Saunders Lewis

Extract

In ‘A note on Welsh Education’ which he contributed to Blackfriars for March, 1948, Mr Saunders Lewis has described how, in the nineteenth century, ‘nonconformity became the very nationhood of Wales’. ‘Its entire cultural life’, he wrote, ‘was centred in the chapel. . . . Religion was three-quarters of life; it triumphed in poverty and over poverty and ennobled the bitter, ill-requited toil on land, in quarry, mine ... The education of this people was rooted in its religious and social life: its content was its evangel, its medium the Welsh language. While the society lived and kept its unity, these two were safe. During the past sixty years, however, that unity has gradually been breaking down; the ‘ideal and authority’ of the society have been destroyed. ‘Middle-class, worldly ideals, the impact of a wider, modern culture, conquered the religious unity of the Methodist peasantry.’

It would be difficult to disagree with that analysis. Wales is now going through the final stages of the disintegration of its nonconformist nationhood. Mr Saunders Lewis is in many ways the most influential personality in Wales today. The names of the contributors to a recent volume on his work are a clear proof of the extent of this influence. The editor, a Congregationalist minister, reminds us that Mr Lewis has enthusiastic disciples, ardent admirers, loyal friends—and enemies. For at least a quarter of a century he has been, to quote the words of the seventeenth-century writer Morgan Llwyd, ‘dirgelwch i rai i’w ddeall ac i eraill i w watwar, he has indeed been a disturbing mystery to many and to object of myopic scorn to others.