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Traws-Olwg - Trawsfynydd a'r Ardal Fel y Bu is full of impressive photographs telling the dramatic story of Trawsfynydd. The memorable book was produced by the photographer Keith O’Brien and the community company Traws-Newid which was founded in 1998 with the aim of improving the economy, environment and social aspects of the area.
From opening the railway between Bala and Blaenau Ffestiniog to establishing a military training camp on the outskirts of the village, building a dam to create Trawsfynydd Lake and building the nuclear power station - the history of Trawsfynydd area is certainly interesting.
The book is published to commemorate the centenary of the death of Hedd Wyn and the Eisteddfod of the Black Chair in the summer of 2017 and contains a foreword by the writer Dewi Prysor who’s from the area himself.
‘Many volumes have already been published about Hedd Wyn this year, but we hope with this volume to show another side to Traws, her history, culture and industry from the beginning of the last century – something that will open the eyes of the reader to this close community that has seen remarkable changes to her landscape and society over the past years’ explained Keith O’Brien.
‘One of the most interesting stories that I came across was the history of the balloon that broke free from its moorings at the Camp and flew in the direction of Bala – and the people of Llŷn thought the Germans were attacking!’ said Keith.
Cyfeillion Yr Ysgwrn – the home of Hedd Wyn, have organised a number of events to remember Hedd Wyn’s death in 2017, and Traws-Newid agreed to publish the book as a contribution to support them.
‘Every picture tells a story, and we are all part of that story’ added Dewi Prysor.
Born in Trawsfynydd, mae Keith o’Brien is a Community and Sustainability Officer at Snowdonia National Park Authority and is the chair of Traws-Newid. He is married with two daughters.
The book will be launched at 7pm at the village hall in Trawsfynydd on Friday 21 st of July.
Traws-Olwg - Trawsfynydd a'r Ardal Fel y Bu (£9.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.
September 1977. Elvis was dead and it was time to go back to school. I had done well in my “O” levels but I was in the grip of the music and attitude of punk rock and the possibility of not conforming to the expectations of the authority figures that seemed to increasingly surround me.
I lived in the village of Llechryd, on the banks of the Teifi River in West Wales, a collection of two chapels, a church, a public house, a hotel, a post office, a primary school, a shop, and expanding local authority housing where my family home was located. I spent much of my teenage years in the company of my near neighbour and best friend, Geraint Evans-Williams. He was a year younger than me, the son of a minister of religion from North Wales. Rugby, fishing, weekend discos in former mansions, the radio and limited television were the only distractions on offer now that we had rejected God.
From his bedroom, we plotted our own counter-culture. We formed a casual musical unit, Edward H. Böring, the umlaut chosen for effect, the name chosen as a satire on the pop group Edward H. Dafis who represented the straitjacketed and utterly tedious modern Welsh entertainment. Geraint’s musical hero was Elvis Presley especially his early work while I was fan of The Adverts, The Jam and The Stranglers. We wrote hundreds of short, pithy and irreverent songs, powered by acoustic guitars and twigs being struck against used Fairy Liquid bottles. As we were bilingual, we wrote in both languages, and like many young people in that situation, experienced a kind of dual identity. Our longest track, and the easiest to compose, was the psychobilly Gregorian chant Aberfan, an endless, lugubrious intoning of those three syllables, in essence an almost non-lingual sonic elegy to fallen children.
Though nearly all of what we crafted was a private, childish self-indulgence, we did have a moment or two of ambition and self awareness, a guess that our raw anti-music, our anti-talent, could be exposed to an audience. We filled a C90 cassette with our efforts and sent it to Huw Eurig, a member of the then popular group Y Trwynau Coch ( The Red Noses). We didn’t give our real names-Geraint became Dai Marw ( Dave Dead) and I became Capten Duw (Captain God or God’s Captain) and it is possible that we did not even include our address. To support this submission, we pretended that we were a five member group by using two cassette players to make it sound like that number of bad musicians, embracing the do it yourself ethos of the punk movement. I can remember only one pseudonym of the other three imaginary fellow travellers-Cleif Cleifion (Clive Patients).
We discovered in the Welsh language newspaper Y Cymro that our low tech and anonymous effort had caused some interest in the conventional world of our country’s emerging popular music. As a result, we came out of the shadows for a short time to make our only contribution to this particular genre.
We were amazed to be invited to record a session for the BBC Radio Cymru show Sosban and were summoned to the Llandaff studio in Cardiff. Geraint’s father Arthur drove us on a grey February late morning in 1980 the twenty seven miles to the nearest railway station in Carmarthen.
Eurof Williams, the radio producer, was bemused and fairly patient in the 60 minutes or so allocated to us. As soon as he heard us, he barred Geraint’s guitar as he felt its steel strings produced too strident a sound. Luckily, my Spanish guitar was acceptable to him though I couldn’t play it. We managed to record two tunes but Eurof thought that one of them was unsuitable for BBC listeners. This was “Mistar Urdd” which was an attack on the mascot of the Welsh League of Youth or Urdd Gobaith Cymru, and the idea of marshalling young people in general. The chorus of this reviled, nihilistic, latter day nursery rhyme was simple and direct-”Cachgi Mistar Urdd”. Cachgi means “coward”. Unforgettable but that’s all I can recall at this distance.
The one surviving track, Hen Wlad Fy Datcu (Land of My Grandfather), was an assassination of both the national anthem and the rules of mutation. The premise of the lyric was that, never mind our fathers, our country and its culture were still mired in the age of our grandfathers. A rambling interview accompanied our cacophony.
Despite the censorship, the truncated session was actually broadcast the following Saturday morning. Richard Rees, the presenter, was a good sport, describing us as the “chwyldroadol” (revolutionary) Edward H. Böring! I cringed as I listened, both glad and mad that no one in my home was listening with me.
We did not capitalise on our small success. My great friend and former fellow pupil David Edwards of the truly pioneering Cardigan rock group, Datblygu, once told me that he had been inspired to start his music career by our example. Geraint and I went our separate ways, he to Charleville-Mézières in France in the footsteps of another of his heroes, Arthur Rimbaud, me to a Youth Opportunities Programme scheme at the local library. I consider my collaboration with him as a kind of apprenticeship, the beginnings of a need to conjure up some kind of literature, of not allowing the weight of having to earn a living erase all creative thoughts from my mind.
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Flame in the Mountains draws together Professor H. A. Hodges’ published work on Williams Pantycelyn, Ann Griffiths and the Welsh hymn, together with his notes on Ann’s hymns and letters, which are published here for the very first time. Placing these hymn-writers in both a Welsh and an international context, the volume will not only be an invaluable introduction to William Williams and Ann Griffiths for those unfamiliar with their work, but will also provide valuable new insights and will be an essential tool for anyone wishing to study their work further.
Also included is Hodges’ English translations of Ann Griffiths’ hymns and letters and his translation of the celebrated lecture on her by the prominent Welsh literary critic, Saunders Lewis, which enthralled the audience when he delivered it at the National Eisteddfod of Wales in 1965.
A. Hodges (1905–76), for many years Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, learned Welsh in order to study Welsh hymnody. He was described by his fellow-student of Welsh spirituality, Canon A. M. Allchin, as ‘one of the most distinguished lay theologians that the Church of England has known in the twentieth century’.
A. Hodges once described himself as a ‘fortunate foreigner’ who, in exploring Welsh literature, had found himself in a ‘new world’; and he became an enthusiastic ambassador for the riches of Welsh Christian literature in general and for Williams Pantycelyn and Ann Griffiths in particular. He was keen to promote them internationally and to place Welsh spirituality in an international context, and he succeeded in doing so sensitively, knowledgeably and perceptively.
According to H. A. Hodges, Ann Griffiths had a tremendous ‘spiritual vision of a distinctive quality’ and he could say of William Williams that through his hymns, ‘with their rich content of experience and their outstanding lyrical beauty, he has cast a spell over the mind of Welsh-speaking Wales which endures to this day’.
‘The hymn is one of the great highlights of Welsh literature, and the two most outstanding of all Welsh hymn-writers, William Williams (1717–91) of Pantycelyn and Ann Griffiths (1776–1805), are not only giants of the literary, cultural and religious life of Wales, but are also figures of international status and significance. Professor Hodges’ writings are an important contribution to our understanding of these exceptional authors’, said Professor E. Wyn James, editor of Flame in the Mountains .
Professor E. Wyn James is a leading authority on the Welsh hymn. He has added to the volume his own edited version of Ann Griffiths’ remarkable hymns in the original Welsh, which are placed side by side with Hodges’ metrical translations. Raised in the industrial valleys of south Wales he was, until his retirement, a Professor in the School of Welsh at Cardiff University and co-Director of the Cardiff Centre for Welsh American Studies.
