Welsh Journals

But I must say a last word about the Civil War. When I told him that the task of writing about it had now passed to younger hands he seemed a little rueful and there was more than a shadow of doubt whether the writer would avoid all the pitfalls. (Mrs. Gabriel has decided to deposit her husband's papers in the library of University College, Bangor.) J. F. REES. BOB OWEN, O.B.E., M.A., CROESOR (1885-1962) Wales can have produced few more remarkable personalities than Bob Owen, whose death occurred at the age of 76 on 30 April of this year. Indeed, perhaps 'phenomenal' is the right epithet with which to describe one who, utterly bereft of anything approaching a higher education, became the confidant and expert informant of scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. It was in 1913 that a chance visit to a local sale at Llanfrothen first aroused in the young quarry clerk, as Bob Owen then was, that life-long insatiable passion for books which predominated even during his honey- moon and, but for the ineffable patience and understanding of a paragon among wives, might well have had disastrous domestic consequences. For his library at Ael-y-bryn in the mountain fastness of Croesor was an unforgettable sight, filling every available inch of room space, overspilling into passages, even underneath the beds and sparing only the kitchen quarters. But a mere bibliomaniac Bob most certainly was not: far from being just ornaments gracing a glazed cupboard, books to him were the vital tools with which to delve deeply into every aspect of Welsh life. Over the years he accumulated an astonishing fund of knowledge, distilling it in massive prize-winning essays at national eisteddfodau, in his weekly columns in Y Genedl and Yr Herald Cymraeg, and in numerous articles in the Welsh historical journals. From the early twenties to within a year or so of his death he lectured regularly to weekly W.E.A. classes all over north Wales at places as far apart as the uplands of Hiraethog and the lower reaches of Llyn; his services were much in demand, too, by local cultural societies throughout the Principality as well as by Welsh communities in England. Local history was a particular forte of his, and that culled not merely from printed sources but from sound bedrock material like parish registers, of which he was an avid transcriber, from wills at Somerset House and diocesan registries, and from a variety of sources at the Public Record Office and British Museum. Small wonder that in the course of his researches he acquired a vast amount of exact genealogical lore which, together with his keen interest in Welsh emigration overseas and to the United States in particular,