The Archbishop of Wales writes:
THE Church in Wales was extremely fortunate to have Canon Gwynn ap Gwilym, who died on 31 July, aged 66, as its Bishops’ Adviser for the Welsh Language, a post he had held since 2002, initially with a part-time parochial appointment as well. He later combined the Language Officer post with that of being the Bench’s Adviser on Church Affairs, which meant not only handling ecumenical relationships in Wales, but across the Anglican, Porvoo, and indeed worldwide Communion of Churches.
He was superbly qualified for the former task, since he had studied Welsh at undergraduate and postgraduate level at the University College of North Wales, Bangor. He had been a lecturer in Celtic Studies at the University of Cork in the 1970s, and worked for the Welsh Academy before being ordained deacon, in 1984, in the diocese of Bangor. He had a tremendous feel for, and understanding of, Welsh language and culture, and had won the Chair at the National Eisteddfod in 1986, when it was held in Fishguard.
He therefore brought both his scholarship and his poetic gifts to bear in translating into Welsh all the Church in Wales’s liturgies over the past ten years. He also ensured that every document he was asked to translate — a sermon, a one-page statement from the Bench, or a translation of new constitutional visions — was done in a meticulous way, conveying exactly the meaning of the document in question.
In 1983, he won the Welsh Arts Council Prize for his volume of poetry Grassholm. He published a further three volumes of poetry — Y Winllan, Gwales, and Yr Ymyl Aur, and co-edited with another distinguished Welsh poet, Alan Llwyd, an anthology of 20th-century Welsh poetry — Flodeugerdd o Farddoniaeth Cymraeg yr Ugein fed Ganrif. He was also co-editor of a Welsh intellectual magazine, Barn, from 1979 to 1981.
His greatest achievement, however — and one that places not only the Church in Wales, but all the other churches in Wales permanently in his debt — was his translation, in 2007, of the Psalms, Salmau Cân Newydd.
This was a totally new translation from the original Hebrew, in a
metrical Welsh version, set to familiar Welsh hymn tunes. This made the Psalms, in the words of one reviewer at the time, “understandable, singable, and dependable for they are as close as it is possible to get to the original Hebrew”. Setting the Psalms out in such a way that they could be easily sung was something that had last been attempted in 1621 by Edmwnd Prys, the Archdeacon of Meirionnydd.
The Welsh tunes that Gwynn chose for each psalm fitted perfectly: lively tunes for psalms of praise and joy, and slower and quieter tunes for more meditative psalms. He also translated, in poetic form, and set to hymn tunes, the main canticles for morning and evening prayer. All this, of course, had been done in English by others, but never in Welsh before this time.
Gwynn belonged to what one Professor of Welsh, writing about 19th-century priests, called “Personiaid Llengar”: priests renowned for their scholarship and literary ability. At the time of his death, he was seeing through the press a biography of one of his most illustrious 16th-century predecessors as Rector of Mallwyd, John Davies, who
had helped translate the Bible into Welsh
Gwynn also took to his ecumenical position with great enthusiasm, and enjoyed his encounter with people from churches across the globe. He always produced for the Bench a comprehensive summary of all the salient points in ecumenical discussions, and a list of things that the bishops were required to either answer or decide. These two tasks fulfilled him in a way that being a parish priest had not, since he was rather a shy man. His formality, however, hid a dry sense of humour, and, when relaxed, he was very good company.
Born in Bangor, he was brought up in Machynlleth, where his father was a Presbyterian minister. For a man who found it hard to express himself emotionally in his personal relationships, his Eisteddfod winning poem Y Cwmwl was about his father’s death, and the impact it had had on him emotionally.
After ordination — he went to Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and gained both an MA and an M.Phil. — he was in turn Assistant Curate of Porthmadog, from 1984 to 1986, and then incumbent of a group of rural parishes in mid Wales in the diocese of Bangor, eventually centred on Mallwyd, from 1986 to 2002. During some of this time, he also taught Old Testament at the Presbyterian Theological College, Aberystwyth.
From 2002 to 2005, he was Priest-in-Charge of Penyfai, in the diocese of Llandaff, and Priest-in-Charge of Dewi Sant Cardiff, from 2005 to 2007, until he took on his provincial posts full-time. He was made Metropolitical Canon of Llandaff in 2014.
He married Mari in 1996, and she survives him. It is ironic that he died at the beginning of this year’s National Eisteddfod week, held at Abergavenny, where his work on the psalms was being published as an app.