17
“Through the Lattice”: An Introduction to Ann Griffiths
Kent F. Williams, Ph.D.
In mid-July 1805, the Welsh poet Ann Griffiths, born Ann Thomas, gave birth to her first child, Elizabeth. Elizabeth died before two weeks had passed. According to E. Wyn James, Ann was frail and frequently ill throughout her life (“Introduction”*). Her heart had been possibly damaged by three childhood bouts of rheumatic fever. Ann may have also been suffering from tuberculosis during her pregnancy. Weakened by childbirth, Ann died within two weeks of her first child. She was twenty-nine years old. At her funeral, the sermon’s text was taken from a central verse, Philippians 1:21, in the only surviving letter in Ann’s handwriting: "Canys byw i mi yw Crist, a marw sydd elw.” For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (James, “Introduction”).
A way to appreciate the Welsh perception of Christ, of theological perspective and culture, is though Welsh hymns. Ann Griffiths wrote Welsh hymns of exceptional beauty, intensity, and grace. Tony Conran characterized Ann as “the greatest of Welsh women poets,” while A. M. Allchin called her “a central figure in the Christian tradition of vision and song” (James, “Introduction”). Saunders Lewis named the longest of Griffiths’ poems as “one of the majestic songs in the religious poetry of Europe” (James, “Introduction”). E. Wyn James emphasized that “Ann’s hymns have long been regarded as one of the highlights of Welsh literature, and since the mid-nineteenth century she herself has become a prominent icon in Welsh-speaking Wales . . .” (“Introduction”).
Saunders Lewis saw Ann as “a poet of contemplation, a poet of the intellect, a poet who gazes outwards in wonder at the panorama of biblical truth” (James, “Introduction”). James adds that “[h]er ability to think lucidly and to give crystal-clear expression to that thinking, is one of the most exceptional characteristics of her work” (“Introduction”). Griffiths’ hymns “are characterized by complex scriptural allusions, bold figures of speech, and deep spiritual fervour” (James, “Introduction”). To emphasize her hymns and letters is to highlight Welsh language and Welsh culture in terms of a still-relevant religious perspective and to study an increasingly revered Welsh poet whose Christian experience was intensely and vividly personal and who spoke of “flooding waters” and “flames of fire” (James, “Introduction”). J. R. R. Tolkien once characterized the Welsh language as being Heaven (Fauskanger 1). The Welsh of Ann Griffiths brings us closer to this Heaven, closer to the New Jerusalem of Revelation, where in Chapter 21 we read:
1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Biblegateway NIV)
This is the new heaven and new earth that Ann envisioned, that she longed for intensely, that she knew would be hers. There, she exclaims, “Jesus, my High Priest, is with me, / Strong to hold me, strong to save.” There, with “Death, and world, and hell defied,” she’ll cry conquest, and “lacking now all means of sinning” Ann will be “in his likeness glorified” (XXIII.1)
Ann’s life is one of brevity and of the everyday in a context of intensity, focus, and eternity. In response to a statement about the brevity of Ann’s life, one of our Welsh students, Lynwen Haf Roberts, said that Ann had lived, even in such a brief time, a life full of richness and meaning (Roberts). To be introduced to Ann Griffiths’ life, we’ll look briefly at four things: the literary and religious background during Ann’s life, E. Wyn James’s words about Ann’s life and personal religious experience, Joseph Clancy’s thoughts about the similarities and differences between Ann and the American poet Emily Dickinson, and my own exploration of three major themes in Ann’s poetry and letters: first, of being a pilgrim journeying a road of trouble leading to death; next, of having a relationship with Christ during the journey; and finally, of being rewarded with the joys of Heaven.
