Growth of the
Temperance societies
For many men living and working in in Coal Mining industrial areas there was no other place to meet than the pub and little else to do but drink. It was inevitable that the country should see a sudden rise in drunkenness with industrialisation.
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This was something that caused serious concern – to the employers who quickly understood the detrimental effects of drink on their workforce, and to the wives who saw hard earned money being wasted on alcohol when it could and should have been spent on food for the family.
As a result the first half of the 19th century saw a rapid increase and growth of temperance societies
with some advocating total abstinence (not just spirits).
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Groups such as the Ebbw Vale Temperance Society, existing and working in the midst of the burgeoning iron industry, allowed its members to drink two pints of beer a day – a practice that eventually ended when it transpired that some men were saving up their allowance in order to drink 12 or 14 pints each Saturday.
Faced by such trickery, many temperance societies soon began to campaign for total abstinence.
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Throughout the middle years of the 19th century the temperance movement grew in strength.
Even the old legends of Wales were subsumed into use by the abolitionists with the story of the lost lands of Cantre'r Gwaelod quietly changed to place the blame for the inundation of the 16 cities on the drunken lock keeper Seithennin rather than the maiden Mererid.
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As the Encyclopaedia of Wales states: “A vigorous temperance sub-culture came into existence with periodicals, meetings, songs, orders, ceremonies, hotels and pledges and by 1850 teetotalism had been absorbed into the moralistic system of the Noncomformists".
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The closing of public houses and the demand, right across Wales, to prohibit alcohol became, effectively, a political tool and when someone like Lady Llanover closed down all the public houses on her lands it was clear that this was a political message with bite.
Politicians were quick to jump onto the bandwagon, many of them campaigning on the issue for years.
The Sunday closing of public houses in Wales, something that sustained pressure from the members of the temperance movement achieved in 1881, was perhaps its greatest moment.
There was little further success, however, until the Defence of the Realm Act in 1914, at the outbreak of World War One, when pub opening hours were limited and the beer on sale was watered down – measures that had little to do with the moral issues but considerably more with helping the war effort.
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In the years after the war the temperance movement began to decline in popularity and influence as it quickly became clear that drinking of alcohol was only one of many possible causes of poverty.
Perhaps more prominently a symptom of poverty rather than its main cause.
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The Depression years were hard in Wales and nobody was going to begrudge an out of work miner the odd pint or two – provided he did not let his family starve.
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The temperance societies were not unique to Wales but, with the country's enormous industrial heritage, they were a significant part of Welsh life for a large part of the 19th century.
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The Cymanfa Ganu movement was actually launched in 1859 at Bethania Chapel in Aberdare, where it was pioneered by the Reverend Evan Lewis.[2]
In Wales, Cymanfa Ganu are held each year in many villages and towns throughout the country. Some have more than one Cymanfa Ganu a year, as often many separate chapels hold their own. Some large annual events occur in some chapels and take place at festivals such as the National Eisteddfod of Wales and the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod. Some are occasionally held in theatres and concert halls.
Cymanfa Ganus are held across the world - wherever people of Welsh heritage live, significantly in Patagonia (Argentina) e.g. Trelew, Gaiman, where there were significant Welsh settlements from the 19th Century. In some of these areas Welsh is still spoken as a main language in daily use, usually together with Spanish. Outside Wales, in the UK there are Cymanfa Ganu in London, parts of the West Midlands and other areas where there are still chapels using the medium of Welsh.
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The preservation of the Cymanfa Ganu as a unique feature of Welsh culture is being supported by a number of Welsh cultural associations
Wiki
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My Grandfather
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Also called James Williams was Ap Valant's son and perhaps the antithesis of
Ap Valant (and ApValant's other son, the Reverend Richard Williams), for the following reasons:
1. he was a professional soldier
2. he enjoyed drinking alcohol
3. he was known to bare knuckle fight on Mountain Ash (for the prize money!)
4. he was not obviously religious
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This clash of behaviours and beliefs (either end of the spectrum) may have led to 'distancing' within my family....
yet what all these men possessed (including my non-religious, clever, atheletic and soldiering father) was a strong sense of being Welsh and loving Wales.
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Patriotic Welshmen to the core.
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They also ALL had the shared hardship of 'going down the mines' to work, even Ap Valant! Poverty and hardship significantly touched them all.
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French Account of the Welsh Revival in the South Wales Valleys
Having arrived in London from France on Sunday 9th April 1905, French theologian Henri Bois of Montauban has been visiting the Welsh Revival. He then went to meetings in Aberaman, where Dan Roberts (brother of Evan Roberts) had been working as a revivalist supported by the singing evangelists Maggie Davies and S A Jones.
