{23} _The butt of everybody_.—Whenever a number of bards, in the course of their peregrinations from one patron’s hall to another, met of a night, their invariable custom was to appoint one of the company to be the butt of their wit, and he was expected to give ready answer in verse and parry the attacks of his brethren. It is said of Dafydd ap Gwilym that he satirized one unfortunate butt of a bard so fiercely that he fell dead at his feet. {24} _Congregation of mutes_.—At the time Ellis Wynne wrote, the Quakers were very numerous in Merioneth and Montgomery and especially in his own immediate neighbourhood, where they probably had a burying-ground and conventicle. They naturally became the objects of cruel persecution at the hands of the dominant church as well as of the state; their meetings were broken up, their members imprisoned and maltreated, until at last they were forced to leave their fatherland and seek freedom of worship across the Atlantic. {25} _Speak no ill_.—A Welsh proverb; _v. Myv. Arch. III. 182_. {26} _We came to a barn_.—The beginning of Nonconformity in Wales. In the Author’s time there were already many adherents to the various dissenting bodies in North Wales. Walter Cradoc, Morgan Llwyd and others had been preaching the Gospel many years previously throughout the length and breadth of Gwynedd; and it was their followers that now fell under the Bard’s lash. {28a} _Corruption of the best_.—A Welsh adage; _v. Myv. Arch. III. 185_. {28b} _Some mocking_.—Compare Bunyan’s Christian starting from the City of Destruction: “So he looked not behind him, but fled towards the middle of the plain. The neighbours came out to see him run, and as he ran, some mocked, others threatened and some cried after him to return.” {29} _Who is content_.—Cp. Qui fit, Maecenas, ut nemo, quam sibi sortem Seu ratio dederit seu fors obiecerit, illa Contentus vivat, laudet diversa sequentes? —_Horace_: _Sat. I. i._ {34} _Increases his own penalty_.—Cp. —the will And high permission of all-ruling heaven Left him at large to his own dark designs, That with reiterated crimes he might Heap on himself damnation, while he sought Evil to others. —_Par. Lost_: _I. 211–6_. {36} _Royal blood_—referring to the execution of Charles I. {37} _The Pope and his other son_.—The concluding lines of this Vision were evidently written amidst the rejoicings of the nation at the victories of Marlborough over the French and of Charles XII. over the Muscovites {43a} _Glyn Cywarch_.—The ancestral home of the Author’s father, situate in a lonely glen about three miles from Harlech. {43b} _Our brother Death_.—This idea of the kinship of Death and Sleep is common to all poets, ancient and modern; cp. the “_Consanguineus Leti Sopor_” of Vergil (Æneid: VI. 278); and also: