Page:Speeches and addresses by the late Thomas E Ellis M P.pdf/75

 of defence, and every rank and kind of dwelling place. Both arts in their higher developments are very similar in that they require patience, long training, devotion and accumulated tradition of excellence, and those indefinable but priceless gifts of instinct, touch and taste.

Wales has always drawn joy and strength from Music. Giraldus Cambrensis describes how the stranger who arrives at morn in a Welshman's house is entertained till sunset with talk of fair maidens and the music of the harp. In all ages the delicate joy of Music has lightened oppression and sorrow and poverty. It penetrates every nook and cranny of Welsh life to-day. Every family has its singer and every country-side its choir. Our peasants and quarry men and miners sing with a sweetness and power and a mighty unity which extort the admiration and enthusiasm of the severest critic. Our religious and lyric music is distinctive, characteristic, national. Music, loved and practised as it is by the whole Welsh people, bringing, as it does, to the whole Welsh