Flame in the Mountains: Williams Pantycelyn, Ann Griffiths and the Welsh Hymn by H. A. Hodges; edited by E. Wyn James (£12.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.
It was dark: as aphotic , as Cimmerian , as stygian , as tenebrous as something very, very dark .
The dear, warm, little golden egg cast a tiny glow a few inches from its nest upon my palm. I clutched it high and peered into the inky dark, trying vainly to assess into what sort of hole I had fallen. Shadows flew up and onto a wall ahead of me. Stepping closer, I saw that strange shapes had been dug into the stone. A moment's study and I knew that a frieze of some sort stretched before me, along the wall into the gloom. Holding my light source as close as I might, I peered at the carvings and followed them into the dark, seeking their meaning.
The shapes nearest me were crude, blocky and rough hewn. Vaguely human figures clustered within a roundish conveyance upon what looked to be a rough sea as frightful creatures rose out of the sharp tips of the waves to menace them. It seemed it was a long journey until the travelers came upon land and left their boats before a mighty forest. I held the egg higher and crept along the wall, searching the carvings under its comforting luminescence. The voyagers entered the wood and were met there by other people, into whose rudimentary society they were welcomed, their lives represented in tiresome scenes of primitive domestic stereotype, generation after generation after generation until I almost fell asleep. Suddenly, the carvings changed: an invading force was represented. Now, the domestic scenes were replaced by visions of hurried and desperate flight before ominous and foreign figures and, oh, the sorrowful tale they told! The brave little figures fled and suffered such privation, plague and all manner of pestilence that I nearly wept to see it. As I reached the final panel, I saw that their journey had ended, the survivors lay together with all their pitiful belongings, as though dead and laid out for a primitive burial, and I knew that this pathetic scene had been their end and I did weep!
Unfair, unkind, unfeeling fates! Were these not men, just as I? Did not their blood flow and their hearts beat, just as mine? What god could look upon such a scene in indifference, permitting, indeed perhaps omnisciently orchestrating, such injustice and not intercede? How could I or any other mortal man trust, or even continue to believe, in such a being?
I leant my head against the cool surface of the panel, to close my eyes against the weight of feeling and, as I did so, the panel swung inward!
I stumbled down the creaking wooden steps in the gloom, wholly fixated upon and making my way toward a tiny, welcome spot of light in the darkness, a torch far below me. Upward and behind, I heard nothing from the Ty Bach.
I reached the bottom and found myself on a frighteningly narrow dirt trail, which ran alongside an underground canal down the stone-topped tunnel into the black unknown on either side of me. My blood ran cold: the boat, there was no boat to carry me out of this place! Stepping down on to the path, I snatched the only torch next to the stair and began to move to my right, down the current, in the hope that the gondola which I had previously been assured would always be here had just floated a little away.
I believe I had gone two turns down the path along that darksome canal, when the sounds of violence erupted behind me. The creatures had found my trail! Rashly, I tossed my torch into the canal as they would be certain to find me by its light, only afterward realizing that I now had no light to find my way down the tunnel by! Momentarily panicked and short of breath, I flailed in the dark until my fingers brushed the cold and unforgiving stone of the wall. Grateful, I realized I could find my way forward by keeping my hands on the wall. I began to make my way carefully along it and down the path, as quickly as I could.
The noises behind me abated somewhat but did not disappear and after some time, I realized they must be following me! Resolute, I continued on my way for what seemed like many hours. My feet had begun to ache. A small stone had worked its way into my shoe and under my heel and the pain was excruciating but I dared not take my hands from the wall to remove it. I felt I might lose my way and fall into the dark and frozen waters of the canal or, alternatively, lose direction and make my way backward toward my pursuers! The pain of my heel, however, was as nothing to the pain of my hands upon the cold wall. As I went along, frigidly cold dew upon the stone coated my fingers and ran down my arms into my sleeves. I occasionally brushed what felt like living creatures which scuttled out from under my touch. At one point, I came along some strange, white moss, which began to glow with a cold light like the moon when I touched it. Amazed but joyous, I gathered handfuls of it and stumbled down the path with it lighting my way. I was saddened near to madness when it quickly faded, possibly I had killed it when I pulled it away from the walls into my hands. It may have been the unnatural warmth of my body in that frozen place. I was reduced to bringing my hands back to the unforgiving cold and punishing texture of the stone to find my way.
