Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

Dec, 1875. BYE-GONES. 342 Sunday afternoon near Ruyton-XI-TWna—I forget the name of the place. The little boys scrambled for lumps of sugar thrown into a spring. Whether this now continues I cannot say. D. Phillips Lewis. Guilsfield Vicarage. Drinking Sugar-and-Water was customary in the parish of Llansantffraid, Oswestry, but not on Trinity Sun¬ day. & t Merry Green Well the ceremony was observed on Palm Sunday : probably at the annual opening of The Green for Spurts. At the Voel Well the fourth Sunday in Lent wa9 the High-day. At Llanymynech the people met at the Three-county Well to drink sugar and water, but on which Sunday I am not informed ; but very likely on the patron saint'* day (St. Agatha), or the Wakes, on or about Feb. 5. The ceremony was part of the Wake ob- seivances, and very general. Ctffin, LORD KEN YON AS A POET (July 29, Sep. 2, 23,1874).—The Hon. George Kenyon in your issue for Sep. 2.1874, gives as his reason why the lines in honour of Sir Watkin were written in 1749 the fact that Sir Watkin died in that year. Anyone who has accei-s to the complete poem willsee that it was penned at some period subsequent to the death of the baronet, but, I tike it, the second Lord Ken¬ yon fixed the date conclusively—and showed that the lines were by the articled clerk at Nantwich, and not the school¬ boy at Ruthin. His Lordship says (in sending the poem to Lord Ashley for the Camb. Quar. Mag.), in Jan. 1830, " I beg to offer you the enclosed, which is copied from the original in my honoured father's handwriting, and sent by him to his father (who preserved it) from Nantwich, ac¬ cording to its date (Sep. 19, 1751). He was at Nantwich at that time under Mr James Tomkinson, an eminent country solicitor, he being then second son of his father, and of the age of eighteen." In the poem the young lawyer pictures Sir Watkin in an elysium in the company of " England's Edwards, Henrys, Charleses," and other wor¬ thies, consorting with whom, it is to be hoped, will not injure the morals of the good baronet ! Anon. OSWESTRY SCHOOL (Nov. 3, 1875)—The Rev. Owen Reynolds is said by our local historians to have become head master about 1769. There are some entries extant in his handwriting, dated on that year, and which refer to the letting of school land. Thus— "March 25th, 1769. Mr Jennings hath agreed to pay for the lands that were in Troy's holding adjoining to what he held himself before, bo;h together 181., and also for a quillet above the smith's shop in Swiuey, adjoining to Widow Danks's land, 21., so that his whole rent now amounts to 201. Commencing as a fore rent the date as above.—Ow. Reynolds.'' . Anothfr entry of agreement of Mr Reynolds's is dated 1771, and refers to two portions of land at Maes Swiney issa, let to Dr Browne for £4. Mr Reynolds died in June, 1772, and was succeeded by the Rev. Charles Anson Tisdale, in whose time the school was built (see Mar. 24, 1875), and, from a memorandum signed by Mr Tisdale, the rents of the school lands in 1773 amounted to £100 10a 6d. the sum being made upas follows :—Edward Jennings, £20, Edward Jones, £21, John Jones, £20, Henry Humphreys, £23 10s, Dr Brown, £4 6s, Dr James, £3, Mrs ttittins, £5, Mr Bassnett (for the Mill), £1 6s 8d, Miss Barrett, 8s, Sir Watkin Wynne, 2?, Thomas Sides, 10s, Bounty Money, *1 3s 4d. Twentyoue years later, when Dr Donne was master, the rents amounted to £169 10s, the sum being made up thus:—Richard Croxon, Esq., The Holbeaches, £94 10s, Mr Jarvis, of The Nant, a field by The Nant and a field °y the Smitbey, £8, Davies of Crickheath, £30, Edward ffrtinu80f Maesbury» £20. T. N. Parker, Esq., of Sweeney ttaU, being the two divisions of Maes Sweeney Issa, now rented at £4, the tenant of The Drill for one acre near The xx Nant, £1 lis 6d, Lazarus Venables,Esq., lands in Trcflacb £5, Mrs Hilditch, £3 (These two lots by the ardent survey amount to 20a. lr. 5p), Mr Bassnett for Maesbury Mill, £1 6s 8d, Mrs Barrett's successor, 8s, Mr N. Jones, by R. Croxon, Esq., 6d, Debenture out of the Exech^quer paid by White, Parliament-place, Old Palace-yard, £1 13s 4d. In Dec. 1805, there was a difference of opinion between Mr Donne and Mr Parker concerning the amount of school lands at MaesSweeney-issa, and the matter was investi¬ gated by the Rev, W. W. Davits, rector of Whittington ; and after evidence was taken before that gentleman Mr Parker proposed to call in Lewis Jones, Esq., and to refer all matters in dispute to him. His decision was that Mr Donne had made good his claim to the land, and it was agreed that Mr Davies and Mr Bowman of Kncckin, should mark out the boundaries. Thtsa gentlemen did so on Ap. 22, 1806, and afterwards Mr Parker paid £8 5s per annum rent, instead of £4 as per agreement between Dr Brown and Mr Reynolds. A further reference to this disi u:e will be found in the Report of the School Commission ot 1830, see Bye-gones, Mar. 10, 1875. Jabco. CURRENT NOTES. Mr John Rhys is preparing for publication a volume of lectures on Welsh philology; it is devoted to the discussion of phonetic decay and initial mutation in Welsh and Irish, the early inscriptions of Wales and the classification of the Celtic nations among themselves, on which he has a new theory to advance; no less new will be bis account of the origin of the Ogham alphabet, which he treats at length. —Academy. The Rev J. D. Lester, who died at Wellington College on December 4th, was an excellent Welsh scholar, and well versed in the older German dialects. At the time of his death he was engaged on a Historical German Grammar for the Clarendon Press series. He was also a frequent writer in the Westminster and Fortnightly Reviews. Among his contributions to those periodicals are articles on Greek novelists, Sophocles, Lessing, Heine, and Welsh poetry. Mr Lester has left a number of translations from Heine's Buck der Lieder and from Welsh poems, which it is hoped may soon be published. It is probable that had his life been spared, his varied scholarship and his delicate literary ap¬ preciation would have been recognised by a wider circle than the few attached friends who now moura the loss of a most unassuming, simple-minded, warm-hearted man.— December 22, 1875. THE SIX EATER (Dec. 1, 1875 )—The Western Mail, Dec. 16, contains a letter signed Rheidiol, Twmbarlwn, on tln> sub¬ ject, in which, after narrating the facts already stated, the writer proceeds to say :—I lived at Llandebie many years ago, and I am well acquainted with the history of that pari-h and its customs and traditions, and from time to tima I attended funerals, hut I never heard of such a thina;. I am well ac¬ quainted with Wel~h lore in almost every parish in South Wale?,which Icollected for the lite Sir Thomas Phillips, Bart., and I never heard of its existence. The Welsh peasint may be a little superstitious, but he is far too intelligent to bilievein such a thing as a Sin Eater. This is simply a fling at the Welsh nation. I hope, for the credit of the Cambrian Associa¬ tion, that they have better foundation for the papers read at their meetings than the " Sin-Eater." NOTES. THE CIVIL WAR ON THE BORDERS (Nov. 24, 1875).—I have still a few more letters in the Denbigh collection to refer to. There are some from Wem and other places of private interest, and the rest include the following :— 86