Blogs

Reproduced from Elizabeth Chadwick's blog 'Living The History' by kind permission of the author.

"While preparing a couple of other blog posts, I thought I'd break off to mention Garth Celyn . 'Who'? or 'What'? you might justifiably ask. Like me, you may have come across it in Sharon Kay Penman's novels Here Be Dragons and The Reckoning, or Edith Pargeter's Brothers of Gwynedd novels, but it probably won't have registered beyond the moment of reading."

"Even for me, when it cropped up again via a couple of Facebook acquaintances, I am ashamed to say that at first it passed me by. At one point I was even under the mistaken impression that it was a person! My excuse for this is my very busy schedule and I hang my head and apologise. Belatedly I came to realise that Garth Celyn is perhaps the most important historical sites in Wales and the place where Llewelyn Fawr (Llewelyn the Great) built his royal palace, overlooking the Menai Strait. That palace still stands today and is in the custody of the Gibson family who bought it all unknowing as a chicken farm in 1988."

"Here are some urls to some excellent articles about Garth Celyn and it would be mad for me to spend a couple of hours typing out the contents when readers can go to them with a single click, so here are some web pages that you might find very interesting. I know I did once I'd been shaken awake! The other matter to note is that Garth Celyn could so easily have been lost to developers in the 1990's and now there is a campaign to preserve this unique and wonderful site for posterity. Please do join if you feel it's appropriate."

First impression, a Wizard of Wales, a storyteller with a subtle pen for a wand, 'White Ravens' is a must read. Owen Sheers has a rare talent. Like the Florida gator, he is both ancient and today.

The Second Branch of the Mabinogion contains the story of Brnwen, Daughter of Llyr. Sheers requested this tale because of its impact upon his own life. If you have not read The Mabinogion, I urge you to read this novella first. It will deepen your appreciation and widen your view of the art and skill of the Bards of old, as well as Owen Sheers.

The author begins by drawing the reader into a modern day Welsh tale of tragedy and high adventure involving a family who raise sheep. Rhian is watching the sunrise as it turns the Thames gold. On a bench by the Tower of London, she recalls her life, at age six her father abandons the family. Ten years later her mother dies leaving her to run the household with Dewi and Sion her brothers to do the sheep farming. The third tragedy comes about six years later. Due to a Foot and Mouth breakout, the sheep are shot.

Dewi and Sion get involved in sheep napping (pun intended), steeling a hundred head at a time and butchering them while on the way to London to sell on the black market. All goes well until the driver comes down sick.

This book should become a N.Y. Times bestseller, Seren publishing house of Wales and author Owen Sheers gets a big thumbs up. Seren publishers commissioned ten Welsh writers to do some retelling of the national treasure 'The Mabinogion'. Theme: keep these old tales at the heart of a new story.

The tale of Rhian and her brothers is complex and compelling. However, when she meets an old man with a cane on the park bench he tells her another tale. This is a tale about a WWII Irish soldier named Matthew OConnell. Wounded in Italy Matthew is given an assignment to go to a remote farm in Wales to pick up six raven chicks. The mission is Top Secret as ordered by Prime Minister Churchill. While waiting for the chicks to mature for traveling Matthew falls in love with Brnwen, sister of the farmer Ben. A whirlwind affair ending with a wedding two weeks later, a returning brother Evan from the war casts a black cloud on the couple that night.

After returning the chicks to London Matthew and his bride leave for Ireland and his farm home on the coast below Dublin. Farm life is terrible for both as Matthews family hate the British and his Welsh wife. Matthew turns sullen and Brnwen sends a message to Ben about how terrible life is. Ben and Evan show up one night to rescue Brnwen. Evan shoots Matthew and knocks their two year old son into the fire.

Later Matthew recovers from the shot, saved by his pocket watch. By the time he contacts Ben in Wales Brnwen has died of a broken heart.

But with a stroke of genius, Sheers redeems both the young woman and the old man in a surprise ending. In addition to these tales, Seren includes a synopsis of the original tale from The Mabinogion. Also an afterword by the author at the back of the book is inspiring.