Hunger overcame me. I stumbled on. I shivered with the unrelenting cold. I stumbled on. I became convinced that I would die in this lightless hell, that no one would find my bones, that the world would never know my fate and forever wonder. Visions of a hot, fresh, chicken vindaloo danced through my head and I drooled helplessly. I was exhausted, there was no knowing how long I had gone sleeplessly down the tunnel but I did not dare to stop and sleep in this place, no! The noises behind me were diminished, at times completely gone, only to come again, faintly and unpredictably.
I stumbled on. My hands brushed something unexpected: a warm, smooth surface in the wall, not stone! Intrigued, I felt at it gingerly, frantically, to find an ovoid embedded in the wall, egg shaped and most certainly not stone. Without knowing why, I scrabbled at it frantically and then, suddenly the wall gave forth before me and I fell through into open space, arms and legs pinwheeling desperately in the air! I fetched up suddenly, slamming spread-eagled into the ground without warning, all the wind knocked from my lungs and my heart thudding in terror like a runaway ewe! I lay stunned, and gradually perceived a light. In my hand I held the object that I had found in the wall. It was an egg. An egg carved of wood. Some golden wood, pine perhaps, so cunningly fashioned that I could feel no grain upon its surface. The egg glowed. It glowed with a soft, warm and golden light that surrounded me and gave me hope. I held it and sat laughing with joy and so it was some time before I lifted my head to look at my surroundings.
It was with a very, very heavy heart that I embarked upon the stair to my study. Upon the empty plane of my desk I most regretfully laid my account statements, my cheque register, a veritable mountain of receipts and vouchers of one kind or another. I lit a candle and settled down to work by its fitful and inconsequential flame.
Oh, Capricious Fate! What evil you do such as I! How can it be that I must stop all creation to fiddle with such low matters as Tedious Finance! This is no fit occupation for a gentleman, certainly not for one of my caliber. How the world suffers for it, how Mankind must suffer at my lack of fit industry. It is not to be borne! I collect my pipe and faggots and fire up the bowl.
A moment of quiet reflection and a comfortable smoke well restored my humor. I set down my pipe, nestled against the cork knocker (quite useless for my purposes) and prepared to set to with a will to conquer my accounts in short order.
There came a knocking at the door.
I froze. When I had entered the room, there was no one else in the house. There could be no knocking at my study door. I had not even a cat for company and cats do not have knuckles sufficient to knock there.
The knocking came again, louder.
Incensed, I thundered, "Who is there?!"
Suddenly, there was a horrific and huge cacophony, as though the house itself were being torn in half, a railroad steam engine run down the hall outside the room, and the door and the wall housing it exploded inward! I dived under the heavy wooden desk, a monumental behemoth carved from a single branch of baobab , as a patter of plaster and patina painted the very chair where I had just been sitting. Through the dust and shrapnel raining down, I saw several persons entering the room through the hole they must have just made, legs clad in outrageously baggy, purple trousers topping intricately embroidered felt boots. Foreign chatter filled the air like a blastwave of boiling brussel sprouts , cheese sauce or no cheese sauce: I rolled out from under my cover, quick as a crocodile, to snatch my saber up from its place in the umbrella stand and face my enemies!
To my surprise, they were not human! A grey, leathery, flat visage met my eyes, mere nostril slits and a slash of a mouth, rimmed with pointed teeth and a flickering tongue like a prostitute from Pillgwenlly. Together we froze a moment in shock. I flicked the point of my blade out at them and they jumped back in terror, allowing me a moment to swiftly turn and race toward the jalousie doors to the small balcony over the street. I immediately heard pursuit begin and exerted myself with purpose, putting down my head and bringing up my arms and running straight through the glass to leap to the rail of my tiny mirador and sail freely into the air and down to the street, where I landed lightly and sprinted down the road toward the waterfront. I heard their despairing cries behind me, then a mechanical roar and looked over my shoulder to see my attackers pursuing me in some sort of sleek airship! Frustrated, I cursed in polite silence and rifled quickly through my familiar knowledge of the streets before me. Where? Where could I go? Feeling the hot breath of fate hard in my ear, I raced around a corner suddenly, my pursuers overshooting and unable to make the turn in their curious and ungainly confection. Far down the street lay a glitter of golden sun on the water, the saltless tang of the river mud rose to my nostrils! I saw a familiar green sign, indistinguishable, but which I knew to represent a drunken sailor surrounded by scantily clad women of soiled repute. I put on a burst of speed and gave it everything I had as the airship roared over the roofs behind me and now kept pace!
