ABSTRACT
This chapter is dedicated to Mary, Tom, Lynd and Nansi with gratitude for the special warmth of a Welsh family. It explores on the significance of the work of Edward Jones, author of the Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards and seek to place the work in its musical, political, social and cultural context. The chapter also examines how Jones's work, with its complex weave of interlocking objectives, also sought to replace the stereotype of the Welsh as a primitive, impoverished and isolated people, with the image of an ancient, civilised, loyal and musical nation. In the capital's musical life Jones made the most the new popularity of the harp as a fashionable instrument and thrived in polite society and royal circles where music from the British margins was regarded as 'evocative but not uncomfortably foreign'. The Relicks established Jones as a major figure in Georgian musical life.
