Welsh Journals

E. Wyn James, Rhyfeddaf Fyth Emynau a llythyrau Ann Griffiths [Gwasg Gregynog, 1998]. 159 pp. ISBN 0 948714 79 4. Price £ 180. This is an exquisite volume worthy of the exceedingly high standards of the Gregynog Press. We are indebted to Dr. E. Wyn James of Cardiff for his immaculate scholarship, for wrestling with countless editorial challenges and for nearly thirty years painstakingly uncovering the necessary evidence in order to provide us with a reliable text of Ann Griffiths's work. His was a far greater task than that faced by Professor Derec Llwyd Morgan in 1991, when the same press produced an edition of the hymns of William Williams, Pantycelyn. We know so much more of the life and times and publications of Williams than we do of Ann. In the case of the latter we neither know the date of her birth nor death; not one word of her work was published during her lifetime; only one letter and one verse of a hymn are extant in her handwriting. The sum total of her "writings" is thirty hymns and eight letters. It is impossible to offer any reliable chronology for her work, though we can surmise that most was composed or written between 1800-1805. In spite of this she is deeply cherished as one of Wales's greatest Christian writers and as a unique figure in our religious history and literature. ANN'S LIFE, DEATH AND REPUTATION Ann, the fourth of five children to John Evan and Jane Thomas of Dolwar Fach farm, was baptised on 21 April 1776 at Llanfihangel-yng-Ngwynfa church in Montgomeryshire. She married there on 10 October 1804; her husband, Thomas Griffiths of Meifod, emanated from a well-to-do Methodist farming family and was respected as an able Sunday School teacher. A month after the birth of their only child, Elizabeth, who died aged two weeks, Ann was buried in Llanfihangel churchyard aged 29 on 12 August 1805. Never physically strong, it is likely that the trauma of childbirth had made her susceptible to tuberculosis; its prevalence in the nineteenth century accounted for nearly a quarter of all deaths at this time, including those of several writers and artists such as Keats, the Brontes and Chopin. Tuberculosis may also account for Ann's distinctively otherworldly and saintly appearance as she grew older. (One may also postulate that the toxicology of that disease heightened any predisposition to psychological instability. The emotional roller-coaster of some of her work has led critics to believe that she may have been a manic-depressive.) There is little in the above detail to suggest anything extraordinary, and as a woman living in a remote part of Wales at this time it would not have been expected for her to be either intelligent or noteworthy. In 1961 the late Professor Stephen J. Williams described Ann as 'y ferch gyffredin ac anghyffredin', 'the remarkable and unremarkable girl'. Much of our fascination with her lies in the contrast between the relatively ordinary circumstances of her life, when compared to the outstanding quality of the spiritual autobiography recounted in her work. This enigma and