If one researches art in Wales, one will come across two sisters–a lot. If one researches music in Wales during World War I, one will come across them again. If one researches how soldiers adjusted to life back at home after the war . . . you get the idea. You’ll yet again end up reading about the Davies sisters, Margaret (called Daisy) and Gwendoline (Gwen).
So naturally, they have to be in my Welsh-set A Song Unheard.
Actually, they’re what inspired it. When I was doing my initial research for how the arts were put to use during WWI, I ran across part of their story, and it intrigued me. It inspired my entire plot.
You see, in the first weeks of the war, Germany invaded Belgium–a country who only existed because it had sworn to neutrality. To violate those terms wasn’t just a blow to the Belgians, it was a blow to civilization. No one could quite believe that the German leadership had so blatantly scorned an agreement made and signed. It wasn’t how gentlemen behaved–it wasn’t how war was waged.
The invasion of Belgium proved to Europe that Germany had no respect for the heretofore “civilized” way of doing things. It horrified the world when the troops marched in and began burning villages, beating priests, and killing innocent civilians. Refugees flooded into friendly nations like England.
And in Wales, these two sisters didn’t just wait for refugees to come to them. They sought them out. Within a few months of the invasion of Belgium, Daisy and Gwen had sent friends into that devastated country to recruit Belgium’s top musicians to come to Wales.
Musicians? you might say. Why??
The answer is two-fold. First, the Davieses were first and foremost always looking to better their “dear principality.” They loved Wales and wanted to better it. They wanted to bring culture to the area often deemed a bit too rural. But that wasn’t their only reasoning.
They also wanted to help. You see, everyone knew from the start that if Germany didn’t relinquish its hold on Belgium, it would soon spell utter disaster for the small nation. Their food supplies wouldn’t last beyond a few months. And with all trade cut off, its citizens would soon be starving. Aid was being organized within weeks of the invasion, much of it spearheaded by Americans (who were thus far otherwise staying as far from the war as possible).
Well, Gwen and Daisy wanted to help with the relief effort. So they put together a symphony orchestra of Belgian refugees and toured Wales, raising money for the Belgian Relief Fund.
This, of course, is where A Song Unheard was born. My hero is a violinist previously with the Brussels Conservatoire, now part of this orchestra touring Wales.
Gregynog
But even after organizing this, the sisters were by no means ready to sit back and say they’d done their duty. A few years later they moved to France, not far from the front, to run a cantina for the soldiers. And a few years after the war, they purchased and opened an estate called Gregynog, whose primary purpose was to rehabilitate soldiers returning from the war, to teach them art and crafts and music to help soothe the ragged edges wrought by violence.
These were sisters described by all who knew them as devout, faithful, focused always on the Lord–and on helping their fellow man. Today, the largest collection of art in Wales is on display because the sisters donated them to the university museum upon their deaths. Theirs is a legacy known far and wide in their dear principality.
Here’s hoping my fictionalized versions of them can do them justice!
What primary school student hasn’t been correctly at some point for saying “fastly”? I know I was…and I know I’ve done the correcting too. But last week when my son said something about this, my husband and I decided to look it up (because really, why isn’t that a word??).
Pretty interesting discovery too!
So the original meaning of fast, dating back to the 12th century, was “firmly, securely.” We still use this occasionally, though it’s old-fashioned. “It stuck fast” etc. Early on, fastly was then indeed a word and used in relation to this sticking definition. It didn’t go completely out of use until the 19th century.
So where did the notion of “quickly” come from? Well, that meaning has been around nearly as long as the original, and came about rather organically. Etymologists believe it’s because “to run hard” and “to run quickly” mean the same thing–and also perhaps because if you’re running “fixedly,” you’re keeping up with anyone in front of you.
Regardless of how it evolved, it’s certainly worth noting that fast was used both as an adjective and an adverb since the get-go, with that “fastly” fading from use a couple hundred years ago solely because the root word had been treated as both adj and adv for so long.
We are officially 13 days from the release of A Lady Unrivaled, the final book in the Ladies of the Manor Series. I’m so excited to share Ella’s story with the world! Most of you probably know how special this series is to me–how The Lost Heiress is rewrite of the very first novel I finished at age 13. Well, Ella’s story is very special to me too . . . because Ella is more like me than any other heroine when it comes to her heart. Her way of seeing the world.
And Russian ballerinas sent to England as spies. There’s that too. That made this book so much fun!
