Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/155

 in our demand that those great quarries of Welsh lore should be opened to the patient and trained literary workers of Wales.

The Government has so far listened to our cry in this respect as to appoint one of our own countrymen, Mr. Gwenogfryn Evans, to do the nccessary and preliminary work of calendaring the manuscripts of Wales; and it is instructive to note the reason for this demand for the calendaring of the manuscripts of Wales, and why it became effective. We know well. and we are proud of, the work which Mr. Evans and Professor Rhys have done in connection with Welsh texts. Mr. Evans was preparing a complete edition of the works of Dafydd ap Gwilym. He worked away for years at this task, and no sooner had he collated available manuscripts, and thought that he had got the fullest collection of the poet's works, than he found there were other manuscripts lying in some private collections hitherto unpublished, and never even collated. So appalled was he at the impossibility of knowing where the manuscripts of the great national poet of Wales were, that an