THE MASS OF THE SANGRAAL
"_FFEIRIADWYR Melcisidec! Ffeiriadwyr Melcisidec!_" shouted the old
Calvinistic Methodist deacon with the grey beard. "Priesthood of
Melchizedek! Priesthood of Melchizedek!"
And he went on:
"The Bell that is like _y glwys yr angel ym mharadwys_--the joy of the
angels in Paradise--is returned; the Altar that is of a colour that no
men can discern is returned, the Cup that came from Syon is returned,
the ancient Offering is restored, the Three Saints have come back to the
church of the _tri sant_, the Three Holy Fishermen are amongst us, and
their net is full. _Gogoniant, gogoniant_--glory, glory!"
Then another Methodist began to recite in Welsh a verse from Wesley's
hymn.
God still respects Thy sacrifice,
Its savour sweet doth always please;
The Offering smokes through earth and skies,
Diffusing life and joy and peace;
To these Thy lower courts it comes
And fills them with Divine perfumes.
The whole church was full, as the old books tell, of the odour of the
rarest spiceries. There were lights shining within the sanctuary,
through the narrow archway.
This was the beginning of the end of what befell at Llantrisant. For it
was the Sunday after that night on which Olwen Phillips had been
restored from death to life. There was not a single chapel of the
Dissenters open in the town that day. The Methodists with their minister
and their deacons and all the Nonconformists had returned on this Sunday
morning to "the old hive." One would have said, a church of the Middle
Ages, a church in Ireland today. Every seat--save those in the chancel
--was full, all the aisles were full, the churchyard was full; everyone
on his knees, and the old rector kneeling before the door into the holy
place.
Yet they can say but very little of what was done beyond the veil. There
was no attempt to perform the usual service; when the bells had stopped
the old deacon raised his cry, and priest and people fell down on their
knees as they thought they heard a choir within singing "Alleluya,
alleluya, alleluya." And as the bells in the tower ceased ringing, there
sounded the thrill of the bell from Syon, and the golden veil of
sunlight fell across the door into the altar, and the heavenly voices
began their melodies.
A voice like a trumpet cried from within the brightness.
_Agyos, Agyos, Agyos._
And the people, as if an age-old memory stirred in them, replied:
_Agyos yr Tâd, agyos yr Mab, agyos yr Yspryd Glan. Sant, sant, sant,
Drindod sant vendigeid. Sanctus Arglwydd Dduw Sabaoth, Dominus Deus._
There was a voice that cried and sang from within the altar; most of the
people had heard some faint echo of it in the chapels; a voice rising
and falling and soaring in awful modulations that rang like the trumpet
of the Last Angel. The people beat upon their breasts, the tears were
like rain of the mountains on their cheeks; those that were able fell
down flat on their faces before the glory of the veil. They said
afterwards that men of the hills, twenty miles away, heard that cry and
that singing, roaring upon them on the wind, and they fell down on
their faces, and cried, "The offering is accomplished," knowing nothing
of what they said.
There were a few who saw three come out of the door of the sanctuary,
and stand for a moment on the pace before the door. These three were in
dyed vesture, red as blood. One stood before two, looking to the west,
and he rang the bell. And they say that all the birds of the wood, and
all the waters of the sea, and all the leaves of the trees, and all the
winds of the high rocks uttered their voices with the ringing of the
bell. And the second and the third; they turned their faces one to
another. The second held up the lost altar that they once called
Sapphirus, which was like the changing of the sea and of the sky, and
like the immixture of gold and silver. And the third heaved up high over
the altar a cup that was red with burning and the blood of the offering.
And the old rector cried aloud then before the entrance:
_Bendigeid yr Offeren yn oes oesoedd_--blessed be the Offering unto the
age of ages.
And then the Mass of the Sangraal was ended, and then began the passing
out of that land of the holy persons and holy things that had returned
to it after the long years. It seemed, indeed, to many that the
thrilling sound of the bell was in their ears for days, even for weeks
after that Sunday morning. But thenceforth neither bell nor altar nor
cup was seen by anyone; not openly, that is, but only in dreams by day
and by night. Nor did the people see Strangers again in the market of
Llantrisant, nor in the lonely places where certain persons oppressed by
great affliction and sorrow had once or twice encountered them.
* * * * *
But that time of visitation will never be forgotten by the people. Many
things happened in the nine days that have not been set down in this
record--or legend. Some of them were trifling matters, though strange
enough in other times. Thus a man in the town who had a fierce dog that
was always kept chained up found one day that the beast had become mild
and gentle.
