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 WALES

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WALES

of Rome, whence (if we may trust Welsh and Roman traditions alike) the first missionaries had come to Britain. According to the "Annales Cambriae", the earliest and a very reliable nati\e authority, the Britons complied with Rome's reform of the Easter cycle in the year 453. There was frequent communi- cation between the British Christians and the pope, and British bishops took part in the Council of Aries, at which papal representatives assisted. When Saint Augustine came to evangchze the Anglo-Saxons, his first step was to invite the co-operation of the Welsh clergy — a fact which proves that these latter were in full communion with Rome and the Catholic Church at large. By that time, however, the British or Welsh Christians had already long been practically cut off from personal commimication with the rest of Christendom by the Germanic invasion, and thas had to some extent lost touch with the Roman See. The result was becoming gradually apparent. Peculiar usages in ritual and discipline, known as "Celtic customs", had been evolved from principles orthodox enough, and in some cases actually Roman in origin, but which had petrified into abuses. Rome would gladly have abolished these, but the Welsh cherished them in her despite, as symbols of nationality. They condemned Saint .\ugustine as the apostle of their Saxon foe, and, deeming the latter more worthy of eternal reprobation than of the joys of heaven, refused to have a hand in their conversion. This attitude of the native bishops, no doubt, brought the Welsh Church into a situation perilously near schism; but the period of tension w.as of relatively brief duration. In the ninth century Wales renounced all such national customs a.s were held unortliodox by Rome, and even accepted (with a bad grace, perhaps) the metropolitan jurisdiction of Canterbury. There- after it was the boast of Welshmen that their country- men had never swerved from the true profession of the Catholic and Roman Faith.

The Reformation came to Wales as a foreign impor- tation, imposed upon the nation by the sheer weight of English officialdom. Of this there is abun- dant evidence from contemporant- records. Protes- tantism was against all the sentiment of Welsh nation- ality, all the traditions and associations dearest to the people. Barlow, the first Protestant Bishop of Saint I^avid's, proposed that the see should be removed to Carmarthen, to avoid the Catholic mem- ories and atmo.sphere which hung around the shrine of Cambria's patron saint. The bards denounced the Reformation with invective, satire, and pathos. Sion BrwjTiog, of Anglesey, who flourished in the reign of Edward VI, composed a poem entitled "CjTvj-dd y Ddwy Ffydd" (Ode to the Two Faiths), portions of which may be baldly translated as follows: "... Some men are resolute in the new way, and some are firm in the old faith. People are found quarrelUng like dogs; there is a different opinion in each head . . . The Apostles are called pillars; poor were they while they lived (a thing not easy to the generation of to-day). .\way from wives and children, to Jesus they turned. With us, on the contrary, a priest (of all persons) leaves .Jesus and His Father, and to his wife freely he goes. His malice and his choler is to be angry about his tithes . . . .\t the table, with all the power of his lungs, he preaches a rigmarole . . . not a word about Mass on Sunday, nor confession. any more than a horse. Cold, in our time, as the grey ice are our churches. Wa-s it not sad, in a day or two, to throw down the altars! In the church choir there will be no wax at all, nor salutary candle, for a moment. The church and her perfumes [sacra- ments] graciously healed us. There was formerly a sign to be had, oil anointing the soul. Woe to us lajTnen all. for that we are all without prayer. There is no agreement in anything betwixt the son and his father. The daughter is against the mother, unless

she turn in mischance. . . . Let us confess, let us approach the sign [of the cross, in absolution]; God will hoar and the Trinity. . . . Let us go to His protection, praying; let us fast, let us do penance. . . . The world, for some time past, docs not trust the shepherds. It behoves a man to trust the God of Heaven. I believe the word of God the Son."

In the Cardiff Free Library is a Welsh prose manu- script of the age of Elizabeth, by an unkno%\'n author. It is a defence of the old religion against the doctrines of the Protestants, whom it terms "the New Men". The book has leaves missing at both ends, but was divided into twelve chapters, each dealing with a leading point in the controversy, as the Real Presence; communion in one kind; purgatorj-, and prayer for the dead ; prayer to, and the intercession of, the saints, and the veneration of relics; pilgrimages, images, and the sign of the cross. The composition is excellent, and the matter, for those fierce times, moderate in tone. A good deal of national feeling is apparent. Referring to the recent translation of the New Testa- ment into Welsh by the state Bishop of Saint David's, and especially to the preface, he says that, though the bishop claims to hold the primitive Faith, itisonly the misbelief of which the ancient heretics boasted. In another chapter the author compares Naaman's Jewish maiden to a Welsh girl recommending her master to try the virtues of Saint Winifred's Well, in Flintshire; and he rebukes the "New Men" for mock- ing the CathoUcs when these go to Holywell on pil- grimage and bring home water, moss, or stones from it. The heretics seek a natural rea.'ion for the virtues of that well, which cures all manner of sick folk Great, he says, are the miracles wrought at Saint Winifred's Well, even in these evil da>s, since the false new faith came from England. Ignorance has increased in Wales, adds the writer, since the churches were cleared of pictures and images, which were books of instruction to the unlettered. The glory of Britain departed when the crucifix was broken down. The legend of the cross of Oswestry is referred to, as also the miraculous appearance of the figure of the cross in a spht tree-trunk (at Saint Donat's) in Glamorgan. This last event had occurred a very few years pre- viously, and made so remarkable an impression on the people that the authorities prohibited any reference to the marvel.

For a hundred years after the Reformation manu- script books containing Welsh poetry and prose of the most distinctly "Popish" character continued to be cherished in mansions and farmhouses, and passed from hand to hand until they were worn out. Many still sur\-ive, tattered and soiled, but eloquent wit- nesses of the Catholicism which died so hard in Wales. The b-ards' favourite subjects were the Blessed \'irgin, the national saints, the ro.'^ary, the roods (calvaries) in the churches, the Ma.ss, the abbeys, and the shrines of the city of Rome. From such a manu- script as is described above, the following poem may be noticed, almost at random. It is entitled "CjTvydd y p.aderau prenn.au" (Ode to the wooden beads) and commences thus: "There is one jewel for my poor soul, in a life which desires not sin; it is the beads, in four rows. A son of learning [a cleric] gave them to an old man. Holy Mary, for that he gave it from his keeping, grant thy grace to Master Richard. The Canon sent ten fine beads (decades), that may hang down to one's knee. I obtained ten of God's apples [the large beads], and I earn,' them at my side — ten were obtained from Yale with great difficulty. Those ten are in memory of you. Ten words of religious law, ten beads follow after them. . . . The man to the cleric of the glen gave beads on a string; Mary's ornament, in tiny fragments, placed upon silk. . . . Wood is the good material — wood from Cyprus in Europe .... Suitable are these for a gift — bits of the tree of Him Who redeemed us. . . ."