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ERHAPS, in

introducing this
new magazine to
Welshmen, I should
say a word or two
about my aims in
connection with it,
and about the meth-
od I mean to take

those aims.

Some two or three years ago I offered to the

[No. 1.

an attempt to get those Welsh to take an interest in anything save politics and theology, you will be happy no more."

The magazine appeared, however, and it was with difficulty that the publisher could meet the demand for it, a demand that is increasing up to this day. The quarrymen of North Wales welcomed it with enthusiasm, the tin-plate workers of South Wales gave it an equally cordial reception, and no in order to attain thoughtful publication ever appealed for support in vain to the upland farmers of Merioneth and Cardigan. A short time ago the printer furnished me with a list of the classes of people who read the magazine. First came the quarrymen of North Wales, especially of Festiniog and Bethesda; then came the farmers and agricultural labourers of Anglesey, Carnarvon, Merioneth, and Cardigan; then the tinplate men of Glamorgan and Carmarthenshire; these were closely followed by the Welsh inhabitants of Liverpool and London, closely followed in their turn by the colliers of Denbighshire, Flintshire, Glamorgan, and Monmouthshire. It should be remembered that sixpence a month was a serious item of expenditure to these readers, especially when it is remembered that the magazine their place of worship, or their representahad nothing to do with their daily bread,

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Welsh-speaking public a magazine that was neither sectarian nor political. It dealt exclusively with the history and literature of Wales, its aim was to enlighten patriotism and to strengthen that keen desire for knowledge which is characteristic,-with gladness be it said, of the poorest Welshman of this day.

My good cautious friends gave me much advice at that time, which did much to discourage me. "You cannot edit a magazine," said one, "to please more than one sect at a time; for there are three things unfathomable in that country,-sectarian bigotry, political animosity, and Bala Lake." "Not the waste-paper baskets of all the world," another friend said, " will contain the rubbish those bards will send you." "Who in his senses," asked one who had spent years at a Welsh grammar school, would believe that a Welsh peasant cares anything about the love songs of Dafydd ab Gwilym or about the ideals of Owen Glendower ?" "You are a happy man now," was the parting advice of the wisest of them, but once you throw yourself into

tion in Parliament.

I had always believed that the Welsh peasant was fond of literature and history, I knew peasant farmers and agricultural labourers who had read through the ten volumes of the Encyclopædia Cambrensis.

But I did not know that this love of knowledge was so deep or so universal until, by means of my Welsh magazine, I was the humble means, to some extent, of guiding their studies. Among those who write the most thoughtful articles for me are quarry

men and agricultural labourers. They have found the means, somehow or other, of mastering the elements of Welsh history, and of getting a very thorough knowledge of modern Welsh poetry. To them Ceiriog and Islwyn, as they would be to any Wordsworthian, are a never ending source of happiness. The man who writes the most graceful bits for me is a labourer, working hard and contentedly on a farm, for one shilling a day.

But Wales is not entirely Welsh-speaking. Radnorshire was Welsh two hundred years ago; now Welsh is not spoken in it at all. Herefordshire, three hundred years ago, was largely Welsh-speaking; even from the valley of the Honddu Welsh has retreated, as a widow told me some years ago, telling me at the same time that her husband was the last man who could speak Welsh and play the harp in that valley. I saw the harp, with all its strings broken.

According to the census of 1891, nearly one half of the inhabitants of Wales can not speak Welsh, and more than threefourths can understand English. My aim is now to help English-speaking Welshmen as I have tried to help their Welsh-speaking brothers. I want to tell you the history of your forefathers, of the men who fought for you, and sacrificed for your sake, and preached for you, and prayed for you. I want you to know what Llywelyn suffered, and what Glendower hoped for. I want you to know the friar as he was before his order degenerated, and before Basingwerk and Tintern fell to ruins. I want you to see the bishop who gave your country its Bible when your forefathers knew nothing but Welsh, and to hear the preacher whose frenzied eloquence roused your fathers from mental sloth and from superstition.

Many weird tales are still told on Radnorshire moors. I wish to give you those. There are striking traditions connected with the castles of Brecon and the Vale of Glamorgan, those, also, will be told. There is endless material for the novelist in the hitherto unwritten legendary lore of Wales, much of this will be found in these pages.

The story of the lives of Welshmen who have worked for the good of Wales and of

mankind will be told, from Giraldus Cambrensis and Llywelyn the Great to Lord Overstone and Robert Owen. Pictures will be given of the homes of some of these benefactors, of George Herbert, and Henry Vaughan, and John Dyer, and John Gibson, and Richard Wilson, and George Cornewall Lewis.

There is much interesting and valuable matter relating to Welsh history that has not been published, from the thirteenth century on; and there is much in Latin and

in Welsh that has not been translated into English. Among these Gerald the Welshman's account of his own life, the untranslated and unpublished letters of Llywelyn and Glendower, the diaries of Eben Fardd and Howell Harris, will be found in the first volume of WALES.

The literary activity of Wales is to be found chiefly in the Welsh-speaking districts. It is from these districts that most of its teachers come. It is in these districts that the great poets have lived. It will be one of the aims of this magazine to lay before the English-speaking Welshman the treasures of his ancestors' thoughts. Translations will be given, in prose and poetry, of Dafydd ab Gwilym, and of the chief poets of the golden age of Welsh literature, from At the Dafydd Nanmor to Tudur Aled. same time, attempts will be made to translate into English some of the masterpieces of modern Welsh prose and poetry.

I hope that those who have hitherto given me such valuable help, help without which nothing could have been done, will make WALES as successful in doing good as they have made Cymru. At this time, the period of the rise of the Welsh Intermediate Schools and of the creation of the University of Wales, it is the duty of every Welshman to do what he can to make the lives of his fellow-countrymen better and happier. They have a natural love for literature and a great desire to know the history of their own country. It would be difficult to find a people so susceptible of education, and we should make students, not only at our University Colleges, but at every fire-side in Wales. There is no life so happy, perhaps, as that of the son of an upland farmer who has a bent for literature.

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I awoke to utter darkness,
Still and deep,

With the walls around me fallen

Of the sombre halls of sleep:

With my hall of dreams downfallen, Dark I lay,

Like one houseless, though about me Hendra stood, more fast than they:

But what broke that

Light or sound?

grave

enchantment,

There was shown no sign, where only Night and shadow's heart were found:

III.

Brechva tells how at length he arose, and
looked out at the night; and how a
voice called him.

Thus it was, till with a troubled
Lonely noise,

Like a cry of men benighted
Midnight made itself a voice:

Then I rose, and from the stair-loop,
Looking down,

Nothing saw, where far below me
Lay, one darkness, all the town.

In that grave, day seemed for ever
To lie dead,

Nevermore at wake of morning
To lift up its pleasant head;
All its friendly foolish clamour,
Its delight,

Fast asleep, or dead, beneath me
In that dark descent of night:
But again, like fitful harping,-
Hark! a noise,

As in dream, suppose the dreamer's
Men of shadow found a voice!
Night-wind never sang more strangely
Song more strange,-

All confused, yet with a music

In confusion's interchange.

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