Cylchgronau Cymru

repaired, and the only two pre-reformation bells in the County have been found in Llanegwad Church tower. The valuable reports of Colonel W. U. Morgan and Mr. Walter Spurrell on the fall of Carmarthen Castle Wall in 1913, throw light on the origin of the mount on which the castle was built. The falling of the piece of wall left exposes a complete section of the soil from top to bottom. An examination of this revealed the undoubted fact that the whole of the mount within the wall, as far as could be seen, consists of made ground. This interesting disclosure makes it pretty clear that Carmarthen Castle had the usual beginning of most Norman castles in this island. The first thing the Norman castle builder did here was to throw up this huge artificial motte or mound and then he built his wooden castle on top of it." Among numerous reprints in the volume, the will of Twm Sion Catti, the famous Welsh bandit, dated 17th May, 1609, is of interest, and shows him to have made quite an unromantic end as a respectable country farmer. I Thomas Jones of Fountain Gate in the parish of Caron, bequeathes nine head of cattle to my base son John Moythe. and the residue to my loving wife Johan Jones." The collection of old bidding letters illustrate a quaint wedding practice which has long died out. The bride and bridegroom send to their friends a letter of which the following is a typical example Carmarthen, April 12th, 1808. Having lately entered the Matri- monial state we purpose to make a Bidding on the Occasion on Tuesday the 11th of this Instant at tne New Market House Carmarthen, when and where the Favur of your Company will be highly esteemed and whatever Donation you will be pleased to bestow on us that Day shall be thankfully received and cheer- fully paid on a similar occasion by your very humble Servants." The reprint of a chapter on What to Note in an Old Parish Church," from the Rev. J. C. Cox, LL.D., F.S.A.'s volume on The English Parish Church. is most helpful. "The Sailor." By J. C. Snaith. Smith, Elder & Co. 5s. net. Some years ago Mr. Snaith produced three books, Broke of Covenden, Henry Northcote, and William Jordan, Junior, which, though marred by faults of judgment and lack of literary experience reached a spiritual intensity that seemed to hold the pro- mise of a tremendous future. Ever since then one has waited with excitement for him to recapture the same ecstacy. But each new book in turn has been a disappointment. Each has contained indi- vidual scenes or incidents to lift it out of the com- mon run, but the necessary pressure of inspiration has been lacking. It is pleasant, therefore, to find in The Sailor, a very much nearer approximation to Mr. Snaith's best. Indeed the first half of the book is very nearly as good as it could be. In craftsmanship there is a decided advance on the early stories. The writing is cleaner and less cum- brous, the arrangement more orderly, the control generally surer. The scheme of the story is an ambitious one. The Sailor is a poor boy of genius brought up in the gutter by a brutal and drunken aunt, driven by unkind chance to spend six years of his boyhood before the mast in a sailing vessel, then gradually and through a series of strange adventures, educating himself to his real destiny- the art of letters. The boy's cruel childhood, his six years of isolation and misery on board the Margaret Carly," the first years during which his strange and almost unearthly innocence becomes inured to the struggle for existence, first as a pro- fessional football player, and later as the assistant in a second-hand book shop, all this, which makes considerably more than half the book, is told with an extraordinary power and sureness of touch. Very effective too, though with a slight loss of reality is the tragedy of his marriage with the prostitute, Cora Dobbs. Up to this point Mr. Snaith has his material well in hand, the central theme is firmly handled, the auxiliary incidents touched in vividly and without any distraction of interest. After this, unfortunately his grip seems to slacken. The sailor's success in the the world of letters, his entry into Society, and his meeting with his real mate, Mary Pridmore, have much less of reality than the record of his earlier misfortunes. The canvas has become too large. and in his efforts to cover it effectively, Mr. Snaith allows his treatment of the central theme to become a little superficial. The story still rivets the atten- tion, and there are still occasional scenes, especially at the crisis when his love of Mary finds him still fettered to a drunken and degraded wife, which reach the level of the earlier chapters. But one cannot help feeling that the wonderful promise of the book is somehow robbed of its full development. None the less The Sailor is a very marked advance on Mr. Snaith's previous work. Technically it shews great improvement on the earlier and in some ways finer novels, and so far as substance is concerned, it is in a different class altogether from the books which he has given us since William Jordan, Junior. Moreover, it is a story which holds the reader bound from the first page to the last.