Transcribed from the 1888 Hodder and Stoughton edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org
CHRISTMAS EVANS:
The Preacher of Wild Wales.
_HIS COUNTRY_, _HIS TIMES_, _AND HIS_
_CONTEMPORARIES_.
* * * * *
BY THE REV.
PAXTON HOOD,
AUTHOR OF
“THE THRONE OF ELOQUENCE,” “WORLD OF PROVERB AND PARABLE,”
“THE WORLD OF ANECDOTE,” “ROBERT HALL,” ETC.
* * * * *
_THIRD EDITION_.
* * * * *
London:
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
* * * * *
MDCCCLXXXVIII.
[_All rights reserved_.]
* * * * *
* * * * *
Hazell Watson and Viney, Printers, London and Aylesbury
TO THE REV. JOHN DAVIES, OF BRIGHTON.
MY DEAR FRIEND,—I believe there is no man living to whom I could so
appropriately inscribe an attempt to give some appreciation of the life
and labours of Christmas Evans as yourself. Your revered father and he
were taken on the same evening into Church fellowship in the old
communion of Castell Hywel, and within a week of each other they preached
their first sermons from the same desk; after this their ways diverged,
Evans uniting himself with the Baptist Communion, your father joining the
Independent; still, like two rivers flowing, and broadening, from
neighbouring, but obscure springs in the heart of their native
Plynlymmon, cheerfully they ran their beautiful course, beneath the
providential law of Him who chooses our inheritance for us, and fixes the
bounds of our habitations. They both served their generation in their
own land well, before they fell on sleep. Your father was called “the
Silver Trumpet of Wales,” and the name of Evans rolled like a
far-resounding bell among its wild mountains. In their early Christian
life they were associates; in their fame, while living, competent judges
tell me they were equal; and I have brought them together again. In the
memories I have sought to retain in this volume, I have attempted to give
some idea of what old Wild Wales was when these two brothers in arms
arose, and I have attempted to show what the singular institution of
preaching effected for the old insulated land. But I am also glad to
avail myself of the opportunity thus afforded me to express my sense of
mingled admiration, and affection for yourself, and congratulation that
the father, who left you an orphan so young, must rejoice, from that
cloud of witnesses he so long since joined, to know that you followed him
in a successful and happy ministry; while I rejoice, that, unlike him,
you have been permitted to enjoy the sunset in a serene and golden old
age. May you long enjoy it.
My Dear Friend,
I am very affectionately
EDWIN PAXTON HOOD.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
SOME GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF WELSH PREACHING.
PAGE
Wales, the Country and the People—Individuality of 1
the Welsh Pulpit—St. David—The Religious Sense of the
People—Association Meetings—Gryffyth of
Caernarvon—Bardic Character of the Sermons—A
Repetition of Sermons—Peculiarities of the Welsh
Language—Its Singular Effects as spoken—Its
Vowels—Its Pictorial Character—The _Hwyl_—Welsh
Scenery—Isolated Character of the Old Chapels—Plain
Living and High Thinking—Ludicrous Incidents of
Uncertain Service—Superstitions of
Heathenism—Fondness of the People for
Allegory—Haunted Wales—The Rev. John Jones and the
Mysterious Horseman—Old Wild Wales—St.
David’s—Kilgerran—Welsh Nomenclature—John Dyer—Old
Customs.
CHAPTER II.
CHRISTMAS EVANS’S EARLY LIFE UNTIL HIS ENTRANCE INTO THE
MINISTRY.
Birth and Early Hardships—Early Church 40
Fellowship—Beginning to Learn—Loses an Eye—A Singular
Dream—Beginning to Preach—His First Sermon—Is
Baptized—A New Church Fellowship—The Rev. Timothy
Thomas—Anecdotes—A Long Season of Spiritual
Depression—Is ordained as Home Missionary to
Lleyn—Commencement of Success as a Preacher—Remarks
on Success—Marries—Great Sermon at Velinvoel—A
Personal Reminiscence of Welsh Preaching.
CHAPTER III.
THE MINISTRY IN THE ISLAND OF ANGLESEA.
Journey to Anglesea—Cildwrn Chapel, and Life in the 63
Cildwrn Cottage—Poverty—Forcing his Way to
Knowledge—Anecdote, “I am the Book”—A Dream—The
Sandemanian Controversy—Jones of Ramoth—“Altogether
Wrong”—The Work in Peril—Thomas Jones of
Rhydwilym—Christmas’s Restoration to Spiritual
Health—Extracts from Personal Reflections—Singular
Covenant with God—Renewed Success—The Great Sermon of
the Churchyard World—Scenery of its Probable
Delivery—Outline of the Sermon—Remarks on the
Allegorical Style—Outlines of Another Remarkable
Sermon, “The Hind of the Morning”—Great Preaching but
Plain Preaching—Hardships of the Welsh Preacher.
CHAPTER IV.
THE MINISTRY IN ANGLESEA (CONTINUED).
Christmas Evans as a Bishop over many Churches—As a 106
Moderator in Public Meetings—Chapel-building and all
its Difficulties to Christmas Evans—Extensive
Travelling for Chapel Debts—Especially in South
Wales—The Cildwrn Cottage again—A Mysterious Life of
Poverty but of Hospitality—Catherine’s Troubles—Story
of a Hat—Wayfaring—Insatiability for Sermons in the
Welsh—The Scenery of a Great Sermon—The Demoniac of
Gadara—A Remarkable Illustration of the Varied Method
of the Preacher—A Series of Illustrations of his
Power of Allegoric Painting—The Four Methods of
Preaching—The Seeking of the Young Child—Satan
walking in Dry Places—Christmas Evans in Another
Light—Lengthy Letter to a Young
Minister—Contributions to Magazines—To be accursed
from Christ—Dark Days of Persecution—Threatened with
Law for a Chapel Debt—Darker Days—Loss of his
Wife—Other Troubles—Determines to leave Anglesea.
CHAPTER V.
CONTEMPORARIES IN THE WELSH PULPIT—WILLIAMS OF WERN.
The Great Welsh Preachers unknown in England—The 166
Family of the Williamses—Williams of Pantycelyn—Peter
Williams—Evan Williams—Dr. Williams—Williams of
Wern—The Immense Power of his Graphic
Language—Reading and Thinking—Instances of his Power
of Luminous Illustration—Early Piety—A Young
Preacher—A Welsh Gilboa—Admiration of, and Likeness
to, Jacob Abbot—Axiomatic Style—Illustrations of
Humour—The Devils—Fondness for Natural
Imagery—Fondness of Solitude—Affecting Anecdotes of
Dying Hours—His Daughter—His Preaching
characterised—The Power of the Refrain in the
Musician and the Preacher, “Unto us a Child is born.”
CHAPTER VI.
CONTEMPORARIES—JOHN ELIAS.
Fire and Smoke—Elias’s Pure Flame—Notes in the 185
Pulpit—Carrying Fire in Paper—Elias’s Power in
Apostrophe—Anecdote of the Flax-dresser—A Singular
First Appearance in the Pulpit—A Rough Time in
Wales—The Burning of the Ravens’ Nests—A Hideous
Custom put down—The Great Fair of Rhuddlan—The Ten
Cannon of Sinai—Action in Oratory—The Tremendous
Character of his Preaching—Lives in an Atmosphere of
Prayer—Singular Dispersion on a Racecourse—A
Remarkable Sermon, Shall the Prey be taken from the
Mighty?—Anecdote of a Noble Earl—Death and Funeral.
CHAPTER VII.
CONTEMPORARIES—DAVIES OF SWANSEA.
Traditions of his Extraordinary 202
Eloquence—Childhood—Unites in Church Fellowship with
Christmas Evans, and with him preaches his First
Sermon—The Church of Castell Hywel—Settles in the
Ministry at Trefach—The Anonymous Preacher—Settles in
Swansea—Swansea a Hundred Years Since—Mr. Davies
reforms the Neighbourhood—Anecdotes of the Power of
his Personal Character—How he Dealt with some Young
Offenders—Anecdote of a Captain—The Gentle Character
of his Eloquence—The Human Voice a Great Organ—The
Power of the “Vox Humana Stop”—A Great Hymn
Writer—His Last Sermon.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PREACHERS OF WILD WALES.