Review by Bill Tillman

The NS&I Album of the Year is voted for by the public, to vote for Only Men Aloud go to www.classicalbrits.co.uk/voting Voting closes at midnight tomorrow ( Friday 23rd April 2010 )

North Shields-born and bred Tony Bianchi is of Italian descent but learnt Welsh so well that he took the major Fiction prize in Welsh, the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize, in 2007, as well as being nominated twice over for the Welsh Book of the Year for his novels in the language. He also taught himself the strict poetic metres and was the 2007 judge for Welsh entries of the Ireland-based International Poetry Competition, File Filochta, which he himself won in 2004. The son of a policeman, he spent most of his career as Literature Director at the Arts Council of Wales. Bumping , published in May 2010, is Bianchis first novel in English.

The first two of Bianchis Welsh novels explore with great sensitivity the compromises and realignments experienced by old people needing care and their families. Inspired by his fathers memories of his Merchant Navy days in wartime America, Bumping also takes age as a major theme in his portrayal of narrator eighty-six year-old Tom, struggling to adapt to life in a care home and the way his memories and thought trails are about quarter of an hour out of synch with everybody elses (indeed, John Williams, author of Cardiff Dead and Malcolm X, praises Bumping for this quality of slippage, A wise and tender portrait of ordinary lives slipping slowly out of kilter with the brave new world around them.) Tom is only one of three main narrators, however, making this a novel with truly wide readership appeal across the generations, as well as one of distinctive contemporary colloquial Tyneside voices.

Bumping interweaves three stories: each presents a character whose obsessions and attachments become magnified through chance encounters, leading to unforeseen and ultimately catastrophic results. The bumping of the title conveys something of these random processes, as well as one characters passion for recreational lock-picking. The stories are told in a number of voices: middle-aged way leave officer Frank; teenagers Nicky and Barry, and the heart-breakingly confused and ever-optimistic elderly Tom. The themes include relationships with home and place, male preoccupation with mechanisms and systems, moral evasion, and the tyranny of random events. Bumping is also a novel about youth and old age, delusion, lock picking and Californian ladybirds.

The author explains the meaning of the title and the impact of Tyneside on his writing,

People bump into each other as simple as that. The novel turns around a number of chance events. All of the characters believe that order, even contentment, are just an arm's-reach away. If only they can get over the next hurdle, explain themselves a little better, show that they are worthy of love then all will be well. But the pattern of their lives is much more random than they can ever allow.

'Bumping' also means 'lock-picking'. You need to read Barry's story to find out why this is significant. This is what he does, what he can do, it is his own, personal attempt at controlling a little bit of the world.

Among the books that have influenced me is Ciaran Carson's The Star Factory. I'd love to do for Tyneside what Carson did for Belfast in that book, and perhaps I'll work up to it. It needs doing. But it needs to be elliptical, full of the unexpected, the awkward, the plainly barmy!

Tony Bianchi is currently a freelance writer and translator, living in Cardiff.

Look inside and order 'Bumping' HERE. ( Available May 6th )

Bronn Journey is a Washington based harpist of Welsh heritage who has a great reputation in the Celtic/Folk music scene in the Pacific Northwest.

Bronn and his wife Katherine will be perfomring at the Thursday night Folk Concert at the North American Festival of Wales in Portland, Oregon on September 2, 2010.

Q1 - What part of the United States are you from, and what is your relationship to Wales?

A1 - I was born in Seattle. My grandparents are from North Wales. My grandmother is from Anglesey and my grandfather is from Penryndydreath (near Beddgelert). My grandfather was the music director for the first Gymanfu in Beavercreek, OR at the Bryn Sion church.

Q2 - How important is your Welsh heritage to you and were you exposed to Welsh culture when you were growing up?

A2 - My Welsh heritage is very important as is everyone's heritage. Our ancestors are the building blocks and stepping stones of what makes us who we are today. I am very grateful to the Seattle Welsh Women's Club for giving me an early opportunity to play my harp for an audience when I was young

Q3 - At what age did you start playing the harp and what initially drew you to the instrument?

