Notes
Introduction
1. A distinguished literary biographer and critic, Cecil was at the time Goldsmiths’ Professor of English Literature at Oxford.
2. Keidrych Rhys had started his colourful and highly influential literary periodical Wales before the war, and the young Emyr Humphreys had been one of the early contributors. Others included Dylan Thomas, Glyn Jones and Vernon Watkins.
3. Kate Roberts (1891-1985) was one of the most impressive and imposing figures among the whole galaxy of talents responsible for the twentieth-century renaissance of Welsh-language literature. Emyr Humphreys scripted a series of programmes in English about her life and work that was televised on Channel Four UK in 1988. The script was simultaneously published in book form under the title: The Triple Net: A Portrait of the Writer Kate Roberts (Channel Four publications, 1988).
4. E. Tegla Davies (1880-1967) was a Wesleyan Methodist minister and prolific popular author, whose best novel Gwr Pen y Bryn (The Master of Pen y Bryn, 1923) has been translated into English.
5. John Gwilym Jones (1904-1988) was a fine Welsh-language dramatist, short-story writer, novelist and literary critic. His friendship with Emyr Humphreys was already of long standing in 1958. He had even been responsible for seeing Humphreys’s first novel, The Little Kingdom, through the press in 1946 when the author was engaged in post-war relief work in Italy.
The Text
6. “That’s not the way to do it.”
7. The reference is primarily to the Calvinistic Methodists. This church was affectionately known as “Yr Hen Gorff’ (“The Old Body”) because in the northern counties of Wales it was, by the end of the last century, the most enduringly powerful of the Nonconformist sects.
8. “By heavens, Nel.”
9. “Of course, you do.”
10. Inflammable, like a match.
11. “Hymn number two hundred and thirty-four.”
12. The two boys supposedly murdered in the Tower of London on the orders of their wicked uncle who became Richard III.
13. The Big Seat, where the deacons sit in Nonconformist chapels.
14. Middle shop.
15. “My lad.”
16. “By God.”
17. “Goodbye, boys”’
18. “Boys.”
19. The first two names bring together the spirit of British loyalism and the cautious sentiments of mainstream Welsh radicalism that are typical of Albie’s respectable working-class background. He is named after Queen Victoria’s lavishly lamented spouse, Prince Albert, and after Thomas Jones, Rhymney-born Secretary to the British Cabinet, from the premiership of Lloyd George to that of Baldwin, Jones was the orchestrator of the labour movement that established a workingman’s college at Harlech.
20. The “British Schools” were the nondenominational elementary schools of the first half of the nineteenth-century. After 1870 a state system of such schools was established, but until then Nonconformist Wales had had to tolerate the Church of England’s widespread control of elementary education. The gradual integration of Church Schools into the state system, after the Balfour Act of 1902, was at first fiercely resented and systematically opposed by Welsh Nonconformity. But by the time Michael and Iorwerth were attending their Church School in the late twenties, serious opposition had long since died away.
21. The Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889 ensured that Wales was covered by a network of “Intermediate” (later “County”) secondary schools. Entrance to such a school was by extremely competitive examination, and no educational provision was made by the state for those who failed.
22. “The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge.”
23. Llew the farm-hand.
24. In the last century no devout Welsh home was complete without pictures of “yr hoelion wyth” (literally “the big nails”) on its walls. These were the outstanding preachers of the particular denomination to which the family belonged.
25. In the third part of his Divine Comedy, Dante meets Beatrice who is his guide through Paradise. Volume Seven of the Children’s Encyclopaedia includes a photograph of a piece of sculpture showing Beatrice taking Dante by the hand and leading him upwards.
26. The University College of North Wales, Bangor.
27. O.M. Edwards (1858-1920) helped create an idealised picture of “y werin” (the cultivated Welsh “volk”) and became in turn the hero of Welsh-speaking Wales. He was the author/editor of several immensely popular periodicals and books that helped form a national consciousness in Wales by popularising Welsh history and literature. Following a period as tutor in History and Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, he was appointed Chief Inspector of Schools in Wales in 1907 and became a renowned educationalist. He is also remembered for his efforts to secure a modest place for Welsh and the study of Welsh history in the thoroughly anglocentric education system of his day.
28. Sir John Herbert Lewis (1858-1933) was born in Mostyn Quay, Flintshire and became the first chairman of Flintshire County Council. He was one of the founders of the Intermediate School system in Wales.
29. A brand of cheap, strong cigarettes, particularly popular with working people.
30. “White Star.”
31. The Missionary (1922-74) was the Calvinistic Methodist monthly that reported on the work of Welsh Methodist missionaries all over the world.
32. The Little Treasury (1862-1966) was the Calvinistic Methodist monthly for children and young people.
33. “The Goddess doesn’t tolerate any further questions on behalf of the dead.” (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XI, line 583)
34. “Where the god himself lies, his limbs loosened by lassitude.” (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XI, line 612) The goddess Juno sends her messenger Iris to the cave of the god of Sleep to persuade him to reveal the death at sea of Ceyx to his unwitting wife, Alcyone. Iris enters the dark, sound-proof lair: “The god of sleep, stretched on the coverlet, / Lies there, his figure languorous and long.” Lethe’s waters flow beneath the cave – and the words of this part of the poem flow through Michael’s unconscious mind as he listens to the girl singing.
