Davies, J. Glyn (John Glyn), 1870-1953

Person

Davies, J. Glyn (John Glyn), 1870-1953

John Glyn Davies (1870-1953), a Celtic scholar, was born in Liverpool, the son of John Davies, a tea merchant, and his wife Gwen, the daughter of John Jones (1796-1857) of Tal-y-sarn, Caernarfonshire, a celebrated Methodist preacher. He received his education at the Liverpool Institute, and worked for two sailing boat companies before being employed in 1899 as librarian of the Welsh Library of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, which was intended to form the nucleus of a national library of Wales. He left in 1907 for Liverpool University's Celtic Department, where he was head of department from 1920 until his retirement in 1936. His published works include collections of songs for children, Cerddi Huw Puw (1923), Cerddi Robin Goch (1935) and Cerddi Portinllaen (1936), many of which are based on sailors' songs he had heard during his youth, and a posthumous book of poems, Cerddi Edern (1955). He assembled the Tanycastell collection of papers, books and paintings relating to his ancestral Davies and Jones families, particularly John Jones of Tal-y-sarn (1796-1857), and manuscripts of Welsh poetry, including the Henblas manuscript and Gwallter Mechain manuscripts.