b'54380380 DAVID DAVIES (Dair Cantwr) - Welsh poet andlay-preacher transported to Van Diemens Land, 1844A leather-bound choirmasters notebook; each page with 4 lines of printed staves on which Davies (and perhaps another hand) have written the 3 and 4-part harmonies for hymns and other liturgical pieces performed by Welsh Mens choirs. Each piece is titled and the meter indicated and some appear to be his own compositions. The front cover bears the embossed name and date of presentation to DAVID DAVIES 1839; additional printed papers are loosely inserted at the front and back. 11 x 21cm.David Davies [c.1812 - 1874), also known as Dair Cantwr (David the Singer), was a Welsh poet and lay-preacher who was convicted and sentenced to 10 years transportation for his participation in the 377 Rebecca (or Tollgate) Riots around 1843. Davies was arrested at PAPERS EXPLANATORY OF THE CHARGESthe Plow and Harrow, a public house in Pum Heol, near Llanelli.BROUGHT AGAINST LIEUT. GEN. DARLING BYHe was placed in custody in Carmarthen Goal to await sentence.WILLIAM CHARLES WENTWORTH, ESQ At his trial on 22 December 1843 at Carmarthen Assizes under Published by The House of Commons, London, July 1830. the charge of demolishing the turnpike at Spudders Bridge, 60pp. Folio, in recent binding. An extremely fine fresh copy.Davies was found guilty and was sentenced to transportation British Parliamentary Paper HC586. Ferguson 1355. for 20 years. Davies was held at Carmarthen while awaiting Wentworth, an outspoken emancipist sought to impeachtransportation and it was during this period that he wrote Governor Darling, principally over the Sudds incident. Inthe poem now known as the Threnody of Dair Cantwr.this Parliamentary Paper the Colonial Secretary presentedOne of the verses of Threnody of Dair Cantwr, correspondence on the Wentworth-Darling affair buttranslated from the original Welsh:with the omission of a key document, Wentworths letterThough wounding were the wicked blowslaying out his case for impeachment. The report thereforeThe cruel world hath struck at mepresented all relevant correspondence whilst omitting theI have a strength they cannot breakcase for impeachment that formed the crux of the wholeMy human pride my dignityaffair. Parliamentary papers of this period are rare as it wasThey bound my hands with prison chainsnot until 1835 that such papers were available for publicAnd yet my soul they could not bindsale. The Davidson example sold for $1280 in 2006. Now far across the sundering sea$200300I drag my solely troubled mindMy fathers home, its tender careI know I shall not see again378 Ill rot for twenty searing yearsWHATELY, Richard Among corrupt unfeeling men Thoughts on Secondary Punishments, in a Letter to Earl Grey Farewell to you a hundredfold[B. Fellowes, London, 1832] 204pp, octavo, a little browning,Fair county, sweet untroubled Walesvery good in papered boards with material spine and paper label.Still I remember in my painFirst edition of an important critique of the transportation systemYour streams, your hills, your gentle valesby of the Archbishop of Dublin Richard Whately (1787-1863). You are the garden of the world$100200The Eden where all beauty liesMy heart breaks as with flaming swordThey drive me now from paradise.379 On 5 February 1844 he was moved to the Millbank Penitentiary The convict record of JOHN WILKINSON, a boyand remained there until 12 March when he was transported on of 15 transported for 7 years for stealing a pair of shoes. the London to Van Diemens Land. He landed on 10 July and The official record providing the sorry tale and details of thewas sent to work on Maria Island. After completing his work on years 1836 to 1842 during which period Wilkinson remainedthe Island, he was placed in the employment of various people, in the system. Following his trial at Leicester, where he wasbut was unable to stay out of trouble, receiving brief sentences for convicted, he was transported to Van Diemens Land aboardminor offences, such as insolence, drunkenness and using indecent Eden, arriving in December 1836 along with 280 other malelanguage. He received his ticket of leave in April 1854, and was convicts. The document records his many episodes of solitaryconditionally pardoned on 31 October of the same year. Although confinement, removal to Port Arthur, hard labour, being whipped,some claimed he returned to Wales, he seems to have remained and other punishments as a result of his various infractionsin Tasmania, and died there in an outhouse of the Ross Hotel in (neglect of duty, idleness, being absent from muster, disorderlyAugust 1874, from smoke inhalation after his pipe accidentally conduct, insolence, striking his overseer, using profaneset fire to grass, whilst Davies was asleep and intoxicated.language) [Transcript accompanies the original document]. $1,2001,500$500750 '