35. “silly boy.”
36. In this chapter of the epistle, Paul compares the ministry of Christ to that of the high priests of the Jewish religion. He emphasises that Christ was indeed the chosen of God, as the priests had claimed to be. “And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.” It seems likely that Iorwerth’s mind is full of the wish to please his father by entering the ministry.
37. “Utter nonsense!”
38. “Gracious!”
39. These were biographies of dominant figures in the life of Nonconformist Wales during the late nineteenth century. J. Cynddylan Jones (1840-1930) was a Calvinistic Methodist minister and prolific theological writer, who worked indefatigably on behalf of the Bible Society. Lewis Edwards (1809-87) was a literary essayist and theologian, who established the influential periodical Y Traethodydd and founded the Calvinistic Methodist college in Bala. John Williams (1854-1921) was a renowned Calvinistic Methodist preacher, whose name is associated with Brynsiencyn, Anglesey, where he spent most of his life. He took an active part in promoting the formation of the Welsh military division during the war of 1914-18 and was its honorary chaplain.
40. The reference is primarily to the opening of ‘Ode to the West Wind’: “O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being.”
41. A mountain well to the south of the speaker, between Ruthin and Mold.
42. Arethusa had been a nymph of the woods and meadows until the river god Alpheus pursued her. Fleeing his advances, she prayed to Artemis for refuge: “The freezing sweat poured down my thighs and knees / A darkening moisture fell from all my body / And where I stopped a stream ran down; from hair / To foot it flowed, faster than words can tell, I had been changed into a pool, a river.” (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book V)
43. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the second circle of hell is reserved for carnal sinners, “in whom reason by lust is sway’d.” There he meets Francesca of Rimini and her lover Paolo, the brother of her deformed husband. Dante is overcome by compassion for the lovers. It’s worth noting that their affair began with the reading of Launcelot’s story. His adulterous love for Queen Guinevere resulted in the destruction of the brotherhood of the Knights of the Round Table, and Albie’s infatuation with Frida is similarly the cause of an estrangement between him and his two friends.
44. This is a form of singing unique to Wales. One melody is played on the harp, while a counter-melody is sung, off the beat, by the singer(s).
45. This “Singing Festival” has been a popular feature of Nonconformist worship in Wales since the first half of the last century.
46. Daedalus, the great craftsman who built the Cretan labyrinth, constructed an ingenious flying machine out of feathers and wax. Exhilarated by the experience of flight, his son Icarus flew too near the sun, and the melting of the wax sent him plunging to his death in the sea.
47. Literally “speckled bread.” A kind of fruit loaf.
48. Galatea was a Nereid, loved by Acis. When Acis’s rival, Polyphemus, crushed him under a rock, she transformed her lover into a river. (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XII)
Afterword
49. The burning at Penyberth was one of the most significant events in the history of the modern Welsh nationalist movement, and it had a great effect on artists and intellectuals. In spite of practically unanimous Welsh opposition, the government had insisted on demolishing an old farmhouse in Llyn whose history dated back to medieval times. In its place they proposed to put an aerial-bombing range. Three leading members of Plaid Cymru – Saunders Lewis, Lewis Valentine and D.J. Williams – set fire to the building-site on September 9, 1936 and immediately reported their action to the police. When they were tried in Caernarfon the jury could not agree on a verdict. In order to secure a conviction the unusual step was taken of transferring the case to England. At the Old Bailey each of the three (two of whom were among the finest Welsh writers of their generation) was sentenced to nine months imprisonment. Thousands assembled in Caernarfon to welcome them after their release from prison.
50. Daniel Owen (1836-95), the most gifted of Welsh novelists, was born in Mold, Flintshire. His four outstanding novels are all strongly influenced by his deep attachment to the Calvinistic Methodist faith.
51. William Williams Pantycelyn (1717-91), as he is generally known, was a hymn-writer of incomparable genius. After his religious conversion, he devoted his life to Methodist activities. His long poem ‘Bywyd a Marwolaeth Theomemphus’ (‘The Life and Death of Theomemphus’, 1764) is a work of great physical force and subtlety that deals with an individual soul’s progress from damnation to salvation.
52. The Mabinogion is the modern title of twelve great Welsh tales from the medieval period.
53. T. Gwynn Jones (1871-1949) was a remarkably versatile writer, who excelled as a poet, both in cynghanedd (the strict classical metres) and in modern experimental forms. The English lines quoted here come from the translation by Joseph Clancy, which attempts to convey something of the richly archaic quality of the original Welsh. Penmon in Anglesey was the site first of an early Celtic church and then of a medieval monastery. The poet recalls a visit he paid to the place in the company of his friend W.J. Gruffydd, when they were briefly transported in imagination by the beauties of the scene to the distant period of the monastery’s hey-day.
54. W.J. Gruffydd (1881-1954) was a literary critic and accomplished poet. In his prime he was one of the principal arbiters of taste and fashioners of literary opinion in Wales.
55. Saunders Lewis (1893-1985) was one of the greatest Welsh-language writers of the modern, or any other, period. As well as being an exceptional dramatist and poet, he was a fine scholar, an incisively authoritative literary critic and an inspired political journalist. A founder member and longtime President of Plaid Cymru, he worked to restore a free Wales to its proper place in European culture.