THE IRISH SANG IN

WELSH FOR ST. DAVID
From Our Special Correspondent WE began our celebration of St. David's Day in North Wales in the comely little church of a seaside town which has a Catholic congregation of 400—including two or three Welsh converts.
The celebrant was Welsh, the priest-cantors were Italian and Anglo-Irish, the thurifer was English, and the congregation—a very small one—mostly of Irish descent.
We had a hurried breakfast before setting out by car, through the mid-Victorian and modern horrors of ribbondevelopment on the North Welsh coast, until we turned inland from what was once the Welsh village of Abergele to the still lovely road which brought us to a dramatic view of a snowcapped Snowdon before it plunged us into the dull streets of Llanrwst. over a 16th-century bridge, and into the sedate village of Trefriw.
There, for the first time in our journey, we saw a Welsh flag floating near the modest entrance to a tiny chapel—not a " Bethel " or a "Sion " but a chapel in which Mass was to he solemnly offered in honour of the saint who is, to most modern Welshmen. about as real as Santa Claus.
To a Welsh convert—for, alas. we hardly know of a Welshman born and bred in the Faith, which was that of his country for 1,600 years—the experience is almost incredible.
Turning Irish'
When one returned to that Faith it was taken for granted that one had turned Irish " — perhaps even " English." At any rate one had left one's Welshness behind in the chapel or church which one had attended. Never again would one hear a Welsh prayer or a Welsh sermon.
And, instead of the hymns and limos which still sung themselves in one's head, one would be subjected to a musical standard of which the less said the better.
For years, perhaps, one had seen St. David's Day slip by unhonoured and unsung, while one had been expected to share in the enthusiasms of St. Patrick's anniversary.
Now, in this " Green Valley," one found an Irish priest who had taught his people, mostly of Irish descent, to sing in Greek, in Latin, and (wonder of wonders) in Welsh.
To this white-washed chapel the Bishop of Menevia brought the splendour of his office and the canons of the diocese their dignified assistance, At a marble altar—due to an English benefactor — a Welsh priest offered the Great Sacrifice with a Welsh deacon and an English subdeacon directed by a Master of Ceremonies with the Catholic blood of the Rhineland and Ireland mingled in his veins.
A son of St. Patrick — and St. Alphonsus of Naples — preached at the Gospel in the language which he has mastered so successfully, and the Bishop gave his indulgenced blessing in the sonorous Latin of the Western Church.
Remembrance
The Lourdes Benedictus, sung with a Welsh hwyl, reminded us of the Breton priest who, nearly half a century since, brought back the Mass to the valley where, in some unknown spot, the bones of the Catholic Prince Llewellyn moulder amid the sparse ruins of an abbey which was exiled from Conway when England " conquered " Wales.
At a fraternal meal—as festive as Lent and rationing would let it be—a Welsh squire welcomed the guests— the staunch Welsh convert who had come from London, the cheery Irish " Friends of Wales " from Liverpool, the friar of St. Francis, the sons of Mgr. de Mazenod, the priests and people who had come together so that, somewhere in North Wales, the patriarch Abbot of Mynyw should be, remembered.
The afternoon devotions, with prayers in Welsh by a Welsh priest, and hymns which for once could vie with those of any Welsh chapel, concluded with Benediction, and a Welsh translation of the hymn which Fr. Faber wrote to keep up the spirits of Irish exiles in England.
Reality
An Italian missionary — here in Wales to learn English so that he may minister m " whites and " blacks" in far-off Kenya—realised, for the first time since his arrival in Wales, that the Welsh language is a pulsating reality, a medium as Catholic as the patois of Piedmont.
As the car brought us swiftly hack through the lush fields and peaceful villages, past the Catholic squire's lodge, with its Italian Madonna set into a pink-washed wall, to the rather tawdry towns of the coastal region one thanked God that the embers of the Ancient Faith had glowed into a warm flame of Hope and rove on a Catholic altar in the very heart of a once-Catholic Wales.
Diolch yn fowr i chwi oil, Gyfeillion Cymru!