WELSH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



I I.AX.il'ACK AND I.ITKHATritK. 



*7 



alphabet, not u the dream* of insanity, but aa disclosure* to be received 

 with repect. He adopt* the nine serious tone in the preface to the 

 1 Brut y Ty wywgion, or the Chronicle of the Prince*,' edited by him in 

 I860, and ' published by the authority of the Lords Commissioner* of 

 Her Majesty'* Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the 

 Boll*.' " The voice of tradition," he begins, " would not lead us to 

 suppose that the ancient Britoua paid any very particular attention to 

 the itudy of chronology previous to the era of Prydain, eon of Aedd 

 the Great, which U variously dated from the year 1780 to 480 before 

 the nativity of Christ." The remarks which follow are of a similar 

 character. Ab Ithel U now (1861) publishing 'The Traditionary AnnaU 

 of the Cvmry ; reprinted from the Cambrian Journal,' in which 

 many of the etatonient* are based on the manuscript of Llewelyn 

 Sion, and many others on what are simply quoted as " unpublished 

 manuscripts." 



A more complete contrast to Ab Ithel, in the character of Ids 

 criticism, con hardly be imagined than Mr. Thomas Stephens, of 

 Merthyr-Tydvil, acknowledged even by his opponents to be one of 

 the first of living Welsh scholars. In his ' Studies on British Bio- 

 graphy,' printed in the ' Cambrian Journal ' in which the editor is in 

 the habit of speaking of Prydain ab Aedd Mawr as a personage as 

 historical aa Llewelyn ab Jorwerth, or William the Conqueror. V 

 Stephen* remarks that "it is seldom that a name con be clearly 

 demonstrated to be a myth, and the stages of its growth fully and 

 satisfactorily unfolded, but we are enabled to do this in the case of 

 Prydain ab Aedd Mawr, and to show that the name is one of the best 

 specimens of a myth in all literature." " On me be the shame," he 

 adds, " if the statement is not borne out by the facts and reasons here 

 following : on those who have deluded their countrymen with dreamy 

 speculations and hardy mis-statements, if the proof should be conclu- 

 sive." Mr. Stephens forcibly describes himself at the end of his article, 

 as one "who honestly endeavours to unfold the real history of his 

 country and countrymen, and who aspires to teach them that that can 

 be no true patriotism which upholds as veritable history a tissue of 

 demonstrable fictions, which fears to realise its own boast of ' Truth 

 against the world,' and dreads nothing to much a to see its 'traditions ' 

 subjected to a rigorous examination ' in the face of the sun and in 

 the eye of light'" The most important work hitherto published 

 by Mr. Stephens is his valuable volume on the ' Literature of the 

 Cyrnry in the Twelfth and following Centuries.' The reader, even 

 where he cannot agree with the author's opinions, feels assured that 

 they are those, not only of a man of learning, but of sincerity and 

 judgment. A complete history of Welsh literature from the same 

 pen would be a boon, not only to the literature of England, but of 

 Europe, and the gratitude of men of letters would make amends to 

 Mr. Stephens for the virulence with which he has been sometimes 

 assailed by the mistaken patriotism of ill-judging countrymen, who do 

 not perceive that he is one of the best friends and supporters of the 

 real honour of Wales, 



It has been already mentioned that Mr. Stephens'* general views 

 have found a powerful supporter, and in some cases extender, in Mr. 

 Nash of Cheltenham. They are also substantially those adopted in 

 the able ' History of Wales from the earliest times to the incorpora- 

 tion with England, by Mr. Bernard Woodward, librarian to the Queen. 

 Much excellent oriticUm on Welsh Druidism, Bardism, and litera- 

 ture may be found embodied to the greatest advantage in a volume 

 which is distinguished for the vivacity, as well as the general sound- 

 ness of its views. 



