Yr Hen Iaith part 67: That Which Was Lost

Jerry Hunter

We have been discussing the Methodist Revival in recent episodes, concentrating specifically on the work of William Williams, Pantycelyn, and highlighting some of the ways in which that prolific poet’s hymns helped usher in a new chapter in the history of Welsh literature.

At the risk of generalising and doing some individuals a disservice, it’s safe to say that most scholars who have taught in the Welsh departments of our universities during the past century and a quarter have described this as an unmitigated positive development in the nation’s literary history.

The focus has been on that which was won in the wake of Nonconformism’s success. In this article we consider that which was lost because of this success.

Welsh traditions

Eighteenth-century religious reformers worked energetically to kill some Welsh traditions. Perhaps the best example is the gwylmabsant (plural gwyliau mabsaint), an annual parish festival or wake (the gŵyl, ‘festival’, of the mabsant, the saint to whom the parish church was dedicated).

This communal celebration would last for two or three days in most cases, and sometimes go on for as long as a week. While it would often begin with religious services in the church, the salient features of the gwylmabsant were decidedly nonreligious in nature – dancing, singing and drinking, as well as the kind of selling and buying one would find in other nineteenth-century Welsh fairs and markets.

Those attending a gwylmabsant often looked forward to the performance of an anterliwt, a long metrical play which contained a great deal of humour (much of it slap-stick and bawdy), and a tradition which we will treat in detail in future episodes.

In many respects, the gwylmabsant provided Welsh versions of the kinds of entertainments, enjoyments and traditions on offer at a continental carnival.

There is a considerable amount of nonconformist literature which lionizes eighteenth-century reformers, portraying them as godly champions doing battle with the forces of darkness in Wales.

A common set-piece of these texts describes a preacher addressing people enjoying – or on their way to enjoy – a gwylmabsant, sometimes setting up his evangelical stall in the same tavern yard where an anterliwt was about to be performed.  As we will see when we discuss the anterliwt, some of the poets who authored those plays hit back at the reformers, satirizing the Methodists and other Nonconformists in the harshest ways and questioning the motives behind their actions.

Ideological war

Many eighteenth-century Welsh texts contain the literary traces of an ideological war waged between the radical reformers and the traditionalists. By stressing the fact that the gwylmabsant was a context in which songs, dances and plays were performed and enjoyed, we can consider the physical sites of cultural activity as places which were hotly contested in the eighteenth century.

During a gwylmabsant, an open space outside near the parish church, a tavern yard or the village square might be transformed into an open-air theatre for the staging of an anterliwt.

Nonconformist preachers sought to insert themselves into those very same public spaces in order to deliver their sermons – thus providing a very different kind of verbal performance which they hoped would undermine the traditional performance set to take place in that same location on that same day. We might view this as a war of words waged to win the hearts and minds of the Welsh population.

This war was waged parish by parish and year by year until Nonconformist chapel services became a central feature of Welsh life and the gwylmabsant and anterliwt were confined to the historical dustbin.

Rather than suffering from the direct attacks of zealous religious reformers, some Welsh traditions were pushed quietly into the shadows by the growing power of Nonconformism.

The halsing

Interestingly enough, the ascendence of the Methodist hymn can be set against the decline of other kinds of Welsh religious song.   The halsing (plural halsingod) was a kind of religious song popular in the south-west, especially in the Teifi valley region. In A View of the State of Religion in the Diocese of St. Davids, Erasmus Saunders describes the halsingod as ‘Divine Hymns, or Songs’. Certain poets specialized in the genre, producing compositions which reworded biblical stories or lessons.

Fascinatingly, Erasmus Saunders also provides a description of the way in which these ‘divine songs’ were performed, noting that they could be sung ‘at home’, during ‘wakes’ (gwyliau mabsaint, perhaps?), and ‘in their Churches in the Winter Season’. He adds that, when sung in church, they were performed ‘before and after Divine Service’. There would be eight or ten singers, and they would ‘commonly divide themselves [into two groups of] Four or Five’. One group or ‘Party’ would begin the song, ‘and then by way of Alternate Responses, the other repeats the same Stanza, and so proceed till they have finish’d their Halsing, and then conclude with a Chorus.’

This kind of call-and-response singing is common in other religious contexts; I first encountered it in the United States in the ‘lining out’ method of singing in Appalachian churches and some African-American gospel songs. It’s fascinating to think that a similar kind of arrangement once characterized religious song popular in the Teifi valley.

Erasmus Saunders’ description of the halsing tradition was published in 1721, less than a decade before the Methodist Reformation would be ignited in Wales. Unbeknownst to him, he was providing a snapshot of a tradition which was soon to be eclipsed by the Methodist hymn.

Many religious carolau or carolion were composed in Wales during the eighteenth century as well, although these divine songs were also eclipsed by the new Nonconformist hymns. Take, for example, Edward Samuel, an Oxford-educated poet from Penmorfa in Gwynedd who died in 1748 – after Pantycelyn had published his first collections of hymns. A note in the manuscripts says that it was to be sung to the tune Ffarwel Ned Puw (‘Ned Puw’s Farewell’). The first line of this jubilant Christmas carol invite us to image a congregation joining in communal song, celebration and prayer:

Dowch, holl brydyddion croywon cred,

 Drwy lân adduned ddoniol,

Ag ymadroddus hwylus hawl

  I g’weirio mawl rhagorol;

Cans dyma’r dydd y daeth y Gair

 I’w eni o Fair y Forwyn,

Yn Dduw, yn ddyn i ddiodde’n ddwys,

 Fel oen gwareiddfwys addfwyn[.] 

‘Come, all pure poets of creation,

By means of pure gifted dedication

And eloquent straightforward claim

To prepare magnificent praise;

For this is the day the Word came

To be born from Mary the Virgin,

[both] God [and] man to suffer grievously,

Like a tender gentle lamb.’

Alliteration

Borrowing from the strict-metre poet’s cynghanedd tool box, this carol’s lines abound with alliteration and internal rhyme. While the religious message is ‘straightforward’ (hwylus) and wholly to be expected in the context of Christmas, the complex vocabulary and line ornamentation are anything but that. This is a far cry from the simple diction and metrical austerity characterising the hymns Pantycelyn was beginning to compose during the last years of Edward Samuel’s life.

This is a long song, containing nine fourteen-line stanzas. The penultimate stanza asks God ‘to preserve our civilized fittingly fair church’ (‘gadw’n heglwys weddlwys wâr’) from ‘the Papists, wearisome host, and the fierce Presbyterians’ (‘rhag y Pabyddion, blinion blaid, A’r Presbyteriaid taerion’). In one manuscript containing a copy of this Christmas carol, a later hand added the words ‘a’r Methodistiaid tostion’, ‘and [preserve our church from] the harsh Methodists’.  Like the public spaces where plays were performed and sermons where delivered, Welsh manuscripts from the period sometimes appear as the sites of conflict.

Darllen Pellach/Further Reading:

Geraint Jenkins, The Foundations of Modern Wales 1642-1780 (1989).

Richard Suggett, ‘Festivals and Social Structure in Early Modern Wales’, Past & Present (Awst, 1996), no. 152.

1. G. (ed.), Blodeugerdd Barddas o Gerddi Rhydd y Ddeunawfed Ganrif (Llandybïe, 1991).
2. Richards, ‘Casgliad o Halsingog’, National Library of Wales Journal, IV, no. 1 (1949).