Part 7

There are some scholars who question the “identity of the Bardic Gorsedd with the druidic system.” The Welsh Gorsedd, this side of the controversial point, is forty centuries old, and in all conscience that is old enough. Diodorus, the Cicilian, wrote, “There are, among the Gauls, makers of verses, whom they name bards. There are also certain philosophers and theologists, exceedingly esteemed, whom they call Druids.” Strabo, the geographer, says, “Amongst the whole of the Gauls three classes are especially held in distinguished honour--the bards, the prophets, and the druids. The bards are singers and poets, the prophets are sacrificers and philosophers, but the druids, besides physiology, practised ethical philosophy.” As far back as we can look in the life of the Cymru, poetry, song, and theology have been inextricably woven together. The Gorsedd was then, formally, for the Welsh people what it still is informally: a popular university, a law court, a parliament. The modern Gorsedd, with its twelve stones, is supposed to represent the signs of the zodiac through which the sun passes, with a central stone, called the “Maen Llog,” in the position of the sacrificial fire in the druidical temple. A close reverence for nature, a certain pantheism in the cult of the druids, shows itself in various ways,--in the belief that the oak tree was the home of the god of lightning, that mistletoe, which usually grows upon the oak, was a mark of divine favour. The most prominent symbol of the Gorsedd is the “Broad Arrow” or “mystic mark,” supposed to represent the rays of light which the druids worshipped. Even the colours of the robes of the druids, ovates, and bards are full of characteristic worship of nature; the druids in white symbolical of the purity of truth and light, the ovates in green like the life and growth of nature, the bards in blue, the hue of the sky and in token of the loftiness of their calling.

Up there on the hilltop, with its vast panorama of hill and valley, sea and sky, time became as nothing. The Gorsedd became again the democratic Witenagemot of the Welsh, and there still were represented the mountain shepherd, the pale collier, the lusty townsman, the gentle knight, the expounder of law, the teacher and the priest. But if upon the hill time was as nothing, down below in the gigantic Eisteddfod pavilion some ten thousand people were waiting. “Gallant little Wales,” which has certainly awakened from its long sleep, was past the period of rubbing its eyes. It was shouting and calling for the Eisteddfod ceremonies to begin, perhaps as the folk in Caerwys had called impatiently in the days of the twelfth century, or again in that old town in the days of Elizabeth, the last that memorable Eisteddfod when a commission was appointed by Elizabeth herself to check the bad habits of a crowd of lazy illiterate bards who went about the country begging.

That great Eisteddfodic pavilion, where the people were waiting good-naturedly but impatiently, is primarily a place of music. Even as in the world, so in Wales music comes first in the hearts of mankind and poetry second. And it may be, since music is more social and democratic, that the popular preference is as it should be. The human element in all that happens at a Welsh Eisteddfod is robust and teeming with enthusiasm. It is true that prize-taking socks, shawls, pillow shams, and such homely articles no longer hang in festoons above the platform as they did some twenty or thirty years ago. Now the walls are gaily decorated with banners bearing thousands of spiteful-looking dragons, and pennants inscribed with the names of scores of famous Welshmen, and with such mottoes as “Y Gwir yn Erbyn y Byd” (the truth against the world), “Gwlad y Mabinogion” (the land of the Mabinogion), “Calon wrth Galon” (heart with heart), and others.

After the procession of dignitaries was seated upon the platform, a worried-looking bard began to call out prizes for every conceivably useful thing under the sun, among them a clock tower which he seemed to be in need of himself as a rostrum for his throat-splitting yells. During these announcements the choirs were filing in, a pretty child with a ’cello much larger than herself was taking off her hat and coat, a stiff, self-conscious young man was bustling about with an air of importance, and in the front, just below the platform, sat newspaper reporters, from all over the United Kingdom, busy at their work. Among them were the gray, the young, the weary, the dusty, the smart, the shabby, and one who wore a wig, but made up in roses in his buttonhole for what he lacked in hair. There were occasional cheers as some local prima donna entered the choir seats, and many jokes from the anxious-looking master of ceremonies.

