Owen Tanat: a story of Welsh life

Front matter

a H ©tors of Wdsb Xife BY 'ROBERT REES' (ALFRED NROBARD PALMER) Xon&on DIGBY, LONG & CO., PUBLISHERS 1 8 Bouverie Street. Fleet Street, E.C. FOREWORDS The preface to this book need not be lengthy. The narrative is throughout attributed to the hand of one Robert Rees, formerly of Trefechan, afterwards of Manchester. Trefechan is supposed to be in the Welsh-speaking area of North-East Wales ; but no especial town or district, nor any person, private or public, must be taken to be indicated. If most of the persons hereafter portrayed had not been accustomed to speak in Welsh, it would have been easy, by the use of peculiar phrases and dialectic forms, to hit off, for the monoglot reader, their characters with more precision and felicity. But inasmuch as I write, by necessity, in English, this device is denied me.

Notwithstanding, I have been so free (but not to such an extent, I hope, as to V VI FOREWORDS over-season the dish) as to pepper my pages with some few Welsh words and sentences, if only to show that in a large part of this island, English, after all these centuries, and so many attempts to stamp out every other tongue, has not yet established itself as the exclusive form of common speech. ALFRED NEOBARD PALMER. Wrexham, North Wales. ' Deal gently with us, ye who read ! Our largest hope is unfulfilled ; The promise still outruns the deed, The tower, but not the spire, we build. Our whitest pearl we never find : Our ripest fruit we never reach. The flowering moments of the mind Lose half their petals in our speech.' Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Chapter I

' Yes, Owen Tanat is a fine fellow, spite of his oddities of speech and manner,' said Llewelyn Thomas. ' Why do you call him odd? ' asked his sister Myfanwy.1 ' Well, he can't exactly be classified or labelled. Often, when I'm talking with him on some subject in which I'm interested, he'll pull me up, and go off on another tack ; and what he says at one time appears to be wholly irreconcilable with what he says at another ; and I can never quite make out what he thinks.' ' But, after all, Llew, in what you are saying, may you not be paying Mr Tanat a great compliment ? May not what you call oddity be really distinction, the absence of a character that is commonplace? You know how clever I think you to be, but he has had, you have told me, much experience of the world, has seen a great deal of men and things, and has been brought into very close and long contact with the hard realities of life, so that it is just possible that he may see two sides of a problem when you can only see one.' ' I tell you, I think him a fine fellow, and, I'll add, an honest fellow, but I, nevertheless, hold him to be queer, and it amuses me to hear you champion him as you do.

One would think you'd fallen in love with him, Fanwy fach.' 2 ' How you talk ' said Myfanwy, ' but I am not ashamed 1 ' Myfanwy,' pronounced My-van-wy, with the accent on the second syllable. F is always pronounced in Welsh like the English V. 2 'Fanwy fach.' 'Fanwy' is an abbreviation of 'Myfanwy,' as ' Llew ' is of 'Llewelyn,' and 'Fanwy fach' means little Myfanwy, or rather Fanwy dear. A to say that I liked Mr Tanat's manners this evening, that I thought he talked sensibly and well, and that he seemed kind and good. That is all.' 'I can't follow your English fully,' chimed in Mrs Thomas, ' but I know, y mhlant I,1 you're talking about Owen Tanat. I remember him, of course, as a child, and knew him well when he was grown up, before he went to the great city, a clever, nice young fellow, and likely for the ministry ; but — ' 'But what? mam anwyl,''1 asked Myfanwy, and she looked up in her mother's face with a certain eagerness, while Llewelyn's eyes twinkled at the expression of in terest shown by Myfanwy in Owen's character. .'Well,' answered Mrs Thomas, 'since he's lived in London, Owen, they tell me, has taken up notions strange and unsafe in matters of religion, and of late, when he's been spending his holidays at Tan y Garnedd, he hasn't even come to chapel.