He visited the Cynon Valley to attend further meetings in Aberdare. What follows is an account of the meetings he attended on that day, prior to his departure to Liverpool to try to catch up with Evan Roberts who had been holding a revival mission there.
http://daibach-welldigger.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/french-account-of-welsh-revival-1.html (for full account)
Dan Roberts
Thursday 13th April 1905
"After a bit of a rest in the morning and having put my notes in order, I leave (Cardiff) for Aberdare in the afternoon in order to get to the evening meeting.
(I've been made aware that) ‘Aberdare, the neighbouring villages and industrial communities which succeed it in the Taff Vale as far as Cardiff are such that their ugliness and vulgarity make them unpleasant places to see.’ But I am not here as a tourist. … When I arrive in Aberdare I'll explore the town a little to become familiar with the place.
(Note: there was a small temperance hotel next to the Temperance Hall on Canon Street in Aberdare town centre. It could well have been here that Henri Bois visited. The Hall was built in 1858. It had been converted into a theatre by 1895, and later became a cinema and bingo hall. It was recently demolished. An office block now stands on the site of the Hall, while the spot where the hotel stood is vacant. Presumably, Henri Bois simply had a meal here before going to the Revival meeting, as he returned to Cardiff by train later that evening.)
I had been advised, to avoid shocking people, never to enter under any pretext, a cabaret or a house somewhere where they sell beer or spirits. In my temperance hotel, I find three students, one of whom is Dutch, who like me have come to attend the meeting. I have precise directions to the chapel where it is to be held and I am one of the first to arrive there. There are still so few people there that the singing has not yet begun. As I am a foreigner, I am provided with an excellent place in the set fawr (the big seat).
The meeting begins at half-past six. It goes on until very late. I must leave the chapel at twenty-five to eleven, to catch the train at the station if I want to get back to Cardiff. But the meeting does not seem anywhere near finishing. If I go anyway, it is not because I am tired. This meeting, which has lasted four hours, has not been tiring. There had been so much that has been unexpected, so much variety, so much life, spontaneity and passion! I leave the set fawr to enter the vestry and leave by the back door; passing by the pulpit I catch the eye of the two young women, Jones and Davies who give me a friendly nod. These revivalists seem absorbed in their praying and their ecstacy, but they do not miss anything that goes on in the chapel.
(Note: It's not clear at which chapel in Aberdare this Thursday evening meeting took place)
Friday 14th April
Regretting having had to leave early before the end of the meeting, and of not having had the chance to speak with Miss Jones, I take the train at ten forty in the morning (from Cardiff) and arrive at Aberdare towards midday. I set out to find the name and address of the person with whom the women revivalists are lodging. I first go to the Post Office, but they don’t know how to direct me, though someone directs me to the house of a grocer who is a deacon at the chapel where there is a meeting this evening (Nazareth Chapel) he would no doubt be able to give me the required information.
(Note: Nazareth is a Calvinistic Methodist chapel.
The minister was Rev Richard Williams (Ap Valant's son) who was born in 1869 in Garnant Carmarthenshire, and who arrived in 1901 from Trinity, Llanelli. The chapel was rebuilt in 1906, immediately after the Revival. Richard Williams was still the minister there throughout the Great War of 1914-18. The chapel closed in the 1960's, but the building remains, at the bottom of Abernant Road, near the railway station. It is now part of the Jewson's store.)
There turn out to be two grocers close together in the same street. I make a mistake, naturally, and go into the other grocer’s than the one I am looking for. We explain … when, seeing a young man pass in the street, the grocer says to me: ‘Hold on, here’s the son of the grocer you are looking for.’ He calls the young man whose first words, spoken with a joyful smile, ‘You are a brother, aren’t you?’ and he cordially offers me his hand. His father gives me the address of Mr Mills, the host of the young revivalists, and I leave. I find the house, not without difficulty. I knock at the door, and ask for Miss Jones. I am led into a small room where Miss Davies and several others are sitting. Then, one after the other, Mr Mills, a venerable old man, then his daughter, and then Miss Jones, arrive.
(Note: Henry Mills was a colliery labourer who was born in Devon in 1844. In 1901 he was living with his wife Jane and their 4 daughters and a son at 5 Graig Street. He and his wife were still there 1911 when he was 67 years old. At this time one unmarried daughter is living with them - Catherine Jane Mills then aged 35. It is possibly her that Henri Bois mentions.)
I ask this group of Welsh people how I should use my time. I am advised, when I go to North Wales, to visit Wrexham. I have no clear idea, by the way, of what has been happening in the north. But I am strongly committed, since I want to see the Revival, to go ‘to the source’ (Miss Jones’s phrase), that is to say Evan Roberts who will still be in Liverpool for a few more days.