At last the first choir was assembled, and a little lady, somebody’s good mother, mounted upon a chair. The choir began to sing,--

“Come, sisters, come, Where light and shadows mingle, And elves and fairies dance and sing, Upon the meadow land.”

The little lady never worked harder, her baton, her hands, her head, her lips, her eyes were all busy. Was it the Celtic spirit that made those elves and fairies _seem_ to dance upon the meadows or did they really dance? The next choir was composed of younger women, among them many a beauty-loving face, alas! too pale and telling of the hard life of the hills or of the harder life of some mining-town. Of the third choir the leader was a merry little man, scarcely as high as the leader’s stand, with a wild look in his twinkling eyes as he waved a baton and the choir began,--

“Far beneath the stars we lie, Far from gaze of mortal eye, Far beneath the ocean swell, Here we merry mermaids dwell.”

He believed not only in his choir, but also in those mermaidens, and so did the little lad, not much bigger than Hofmann when he first began to tour, who played the accompaniment. When that choir went out, a fourth came in, still inviting the sisters to come. At last the sisters not only came, but also decided to stay, and another choir lured the sailor successfully to his doom, and all was over, for even in choir tragedies there must be an end to the song. The gallant little mother had won the first prize. It takes the mothers to win prizes, and the audience thought so, too. The crowd yelled and stamped with delight.

When one asks one’s self whether Surrey, for example, or such a state as Massachusetts in America, could be brought to send its people from every farm, every valley, every hilltop, to a festival thousands strong, day after day for a whole week, one realizes how tremendous a thing this Welsh national enthusiasm is. Educationally nothing could be a greater movement for Wales. To the Welsh the beauty of worship, of music, of poetry are inseparable. Only so can this passion for beauty, which brings multitudes together to take part in all that is noblest and best in Welsh life, be explained. Only so can you understand why some young collier, pale and work-worn, sings with his whole soul and shakes with the song within him even as a bird shakes with the notes that are too great for its body. These Welsh sing as if music were all the world to them, and in it they forget the world. Behind the passion of their song lies a devout religious conviction, and their song sweeps up in praise and petition to an Almighty God, who listens to Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” as well as to some great hymn. To hear ten thousand Welsh people singing “Land of my Fathers,” each taking naturally one of the four parts and all singing in perfect harmony, is to have one of the great experiences of life. To hear Shelley’s “Ode” set to Elgar’s music and sung by several choirs, to hear that wild, far-travelling wind sweep along in a tumult of harmonies, to know that every heart there was as a lyre even to the least breath of that wind, to hear that last cry,--

“Oh, wind, If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”--

to listen again to those choirs late in the evening on the station platform with the sea dim and vast and muting the song to its own greater music, is to have felt in the Welsh spirit what no tongue can describe,--it is to understand the meaning of the word “hwyl,” that untranslatable word of a passionate emotionalism.

All that went on behind the scenes the audience could not know. They saw only those considered by the adjudicators fit to survive. They did not see the six blind people, for even the blind have their place in this great festival, who entered the little school-room off Abergele Road to take the preliminary tests, the girl who played “The Harmonious Blacksmith,” and, shaking from excitement and holding on to her guide, was led away unsuccessful. They did not see the lad who played “Men of Harlech” crudely, his anxious ageing, work-worn mother sitting beside him, holding his stick and nodding her head in approval. All they heard were a selected two who were considered by the judges fit to play, a man both blind and deaf who performed a _scherzo_ of Brahms and a Carnarvon sea-captain, now blind, who played on the violin. The quiet of the one-time sea-captain’s face laid against the violin, the peace and pleasure in the lines about the sightless eyes, would have repaid the whole audience--even if the violinist had not been an exceptionally good player--for listening.