So last week this happened.
That would be the arrival of my author copies of A Lady Unrivaled. Always an exciting day (even if I have nowhere to put those three boxes!).
And this week–this week, we could start looking up the 10-day forecast for where we’ll be in England next week!!!! Still can’t believe that one’s actually happening. But it is. Next Thursday, I’ll be looking up at Stonehenge with my kids and husband.
I’ll get to celebrate A Lady Unrivaled‘s release day in England, after having been where Ella and Cayton would be (more or less). This is pretty awesome.
My to-do list though . . . that’s a wee bit intimidating, LOL. So I need to get back to it, if you’ll excuse me. Just had to share the joy of books arriving and soon releasing!
Well the votes were tallied, and the public spoke! The winner of the Song Unheard Contest is…
Finalist #3
Jessica Brand!
Congratulations, Jessica, and thank you so much for the gorgeous song for my heroine, Willa!
Thank you, everyone, for joining with me in this fun contest! I loved watching all the votes and views climb upward and to hear the chat about them on Facebook and Twitter!
I’m not sure when this thought hit me–but it was in the last month or so. One of those things that has niggled and wiggled around in my head and then burst into realization during a sermon in church one week.
I’d been wondering about blessings . . . and if we really know how to identify them.
Living as we do in a prosperous, rich country, we tend to think of things as blessings, don’t we? We’re blessed to have a nice house . . . a car . . . a paycheck. We’re blessed to have insurance . . . college savings accounts . . . and closets bursting with clothes. We’re blessed, we think, to have all we need.
But what if we’re not?
Let me be clear from the start–I’m not saying these things aren’t blessings, period, end of story. They could be. But I am saying this: I don’t think they are always blessings.
Why? Because a blessing shouldn’t ever get between us and God–and all too often, our possessions do. All too often we focus more on finding that new set of curtains or bookshelf or new car than we do on Him. All too often we give to others, offer our service or money, only after we’ve met our “needs.” But is that what the Lord instructs? Or are we to give Him our first fruits? Or our all?
Yet so many times we heard people say, “Thank you, Lord, for giving me ________ [insert possession here].”
This has made the thought wiggle and niggle with increasing frequency. Yes, I think God does help us get the things we need, absolutely. The things that will aid us in our walk with Him, the things that will help us help others. I do fully believe that it was a gift from God when our friends with a calling to hospitality found a great deal on a big house, which they frequently opened up to visitors and missionaries.
Yes, I think it’s a gift from God when the funds come in to buy a new laptop that allows a writer or blogger to continue their ministry with words.
Yes, I absolutely think it’s a gift from God to find a dependable car at a good price so we can get where He wants us to go.
But for every one of those clear blessings, how many murky ones have we seen? I can’t count them. And I certainly can’t judge them in anyone’s life but my own. But I think, in order to keep them straight, I need to give myself a new definition of blessing.
Blessings aren’t the things God gives us–
they’re whatever brings us closer to Him.
Does my house bring me closer to Him or get in the way? My car? My clothes? My bank account? Does air conditioning make me a better Christian? Does my full pantry?
Does heartache? Does loss? Does having to scrounge around for dollars enough to cover an expense? Does needing to lean on Him in hard times because my own strength isn’t enough?
Sheds a different light on things, doesn’t it? That sometimes, those things we thank Him for might not be the real blessings in our lives at all (though sometimes they certainly are). But the real blessings might be the hard parts. The valleys. The days of darkness. Because those are the things that make us curl up in the lap of our God and cling to Him as our Father.
There are always going to be things we need, things He gives us. Yes. Absolutely. But there are also so very many things that are just that–things. And we need to be careful about how we look on those–as what we ought to be striving to possess . . . or as mere objects that litter our lives.
Remembering always that the real gift, the most valuable is the eternal. Is Him and His salvation. That is the dearest, most precious, most expensive thing in this world–it cost Jesus His life! So if that is the best thing, the thing we ought to guard and yet share, what is the rest? Nothing.
Yet we offer people God freely–because it cost us nothing–and hoard our belongings. We’ve got it all backwards, my friends. And until we realize it . . . well, then I’m going to stick with my new epiphany. These things around me aren’t always a blessing. And that’s why sometimes God has to take them away from us.
That isn’t God removing His blessing. That’s God removing a curse we’d been clinging to.
The biggest blessing is something He’ll never take away, ever. Him.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.