MY RELATIVES AND ANCESTORS 19 



Here nature speaks with a resistless force. 

 What though these flow'rets speedily decay 

 Yet they our love, our tenderest thoughts display, 

 Of friends departed a memorial sweet 

 With which their relics thus we fondly greet, 

 'Our minds revisit those we loved when here, 

 Tho' lost to sight, to memory still they're dear.' " 



In consequence of this custom the Sunday before Easter 

 was called in Wales " Flowering Sunday," and was looked 

 forward to by most families as an event of special interest, 

 and by children as quite a festival. It is always a pretty 

 sight when even a grave here and there is nicely adorned 

 with fresh flowers, but when a whole churchyard is so deco- 

 rated, at least as regards all but the oldest tombs, it becomes 

 really beautiful. The long procession during the morning of 

 women and children carrying baskets of flowers, and coming 

 in from various directions, often from many miles distant, 

 adds greatly to the interest of the scene. This custom seems 

 to be one of the expressions of the idealism and poetry char- 

 acteristic of most Celtic peoples. 