They all admire Evan Roberts, the man sent by God, the Revivalist. Evan Roberts is their favourite. Dan (his brother) is regarded as being like his Elisha, upon whom Evan has thrown his cloak. And so the desire to see and hear Evan Roberts grows in me. Decidedly I believe that I will leave in the morning to go to Liverpool. Mr Mills’ daughter invites me to stay for lunch and suggests I return with her for a cup of tea between the two meetings (in the afternoon and in the evening).
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Someone points me to the (Nazarus) chapel where the meeting will be. When I go in it is still far from full, and a deacon sitting in the set fawr gestures to me to sit behind him. ‘You are a foreigner?’ he says to me. I explain my name and background, and he asks me to speak in the meeting. I accept. These are things you can’t refuse here. The meeting takes its course, interesting, full, moving. Towards the end, the deacon gets up, and as he ends his contribution, I realize that he has been speaking about me, because he pronounces in what he says in Welsh a word which sounds like Frank or France, and he looks at me as he speaks. When he stops, making a sign to me, I say to him, for in these meetings everything happens as if in a family – ‘What did you say about me?’ And he replies in English ‘Oh! We are not going to translate for you what I have just said about you! Do you just want to say a few things yourself?’ So I make my little speech. It is even the best of all I have shared during this visit. When in the middle of my speech, I am led to say: I regret that I do not understand your Welsh language. But there are a few words that I have begun to understand: Arglwydd (Lord), achub (to save), Bendigedig (wonderful), Diolch iddo (thanks be to Him)....
A woman with eyes shining with an intense and profound light speaks about the change brought about in Wales by the Revival, of the impossibility of putting into words what she feels. ‘Before the Revival without doubt we believed this … and we believed that … we believed it naturally and we enjoyed sitting on our pews in the church … and we didn’t do anything. Now we have come to realize all this. That’s the difference'...
I go back to Mr Mills’ house for a cup of tea. I learn that the Misses Jones and Davies have just decided to go to Scotland when the mission in Aberdare has finished. Dan Roberts has left them free to go...
An inhabitant of Aberdare asks me to give the copy I had on me of the of the Welsh song 'Dyma gariad' ('Here is love' translated into French by Monsieur Saillens)
to Dan Roberts, after he had the imprudence to show it to him.
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‘Dan Roberts said he would be pleased to see you this afternoon’ I was told. ‘Oh!’ I replied, ‘I haven’t tried to see him because I was afraid of being indiscrete, and I didn’t want to tire him. But I would be very happy to spend a few minutes with him.’
I avoid the interview with the representative of the Western Mail, and I am taken to see Dan Roberts. There, after a few minutes of pleasantries, I find myself singing Welsh hymns in harmony with a minister and his wife and a missionary and his wife who happen to be there.
We go to the meeting with Dan Roberts. The meeting has already been under way for a while. But there is a space in the set fawr. It is one of the best meetings that I have been to. Beside me, often during the course of the evening, I saw silent tears running down the cheeks or filling the eyes of women and young girls listening to the fervent prayers.
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A missionary pastor beside me says to me at times, his eyes shining and moist ‘Oh, what a beautiful prayer! How he prays! How wonderfully she prays!’ A few of these prayers are in English, not many though, unfortunately. They were, however, fine and touching in their simplicity, and yet I had the impression that the prayers in Welsh must have been infinitely better.
Towards the end of the meeting, there came a moment when the exhortations to be saved or for those who had been converted to worship God, Dan Roberts invited those who had been saved to share their testimonies, if they felt so led. Then the minister of the chapel climbed up into the pulpit to stand alongside Dan Roberts, and mentions the fact that a gentleman has come from France and a missionary has come from somewhere I do not now recall, and he invites us to express out feelings. It has to be done.
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As soon as the missionary has finished speaking, I get up to leave. It is important not to miss the last train to Cardiff! But the lady with whom Dan Roberts is staying stops me in the aisle and says to me that if I wish to stay, there is another lady who can let me have a room. And so I decide to stay and go back to my seat. I would have been sad to leave without having said goodbye to Dan Roberts and the women revivalists. Somehow tomorrow morning I would find a way of catching the fast train to Liverpool.
The meeting goes on after eleven o’clock, and once again we leave very late. We were struck by a significant moment in the chapel. Miss Jones prophesies that there will be a great revival in France. ‘Evan Roberts himself has prophesied it, and his predictions have always been verified.
The (Nazarus) minister who had spoken to me in the meeting embraces me warmly, hugging me with cordial and brotherly warmth. I express to him enthusiastically my admiration for the Welsh hymns which have filled me with an emotion which still affects me.
'You see,’ he explains to me, ‘it is because we Welsh sing from our hearts.’
At a turning we separate, and Dan Roberts said to me something that sounded like no star. I look up. The sky is very clear and full of stars. I say that I don’t understand, but he says that he was not referring to the stars, and that what he had said was the Welsh for ‘good night.’ The miners with whom I am staying welcome me warmly, give me something to eat, somewhere to sleep, and breakfast.