I reached my sanctuary and thrust the door open before me, falling into inner gloom. Wooden tables and chairs strewn about the room, a disheartened fiddler barely plucked at his instrument, figures lurched about indistinctly before the bar. Like candles in the dark, bright and feminine faces registered my presence and swayed smiling near, then recognized me and fell in disappointment, to turn away to the bar. The bartender stepped in front of me, heavy dark face full of questions and concern. "Umuh?" he queried.
"I am sorry beyond explanation to bring this on you, my good friend, Jonty! I am being pursued by strange creatures who mean me violence and I must find some way to escape them, may I use the tunnels?"
Jonty, ever a good fellow, nodded vigorously and swept his heavy arm, as thick as a plank, to the small door at the back of the room. "Umuh!" he snapped.
"I must warn you, they may be dangerous! They are not of our world and I believe they mean us harm!"
Before I could go on, his massive brow beetled, his face darkened even further, now the color of a beet, and through gritted teeth he asserted firmly, "Umuh!" and shoved me toward the little green door which read " Ty Bach ."
Once inside, I twisted behind the apparatus there to push against the back wall and its ubiquitous painting of the view out of someone's kitchen window. The wood gave before me, turning on its mechanism to reveal a dark, stone mouth, the stench of the river and moss blown up through it. I forced myself through and into the black.
The summer of 1946, the first since the end of World War Two, was a chance to appreciate the benefits of peace alongside the work of rebuilding the battered nation. Swansea had suffered catastrophically at the hands of the Luftwaffe, especially in a three night blitz in February 1942 in which over half of its town centre was destroyed . It was a time to at last look forward to the future. However, the tranquility of the nearby village of Penllergaer was disturbed in that hopeful June by a sadistic crime that remains unsolved and remembered to this day.
On the cold and rainy 27th afternoon of that month, 12 year old Muriel Drinkwater began to walk the last mile of her journey home from where the school bus had left her off, singing as she went. At the railway bridge, she met 13 year old Hubert Hoyles who was going in the opposite direction as he had visited her parents’ remote farm, Tyle Du, to buy black market eggs and butter. It was a rough path that meandered in and out of woodland and her mother caught a glimpse of her as she emerged onto a lane about 400 yards away only to disappear into the trees. She put the kettle on but would never see her again. When her daughter did not return home, she and her husband went to the village to search for her, assisted by a policeman and a dozen men as glowworms sparkled in the gathering gloom and mounting panic of the twilight forest.
The next morning, PC David Lloyd George found the red glove in the undergrowth that led him to Muriel’s body, her eyes open and one hand raised in a final, pleading and defensive action. She had beaten about her head, raped, and shot twice in her chest. Two days later, the police discovered the murder weapon close to where it had been used, a 1911 Colt .45 pistol that was found to have been manufactured in 1942 and issued to US forces in Europe. It was distinctive in that it had modified perspex grips. American troops had been billeted in a local mansion during the war and the police theorised that one of them may have been the source of the firearm. Food remains in the vicinity of the gun were evidence that the killer had lain in wait for his victim.
Scotland Yard detectives were brought in to support the investigation which was not uncommon in those days. Hubert Hoyles recounted seeing someone in the woods the week before the attack who was:- "30 years of age. Thick fluffy hair, stern looking and appeared agitated, had a menace about him...a wickedness. He was smart looking, wearing a brown corduroy trousers and a light brown sports jacket". The police visited every house in a 150 square mile area and interviewed 20,000 men. More than 3,000 mourners attended the schoolgirl’s funeral. The numbers are large but so far have added up to nothing as far as identifying the killer is concerned.
Strategic bombing had created an air of fatalism and a relaxation of inhibitions among some who existed in targeted, rearranged cities. There was a glut of guns available to those who wanted to further their criminal careers, whatever their objectives, whatever their needs. In February, George Orwell’s essay “Decline of The English Murder” had appeared in which he bemoaned the scarcity of the “perfect murder” to read about in one’s News of The World i.e. one committed by a solicitor or dentist whose outward respectability masked his decision to enlist poison to conceal his adultery and illicit financial affairs. Homicide was changing.
