Cymraeg | English
CHAPTER I : Why translate the Bible into Welsh?
CHAPTER II : Who was William Morgan?
No country in England so flourished in one hundred years as Wales hath done, since the government of Henry VII to this time, in so much that if our fathers were now living they would think it some strange country inhabited with a foreign nation, so altered is the country and countrymen, the people changed in heart within and the land altered in hue without, from evil to good, and from bad to better; the Lord continue his goodness towards us and make us thankful; and now not three years past we have the light of the gospel, yea, the whole Bible in our own native Tongue, which in short time must needs work great good inwardly in the hearts of the people, whereas the service and sacraments in the English tongue was as strange to many or most of the simplest sort as the mass in the time of blindness was to the rest of England.
(George Owen of Henllys, Pembrokeshire, 1591)
As Huw Lewys observed in his book Perl mewn Adfyd in 1595, the Bible of William Morgan was bound by a chain – 'no one goes to it except once a week'. Even so, to hear the majestic Welsh of that Bible once a week was certain to have had some effect on the lives of the people, and to be a motive for priests to learn to read and write good Welsh. The effect of the re-edition by Parry and Davies in 1620 was to make the Welsh of the Bible slightly more archaic by losing some of the colloquial forms. The Welsh of Edward James's Welsh version of the Book of Homilies (1606) was also to encourage the use of a stately Welsh. But the contrary was the effect of Salmau Cân (Psalms set to music) by Edmwnd Prys in 1621, in which he followed the more sprightly rhythms of the Welsh free metres and more colloquial language. The Bible of 1588 created a standard Welsh which encouraged others to venture into the field – we have already mentioned books such as Perl mewn Adfyd by Huw Lewys and Deffyniad Ffydd Eglwys Loegr by Maurice Kyffin, and they led the way to a whole host of books discussing religion through fine Welsh prose.
Figure 32. Map of Pembrokeshire, 1602, by the historian George Owen, one of Bishop Morgan's admirers.
The first popular edition of the Bible came in 1630, and after that many other editions followed, until by the late seventeenth century there was a demand for larger editions. By then, societies were being founded, such as the Welsh Trust or the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the S.P.C.K., which encouraged the distribution of religious texts and tracts to the common people. One parish priest who wrote to the Society, the S.P.C.K., early in the eighteenth century to ask for larger editions of the Welsh Bible was Griffith Jones of Llanddowror in Carmarthenshire, and it was he, around 1737, who set up a network of popular schools to teach common people to read the Bible, a network called the Welsh Circulating Schools. In his annual reports on these schools, which he entitled Welch Piety, Griffith Jones in one place says that Thomas Gouge, who had set up the Welsh Trust back in the 1670s, had distributed many copies of the Welsh Bible but had not educated people to read them, so that many Bibles had been locked away unread like family heirlooms. That may well have been true of the end of the seventeenth century but was manifestly untrue by the end of the eighteenth, for the educational changes had made large numbers of the Welsh familiar with reading the Bible. By the early eighteenth century there were enough editions of the Welsh Bible for the scholar Moses Williams to compile a bibliography of them, which was used as the basis for a book on the history of the Welsh Bible by Dr. Thomas Llewelyn, published in 1768.
Figure 33. 'The Little Bible', 1630, the first Welsh Bible published for the common people.
Figure 34. A printed map of the Bible lands from a Bible edited by Richard Morris in 1746.
Different kinds of Bibles were published during the eighteenth century, such as editions containing engraved maps, and a host of expository books to explain the meanings of Bible verses. In 1730 (in Philadelphia in America) was published a Bible dictionary or concordance in Welsh, a book whereby the reader can look up a word and find out where it is used anywhere in the Bible. By the second half of the century, a large number of printers appeared inside Wales itself, but these could not print Bibles because that was a monopoly restricted to the King's printers and the presses of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. To get around this monopoly, Peter Williams printed a copy of the Welsh Bible together with innumerable marginal notes, and sold it as an exposition on the Bible, rather than as text. This was the first Bible actually to be printed in Wales, and ‘Peter Williams's Bible' became immensely popular.
By the end of the seventeenth century the Church of England encouraged the practice of reading the Bible at home, and this form of Bible study became ever more widespread in the following century, most especially amongst those evangelicals who joined a Methodist society and amongst those who had dissented from the Church to form sects such as the Baptists. In this century, William Morgan's work came into its own at last, and was used in church, at home, in the circulating schools, and after 1786 in the innumerable Sunday Schools which were set up the length and breadth of Wales under the inspiration of Thomas Charles of Bala. Charles saw to it from the beginning that the Sunday Schools were well supplied with Bibles, with grammar books to teach the pupils to read and write good Welsh, and with all sorts of expository aids such as his own huge and extremely popular ‘Scriptural Dictionary', Geiriadur Ysgrythurawl, a kind of encyclopaedia giving one information on every topic in the Bible.
According to the world-famous story, Thomas Charles was visited at Bala in 1800 by a young girl aged fifteen from Llanfihangel-y-Pennant, in Merioneth, called Mary Jones. She had learned to read, had saved up three shillings and sixpence over a period of six years, and walked barefoot all the way to Bala to buy a Bible from him. Charles was so deeply moved by this heroic self-sacrifice, that he used his influence to found in 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society, a society which still flourishes today, and which sends Bibles in every language all over the world. So great had been the success of movements for popular education in Welsh during the eighteenth century that the influence of Morgan's Bible had truly spread to almost every corner of Wales, and since comparatively little secular culture or learning was printed in book form in Welsh, it was well said that the Welsh were ‘a nation of one book', and that book was the Bible of William Morgan.
