It was fitting that Williams should name the first collection of his hymns (all in his native Welsh) The Hallelujah. Its lyrics are full of adoration for the Redeemer, and thanksgivings for His work.
“ONWARD RIDE IN TRIUMPH, JESUS,”
Marchog, Jesu, yn llwyddiannus,
Has been sung in Wales for a century and a half, and is still a favorite.
* The following shows the style of Rev. Elvet Lewis' translation:
The unusual militant strain in this pæan of conquest soon disappears, and the gentler aspects of Christ's atoning sacrifice occupy the writer's mind and pen.
“IN EDEN—O THE MEMORY!”
Yn Eden cofiaf hyny byth!
The text, “He was wounded for our transgressions,” is amplified in this hymn, and the Saviour is shown bruising Himself while bruising the serpent.
The first stanza gives the key-note,—
—and the multitude of Williams' succeeding “songs” that chant the same theme shows how well he kept 438 / 384 his promise. The following hymn in Welsh (Cymmer, Jesu fi fel'r ydwyf) antedates the advice of Dr. Malan to Charlotte Elliott, “Come just as you are”—
—and another (Mi dafla maich oddi ar fy ngway) reminds us of Bunyan's Pilgrim in sight of the Cross:
Williams was called “The Sweet Singer of Wales” and “The Watts of Wales” because he was the chief poet and hymn-writer of his time, but the lady he married, Miss Mary Francis, was literally a singer, with a voice so full and melodious that the people to whom he preached during his itineraries, which she sometimes shared with him, were often more moved by her sweet hymnody than by his exhortations. On one occasion 439 / 385 the good man, accompanied by his wife, put up at Bridgend Tavern in Llangefin, Anglesea, and a mischievous crowd, wishing to plague the “Methodists,” planned to make night hideous in the house with a boisterous merry-making. The fiddler, followed by a gang of roughs, pushed his way to the parlor, and mockingly asked the two guests if they would “have a tune.”
“Yes,” replied Williams, falling in with his banter, “anything you like, my lad; ‘Nancy Jig’ or anything else.”
And at a sign from her husband, as soon as the fellow began the jig, Mrs. Williams struck in with one of the poet-minister's well-known Welsh hymns in the same metre,—
—and followed the player note for note, singing the sacred words in her sweet, clear voice, till he stopped ashamed, and took himself off with all his gang.
* A less literal but more hymn-like translation is:
Says the author of Sweet Singers of Wales, “This refrain has been the password of many powerful revivals.”
Another hymn—
—recalls the well-known verse of Newton, “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds.” Like many of Williams' hymns, it was prompted by occasion. Some converts suffered for lack of a “clear experience” and complained to him. They were like the disciples in the ship, “It was dark, and Jesus had not yet come unto them.” The poet-preacher immediately made this hymn-prayer for all souls similarly tried. Edward Griffiths translates it thus:
Besides his Welsh hymns, published in the first and in the second and larger editions of his Hallelujah, and in two or three other collections, William Williams wrote and published two books 441 / 387 of English hymns,* the Hosanna (1759) and the Gloria (1772). He fills so large a space in the hymnology and religious history of Wales that he will necessarily reappear in other pages of this chapter.
* Possibly they were written in Welsh, and translated into English by his friend and neighbor, Peter Williams.
From the days of the early religious awakenings under the 16th century preachers, and after the ecclesiastical dynasty of Rome had been replaced by that of the Church of England, there were periods when the independent conscience of a few pious Welshmen rose against religious formalism, and the credal constraints of “established” teaching—and suffered for it. Burning heretics at the stake had ceased to be a church practice before the 1740's, but Howell Harris, Daniel Rowlands, and the rest of the “Methodist Fathers,” with their followers, were not only ostracised by society and haled before magistrates to be fined for preaching, and sometimes imprisoned, but they were chased and beaten by mobs, ducked in ponds and rivers, and pelted with mud and garbage when they tried to speak or sing. But they kept on talking and singing. Harris (who had joined the army in 1760) owned a commission, and once he saved himself from the fury of a mob while preaching—with cloak over his ordinary dress—by lifting his cape and showing the star on his breast. No one dared molest an officer of His Britannic Majesty. 442 / 388 But all were not able to use St. Paul's expedient in critical moments.*
* Acts 22:25.
