John Ellis Caerwyn Williams, medievalist, teacher, Celticist, was one of those men for whom their scholarship was, in the most liberal sense, virtually a way of life, and it was appropriate that he should have remained actively engaged almost to the day of his death in Aberystwyth, on June 8th, 1999, in his eighty-eighth year.
Caerwyn Williams was respected internationally for his scholarly distinction, and also for his kindness and quiet good humour, his deep religious faith and innate ecumenism, and of course his love of Wales and its language and literature. But he also had a place in his affections for the Ireland he had come to know and value many years ago. He spent two years in Dublin at a pivotal time in his career, 1939-41, forming personal links with Irish scholars at University College and Trinity College, and clearly this experience left a lasting impression on his outlook and on his own academic agenda.
Many years ago, reflecting on how one comes to adopt a second patrie in addition to one's native land, he recalled that his first choice was Palestine, for in his childhood he knew its map and its history before all others, and the second was Italy because of his attachment to the Latin language; but since one cannot really love a country, its blemishes as well as its virtues, unless one has lived there during one's formative years, Ireland won out.
He was born in Gwauncaegurwen, a Welsh-speaking mining village in the west of the former Glamorganshire in 1912; his father was from Croeslon in Caernarvonshire, in the region of the north-Welsh slate-quarries. Like many of his fellow northerners at the time, he moved south in search of work. But he maintained his family ties with Caernarvonshire and eventually returned as an undergraduate to the University College of North Wales in Bangor where he graduated in Latin and Welsh in 1933 and 1934. As an MA student he took the first steps which led in time to his becoming a recognised authority on medieval religious literature, especially biblical apocrypha.
On his return from Dublin he joined the United Theological College in Aberystwyth, where he graduated with a BD in 1944. A more testing time was soon to follow, however, when it was discovered that he was suffering from tuberculosis and he had to spend several lengthy periods in hospital. His wife Gwen (nee Watkins), whom he had married in 1946 and who now survives him, played a crucial part in ensuring his return to health and to his academic career at Bangor, where he had been appointed a lecturer in Welsh in 1945. In 1953 he succeeded to the professorship, and in 1965 he moved to Aberystwyth to the newly created Chair of Irish. He was particularly attracted by the challenge posed by the remarkably rich but difficult body of verse composed by the Poets of the Princes from the 12th to the 14th century, and in the Centre at Aberystwyth he collaborated with its then director, Professor Geraint Gruffydd, in organising organising a small team of editors to produce a multi-volume edition of the entire corpus - a quite remarkable achievement.
He also published several important studies of this poetry, the most recent of them The Court Poet in Medieval Wales (1997) - all of them forming a natural sequence to his The Court Poet in Medieval Ireland (1972), the published form of his Rhys Lecture to the British Academy.
His dedicated reading encompassed a vast range of text and commentary in theology and biblical studies, the history of ideas, comparative literature and modern literary theory, as well as on virtually every aspect of Celtic language and culture: though best known outside Wales as a medievalist he was well versed in modern Irish, Breton and Scottish Gaelic literature, and it was an especial pleasure for him to welcome authors and poets from the other Celtic countries to Cardiff in 1969 for the Taliesin congress and to preside over their discussions.
During his stay in Ireland in his late twenties he came to know Connemara, met Mairtin O Cadhain there and fell under the spell of traditional storytelling. He often recalled with admiration the narrative skills and inexhaustible repertoire of Eamon a Burc of Carna, and this was evidently the starting point for his own exploration of the tradition which led in due course to his full-length study.
Y Storiwr Gwyddelig a'i Chwedlau (The Irish Storyteller and his Tales) (1972). It was followed a few years later by his handbook of Irish literary history, Traddodiad Llenyddol Iwerddon, written in collaboration with Mairin Ni Mhuiriosa; in due course this reappeared, in translation and somewhat augmented, as Traidisiun Liteartha na nGael (1979) and, in collaboration with Patrick K. Ford, The Irish Literary Tradition (1992).
Caerwyn Williams was a scholar of distinction, but he will be missed as much for his kindness and simple good nature as for his great scholarship. Nonetheless, it is gratifying to recall that his scholarship was accorded appropriate recognition here in Ireland in his own lifetime. In 1967 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the National University of Ireland and in 1990 the Royal Irish Academy elected him an honorary member.
John Ellis Caerwyn Williams: born 1912; died June, 1999