Rees Pritchard, and “The Welshman’s Candle”—A 217
Singular Conversion—The Intoxicated Goat—The Vicar’s
Memory—“God’s better than All”—Howell Harris—Daniel
Rowlands at Llangeitho—Philip Pugh—The Obscure
Nonconformist—Llangeitho—Charles of Bala—His Various
Works of Christian Usefulness—The Ancient Preachers
of Wild Wales characterised—Thomas Rhys
Davies—Impressive Paragraphs from his Sermons—Evan
Jones, an Intimate Friend of Christmas Evans—Shenkin
of Penhydd—A Singular Mode of Illustrating a
Subject—Is the Light in the Eye?—Ebenezer Morris—High
Integrity—Homage of Magistrates paid to his
Worth—“Beneath”—Ebenezer Morris at
Wotton-under-Edge—His Father, David
Morris—Rough-and-ready Preachers—Thomas
Hughes—Catechised by a Vicar—Catching the
Congregation by Guile—Sammy Breeze—A Singular Sermon
in Bristol in the Old Time—A Cloud of Forgotten
Worthies—Dr. William Richards—His Definition of
Doctrine—Davies of Castell Hywel, the Pastor of
Christmas Evans, and of Davies of Swansea—Some
Account of Welsh Preaching in Wild Wales, in Relation
to the Welsh Proverbs, Ancient Triads, Metaphysics,
and Poetry—Remarks on the Welsh Language and the
Welsh Mind—Its Secluded and Clannish Character.
CHAPTER IX.
CHRISTMAS EVANS CONTINUED—HIS MINISTRY AT CAERPHILLY.
Caerphilly and its Associations—“Christmas Evans is 261
come!”—A Housekeeper—His Characteristic Second
Marriage—A Great Sermon, The Trial of the
Witnesses—The Tall Soldier—Extracts from Sermons—The
Bible a Stone with Seven Eyes—“Their Works do Follow
them”—A Second Covenant with God—Friends at
Cardiff—J. P. Davies—Reads Pye Smith’s “Scripture
Testimony to the Messiah”—Beattie on Truth—The
Edwards Family—Requested to Publish a Volume of
Sermons, and his Serious Thoughts upon the Subject.
CHAPTER X.
CAERNARVON AND LAST DAYS.
Leading a Forlorn Hope again—More Chapel Debts—A 287
Present of a Gig—Jack, _bach_!—The One-eyed Man of
Anglesea once more—The Old Man’s Reflections in his
Journal—Characteristic Letters on Church
Discipline—Threescore Years and Twelve—Starts on his
Last Journey to liquidate a Chapel Debt—An Affecting
Appeal to the Churches—Laid up at
Tredegar—Conversations—In Swansea—This is my Last
Sermon—Dying—Last Words—“Good-bye! Drive on!”
CHAPTER XI.
SUMMARY OF GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRISTMAS EVANS, AS A
MAN AND A PREACHER.
A Central Figure in the Religious Life of Wales—In a 304
Singular Degree a Self-made Man—His Words on the
Value of Industry—His Honest Simplicity—Power of
Sarcasm Repressed—Affectionate Forgiveableness—Great
Faith, and Power in Prayer—A Passage in Dean Milman’s
“Samor”—His Sermons a Kind of _Silex
Scintillaus_—Massive Preaching, but lightened by
Beautiful Flowers—As an Orator—A Preacher in the Age
of Faith—Seeing Great Truths—His Remarks on what was
called “Welsh Jumping” in Religious Services.
CHAPTER XII.
SUMMARY OF GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRISTMAS EVANS AS A
PREACHER.
Remarks renewed in Vindication of his Use of Parable 322
in the Pulpit—His Sermons appear to be Born of
Solitude—His Imitators—His Probable Acquaintance with
“The Sleeping Bard” of Elis Wynn—A
Dream—Illustrations—The Gospel Mould—Saul of Tarsus
and his Seven Ships—The Misplaced Bone—The Man in the
House of Steel—The Parable of the Church as an Ark
among the Bulrushes of the Nile—The Handwriting—Death
as an Inoculator—Time—The Timepiece—Parable of the
Birds—Parable of the Vine-tree, the Thorn, the
Bramble, and the Cedar—Illustrations of his more
Sustained Style—The Resurrection of Christ—They drank
of that Rock which followed them—The Impossibility of
Adequate Translation—Closing Remarks on his Place and
Claim to Affectionate Regard.
APPENDATORY CHAPTER.
SELECTION OF ILLUSTRATIVE SERMONS.
Sermon I.—The Time of Reformation 358
„ II.—The Purification of the Conscience 368
„ III.—Finished Redemption 378
„ IV.—The Father and Son Glorified 386
„ V.—The Cedar of God 396
A Sermon on the Welsh Hills 407
CHAPTER I.
_SOME GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF WELSH PREACHING_.
Wales, the Country and the People—Individuality of the Welsh Pulpit—St.
David—The Religious Sense of the People—Association Meetings—Gryffyth of
Caernarvon—Bardic Character of the Sermons—A Repetition of
Sermons—Peculiarities of the Welsh Language—Its Singular Effects as
Spoken—Its Vowels—Its Pictorial Character—The _Hwyl_—Welsh
Scenery—Isolated Character of the Old Chapels—Plain Living and High
Thinking—Ludicrous Incidents of Uncertain Service—Superstitions of
Heathenism—Fondness of the People for Allegory—Haunted Wales—The Rev.
John Jones and the Mysterious Horseman—Old Wild Wales—St.
David’s—Kilgerran—Welsh Nomenclature—John Dyer—Old Customs.
WE propose, in the following pages, to give some account of Christmas
Evans, the great Welsh preacher; believing that he had a style and manner
of preaching which, to English minds and readers, will seem altogether
his own, perhaps more admirable than imitable. But before we enter upon
the delineation of his life, or attempt to unfold his style, or to
represent his method as displayed in his sermons, it may be well to
present some concise view of Welsh preaching and Welsh preachers in
general, especially those of the last age; for as an order of preaching
it has possessed its own very distinctive peculiarities. Some readers
may at first indeed inquire, Is not preaching very much the same
everywhere, in all counties and in all countries? And Wales, which seems
itself in its nearness now only like a district of England, and that
district for the most part wild and but scantily peopled,—can there be
anything so remarkable about its pulpit work as to make it either capable
or worthy of any separate account of its singularities and
idiosyncrasies? To most English people Welsh preaching is a phase of
religious life entirely unknown: thousands of tourists visit the more
conspicuous highways of Wales from year to year, its few places of public
resort or more manifest beauty; but Wales is still, for the most part,
unknown; its isolation is indeed somewhat disturbed now, its villages are
no longer so insulated as of old, and the sounds of advancing life are
breaking in upon its solitudes, yet, perhaps, its fairest scenes are
still uninvaded. But if the country be unknown, still more unknown are
the people, and of its singular preaching phenomena scarcely anything is
known, or ever can be known by English people; yet it is not too much to
say that, in that little land, during the last hundred years, amidst its
wild glens and sombre mountain shadows, its villages retreating into
desolate moorlands and winding vales, where seldom a traveller passes by,
there have appeared such a succession and race of remarkable preachers as
could be rivalled—in their own peculiar popular power over the hearts and
minds of many thousands, for their eminence and variety—in no other
country. Among these, Christmas Evans seems to us singularly
representative; eminently Welsh, his attributes of power seem to be
especially indicative of the characteristics of the Welsh mind, an order
of mind as remarkably singular and individual, and worthy of study, as
any national character in the great human family. But even before we
mention these, it may be well to notice what were some of the reasons for
the eminent influence and usefulness of Christmas Evans, and some of his
extraordinary preaching comrades and contemporaries to whom we shall have
occasion to refer.
