Welsh Journals

ventured to publish a book on Wales in the seventeenth century in 1918 he dismissed it 'as a scandal-there's no other word for it'. One can imagine how it was blue-pencilled. Our project made slow progress after I left Bangor because it now depended on correspondence. The draft chapters, mostly written in Edinburgh, remain in faded pages of manuscript, except for the one on the Second Civil War which was printed in the Transactions (1930-31) of the Cymmrodorion Society and is included in my Studies in Welsh History (1947). Gabriel continued to collect. He speaks in one letter of the 'mass of fugitive notes which frequently evade the maker's search' and he complains of his addiction to discursive reading. He loved to impart knowledge provided it did not involve him in correspondence. He used to tell with great pleasure of verbal contests with Sir Joseph Bradney on the minutiae of Monmouthshire history. His extra-mural class, which he conducted year after year at Abergavenny on local history he declares was 'great fun', and he records with obvious satisfaction that the editor of the Abergavenny Chronicle, who attended the course, extracted material for columns in his paper from the copious notes he took. Gabriel taught History for many years, first at Bangor Normal College and then, from 1918 until his retirement in 1946, at Caerleon Training College. His attitude to the subject, as may be gathered from what I have said, was to record what actually happened. Attempts to find causes, economic or other, for men's actions did not interest him. His method gave no room for the modern fashion of interpretation according to conflicting ideologies. He did not award praise or blame. Victory or defeat was 'just one of those things'. We used to chaff him at Bangor that if he could discover that there was a change of the weather in the course of a battle that was as worthy of record as was the result of the engagement. It is always difficult to convey to others the impression a personality makes on one. I have by me all the letters Gabriel wrote to me over the years. They are characteristically brief and to the point. But really to know him one had to ramble with him in his homeland around Golden Grove, along the Gower coast, or in the lanes of Wentwood. He could not only summon to memory traditions and history of the place, but he had the countryman's keen eye for the quality of the land, its farm stock and crops. The many parties he conducted over the excavations at Caerleon will testify to his infectious enthusiasm and his curious habit of blinking his eyes as he poured out information interspersed with questions which were largely rhetorical. I saw him last at his new home in Langley, Bucks. It was obvious that it had been a wrench to leave Monmouthshire. I chanced to say that there was quite a large Welsh colony around him at Slough; but he said that their meetings mostly degenerated into a sing- song. That did not appeal to him. They were not interested in history.