Encyclopaedia

GRIFFITHS, Ann (b. Thomas; 1776-1805) Hymnwriter

The most famous of all Welsh female poets, she was born Ann Thomas (or Nansi Tomos as she was generally known) at Dolwar Fach farmhouse in the parish of Llanfihangel-yng-Ngwynfa, Montgomeryshire (now in the community of Llanfihangel), into a family whose circumstances were fairly comfortable and whose members were prominent in the local community. She spent her whole life at Dolwar Fach. She was notably fond of dancing, but became a Calvinistic Methodist in 1796/7 during a period of revival in the area. Her spiritual life was characterized by its remarkable intensity. She married Thomas Griffiths, a Montgomeryshire Methodist leader, in October 1804, and died in August 1805 following childbirth.

Around 1802, she began composing verses to crystallize her spiritual experiences. They were composed orally, with no intention of their becoming congregational hymns. Just over 70 of these verses have survived, mainly through the efforts of her friend and spiritual mentor, John Hughes (1775-1854) of Pontrobert (Llangyniew), and his wife, Ruth Evans, who had been a maid at Dolwar Fach. One englyn that she composed as a child has also survived, together with seven letters to John Hughes and one to Elizabeth Evans (Ruth Evans’s sister, by all accounts). The letters, like her hymns, are considered spiritual classics.

There has been a tendency to label Ann Griffiths a mystic, but Calvinistic Methodist is a more appropriate term since it emphasizes the combination of subjective experience and objective theology which is to be found in her work – the heat and the light (to echo her biographer, Morris Davies). Her verses are characterized by a wide-ranging and detailed scriptural knowledge. The Bible is the main source of her vivid imagery, and in her hands biblical vocabulary becomes the language of her deepest experiences. Her best-known hymn is her ode of love to Christ, ‘Wele’n sefyll rhwng y myrtwydd’, usually sung to the tune ‘Cwm Rhondda’. Saunders Lewis described her longest poem, ‘Rhyfedd, rhyfedd gan angylion’, as ‘one of the majestic poems of the religious poetry of Europe’.