But your father used to be very fond of him, and I never heard of anything wrong he did, and I know he was gentle, and good, and beloved by almost everybody. Wasn't it chiefly through him that Benjamin Breeze, formerly a common drunkard, was saved from his besetting sin? Didn't he discover Ben's daughter, Sinah, who was lost when a child, and carried off in a gipsy's van ? And if he doesn't care to hear Mr Lewis preach, there are others who don't care either. Why, the winter you were in Norfolk, Myfanwy, he was in and out of this house continually, and your father and he were just like two sweethearts. And I was glad when he called in this evening. I was reminded of old times.' ' Oh, I tell you,' exclaimed Llewelyn, ' since I came to know Tanat better, I've got quite to'like him, though I've not yet been able to understand him.

There is an openness in his bearing, a gentleness in his very bluntness, nay, a frankness in his reserve, and a fascination, a fulness of knowledge about his talk which attracts me, and has evidently captivated our little Fanwy.' ' Oh, for shame, Llew,' said Myfawny ; ' cannot a girl express her admiration of a man's character and talents 1 ' Y mhlant i ' — A colloquialism for ' fy mhlant i,' my children. " ' Mam anwyl ' — Mother dear. without being supposed to be in love with him, to employ a phrase you are too ready to use. You are unjust to me, indeed you are.' And her cheeks flamed and her eyes flashed. ' Well, Fanwy, I'll let you off this time, but I'm not sure that I can be quite so complacent with Tanat. He's not, I think, a gwladgarwr l of the right stamp, a true and ardent patriot ; and belonging, as I do, to the school of Cymru Fydd2 I can never wholly forgive him any treason in that direction, you know.' ' You were unjust to me a minute ago, Llew, and now you are unjust to Mr Tanat.

You said he is not a true gwladgarwr, because he does not, like you, belong to the school of Cymru Fydd. But are there no patriots outside that school ? Are there none who believe in its aims, but who think its methods might be improved ? Or may there not be some whose aspirations include nearly all that those of your school aim at, and, maybe, something besides ? ' 'I won't pretend,' replied Llewelyn, 'to answer these questions, to solve these conundrums, Miss Myfanwy, but this I will say, that I shall think twice before I venture to criticise Tanat's actions or opinions in your presence again.' ' Llewelyn, you talk too much, and too heedlessly ; if you were more often silent, your discretion would not so many times be called in question. Remember the proverb, Taw fia hi /' 3 ' Oh, I've got you to talk Welsh at last, have I ?

And when you drop into yr hen iaithf then I know you're speaking about something or someone that is very dear to you.' Myfanwy knew, of course, what was meant by this home thrust, but she merely answered, 'Yes, I believe I was speaking just now about yourself.' Mrs Thomas, however, did not fail to notice the averted looks and mantling cheeks of her daughter, and so, turn- 1 ' Gwladgarwr ' — A patriot. 2 'Cymru Fydd' — The Wales that shall be, or Young Wales. ' Cymru Fydd ' did not at this time indicate the saner and more ordered movement it has since become, but the watchword of a few wild, restless, and, it must be added, not very wise young men. 3 ' Taw pia hi ' — Silence has it. 4 ' Yr hen iaith ' — The old language. ing to Llewelyn, she said gently, ' Yr wyt yn plagio dy chwaer,'1 and then, reaching down the big Bible, ' Gadewch i ni ddarllen pennod cyn myn'd i'n gw'lau.' 2 The conversation reported in the foregoing paragraphs took place in the house called Gorphwysfa, situate on the Llanddeuno Road, in the town of Trefechan, one evening in the early part of September, 1882.