One of the inspiring and amusing events of the week was the discovery of a marvellous contralto. A young girl, shabbily dressed and ill at ease, came out to sing. Everything was being pressed forward towards the crowning of the bard, one of the great events of the Eisteddfod. People were impatient, and somewhat noisy. But as the girl began to sing they quieted down, then they listened with wonder, and in a minute you could have heard a pin drop in that throng of ten thousand. Before she had finished singing, “Jesu, Lover of my Soul,” the audience knew that it had listened to one of the great singers of the world. When she had finished her song and unclasped her hands, she became again nothing more than an awkward, silly, giggling child whom Llew Tegid had to hold by the arm.

The audience shouted, “What’s her name?”

“Maggie Jones,” he replied; “that begins well.”

“Where does she come from?” demanded the crowd.

“Police station,” answered Llew Tegid lugubriously.

The audience roared with laughter and demanded the name of the town. Maggie Jones is the daughter of Police Superintendent Jones of Pwllheli. Perhaps in the years to come the world will hear her name again.

There are children at these Eisteddfodau whose little feet can scarce reach the pedals of a harp. Even the robins singing up in the high pavilion roof who had joined in the music from time to time, trilling joyously to Handel’s “Oh, had I Jubal’s Lyre,” twittered with surprise that anything so small could play anything so large. But no one of the thousands there, even the children, grew tired for an instant, unless it was these same robins, who were weary at times because of the cheerless character of some of the sacred music sung in competition and themselves started up singing blithely and gladly as God meant that birds and men should sing. The robins twittered madly when some sturdy little Welshman stepped into the penillion singing, accompanied by the harp, no more to be daunted than a child stepping into rope skipping. When the grown-ups had finished, two little children came forward and sang their songs, North Wales style.

The afternoon was growing later and later; it was high time for the name of the bard of the crown poem to be announced. At last, with due pomp, the name of the young bard was announced. Every one looked to see where he might be sitting. He was found sitting modestly in the rear of the big pavilion, and there were shouts of “Dyma fo!” (here he is). Two bards came down and escorted him to the platform, where all the druids, ovates, and bards were awaiting him. The band, the trumpeter, the harp, and the sword now all performed their service, the sun slanting down through the western windows on to this bardic pageant. The sparrows flew in and out of the sunlight, unafraid of the dragons that waved about them and the bands that played beneath them, and the great sword held sheathed over the young bard’s head. The sword was bared three times and sheathed again as all shouted “Heddwch!” The bard was crowned and the whole audience rose to the Welsh national song.

What is the meaning of this unique festival of poetry and song? Mr. Lloyd George, who had escaped from the din of battle outside, and the jeers of the Goths and Vandals who couldn’t or wouldn’t understand the Fourth Form, said, amidst laughter, that there was no budget to raise taxes for the upkeep of the Eisteddfod. Then he continued, “The bards are not compelled by law to fill up forms. There is no conscription to raise an army from the ranks of the people to defend the Eisteddfod’s empire in the heart of the nation. And yet, after the lapse of generations, the Eisteddfod is more alive than ever. Well, of what good is she? I will tell you one thing--she demonstrates what the democracy of Wales can do at its best. The democracy has kept her alive; the democracy has filled her chairs; the sons of the democracy compete for her honours. I shall never forget my visit to the Llangollen Eisteddfod two years ago. When crossing the hills between Flintshire and the valley of the Dee, I saw their slopes darkened with the streams of shepherds and cottagers and their families going towards the town. What did they go to see? To see a man of their nation honoured for a piece of poetry.… And the people were as quick to appreciate the points as any expert of the Gorsedd, and wonderfully responsive to every lofty thought.” Yes, unlike any other gathering in the world, the Eisteddfod is all that. Long ago in the latter half of the eighteenth century Iolo Morganwg stated the objects of Welsh bardism,--“to reform the morals and customs; to secure peace; to praise (or encourage) all that is good or excellent.” This national festival is the popular university of the people, it is the centre of Welsh nationalism, the feast of Welsh brotherhood. Only listened to in this spirit can one understand what it means when an Eisteddfodic throng, after the crowning of the bard, rises to sing “Hen Wlad fy Nhadau,”--

“Old land that our fathers before us held dear.”