The time Ann lived, the latter part of the eighteenth century and the first five years of the nineteenth century, “was [as James says] an age of great change . . . in agriculture, industry, politics, culture and religion” (“Introduction”). It was “an age of great awakenings.” The Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in Defence of Poetry saw the literature of this time “[arising] as it were from a new birth” (Abrams 5). In The Spirit of the Age, the essayist William Hazlitt saw this time as “the dawn of a new era, a new impulse had been given . . .” (Abrams 5). The Romantic poet William Wordsworth went so far as to see the earth as created by God as “a symbol system, a physical revelation parallel to Revelation in the Scriptures” (Abrams 5). Wordsworth writes about “Characters of the great Apocalypse, / The types and symbols of Eternity, / Of first, and last, and midst, and without end” (Abrams 5). When the American Declaration of Independence was signed, Ann was only months old. In 1789, the time of the French Revolution, of the storming of the Bastille, she was only thirteen. Two or so years later, William Wordsworth, the English poet, went to northern Wales with the Welshman Robert Jones to climb Wale’s tallest peak, Mt. Snowdon. There, Wordsworth had his great vision emblematic of the activity of the imagination. There, as Wordsworth describes the landscape in the fourteenth book of The Prelude, “A fixed, abysmal, gloomy breathing-place, mounted the roar of waters—torrents—streams/Innumerable, roaring with one voice! Heard over earth and sea, and in that hour,/ . . . felt by the starry heavens” (Abrams, 306-07). As we will see, Ann Griffiths saw creation and the work of the imagination differently. Ann’s lifetime was filled with war between Britain and France. As James mentions, she prayed especially and repeatedly about the war (“Introduction”). In 1805, the year of Ann’s birth, the United States Marines attack the shores of Tripoli, the explorers Louis and Clark have their first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains, and Beethoven conducts the premiere of his Eroica (Brainyhistory).
During Ann’s lifetime, Christian thought and experience remained vivid. John Newton wrote “Amazing Grace.” William Cowper, suffering profound depression and saved repeatedly from suicide by Newton, wrote the lines “God moves in a mysterious way, / His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, / And rides upon the storm” in his hymn “Light Shining Out of Darkness” (Fire and Ice). “Many people who scorned evangelicals as ‘Methodists’ would read Cowper's poems.” John Wesley’s baptizing a believer created Methodism as a distinct denomination from the Church of England. The Baptist Missionary Society and the London Missionary Society were created. “The Welsh Methodist revival of the 18th century was one of the most significant religious and social movements in the history of Wales” (Fire and Ice). One source, perhaps incorrectly, said that, at one time in Wales, the number of chapels outnumbered the number of Welsh people. But this statement shows how strong and pervasive and long-lasting this movement was in Wales. Two of the three major preachers of that movement were still powerful and influential during Ann’s lifetime. Although Howel Harris had died three years before Ann Griffiths’ birth, Daniel Rowland would attract a following from throughout Wales. Thousands would come to hear his words. And William Williams “Pantycelyn”, called “The Sweet Singer,” sold tea and his hymnbooks to make ends meet, travelled thousands of Welsh miles, but in the midst of preaching and writing prose and poetry, composing about a thousand hymns. Williams wrote the familiar lines:
Guide me, O thou great redeemer,
Pilgrim through this barren land;
I am weak, but thou art mighty,
Hold me with thy powerful hand;
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven
Feed me till I want no more;
Feed me till I want no more.
And Thomas Charles, who assumed leadership of the Welsh Methodist Revival at the end of the nineteenth century, profoundly influenced Ann Griffiths (British Broadcasting Company).
E. Wyn James, from Cardiff University, has written extensively about Ann and has an excellent Web site, http://www.anngriffiths.cardiff.ac.uk/, which I highly recommend, dedicated to her. James tells us the following things about Ann’s home life, physical appearance, and religious experience.
