Robert Williams (R. ab Gwilym Ddu)

ROBERT WILLIAMS (R. ab Gwilym Ddu) was born in the parish of Llanystundwy, Caernarvonshire, in the year 1767. He spent his life on his own farm, removed far from the world, in the company of Arvon's mountains. His days seem to have passed by evenly till the death of his only daughter, the child of his old age, in her seventeenth year. His heart never recovered from the sorrow; and the elegy he wrote on her death is an expression of most vivid grief. He and another famous bard--Dewi Wyn o Eifion--were Baptists; and by their efforts a chapel was built, which still goes by the name of 'The Bards' Chapel.' He died June 11, 1850. The original of the following hymn has woven itself around 98 some of the tenderest recollections of Welsh communion services: