Welsh Journals

death of that son caused him the only pang at heart that he ever felt; that son, however, left a son, the fairest and most promising lad in Wales, in whom the old man took pride and comfort, and who survived his grandsire and inherited all his enormous riches. Yet ere that vouth had attained the age of twenty-three, Henry the Eighth laid his tremendous clutch upon him for inscribing the name of Fitzurien on his coat-of-arms, cut off his head, and confiscated all the vast possessions of Ryce to his own use. So there was an end to the family of Ryce. And now for the name of Ryce. The bards told Ryce that his name would live for ever and be blessed by countless generations. But who at the present day ever heard of the name of Ryce? Nobody. Who ever read of it? Why, the present writer, and about half a dozen obscure bookworms like himself. The name of Ryce is as little known as the names of the bards who promised him immortality, and thought they were securing immortality to them- selves by chanting his praises. The writer has St. Davids Revisited. J. A. Price, M.A. rl'" HE other day I visited with some other Welshmen a portion of Westminster Abbey to which the public is not generally admitted. The visitation, I will not say pilgrimage, had been arranged by a Welsh educationist with a Broad Church dignitary of the Abbey. I listened to the dignitary's address and felt how old-fashioned the thing sounded. The reverent cleric is, I believe, regarded as a dangerous modern thinker. To me he seemed to talk as Horace Walpole or Jane Austen might have talked. I do not mean that the address was redolent with the brilliant gossip of Horace or the more brilliant wit of gentle Jane. I do mean that to judge from his speech he looked on the Abbey of Westminster as Jane looked on the Abbey of Northanger, or Horace on every shrine that he visited in Italy, not as a sanctuary but as an antiquity. We were in the Abbey on the day of the Translation of St. Edward's relics, but the dignitary's sole refer- ence to the fact was that there would be a good many people in the Abbey that day. The refer- ence was a not very courteous allusion to the Roman Catholic pilgrims. Yet what a chance he might have had if he had cared to remind Welshmen, sick and weary of war and Imperialism, of the fact that if Wales could claim her St. David and her Henry Richard, England at least could claim among her rulers one sovereign who was a man of peace, who estab- lished good customs and was loved by the common folk and found his way to the calendar of saints. He might have told us that his own been in Ryce's country and talked and asked questions about Ryce, but never could find any person who had heard of him who was once called the great Ryce ot Wales, or of the bards who had made him the theme of many a tuneful, alliter- ative lay; though everybody had plenty to say of a certain old vicar, who lived about a hundred years after Ryce, who cut no particular figure in life, merely preached the Gospel, visited the sick, and wrote humble verses, which, odd enough everybody could repeat. That vicar was one Rees Pritchard. This consignment of the mighty chieftain to oblivion in his own land, and this cherishing of the memory of the poor vicar, brought powerfully to the mind of the writer cer- tain lines, not Welsh but Persian, to the following effect "Great Caroun is dead and is nothing, the man Who left forty castles replete with gold store; But living though dead is the good Nourshivan, In the fair name he left he has death triumph'd o'er." St. Edward is the only possible English patron saint for the League of Nations. But he paid no homage to his memory. I feel bound to make these observations, because I wish to protest against the idea that the English use of our Cathedral Churches is the proper one. What- ever may have been the faults of the Disestab- ■■'rch in Wales, it knows how to treat its sacred buildings with proper respect. This fact was brought home to me by a recent visit that I paid to St. Davids. I had not seen the ancient city for many years, and when I arrived I wondered what changes would be apparent. Outwardly there is little new. The City retains the derelict appearance which I fancy it has always borne since the stream of pilgrims ceased to flow there in Reformation days. In Non's Street chickens still straggle about the paths as they did in old mediaeval days. The old four-horse coach, whose driver, though a Welshman, always called Allez to his horses, has yielded to the motor-bus, and sometimes a private motor car recalls modern civilization. But the Arcadian charm remains. And as one sits on the banks of the Alun and gazes at its pure waters or watches the gulls fly around the rocks that still bear the name of The Bishop and the Clerks," or struggles up the height of Clegyr Fawr, we feel we known Dewisland as Boia and Dewi Sant knew it. And the Cathedral Church so beautifully restored has escaped the soot and the dust of the industrial age. As we gaze on the fabric from the Vale of Roses we observe that the stones of some of the ancient arches are as pure and white as though the builders had only finished their work yesterday. And yet many a century has passed since the honest fellows were laid in their graves with the