It was the time when Whitefield and the Wesleys were sweeping the kingdom with their conquering eloquence, and Howell Harris (their fellow-student at Oxford) had sided with the conservative wing of the Gospel Reformation workers, and become a "Whitfield Methodist." The Welsh Methodists, _ad exemplum_, marched with this Calvinistic branch--as they do today. Each division had its Christian bard. Charles Wesley could put regenerating power into sweet, poetic hymns, and William Williams' lyrical preaching made the Bible a travelling pulpit. The great "Beibl Peter Williams" with its commentaries in Welsh, since so long reverenced and cherished in provincial families, was not published till 1770, and for many the printed Word was far to seek.[41] But the gospel minstrels carried the Word with them. Some of the long hymns contained nearly a whole body of divinity. [Footnote 41: As an incident contributory to the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the story has been often repeated of the little girl who wept when she missed her Catechism appointment, and told Thomas Charles of Bala that the bad weather was the cause of it, for she had to walk seven miles to find a Bible every time she prepared her lessons. See page 380.] The Welsh learn their hymns by heart, as they do the Bible--a habit inherited from those old days of scarcity, when memory served pious people instead of print--so that a Welsh prayer-meeting is never embarrassed by a lack of books. An anecdote illustrates this characteristic readiness. In February, 1797, when Napoleon's name was a terror to England, the French landed some troops near Fishguard, Pembrokeshire. Mounted heralds spread the news through Wales, and in the village of Rhydybont, Cardiganshire, the fright nearly broke up a religious meeting; but one brave woman, Nancy Jones, stopped a panic by singing this stanza of one of Thomas Williams' hymns,-- _Diuw os wyt am ddylenu'r bya_ If Thou wouldst end the world, O Lord, Accomplish first Thy promised Word, And gather home with one accord From every part Thine own, Send out Thy Word from pole to pole, And with Thy blood make thousands whole, And, _after that come down_. Nancy Jones would have been a useful member of the "Singing Sisters" band, so efficient a century or more afterwards. The _tunes_ of the Reformation under the "Methodist Fathers" continued far down the century to be the country airs of the nation, and reverberations of the great spiritual movement were heard in their rude music in the mountain-born revival led by Jack Edward Watkin in 1779 and in the local awakenings of 1791 and 1817. Later in the 19th century new hymns, and many of the old, found new tunes, made for their sake or imported from England and America.