ging his hymn and enforcing it with realistic representation. He is
the author and compiler of several Sunday-school and chapel
song-manuals, as _Converts' Praise_, _Life-long Songs_, _Wonderful Love_
and _Gathered Gems_.

CHAPTER XI.

HYMNS OF WALES.

In writing this chapter the task of identifying the _tune_, and its
author, in the case of every hymn, would have required more time and
labor than, perhaps, the importance of the facts would justify.

Peculiar interest, however, attaches to Welsh hymns, even apart from the
airs which accompany them, and a general idea of Welsh music may be
gathered from the tone and metre of the lyrics introduced. More
particular information would necessitate printing the music itself.

From the days of the Druids, Wales has been a land of song. From the
later but yet ancient time when the people learned the Christian faith,
it has had its Christian psalms. The "March of the White Monks of
Bangor" (7th century) is an epic of bravery and death celebrating the
advance of Christian martyrs to their bloody fate at the hands of the
Saxon savages. "Its very rhythm pictures the long procession of
white-cowled patriots bearing peaceful banners and in faith taking their
way to Chester to stimulate the valor of their countrymen." And ever
since the "Battle of the Hallelujahs"--near Chirk on the border, nine
miles from Wrexham--when the invading Danes were driven from the field
in fright by the rush of the Cymric army shouting that mighty cry, every
Christian poet in Wales has had a hallelujah in his verse.

Through the centuries, while chased and hunted by their conquerors among
the Cambrian hills, but clinging to their independent faith, or even
when paralyzed into spiritual apathy under tribute to a foreign church,
the heavenly song still murmured in a few true hearts amidst the vain
and vicious lays of carnal mirth. It survived even when people and
priest alike seemed utterly degenerate and godless. The voice of Walter
Bute (1372) rang true for the religion of Jesus in its purity. Brave
John Oldcastle, the martyr, (1417) clung to the gospel he learned at
the foot of the cross. William Wroth, _clergyman_, saved from fiddling
at a drunken dance by a disaster that turned a house of revelry into a
house of death, confessed his sins to God and became the "Apostle of
South Wales." The young vicar, Rhys Pritchard (1579) rose from the
sunken level of his profession, rescued through an inc