Preaching is, in Wales, the great national characteristic; the Derby Day
is not more truly a characteristic of England than the great gatherings
and meetings of the Associations all grouped around some popular
favourites. The dwellers among those mountains and upon those hill-sides
have no concerts, no theatres, no means of stimulating or satisfying
their curiosity. For we, who care little for preaching, to whom the
whole sermon system is perhaps becoming more tedious, can form but little
idea, and have but little sympathy with that form of religious society
where the pulpit is the orchestra, the stage, and the platform, and where
the charms of music, painting, and acting are looked for, and found in
the preacher. We very likely would be disposed even to look with
complacent pity upon such a state of society,—it has not yet
expired,—where the Bulwers, the Dickenses, the Thackerays, and Scotts are
altogether unknown,—but where the peculiar forms of their
genius—certainly without their peculiar education—display themselves in
the pulpit. If our readers suppose, therefore, a large amount of
ignorance,—well, upon such a subject, certainly, it is possible to enter
easily upon the illimitable. Yet it is such an ignorance as that which
developed itself in Job, and in his companions, and in his age—an
ignorance like that which we may conceive in Æschylus. In fact, in
Wales, the gates of every man’s being have been opened. It is possible
to know much of the grammar, and the history, and the lexicography of
things, and yet to be so utterly ignorant of _things_ as never to have
felt the sentiment of strangeness and of terror; and without having been
informed about the names of things, it is possible to have been brought
into the presence and power of _things_ themselves. Thus, the ignorance
of one man may be higher than the intelligence of another. There may be
a large memory and a very narrow consciousness. On the contrary, there
may be a large consciousness, while the forms it embraces may be
uncertain and undefined in the misty twilight of the soul. This is much
the state of many minds in Wales. It is the state of feeling, and of
poetry, of subtle questionings, high religious musings, and raptures.
This state has been aided by the secludedness of the country, and the
exclusiveness of the language,—not less than by the rugged force and
masculine majesty and strength of the language;—a language full of angles
and sharp goads, admirably fitted for the masters of assemblies,
admirably fitted to move like a wind over the soul, rousing and soothing,
stirring into storm, and lulling into rest. Something in it makes an
orator almost ludicrous when he attempts to convey himself in another
language, but very powerful and impressive in that. It is a speaking and
living language, a language without any shallows, a language which seems
to compel the necessity of thought before using it. Our language is fast
becoming serviceable for all that large part of the human family who
speak without thinking. To this state the Welsh can never come. That
unaccommodating tongue only moves with a soul behind it.
Thus, it is not the first reason, but it is not unimportant to remember,
that, until very recently, the pulpit in Wales has been the only means of
popular excitement, instruction, or even of entertainment; until very
recently the Welsh, like the ancient Hebrew lady, have dwelt among their
own people, they have possessed no popular fictions, no published poems,
no published emanations either of metaphysics or natural science; immured
in their own language, as they were, less than a century since, among
their own mountains, their language proved a barrier to the importation
of many works accessible to almost all the other languages of Europe. It
may be said that religion, as represented through the men of the pulpit,
has made Wales what she is. When the first men of the pulpit, Howell
Harris, Daniel Rowlands, and others, arose, they found their country
lying under a night of spiritual darkness, and they effected an amazing
reformation; but then they had no competitive influences to interfere
with their progress, or none beyond that rough, rude sensuality, that
barbarism of character, which everywhere sets itself in an attitude of
hostility to spiritual truth and to elevated holiness; there were no
theatres or race courses, there was no possibility that the minds of the
multitudes should be occupied by the intellectual casuistries of a later
day; Wales possessed no Universities or Colleges, and very few Schools;
on the other hand, there were some characteristics of the national mind
very favourable to the impulse these men gave, and the impressions they
produced. So it has happened that the Welsh preacher has been elevated
into an importance, reminding us of the Welsh tradition concerning St.
David, the patron saint of Wales, regarding whom it is said, that, while
preaching in the year 520, in Cardigan, against the Pelagian heresy, such
was the force of his argument, and the eloquence of his oratory, that the
very ground on which he stood rose beneath his feet and elevated itself
into a hillock; and there, in after ages, a church was erected upon the
spot to which awful tradition pointed as the marvellous pulpit of the
patron saint.
Three-fourths of any amount of power which either or any of these first
preachers, or their successors, have obtained over their countrymen, and
countrywomen, arises from the fact that the Welsh possess, in an eminent
degree, what we call a Religious Nature; they are very open to Wonder;
they have a most keen and curious propensity to inquire into the hidden
causes of things, not mere material causes, but Spiritual causes, what we
call Metaphysics; the Unseen Universe is to them as to all of us a
mystery, but it is a mystery over which they cannot but brood; when
education is lacking, this realizing of the unseen is apt to give rise to
superstitious feelings, and superstitions still loiter and linger among
the glens, the churchyards, and old castles and ruins of Wales, although
the spread of Christian truth has divested them of much of their ancient
extravagance; when, therefore, the earnest voice of their native speech
became the vehicle for unfolding the higher doctrines of the Christian
life, the sufferings of the Redeemer and their relation to eternal laws
and human conditions, probably a people was never found whose ears were
more open, or whose hearts were more ready to receive, and to be stirred
to their utmost depths. Thus Religion—Evangelical Religion—became the
very life of the land of Wales.
“There is not a heathen man, woman, or child in all the Principality,”
said a very eminent Welshman to us once, probably with some measure of
exaggeration; “there are wicked men, and women,” he continued,
“unconverted men, and women, but there is not a man, woman, or child
throughout Wales who does not know all about Jesus Christ, and why He
came into the world, and what He came to do.” Thus, within the memory of
the writer of this volume, Religion was the one topic upon which you
might talk intelligently anywhere in Wales: with the pitman in the
coalmine, with the iron-smelter at the forge, with the farmer by his
ingleside, with the labourer in his mountain shieling; and not merely on
the first more elementary lessons of the catechism, but on the great
bearings and infinite relations of religious things. Jonathan Edwards,
and Williams of Rotherham, and Owen, and Bunyan, and Flavel,—these men
and their works, and a few others like them, were well known; and,
especially, the new aspects which the modified opinions of Andrew Fuller
had introduced into religious thought; thus, you might often feel
surprised when, sitting down in some lowly cottage, you found yourself
suddenly caught, and carried along by its owner in a coil of metaphysical
argument. This was the soil on which the Welsh preachers had to work,
and cast abroad their seed.
No person can have heard anything of the Welsh religious life without
having heard also of the immense annual gatherings, the Association
meetings, a sort of great movable festival, annually held in Wales, to
which everything had to give place, and to which all the various tribes
of the various Houses of the Lord came up. Their ordinary Sunday
services were crowded, but, upon these great occasions, twenty or
twenty-five thousand people would come together; and, to such
congregations, their great men, their great preachers, such as those we
are about to mention, addressed themselves—addressed themselves not to a
mass ignorant and unintelligent, but all thoroughly informed in religious
matters, and prepared to follow their preacher whithersoever his
imagination or thought might lead him. The reader must not smile when we
remind him that Wales was,—had been for ages,—the land of Bards; a love
of poetry, poetry chanted or recited, had always been the Welshman’s
passion, and those great writers of our literature who best know what
poetry is, have taught us that we are not to look upon those productions
with contempt. For ages there had been held in Wales what has been
called, and is still called the _Eisteddfod_, or _Cymreigyddion_, or the
meeting of the Bards and Minstrels; they were, as Pennant has called
them, British Olympics, where none but Bards of merit were suffered to
rehearse their pieces, or Minstrels of skill to perform. These
Association meetings were a kind of religious Eisteddfodd, where the
great Welsh preacher was a kind of sacred Bard; he knew nothing of
written sermons; he carried no notes nor writings with him to his pulpit
or platform, but he made the law and doctrine of religious metaphysics
march to the minstrelsy and music of speech; on the other hand, he did
not indulge himself in casting about wildfire, all had been thoroughly
prepared and rooted in his understanding; and then he went with his
sermon, which was a kind of high song, to chant it over the hearts of the
multitude. We shall have occasion to show, by many instances, from the
lives of their greatest men, how their own hearts had been marvellously
prepared.
There is a pleasant anecdote told of one of them, Gryffyth of Caernarvon,
how he had to preach one night. Before preaching, staying at a farmhouse
on the spot, he desired permission to retire before the service began; he
remained in his room a considerable time; the congregation had assembled,
still he did not come; there was no sign of his making his appearance.
