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FAMOUS SONGS
But this is no place to enter into particulars of the ancient music of Wales, though as Mr. Brinley Richards says in his Introduction to the " Royal Edition of the Songs of Wales" (Caneuon Cymru): " That a Welsh adaptation of the songs will be welcomed throughout the Principality may not be generally understood, for the oddest misconceptions prevail in Eng-land as to the Welsh language. Many people imagine that the Welsh language is only a sort of provincial dialect of English, like that which prevails in Scotland. Very few Englishmen seem to know that the Welsh have a large living literature, and that there are upwards of twelve thousand printed books in the Welsh Language." I shall now endeavor to tell some facts of the few songs that I have been able to trace as having a more than passing history.
In a note to his poem, "The Dying Bard," Sir Walter Scott says, " The Welsh tradition proves that a bard on his death-bed demanded his harp, and the air (' Dafydd y Gareg Wen') to which these words are adapted, requesting that it might be performed at his funeral." And, according to J. Parry's " Welsh Harper," this melody was accordingly played on the harp, at the parish church Ynys Cynhaiarn; in which
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