That so the vilest sinner might
Be cleansed forevermore;
Williams was called “The Sweet Singer of Wales” and “The Watts of Wales” because he was the chief poet and hymn-writer of his time, but the lady he married, Miss Mary Francis, was literally a singer, with a voice so full and melodious that the people to whom he preached during his itineraries, which she sometimes shared with him, were often more moved by her sweet hymnody than by his exhortations. On one occasion 439 / 385 the good man, accompanied by his wife, put up at Bridgend Tavern in Llangefin, Anglesea, and a mischievous crowd, wishing to plague the “Methodists,” planned to make night hideous in the house with a boisterous merry-making. The fiddler, followed by a gang of roughs, pushed his way to the parlor, and mockingly asked the two guests if they would “have a tune.”
“Yes,” replied Williams, falling in with his banter, “anything you like, my lad; ‘Nancy Jig’ or anything else.”
And at a sign from her husband, as soon as the fellow began the jig, Mrs. Williams struck in with one of the poet-minister's well-known Welsh hymns in the same metre,—
Gwaed Dy groes sy'n c' odi fyny
Calvary's blood the weak exalteth
More than conquerors to be,*
—and followed the player note for note, singing the sacred words in her sweet, clear voice, till he stopped ashamed, and took himself off with all his gang.