The good man of the house sent the servant to request him to come, as the
people had been for some time assembled and waiting. Approaching the
room she heard, what seemed to her to be a conversation, going on between
two persons, in a subdued tone of voice, and she caught from Mr. Gryffyth
the expression, “_I_ will not go unless _you_ come with me.” She went
back to her master, and said, “I do not think Mr. Gryffyth will come
to-night; there is some one with him, and he is telling him that he will
not come unless the other will come too; but I did not hear the other
reply, so I think Mr. Gryffyth will not come to-night.”
“Yes, yes,” said the farmer, “_he_ will come, and I warrant the _other_
will come too, if matters are as you say between them; but we had better
begin singing and reading until the _two_ do come.” And the story goes
on to say that Mr. Gryffyth did come, and the other One with him, for
they had a very extraordinary meeting that night, and the whole
neighbourhood was stirred by it and numbers were changed and converted.
It was Williams of Wern who used to tell this pleasing anecdote; it is an
anecdote of one man, but, so far as we have been able to see, it
illustrates the way in which they all prepared themselves before they
began to speak.
It must not be supposed from this that they imagined that prayer was to
dispense with preparation; their great preachers studied hard and deeply,
and Williams of Wern, one of the greatest of them all, says, “In order to
be a good preacher, usefulness must be the grand aim, usefulness must
choose the text and divide it, usefulness must compose the sermon and sit
at the helm during the delivery; if the introduction be not clear and
pertinent it is evident the preacher does not know whither he is going,
and if the inferences are of the same character, it is obvious he does
not know where he has been. Unstudied sermons are not worth hearing or
having; who would trust his life in the hands of a physician who had
never thought of his profession?” But these men never permitted the
understanding to supersede emotion, and, when they met the people face to
face, the greatest of them went prepared, warmed and kindled, and ready
to warm and kindle.
Thus their sermons became a sort of inspired song, full of
imagination—imagination very often, and usually, deriving its imagery
from no far-off and recondite allusions, never losing itself in a flowery
wilderness of expressions, but homely illustrations, ministered to by the
things and affairs of ordinary life, and, therefore, instantly preacher
and people in emotion were one.
It is indeed true that many of their great preachers repeated the same
sermon many times. Why not? So did Whitfield, so did Wesley, so have
most eminent preachers done; but this need in no way interfere with—it
did not interfere with—the felt necessity for unction on the part of the
minister; and as to the people they liked to hear an old favourite again,
or a sermon, which they had never heard although they had heard much
about it. We believe it was to Christmas Evans a pert young preacher
said, “Well, you have given us an old sermon again to-day.”
“What then, my boy?” said the Master of Assemblies; “had you a new one?”
“Certainly,” was the answer.
“Well, but look you,” said the unblushing old culprit, “I would not take
a dozen new sermons like yours for this one old sermon of mine.”
“No, nor I,” chimed in a gruff old deacon. “Oh yes, and look you, I
should like to hear it again; but as for _yours_, I never heard it
before, and I do not want to hear it again.”
But then the _Language_! Of course the language had a great deal to do
with this preaching power, we do not mean generally, but particularly; on
all hands the Welsh is acknowledged to be a wonderful language. A
Welshman will tell you that there is no language like it on the face of
the earth, but that is a testimony borne by many scholars who are not
Welshmen; perhaps there is no other language which so instantly conveys a
meaning and at the same time touches emotion to the quick. True, like
the Welshman himself, it is bony, and strangers to its power laugh
somewhat ignorantly at its never-ending succession of consonants.
Somebody has said that the whole language is as if it were made up of
such words as our word “_strength_,” and if the reader will compare in
his mind the effect of the word _power_ as contrasted with the word
_strength_, he will feel something of the force of the language, and its
fitness for the purposes of impression; but still this conveys but a poor
idea of its great attributes.
It is so _literal_ that the competent hearer, or reader, instantly
realizes, from its words, things. Well do we remember sitting in Wales
with a group of Welsh ministers and Welshmen round a pleasant tea-table;
we were talking of the Welsh language, and one of our company, who had
perhaps done more than any one of his own country for popular Welsh
literature, and was one of the order of eminent Welsh preachers of whom
we are speaking, broke forth: “Oh!” he said, “you English people cannot
see all the things in your Bible that a Welshman can see; now your word
‘_blessed_,’ it seems a very dear sweet thing to an Englishman and to a
Welshman, but a Welshman sees the _thing_ in the word, ‘_Gwyn ei fyd_,’
that is, ‘_a white world_—white,’ literally, white their world; so a
Welshman would see there is a ‘_white world_’ for the pure in heart, a
‘_white world_’ for the poor in spirit, a ‘_white world_’ for them who
are reviled and persecuted for righteousness’ sake; and when you read,
‘_Blessed_ is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity,’ the
Welshman reads his Bible and sees there is a ‘_white world_’ for such a
one, that is, all sin wiped out, the place quite clean, to begin again.”
This is not all. We are not intending to devote any considerable space
to a vindication of the Welsh language, but, when we speak of it with
reference to the effects it produces as the vehicle of Oratory, it is
necessary to remark that, so far from being,—as many have supposed who
have only looked at it in its strange combination of letters on a page,
perhaps unable to read it, and never having heard it spoken,—so far from
being harsh and rugged, coarse or guttural, it probably yields to no
language in delicious softness, in melting sweetness; in this it has been
likened to the Italian language by those who have been best able to
judge. Lord Lyttleton, in his “Letters from Wales,” says, that when he
first passed some of the Welsh hills, and heard the harp and the
beautiful female peasants accompanying it with their melodious voices, he
could not help indulging in the idea that he had descended the Alps, and
was enjoying the harmonious pleasures of the Italian Paradise. And as we
have already said, there has long prevailed an idea that the Welsh
language is a multitude of consonants; but indeed the reverse is the
case; the learned Eliezer Williams says, in his “Historical Anecdotes of
the Welsh Language,” “The alphabet itself demonstrates that the charge of
a multiplicity of consonants is fallacious, since, whether the number of
letters be reckoned twenty-two or twenty-four, seven are vowels; there
remain therefore a more inconsiderable number than most of the European
languages are obliged to admit . . . . _Y_ and _w_ are considered as
vowels, and sounded as such; _w_ is pronounced like _o u_ in French in
the word _oui_.” To persons ignorant of the language, how strange is the
appearance, and how erroneous the idea of the sound to be conveyed by
_dd_, _ll_, _ch_, but indeed all these are indications of the softening
of the letter; in a word, the impressions entertained of the harshness of
the language are altogether erroneous.
The supposition that the Welsh language is made up of consonants is more
especially singular from the fact that it possesses, says a writer in the
_Quarterly Review_, what perhaps no other nation has,—a poem of eight
lines in which there is not a single consonant. These verses are very
old, dating from the seventeenth century;—of course the reader will
remember that the Welsh language has seven vowels, both _w_ and _y_ being
considered and sounded as such. This epigram or poem is on the Spider,
and originally stood thus,—
“O’i wiw ŵy i weu e â;—o’i iau Ei wyau a wea,
E wywa ei wê aua, A’i weau yw ieuau ia.”
To this, the great Gronwy Owen added a kind of counter change of vowels,
and the translation has been given as follows:—
“From out its womb it weaves with care
Its web beneath the roof;
Its wintry web it spreadeth there—
Wires of ice its woof.
“And doth it weave against the wall
Thin ropes of ice on high?
And must its little liver all
The wondrous stuff supply?”
A singular illustration of the vowel power in a language ignorantly
supposed to possess no vowels.