Chapter II

Mrs Thomas was the widow of Y Parchedig 3 Cynhaiarn Thomas, for forty years the Welsh Congregational minister of Trefechan, a devout and thoughtful man, who had died about two years before our story begins. He was the author of a rather notable book of sermons, en titled, Yr Awr o flaen y Wawr, of which an English translation by the author had already appeared, bearing the corresponding title, The Hour before the Dawn. Although both editions sold fairly well, the old minister had never realised the money expended in their production, and some hundreds of copies remained unpacked in the garret of Gorphwysfa. Indeed, one of his deacons had been heard to say that the book was marked by that want of insistence upon the details of ' the plan of salvation ' (trefn iachawdwriaetli) ' and the general doctrinal in desiniteness which had characterised the minister's preaching during the last few years of his life.' But 'old Cynhaiarn,' as he was familiarly called, was almost universally beloved for his graciousness, and respected for his intellectual integrity, and after his death, those who cherished his memory, and wished at the same time, without suspicion of patronage, to render some assistance to his widow, began to buy his two books with so much eagerness that Mrs Thomas herself suspected at last that the sudden demand for them which had sprung up was not wholly due to a revived and increasing appreciation of their merits by the public.

Anyway, she was grateful, and the hundred pounds or more thus realised 1 That is, Thou art teasing thy sister. 2 That is, Let us read a chapter before going to bed. 3 'Y Parchedig' — The Reverend. proved very helpful to her at the time. She was left poor, but not destitute. Gorphwysfa, the minister had inherited from his father, together with three other houses nearer the town on the same road, the rent of which brought in about seventy-five pounds a year. Her brother, Mr Daniel Davies, moreover, promptly and generously offered to maintain, at his sole charge, young Llewelyn at Aberystwyth, whither his father had sent him more than a year before, promising, if the youth distinguished himself at the college, to take him after wards into his office, at the Pandy Welsh Flannel Mills, on the left bank of the Rhedwy, two miles below Trefechan.

At Aberystwyth Llewelyn had worked hard, and passed the matriculation examination ofthe London University. He had now been some six months in Mr Davies's office, and was tolerably well paid — better paid, perhaps, than the way in which he performed his duties warranted ; but Mrs Thomas was boastfully proud of him, and believed he could scarcely err in judgment or do anything that was wrong. In truth, though wanting in delicacy of mind, he was, as young fellows go, a good son, and the half of his salary, which he insisted on placing at his mother's disposal, had long since relieved her from the cares, due to insufficiency of income, which after her husband's death had for a time beset her, and which she had uncomplainingly borne. Generous, indeed, by nature, the young man was, as generous as thought less, and with characteristic ardour had thrown himself into the new movement of advanced Welsh Radicalism.

He talked about ' the mission of Wales ' (neges Cymru), and was a frequent and fluent speaker at political and literary gatherings. Spite of his solid acquirements, however, it is to be doubted whether he had yet really tasted the sweets of literature, or reaped the harvest of the quiet eye. Although he spoke English oftener and more habitually than Welsh, he had never troubled himself to become acquainted with any of the works of those English writers who are really great, either by reason of the importance of their subject or the distinction of their style. And as to Welsh, the translation of the Bible and certain hymns excepted, I am certain that he had read none of the best literary productions of his own country. Dafydd ap Gwilym, Elis Wyn o Lasynys, Huw Morris o Bont y Meibion, Maurice Kyffyn o'r Glascoed, Goronwy Owen, were but names to him.

He delighted to call himself ' Llewelyn ap Cynhaiarn,' but I doubt whether he had read his own father's book with much care or attention. He would dash off englynion 1 on all imagin able subjects with the utmost facility, and was a regular contributor to the Taranydd, " a weekly newspaper, now defunct, which had been recently started in Trefechan. But he had no accurate knowledge of the real history of Wales, nor any full and living sympathy with the Welsh people, with their actual wants, with such of their aspirations as were in closest touch with their racial instincts. And though he talked in his fine, flowing fashion about the mynyddoedd, dyffrynoedd ac afonydd^ of the land of his fathers, it was noticed that he never took a walk over the hills that rose above Trefechan to the south, or wan dered along the lovely glens and streams in the neigh bourhood, unless accompanied by two or three of his friends, whom he would keep in roars of laughter by his sallies, by his retorts, and by his unconscious display of affectations, as amusing as they were harmless.

