Cylchgronau Cymru

JULY, 1879. THE CAMBRIAN REMEMBRANCER. 113 gift is neglected, and so far as my observation goes, we are fast losing its counter-part of pennillion singing at the Eisteddfodau. I take leave to ask why P No one can truly say that our old part singers did not excel exceedingly in their art. Passing from the gay to the serious, I exceedingly deplore the abandonment of the good old rule which our forefathers cherished so fondly in relation to the burial of the dead. I remomber how the corpse used to be carried out of the house-place, and laid reverently upon the bier in the open street, and how the next of kin to the deceased (always a female) handed over the coffin to the assembled friends the 'dead cake." I say nothing of the speed ale, for that is best away. When this ceremony had been gone through all knelt down, and the minister said the Lord's Prayer, after which the bier was carried to the churchyard, preceded by a select few who sang psalms, and " the stillness of rural life was broken into in a manner finely productive of re¬ ligious reflections." None of these things were observed in three funerals which came under my observation last year, but the English fashion of hurrying the whole business over as quickly as possible was followed out to the letter, to my great grief, and, as I think, to the shame of our nation. z Hen GYMsro Glan. AUGUST 16th, 1879. The Eisteddfod.—I am more than ever con¬ vinced that we must try and reform this great national gathering if we are to secure permanence for it. Probably we should endeavour to carry out the suggestion made by Mr Salisbury at Llaurvvst, to obtain a royal charter to hold it authorita¬ tively under the governance of a duly ap¬ pointed commission, whose business it would be, not only to settle when and where the Eisteddfod should be held annually, to confer bardic and musical degrees, to determine the subjects to be competed for, but also the order in which the business should b ■ carried on. The approach of the Conway Eistedd- fod leads me to hope that some attention will be given to these subjects. In my opinion, there should be three chairs to be competed for at each Eisteddfod: one to be awarded to the chief prose writer; one to the chief bard; and the other to the chief musician ; and if our main object is to be the cultivation of the Welsh language, 1 need hardly say, the competition in each art should be ordered accordingly, J have felt in reading Rhys' Lectures how backward we are as philologists, few of us even knowing the relation held by the Selamic, Polish, Muscovite, Nova Zemblian, Bohem¬ ian, Dalmatian, Croatic, Bulgarian,Servian, Carniolan, Vandalic, Wendish, Waldensian, Irish, Mankish, Cornish, Armenian, and Welsh divisions of languages to the Cymbrian chief one. If a chair prize of sufficient value were given annually to induce our rising young men. to write essays upon subjects which would lead them to study these languages, who can doubt the advantage this would be to us as a nation, and the spur it would give to our people P The same argument applies to music, for the study of the musical compositions of our brethren after the flesh—the Cymbrian race—would help to enrich our own stores of Welsh music, and tend to make our fame world-wide. We are pre-eminent already in the bardic line, and all we want to make the Eisteddfod valuable to the nation, is the same honourable distinctions in respect to prose and music which we now accord to poetry. The example set by Dr Rees, at Llanrwst, when pronouncing his adjudi¬ cations upon the chair prize seems to be the one to be followed—a living exposition in terse and taking language of the means which induced him to give the prize to G walchmai,his viva voce speech instructed every one, whereas the old cut and dry system of reading the adjudications spoils a meeting. Surely we could afford to give three prizes of 50/. each (and chairs) annually to encourage competitors; and for variety, we might also give a reasonable number of smaller prizes for englyns, pennillion singing, &c, so as to give the common people an interest in all that is lively and pleasing to their love of innocent mirth. Two or three balads sang at each meeting, would, I humbly think, do much in that direction, and at the same time, encourage a taste for household music, which must be highly beneficial in the end. I have ventured to throw out this sug¬ gestion in the hope that others may take the matter in hand, leaving much unsaid upon it because others may be able to say it far better than I myself can do. Both the Llanrwst and Menai Bridge Eistedd¬ fods seem to say " ditto" to the sentiment of this letter. Hugo Anwyl. ODDS AND ENDS. Denbighshire Worthies.—Mr Williams gives the following account of Thomas and Robert Pigott, and of William Myddleton, in his Ancient Denbigh:— Thomas Pigott married Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Eyton, of Eyton, in Flintshire, and died in 1620. Rebecca Pigott married John Mytton, of Halston. There are two anecdotes of the Pigots which may be interesting. Robert Pigott, father of the above Rebecca, died in 1699, the date of his death being preserved by an odd wager, recorded in our law reports as The Earl of March versus Pigott. Lord Mansfield decided that the possibility of a contingency is no bar to its becoming the subject of a wager, provided the possibilty is unknowu to both parties at the time of laying it. Mr Pigott and Mr Codrington engaged to run their fathers' lives one aga;nst the other; Sir William Codrington being a little turned of fifty, and Mr Pigott upwards of seventy ; but the latter was already dead. He died at two o'clock in the morning of the day on which the bet was made at Newmarket, after dinner. This circumstance was, at the time, unknown to, and not even suspected by either party; but, hence, Mr