Voluntary popular agency has been conspicuous in all the movements that have lifted the land out of the state of intellectual neglect and destitution into which it had sunk in the Georgian era. It was voluntary agency that organised the first supply of sadly-needed schools; it was voluntary agency that supplemented the shortcomings of the system that superseded them by the peculiar institution of the Welsh Sunday-school; it was voluntary agency that covered the land, as few lands are covered, with the means of religious worship; the people at large supported Sir Hugh Owen in the matter of higher education; and the popular effort which revived, has since continued to maintain, the celebration of the national Eisteddfod.

Here, then, stands modern Wales, inheriting by right an honourable position in a great realm, looking back on a history which at least was never sullied by slavishness or cowardice; its people trained to self-help under circumstances of extreme difficulty and discouragement, bound into a nationality by an idea that is independent of political chances, pregnant with intellectual progress, and embodied in an institution at once ancient and modern, stable in its immemorial tradition, and flexible enough to meet the changing requirements of the time.

Wales, if true to its national idea, has a future before it; but there is a barrier in the path which the united efforts of its sons are needed to remove. I mean the grave defects of the national system of education. This is a matter that stands far above the level of party strife, and I make no apology for alluding to it in an Eisteddfodic meeting. Rightly to appreciate the force of the movement which the Eisteddfod represents, we must not fail to keep steadily before us the educational conditions under which it has been carried on. It is singular that the part of our common kingdom in which the love of intellectual pursuits is most widely dif

fused, and in which intellectual culture is of the essence of the national idea, should be, of all, the part worst supplied with the means of systematic mental training. We are asked to-morrow to discuss a proposed means of surmounting the difficulties against which elementary instruction has to struggle, and more than a passing reference to that part of the subject would be now misplaced. But behind the matter of elementary education looms the more formidable question of intermediate schools. Beset with difficulties as the question is, Welshmen must grapple resolutely with it erelong, for, from the point of view which we have been considering, it cannot but be the question of questions for the future of our country. Mental training is the life-blood of the Welsh nation. Deprived of education, a Welshman is an organism incomplete, lacking its perfect development. His intellectual capacities are his fighting arm. What can avail him in the battle of life if his right arm be withered and stunted from childhood. The Welsh people possesses abilities and character fitted to give it a position of credit in the family of modern nations. As long as the present state of things lasts, we must be content to take an inferior place. Honour and interest are alike imperilled by delay. The question is one of life and death for the country, and should be attacked with the conviction that national life or national death depends upon the finding or missing a solution.

NOTES ON THE LIFE OF ST. DAVID,

THE PATRON SAINT OF WALES.

BY HOWEL W. LLOYD, M. A.

(Read before the Society, February 24th, 1887.)

THE time when St. David lived belongs perhaps to the most obscure period of the history of this country. It is that in which the King Arthur of romance is said to have flourished; who, though a certain place in history has been accorded to him by some writers, is stated to have fought and defeated the Saxons in twelve battles, neither the site nor the date of which have hitherto been ascertained with certainty; whence, some have gone so far as to deny that they ever were really fought, or that the hero of them had any real existence. It may, therefore, well be conceived difficult, if not impossible, to fix the date of St. David's birth, as well as of his death; although both may be reached approximately, and with sufficient accuracy to enable us to gain in succession a knowledge of the principal circumstances of his career.

It is universally agreed by his biographers, and indeed in all the ancient documents that relate to him, that he was a person of noble, nay, even of princely birth. His father, whose name is given variously as Sant, Sandde, Sanctus, and Xanthus, but all referring clearly to the same individual, is called the son of Ceredig, son of Cunedda Wledig. His mother, the wife of Sandde, was Non, (called by Ricemarchus, his biographier, Nonnita) the daughter of Gynyr of Caer Gawch, the petty prince of a district in what is now the

1 Gynyr of Caer Gawch appears to have been the chieftain of a district in Pembrokeshire, since called Pebidiog, or Dewsland, in which

County of Pembroke, by his second wife, Anna, who was the daughter of Vortimer, surnamed by his countrymen "the Blessed", one of the three sons of Vortigern, the British king whose name has been traditionally execrated by his countrymen for his traitorous dealing with their Saxon enemies. St. David was therefore fifth in descent from Vortigern, and fourth from Cunedda. Cunedda was himself partly of British, and partly of Roman descent; for some of his ancestors, as Edern, his father, and Padarn Peisrudd, his grandfather, bore names indicative of Roman origin, Æternus and Paternus in Latin. The scarlet robe of Paternus implies that he was high in authority under the Romans, as has been acutely observed by Professor Rhŷs; who has also inferred from the term "Gwledig", attached to the name of Cunedda, that he was invested with supreme authority over them by the Britons, when the Romans had left them to take care of themselves. The title is never found in connexion with any except royal names, and those of persons possessing the highest authority; and we know, from the Elegy on Cunedda, by Taliesin, that he died gloriously on the Great Wall from Tyne to Solway, which he guarded when resisting an invasion of the Picts. Possibly it was this very disaster which finally impelled his subjects to despair, when they sent

the town of St. David's is situated; and he probably rose into power upon the reduction of the Gwyddyl Ffichti by Clydwyn. His first wife was Mechell, daughter of Brychan, by whom he had issue a daughter called Danadlwen; whose husband, Dirdan, is included in the Catalogue of Saints, but no churches are ascribed to him. The second wife of Gynyr was Anna, daughter of Gwrthefyr Fendigaid, or Vortimer (son of Vortigern), King of Britain; and the fruit of this union was a son, named Gistlianus (in W. Gweslan), together with two daughters, Non, the mother of St. David, and Gwen, the mother of St. Cybi. From confounding Anna, the daughter of Gwrthefyr Fendigaid, with Anna, the daughter of Uther Pendragon, arose probably the legendary story that St. David was related to King Arthur, but this tale is at variance with all the pedigrees.-From Rees' Essay on the Welsh Saints, p. 162.

their famous letter entitled "The Groans of the Britons," to Aëtius, imploring the Romans to return and protect them, since the barbarians were driving them to the sea, and the sea to the barbarians."

The sons of Cunedda, no longer able to hold their own against the Picts in the North, migrated to the West, where they would be hospitably received by their maternal relatives, the descendants of Maximus, a Roman, but, on his mother's side, of British blood, who ultimately usurped the Imperial purple, and was slain at the battle of Aquileia, by his successor, Theodosius. Here tradition ascribes to their valour the expulsion of the Gwyddyl, who had either survived in those parts from the original occupation of the island by their race, or had invaded it from Ireland. The lands thus subdued they seized, and occupied and thus it appears that Ceredig, the grandfather of St. David, became master of the country, since called from him, Ceredigion, and now Cardigan. Hence it is natural to expect that we should find in that region, or its neighbourhood, the birthplace of St. David. This was in Dyfed, or Dimetia, and, according to Giraldus, on the spot known afterwards as St. David's, but, according to Ricemarchus, at a place still called Hên Fynyw in Cardiganshire, which appears to be on the whole the best supported tradition.

All the biographers agree that his birth was predicted by St. Patrick, a chapel dedicated to whom still exists in Rhôs, near St. David's, where, they say, the prediction was made. His religious education was completed by St. Paulinus, (Pawl Hên), who had been a disciple of St. Germanus, and had a school, or monastery, at Ty Gwyn ar Dâf (the Holy House on the Taff) now Whitland, in Caermarthenshire. There he remained for a period not less than ten years. He had been baptised, according to one account, by "Beluc, Bishop of the Menevians"; by another, at a place called Porth Clais, in