These convivial harp meetings are generally conducted with great regularity, and are really social; all sing if they please, or all are silent. To some tunes there are a great number of singers, according to the ingenuity required in adapting Pennillion. Yet even this custom is on the decline.
In South Wales, the custom has been long lost; on its demise they encouraged song writing and singing, and they are still accounted the best (without the harp) in the principality. In North Wales song-singing was hardly known before the time of Huw Morus, in the reign of Charles I., nor is it now so prevalent as in the south.
In the year 1176, Rhys ap Gruffydd held a congress of bards and minstrels at Aberteifi, in which the North Welsh bards came off as victors in the poetical contest, and the South Welsh were adjudged to excel in the powers of harmony.
For the encouragement of the harp and Pennillion chanting, a number of institutions have lately been formed, and the liberal spirit with which they are conducted will do much towards the object; among the principal are the “Cymmrodorion,” or Cambrian Societies of Gwynedd, Powys, Dyfed, Gwent, and London; the “Gwyneddigion,” and “Canorion,” also in London. The former established so long since as 1771, and the “Undeb Cymry,” or United Welshmen, established in 1823, for the same purpose. In all the principal towns of Wales, societies having the same object in view have been formed, among which the “Brecon Minstrelsy Society” is particularly deserving of notice. The harp and Pennillion singing have at all times come in for their share of encomium by the poets, and are still the theme of many a sonnet in both languages.
From more than a hundred pieces in Mr. Leathart’s “Pennillion,” translations of a few pennills, or stanzas, are taken at random, as specimens of the prevailing sentiments.
The man who loves the sound of harp,
Of song, and ode, and all that’s dear,
Where angels hold their blest abode,
Will cherish all that’s cherish’d there.
But he who loves not tune nor strain,
Nature to him no love has given,
You’ll see him while his days remain,
Hateful both to earth and heaven.
Fair is yon harp, and sweet the song,
That strays its tuneful strings along,
And would not such a minstrel too,
This heart to sweetest music woo?
Sweet is the bird’s melodious lay
In summer morn upon the spray.
But from my Gweno sweeter far,
The notes of friendship after war.
Woe to him, whose every bliss
Centers in the burthen’d bowl;
Of all burthens none like this,
Sin’s sad burthen on the soul;
Tis of craft and lies the seeker,
Murder, theft, and wantonness,
Weakens strong men, makes weak weaker,
Shrewd men foolish, foolish—less.