Welsh Journals

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An old native of Llanddewy Brefi, Cardiganshire, said there was a tradition that David Evans, when curate there, used to marry people under the yew tree in the churchyard in the 1790's probably when the church was under some repair. In another parish in the same county, a door was fixed to one hollow yew 58 years ago, where coal is stored, and another tree protects the gravedigger's tool. Radnorshire has one other hollow tree which was used for years as a church coal-house until a new one was built. It is in Llandewey- Ystrad Enni Churchyard, with a cavity extending twelve feet up the trunk, which is really a shell. A visitor to Llanyre, Cascob and Llansantffraed in Elvell will notice yews growing on mounds, and especially at Llantfihangel-nant-Mellan, where seven out of ten hollow trees stand on a slight mound. These remind us of the pre-Christian custom of erecting a mound over a grave, and when found in a circular churchyard, as at Llanyre, we have a double reminder of a burial within a circular enclosure which was so sacred to the early Celts and a place of meeting for the community, who, on becoming Christians, built a church of wattle and mortar within its confines, thus handing it down to us through the centuries. Mr. J. Elwyn Price, School House, Llanddewi-Ystrad Enni, asking a Parishioner if he knew of any tradition, got this reply: One auld ewe from the Bryn used to yeen every year reg'lar in the church porch, but I hanna sid her this couple o' years now." This ewe was well known, for it raided the School Garden over the wall and made short work with the spring cabbages. HOW OLD IS THIS CHURCH ? By Rev. D. STEDMAN DAVIES, M.A. THIS is a question often asked by strangers and it is quite natural. Just as we are attracted by a shop window displaying its goods, so the Church-the building-displays the handiwork of man at different periods of its existence. A square-headed window of the 17th century or a pointed window of the 13th and the thick walls and the massive tower point to many restorations since the first stone Church was set up in the Norman period. That is what the picture presents to the eye, and in most cases that is the limit of what we learn from the stone work as we look at a Church from the outside, but it is not the limit of our information of what stood on the spot before 1086. The buildings of wood and thatch have perished long ago. Still we need not go beyond the boundaries of a churchyard to learn something about the pre-Norman period, often referred to as the Dark Ages. How seldom people ask how old is the churchyard, and yet it is older than anything else around it. A large number still retain their circular form and traces of a circular mound, which were sacred to the pagans and were turned afterwards to Christian uses in the 6th Century.