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STORIES OF
u It is a most remarkable feature in the history of any people, and such as could be said of no other people than the Welsh, that they have centred their national recreation in literature and musical competitions." To this may be added the remarks of Dr. Fetis, at one time the director of the Brussels Royal Academy of Music, who, in his " History of Music" thus refers to the antiquity of the Welsh and their music: " In Gaul, as well as in the country of the Welsh nation, there were priests called Druids, who celebrated their mysterious rites in the forests, and bards or musical priests who sang the glory of Heroes. But there is the difference between Gaul and the country of the Welsh, inasmuch as the latter still preserve their bards, and that the Cambrian or Celtic language is still cultivated by them, and moreover their music still maintains its primitive type. There is something remarkable in this now interminable succession of Welsh bards for two thousand years, and that the preservation intact of their language and their Celtic music, in a country so long ruled over by the Saxons." Francis Joseph Fetis, by the way, was a brilliant musician and learned writer on musical subjects. He was born at Mons, March 25, 1784, and died on his birthday, 1871.
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