William Morgan – Tŷ Mawr Wybrnant

Will Tŷ Mawr, not William Morgan but the former custodian of the house that saw William Morgan (Esgob) to birth: As we sat in his kitchen at Wybrnant he recalls ‘they keep bringing us bibles – what do we want with them here? And I’m, taken to the old parlor where a large cupboard stands; it is full of bibles.  Family bibles, and bibles in all languages.  When Will says he doesn’t want their old bible they often say “Well, what should I do with it then?” To which he would reply “Read it.”  And so it begins. 

“O Deuwch i’r dyfroedd, bob un y mae syched arno, ie, yr hwn nid oes arian ganddo; deuwch, prynwch, a bwytewch; ie, deuwch, prynwch win a llaeth, heb arian, ac heb werth.”  Eseia 55:1 yn ôl y BWM

William Morgan. Neither first nor last of his trade

Like a drop in the ocean, the one drop that starts 

the overflow from the Wybrnant to the sea

of the institution, the establishment and yet

Independent at heart.   Time to rise up.

Can any good come out of Penmachno?

Deuwch i’r dyfroedd a gweld.

And the waters continue to flow from the hills into the sea.

Those waters overflowed the bowl on our inauguration day – Bro Gwydyr Ministry Area of the forest, rivers, valleys and hills.  The waters we poured into a bowl, brought and poured by members of each community, overflowed and tumbled to the ground symbolic of the overflowing grace poured out for us, for our communities laid up by those on whose shoulders we stood that day at Tŷ Mawr Wybrnant reading from the book in the language of the common folk. A language set down creates a new beginning and a new place of departure.  A humble beginning. But what beginning is not.  And so we walk humbly in pilgrimage each year from St. Tudclud, sacred home of ancient stones to wybrnant, nestled in the quiet valley between Penmachno and Dolwyddelan a place of birth, of baptism for us for William Morgan whose name would become an icon behind which the people of Cymru would rally. Icon of independence, language, culture, society.  With the language they (the monarchy) tried to break and tame those difficult folk in the west, yet the poetic language of the William Morgan bible became the call to rise to stand apart, we will not conform. The establishment always underestimated, always, what a bible could do in the language finally understood of its hearers a book heady with dissent with liberation for those who are oppressed and the Cymru heard the voice of salvation in their mother tongue and rallied to its cry.  They say it began the revolution, but the real moment, the catalyst: a cross, generations before had waited out its revelation.  Morgan’s contribution of the saying of the sages and the wisdom of the prophets laid bare for all to read and hear.  No longer cloaked in a hidden language, now voiced as a new birth, as an overflowing of the waters.