A Book of North Wales

by S. Baring-Gould

He gives us a Welsh air, “Difyrwch Gwyr Dyfi,” as a bardic melody, but it is found in Tom D’Urfey’s Pills to purge Melancholy, published in 1719-1720, and is the old English melody of “Greensleeves” spoiled. The melody of “Cynwyd” is none other than the venerable English air of “Dargason,” which may be traced back in England to the reign of Elizabeth. A tune given by Jones as “Toriad y Dydd” is the old English air “Windsor Terrace,” and “Y Brython” is a country dance published in The Dancing Master by Playford, 1696. Jones gives the “Monks’ March” as probably the tune of the monks of Bangor when they marched to Chester, about the year 603, and it is none other than “General Monk’s March,” composed at the restoration of Charles II., and “The King’s Note” is none other than King Henry VIII.’s “Pastyme with good company.” The “Ash Grove” is doubtful. It first appears as a popular song in Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, 1727, “Cease your funning.” The Beggar’s Opera became the rage in London, throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, and we know that it was performed also in Wales. Edward Jones in his Bardic Museum, in the second series published in 1802, inserted a tune that seems to have been formed on it, but the resemblance was confined to the first part. John Parry touched it up and altered all the second part of the tune to what it is now. It is, of course, possible that Gay may have heard a Welsh air and introduced it into his opera, but it is far more probable that the Beggar’s Opera, which was repeatedly performed in Wales, introduced the melody into the Principality. One Welsh air Gay did insert in his play, “Of noble race was Shenkin,” and he may have picked up another.

Tunes are like birds of the air that fly from place to place and light on every tree, and are at home everywhere. There is a popular melody sung to very gross words by the peasantry in England. I picked it up in Devon, and it has also been found in Yorkshire, and a lady sent it me as heard in Wales, but without the words. Mr. Chappell has noted sixteen in Jones’s collection that are certainly English, and he did not exhaust the number.

A curious instance of the manner in which melodies drift from their original connections is that of the popular hymn tune “Helmsley,” to which is sung “Lo! He comes with clouds descending.”

Thomas Olivers was born in the village of Tregynon, in Montgomeryshire, in 1725; his father was a small farmer, who died when Thomas was a lad, and he was then committed to the charge of his father’s uncle Thomas Tudor, a farmer at Forden. In his youth he was of a merry and thoughtless disposition, and was dearly fond of dancing and all sorts of amusements. In his autobiography he states “that out of sixteen nights and days, he was fifteen of them without ever being in bed.”

Some years after, when he was in Bristol, he was “converted” by Whitefield, and he became a Wesleyan Methodist lay preacher, and in 1777 undertook the printing of Wesley’s Arminian Magazine. But his lack of education stood in his way, and in 1789 Wesley had to take the periodical out of his hands. In his Journal, Wesley enters his reasons: “1. The errata are unsufferable. I have borne them for these 12 years, but can bear them no longer. 2. Several pieces are inserted without my knowledge, both in prose and verse.”

Olivers became noted, however, as a hymn writer, and especially for his tune “Helmsley,” which he gave to the world, no doubt firmly convinced that it was original. But this it was not; it was a reminiscence of his old unregenerate days. In fact it is an opera air, and belongs to The Golden Pippin, in which occurs the song:—

“Guardian angels now protect me,

Send to me the youth I love.”

The Golden Pippin appeared in 1773.

Some of the stories connected with genuine Welsh airs are delightful. David Owen, of the Garreg Wen, lay on his death-bed, and fell into a trance. His mother, who was watching him at the time, supposed that he was dead. But presently he roused, and said to her that he had been in an ecstasy, and had seen heaven open, and the harpers about the throne were playing a wondrous strain. He called for his harp, and, with a radiance as of the world he had visited on his face, played the tune “Dafydd y Garreg Wen.” As the last note died away the flame of life passed from him. The air became fixed in his mother’s memory, and has thus been preserved.