Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/141

 tenderness for the poor. Giraldus Cambrensis in 1194 wrote that "Welshmen break the first piece of every loaf for the poor." This year— 700 years later—the Inspector of the Local Government Board admits, that despite all pressure, Welsh Guardians of the Poor have an almost unconquerable aversion to the pulling of the poor, especially the aged poor, up by the roots from the country-sides and heaping them together in a town workhouse. Those who aver that Puritanism has soured the Welsh temperament know little of the merriment, the sly humour and the quick- wittedness of social converse on Welsh hearths. It is true that it has given a more serious purpose to their activities. "Glan Meddwdod Mwyn" and "Codiad yr Ehedydd" have a wider sway than ever as national airs, but the great hymn-tunes with their solemn cadences and their associations with the spiritual and the Unseen have far the strongest hold upon the Welsh people. Their response to leadership and to appeals on behalf of various modes of religious and social work, of educational movements and of