Welsh Journals

Awdl Famon touch life as it can never be touched by mere imitation. Awdl Famon is a great modern poem. This realistic tendency is also witnessed by the growth of the novel and the begin- nings of the drama. Daniel Owen comes partly into our period, though he owed his inspiritaon to the movement started by Lewis Edwards and Roger Edwards. As faithful pictures of Welsh life and character, Daniel Owen's stories still occupy the first rank. Gwyneth Vaughan possessed a better literary equipment, but the tragedy of life prevented her from giving of her best. Other writers have been content with their first novel." The short story has greatly developed, and has perhaps been more successfully handled than the novel, but it shows a tendency to degenerate into mere verbal humour, depending upon the perversion of terms and words-an old trick of the Welsh popular fancy. The evolution of the drama, still proceeding, is entirely within our period. Attempts to stage 44 Rhys Lewis in the eighties were put down by the action of the religious organi- sations. Within the last few years, views have changed, and there are now scores of amateur dramatic companies through- out the country. The majority of the many plays produced seem to follow the same type of plot-the conflict of old and new, complicated by the attachment of Romeo and Juliet. These plays may serve the purpose of apprenticeship in stagecraft, and a progressive history of the efforts would be interesting and in- structive. R. A. Griffith's Y Bardd a'r Cerddor," Aelwyd Angharad by Llew Tegid and Lloyd Williams, and W. J. Gruffydd's Beddau'r Proffwydl," are faithful and effective pictures of Welsh customs and character, and have been played with a success that promises well for the future. If we compare these plays with the alleged representations of Welsh life by alien writers-and only Welsh players-we may confidently assert that the Welsh drama has come, and that it is of a comparatively high order. The stage Welshman in England is as far from the original as he was in the sixteenth century. There is undoubtedly much that is gen- uinely religious in what we call our reli- gious literature, but there is much more that is mere religiosity. If, however, I am not mistaken, there are signs of a deeper, more catholic tendency, a reverence which cannot confound religion with forms, which cannot laugh at other religions, or damn all the outside world with com- placency. This tendency is found in the sermons of Emrys ap Iwan, admirable also from a literary point of view in Sir Henry Jones's addresses recently issued in book form in the verse of Gwili, including a remarkable poem to the Virgin Mary in the ballads of J. T. Job; in W. J. Gruffydd's play, Beddau 'r Proffwydi." All this means that the Romanticism has served its purpose. It was the characteristic of its apprenticeship, and its discussion, whether favourable or other- wise is full of unrealities; terms of whimsical criticism are used as if they represented facts the attempt to express the realities of life, good or bad, are treated as if they were a mere hunt for words beauty, or ugliness, is attributed to what was never meant to be anything but plain truth an immemorial tradition that literature must be fulsome praise or foul abuse, unconsciously affects much of our attempts at criticism. But a new literature has come. It has achieved form. It will do more-if the golden chalice which the ages have wrought for us-the language -is not heedlessly thrown away. If that happens, we shall be mute for centuries whilst another is making. T. GWYNN JONES.