Welsh Journals

Reviews. Doctor Die: Ei serch a'i bryder. Gan Grace Thomas. Wrecsam: Hughes a'i Fab. 1922. The tragic occurrences, the ingenious complications, and the wonderful incidents in this little novel are some- what bewildering, but almost from the start one feels certain that all difficulties will magically vanish, and that in the end everything will turn out for the very best for everybody concerned. And so everything does. The characterisation is weak, and the narrative loose and unbalanced. Pointless detail is elaborated, and the one serious problem that emerges from the association of the characters-that of the hero's love of physical beauty and the heroine's misfortune-is not developed at all. The life depicted is not Welsh life, neither is it more than superficially English. The author has a fair vocabulary, but does not know how to use it. The grammar is faulty, and the idiom frequently nothing better than a literal rendering of the pompous diction of inferior English fiction. One would like to be able to assist all attempts at providing good Welsh fiction, for which there certainly ought to be a demand. One way to do so is to be quite frank, and to say that a com- petent mastery of the language and some acquaintance with the craft of story-telling are really indispensable. Hen Chwedlau Groeg. By D. J. Williams, Council School, Llandderfel. Wrexham: Hughes and Son. Pp. 96. 1/6 net. This small collection of ancient Greek legends was awarded the first prize, if we remember rightly, at a recent National Eisteddfod, and it deserves a cordial welcome at the hands of parents and teachers. It will be quite a useful addition to the growing list of Welsh books for children, and these old Greek tales will cer- tainly appeal to them, as they are told in a straight- forward way with no moralizing and without any un- necessary and subsidiary details. Some of the stories are old favourites (e.g., Pandora a'r Blwch and Y Brenin Midas), but others (e.g., Plas y Brenin and Endymion) are less familiar to most Welsh children. They vary in length and are clearly printed in a bold type. In fact, smaller type could have been used without sacrificing clearness, and space would have been gained at the same time for more stories. After all, eleven legends, some of them briefly told, are not too many in a book of 96 pages, and more than twenty of those pages are accounted for by title-page, contents table, glossary, and a number of illustrations of varying merit. Messrs Hughes and Son's work is done carefully and tastefully, and it is good to know that the whole book (letter-press, binding, illustrations, paper, blocks and all) has been produced in Wales. Several corrections ought to be made in the second edition. Some Greek proper names are wrongly spelt (Piseidon for Poseidon p. 82 and Pactalus for Pactolus pp. 62, 63). In some other cases uniformity of spelling is desirable (thus we have fe bae and pe bai pp. 52, 54; pib and pib p. 64). Some words, despite a vocabu- lary to explain them, are very unlikely one's in children's speech (e.g. torheulo p. 9 min p. 57 for month). There are one or two delightful anachronisms. Midas, so we learn (pp. 55 and 57) had coffee for breakfast, and at his bedside stood a table on which lay books complete with covers, pages, and all! Branwen, Fereh Llyr. Drama mewn pum Golygfa ac yn seiliedig ar Ail Gainge y Mabinogi. Gan D. T. Davies. Cardiff: Educational Publishing Company. Some two years ago the Cardiff Cymmrodorion offered a prize of £ 100 for -he best new drama portraying Welsh life. The late Mr. Llewelyn Williams, the adjudicator, awarded Mr. D. T. Davies's Branwen, Ferch Llyr," half the prize; the other half he divided between Mr. Brinley Jones, of Dowlais, who has since proved that he has a very considerable dramatic gift, and Mr. D. R. Williams, the editor of the American Drych." Mr. Llewelyn Williams expressed the opinion that not one of the successful dramas could be acted without changes and improvements, but it is only fair to his memory to say that he told the present reviewer that as far as Branwen was concerned he only wished to convey that the resources of Welsh village players were too slender to stage it, and that this was his sole objection. He also said that the result of the competi- tion as a whole was disappointing, but the Cymmro- dorion can claim now that it produced this play, and we venture to say that this in itself is a very considerable achievement. We have always thought that one of the main differ- ences between the Irish and the Welsh dramatic move- ments in their inception was that while the latter drew extensively on the old legendary material of the country for theme and inspiration, the former was almost exclu- sively concerned with the present. Deirdre and her tragedy formed a theme for three of the greatest figures in modern Irish literature, and hardly a single writer could be named who did not explore the romances for material. It was different in Wales. We have had almost every kind of play,-social, political, satirical, but so far as we know not one with a setting of dim and distant romance. Mr. D. T. Davies has now remedied the deficiency. He was for many of us before the greatest of the Welsh playwrights. Ephraim Harris, Castlemartin, Ble ma fe, Y Dieithryn, all prove that the hand that fashioned them knows its craft and knows it thoroughly. The last named, which appeared recently in Y Lienor," has much of the elemental force of Synge's plays. It was a risky thing for anyone who had achieved such success in other forms to attempt a task requiring such different powers as Branwen," but he has succeeded beyond all expectation. He has not taken liberties with the fable in turning into its dramatic form; he has not attempted to read more into the characters than he was fully justified in doing, and we think he did not only the wise but the only justifiable thing in using as far as he possibly could the language of the Branch. If he had given way to the temptation to write his play in the dialect of Morgannwg we feel certain he would have lost something indispensable for a romantic play-for want of a better word we will call it dignity. The play contains some exceptionally fine writing, as in the conversation between Taliesin and Branwen in the last act Taliesin: .egaist obeithion a meithrinaist ddyhead, eithr ni bu iti namyn chwerwder a siomiant. Pe gellid ddileu oth' gof dy brofiad blin drwy ddileu hefyd gof am dy freuddwydion, ai bodlon fyddit ? BRANWEN (yn ysgwyd ei phen yn araf) Er i mi lwyr anghofio fy mhrofiad blin, pe dileid hefyd gof am fy mreuddwydion, beth a arhosai i mi? Na, gwell gennyf gaw'r ddau na cholli'r cyntaf. That is as fine a piece of tragic writing as there is in Yeats' Deirdre." It is a great play, and we shall not be satisfied until we see it acted. There are moments in it perhaps where the present and its affairs were too much with the author-but they were not frequent.-D. Suggestions for a Syllabus in Religious Teaching. G. B. Ayre (Student C. Movt., 4s.). This revised edition of a seven years' religious teaching course for children in day or Sunday schools will be very helpful to those who feel the need for discrimination and sequence of ideas in their teaching. It is quite alive to the perils as well as to the charm of the Old Testament stories. "In time of peace and in private life the New "Testament ethic is recognised,but in war-time or in "industrial strife the O.T. teaching of our childhood "surges up from our subconsciousness, and being rein- "forced by passion dominates the will. We do not want "to perpetuate that in the next generation." But we still need a good deaJ of wisdom to be able to tell our children the story of Jacob and Esau or of David and Uriah and to explain how those guilty of such "horrid "mean tricks" could become "men after God's own "heart." But this book is a mine of suggestive informa- tion, history and anecdote illustrating the growth of spiritual apprehension from its early animal childishness to its culmination in Jesus. A most useful bibliography concludes the book. G.M.LL.D.