The Weekly Machen
This week, we continue a survey of Machen’s war writing, but switch modes from news stories to original fiction. The following short tale was published in the Evening News less than two months after the appearance of “The Bowmen.” Here, Machen continues the theme of heavenly succor, but instead of St. George and the Agincourt archers, he employs the host of Welsh saints. This includes Sts. David and Teilo who figure among the Rich Fishermen from Machen’s The Great Return, published the following year. Also in common with that later story, Machen implants in his Calvinistic Welshmen a spiritual memory of the ancient Celtic Church that enlivens and strengthens. Many of the mentioned place-names were locations well-known to the author and reappear throughout his work.
The War Song of the Welsh
by
Arthur Machen
November 2, 1914
The South Wales Rangers had been enjoying for some days a most welcome rest. They had done their spell in the trenches faithfully and steadily; they had passed the initiations by fire and by water. Drenching, pitiless rains had soaked them; they had been cramped in the sodden trenches, with sure death as the price of a change of posture; black smoke and blinding flame and rending shells had tried them and torn them. At last they had been relieved, and they were resting in certain inner huts and earthy shelters behind the lines.
It was not splendid, but it was better than the trenches, and here in these burrows they ate hot stew, smoked shag, talked Newport-Cardiff-Lanelly-Swansea football talk, and drank tea in large quantities. Some of them pulled out now and then, in a furtive manner, stiff photographs of beautiful girls who lived in various places between Caerwent and St. Govan’s Head. In short, they were in excellent spirits and their officers were pleased with them.
Late one afternoon, when they were in this happy state, great news came for the Rangers. In one burrow a loud game of cards was being played, in another four men from the Vale of Glamorgan were quarrelling about the Newport forwards, in a third a man of Usk had an interminable story of how the Llangibby hounds once killed in Kemys Churchyard, just as the fox was taking to the river. Further on someone had apparently exceeded the limits of the credible.
‘I tell you, mun, I did see it,’ a man kept repeating; and a voice answered him:
‘You wass never see no such thing in oll your days, William Williams.’
To this happy military family came tidings that desperate work was appointed to them. A strongly-held position, horrid with machine guns and well-trenched Prussians was to be taken at all risks and all losses and the Rangers were to begin the attack in the darkness just before the next dawn.
‘Well, well,’ said one man in a long, lazy drawl, ‘some of us will have a chance of finding out whether the world be round.’
‘Well, look you,’ said another; ‘I’ve been to Abergavenny, and it’s not round there, whatever.’
A little later, while a band was playing behind the German lines, a young lieutenant of the Rangers sought out Major Lewis in his burrow. The lieutenant, an Englishman, was uneasy. He explained that he couldn’t make out what the men were after.
‘I suppose they’re all right; they wouldn’t be funking things now. But there’s something up; I wish you’d come and have a look at them.’
The Major groaned, and put down a very old newspaper, in which he had been reading of ‘the scrap’ in the Bight, and went with Lieutenant Harben to the men’s quarters. They had swarmed out of their burrows, and an eager buzz of talk came from them; now and again a voice in higher singsong rising above the other voices.
Then, quite suddenly, a private got up on an old biscuit tin and lifted up his hand.
‘Yr oes heddwch?’ he cried. And Major Lewis interpreted this and that which followed to the young lieutenant.
‘Is there peace?’ the man on the biscuit tin asked. And three or four hundred voices answered that there was no peace. Then the leader drew from a scabbard at his side a sword that might have come out of an old curiosity shop or the property room of a theatre.
‘The sword of the Bards of the Isle of Britain is drawn against wrong and cruelty and oppression, against abomination and defilement, against treachery and abounding wickedness.’
The sword flashed in the light of the dying sun, and the assembly said that a strong sword was drawn against the oppressors.
‘Men of Britain,’ the speaker continued, ‘we will go up against the men of Belial. Who will go with us?’
‘A great multitude will go with us.’ answered a voice.
‘What is that multitude?’
‘The multitude of the Saints of the Isle of Britain.’ The second speaker was as it were, deacon to Evan Thomas’s priest. Evan Thomas was the name of the private on the biscuit-tin. And the two began to recite the names of the Welsh saints.
‘They are both strict Calvinistic Methodists,’ said the major in an undertone to the lieutenant. Nevertheless the dialogue between them was like this:
‘Dewi sant shall go with us’
‘Teilo sant shall go with us’
‘Iltyd sant shall go with us’
‘Cadoc sant shall go with us’
‘Henoc sant shall go with us’
‘All they that have won Red Martyrdom shall go with us.’
‘Cadwaladyr the Blessed shall be of our company.’
‘Mihangel, the principal warrior of the Most High, is our captain.’
‘By the power of the Offering we shall prevail.’ ‘Evan Thomas’s father,’ whispered the major to the lieutenant, ‘is a small mountain farmer, and a great man at a chapel called Bethesda. He wouldn’t enter his parish church for any money you could offer him. But I may tell you that “offeren” is Welsh for Mass.’
Evan Thomas’s voice now changed its nature. It was no longer common speech; it was transmuted into a high chanting song, with cadences and wild trills that caused the short hair on the young lieutenant’s head to lift itself and shiver.
‘I see a great ship that sails forth from the island of the west,’ chanted Private Evan Thomas, ‘and the light of heaven shines upon it, and the blast of the wind of heaven is in its sails, and the glory of paradise is displayed about it. For the word has come unto the Isle of Avalon, and the warriors have waked, and they sail with power to the place of the great conflict.’
…
‘Thou dear God!’ said Hans to Fritz in the German trenches, ‘dost thou hear that song? It is terrible, it is ghostlike.’