The author Neil Milkins suggests that the murderer could have been Harold Jones who killed two young girls in sexually motivated acts in Abertillery in 1921. He had been found not guilty of the murder of Freda Burnell, aged 8, and had been given a hero’s welcome on his return from his acquittal. Fifteen days later, he murdered Florence Little, aged 11. He pleaded guilty to both murders, most probably to save his neck as his 16th birthday and the gallows were fast approaching. He was released from Wandsworth Prison in 1941.
A team of retired detectives led by Paul Bethell, a former Detective Chief Inspector with South Wales Police, was set up to re-examine unsolved murders and decided to consider this case despite it being well outside its period of interest. As a result, a DNA profile was obtained from semen on the victim’s mackintosh in 2008 and it is believed that this is the oldest case in the world in which such a profile has been secured. To date, there has been no match in the UK National DNA Database, or to members of the murderer’s family in that database, but a link was established to the killing of 11 year old Sheila Martin who was raped and strangled with her own hair ribbon in woodland near the Brands Hatch Motor Racing Circuit in Kent on 7 July 1946, less than a fortnight after the death at Penllergaer.
In 2010, a decision was made by the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Council on National Records and Archives to remove the Muriel Drinkwater files from public view until 2032, to prevent the murderer, if still alive, finding out what the police knew 64 years after his crimes had been committed.
The point blank execution of a girl by an unknown assassin with a powerful handgun in a secluded place long ago was an act of brutal excess that still resonates in our own age of murder, regrettably accustomed as we have become to regular news of predation on children.
Muriel’s family left the area and their isolated smallholding has become subsumed by a modern housing development. This coldest of cold cases maintains a troubled presence in the minds of the elder inhabitants of the village while the mute witness of Penllergaer Forest continues to keep its secrets.
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Bryn Seion Welsh Church - 82nd annual Gymanfa Ganu
The Welsh Society of Oregon held its 82nd annual Gymanfa Ganu at Bryn Seion Welsh church in Beavercreek on June 25th 2017. It was part of a wider Welsh celebration which included a lively Noson Lawen at the Lucky Labrador pub on Saturday night. The event was well attended with around 200 participants showing up for the afternoon and evening sessions.
Musical director Nerys Jones and organist Geneva Cook were joined by Harpist Bronn Journey in the afternoon, and The Picton Singers in the evening, for a lively and uplifting program of group singing and performances.
During the afternoon session Tad Davis outlined future plans for Welsh events in the Spring and Fall to supplement the already scheduled Portland Gymanfa Ganu and Christmas celebrations. The Society has also recently established the 'Gwaddol Group' which will seek to raise funds for "individuals conducting Welsh research, or support for development of music or art with a Welsh connection." ( for more details go here )
Noson Lawen - Portland 2017
The Welsh Society of Oregon’s annual Noson Lawen was hosted by the Welsh Society Festival Chorus who presented a handful of enchanting Welsh tunes. MCs Andrea Wild and Hugo Glanville led the crowd in pub singing and their band Three Pound Note also joined them on the stage for some Welsh, Cornish and English folk songs. Throughout the night there were contributions from the floor and one of the evenings highlights was a reading of Dylan Thomas's 'August Bank Holiday' given by Jonathan Nicholas.
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Bryn Seion Welsh Church, Beavercreek, Oregon
Bryn Seion (Mt Zion) was built in 1884, and is the last active Welsh church on the Pacific Coast. Visit the church website here: Bryn Seion Welsh Church
What Is A Gymanfa Ganu?
From the Welsh Society of Oregon website:- "Gymanfa Ganu (guh-mahn-vah GAH-nee) is a magnificent Welsh hymn-singing festival and more! Literally meaning “sing gathering,” it is a tradition of song and worship that has been practiced in Wales for centuries. The songs are sung in English and Welsh in four-part harmonies. Bryn Seion Welsh Church, Beavercreek, Oregon, has carried on the Gymanfa Ganu tradition since 1935. You don’t need to know Welsh to make a joyful noise, so please join us."..... Read More
The Welsh In The Northwest
Many Welsh moved into Oregon and Washington Territory in the 1880's. When train travel opened up the west. They found that land was cheap and abundant. Compared with the Great Plains, the land was much morelike that of Wales.
