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THE GLAMORGAN REVEL. 131 instead of Rome. Here in the plain of Glamorgan the shades and spectres of former festivals and revels mock at us on the annual round of the day or days on which they were wont to be observed—those parish festivals that were healthy, spon¬ taneous, and full of heartfelt sense of enjoyment, when all classes had opportunities to meet fraternally their neighbours and friends, and do honour to Evangelist, Apostle, Saint, or Martyr. What is become of those festivals ? They are all gone, absorbed into the political economists' " national wealth," to the continued production of which they must be sacrificed. Glancing backwards fifty years and more at the habits, pleasures, and modes of life then common in the villages that are so thickly dotted over that strip of country usually called the Vale of Glamorgan (Bro Morganwg), many are the social changes that become evident to the memory. Most of the old hospitality, that won for the people the character of being gentle and kind (Mwynder Morganwg), has departed, and innocent amusements, with a character of their own, and a kind of local rural beauty about them, have disappeared. No doubt the habits, practices, and feelings of the peasants now approach more nearly to those of the towns and to the classes above them, but that kind of change does not by any means always indicate improvement. Amongst the sports and games that have quite ceased to be practised in the localities indicated are bandy or hockey, and tennis, which was not in all respects like the game of that name that is now played in tennis courts. Bandy was played in meadows or on the sands by the sea side, and tennis most frequently against the parish church walls; but no sport or game has more completely perished than dancing, which was at one time a most common and frequent form of amusement. So common and general was it, in fact, that if a question had been asked, " What is the most general accomplishment to be met with amongst the youthful inhabitants of the Glamorgan dales ?" the answer that it was " a knowledge of dancing" would have been as true as any that could be devised. Every lad and lass danced on holidays and highdays, at fairs and weddings, and especially at the village festival, the Glamor¬ gan Revel, or " Gwyl a Gwledd Mabsant." It is not my intention, had I the means and knowledge at hand, to attempt to trace the origin of the village festival or Mabsant, but simply to describe, as well as I may from my memory, the manner in which it was observed in the early part •of the second quarter of this century. To call it, as I have known it called, a remnant of Popery, is to take a very narrow and unworthy view of it, and condemning it on wholly in¬ sufficient ground. That it passed through the Roman Catholic period, and lived on to the nineteenth century, is true enough ;