The music of Wales wag first brought before the English public, in 

 connection with its poetry, in the ' Relics of the Welsh Bards,' pub- 

 lished in 1784, by Edward Jones," Bard to the Prince of Wales," a 

 native of Merionethshire, who died at London in 1824. The work is 

 valuable from the specimens it contains of both poetry nnd mimic, 

 but the poetry is too paraphrostically rendered, and the accompanying 

 notices are little to be relied on. A similar collection of \\ el -b 

 tunes was made by John Parry (born at Denbigh in 1776, died at 

 London in 1861), a self-taught musician, who became composer to 

 Vauxhall Gardens, and was moreover honoured with the degree ol 

 " Bardd Alaw," or Bard of Music, at a congress of Bards, iu 1821. Mr. 

 Parry had the good fortune to engage Mrs. Hcmans to write the 

 verses to his collection of melodies; but Mrs. Hcmans, though she 

 spent part of her childhood and much of her life in Wales, and was 

 attached to the country, was unacquainted with the language. An- 

 other collection of Welsh tunes is now announced an in preparation, 

 with Welsh words, by " Talhaiarn," one of the first of living Welsh 

 poets, and translations into English verse by Mr. Thomas Oliphant, of 

 the Madrigal Society, author of the ' Musa Madrigalesca.' 



The quantity of Welsh poetry, or verse, that has been written 

 during the last hundred years is very remarkable, and not the less 

 remarkable U the general uniformity of it* character. It is almost 

 exclusively lyrical In the whole range of Welsh literature for many 

 centuries there was nothing of the epic or narrative kind, not even so 

 much as a ballad, while the most popular volume of Breton poetry 

 that has been published, the ' Bartas Breir.,' consist* of a collection of 

 ballads gathered among the peasantry. An absence of fiction in prose 

 of that class which the German* consider a branch of poetry, is also 

 vary striking in Welsh literature. It might bo brought as an argu 

 meat (gainst the originality of the Mabinogion, that the only other 



ratives that have been popular in Wales, even down to 

 *, have certainly been imported. The ' 1 ' 



tictkiuua narrative 

 our own time*, 



> simply a translation of Bunyan ; the'' Sleeping Bard' of Klli- \V 

 "ounded on Quevedo; and the only book of the kind that has stirred 

 ;he mind of the Welsh in our days is 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' 

 received the extraordinary honour of four dill'erent translations and 

 adaptations. All these works, it may be remarked, partake of a reli- 

 gious character. We have never heard of a Welsh translate 

 Robinson Crusoe,' or of a novel by Sir Walter Scott. Some ' T< 

 ranee Tales' have lately been produced in answer to prizes, and we 

 observe that with the present year (1861) a serial was commenced at 

 LJanerohymedd under the title of ' Id,' "The Novelist.' li 



well conducted, we heartily wish it success. The " Cymro utr 

 he Welshman who knows no language but Welsh, has been !< 

 rularly deficient in means of literary recreation. The 8ajm: 

 lardly be more ignorant of the literature of Wales than such a 

 ' Cymro unkith " necessarily was, till very recently, of the literature 

 of England. 



Some of the poets of the more recent period have already been men- 



.n giving an account of the antiquaries, Owen Pup 

 Williams, and his son Taliesin ; of the other*, the only dram 

 take precedence. " Twm o'r Nant," says Williams, or lolo Mor; 

 n one of his letters, " has been called the Shakspere of Wales, What 

 Blasphemy to name him with the Shakspere of England ! You have 

 most probably seen a foolish crambo sometimes put into tlie 1 

 ittle children beginning to read, ' This is the House that Jack built.' 

