John Vaughan and His Friends or More Echoes from the Welsh Hills

Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897.

Excerpt: … PREFACE. This book, like my Echoes From The Welsh Hills, aims at presenting a picture of peasant life as it has existed for generations in the heart of Wales. The villages for the last fifty years have been gradually, but effectually, depleted of their inhabitants, in favour of the large towns and busy commercial centres. The result is, that the primitive customs, which once prevailed in Welsh hamlets, are gradually dying out. My earnest hope is that they will, at least, be not altogether forgotten. The memory of the simple faith and quaint customs of Welsh villages, are so sacred to me, that it is with a positive pang that I think of the possibility of their ever ceasing to exist, and still worse, of their being ever forgotten. I have also the further aim of giving our English friends a better conception, than they even now have, of the power of the pulpit and the Sunday School in Wales. In the first place, I would say just a word about the latter institution. Men and women of all ages attend the Bible Classes in Welsh Sunday Schools, and of late the probability of this happy state of things continuing is greatly enhanced by the very valuable help supplied teachers and scholars by our Welsh Sunday School literature. With regard to the preachers of Wales, I can only mention here six typical representatives, all of whom have recently passed from us; while I am obliged to pass over others who were almost, if not quite equally gifted and blessed. Nine years ago there were not two finer men, physically and mentally, in Wales than Revs. J. R. Kilsby Jones and Benjamin Thomas. Men of magnificent physique and towering intellects, they stood head and shoulders above their fellows for originality of thought and sparkling utterance.