And these remarks are not at all unnecessary, for they illustrate to the
reader, unacquainted with the language, the way in which it becomes such
a means of immediate emotion; its words start before the eye like
pictures, but are conveyed to the mind like music; and yet the bony
character of the language, to which we have referred before, adds to the
picture dramatic action and living strength. What a language, then, is
this for a competent orator to play upon,—a man with an imaginative mind,
and a fervid and fiery soul! Then is brought into play that element of
Welsh preaching, without knowing and apprehending which there would be no
possibility of understanding the secret of its great power; it is the
“_hwyl_.” When the Welsh preacher speaks in his best mood, and with
great unction, the highest compliment that can be paid him, the loftiest
commendation that can be given, is, that he had the “_hwyl_.” “_Hwyl_”
is the Welsh word for the canvas of a ship; and probably the derivation
of the meaning is, from the canvas or sails of a ship filled with a
breeze: the word for breeze, _awel_, is like it, and is used to denote a
similar effect. Some years since, when the most eminent Welsh preacher
we have recently seen in England, at an ordination service, was
addressing his nephew in a crowded church in the neighbourhood of London,
he said, “And, my dear boy, remember you are a Welshman; don’t try to
speak English, and don’t try to speak like the English.” A great many of
his hearers wondered what the good man could mean; but both he and his
nephew, and several others of the initiated, very well knew. He meant,
speak your words with an _accent_, and an accent formed from a soul
giving life and meaning to an expression. This, we know, is what the
singer does,—this is what the musician tries to do. All words are not
the same words in their meaning; the Welsh preacher seeks to play upon
them as keys; the words themselves help him to do so. Literally, they
are full of meaning; verbally, he attempts to pronounce that meaning;
hence, as he rises in feeling he rises in variety of intonation, and his
words sway to and fro, up and down,—bass, minor, and soprano all play
their part, a series of intonings. In English, this very frequently
sounds monotonous, sometimes even affected; in Welsh, the soul of the man
is said to have caught the _hwyl_,—that is, he is in full sail, he has
feeling and fire: the people catch it too. A Welsh writer, describing
this, quotes the words of Jean Paul Richter: “Pictures during music are
seen into more deeply and warmly by spectators; nay, many masters have in
creating them acknowledged help from music.” Great Welsh preaching, is
very often a kind of wild, irregular chant, a jubilant refrain, recurring
again and again. The people catch the power of it; shouts rise—prayers!
“_Bendigedig_” (“blessed,” or synonymous with our “Bless the Lord!”)
Amen! “_Diolch byth_!” and other expressions, rise, and roll over the
multitude; they, too, have caught the _hwyl_. It is singular that, with
us, the only circumstances and scenes in which such manifestations can
take place, are purely secular, or on the occasions of great public
meetings. The Welshman very much estimates the greatness of a preacher
by his power to move men; but it does not follow, that this power shall
be associated with great apparent bodily action. The words of John Elias
and Williams of Wern consumed like flames, and divided like swords; but
they were men of immense self-possession, and apparently very quiet. It
has always been the aim of the greater Welsh preachers to find out such
“acceptable”—that is, fitting and piercing—words, so that the words alone
shall have the effect of action.
But, in any account of Welsh preaching, the place ought never to be
forgotten—the scenery. We have said, the country is losing, now, many of
its old characteristics of solitude and isolation; the railways are
running along at the foot of the tall mountains, and spots, which we knew
thirty years since as hamlets and villages, have now grown into large
towns. It has often been the case, that populations born and reared
amidst remote mountain solitudes, have possessed strong religious
susceptibilities. The Welshman’s chapel was very frequently reared in
the midst of an unpeopled district, likely to provoke wonder in the mind
of the passing stranger, as to whence it could derive its congregation.
The building was erected there because it was favourable to a confluence
of neighbourhoods. Take a region near to the spot where Christmas Evans
was born,—a wild, mountainous tract of country, lying between the
counties Brecon and Cardigan; for long miles, in every direction, there
are no human habitations,—only, perhaps, here and there, in a deep
dingle, some lone house, the residence of a sheep farmer, with three or
four cultivated fields in its immediate neighbourhood; and at some
distance, on the slopes of the mountain, an occasional shepherd’s hut.
It is a scene of the wildest magnificence. The traveller, as he passes
along, discerns nothing but a sea of mountains,—rugged and precipitous
bluffs, and precipices innumerable; here the grand and sportive streams,
the Irvon, the Towy, and the Dothia, spring from their rocky channels,
and tumble along, rushing and gurgling with deafening roar; here, as you
pass along, you encounter more than one or two “wolves’ leaps;”—dark
caverns are there, from whence these brotherly rivers rush into each
other’s embrace. These regions, when we were in the habit of crossing
them, many years since,—and we often crossed them,—we very naturally
regarded as the Highlands, the sequestered mountain retreats, of Wales;
this was Twm Shon Catty’s, the Welsh Rob Roy’s, country; for let Scotland
boast as she will—
“Wales has had a thief as good,
She has her own Rob Roy.”
And wonderfully romantic is the story of this same Welsh gentleman, and
predatory chieftain. Here you find, to this day, his cave, from whence
the bold and humorous outlaw was wont to spring forth, to spread terror
and rapine over the whole region. It is thirty years since we passed
through these desolations; they are probably much the same now as they
were then; let the traveller shout as he will as he passes along, it is
not from any human being, it is only from the wild rock, or screaming
bird, he will have a reply.
Now, what do our readers think of a large and commodious chapel in the
midst of a wild region like this? But one there is, in the very heart of
the wilderness. Up to this place the worshippers come, on Sabbath
mornings, from distances varying from two to eight miles. It is a
Calvinistic-Methodist chapel; and the Rev. William Williams, in his
interesting little historical sketch of Welsh Calvinistic-Methodism,
tells how he preached in this building, several years since, when the
chapel was crowded with worshippers; and in the yard adjoining, between
fifty and sixty ponies, which had borne the worshippers to the place,
with or without vehicles, were waiting the time for the return journey.
This building had its birth from a congregation gathered first in one of
the farm houses in these inaccessible wilds, in 1847. It seems strange
to think how far people will travel to Divine Service when they have no
such service near their own doors. We were struck with this, a short
time since, in Norway; we found our way to a little village church, and
there, on a spot where was next to no population, we found the Lutheran
church crowded; and outside, a large square space thronged with carioles,
ancient old shandydan landaus, carts, and every kind of
conveyance,—horses and ponies stabled in the sheds all round; and we
learned that many of the congregation had travelled in this way, beside
the numbers who had walked, twelve, sixteen, eighteen miles to the
service.
And thus, also, in Wales, many were the long and weary miles usually
traversed, and through every variety of weather; and it seemed to be
usually thought that the service, or services, repaid all the toil. And
there was very little, externally, to aid the imagination, or to charm
the taste, either in the building itself, or in the ritual adopted;—all
was of the plainest and most severe order. The building, no doubt, was
little more than a shelter from the weather; generally, perhaps, huge and
capacious,—that was necessary,—but it was quite unadorned; the minister
had nothing in the way of robes or attire to aid the impressions of
reverence; there was no organ,—usually no instrument of any
description,—although if an entire stranger to the language had entered,
and heard the long, low, plaintive wail of almost any of their
hymns,—most of them seeming to express a kind of dirge-like feeling of an
exiled, conquered, and trampled people, a tone with its often-renewed
refrain, its long-drawn minor, now sobbing into grief, occasionally
swelling into triumph,—he might have found the notes of an organ were not
needed to compel the unexpected tear. An exiled, conquered, and trampled
people,—that expresses a great deal of truth. Wales has wrongs quite as
bitter as any which Ireland ever knew;—the very cause of the existence of
most of her chapels arose from the fact that, in many of her parish
churches, not a word of Welsh was spoken; and perhaps frequently their
ministers could not speak the native language;—the very judges who
dispensed justice from the Bench were usually English, and needed an
interpreter, that they might be able to understand the case upon which
they were to give a judgment. Wales has had very little for which to
thank England, but her people have never been seditious. Pious,
industrious people, with their simple amusements and weird superstitions,
and blossoming out into their great religious revivals and reformations,
they have had to thank themselves, chiefly, for all the good which has
unfolded itself upon their soil. These circumstances, however, have no
doubt aided their peculiar and isolated religious life.
