The Story of the Hymns and Tunes, page 249 by Theron Brown
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o find a Bible every time she prepared her lessons. See page 380.]
The Welsh learn their hymns by heart, as they do the Bible--a habit inherited from those old days of scarcity, when memory served pious people instead of print--so that a Welsh prayer-meeting is never embarrassed by a lack of books. An anecdote illustrates this characteristic readiness. In February, 1797, when Napoleon's name was a terror to England, the French landed some troops near Fishguard, Pembrokeshire. Mounted heralds spread the news through Wales, and in the village of Rhydybont, Cardiganshire, the fright nearly broke up a religious meeting; but one brave woman, Nancy Jones, stopped a panic by singing this stanza of one of Thomas Williams' hymns,--
Diuw os wyt am ddylenu'r bya
If Thou wouldst end the world, O Lord, Accomplish first Thy promised Word, And gather home with one accord From every part Thine own, Send out Thy Word from pole to pole, And with Thy blood make thousands whole, And, after that come down.
Nancy Jones would have been a useful member of the "Singing Sisters" band, so efficient a century or more afterwards.
The tunes of the Reformation under the "Methodist Fathers" continued far down the century to be the country airs of the nation, and reverberations of the great spiritual movement were heard in their rude music in the mountain-born revival led by Jack Edward Watkin in 1779 and in the local awakenings of 1791 and 1817. Later in the 19th century new hymns, and many of the old, found new tunes, made for their sake or imported from England and America.
The sanctified gift of song helped to make 1829 a year of jubilee in South Wales, nor was the same aid wanting during the plague in 1831, when the famous Presbyterian preacher, John Elias,[42] won nearly a whole county to Christ.
[Footnote 42: Those who read his biography will call him the "Seraphic John Elias."
His name was John Jones when he was admitted a member of the presbytery. What fo