 [t in much fairer to compare this to the writings of Shakspere than 

 anything that was ever written by Twm o'r Nant, whose interludes 

 consist of nothing but the lowest and frequently the most indecent 

 buffoonery that can be imagined." " Twm o'r Nant," or " Tom of the 

 Valley," was the bardic name of Thomas Edwards, who was the 

 originator and chief of a band of strolling players who went ab 

 the Welsh villages. His interludes, " Enterlutes," as he calls them in 

 Welsh, resemble, if we may judge by their titles, whieh are ni- 

 si correspondent in the ' Gwladgarwr' (vol. vi.. p. 141), the My.teries, 

 or Moralities, which preceded the establishment of the regular theatre 

 in most countries of Europe. One of them is a dialogue betv 

 Protestant and a Dissenter; another between Pleasure and v 

 The dates of these are 1783 and 1787. He afterwards advanced nearer 

 to the regular drama, for in 1812 we have the ' Ystori Richard 

 Whittington yr hwn a fu dair gwaith yn Arglwydd Maer Lhmdain ;' the 

 story of Whittington thrice lord mayor of London. Their merit, we 

 may charitably suppose, was greater than Williams allows them 

 some who deny him the name of the Welsh Shakspere call him the 

 Welsh Aristophanes. Edwards was born in Denbighshire in 1788, and 

 died, apparently, before 1820. Before his time the only existing speci- 

 mens of the Welsh drama, that we are aware of, are a volume of 

 "interludes" of the 17th century, among the manuscripts of the 

 British Museum. Since his time we have heard of no atten 

 the acted drama in Wales; but in a recent number 

 Beirniad,' a periodical, there is on adaptation of David and Goliath, 

 from the original of Hannah More ; and Talhaiarn gives in his i 

 a translation of a scene or two from Shakspere's ' King Lear.' 



The poetry of the fourth period in Wales is generally of a serious 

 character. Three Davids are mentioned as distinguished among the 

 bards David Richards of Dolgelly (1751-1827), known as 1' 

 lonawr ; David Thomas of Caernarvon (1769-1822), known as 1 ' 

 I )dn Eryri; and David Owen of Eivion (1784-1841), by his bardic name 

 Dewi Wyn. Davydd lonawr is sometimes called ''the Christian poet 

 of Wales," his chief productions being a sort of epic on the Trinity, 

 and a paraphrase of the history of Joseph. 1 >avydd Ddu Eryri was 

 one of the companions of lolo Morganwg in the bardic meeting held in 

 1792 < m the summit of IVimrose Hill, and in 17!'3and 17!>4 he was, 

 with his rival, Walter Davies, or Gwallter Mechain, prohibited from 

 contending at Eisteddfods for a time, because, when they did BO, their 

 competitor* had no chance of success. Dcwi Wyn spent his life in 

 rural pursuits, and his poems were collected in a volume under the 

 title of 'Blodau Arfcm,' or ' Flowers of Arvon.' Mr. Thomas Lloyd 

 Jones (Qwenffrwd), of Holywcll. in Flintshire, who emigrated to 

 America, and died in Alabama in 1834, in his twenty-fourth 

 published a small but useful volume. Ceinion Awen y Cyinn 

 Beauties of Welsh Poetry,' an acceptable ^uidc both to the stranp 

 native. A larger volume of this description, with biographical n< 

 of the poets, on the plan of Macki i. t (iaelic I 1 



is much required in Welsh literature. Lloyd Jones h 

 int.. Welsh, Thomson's ' Seasons,' and the Deserted Villa; 

 set an example, which has been followed by Daniel Silvan Kvans and 



by Jones (Talhaiarn), of enabling the Welsh reader to taste eorne 



of the beauties of the bards of England. Merthyr-Tydvil at one time 

 boasted of three poets Taliesin Williams, already repeatedly men- 

 tioned; Edward Williams, an who, to distinguish hit 

 the more famous Edward Williams, or lolo Morganwg, was called Io!" 

 Mynwy ; and John Thomas, said by his admirers to be the best 

 minstrel iu South Wales. Two eminent Welsh bards were resident at 

 Oxford together the Rev. D.miel Evans, of Jesus (' 

 assumed the name of Daniel Ddu o Ocredigion, from 

 Cardigan, and the Rev. John Jones, of Christ Church, who took t 

 Tegid, from having been born near Llyn Tegid. A collection of poems 