But, in those great assemblies, the Association meetings to which we have
referred, many of the great preachers stood, with their vast
congregations round them, in Nature’s open Cathedral. Christmas Evans
preached many of his noblest sermons amidst the imposing ruins of
Caerphilly, Pembroke, and Manobear Castles; or the preacher found himself
with his audience on the slope of some sweet, gorse-covered hill, in the
neighbourhood of tumbling torrents, which did not sing so loudly in their
melody as to interfere with the sweet restfulness of the surrounding
scene. Preachers and hearers were accustomed to plain living,—one of the
most essential conditions of high thinking; neither of them knew anything
of luxury; and when most of them spoke, the age of luxury, even with us,
had not yet set in. Bread and milk, or oatmeal and milk, were the
favourite diet of all, in those days; even tea was all but unknown, and
the potato almost their nearest approach to a dainty dish. They lived on
good terms with Nature, with whom we have been quarrelling now for some
years past; and thus they were prepared to receive such lessons as Nature
might give, to aid and illustrate the deeper lessons of Divine Grace.
Of course, there was considerable uncertainty about the
services,—excepting those more imposing and important occasions; and this
gave, very frequently, a tone of the ludicrous to their announcement of
the services. Thus, if a stranger asked what time the service would
commence, it would often have been quite impossible to get any
information; and failures, says Mr. D. M. Evans, were so frequent, that
the announcement was often made with perfect gravity, “— will be here
next Sunday, if he comes.” Mr. Evans continues, that he well knew a
deacon who claimed the prerogative to make announcements to the
congregation, but who every week was guilty of such blunders, that he was
implored to resign the honour to some other brother; to which he
indignantly replied, that it was his crown, and was he not told in
Scripture, “Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown”?
Often, when the preacher appeared, he showed himself in the pulpit almost
out of breath, sometimes in sad disarray, sometimes apparently as if
smothered with wrappers and top-coats; and by his panting and puffing, as
someone said, “seeming to show that God Almighty had asked him to preach
the Gospel, but had given him no time for it.”
In a word, it is impossible, knowing Wales as we know it in our own day,
to form any very distinct idea of the country as it was when these great
preachers arose; and, when the tides of a new spiritual life rolled over
the Principality, the singular relics of even heathenish superstition
were loitering still among the secluded valleys and mountains of the
land. No doubt, the proclamation of the Gospel, and the elevated faith
which its great truths bring in its train, broke the fascination, the
charm, and power of many of these; but they lingered even until within
the last forty or fifty years,—indeed, the superstition of the Sin-Eater
is said to {23} linger even now in the secluded vale of Cwm-Aman, in
Caermarthenshire. The meaning of this most singular institution of
superstition was, that when a person died, the friends sent for the
Sin-Eater of the district, who, on his arrival, placed a plate of salt
and bread on the breast of the deceased person; he then uttered an
incantation over the bread, after which, he proceeded to eat it,—thereby
eating the sins of the dead person; this done, he received a fee of
two-and-sixpence,—which, we suppose, was much more than many a preacher
received for a long and painful service. Having received this, he
vanished as swiftly as possible, all the friends and relatives of the
departed aiding his exit with blows and kicks, and other indications of
their faith in the service he had rendered. A hundred years since, and
through the ages beyond that time, we suppose this curious superstition
was everywhere prevalent.
Another odd custom was the manner in which public opinion expressed
itself on account of any domestic or social delinquency. A large crowd
assembled before the house of the delinquent, one of whom was dressed up
in what seemed to be a horse’s head; the crowd then burst forth into
strong vituperative abuse, accompanying the execrations with the rough
music of old kettles, marrow-bones, and cleavers; finally, the effigy of
the sinner was burnt before the house, and the sacred wrath of the
multitude appeased. The majesty of outraged opinion being vindicated,
they dispersed.
Some superstitions were of a more gentle character; the fairies, or
“little men in green,” as they were popularly called, continued to hold
their tenantry of Wales long after they had departed from England; and
even Glamorganshire, one of the counties nearest to England,—its roads
forming the most considerable highway through Wales,—was, perhaps, the
county where they lingered last; certainly not many years have passed by
since, in the Vale of Neath, in the same county, there would have been a
fear in taking some secluded pathway in the night, lest the “little
people” should be offended by the intrusion upon their haunts.
With all these singular observances and superstitions, there was yet a
kind of Christian faith prevalent among the people, but buried beneath
dark ignorance and social folly. At Christmas time, at night, it was
usual to illuminate all the churches in the villages. And upon the New
Year’s morning, children came waking the dawning, knocking at the
doors,—usually obtaining admittance,—when they proceeded to sprinkle the
furniture with water, singing as they did so the following words, which
we quote on account of their quaint, sweet, old-world simplicity:—
“Here we bring new water from the well so clear,
For to worship God with this happy new year.
Sing levy dew, sing levy dew, the water and the wine,
With seven bright gold wires and bugles that do shine.
Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon her toe,
Open you the west door, and turn the old year go.
Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon her chin,
Open you the east door, and let the new year in.”
It is admitted on all hands that the dissolution of the mists of darkness
and superstition is owing to the people usually called Dissenters; the
Church of the Establishment—and this is said in no spirit of
unkindness—did very little to humanise or soften the rugged character, or
to put to flight the debasing habits of the people. Of course, there are
high and honourable exceptions; but while many clergymen devoted
themselves, with great enthusiasm, to the perpetuation of the singular
lore, the wild bardic songs, the triads, or the strange fables and mythic
histories of the country, we can call to mind the names of but very few
who attempted to improve, or to ameliorate, the social condition. So
that the preachers, and the vast gatherings of the people by whom the
preachers were surrounded, when the rays of knowledge were shed abroad,
and devotion fired, were not so much the result of any antagonism to the
Established Church,—_that_ came afterwards; they were a necessity created
by the painful exigencies of the country.
The remarks on the superstitions of Wales are not at all irrelevant to
the more general observations on Welsh preaching; they are so essentially
inwoven with the type of character, and nationality. The Welsh appears
to be intimately related to the Breton; the languages assimilate,—so also
do the folk-lores of the people; and the traditions and fanciful fables
which have been woven from the grasses of the field, the leaves of the
forest, and the clouds of the heavens, would have furnished Christmas
Evans with allegoric texts which he might have expanded into sermons. It
is not possible to doubt that these form one branch, from the great
Celtic stem, of the human family. And not only are they alike in
language and tradition, but also in the melancholy religiousness, in the
metaphysical brooding over natural causes, and in the absence of any
genuine humour, except in some grim or gloomy and grotesque utterance.
The stories, the heroes, and the heroines, are very much the same;
historic memory in both looks back to a fantastic fairyland, and presents
those fantastic pictures of cities and castles strangely submerged
beneath the sea, and romantic shadows and spectral forms of wonderful
kings and queens, such as we meet in the Mabinogi of Taliesin, in the
Fairy Queen of Spenser, and in the Idylls of our Laureate. Thus, all
that could stir wonder, excite the imagination and the fancy, and
describe the nearness of the supernatural to the natural, would become
very charming to a Welshman’s ears; and we instantly have suggested to us
one of the sources of the power and popularity of Christmas Evans with
his countrymen.
Even the spread and prevalence of Christian knowledge have scarcely
disenchanted Wales of its superstitions. Few persons who know anything
at all of the country, however slight such knowledge may be, are unaware
of this characteristic of the people. This remark was, no doubt, far
more applicable even twenty-five years since than now. The writer of
this volume has listened to the stories of many who believed that they
had seen the _Canwyll-y-corph_—corpse-candles—wending their way from
houses, more or less remote, to the churchyard. Mr. Borrow, also, in his
“Wild Wales,” tells us how he conversed with people in his travels who
believed that they had seen the corpse-candles. But a hundred years ago,
this was a universal object of faith; as was also the belief in coffins
and burial trains seen wending their way, in the dead of night, to the
churchyard. Omens and predictions abounded everywhere, while singular
legends and traditions in many districts hung also round church bells.
