Welsh Journals

wharf of Amlwch remains now a deserted memorial of the bustling times when the Parys copper mines supplied cargoes for the home-built ships of that port; the port of Aberystwyth decayed with the lead-mines but the busy ports of the south, the easily accessible port of Liverpool together with Ho!yhead and Milford, old centres of the Irish traffic, still supplied numerous outlets for the mari- time activity of the nation. And, to judge by the pay-lists of some of the great steamship companies, the result of this activity would seem to be that the Welshman now enjoys on the bridge that ubiquity which is the Scotsman's in the engine-room. Yet the impression that all this advance has left on the literary life of the nation is comparatively slight. It is remarkable that even Tomas Prys, a typical Elizabethan sea-dog who, when not engaged in fighting Spaniards, coquetted with the Muse, reserved his finer strains for land themes this is the way in which the redoubtable captain of Plas Iolyn wrote of the sea Our ship is wrth ymgripio, Weak and full of leak below Dowt yma o daw Tomas Adre'n siwr o'r gloywddwr glas. The everyday speech of the Englishman is often redolent of tar and spray; indeed, one is not aware of any departure out of the rut of ordinary conver- sation into the sphere of the metaphor when making use of the English phrases to steer clear of this or to be taken aback by that. On the other hand, the nautical idioms that have woven themselves into the fabric of common Welsh speech are few. In seeking to account for this, much allowance must be made for the pastoral traditions of the nation the bulk of the population was pastoral in its history and in its literary and religious ideals, and the tendency of the shepherd is to look askance at the sea as a realm of mystery and unknown dangers. This tendency was reinforced by the wave of fervid patriotism so well represented in Ceiriog; poetry was of the land the poetic gaze was focussed on the mountains it was in Eryri that Llywelyn had made his stand against the invader in the glens the royalists had fought and in the mountains they had sought a hiding-place. The nonconformist fathers, too, had lived their epics in the little white- washed chapels in the valleys Ceiriog could hear the rush of a mountain stream or the reverberations of the thunder among the precipices, but he was comparatively deaf to the roar of the waves on a lee shore; in his "Awdl y Mor," indeed, he has written a creditable sea-poem, but one does not need to glance at the foot-notes to know that the details are derived largely from books. Typical also is the space devoted to the voyager's agricultural mis- adventures before he goes to sea; Ceiriog is clearly more at his ease with the horses and the carts than upon ship-board. It is strange that so little should have filtered in from English literature; the English sea-lyric is as old as Anglo-Saxon times it forms an important element in the work of Shakespeare and in the poetry of the Romantic Revival, whilst the poets of the Victorian era were amongst its ablest exponents. Yet neither this neighbour literature nor the language of the Old Testament seems to have left much impress on Welsh lyric poetry Dafydd Ddu Eryri readily purloined Byron's description of the rugged mountain grandeur of Loch na Garr, but he does not seem to have been tempted by the same poet's splendid sea-poetry. In this connection, the close relation between the religious and the literary life of Wales must not be forgotten to many poets, the shepherd who was within reach of chapel and church, and lent himself to the pastoral ideals of religion must have seemed a more desirable person to exalt than the sailor who lived his life far from the echo of hymn and psalm. The sailor seems to have been generally regarded as a type of roughness and ungodliness from whom decent folks shrank certainly, the conditions of sea-life at that time did not favour canonisation, nor do they now. Goronwy Owen, in his letters describing his voyage to America, writes in no uncertain terms of the life about him. A striking instance of this attitude towards seamen is to be found in a hymn in the Congregationalist hymn-book, unique among hymns for its sarcasm:- Fe welir gwaith Rhagluniaeth Ar forwyr cyn bo hir; Eu llongau fyddant demlau I Arglwydd mor a thir; Clodforedd i'r Gwaredwr A glywir ar y don, Pryd hyn bydd delw'r nefoedd Ar wedd y ddaear hon. To particularise: in Professor Lewis Jones's Caniadau Cymru we have a standard anthology of Welsh lyric poetry from Huw Morus to Ceiriog. Of the one hundred and thirty seven lyrics which the volume contains, five really deal with the sea, and it is interesting to note the theme and treatment. In Uadron Grigyll "-the Wreckers of Grigyll