The truth is, he had as yet cultivated only one side of his intellect and character, while his imagination was scarcely at all developed. He had never stopped seriously to think. He was capable of noble things, but his life hitherto had been a careless, joyous, and, on the whole, an untroubled one, and his nature needed the shock of a great sorrow, or the stimulus of an absorbing passion, to awaken its dormant capacities ; and one might guess that when he should at last be fairly aroused, his tendency would be rather towards action than reflection, towards doing rather than towards thinking. 1 'Englynion,' plural of 'englyn.' An englyn is a four-lined stanza, much used by Welsh poets and poetasters, of peculiar con struction, each line being alliterated, and ending with a rhyme common to all. 2 ' Y Taranydd ' — The Thunderer. s That is, Mountains, vales and rivers.

Chapter III

In character, Myfanwy was much more the child of her father than Llewelyn. Tranquilly and quietly she did the daily duties of her homely life — to her no drudgery, for they were lightened by love, and touched by imagination. But this girl, sensitive to beautiful thoughts, and delight ing in the pageant which Nature had spread about her, was not without a quiet determination of her own, an independ ence of thought and restrained frankness of speech which often amazed and amused those who knew her. Nor was there anything unmaidenly in this frankness, anything abnormal, or at variance with the general tone of her gentle mind. It did but reveal another side of the sweet simplicity of her character. The thoughts that had been stirred in her by the books she had studied, by her life at Hatterley and Carr Hall (of which hereafter), the inspira tions supplied during her many solitary rambles over moor and field, along stream and glen, she had pondered over until they had become a part of her very life.

From what these had wrought in her she could no more escape than go shadowless in the slanting sunbeams, or remain unen lightened by their glow, Her father's book she had read again and again, always finding in it something new — a light in trouble, a help in difficulty, a clarion call to duty. Her mother, when she saw Myfanwy absorbed in Yr Awr o flaeny Wawr, would often herself take down another of the well-known volumes, but by the time she had ad justed her spectacles, and completed all the other pre parations preliminary to reading a few pages of it, would begin to nod, and in a few minutes be fast asleep. Let us not complain if the aged take refuge in slumber. It is the balm of the toilworn, and those who are nearing life's end. Moreover, have you ever known a wife who has read all that her husband has written ?

I have still to mention a spot connected with her father's memory which contributed, perhaps, as much as anything else to shape Myfanwy's character. The garden of Gorphwysfa was old-fashioned and somewhat neglected, but a pleasant place enough for all that. It was well stocked with fruit trees and shrubs, and a perfect paradise for birds. It stretched, a long narrow plot, between two high walls from the back of the house down to the left bank of the Rhedwy, from which it was hidden by a thick hawthorn hedge, but this hedge was broken at one end by what, to my mind, was the most charming and distinctive feature of the garden, namely, the old minister's out-of-doors study, a building erected partly on piles driven into the river bed. The study was, in fact, arranged so that one half of it stood on the bank of the stream, while the other half was perched above the stream itself.

Thus its occupant, sitting in the projecting window above the outermost piles, could see up and down the river, hear the swirl and swish of it, watch it dashing over the ledges of rock in front and spreading itself below into a quiet reach, its dark surface there often dappled by the broken light that struggled through the sheltering trees. Mr Thomas had himself designed and arranged this gwylfa, or watch-place, of his, so that by stepping twenty yards from his back door he could pass at once, as it were, into another world. He had also provided the gwylfa with a fireplace and chimney, built against the garden wall, and as the days got chilly with the dying of the year he would have a fire lighted in this study, and spend an hour or two there, reading, thinking and noting all the moods of the ever varying stream.

Who shall say what ideas the Rhedwy stirred up in him, how it entered into his being, mingling its course with the current of his own life ? For myself, I am confident that its tones touched with music the very form of his words as the preacher stood up on Sundays in the last years of his life in the old pulpit of Capel y Bont, and freighted those words with music, 'deep, mystic, wonderful,' which but for the stream they could never have had. It was not merely that Cynhaiarn laid bare the springs of life, warned, encouraged, enlightened, stimulated, comforted, in a manner singularly impressive. Other preachers had done this ; but he was one of the few to whom it was sometimes given to lift his hearers, or such of them as were capable of being lifted, straight way up into a higher level of spiritual consciousness, so as to see all forces working to one end, to perceive piety reasonable, duty a delight, trouble bearable, and the world transformed into the court of God's holy temple.

