Welsh Journals

394 BYE-GONES. June 6, 1900. pathetic romance that is generally attached to it; just as a modern operatic scene would accentuate an ancient myth with effective words and music." Some of these musical legends are so pretty and so pathetic that it seems a pity to have to destroy them. There is the well known one, for example, respecting Dafydd y Garreg Wen. When David Owen lay on his death-bed he happened one day to fall into a trance. His mother, who was watching him at the time, thought the flame of life te be extinguished. But he suddenly revived and, fixing his eyes upon her, said that he had just dreamed a wonderful dream, in which he found himself in heaven, where he heard the sweetest strains that ever fell on the ears of man. He also said he could recall the music, if she would only reach him his harp. This she did, when he wich a glow upon his countenance played " Dafydd y Garreg Wen." Just as the last note was dying away, his spirit took its flight to its eternal home. The Air fixed itself in the mother's memory, and was thus preserved for posterity. There is also a story of David Owen, how in returning from a feast in the early morning, daybreak overtook him _ as he sat on a Btone, still pointed out in the neighbourhood of Portmadoc, and how, watching the skylark above him, he wrote the " Rising of the Lark." In the course of his paper Mr Jenkins says the in¬ habitants of mountainous districts are inclined to construct tunes or airs of extraordinarily wide compass and theory, which, if it is generally true, is one of great interest. He also mentions the high compliment which Handel paid Welsh music by adopting " The Rising of the Sun," almost in its entirety, in " Acis and Galatea." A Welsh Professor writes " A Plea for a Reform of the Universitv of Wales," Miss Ellen Hughes dis¬ cusses " Wales that is to be," the Rev. Charles Davies writes a paper, entitled " Where there is no Vision the People Perish," and there is a paper on %' The Welsh Colony in Patagonia," by Benbow Phillips, and one on " Welsh Nationality," by the late Sir George Osborne Morgan, Bart. The Registers of Conway [London : C. J. Clark] is a remarkable piece of work. A volume of nearly four hundred pages, consisting almost entirely of copies of the registers, with an index of names, trades, professions, and places, is a monu¬ ment of industry of which Miss Alice Hadley may well be proud. She says, owing to faded ink, individual idiosyncrasies of penmanship, terminal flourishes, and various forms of abbreviation in Welsh, English, and Latin, the transcription and correction of this volume has been a long and difficult task, and everyone who has to do with the transcription of parish registers will thoroughly agree with the remark. Miss Hadley adds that with the valuable corrections made by the Ven. Archdeacon Thomas the work is as accurate as possible; and we have no doubt she is correct. The copying seems to have been done in the most conscientious way, and what must have been an extremely monotonous task, even to one who took a deep interest in it, was not relieved to any very great extent by those quaint entries which occur in some parish registers. Considering the length of the Conway Registers, it is astonishing how seldom the writers indulge themselves by adding comments on the occurrences which happened in the neighbourhood, or other mi3cellanea. We meet with them, however, here and there. In 1597 we have the entry— wheate soulde this yeere for 46s p. peck. Rye for 40s p. pecke./ Barelie for 33s p. pecke malte for 40s p. pecke. Here and there the circumstances in which the man died are recorded ; and as might be expected in a seaport town, under the deaths we often meet with the words, " Qui mari imersus erat," and occasionally there is an entry like this— John Hookes esquier, died upon Sundaie beinge the eleaventhe daie of tfebruarij./ about xtn of the Olocke beinge high Service tyme att the readinge of the firste Chapter / Woord beinge Sent to the Church to toule the passinge bell, the moste pte of the peeple then Assembled who Could earth, ranned out Amazed anil Astonied with weepinge teares. He was buryed in Walton hill Chappell the : 15 : daie of february. & laied in the tome wch h8 Caused to be made in memoriall of his tfather, some towe monthes before his sayd deathe. etc./ Still, from what is little more than a bare list of names, the attentive student of the registers,which go back to the first half of the sixteenth century, is certain to obtain a large amount of useful and interesting information, if only from the personal names, place-names, and the occupations. A list of monumental inscriptions_ within the parish church of Conway is added, including, of course, the well-known one recording that Nicholas Hookes was the twenty-first child of his father, and himself the father of twenty-seven children. Of a Latin inscription on another monument an English translation is given. In the bowels of the earth is the body of Edward shut up, So willed it Holland's black Fates. But his spirit, in spite of the Fates, reigns on high, Which neither death, nor the tomb are able to hold in. As his body goes to earth, so his fiery mind scales the heavens, A man (and his wife) mindful of the fame of virtue. If a few more editors, as diligent and conscientious as Miss Hadley, could be found, we should have the registers of the country placed in a permanent and satisfactory form. We note that marriages after the A.ct of 1753 are to be contained in another volume of a hundred pages, which it is proposed to publish if a sufficient number of subscribers express a desire for it. As the price is only two shillings and sixpence we should hope there will be no doubt as to the response. JUtfE 6, 1900. NOTES. MAINWARING OF IGHTEIELD (May 23, 1900).—The collection of Wills at Lichfield in¬ cludes the following : — 1545, Robert Main- waringe ; 1551, Roger ; 1552, William (Stoke on Tern); 1556, George Manering of Wem ; 1556, Randell, and Anne Maynwaring, also of Wem ; 1559, Robert; 1625, John Manwaringe; 1629, Anne; 1632, Robert; 1635, Roger; 1639, Michael, of Wem. Sir Richard Maynwaring, Knt., appears in a record of the manor of Prees,5 Edward VI. (1551); and the Moreton Corbeb parish register has an entry Oct. 20, 1580, of the baptism of Ane, daughter of Adam Mainwaringe.