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 PrintableVersion Hymns and Letters of Ann GriffithsHYMNS AND LETTERS OF ANN GRIFFITHS One day, evangelicals who spot this title will no longer say: 'Who?' That at least is my hope as I treasure this delightful, moving and humbling collection of the work of a young Welsh farmer's wife from two centuries ago. Ann was born in 1776, and at 17 found herself mistress of farmhouse and family on the death of her mother. Converted at 20, with a deep conviction of sin, she reluctantly left the established church and joined the Methodists, nourished spiritually through the work associated with Thomas Charles of Bala. Soon after her father died, she married; less than a year later she succumbed to TB at the age of 29, having lived just long enough to bury her two-week-old daughter. If that were all, Ann's story would be touching but hardly unique. What makes it special is the extraordinary depth, insight and poetic fervour of the handful of hymns which have providentially survived, and by curiously delayed action, have begun to reach a wider audience of those who do not speak her native Welsh. It is tempting to quote her verse, but a line or two hardly suffices; it is suffused with the Scriptures she clearly loved, rich in personal devotion which echoes the Song of Solomon and other Old Testament types, but with her eyes and heart clearly fixed on Christ. 'Her Calvinism is much to the fore,' says the introduction; even more so, the Persons of the Trinity, the atoning death of her Lord Jesus, and her own soul's need of a redeemer. 'I intend from my heart to rest in his love, always singing . . .'; this from the last of her eight extant letters, and almost the only surviving item in her own handwriting. It is because she was 'always singing' that we have her hymns, as they were transcribed by John Hughes, husband of Ann's maid Ruth who knew and sang them by heart. Other vital names are Wyn James, whose recent researches make the most of the crumbs of evidence; Kathryn Jenkins who writes on her life and work; and Alan Luff who translates the letters and selects the 28 tunes, from the familiar to the brand new, printed here. But most credit is due to Alan Gaunt, who brings his own hymn-writing skills to the delicate task of translating Welsh verse with both faithfulness and fluency. Some of our most famous hymn paraphrases have one or the other; to achieve both is a rare wonder. Christopher Idle,
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