Glamorgan Customs in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

THE Editor has suggested to me that I should give the readers of GWERINa short account of certain features of rural life in the Vale of Glamorgan which are referred to in eighteenthand nineteenthcentury documents. Many of these are to be found in the 1010 Morganwg MSS. in the National Library of Wales. They contain lists of old customs and festivities, and of the games which were so popular throughout Glamorgan during his lifetime. Much valuable material can also be found in a curious diary which was written by an eccentric old schoolmaster, William Thomas, who lived in Michaelston-super-Ely, within a mile of the Welsh Folk Museum in St. Fagans. He was born in 1727 and died in 1795, and from 1750 until his death he kept a diary. It is a curious document, full of gossip and scandal. In spite of the great interest which he took in the activities of the Welsh Methodist Revivalists and of the Nonconformist Ministers, he was regarded by his contemporaries as a wizard and a magician, and, indeed, it was as a great master of the 'occult arts' that he was remembered in the neighbourhood of St. Fagans for over a hundred years after his death. He was, indeed, a complex character, who duly recorded the evil doings of his contemporaries in East Glamorgan for over forty years. This perverted Calvinist condemns all rural amusements, the revels, cock-fighting, horse-races, the 'assemblies of dance and song', etc., but at the same time he sometimes gives us fairly accurate descriptions of those amusements which retained their popularity in the Vale of Glamorgan until the second half of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately the original diary has disappeared, but in 1888 a Glamorgan historian, David Jones of Wallington, a native of Llanblethian, near Cowbridge, saw the second volume. It was a bulky tome of 1296 pages, and contained all the entries made between 1762 and 1795. He did not have time to make a complete transcript, but he has given us copious extracts, with commentaries (which are invaluable for the local historian).! It is certain that the scores of entries which he did not include in his copy contained valuable material. If the original diary were to be discovered, it