William Williams often found immunity in his hymns, for like Luther—and like Charles Wesley among the Cornwall sea-robbers—he caught up the popular glees and ballad-refrains of the street and market and his wife sang their music to his words. It is true many of these old Welsh airs were minors, like “Elvy” and “Babel” (a significant name in English) and would not be classed as “glees” in any other country—always excepting Scotland—but they had the swing, and their mode and style were catchy to a Welsh multitude. In fact many of these uncopyrighted bits of musical vernacular were appropriated by the hymnbook makers, and christened with such titles as “Pembroke,” “Arabia,” “Brymgfryd,” “Cwyfan,” “Thydian,” and the two mentioned above.
It was the time when Whitefield and the Wesleys were sweeping the kingdom with their conquering eloquence, and Howell Harris (their fellow-student at Oxford) had sided with the conservative wing of the Gospel Reformation workers, and become a “Whitfield Methodist.” The Welsh Methodists, ad exemplum, marched with this Calvinistic branch—as they do today. Each division had its Christian bard. Charles Wesley could put regenerating power into sweet, poetic hymns, and William Williams' lyrical preaching made the Bible a travelling pulpit. The great “Beibl Peter 443 / 389 Williams” with its commentaries in Welsh, since so long reverenced and cherished in provincial families, was not published till 1770, and for many the printed Word was far to seek.* But the gospel minstrels carried the Word with them. Some of the long hymns contained nearly a whole body of divinity.
* As an incident contributory to the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the story has been often repeated of the little girl who wept when she missed her Catechism appointment, and told Thomas Charles of Bala that the bad weather was the cause of it, for she had to walk seven miles to find a Bible every time she prepared her lessons. See page 380.
The Welsh learn their hymns by heart, as they do the Bible—a habit inherited from those old days of scarcity, when memory served pious people instead of print—so that a Welsh prayer-meeting is never embarrassed by a lack of books. An anecdote illustrates this characteristic readiness. In February, 1797, when Napoleon's name was a terror to England, the French landed some troops near Fishguard, Pembrokeshire. Mounted heralds spread the news through Wales, and in the village of Rhydybont, Cardiganshire, the fright nearly broke up a religious meeting; but one brave woman, Nancy Jones, stopped a panic by singing this stanza of one of Thomas Williams' hymns,—
Nancy Jones would have been a useful member of the “Singing Sisters” band, so efficient a century or more afterwards.
The tunes of the Reformation under the “Methodist Fathers” continued far down the century to be the country airs of the nation, and reverberations of the great spiritual movement were heard in their rude music in the mountain-born revival led by Jack Edward Watkin in 1779 and in the local awakenings of 1791 and 1817. Later in the 19th century new hymns, and many of the old, found new tunes, made for their sake or imported from England and America.
The sanctified gift of song helped to make 1829 a year of jubilee in South Wales, nor was the same aid wanting during the plague in 1831, when the famous Presbyterian preacher, John Elias,* won nearly a whole county to Christ.
* Those who read his biography will call him the “Seraphic John Elias.”
His name was John Jones when he was admitted a member of the presbytery. What followed is a commentary on the embarrassing frequency of a common name, nowhere realized so universally as it is in Wales.
“What is his father's name?” asked the moderator when John Jones was announced.
“Elias Jones,” was the answer.
“Then call the young man John Elias,” said the speaker, “otherwise we shall by and by have nobody but John Joneses.”
And “John Elias” it remained.
An accession of temperance hymns in Wales followed the spread of the “Washingtonian” 445 / 391 movement on the other side of the Atlantic in 1840, and began a moral reformation in the county of Merioneth that resulted in a spiritual one, and added to the churches several thousand converts, scarcely any of whom fell away.
The revival of 1851–2 was a local one, but was believed by many to have been inspired by a celestial antiphony. The remarkable sounds were either a miracle or a psychic wonder born of the intense imagination of a sensitive race. A few pious people in a small village of Montgomeryshire had been making special prayer for an outpouring of the spirit, but after a week of meetings with no sign of the result hoped for, they were returning to their homes, discouraged, when they heard strains of sweet music in the sky. They stopped in amazement, but the beautiful singing went on—voices as of a choir invisible, indistinct but melodious, in the air far above the roof of the chapel they had just left. Next day, when the astonished worshippers told the story, numbers in the district said they had heard the same sounds. Some had gone out at eleven o'clock to listen, and thought that angels must be singing. Whatever the music meant, the good brethren's and sisters' little meetings became crowded very soon after, and the longed-for out-pouring came mightily upon the neighborhood. Hundreds from all parts flocked to the churches, all ages joining in the prayers and hymns and testimonies, and a harvest of glad believers followed a series of meetings “led by the Holy Ghost.”
446 / 392The sounds in the sky were never explained; but the belief that God sent His angels to sing an answer to the anxious prayers of those pious brethren and sisters did no one any harm.