And yet with all this the same writer, remarking on Welsh character,
says, “What a difference between a Welshman and an Englishman of the
lower class!” He had just been conversing with a miller’s man,—a working
labourer in the lowliest walk of life; and found him conversant with the
old poets, and the old traditions of the country, and quite interested in
them; and he says, “What would a Suffolk miller’s man have said, if I had
repeated to him verses out of Beowulf or even Chaucer, and had asked him
about the residence of Skelton?” We must bear this in mind as we attempt
to estimate the character with which the preacher had to deal. Haunted
houses were numerous. A lonely old place, very distinct to the writer’s
knowledge, had hung round it some wild traditions not unlike “Blind
Willie’s Story” in “Redgauntlet.” No doubt, now, all these things have,
to a considerable extent, disappeared,—although there are wild nooks, far
wilder than any we have in England, where the faith in the old
superstitions lingers. In the great preaching days, those men who shook
the hearts of the thousands of their listeners, as they dealt with unseen
terrors, believed themselves to be—as it was believed of them that they
were—covered with the shadow of an Unseen Hand, and surrounded by the
guardianship of the old Hebrew prophet—“chariots of fire, and horses of
fire;” they believed themselves to be the care of a special Providence;
and some of the stories then current would only move the contempt of that
modern intelligence which has, at any rate, laid all the ghosts.
It is not within the province of this volume to recapitulate and classify
Welsh superstitions; they were, and probably, in many neighbourhoods, are
still, very various: we must satisfy our readers with a slight
illustration. Perhaps some may object to the retailing such stories, for
instance, as the following. The apology for its insertion, then, must
be, that it is one of a number tending to illustrate that sense which the
old Welsh mind had, of its residence upon the borders of, and relation
to, the Invisible World. The Rev. John Jones, of Holywell, in
Flintshire, was one of the most renowned ministers in the Principality;
he was a man of extraordinary zeal and fervour as a preacher, and his
life and character were, in unblemished reputation, equal to his gifts
and zeal. He used to recite, with peculiar solemnity, a story of a
mysterious horseman, by whom he believed he had been delivered from a
position of extreme danger, when he was travelling, alone, from Bala, in
Merionethshire, to Machynlleth, in the county of Montgomery. He
travelled on horseback through a wild, desolate country, at that time
almost uninhabited; he had performed nearly half his journey, when, as he
was emerging from a wood, he says, “I observed coming towards me a man on
foot. By his appearance, judging from the sickle which he carried
sheathed in straw over his shoulder, he was doubtless a reaper in search
of employment. As he drew near, I recognized a man whom I had seen at
the door of the village inn at Llanwhellyn, where I had stopped to bait
my horse. On our meeting, he touched his hat, and asked if I could tell
him the time of day. I pulled out my watch for the purpose,—noticing, at
the same time, the peculiar look which the man cast at its heavy silver
case. Nothing else, however, occurred to excite any suspicion on my
part; so, wishing him a good afternoon, I continued my journey.” We must
condense Mr. Jones’s narration, feeling that the story loses much of its
graphic strength in so doing. He pursued his way down a hill, and, at
some distance farther on, noticed something moving on the other side of a
large hedge; he soon discovered it to be a man, running in a stooping
position. He watched the figure with curiosity, which grew into
something like fear as he recognized the reaper with whom he had spoken a
short time before, and that, as he moved on, he was engaged in tearing
the straw band from his sickle. The man hurried on, and Mr. Jones saw
him conceal himself behind a thicker part of the hedge, within a few
yards of the road, and near where a gate crossed the park. Mr. Jones
says he did not doubt, then, that he intended to attack and, perhaps,
murder him for the sake of the watch, and whatever money he might have
about him. He looked round: no other person was in sight,—no house near;
he was hemmed in by rocky banks and high hedges on either side.
“I could not turn back,” he says; “my business was of the utmost
importance to the cause for which I was journeying.” He could not urge
his horse with speed, for the gate was not open through which he had to
pass; he felt that he was weak and unarmed, and had no chance against a
powerful man with a dangerous weapon in his hand. “In despair,” he says,
“rather than in a spirit of humble trust and confidence, I bowed my head,
and offered up a silent prayer. At this juncture, my horse, growing
impatient of delay, started off. I clutched the reins, which I had let
fall on his neck,—when, happening to turn my eyes, I saw, to my utter
astonishment, that I was no longer alone: there, by my side, I beheld a
horseman, in a dark dress, mounted on a white steed. In intense
amazement, I gazed upon him. Where could he have come from? He appeared
as suddenly as if he had sprung from the earth; he must have been riding
behind, and have overtaken me,—and yet I had not heard the slightest
sound. It was mysterious, inexplicable; but joy overcame my feelings of
wonder, and I began at once to address my companion. I asked him if he
had seen any one; and then described to him what had taken place, and how
relieved I felt by his sudden appearance. He made no reply, and, on
looking at his face, he seemed paying but slight attention to my words,
but continued intently gazing in the direction of the gate,—now about a
quarter of a mile ahead. I followed his gaze, and saw the reaper emerge
from his concealment, and run across a field to our left, resheathing his
sickle as he hurried along. He had evidently seen that I was no longer
alone, and had relinquished his intended attempt.”
Mr. Jones sought to enter into conversation with his mysterious
companion, but he gave him no word in reply. He says he “was hurt at his
companion’s mysterious silence;” only once did he hear his voice. Having
watched the figure of the reaper disappear over the brow of a
neighbouring hill, he turned to the stranger, and said, “‘Can it for a
moment be doubted that my prayer was heard, and that you were sent for my
deliverance by the Lord?’ Then it was that I thought I heard the
horseman speak, and that he uttered the single word, ‘Amen!’ Not another
word did he give utterance to, though I spoke to him both in English and
Welsh. We were now approaching the gate, which I hastened to open; and
having done so, I waited at the side of the road for him to pass
through,—but he came not. I turned my head to look; the mysterious
horseman was gone; he was not to be seen; he had disappeared as
mysteriously as he had come. What could have become of him? He could
not have gone through the gate, nor have made his horse leap the high
hedges, which on both sides shut in the road. Where was he? had I been
dreaming? was it an apparition, a spectre, which had been riding by my
side for the last ten minutes?—was it but a creature of my imagination?
I tried hard to convince myself that this was the case; but why had the
reaper resheathed his murderous-looking sickle and fled? And then, a
feeling of profound awe began to creep over my soul. I remembered the
singular way of his first appearance,—his long silence, and the single
word to which he had given utterance after I had mentioned the name of
the Lord; the single occasion on which I had done so. What could I,
then, believe, but that my prayer had been heard, and that help had been
given me at a time of great danger? I dismounted, and throwing myself on
my knees, I offered up my thankfulness to Him who had heard my cry. I
then mounted my horse, and continued my journey; but through the long
years that have elapsed since that memorable summer’s day, I have never
for a moment wavered in my belief, that in the mysterious horseman I had
a special interference of Providence, by which I was delivered from a
position of extreme danger.”
Now, however our readers may account for such incidents, the only purpose
in introducing such a story here, is to say that it gives a fair
illustration of that peculiar cast of ideal imagination which pervaded
the Welsh mind, and influenced at once the impressions both of preachers
and hearers.
There is, perhaps, no other spot on our British soil where “the old
order” has so suddenly “changed” as in Wales: the breaking open the
mountains for mining purposes has led to the thronging of dense
populations on spots which were, only a few years since, unbroken
solitudes. Ruins, which the sentimental idler never visited, wrecks of
castles and abbeys crumbling into dust, isolated places through which we
passed thirty years since, which seemed as though they never could be
invaded by the railway whistle, or scarcely reached by the penny postman,
now lie on the great highway of the train. It is not saying too much to
affirm that there is no spot in Europe where the traveller is so
constantly brought into the neighbourhood of old magnificence, the relics
of vanished cities.
The wonder grows as to what was the state of ancient society in Wales.
An eminent traveller says: “In England our ancestors have left us,
dispersed in various places, splendid remains of their greatness; but in
Wales you cannot travel ten miles without coming upon some vestige of
antiquity which in another country you would go fifty to trace out.” It
is of such spots that a Welsh poet, Dyer, says:—
“The pilgrim oft,
At dead of night, ’mid his orisons hears,
Aghast, the voice of Time disparting towers,
Tumbling all precipitate, all down-dashed,
Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon.”