I rented a car from Enterprise. This seems to be my regular rental action for autos in the UK, unless it is a van. Usually, it ends up cheaper than other companies. I left downtown Cardiff. Then I left it again. I think I might have done it a third time as well. Somehow getting out of the area between the downtown near Brains Brewery and the Bay doesn’t instill any sense of direction for me. This happens every time.
45 minutes later I was finally heading in the correct direction – toward West Wales, and adventures with monastics, hippies, and poets. Destination 1: Saint Govan’s Chapel.
Saint Govan was an Irish Saint living in the 6 th Century – that wondrous Age of the Celtic Saints. Tradition says he was pursued by pirates, perhaps because he had once been a thief himself, and the cliff opened up to hide him. He remained in this spot on the sea in a cave in the cliff. Today you can visit Saint Govan’s and walk down the steep steps to see the chapel. You will want to become an ascetic monk yourself after seeing the location of Saint Govan’s Chapel. Check out my two-minute tour of the chapel.
After leaving Saint Govan’s, I was driving down the narrow lanes, and came across a weary couple hiking the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path. I gave them a short ride to their destination, and they invited me into the pub for a pint. Moral of the tale: pick up weary hikers. It’s worth a free pint.
From the saint’s cliff-side home, I found myself arriving that evening at one of the hippiest Hippy Festivals I’ve ever been to, and yes, that is saying a lot. “Unearthed in a Field” is hard to find, but after driving down single lane farm roads, and having to back up long distances for large tractors to pass, I arrived in a field somewhere inland from Saint David’s Cathedral near the end of Pembrokeshire. I listened to storytellers and reggae music, and ate vegan food and found all the expected things that come with hippy festivals in fields. I don’t think this is what Saint Govan found here in the late 6 th Century. I sat around the fire that night talking about as varied subjects as the theories of Russian Philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, the local communes in West Wales, and the space where spirituality meets talking to people we radically disagree with. Yes, this was surely a hippy event.
I slept at Unearthed in Field for the night, and in the morning headed out. I found myself drawn by the tourist signs pointing me to some Dylan Thomas thing. Soon I was at Laugharne Castle a couple hours before anything opened. The sky was miraculously blue, and the day prepared to become ridiculously warm. Shortly before opening time for the Boathouse, I wandered around the castle, up the hill, and through the town, where the path to the boathouse wound along the rising cliffs by the sea. I met a lady standing on the corner, and we talked. She was waiting for her fellow workers, who ran the Dylan Thomas Boathouse. She quickly became impressed with me, because I was an American who could speak Welsh. Strangely, those who know a little Welsh think I am fluent, and those who speak fluently have to put up with my baby-talk. When her work-mates arrived, I carried their bags of food and supplies along the path, and down the steep steps to the house. I ended up with a free tour, and free cold drinks for my simple help. So, now I had visited the spaces of an ascetic monk, a pile of hippies, and the last get away home of a brilliant drunken 20 th Century poet. Being a writer and poet myself, I found equal inspiration in all these spots. Wales is in all ways a land for poets and singers, and a place you can find whatever it is you are looking for.
By late morning I headed off for Cardiff to return the car. As usual, I got stuck in the Cardiff Bay to Brain’s Brewery loop, but this time my circuitous and repetitive route was stalled by a parade. It was the Cardiff World Naked Bike Ride Day, and a pig pile of naked people on bicycles gently rolled by between me and my destination. Now, it is true, that I previously mentioned that you would not get any “Naked Blond” pics. But, I have now trangressed those words. There isn’t really anything to see, but here you go: this is World Naked Bike Ride Day in Cardiff, which delayed my return of the rental car.
It is true that you really can see everything in Wales – literally everything. I went from a crazy Saint, to hippies, to the home of a great poet, to naked bike riders all in barely over 24 hours. Yes, “barely” over 24 hours. And to top it off, I did “barely” get the car back in time.
links:
Saint Govan’s Chapel - http://www.visitpembrokeshire.com/attractions-events/st-govans-chapel/
Unearthed in a Field - http://www.unearthedinafield.co.uk/
Dylan Thomas Boathouse site - http://www.dylanthomasboathouse.com/
Cardiff World Naked Bike Ride Day - https://www.facebook.com/groups/194410707262234/
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