Yr Hen Iaith fifty nine: Replacing the bloody sword with an angry pen

Replacing the Bloody Sword with an Angry Pen: writing and ideology after the wars

Jerry Hunter

As was mentioned in episode 54, the royalist Rowland Fychan suffered considerably during the wars between Charles I and Parliament.

Imprisoned, deprived of his family estates and forced to witness the destruction of his home by Parliamentarian troops.

An extremely creative poet as well as an experienced prose stylist, episode 55 explored one of the ways in which Fychan used his literary talents to address matters relating to the wars.

When peace returned, he began translating Anglican books again, as he had done before the wars. In 1658 he published Prifannau Crefydd Gristnogawl, a translation of James Ussher’s Principle Points of the Christian Religion.

‘Proof’

The introduction is an original piece by Rowland Fychan.

He tells his reader that the work contains ‘proof of the foundational principles of your religion’ ([p]rawf ar wyddorion dy grefydd), adding that this is ‘the most proper thing in this age’ (y peth reitiaf yn yr oes hon).

He then states that, when these proper principles were threatened by religious radicals, he shed blood in their defence: mi welwn yn fadws i minnau a’m cleddyf coch, ‘I saw that it was time for me and my red sword [to go to work].’

This conservative Anglican describes the radical religious teachings driving the opposing side as hefrau – ‘tares’, ‘vetch’ or ‘darnel’, the kind of weeds which grow in wheat fields and choke out the desired crop.

Having fought on the losing side during the wars, this Welshman confesses that he failed to cut down these weeds with his ‘red sword’, informing readers that now he is ‘venturing to take a Sickle’ (anturio gymeryd Cryman) in order to cut down the harmful plants.

That sickle is, of course, the very pen he is using to write this tirade against radical religious teachings.

He stresses that this book will help Welsh readers ‘avoid the false prophets and vaticinators of idiotic means’ (ochel y gau broffwydi a’r brudwyr ynfydfodd hynny).

Biblical

While the common phrase gau broffwydi, ‘false prophets’, is of biblical origin (found, for example, in Mathew 7:15), the other word used here for prophets or vaticinators, brudwyr, indexes that unique Welsh tradition which held prophecy and historiography in productive association (see episode 30 in this series).

However, unlike those brudwyr revered by past generations of Welsh people, the Puritans against whom Rowland Fychan once fought – and against whom he now rails in writing – are ynfydfodd, using ‘idiotic means’ to promulgate their false teachings.

This conservative swipe at religious radicals is delivered using language charged by centuries of Welsh tradition.

With the restoration the monarchy in 1660, many puritanical laws were swept away with the vestiges of the Commonwealth.

This included a ban on theatrical performances. Interestingly, the first clear evidence of a Welsh anterliwt or ‘interlude’ being performed is from the time of the Commonwealth.

A surviving 1654 record of an ‘Examination taken before [the] Justice of [the] peace for the Countie of Carnarvon’. One ‘Moris ap William David of Llanvihengell’ swore that, ‘an enterlude’ was performed at ‘the dwellinge house of Hugh ap William ap Evan of Derwynfechan’.

This house, now called Derwin Bach, still stands near Bryncir in Gwynedd. All evidence relating to the performance of anterliwtiau from the following century agrees that these plays were performed outside, usually during a gwylmabsant (a parish festival) or another kind of fair.

Being illegal, this 1654 play was put on inside.

Religious strictures

If we only know about this performance because drama had been outlawed by a Parliament tempered by the religious strictures of the Puritans, one of the earliest surviving anterliwt texts is a play about the very wars which led to the establishment of that puritanical Parliament.

Entitled Y Rhyfel Cartrefol, ‘the Civil War’, and most likely composed by the poet Huw Morys, this play seems to have been performed in order to celebrate the Restoration in 1660.

This anterliwt would’ve lasted for at least two hours, and its large cast of characters includes many historical figures from the wars, all of whom – including Cromwell himself – speak fluent Welsh.

The Fool, a stock character in all anterliwtiau, concludes the play, gloating over the fact that the Parliamentarian ‘roundheads’ have finally lost power and that the day of the royalist ‘cavaliers’ has come:

Oes yma neb yn ofni’r Rowndied?
Doed i’r tir gole, dim hwy nac ymguddied!
Mae’r Cabelîr yn mynd yn fras,
Drwy iawnwych urddas, chwardded!

‘Is there anybody here who fears the Roundhead?
Let him come out into the light, no longer let him hide!
The Cavalier is growing fat,
Through properly splendid status, let him laugh!’

He celebrates the return of the old order:

Chwi gewch yr un fath ar gyfreithie
Ag oedd yn amser eich hen dade
A’ch teidie wnae gadw diwrnod gŵyl,
Wel dyna’r gorchwyl gore.

‘You will receive the same kind of laws
As existed in the time of your old fathers
And grandfathers who kept a feast day,
Well that is the best occupation!’

The fool then urges the audience to join in a joyous communal celebration of the conservative status quo’s return:

Pob un sy’n caru hawddgarwch
Yn well na’r trwst na’r tristwch,
Gan fod ein Brenin yn ein bro,
Fe ddarfu cwyno – cenwch!

‘Everybody who love geniality
More than tumult or sadness,
Since our King is in our land,
Complaining has ended – (everybody) sing!’

Yes, Welsh writing from the post-war decades contains a great deal of conservative triumphalism, but the picture is far from unified.

Although they had lost their most talented writer with the death of Morgan Llwyd, Welsh Puritans continued to use the printing press in an attempt to reach the hearts and minds of their fellow countrymen and women.

As was discussed in episode 53, the pre-war poetry of the Anglican clergyman Rhys Prichard was co-opted into the Welsh Puritan canon by Stephen Hughes.

In 1667 Charles Edwards published Y Ffydd Ddi-ffuant (‘The True Faith’), an ambitious work of religious historiography filling more than 400 pages.

And in 1688 Stephen Hughes and his colleagues added another important title to the Welsh Puritan canon – a translation of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progess. Entitled Taith neu Siwrnai y Pererin, this work would have a profound influence on successive generations of Welsh readers and writers.

Although Welsh Puritans were a minority in their own country in the seventeenth century, the religious landscape of Wales would change dramatically during the following century.

Nonconformism would become an awesome cultural force, and the literature produced by those seventeenth-century Welsh Puritans would provide important touchstones for Methodist hymnists and other Nonconformist writers.

Further Reading:

Gareth Haulfryn Williams, ‘Anterliwt Derwyn Fechan, 1654’, Transactions of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society (1983).

Ffion Mair Jones (ed.), Huw Morys, Y Rhyfel Cartrefol (2008).

Jerry Hunter, ‘The Red Sword, the Sickle and the Author’s Revenge: Welsh Literature and Conflict in the Seventeenth Century, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 36 (2018).