Saturday 15th April
Early in the morning I return to Cardiff. In thirty-four minutes I accomplish a tour de force which would have been impossible in France: go from the station to my hotel*, pack my things, secure my suitcase, pay my bill, run to the other station, and catch the train to Liverpool.
(*Note: Henri Bois must have been staying at a hotel very close to Central Station in Cardiff - in all likelihood either the Royal Hotel or the Great Western, the nearest being the latter.
…. On Saturday evening I attended my first meeting with Evan Roberts".
(To be continued ...
For brevity, this is a Edited version of an article posted 9th November 2017 by David Edward Pike )
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PUB
Publicans complained that the Welsh Revival was ruining their businesses
Wales, 1904/1905 ~
Evan Roberts Welsh Revivalist
The Welshman called by God to prepare people for their baptism with the Holy Sprit.
He was widely regarded as a young man sincere and enthusiastic and spoke the language of the people. He had a great spirituality expressed in the vernacular which made the people of Wales flock to his services. He emotionally expressed how it was to bend to the will of God and many people felt they understood his message. He spoke from the heart.
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Critics (like Rev Peter Price from Dowlais) described his method as exhibitionism. There were many letters to the newspapers in support and of criticism. Roberts stated that ‘exhibitionism’ was the furthest thing from his mind and expressed that people should come to see him to worship god alone.
His mission he stated was to help Fill people with the Holy Spirit allowing them to get to Heaven under guidance of the Holy Spirit. All learnings were to rely on the Spirit and not on man.
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People appeared to be experiencing a total transformation of their ‘inner and outer’ lives.
Four Things leading to the Grand Blessing according to EVAN ROBERTS
(You must obtain full and complete pardon for Sins of the Past).
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1. Everything you know (sins) it honestly before God,
if the past is not alright, it must be made so.
2. Is there anything doubtful in your life?
If so, it must be removed and done away with.
If there a habit or doubtful character in your life?
If so, away with it.
There cannot be any joy in your heart until you remove the questionable habits and pleasures.
Self-denial is one of the very first essentials of the Religion of Christ.
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3. Complete and immediate obedience to the Holy Spirit.
Whatsoever ‘he’ says to you, do it. Bow to him now.
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4. A public and personal confession of Christ.Stand up now, out with a confession.
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Roberts stated in a media interview “What I want people to know is the joy of religion.
Religion was never intended to make a man gloomy, it should be the happiest thing in life.
Our fathers, thank god for them, were simply men, but gloomy and melancholy as if religion were a sore trial to the flesh, what they missed was the joy of Our Lord. They got into a groove and we must now get out of it”.
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And getting out of it was what happened to Nonconformity over the next year or so (see video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p4Qjsuf_ig )
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See also
A revival of The Temperance movement in Wales:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/entries/167b76c8-dd7b-35c2-89b9-4ff500fd38ec
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Calvanistic Methodist SINGING FESTIVAL
Cymanfa Ganu (Singing Festival), is a Welsh festival of sacred hymns, sung with four part harmony by a congregation, usually under a choral director.
The Cymanfa Ganu movement was launched in 1859 at Bethania Chapel in Aberdare, where it was pioneered by the Reverend Evan Lewis.
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Big Gathering at Mountain Ash (around 1904)
[By AWSTIN.]
The Glamorgan and Gwent Musical Festival, or (as it is best known) cymanfa ganu, held in the Mountain Ash Pavilion on Thursday, was a wonderful gathering, and the proceedings throughout the day were typical of all that is best in Welsh singing and the organising power of Calvinistic Methodism. Choirs drawn from the connexional congregations of the two counties came trooping into the town at quite an early hour, and by eleven o'clock the sight in the great pavilion was a fine one, and the singing, inspiring from the first, became more powerful and enthusiastic as the day wore on.
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The hymn-singing in the afternoon was, perhaps, more characteristic of the Welsh cymanfa ganu than that of the morning, and there were certainly striking variations in the programme. Notable in itself was the Psalm singing, which elicited encomiums from the conductor, and led him to remark that he would have liked some of the Welsh bishops to hear what had just been sung so well - Psalm xlviii (to leuan Gwyllt's setting), the last verse being repeated spontaneously several times by the great congregation.
One of the most popular of the hymns sung was Gutyn Arfon's tune, "LIef," to the words 'O! Iesu mawr, rho d'anian bur,' which, it will be remembered, was, during the revival, often wedded to the old familiar air 'Genevieve.' The tune rendered on Thursday, however, caught on so well that the two last lines of the third verse were repeated several times, during which a voice was heard to say, "Nid yw ysbryd y diwygiad wedi marw" ("The spirit of the revival is not dead"). Wiki
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