‘Thou superstitious pig, this trench is not for neurasthenics constructed.’
…
The South Welsh Rangers crept up the hill in the darkness before the dawn. They crept till they could creep no longer, and then rose and rushed forward with a tremendous shout. They charged and overwhelmed and overthrew, and a thousand slew ten thousand, and there was scarce a hurt among the Welshmen.
For at the critical moment, when the roar of the Welsh voices smote upon the Prussian trenches, the machine guns were silent, hardly a man fired his musket; for those that fled and saved their lives said that they saw dreadful burning flames in the air, above the charging enemy, and their hearts failed them.
…
The professor at Heidelberg, who is more or less the world-authority on Collective Hallucinations, is investigating this point in a dispassionate and exhaustive manner. But it will be remembered that such fires were said to have appeared on lonely mountain sides during the great Welsh revival of ten years ago.
Previous: The Ceaseless Bugle Call
Next: The Light That Can Never Be Put Out
darklybrightpress.com 
Loving it!!! Glory to God and His Mighty Army!
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Many thanks! What a splendid addition to the Great War stories!
I will divide my comments over more than one ‘installment’.
I wonder if the “South Wales Rangers” existed, or if this is Machen’s fictionalization of the “South Wales Brigade” as its Wikipedia article is entitled?
Among many striking details is Major Lewis’s “very old newspaper, in which he had been reading of ‘the scrap’ in the Bight”. If the paper is current with that action, and what Machen describes is recent, it must be some two month old as it presumably refers to “the first Anglo-German naval battle of the First World War, fought on 28 August 1914” as the Wikipedia article “Battle of Heligoland Bight (1914)” describes it. In Somerset Maugham’s story, “The Outstation” (1924) the Resident, Mr. Warburton, in his distant post receives newspapers in batches six weeks after publication, but reads them one a day in chronological order. Perhaps among the Welsh Rangers any reading material is too precious to let go to waste, something to savor. But perhaps Major Lewis is rereading an account of this British victory at sea by way of encouragement.
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To resume:
A fascinating detail at the heart of the story is what Lieutenant Harben, an Englishman, “couldn’t make out” – as it comes to its point. For Machen seems pretty clearly to be varying an ancient-seeming ritual added in 1867 to the Gorsedd at the National Eisteddfod, which an article on the Museum Wales website describes in this way: “the ceremony of partly unsheathing the Grand Sword. The Archdruid asks the following questions and the audience replies ‘Heddwch’ (Peace) three times:
‘Y Gwir yn erbyn y Byd, A oes Heddwch? (The Truth against the World, Is there Peace?)
Calon wrth Galon, A oes Heddwch? (Heart to Heart, Is there Peace?)
Gwaedd uwch Adwaedd, A oes Heddwch? (Shout above responding Shout, Is there Peace?)’”.
It adds, “Carrying a sword was one of the rites in Iolo Morganwg’s first Gorsedd in 1792. As a pacifist Iolo wanted to emphasise that the Bards met in peace”. Here, a detail in the Wikipedia article, “Eisteddfod”, is worth noting: “both the Gorsedd and the eisteddfod revival were embraced and spread widely by Anglican and nonconformist clergy.”
But, by contrast, in the face of the impending battle, “‘Is there peace?’ the man on the biscuit tin asked. And three or four hundred voices answered that there was no peace. Then the leader drew from a scabbard at his side a sword”. There is peace among the soldiers of diverse places, social ranks, and churches, but not with “the men of Belial”.
I think another dimension here is an echo of Isaiah 48:22 in the great 1588 Welsh translation of the Bible: “Nid [oes] heddwch (medd yr Arglwydd) i’r rhai annuwiol” (which in the Authorized Version of 23 years later is translated “There is no peace, saith the Lord, vnto the wicked”).
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To continue:
When Evan Thomas’s “high chanting song” includes “the word has come unto the Isle of Avalon, and the warriors have waked” I think there is, among other things, play with two details of Arthurian tradition: that the gravely wounded King Arthur is borne away to the Isle of Avalon, and that Arthur and his companions slumber in anticipation of the time when they will awake and come to help Britain in its great need. I also think there is some delicate play between the Battle of the Bight and the “great ship that sails forth from the island of the west”.
I need a good deal of brushing up on whatever I once knew of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century attention – and later scholarly attention – to ‘war songs’ among surviving early Welsh poetry, but note that the Wikipedia article, “Men of Harlech”, is worth reading in this context, and various of its links worth following.
And I can imagine Arthur Machen enjoyed the works of Thomas Love Peacock, though I do not recall any references. In any case, his playfully satirical “War Song of Dinas Vawr” in The Misfortunes of Elphin (1829) bears witness in its own way to the widespread attention to ‘Welsh war songs’.
Machen’s own satirical presentations of the pseudo-scientific Fritz and Heidelberg professor chime nicely with the protracted evasions of understanding his experiences by Karl Heinz in “The Monstrance”.
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I don’t know enough about the history of the Eisteddfod ritual, but it strikes me that Machen is imagining the manifestation of an actual early and fairly long-enduring Christian ritual which may have been hijacked by fake ‘Druidism’. This would be in keeping with the widespread ‘learned’ fad for purportedly detecting ‘the real pagan meaning’ of things found only in mediaeval Christian manuscripts, which he variously takes to task in essays elsewhere.
If I remembered more details from Stuart Piggott’s excellent book, The Druids (1968), I might have more to say – but heartily recommend it, in any case.
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By the way, here is a link to the Museum Wales article:
https://museum.wales/articles/1136/Scrolls-swords-and-mystic-marks/
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