Whether this event in Montgomeryshire was a preparation for what took place six or seven years later is a suggestive question only, but when the wave of spiritual power from the great American revival of 1857–8 reached England, its first messenger to Wales, Rev. H.R. Jones, a Wesleyan, had only to drop the spark that “lit a prairie fire.” The reformation, chiefly under the leadership of Mr. Jones and Rev. David Morgan, a Presbyterian, with their singing bands, was general and lasting, hundreds of still robust and active Christians today dating their new birth from the Pentecost of 1859 and its ingathering of eighty thousand souls.
A favorite hymn of that revival was the penitential cry,—
O'th flaem, O Dduw! 'r wy'n dyfod,
—in the seven-six metre so much loved in Wales.
The author of the hymn was Thomas Williams of Glamorganshire, born 1761; died 1844. He published a volume of hymns, Waters of Bethesda in 1823.
The Welsh minor tune of “Clwyd” may appropriately have been the music to express the contrite prayer of the words. The living composer, John Jones, has several tunes in the Welsh revival manual of melodies, Ail Attodiad.
The unparalleled religious movement of 1904–5 was a praying and singing revival. The apostle and spiritual prompter of that unbroken campaign of Christian victories—so far as any single human agency counted—was Evan Roberts, of Laughor, a humble young worker in the mines, who had prayed thirteen years for a mighty descent of the heavenly blessing on his country and for a clear indication of his own mission. His convictions naturally led him to the ministry, and he went to Newcastle Emlyn to study. Evangelical work had been done by two societies, made up of earnest Christians, and known as the “Forward Movement” and the “Simultaneous Mission.” Beginnings of a special season of interest as a result of 448 / 394 their efforts, appeared in the young people's prayer meetings in February, 1904, at New Quay, Cardiganshire. The interest increased, and when branch-work was organized a young praying and singing band visited Newcastle Emlyn in the course of one of their tours, and held a rally meeting. Evan Roberts went to the meeting and found his own mission. He left his studies and consecrated himself, soul and body, to revival work. In every spiritual and mental quality he was surpassingly well-equipped. To the quick sensibility of his poetic nature he added the inspiration of a seer and the zeal of a devotee. Like Moses, Elijah, and Paul in Arabian solitudes, and John in the Dead Sea wilds, he had prepared himself in silence and alone with God; and though, on occasion, he could use effectively his gift of words, he stood distinct in a land of matchless pulpit orators as “the silent leader.” Without preaching he dominated the mood of his meetings, and without dictating he could change the trend of a service and shape the next song or prayer on the intuition of a moment. In fact, judged by its results, it was God Himself who directed the revival, only He endowed His minister with the power of divination to watch its progress and take the stumbling-blocks out of the way. By a kind of hallowed psychomancy, that humble man would detect a discordant presence, and hush the voices of a congregation till the stubborn soul felt God in the stillness, and penitently surrendered.
449 / 395Many tones of the great awakening of 1859 heard again in 1904–5,—the harvest season without a precedent, when men, women and children numbering ten per cent of the whole population of a province were gathered into the membership of the church of Christ. But there were tones a century older heard in the devotions of that harvest-home in Wales. A New England Christian would have felt at home, with the tuneful assemblies at Laughor, Trencynon, Bangor, Bethesda, Wrexham, Cardiff, or Liverpool, singing Lowell Mason's “Meribah” or the clarion melody of Edson's “Lenox” to Wesley's—
—or to his other well-known—
In short, the flood tide of 1904 and 1905 brought in very little new music and very few new hymns. “Aberystwyth” and “Tanymarian,” the minor harmonies of Joseph Party and Stephens; E.M. Price's “St. Garmon;” R.M. Pritchard's, “Hyfrydol,” and a few others, were choral favorites, but their composers were all dead, and the congregations loved the still older singers who had found familiar welcome at their altars and firesides. The most cherished and oftenest chosen hymns 450 / 396 were those of William Williams and Ann Griffiths, of Charles Wesley, of Isaac Watts—indeed the very tongues of fire that appeared at Jerusalem took on the Cymric speech, and sang the burning lyrics of the poet-saints. And in their revival joy Calvinistic Wales sang the New Testament with more of its Johannic than of its Pauline texts. The covenant of peace—Christ and His Cross—is the theme of all their hymns.
453 / opp 398| Isaac Watts |
|
“HERE BEHOLD THE TENT OF MEETING.”
Dyma Babell y cyfarfod.
