A Book of North Wales

by S. Baring-Gould

the final line of which is capable of a double interpretation—the bucolic mind rises to no poetic conception. It looks at Nature with dull, dazed eyes, and sees nothing in it. It does not distinguish one plant from another, its only idea of a sensation is a young woman dressing as a sailor or a soldier to run after her young man, and its only idea of humour is grossness.

But the moment you come in contact with Celtic blood a ripple of living fire runs through the veins, the eyes are open and they see, the ears are touched and they hear, the tongue is unloosed and it sings.

The sole conception that the vulgar English mind has of poetry is rhyme, and the rhyme often execrably bad. In my time I have come upon many a village poet—but never a poetic idea from their minds, never a spark of divine fire in their doggerel.

But to return to Welsh Nonconformity. That it was the revolt of the Conscience against the deadness of the Church, which had left out of view all its glorious Catholic heritage, and offered stones in place of bread, and put wolves in place of pastors over the sheep, does not admit of question. Nor can it be doubted that Nonconformity has done an amazing deal for the development—if one-sided, yet a development—of the Welsh mind. It has stunted some of its faculties, but it has expanded the mind in other directions. Nonconformity exercises a most controlling force upon the Welshman. He no more dares to think or worship or have an aspiration beyond his sect, than has a Mussulman outside his religion. So long as he is in Wales, by a thousand ties he is bound to his sect. He would wreck his social, his moral influence, his position, his worldly prospects if he left it.

The bicycle, however, is making a breach in the bonds that restrain the young people, much as in France it is emancipating the demoiselle from the severe tutelage in which the French girl is held. It is taking those who use the “wheel” beyond the little area over which their religious community exercises influence.

We talk of the Irish peasantry as priest-ridden, but the Welsh are in almost as strict subjection to the opinion of their chapel body. The emancipation the bicycle produces has its good effects, but also those which are evil. The chapel opinion makes for godliness and a decent life.

The Sciet, or Society, comprises every member of the denomination, and is a miniature democracy, in which the affairs of the community are discussed, and its working is arranged, its religious tenets are shaped, and its code of morals is fixed. The greatest excitement allowed is the Diwygiad, or Revival, which may or may not leave good moral results. Sometimes it awakens the indifferent, sometimes deepens the religious life, but it also occasionally leads to lapses from virtue.

Revivalism is a two-edged weapon that may cut the hand that holds it.

The Church is supported principally by the squirearchy and the dependants on the squirearchy. And, as a rule, the squirearchy likes to have a religion that does not make great demands on its time, does not exact self-denial, does not require exalted spirituality. And it is ready enough to pay for a jog-trot religion, but will button up the pocket against a too exacting zeal.