"OwenMEdwards-AShortHistoryOfWales" - читать интересную книгу автора (Edwards Owen M)

was noble. {3} He was followed by the Franciscan friar, who said
that deeds of mercy and love should be added to prayer, that Christ
had been a poor man, and that men should help each other, not only in
saving souls, but in healing sickness and relieving pain. In the
fifteenth century the Lollard came to say that the Church was too
rich, and that it had become blind to the truth, and Walter Brute
said that men were to be justified by faith in Christ, not by the
worship of images or by the merit of saints. In the sixteenth
century came the Protestant, and the sway of Rome over Wales came to
an end; Bishop Morgan translated the Bible into Welsh, and John Penry
yearned for the preaching of the Gospel in Wales. The Jesuit
followed, calling himself by the name of Jesus, to try to win the
country back again to Rome. Robert Jones toiled and schemed, and
some laid down their lives. The Puritan came in the seventeenth
century to demand simple worship, and Morgan Lloyd thought that the
second advent of Christ was at hand. The Revivalist came in the
eighteenth century, and, in the name of Christ, aroused the people of
Wales to a new life of thought.

After all this, you will be surprised to learn that many of the old
gods still remain in Wales, and much of the old pagan worship. Who
drops a pin into a sacred well, or leaves a tiny rag on a bush close
by, and then wishes for something? A young maiden in the twentieth
century, who sacrifices to a well heathen god. Until quite recently
men thought that Ffynnon Gybi, and Ffynnon Elian, and Ffynnon
Ddwynwen, had in them a power which could curse and bless, ruin and
save.

Lud of the Silver Hand was the god of flocks and ships. His caves
are in Dyved still, and his was the temple on Ludgate Hill in London.
Merlin was a god of knowledge; he could foretell events. Ceridwen
was the goddess of wisdom; she distilled wisdom-giving drops in a
cauldron. Gwydion created a beautiful girl from flowers, "from red
rose, and yellow broom, and white anemony." I am not quite sure what
Coil did, but I have heard children singing the history of "old King
Cole." Olwen also walked through Wales in heathen times, and it is
said that three white flowers rose behind her wherever she had put
her foot.



CHAPTER V--THE WELSH KINGS



The spirit of Rome remained, though Rome itself had fallen. And
Welsh kings rose to take the place of the Roman ruler, trying to
force the tribes of Wales--of different races and tongues--to become
one people.