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STORIES OF
institutedby this venerable assemblage convoked just twenty-six years before the Norman Con-quest, appears to have been—according to Mr. John Thomas, the Queen's harpist—the separa-tion of the professions of bard and minstrel; in other words, poetry and music, arts the practice of which had theretofore been united in one and the same person."
" David of the White Rock"—" Dafydd y Garreg Wen," or David Owen, a famous minstrel who was bora in 1720. Owen was a skilful performer on the harp, and a clever composer to boot. He died young, but wrote several popular Welsh songs, and about the song named after himself, sometimes called "T h e Dying Minstrel," the following pathetic incident is told. When David Owen lay on his deathbed, he happened to fall into a trance. His mother, who was watching him at the time, thought the flame of life had gone out But he suddenly revived, and fixing his eyes upon her said that he had just dreamed a wonderful dream, in which he found himself in heaven, where he had heard the sweetest strains that ever fell on mortal ears. At his request his harp was given to him, and he recalled the music he had heard, and played "Dafydd y Garreg Wen." Just as the last note was dying away his spirit took its flight
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