Welsh Journals

prayers and benediction of their Church. As I entered the Cathedral I could not help feeling a thrill. I seemed at last to be on free ground. I once wrote in the Welsh Outlook on the "Last Days of Free St. Davids," of the days of Sulien and Rhygyvarch, when the last free voices of Dewisland were raised against the nearing menace of the Latin crozier and Norman lance. The protest failed, and even the genius and chivalry of Geraldus could not win back the lost liberties. So for seven hundred weary years Menevia sat on her rocks, a dethroned princess, whose crown Canterbury had torn from her brows. To-day, in the nave of the Cathedral, I saw the Welsh flag. It was put there indeed to honour the victims of recent wars, but what would the old Anglicizers of the past, Canon Bevan or Dean Davey or even Professor Free- man have thought of the presence of the Red Dragon. But more impressive to the historical ense was the new bust of Giraldus Cambrensis in the Vaughan Chapel, crowned with the laurel leaf and with the mitre lying below. Certainly The voice of the sea is continually loud in my ears; The surging of tides is for ever shaking my soul; Dweller on land though I be, yet the heart of me hears, Always, breakers that crash, billows that roll, And the long, low murmur on sandy shores when the daylight disappears. Yet I cannot arise and answer the call of the sea, And give myself utterly to the winds and the tides, For the high, bare hills and the woods are too dear to me, And I may not turn away from the earth that hides In her heart the dreams and desires of men, and the fires of ecstasy. Being torn asunder between the sea and the land, I will seek some place on a lonely coast, and stay Between the great, grey hills and the yellow sand, Within sound of trees, within touch of the flying spray, In a small hut thatched with yellow straw, and grey as the rocky strand And there I will watch through stormy and quiet days The changing lights on the sea, the clouds on the hills, Till earth and water mingle in subtle ways, And they and I become one with the Life that fills The glow of noon and the deep of night, and flows beyond time and space. it was a strange coincidence that Giraldus' bust should have appeared in the Cathedral immedi- ately after the severance of the Welsh Church from the English State. Giraldus has returned to his Cathedral to enjoy a posthumous victory. The cause for which he fought has triumphed after a weary waiting of seven hundred years. But can I believe that the casket which Dean Williams showed me really contains the bones of the Patron Saint of Wales. The Dean's case cannot be ignored. There is no doubt that the relics he possesses were regarded as genuine in the eleventh century, when Bernard the Norman came to the Vale of Roses. And the Normans, we must remember, took over the Cathedral from patriotic nationalists of the school of Sulien and Rhygyvarch, and through the whole of the Welsh period of St. David's, business interests alone would have caused these relics to be preserved with the utmost care and devotion. Here I must leave the matter. (To be continued.) CONFLICT. MONA DOUGLAS.