Figure 35. The translator's memorial outside St. Asaph Cathedral. Photograph by John Thomas (1838-1905), ca. 1885
The way in which the Welsh contemporaries of William Morgan, or writers of the age immediately following his, speak about his translation is as a kind of national exploit as much as a religious triumph. To rescue the Welsh language, they imply, is as noble a task as to rescue the Welsh soul. In the absence of varied secular literature, as we have said, the Bible came to play a disproportionate role in the development of Welsh. A text which was so clear and readable was a spur to others, and a standard to follow. When scholars such as William Owen Pughe at the start of the nineteenth century tried to reform Welsh orthography, and publish grammars and dictionaries in their curiously-reformed orthography, the old language was rescued from such zealots by clergymen with common sense, who stuck rigidly to William Morgan's language, using his Bible as the sole standard of correctness.
From what has just been said, it may be gathered that the excellence of the Bible also created a certain conservatism in the language. William Morgan created an idiom in which to translate the most archaic and stately Hebrew scriptures, and forced Welsh into a mould which was even then rather old-fashioned, using words that were more archaic than the popular parlance of his own generation. One only has to compare the Bible Welsh with the everyday Welsh used in the ‘Early Free Verse', the popular lyrics of the reign of Elizabeth I, to sense a wide gap. William Morgan, of course, should not be blamed for the gap between colloquial and literary Welsh, for that is more likely due to the fact that from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries there was no really Welsh educational system.
William Morgan's Bible appeared in 1588 just at the time when Welsh had declined in its official status and dignity and was starting to divide into varying dialects. The bards used phrases like ‘going into an age of misfortune' or ‘hard times' when speaking of Welsh. By the end of the seventeenth century Welsh writers complained that they found it hard to know how to write Welsh correctly. By the early eighteenth century clerics distributing religious tracts bewailed the fact that what was written by Southwalians was not understood in the North and vice versa. Almost the only link holding the varying dialects together was that provided by the Book of Common Prayer and the Bible, read in most parts of Wales every Sunday.
After 1718 when printers appeared inside Wales, and when people had more wealth to spend on books, and when there was a great surge of interest in popular education, then the Bible came into its own, and the mass of the population became acquainted with it at first or second hand. It is true that Methodist preachers used their own homely dialects, but it is hard to see how, without the standardizing effect of Morgan's Bible, men like Howell Harris, William Williams of Pantycelyn, or Thomas Charles of Bala, all of them from the South, could have ventured into North Wales, with such sweeping success as to convert the North to Methodism by the end of the century.
In 1595 Maurice Kyffin lamented the excessively light and flippant character of so much Welsh native culture. But by the eighteenth century, Welsh life had changed and larger numbers had appeared who sought a more serious thoughtful culture, with an appeal to the mind. This they found in the Bible and the expositions on it. This they found written in excellent standard Welsh, and so Morgan's Bible lies at the base of so much that is serious or thoughtful in modern Welsh cultural life. As far as the language itself is concerned, Morgan had appeared at the eleventh hour, as it were, and his Bible intervened to give Welsh a new lease of life, enabling it to become a modern language. This was not done for any other Celtic language in the sixteenth century, or not with such lasting success, not even for Irish or Breton which were spoken by numbers far larger than spoke Welsh.
To men like William Morgan, the purity of Welsh was an important matter, but not as important as the task of saving Welsh souls or securing Wales for Protestantism. To Englishmen anxious to help, like Whitgift, the religious motive was the only one that mattered. To men of the Reformation, the only means by which an individual could be saved was by realizing first his or her lamentable condition, to be converted and to turn to God. One could not do this unless one heard the message of Christ in one's own language. Now the great majority of the Welsh had little or no English, and there was little hope of bringing them out of their monoglot isolation for generations. In the meantime several generations of Welsh people would go to perdition. Such a tragedy would be disgraceful in the eyes of men like Whitgift.
It may be true that the English and the Welsh listened to the historical arguments of men like Richard Davies, namely that the Welsh were the only true heirs of the Ancient British Church which had received Christ's message from Joseph of Arimathea. It is true that several Englishmen and Welshmen feared at the end of the sixteenth century that if the Welsh did not have their Bible and were not turned into a nation of faithful adherents of the Church of England, they would turn to Catholicism. Wales was thought of as a country where medieval customs survived, many of them Romish or popish traditions. If the Spaniards invaded, what was to stop the Welsh siding with the Spaniards? In a remote parish like Llanrhaeadr, William Morgan with the help of a veteran soldier who had fought the Spaniards in the Netherlands, drilled the parishioners into a rural ‘Home Guard' for fear of a Spanish invasion. There was much coming and going along the seaways between Wales and Ireland and Spain. The Welsh might go the same way as the Irish. The English had to consider that even if a Welsh Bible ensured the survival of the Welsh as a language-group, that was a small price to pay for the loyalty of the Welsh to the Tudors and the Church of England.
It can finally be seen that the Bible of 1588 had a decisive role to play in Welsh history, by greatly encouraging the establishment of loyalty to the Church of England in Wales. The power of the state of course lay behind these changes, but the change was made easier by having the Bible and Prayer Book in Welsh, together with its associated propaganda. What if the Welsh had turned against Protestantism at this juncture, and had embraced Catholicism? It is just a hypothesis. But the Government had considered the likelihood and considered settling Wales with colonies of faithful loyal Englishmen. Such colonies would have been enough to destroy Wales, when one considers how small Wales was and how large England. Things did not turn out that way. When all is said and done, and one thinks of all the threats that there were to the very survival of the Welsh people and the Welsh language in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it can be seen that the conversion of the Welsh to a convinced Protestantism had given the Welsh one more opportunity to survive, and in that conversion the Bible of 1588 played the most important part.