Ann was born “Ann Thomas” in the spring of 1776 in northeast Wales in the county of Montgomeryshire, not far from Shropshire in England. Ann was known as “Nansi Thomas” for all but the last year of her life. She lived “in relative obscurity” (“Introduction”) throughout her life. She was born on a farm, called Dolwar Fach, where she lived all her life. Her farming family was “close-knit and hospitable,” “prominent,” “popular,” and “respected” in the area and economically well off. The families of both Ann’s father and mother had long been established in that area of Wales. Ann had two sisters and two brothers. Ann knew work and responsibility early. When Ann was seventeen, her mother died. Ann then took charge of the household, “keeping house,” “supervising the work of the maid (or maids),” “responsible for milking . . . ; processing the milk, butter and cheese,” doing “other chores around the farm,” and “preparing and spinning wool” (“Introduction”). According to James, “Montgomeryshire was one of the main centres of the woolen industry in Wales in that period. Many of the county’s farmers spun wool in order to supplement their income, and at the time of Ann’s death there was a loom, five spinning wheels and about eighty sheep at Dolwar Fach” (“Introduction”)
James tells us the following about Ann’s appearance. We do not have a contemporary painting of Ann. We do have descriptions of her from those who knew her. The drawing by Emalea Neal is based on the “effigy of [Ann] in the Ann Griffiths Memorial Chapel in Dolanog” (James, “Introduction”). From all accounts, however, Ann “was [in James’s words] taller than average and rather stately in appearance, although gentle in character when one got to know her. She had long dark hair, a high forehead and a slightly arched nose. She was rather pale in complexion, with rosy cheeks and bright eyes” (“Introduction”). “Although frail of body, Ann was strong in mind and character” (James, “Introduction”). She “was full of life, rather impulsive, witty and mischievous by nature, single-minded, meticulous and passionate . . . affectionate and cheerful” (“Introduction”). E. Wyn James calls Ann “a born leader . . . a gifted person, with an astute mind and an exceptional memory” (“Introduction”). She had only a small amount of formal education, but she could read and write and knew a little English. Ann loved “merry-making . . . fairs and wakes and informal evening entertainment,” and she particularly loved dancing (James, “Introduction”).
About Ann’s religious experience, James emphasizes the following: Ann was brought up in “the established church of Wales at that time,” the Anglican Church, and “attended regularly” with her family. Her father presided over devotions at the farm “every morning and evening” (“Introduction”). Because of these devotions, church attendance, and devoted reading throughout her life, Ann knew “the majestic religious prose” of the Welsh Bible and “the Welsh translation of the Book of Common Prayer” (James, “Introduction”). The Welsh Bible Ann knew and loved was Bishop Parry and Dr. Davies’ 1620 revised edition of William Morgan’s 1588 edition. This Bible is revered in the same way as English-speaking Christians revere the King James Version and remained the standard Welsh Bible into the twentieth century (James, e-mail to the author).
In Wales, Methodism was a “revolutionary evangelical movement” that began “in south Wales in the 1730s” but influenced north Wales by the time Ann was young. In the eighteenth century, the Welsh were primarily Calvinistic Methodists, as opposed to John Wesley’s Arminian Methodists. Calvinistic Methodism emphasized Christian “orthodox beliefs,” but emphasized “the personal experience of those beliefs, on feeling the truths” “of those beliefs” (James, “Introduction”). Morris Davies, a biographer of Ann Griffiths, said that Calvinistic Methodism “was a religion of heat as well as light” (James, “Introduction”). During Ann’s lifetime, “Welsh Calvinistic Methodism was officially a movement within the Established Church and not a separate denomination” (James, Introduction”).
E. Wyn James reveals the following about Ann Griffiths’ conversion to a vivid, intensely personal, life-changing relationship with Christ. In 1796, when she was twenty years old, Ann had “a series of intense spiritual experiences which transformed her life over a period of about a year” (“Introduction”). These experiences began as she attended an Easter fair at Llanfyllin and heard the words of an open-air Congregational preacher who was attempting to counter the revelry of the fair. The words affected Ann profoundly and left her troubled for months about her “spiritual state” (James, “Introduction”). “Ann’s spiritual experiences during her conversion were particularly intense, even for a time of religious awakening” (“James, “Introduction”). Ann “[came] to see through faith that Jesus Christ – the One who was God and man in the same Person – had taken the punishment for her sin upon himself through dying in her [place].” Ann believed profoundly that God had forgiven her and that she had been given “eternal reconciliation with God” (James, “Introduction”). God’s forgiveness was a act of grace, not won by anything she had or could have done, but though her faith in Christ and her belief in His death for her sins and His resurrection from death. As James relates, “Even as her lost condition had weighed so heavily upon her that she would sometimes roll on the ground on the way home from preaching meetings, now, after coming to an assurance of faith, she would sometimes drink so deeply of the joy of salvation that she would break out into periods of rejoicing, both publicly and in private, with the sound of her praise in her room being audible some fields’ length from the house at Dolwar Fach” (James, “Introduction.”