What an illustration of this is St. David’s!—a little miserable village,
with the magnificent remains of its great palace, and the indications of
its once splendid cathedral; itself now a kind of suffragan, it once
numbered seven suffragans within its metropolitan pale—Worcester,
Hereford, Llandaff, Bangor, St. Asaph, Llanbadarn, and Margam. The mitre
now dimly beaming at almost the lowest step of the ecclesiastical ladder,
once shone with so proud a lustre as to attract the loftiest
ecclesiastics. St. David’s numbers one saint, three lord-treasurers, one
lord privy-seal, one chancellor of Oxford, one chancellor of England,
and, in Farrar, one illustrious martyr.
Travel through the country, and similar reflections will meet you in
every direction. You step a little off the high-road, and—as, for
instance, in Kilgerran—you come to the traditional King Arthur’s castle,
the far-famed Welsh Tintagel, of which Warton sings,—
“Stately the feast, and high the cheer,
Girt with many an armèd peer,
And canopied with golden pall,
Amid Kilgerran’s castle hall;
Illumining the vaulted roof,
A thousand torches flamed aloof;
The storied tapestry was hung,
With minstrelsy the arches rung,
Of harps that with reflected light
From the proud gallery glittered bright.”
Or, in the neighbourhood of the magnificent coast of Pembrokeshire, the
wondrous little chapel of St. Govan’s, the hermitage of the hundred
steps; and those splendid wrecks of castles, Manopear, the home of
Giraldus Cambrensis, and the graceful and almost interminable recesses of
Carew. A traveller may plunge about among innumerable villages bearing
the names of saints for whom he will look in vain in the Romish
calendar,—St. Athan’s, St. Siebald’s, St. Dubric’s, St. Dogmael’s, St.
Ishmael’s, and crowds besides. All such places are girdled round with
traditions and legends known to Welsh archæologists—the very nomenclature
of Wales involving poetry and historical romance, and often deep tragedy.
The names of the villages have a whisper of fabulous and traditional
times, and are like the half-effaced hieroglyphs upon an old Egyptian
tomb. There is the _Fynnon Waedog_ (Bloody Well), _the Pald of Gwaye_
(the Hollow of Woe), the _Maen Achwynfan_, (the Stone of Lamentation and
Weeping), the _Leysan Gwaed Gwyr_ (the Plant of the Blood of Man),
_Merthyr Tydvil_ is the Martyred Tydvil. Villages and fields with names
like these, remind us of the Hebrew names of places, really significant
of some buried tragedy, long holding its place in the heart, and terror
of the neighbourhood.
In a land-locked solitude like that of Nevern, Cardiganshire,—where,
by-the-bye, we might loiter some time to recite some anecdotes of its
admirable clergyman and great preacher, one of the Griffiths,—the
wanderer, after a piece of agreeable wildness, comes to a village,
enchanting for its beauty, lying on the brink of a charming river, with
indications of a decayed importance; the venerable yew-trees of its
churchyard shadowing over a singular—we may venture to speak of it as a
piece of inexplicable—Runic antiquity, in a stone of a quadrangular form,
about two feet broad, eighteen inches thick, and thirteen feet high, with
a cross at the top. Few countries can boast, like Wales, the charm of
places in wildest and most delicious scenery, with all that can stir an
artist’s, poet’s, or antiquarian’s sensibility. What a neighbourhood is
Llandilo!—the home of the really great poet, John Dyer, the author of
“Grongar Hill,” a delicious spot in this neighbourhood. Here, too, is
Golden Grove, the retreat of our own Jeremy Taylor; and here, in his days
of exile, many of the matchless sermons of him who has been called, by
some, “the English Chrysostom,” and, by others, the “Milton of the
English pulpit,” were preached. We made a pilgrimage there ourselves
some few years since, urged by love to the memory of Jeremy Taylor. We
found the old church gone, and in its place a new one,—the taste of which
did not particularly impress us; and we inquired for Taylor’s pulpit, and
were told it had been chopped up for fire-wood! Then we inquired for a
path through the fields, which for a hundred and fifty years had been
called “Taylor’s Walk,” where the great bishop was wont to meditate,—and
found it had been delivered over to the plough. We hope we may be
forgiven if we say, that we hurried in disgust from a village which, in
spite of its new noble mansion, had lost to us its chief charm. But this
neighbourhood, with its Dynevor Castle and its charming river, the Towey,
and all the scenery described by the exquisite Welsh poet, in whose verse
beauty and sublimity equally reign, compels us to feel that if he
somewhat pardonably over-coloured, by his own associations, the lovely
shrine of his birth, he only naturally described the country through
which these preachers wandered, when he says,—
“Ever charming, ever new,
When will the landscape tire the view!
The fountain’s fall, the river’s flow,
The woody valleys, warm and low:
The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky!
The pleasant seat, the ruin’d tow’r,
The naked rock, the shady bow’r;
The town and village, dome and farm,
Each give to each a double charm,
As pearls upon an Ethiop’s arm.”
The manners of the people, a few years since, were as singular and
primeval as their country; in all the villages there were singular
usages. The “biddings” to their weddings,—which have, perhaps, yielded
to advanced good taste,—had a sweeter relief in other customs, at
weddings and funerals, tending to civilize, and refine. Throughout
Glamorganshire, especially, and not many years since, it was the
universal custom, when young unmarried persons died, to strew the way to
the grave with sweet flowers and evergreens. Mr. Malkin, in his
interesting work on South Wales, published now seventy years since, says:
“There is in the world an unfeeling kind of false philosophy, which will
treat such customs as I mention with ridicule; but what can be more
affecting than to see all the youth of both sexes in a village, and in
every village through which the corpse passes, dressed in their best
apparel, and strewing with sweet-scented flowers the ways along which one
of their beloved neighbours was carried to his, or her last home?” No
doubt such customs are very much changed, but they were prevalent during
that period to which most of those preachers whose manners we have
mentioned belonged.
Such pathetic usages, indicating a simple state of society, are commonly
associated, as we have seen, with others of a rougher kind and character.
The Welsh preachers were the pioneers of civilization,—although advanced
society might still think much had to be done in the amelioration of the
national manners. They probably touched a few practices which were
really in themselves simple and affecting, but they swept away many
superstitions, quite destroyed many rude and degrading practices, and
introduced many usages, which, while they were in conformity with the
national instincts of the people (such as preaching and singing, and
assembling themselves together in large companies), tended to refine and
elevate the mind and heart.
Such were the circumstances, and such the scenery, in which the great
Welsh preachers arose.
We have not thought of those Welsh preachers who have made themselves
especially known in England. Many have, from time to time, settled as
pastors with us, who have deserved a large amount of our esteem and
honour, blending in their minds high reverence, the tender sensitiveness
of a poetic imagination, with the instinct of philosophic
inquisitiveness—even shading off into an order of scepticism,—but all
united to a strong and impressive eloquence. These attributes seem all
essentially to adhere in the character of the cultured Welsh preacher.
Caleb Morris finely illustrates all this; perhaps he was no whit
inferior, in the build and architecture of his mind, to Horace Bushnell,
whom he greatly resembled; but, unlike Bushnell, he never committed any
of his soliloquies of thought, or feeling to the press. The present
writer possesses volumes of his reported sermons which have never seen
the light.
And what a Welshman was Rowland Williams! Who can read his life without
feeling the spirit of devotion, however languid, inflamed and fired? And
how, in spite of all the heresies attributed to him, and, growing up in
the midst of the sacred ardours of his character, we find illustrated the
wonder of the curious and searching eye, united to the warmth of the
tender and revering heart!—attributes, we repeat, which seemed to mingle
in very inferior types of Welsh preachers, as well as in the more
eminent, and which, as they kindle into a passion in the man’s nature who
desires to instruct his fellow-men, combine to make preaching, if they be
absent, an infamy, a pastime, a day labour, or a handicraft, an art or a
science; or, by their presence, constitute it a virtue and a mighty power
over human souls. Eminently these men seem to hear a voice saying, “_The
prophet that hath a dream_, _let him tell a dream_! _What is the chaff
to the wheat_? _saith the Lord_.”
* * * * *
_Note to_ “Cwm-Aman,” _page_ 23.
Dr. Thos. Rees, in a letter to the Editor of the _Dysgedydd_, Rev. Herber
Evans, says, “That although bred and born within ten miles of Cwm-Aman,
he had never heard of this ridiculous superstition.”