If we were not pure, truthful, gentle, honest, reverent, he would ask, how could we read the riddle of the universe, whose children we were ? and how could we become so if we did not daily and diligently do the duty assigned to us, and bear our burdens bravely and cheerfully? But oh, how hard were such a task if our eyes were not open to see the workings of God about us, or our hearts unattuned to feel His workings within us ! And so the whole circle swung round, and the preacher finished as he began. Now and then, as he was dilating on some of his favourite themes, his very visage would be transformed, and old Robert Jones, Garreg Wen, walking home with me after evening service along the Pont Riffri Road, his heart full and his eyes brimming, would say, 'A thafod angel Duw y mae Cynhaiarn wedi bod yn llefaru wrthym heddyw.' 1 I do not mean to say that Mr Thomas was a man of transcendent mental power.

I do not mean to say that he was at all abreast of the learning of his time. Of modern Biblical criticism he knew little, and he used the phrases of the old theology, which quite unconsciously he had outgrown. But those phrases had in his mouth come to mean and suggest something different from that which they had once meant and suggested to him. They had become spiritualised, poetised. His spirit had ripened and caught the flush of the coming dawn, and his words and thoughts were touched with the music and mystery of the Rhedwy, the type to him of the river of life, which, born in the quiet depths of the holy hills, lost itself, after many strange experiences, in the spacious and boundless sea.

Chapter IV

But what am I doing prating about old Cynhaiarn, when I ought to be telling you about his daughter ? However, 1 That is, With the tongue of an angel of God has Cynhaiarn been speaking to us to-day. I have not forgotten Myfanwy swyn,1 and all that I have been saying as to her father was intended to lead up to something I wished to say about herself. After Mr Thomas died his widow cared not to enter the garden study, because it brought home to her too keenly the loss that had befallen her. Llewelyn had in his brain the maggot of unrest, and could not sit, he said, in that uncanny hole, looking wearily out over a wild waste of waters. But to Myfanwy, her father was not wholly dead when she was there, and thither would she take her knitting or her book, and work and dream, or read and think and glance at the rushing of the river over and among the scattered rocks, and at its ripple in the quiet pools, and watch it flashing in the sunlight, or frowning when the skies were overcast and the raindrops hissed on its angry face.

And when the ways were miry, and the heavens lowered, so that she could not take her accustomed walk, and no call upon her time was urgent, then would she hie to her noddfa, to her refuge, and find a fascination in the turbulent flow of the water flood when the springs were full and the reaches swollen with the rain and with the melting of the snow on the mountains at the first breath of spring. Nor did the river appeal to her less in the brooding time of autumn, when it carried on its bosom the long procession of fallen leaves down to the sea. Ah ! how short a time ago it was since those leaves had burst forth on the branches that had been darkened with the blasts of winter, and then presently they had covered those branches with their wealth of green, and the flaunting sun had toyed with them, and the frolic wind stirred them, and the gentle rain from heaven sprinkled them with its blessed baptism, and the stars looked down on them in the quiet nights !

To what love songs of nestling birds, that built in their midst, had they listened ! How they had quivered with the shouts of merry boys, paddling in the brook below, or playing in the shade ! And then, as the long days of summer shortened, what glorious hues had these leaves assumed, russet, and amber, and orange, and gold, and scarlet rhuddgoch, rhuddlas, melyngoch, a tnelynwyn I ' Oh, Llewelyn,' said Myfanwy once, hastening forth to 1 ' Myfanwy swyn ' — The mild ox sweet Myfanwy. meet her brother, who had reached home much earlier than usual, ' come and see the passing of the leaves ! ' ' Ugh ! ' cried he, giving a hasty glance at the burden of the stream, "tis like a funeral, and gives me the creeps.' ' What nonsense ! Llew,' answered his sister. ' This seems to me more like a Canterbury pilgrimage than a funeral.

