And having read many volumes of man’s answer to George Fox, I am content for my part to think he still has the best of it, and that “Swear not at all” is as much a commandment as “Thou shalt not steal,” or “Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor.” Whether in a work-a-day world of timid people, who cling to the bad habits of their prehistoric ancestry, it is possible to live up to the ideals of these commandments is quite another matter, and I should be the last in the world to throw stones at others in this matter.
I must confess that on the few occasions I have given evidence I have dutifully “kissed the Book” like any other witness. Whether I should do so again I am not so sure. Probably literary pride would overcome the natural shyness of my disposition, and I should propose to read what I have written here to a long-suffering judge, and claim as of right to take the oath “tactis sanctis,” with no ceremony of kissing.
For the more I see of the ceremony the more it jars upon me as a mere matter of reverence to holy things, and the more I read of the matter the more convinced I am of its superstitious origin. When, too, I feel sure that it is of no practical purpose and is as useless as it is insanitary, I begin to think that the hour is approaching when we may, without impiety to the shades of our ancestors, adopt some more reasonable ceremony of commencing our evidence in the law courts than that of kissing the Book.
A WELSH RECTOR OF THE LAST CENTURY.
“E’en children follow’d with endearing wile,
And pluck’d his gown to share the good man’s smile.”
—Oliver Goldsmith.
“I must tell you this indeed,” as the Reverend John Hopkins, Rector of Rhoscolyn, always began his stories; but I wish I could tell you what I have to tell in his own delightful accent. For the form of words, “I must tell you this indeed,” was only, I think, a trick of speech he used in order to give himself time to translate his Welsh thought into the English tongue, and his English tongue, when it spoke, gave something of the rhythm and music of the Welsh to the foreign language he was using. His was a curious Welsh accent, unlike any I have heard. For though he had lived in the pure and bracing atmosphere of Anglesey—where, as in all the Welsh counties I have been in, they assure me the most classical Welsh is spoken—yet the rector did not speak with the Anglesey tongue, being a South Wales man himself, a “Hwntw” in the phrase of the North, or “man from beyond.” And the beyond he had sprung from was, I believe, in the neighbourhood of Merthyr. He was a son of the soil and of the school of Lampeter, and—the rectory of Rhoscolyn being in the gift of the Bishop of Llandaff—he had, when I first knew him, been sent some twenty years ago to minister on this out-of-way rock, and there he remained to the day of his death. The rector’s duties included ministering in two distant chapels, Llanfair-yn-Neubwll and Llanfihangel-y-Traeth, which was performed by deputy, but wholly or partly at his cost. In the days of Elizabeth, the whole of the duties were performed for ten pounds five shillings; nowadays, I believe, the living is worth nearly two hundred pounds.
But though, as I said, there was the song in his words that there is in all right-spoken Welsh, and the high note lovingly dwelt on towards the end of the sentence, which only a Welshman can produce without effort, yet I am not artist enough to describe to you in words the difference of the rector’s speech from that of his neighbours, only, “I must tell you this indeed,” that so it was and always is, I am told, with the “men from beyond.”