A3 - I began playing the harp when I was 12. The harp is the Welsh national instrument. My mom wanted me to give the harp a try since she is closely aware of her Welsh ancestry. The Seattle Public Schools had a harp program where students were taught in group lessons. The readily accessibility to the harp was offered so I was enrolled. At the time when I was 12 I was not aware of the privilege that was offered in the public school setting.

Q4 - How would you describe your style of music to those who are unfamiliar with your work?

A4 - I did not take the traditional harpists path of performing classical music. During my high school years, instead of flipping hamburgers for a job, I began to play my harp as background music in fine restaurants and hotels in the Seattle area. That experience lead me to playing popular music. The harpist that everyone knows is Harpo Marx. I play more like Harpo than I do a symphony harpist.

Q5 You have performed in a number of notable venues from Florida to Washington and Maine to California which ones particularly stick out as your favorites?

A5 - It is very difficult to pick a highlight where we have performed. For the answer to this question in this case, I must say a highlight was playing in upstate New York for Jay Williams. He is a delightful man with a delightful family. He is the pastor in a small church in upstate New York in Augusta. Jay took us on a tour to Remsen New York, not far from where we presented our program. Remsen is where my grandmother first lived after she arrived from Wales with her family. If a someone who is aware of their Welsh ancestry and it is important to them, Remsen is a "pilgrimage" that such a person should make. For me, the performing is not the big part. It's the people that we meet that is the important part.

Q6 - How often do you get back to Wales and what is the first thing you try to do when you get there?

A6 - We don't have an opportunity to go to Wales often although the door is open as my mom's cousins have invited us . We hope to go again now that the our son's are out on their own. We can go without feeling guilty about it! My highlight of Wales was taking my mom their for her 80th birthday to see the place where her father was born. Her father was born on a large farm that is located on a hill overlooking Caernarfon Bay. My mother remembers the many stories that her father told of sheering sheep. On the day we drove up the long driveway to the 16th century stone farmhouse, workers were in the barn sheering sheep. It was a special moment in all of our lives to be generationaly connected to the land.

Q7 - Wales, with its incredibly small size and population, seems to produce a remarkable amount of singing and acting talent. Do you have a pet theory as to why this is?

A7 - Music is in the DNA! The land is beautiful in an artistic way. It would be acceptable to indiscriminately take a photo of any place in Wales, have it framed, hang it on a wall and have it considered as a work of art. It makes sense to me that artistic land would be filled with artistic people! The Welsh revival was very influential with the beautiful singing. The greatest work of art is centered around man's belief in God. Consider the great painters and their subjects that they chose. Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, Leonardo da Vinci and his painting of "The Virgin and Child with St Anne" and thousands of other paintings drawing inspiration from God. God gives us a melody. Some He gives the ability to paint, to the Welsh He gave the gift of music.

Q8 - What are your dreams and ambitions for the future?

A8 - My dreams for the future is to "pass the torch." Carry the torch while we can and to teach others to carry it by encouraging them. We are built on the work that others have done who have gone on before us. I am aware that I am laying a foundation for others. I hope to lead a life that the strong foundations are kept in tact. And of course, I would like the chance to play my harp in Wales.

Q9 - What do you think is the best way for Wales to go about raising its profile abroad?

A9 - The best way for Wales to raise it's profile is for the citizens to be a good example. Being a small business person, it's a question I ask of myself often. I am never going to be a giant in the music field. After all, it' the harp we're talking about. There is a big difference between having a big profile and having a great profile. Through extensive marketing, one could become big. Unfortunately, that's how we elect politicians in this country by marketing. Leading by example is how we become and remain great. That doesn't always lead to fame but it always leads to a good foundation by those coming after us.

Q10 - Do you have any messages for our readers?

A10 - A message for the readers is to keep up the music. Keep on singing. Do a good job at what you are doing. I like to say, "Keep HARPIN" on it!"

For more information and tour dates for Bronn Journey, please visit: www.bronnjourney.com