See how the leaves perk and prance and play at hide-and-seek among the rocks, while the river pipes to their dancing, and their bonnie coats gleam in the beams of the setting sun. But if they are going to the land of Death, then are they having a pleasant journey thither, as though they knew that death is not utter dissolution, but rather a happy transformation.' 'Fanwy, you're a little goose, and I want my tea,' said Llewelyn, marching off to the house. But it is not to be supposed because Myfanwy con trived to spend a couple of hours two or three times a week in her father's gwylfa, or in solitary country walks, that she neglected the duties of home. The management of the household at Gorphwysfa depended almost wholly on her. Cadi'r Beudy, the charwoman, to whom the reader will hereafter be more fully introduced, came in every morning, from Monday to Saturday, to help her in the heavier household tasks ; and Mrs Thomas would do little odds and ends of work about the house, and a great deal of miscellaneous dusting.

But it was Myfanwy who overlooked and directed everything, prepared the meals, and took on her the multitudinous cares which are always involved in considering and anticipating the wants and comforts ofthe members of a household, even when that household is so small, and conducted on so modest a scale, as was that which Gorphwysfa sheltered. She was up betimes, and thenceforward, until dinner was over and all things cleaned and put in due place and order, every moment was occupied. Llewelyn dined always, except on Saturdays and Sundays, at the Pandy. At Gorphwysfa, dinner was on the table at half-past twelve — at one, indeed, if the clock was to be believed, for Mrs Thomas insisted, like many of her neighbours, on having the hands of it half-an-hour fast, thinking thereby to cheat herself into punctuality, and believing that on this device, by which no one was deceived, the whole stability of the household depended.

But by three o'clock, Greenwich time, the more serious duties of the day were over, Cadi had returned to her little cottage, and Myfanwy was able to slip out and do the necessary shopping. When she got back, if her mother was alone, she would sit down with her, and stitch and read and chat in her cheerful way. But if a neighbour had dropped in, as often happened, to stay the afternoon for a bit of talk, of which, to speak the truth, Mrs Thomas was very fond, then came Myfanwy's opportunity, and if the weather were fine she would put a few little delicacies in her basket for her ' children ' and sally forth — her ' children ' being various bed-ridden or suffering old men and women, whose cottages were up in the glens, or down along some country lane, and who were seldom visited by anyone else from the town.

If I am asked how my young friend could find the time for so much working and walking, so much reading and brood ing, I can only reply that she paid but few formal calls, nor did she waste her hours in that clep or gossip which was one of the banes of the womankind of Trefechan. Her evenings were generally devoted to her mother, and to her brother also, whenever that much-engaged young man condescended to stay at home. There was always plenty of sewing to be got through at night, for her mother, whose eyes were now failing her, did little else after tea but knit everlasting bed quilts, or drop off into a quiet doze, while Myfanwy, with a book always at her elbow, would alternately read and stitch, and stitch and think, until the clock, with great ado striking nine, announced that it was half-past eight, and time to make preparation for supper and the hours of sleep.

But was Myfanwy beautiful ? I must protest against this insistence on beauty. Am I beautiful ? Are you ? Must not a young lady be introduced as one of the principal characters in such a homely narrative as this, unless her charms of feature and of form can only be expressed in superlative language? In her ordinary moods I cannot truthfully say that Myfanwy's beauty was of a kind to carry captive at once all who beheld it. But her features were regular, and she had wonderful eyes — eyes that, when her sympathies were engaged, seemed to have a mystic and marvellous depth, and to become suddenly brimming and fluent ; eyes that flashed in the heaven of her brow when her feelings were aroused, lending an animation to her face, and trans forming the very fashion of her. And she was always sweet, thoughtful and dutiful.