In the period of the people, from Tudor times on, the peasants tried
at first to imitate the poetry of the past; then they began to write
and think in their own way. It is not my aim to explain the periods
of Welsh literature now; I am going to do that in another book. But,
as I have mentioned three typical poets in the period of the princes,
I will also mention three poets in the period of the people.

In 1579 Rees Prichard was born; in 1717, Williams Pant y Celyn; in
1832, Islwyn. We have, in these three, writers typical of the
seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries respectively. Rees
Prichard, still affectionately remembered in every Welsh home as the
"Old Vicar," wrote stanzas in the dialect of the Vale of Towy--rough,
full of peasant phrases and mangled English words; and he wrote them,
not in books, but on the memory of the people. In the same valley, a
century later, Williams Pant y Celyn wrote hymns, melodious and
inspiring, of great poetic beauty, though with a trace of dialect;
they were written and published, but they also haunted every ear that
heard them. Beyond the Black Mountains, in the hills of West
Monmouth, after another century, Islwyn wrote odes without a trace of
dialect; they were written and remained for some time in manuscript;
when published, they met with a welcome which shows clearly that
Islwyn is the typical poet of modern Welsh thought. If you wish to
see and realise the rise of the Welsh peasant, pass from the homely
stanzas of the good Old Vicar's Welshmen's Candle to the poetic
theology of Pant y Celyn, and from that to the poetic philosophy of
Islwyn, where concentrated intensity of thought is expressed in a
style that is, at any rate at its best, superior to the best work of
the poets of the princes.

If I were to tell you the reasons for this change, I would be