This hymn, written by Ann Griffiths, is entitled “Love Eternal,” and praises the Divine plan to satisfy the Law and at the same time save the sinner. The first stanza gives an idea of the thought:
“HOW SWEET THE COVENANT TO REMEMBER.”
Bydd melus gofio y cyfammod.
This, entitled “Mysteries of Grace,” is also from the pen of Ann Griffiths. It has the literalness 451 / 397 noticeable in much of the Welsh religious poetry, and there is a note of pietism in it. The two last stanzas are these:
Ann Griffiths' earliest hymn will be called her sweetest. Fortunately, too, it is more poetically translated. It was before the vivid consciousness and intensity of her religious experience had given her spiritual writings a more involved and mystical expression.
This stanza, the last of her little poem on the “Eternal Fitness of Jesus,” came to her when, returning from an exciting service, filled with thoughts of her unworthiness and of the glorious beauty of her Saviour, she had turned down a sheltered lane to pray alone. There on her knees in communion with God her soul felt the spirit of the sacred song. By the time she reached home she had formed it into words.
The first and second stanzas, written later, are these:
Mrs. Ann Griffiths, of Dolwar Fechan, Montgomeryshire, was born in 1776, and died in 1805. “She remains,” says Dr. Parry, her fellow-countryman, 455 / 399 “a romantic figure in the religious history of Wales. Her hymns leave upon the reader an undefinable impression both of sublimity and mysticism. Her brief life-history is most worthy of study both from a literary and a religious point of view.”
A suggestive chapter of her short earthly career is compressed in a sentence by the author of “Sweet Singers of Wales:”
“She had a Christian life of eight years and a married life of ten months.”
She died at the age of twenty-nine. In 1904, near the centennial of her death, amid the echoes of her own hymns, and the rising waves of the great Refreshing over her native land, the people of Dolwar Fechan dedicated the new “Ann Griffiths Memorial Chapel” to her name and to the glory of God.
Although the Welsh were not slow to adopt the revival tones of other lands, it was the native, and what might be called the national, lyrics of that emotional race that were sung with the richest unction and hwyl (as the Cymric word is) during the recent reformation, and that evinced the strongest hold on the common heart. Needless to say that with them was the world-famous song of William Williams,—
—and that of Dr. Heber Evans,—
456 / 400—and also that native hymn of expectation, high and sweet, whose writer we have been unable to identify—
Of the almost countless hymns that voiced the spirit of the great revival, the nine following are selected because they are representative, and all favorites—and because there is no room for a larger number. The first line of each is given in the original Welsh:
“DWY ADEN COLOMEN PE CAWN.”
This is another of Thomas Williams' hymns. One of the tunes suitable to its feeling and its measure was “Edom,” by Thomas Evans. It was much sung in 1859, as well as in 1904.
“CAELBOD YN FORSEC DAN YR IAN.”
Written for children and youth by Rev. Thomas Jones, of Denbigh, born 1756; died 1820,—a Calvinistic Methodist preacher, author of a biography of Thomas Charles of Bala, and various theological works.
“DYMA GARIAD FEL Y MOROEDD, TOSTURIASTHAN FEL Y LLI.”
This is called “The great Welsh love-song.” It was written by Rev. William Rees, D.D., eminent as a preacher, poet, politician and essayist. One of the greatest names of nineteenth century Wales. He died in 1883.
The tune, “Cwynfan Prydian,” sung to this hymn is one of the old Welsh minors that would sound almost weird to our ears, but Welsh voices can sing with strange sweetness the Saviour's passion on which Christian hearts of that nation love so well to dwell, and the shadow of it, with His love shining through, creates the paradox of a joyful lament in many of their chorals. We cannot imitate it.
“RHYFEDDODAU DYDD YR ADGYFODIDD.”
The author of this Easter hymn is unknown.
The most popular Welsh hymns would be named variously by different witnesses according to the breadth and length of their observation. Two of them, as a Wrexham music publisher testifies, are certainly the following; “Heaven and Home,” and “Lo, a Saviour for the Fallen.” The 459 / 403 first of these was sung in the late revival with “stormy rapture.”
“O FRYNAU CAERSALEM CEIR GIVELED.”
According to the mood of the meeting this was pitched in three sharps to Evelyn Evans' tune of “Eirinwg” or with equal Welsh enthusiasm in the C minor of old “Darby.”
