Welsh Journals

Borrow's "Wild Wales." SUPPRESSED CHAPTERS.* Edited by Professor H. Wright. A very different man from Edmund Price was the man whom we have next occasion to mention. He was a clergyman and a poet like the other, but there was a singleness of purpose about him to which the Archdeacon could lay no claim. All his thoughts, all his efforts were directed to the salvation of souls, and con- sequently to the promoting of the glory of God. If he wrote poetry, it was only sacred poetry, calculated to do good, to awaken the rude sinners to a sense of their awful condition, to make them sensible of the loving kindness of God, and to promote peace and goodwill amongst men. He never wrote cowydds like the clever Archdeacon on matters which did not concern him, tending to widen differences between brethren and to arouse the worst passions of the human heart. He was not fond of rubbing sore places and see- ing people writhe and wince beneath the agony he inflicted. On the contrary he was remarkably fond of pouring oil upon festering wounds. We have used the words "after he came to his re- flection," for, of course, there was a time when Rees Pritchard, for such was the name of the illustrious individual of whom it is our privilege now to speak, was not good and holy. There was a time, no doubt, when he was vicious and cruel. What child of Adam is not, or has not been so? But he came to his reflection; he be- came a converted man, which unhappily every child of Adam does not become. It is said that in his early life he was addicted to intemperance, even after he had become a priest and that once, being followed into a tavern which he frequented by a he-goat, he gave the creature ale, which it drank greedily and it became so intoxicated that it fell on the ground, where it lay quivering and gasping. It is said, however, that Rees Pritchard was so horrified by the appearance and movements of the poor drunken animal that he forthwith renounced his intemperate habits and became thoroughly reformed and an ornament to his profession. If this story be true, and there is no reason to doubt it, for drunkenness was the reigning vice of the age in which Rees Pritchard lived, it shows that at one time Rees Pritchard was a very bad man but that his heart was open to conviction. No sooner was the filthiness of drunkenness brought forcibly before his eyes than he repented of his drunkenness, set about reform- ing himself and became a bright candle to the world. What a contrast does the behaviour of Rees Pritchard after the affair of the goat ex- hibit to that of Archdeacon Price after the death of William Cynwal. Rees strikes his breast, says, "God be merciful to me, a sinner," and becomes the Candle of the Deheubarth. The By kind permission of Mr. Clement Shorter and Mr. T. J. Wise. Archdeacon, rather proud than not at having dis- posed of his man, sits down, and with consider- able self-esteem writes a very fulsome cowydd in his adversary's praise, and continues till the day of his death what the world would call a digni- fied, respectable ecclesiastic very much addicted to satire and making people miserable, but a digni- fied ecclesiastic whom nobody could contemn. But what happens after death ? It is to be hoped that both go to heaven. But at the present day there is scarcely a child of the south who is not taught to bless with his infant accents the Vicar, but what child of Gwynedd ever invokes a bless- ing on the head of the Archdeacon? How many of those grown up ever mention him? Pritchard was Vicar of Llandovery in Carmar- thenshire, in which place, after he had come to his reflection, he preached the gospel for upwards of thirty years as it had never before been preached in the Welsh tongue since the time of Saint Paul, supposing the beautiful legend to be true, which tells us that Saint Paul in his wander- ings found his way to Britain and preached to the inhabitants the inestimable efficacy of Christ's bloodshedding in "Cymraeg wen," in the fairest Welsh, having, like all other apostles, the mira- culous gift of tongues, and it was there that the good Vicar composed the most popular volume of poems ever written in the Welsh language, entitled "Canwyll y Cymry" ("The Candle of the Welshmen"), a work which has gone through almost countless editions. It is written in two common easy measures and the language is so plain and simple that it is intelligible to the home- liest hind who speaks the Welsh language. All of the pieces are of a strictly devotional character with the exception of one, namely, a welcome to Charles, Prince of Wales, on his return from Spain, to which country he had gone to see the Spanish lady whom at one time he sought as bride. Some of the pieces are highly curious, as they bear upon events at present forgotten, for example, the "Song upon the year 1629," when the corn was blighted throughout the land, and "A Warning to the Cymry" to repent when the plague of blotches and boils was prevalent in London. Some of the pieces are written with astonishing vigour, for example, "The Song of the Husbandman" and "God's Better Than All," of which last piece the following is a literal tran- slation (1) God's better than heaven or aught therein, Than the earth or aught we there can win, Better than the world or its wealth to me, God's better than all that is or can be. Better than father, than mother, than nurse, Better than riches, oft proving a curse, Better than Martha or Mary even- Better by far is the God of Heaven. If God for thy portion thou hast ta'en, There's Christ to support thee in every pain, The world to respect thee thou wilt gain, To fear thee the fiend and all his train. 1 Blank in MS. Inserted from Wild Wales. "-ED.