Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/10

 sympathy. It testifies to the sensitiveness of the Celt to all that awakens in him thoughts of the Unseen and of the mysteries of the Valley of the Dark Shadow. I have witnessed the burial of the dead in Catholic Tyrol, in Protestant Zurich, in silenced Pisa, and in sunny Naples. I have watched Egyptians and Kaffirs bury their dead. I have been touched by the mingled awe and pomp of a British military funeral, and by the State funeral accorded to a great Celtic man of letters by Republican France.

But I think that, one and all, they lack the note of passionate searching and of genuine impressiveness which characterises the extempore prayer at the grave-side of a respected neighbour in a Welsh glen or country-side, or the cadences, measured, sweet, and stored with emotion, of the singing of hymns like "Bydd myrdd o ryfeddodau " by the throngs, which I well remember gathered at Llanycil by the side of the silent lake, to pay the last tribute of respect to John Parry, to Ioan Pedr, and to Lewis Edwards. One cannot but be touched by the sight to be