Welsh Journals

WELSH NOTES. 517 Mr. Jackson gave a sympathetic but guarded reply, such as Ministers give when anxious to make progress with Supply, and Mr. Ellis was requested to foward to the Record Office sugges¬ tions as to the work most urgently required by Welsh scholars and antiquarians. This was done, but the response elicited from Mr. Maxwell Lyte was not encouraging. " The Public Record Office," he observed, "is not in a position to undertake the print¬ ing of any local records, English or Welsh, and it would be very difficult to adduce good reasons for dealing exceptionally with the records of any particular district of the United King¬ dom." In fact, it was tolerably clear from Mr. Maxwell Lyte's reply that Wales in this as in other matters must trust mainly to voluntary enterprise. We congratulate the Cymmrodorion on being alive to the position. The initiation of their plan by the labour and generosity of Mr. Henry Owen marks an •excellent beginning. We have reason to believe that they will shortly follow this up by the publication of an instalment of the famous Ruthin Court Rolls, the most complete set of documents ■of that kind now remaining. Mr. E. Sidney Hartland, formerly of Swansea, the author of "The Science of Folk-Tales," at a joint meeting of the Cymm¬ rodorion and Folk-Lore Societies the other day, dealt with the curious and interesting customs connected with the being known as "the Sin-Eater." The earliest mention of the custom of "sin-eating" formerly observed in Wales and the Welsh marches at funerals, is found in The Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme, a two centuries' old manuscript of John Aubrey's, published some ten or twelve years ago by the Folk-Lore Society. He says, in referring to offertories at funerals, " But before, when the corps is brought out of doores, there is cake and cheese, and a new bowle of beere, and another of milke, with ye Anno Dni. ingraved on it, and ye parties name deceased, which one accepts of on the other side of ye corps, and this custom is used to this day, 1686, in North Wales." That some such custom was observed throughout Wales in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries appears to be undoubted. The late Mr. Mathew Moggridge, of Swansea, mentioned the custom at a meeting of the Cambrian Archaeological Association, held at Ludlow in 1852, and specified the parish of Llandevie, about 12 or 13 miles