The author of the hymn was the Rev. David Charles, of Carmarthen, born 1762; died 1834. He was a heavenly-minded man who loved to dwell on the divine and eternal wonders of redemption. A volume of his sermons was spoken of as “Apples of gold in pictures of silver,” and the beautiful piety of all his writings made them strings of pearls. He understood English as well as Welsh, and enjoyed the hymns not only of William and Thomas Williams but of Watts, Wesley, Cowper, and Newton.*
* The following verses were written by him in English:
“DYMA GEIDWAD I R COLLEDIG.”
The little now known of the Rev. Morgan Rhys, author of this hymn, is that he was a schoolmaster and preacher, and that he was a contemporary and friend of William Williams. Several of his hymns remain in use of which the oftenest sung is one cited above, and “O agor fy llygaid i weled:”
“Lo! a Saviour for the Fallen” finds an appropriate voice in W.M. Robert's tune of “Nesta,” and also, like many others of the same measure, in the much-used minors “Llanietyn,” “Catharine,” and “Bryn Calfaria.”
461 / 405“O SANCTEIDDIA F'ENAID ARGLWYDD.”
This one more hymn of William Williams is from his “Song of a Cleansed Heart” and is amply provided with tunes, popular ones like “Tyddyn Llwyn,” “Y Delyn Aur,” or “Capel-Y-Ddol” lending their deep minors to its lines with a thrilling effect realized, perhaps, only in the land of Taliessin and the Druids.
The singular history and inspiring cause of one old Welsh hymn which after various mutilations and vicissitudes survives as the key-note of a valued song of trust, seems to illustrate the Providence that will never let a good thing be lost. It is related of the Rev. David Williams, of Llandilo, an obscure but not entirely forgotten preacher, that he had a termagant wife, and one stormy night, when her bickerings became intolerable, he went out in the rain and standing by the river composed in his mind these lines of tender faith:
Apparently the sentiment and substantially the expression of this humble hymn became the burden of more than one Christian lay. Altered and blended with a modern gospel hymn, it was sung at the crowded meetings of 1904 to Robert Lowry's air of “Jesus Only,” and often rendered very impressively as a solo by a sweet female voice.
A few of the revival tunes have living authors and are of recent date; and the minor harmony of “Ebenezer” (marked “Ton Y Botel”), which was copied in this country by the New York Examiner, with its hymn, is apparently a contemporary piece. It was first sung at Bethany Chapel, Cardiff, Jan, 8, 1905, the hymn bearing the name of Rev. W.E. Winks.
463 / 407One cannot help noticing the fondness of the Welsh for the 7-6, 8-7, and 8-7-4 metres. These are favorites since they lend themselves so naturally to the rhythms of their national music—though their newest hymnals by no means exclude exotic lyrics and melodies. Even “O mother dear, Jerusalem,” one of the echoes of Bernard of Cluny's great hymn, is cherished in their tongue (O, Frynian Caerselem) among the favorites of song. Old “Truro” by Dr. Burney appears among their tunes, Mason's “Ernan,” “Lowell” and “Shawmut,” I.B. Woodbury's “Nearer Home” (to Phebe Cary's hymn), and even George Hews' gently-flowing “Holley.” Most of these tunes retain their own hymns, but in Welsh translation. To find our Daniel Read's old “Windham” there 464 / 408 is no surprise. The minor mode—a song-instinct of the Welsh, if not of the whole Celtic family of nations, is their rural inheritance. It is in the wind of their mountains and the semitones of their streams; and their nature can make it a gladness as the Anglo-Saxon cannot. So far from being a gloomy people, their capacity for joy in spiritual life is phenomenal. In psalmody their emotions mount on wings, and they find ecstacy in solemn sounds.
“A temporary excitement” is the verdict of skepticism on the Reformation wave that for a twelvemonth swept over Wales with its ringing symphonies of hymn and tune. But such excitements are the May-blossom seasons of God's eternal husbandry. They pass because human vigor cannot last at flood-tide, but in spiritual economy they will always have their place, “If the blossoms had not come and gone there would be no fruit.”
465 / 409CHAPTER XII.
FIELD HYMNS.
Hymns of the hortatory and persuasive tone are sufficiently numerous to make an “embarrassment of riches” in a compiler's hands. Not a few songs of invitation and awakening are either quoted or mentioned in the chapter on “Old Revival Hymns,” and many appear among those in the last chapter, (on the Hymns of Wales;) but the working songs of Christian hymnology deserve a special space as such.
“COME HITHER ALL YE WEARY SOULS,”
Sung to “Federal St.,” is one of the older soul-winning calls from the great hymn-treasury of Dr. Watts; and another note of the same sacred bard,—
—is always coupled with the venerable tune of “Wells.”* Aged Christians are still remembered who were wont to repeat or sing with quavering voices the second stanza,—
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