And this is odder: Edward Davies, of Lanafon, a farmer, was roused from
sleep one night by a queer yelping and barking in his yard. He looked
out of the window and saw his sheep-dog playing with a big fox; they
were chasing each other by turns, rolling over and over one another,
"cutting such capers as I did never see the like," as the astonished
farmer put it. And some of the people said that during this season of
wonder the corn shot up, and the grass thickened, and the fruit was
multiplied on the trees in a very marvellous manner.
More important, it seemed, was the case of Williams, the grocer; though
this may have been a purely natural deliverance. Mr. Williams was to
marry his daughter Mary to a smart young fellow from Carmarthen, and he
was in great distress over it. Not over the marriage itself, but because
things had been going very badly with him for some time, and he could
not see his way to giving anything like the wedding entertainment that
would be expected of him. The wedding was to be on the Saturday--that
was the day on which the lawyer, Lewis Prothero, and the farmer, Philip
James, were reconciled--and this John Williams, without money or credit,
could not think how shame would not be on him for the meagreness and
poverty of the wedding feast. And then on the Tuesday came a letter from
his brother, David Williams, Australia, from whom he had not heard for
fifteen years. And David, it seemed, had been making a great deal of
money, and was a bachelor, and here was with his letter a paper good for
a thousand pounds: "You may as well enjoy it now as wait till I am
dead." This was enough, indeed, one might say; but hardly an hour after
the letter had come the lady from the big house (Plas Mawr) drove up in
all her grandeur, and went into the shop and said, "Mr. Williams, your
daughter Mary has always been a very good girl, and my husband and I
feel that we must give her some little thing on her wedding, and we hope
she'll be very happy." It was a gold watch worth fifteen pounds. And
after Lady Watcyn, advances the old doctor with a dozen of port, forty
years upon it, and a long sermon on how to decant it. And the old
rector's old wife brings to the beautiful dark girl two yards of creamy
lace, like an enchantment, for her wedding veil, and tells Mary how she
wore it for her own wedding fifty years ago; and the squire, Sir Watcyn,
as if his wife had not been already with a fine gift, calls from his
horse, and brings out Williams and barks like a dog at him, "Goin' to
have a weddin', eh, Williams? Can't have a weddin' without champagne, y'
know; wouldn't be legal, don't y' know. So look out for a couple of
cases." So Williams tells the story of the gifts; and certainly there
was never so famous a wedding in Llantrisant before.
All this, of course, may have been altogether in the natural order; the
"glow," as they call it, seems more difficult to explain. For they say
that all through the nine days, and indeed after the time had ended,
there never was a man weary or sick at heart in Llantrisant, or in the
country round it. For if a man felt that his work of the body or the
mind was going to be too much for his strength, then there would come to
him of a sudden a warm glow and a thrilling all over him and he felt as
strong as a giant, and happier than he had ever been in his life before,
so that lawyer and hedger each rejoiced in the task that was before him,
as if it were sport and play.
And much more wonderful than this or any other wonders was forgiveness,
with love to follow it. There were meetings of old enemies in the
market-place and in the street that made the people lift up their hands
and declare that it was as if one walked the miraculous streets of Syon.
* * * * *
But as to the "phenomena," the occurrences for which, in ordinary talk,
we should reserve the word "miraculous"? Well, what do we know? The
question that I have already stated comes up again, as to the possible
survival of old tradition in a kind of dormant, or torpid,
semi-conscious state. In other words, did the people "see" and "hear"
what they expected to see and hear? This point, or one similar to it,
occurred in a debate between Andrew Lang and Anatole France as to the
visions of Joan of Arc. M. France stated that when Joan saw St. Michael,
she saw the traditional archangel of the religious art of her day, but
to the best of my belief Andrew Lang proved that the visionary figure
Joan described was not in the least like the fifteenth-century
conception of St. Michael. So, in the case of Llantrisant, I have stated
that there was a sort of tradition about the Holy Bell of Teilo Sant;
and it is, of course, barely possible that some vague notion of the
Graal Cup may have reached even Welsh country folks through Tennyson's
Idylls. But so far I see no reason to suppose that these people had ever
heard of the portable altar (called Sapphirus in William of Malmesbury)
or of its changing colours "that no man could discern."
And then there are the other questions of the distinction between
hallucination and vision, of the average duration of one and the other,
and of the possibility of collective hallucination. If a number of
people all see (or think they see) the same appearances, can this be
merely hallucination? I believe there is a leading case on the matter,
which concerns a number of people seeing the same appearance on a church
wall in Ireland; but there is, of course, this difficulty, that one may
be hallucinated and communicate his impression to the others,
telepathically.
But at the last, what do we know?