The Welsh Religious Tradition

Extract

Towards the end of the sixth century, the invading pagans were pushing their way northwards along the eastern coast of Britain. At this period too, Aneirin the poet was singing his verses in the court of Mynyddawg Mwynfawr at Edinburgh. He was to sing the lament at the death of the brave three hundred who lost their lives in the desperate attempt to retake Catterick, and so halt the pagan advance. Farther to the west, about his time too, Taliesin was celebrating the victories of Urien Rheged and of his son Owain. He also sang their elegies. These two are the earliest Welsh poets of whom we can say with reasonable certainty that we have some of their authentic work. Both of them can use the word bedydd (baptism) to mean the world. To them, the only world they knew was the baptised world. All outside that was darkness and barbarism.

In 1823, at meetings at Aberystwyth and Bala, the Welsh Calvin-istic Methodists met and agreed on the forty four articles of their Cyffes Ffydd, their confession of Faith. It was published in book form in the following year, and literate Wales could read and learn by rote the restrained and powerful language, the finest prose of the nineteenth century written to give glory to God and to instruct His people.

It is a long cry from the sixth to the nineteenth century. The earliest Welsh literature was written in Southern Scotland, before Wales as an entity had come into existence.