The Spirit of the Mountains
Preface
This story was originally written as part of the Millennium celebrations in Beddgelert in 2000. It was read onstage at the main event, entitled ‘The Spirit of the Mountains’ – hence the title.
It has been rewritten and updated as part of the commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of the 1817 Beddgelert Revival.
My main character – and his friends and family – are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The other characters named are real, and the historical events described did happen, although I have elaborated on the detail. John Elias speaking in Tremadog was a key part of the story as I was originally told it – and does appear quite early in the written accounts of the Revival – but there is no evidence from the records of the chapel in Tremadog that he preached there in August of 1817.
Though largely forgotten, the Beddgelert Revival was a powerful spiritual event that had a significant practical, and wide-ranging, impact on communities across North and Mid-Wales.
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to Eryl Davies’s book ‘The Beddgelert Revival’ and to Michael Marcel’s website ‘UK Wells’ for much of the background information that I used, but my main thanks must go to Hannah Retallick, who has encouraged me to write and has taught me a lot about the techniques of creative writing. She has also freely given of her time to edit my manuscript into the form you see today. Thank you Hannah.
Copyright © 2017 Alan Lorrimer-Riley All rights reserved
Go to Chapter 1 >>>