MONA, MOTHER OF WALES Anglesey. A Survey and Inventory by
the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales and Monmouth- shire. (H.M. Stationery Office. 37s. 6d.) THE island County of Anglesey has not had a whole book dedicated to it for nearly a hundred years. But now its patience is rewarded by an authoritative and richly illustrated volume summarising its past, as revealed by existing evidences, to the extent of about six thousand years, from the architect of a nameless Neolithic tribe to the Welshman of the early nine- teenth century.
The volume is the eighth to be issued by the Commission but " the first to conform in size and general make up with those containing the more recent reports of the English and Scottish Commissioners." Size apart, the chief departure from the previous volumes lies in the greater prominence and space given to the critical survey of the matter contained in the inventory. Whereas, in the older reports, the Survey was only a short foreword, in the present work it occupies 189 pages, as against 15o devoted to the Inventory. It is, in fact, the treatment in the first part which gives the book a much wider appeal than that of local interest, for it is made up of a number of relevant articles by leading authorities, and forms, as a whole, a new and brilliant thesis of comparative archaeology.
Sir Cyril Fox treats briefly of the cultural background. Mr. W. J. Hemp deals with Prehistory and other matters. Mr. C.A. Ralegh Radford writes of the Iron Age, the Roman Period, and the Early Christian monuments. His remarks are illu- minated with appendices by Professor Ifor Williams, the Welsh scholar. It is through the joint efforts of these two that an echo from that almost voiceless period " c. boo " (when Augustine had just arrived to preach to the heathen English) has been rescued and cries plaintively to us from a slab of rough stone : " . . . iva, a most holy lady, lies here, who was the very beloved wife of Bivatig [irnus], a servant of God, a bishop, and a disciple of Paulinus, by race a . . . udocian, and an example to all his fellow citizens and relations both in character, rule of life, and [that] wisdom which is better than gold and gems."
Sir J. E. Lloyd, the most distinguished historian Wales has ever had, contributes an article to the Survey. There is a note of outstanding interest on the ferries of the Menai Straits by Mr. H. R. Davies. The Anglesey windmills (which used to enliven every breezy skyline of the island) are treated of, with interesting diagrams, by Mr. Rex Wailes, though he has not mentioned that all the millers were Rowlands and related.
The photographic plates number isi and are so massed and edited as to constitute a theme in themselves. Then comes the Inventory—parish by parish. What spade-work, both in the real and metaphoric sense, must have gone into the making of that ! Mr. W. J. Hemp, Secretary to the Com- mission and Editor of the book, was himself in charge of the two major Stone Age excavations and also of the " treatment " of Beatunaris Castle when the Office of Works assumed guardian- ship of it. It is, presumably, to his hand that all the unsigned articles in the Survey must be attributed. Both as a writer and editor he is to be congratulated on having brought so complex a task so well through the press. EDMUND VALE.
Previous page
