Maria Jane Williams

folklorist born at Aberpergwm House, Glynneath in Glamorgan, South Wales. She rescued many Welsh songs from obscurity, including Y Deryn Pur (The Gentle Bird) and Y Ferch o'r Sger.^[1]

Blaen Baglan but in her later years, at a house called Ynys-las, near Aberpergwm House. She died in 1873 and is buried at St Cadoc's Church in the grounds of Aberpergwm House.^[2]

linnet), and was associated with the Welsh cultural society known as Cymreigyddion y Fenni and made her home a focus for ‘Celtic Renaissance’ enthusiasts.^[3]

Crofton Croker's ‘Irish Fairy Legends’ and subsequently reprinted in an abridged form in the ‘Fairy Mythology’ of Thomas Keightley who had suggested that she should make the collection.^[1]

folk song was during this period.^[4] The book has since been re-issued by the Welsh Folk Song Society with a contemporary introduction and notes by Daniel Huws.^[4] Through this collection she rescued many songs, the best known being Y Deryn Pur (The Gentle Dove) and Y Ferch o'r Sger (The Maid of Sker).^[1] In October 1838, at the ensuing Eisteddfod, she won a prize for the best arrangement of any Welsh air for four voices^[1]

Folk Song Society, and one of the earliest collectors of Celtic folk songs, in a scathing attack on the folklorists of the day, claimed that during the period 1800 to 1850, in Wales, as in the rest of Britain, ‘a mass of "traditional" and so-called "Druidical" songs was published which does not bear critical investigation.’ She claimed, however, that Maria Jane Williams was one of only two people in Britain at this time who were the exception to this rule.^[4] Maria Jane Williams claimed that: ‘The songs were given as...obtained,...in their wild and original state; no embellishments of the melody have been attempted, and the accompanying words are those sung to the airs.’^[5]