VIII

_Cambrian Cottages_

In the “Dream of Rhonabwy,” from the “Mabinogion,” one of the great books of the imaginative literature of the world, it is not a very pleasant picture which we get of a Welsh home. Yet the Welsh cottage home of to-day is a treasure of beauty and orderliness. Doubtless this picture from the “Dream of Rhonabwy,” in its realistic detail, making allowances for certain Norman influences at work upon the various stories of the “Mabinogion,” is a true one. The strength and rustiness of the colouring of the house of Heilyn Goch, the blackness of the old hall, the upright gable out of the door of which poured the household smoke, the floor inside full of puddles and slippery with the mire of cattle, the boughs of holly spread on the floor, and at one side of the hall an old hag making a fire, the yellow calf-skin it was a privilege for any one to get upon, the barley bread and cheese and milk which, after the people of the house had entered,--a ruddy, curly-headed man with faggots on his back, and a pale slender woman,--they were given to eat;--all, I say, forms a picture rude, coarse, strong in its primitive detail of twelfth-century Cymric household life. Something more, too, it suggests. As Matthew Arnold says, “The very first thing that strikes one, in reading the ‘Mabinogion,’ is how evidently the mediæval story-teller is pillaging an antiquity of which he does not fully possess the secret; he is like a peasant building his hut on the side of Halicarnassus or Ephesus; he builds, but what he builds is full of materials of which he knows not the history, or knows by a glimmering tradition merely.”

There are other pictures, too, in the “Mabinogion” of early Welsh household life, pictures which one must question because of their luxury and general magnificence, features evidently due to the strong Norman influence one finds at work almost throughout these stories. No picture could be more rich and more beautiful than that in the “Dream of Maxen Wledig,” where Helen is found by the Emperor’s messenger sitting in the old castle hall at Carnarvon. These are the tales of the splendid, barbaric youth of a people, filled with the vividness, the crowding, the vitality of youth, and touched to an even more magnificent beauty by another hand which was deliberate and Norman--stories divinely disregardful of what might have been intelligible; in their mystery and wonder full of the life of the young. Barbaric touches, magic, fantastic elements, crude life, gorgeous colouring,--all this and thrice more than this does one find in the “Mabinogion.”

At first dreaming,--for dream one must over the cottages of Wales if one is ever truly to enter them,--these homes of a more recent time would seem to have suffered a loss in vividness, in interest, so immeasurable that there could be no gain to balance against it. Gone are the mystery and the semblance of splendour; the sense of adventure and the strong, wild life of these earlier centuries are forever vanished. Yes, gone they are, and gone they were before ever a _rédacteur_ took down one of the tales of the “Mabinogion” from report that was already becoming but tradition. Purposely did I select the “Dream of Rhonabwy,” for not only in closeness to human reality, but also in architectural detail, do I believe it to be an exact picture of early Welsh home life. After the sordid picture of the hall, the description of the rainstorm comes but as a reinforcing touch of truthfulness: “And there arose a storm of wind and rain, so that it was hardly possible to go forth with safety. And being weary with their journey, they laid themselves down and sought sleep. And when they looked at the couch, it seemed to be made but of a little coarse straw … with the stems of boughs sticking therethrough, for the cattle had eaten all the straw that was placed at the head and at the foot. And upon it was stretched an old russet-coloured rug, threadbare and ragged; and a coarse sheet, full of slits, was upon the rug, and an ill-stuffed pillow, and a worn-out cover upon the sheet. And after much suffering from … the discomfort of their couch, a heavy sleep fell on Rhonabwy’s companion. But Rhonabwy, not being able either to sleep or to rest, thought he should suffer less if he went to lie upon the yellow calf-skin that was stretched out on the floor. And there he slept.” Undoubtedly here even the slit sheet is a touch of Norman elegance.

In the “Dream of Rhonabwy,” not in the far more beautiful “Dream of Maxen Wledig,” with its elaborate interior descriptions, do we find something like prototype for the Welsh cottage of to-day: the fire made against the gable end, even as it is now in the cottages, the sleeping accommodations at the opposite ends. This is the arrangement still of the vast majority of the cottages. Originally probably there were no windows other than, it may be, little slits--“wind-eyes” they were called with that relevant quaintness characteristic of early speech--such as we see to this day in old Welsh barns. In the “Mabinogion” story of Geraint, with its white stag, its divergent sense of the forest and of a bustling town life and the beautiful Gwenhwyvar, there is reference to glass windows: “And one morning in the summer time they were upon their couch, and Geraint lay upon the edge of it. And Enid was without sleep in the apartment, which had windows of glass. And the sun shone upon the couch. And the clothes had slipped from off his arms and his breast, and he was asleep. Then she gazed upon the marvellous beauty of his appearance, and she said, ‘Alas, and I am the cause that these arms and this breast have lost their glory and the war-like fame which they once so richly enjoyed.’” Are any lines in Tennyson’s “Enid” taken from this “Mabinogion” tale, that story upon which Tennyson’s widest popularity was founded, more vivid than this beautiful romantic touch? Undoubtedly these glass windows which revealed the manly beauty of Geraint in overthrow were glass lattices. They could not have been very common, and considerably later they were followed by wooden lattices in general use in the Welsh cottage, and still occasionally to be found to-day. I have found them several times in the dairy-rooms of old cottages in North Wales. Norman influence was at work in this story of the late twelfth or early thirteenth century from the “Mabinogion.” Sometime in the fourteenth or fifteenth century it was that the lattice window of the cottage came in, nor did it go out of use until the end of the seventeenth century. The window was a double frame--just as it is most frequently now--filled with woven diamond lattice. Within were wooden shutters opening inwards. A distant view or sketch of the leaded panes of to-day or of the diamond lattice of a long ago yesterday reveals no difference between the two, so closely has the type of window been kept, as, for example, the little, old-style windows of Beddgelert and Carnarvon.

And the beauty out upon which these old windows look is ever the same--Eryri, Eagle’s Eyrie, is this land of North Wales. Peak, precipice, lake, rushing stream, valley, forest lie always before one, sometimes shrouded for a while by the mist, again pricked out in indescribable altitude of mountain or whiteness of falling water before eyes that cannot fail to wonder at their beauty. In the fourteenth book of the “Prelude,” Wordsworth writes of the ascent which he and his Welsh friend made of Snowdon from Beddgelert at dawn, and we may, if we have not been in that mountain-cupped heart of Wales to hear it for ourselves, hear with Wordsworth the mounting

“roar of waters, torrents, streams, Innumerable, roaring with one voice!”

And with the poet, too, behold an

“Emblem of a mind That feeds upon infinity.”

The majestic beauty of these little Alps of Wales seems but to emphasize the cheerfulness and cosiness of the life man has made for himself. Indeed, nowhere are valleys greener, more sheltering, more homelike, more cosey. And the cottages, with their ascending spirals of peat smoke, the sweet fragrance of their homely life, speak a language of welcome no one can mistake. Gone are the old barbaric days, with their rough, strong life, their adventure; gone are the days of chivalry, with their bright pageant, their luxury, their courtly ways. Here we may turn a stone of those mediæval days, there touch a fretted memorial of still earlier times, even before Arthur had come to wake the world to a new romance and a new and selfless endeavour. Lessened, cheaper may this humble cottage heritage of the present seem than those times which have gone their “journey of all days” into the past. But not so does this sweet homeliness seem to me. Life is gentler, life is better, perhaps even kindlier within them by the bright hearth where, for the asking, any one may sit welcomed and at ease. Their purple roofs are but modest regal seal upon the happiness within. One feels singularly close to that great mother of us all in these tiny Welsh cottages, near to what is essential, what is real. Mortals who have not been dissevered from their proper feeling for houses will realize that these little homes have sprung, as it were, from the soil, that the cord binding them to the earth has never been cut.