Chapter II: Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen
Sometime in 1909, we moved from Cymmer to Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, this time drawing nearer to my mother’s ‘native heath’, and indeed this proved to be just one step towards, eventually, arriving at that ‘native heath’.
The first to move to work in the Waun, in Maerdy Pit, were my grandfather and his son Tomos, leaving behind Mamgu and her family. They were in lodgings while their house, No. 3 Gron Road, was being built. At the same time No. 11, Gron Road, was being built in readiness for my parents’ move.
In those days building a house was a much slower process than in these days. Pauses were made at certain stages of the building so that the walls were solidly settled. There was no building in frosty weather. The materials too were different. Both No. 3 and No. 11 were built of dressed stone – no bricks were used – and all the timber was well-seasoned, unlike the timber used today. Houses were built to last. They had three rooms and a pantry downstairs and three bedrooms and a box-room upstairs. There was no bathroom – the colliers washed in a tin bath in front of the living-room fire, having their backs washed by their wives.
Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen is situated on a fairly high narrow plateau between mountains. The approach from the east is up from the Tawe Valley through Pontardawe, and then you pass through to the West down to the Aman Valley in the direction of Garnant and also in the direction of Brynaman. The land is grey and infertile, many acres of common land stretching towards the Morriston area from Betws Mountain, and also stretching for some miles in the direction of the Black Mountain towards Cwmllynfell and Rhiwfawr.
This common land played an important part in the economy of the village. Many of the colliers working in the Maerdy and East Pits, and who lived on the edge of the Common, supplemented their wages by keeping geese. We children used to try to avoid this area, Cae Newydd. The geese were very jealous of their territory, and the ganders, who were very protective of their flocks and had very aggressive instincts, would attack intruders with outstretched necks and hissing beaks.
Some time ago I heard a talk on the life and habits of colliers in the Pontardawe and Waun areas. This was given to a congregation of people in Rhuddlan who had very little knowledge of the life of South Wales colliers, apart from the fictional account read in T. Rowland Hughes’ novel ‘William Jones’. This talk was given by a well-known preacher, renowned for making wild statements and for telling tall stories, namely Idwal Jones, Llanrwst. He stated that every collier living in those areas kept a pig in a pigsty at the far end of his garden and then gave an elaborate account of the day of the killing of the pig.
I felt sure that he must have been thinking of some other area, possibly a more rural area. However I feel certain that I am right in stating that the colliers in the Waun, especially those in Cae Newydd, kept geese rather than pigs.
After writing the above paragraph, I heard a talk by a neighbour, Huw Walters, a native of Glanaman, and he maintained that many of the colliers in the Aman Valley did keep pigs. Still I am not convinced that the Waun colliers, especially those living in Gron Road, kept pigs, apart from a few exceptions.
In my description of life in the Waun I shall have to depend mainly on my own recollections. Those of the early years must, naturally, be rather vague. Indeed, I don’t remember, as many do, my first day in School. If I had cried on that fateful day, I surely would have remembered it. So I assume that, in spite of my being an only child, I must have fitted in to the school community without any problems. Perhaps a reason for that was that I had become very friendly with the youngest of five boys living next door. His name was David Morgan. We were about the same age. So it seems likely that we started school together. No child was admitted before his fifth birthday.
The school was situated about two hundred yards from my home. So no great effort was required to get up in the morning in order to be in school on time. The school had a big bell in a small tower on the roof – a bell like that of a church. It was rung for about ten minutes before the beginning of assembly – assembly was just congregating in lines in the school yard, provided it was not raining – and in my later years in school, I usually made a point of arriving in school before the time of ringing, and would hang around the Head’s room, waiting for the Headmaster, John Hugh, to appear to give the order in stentorian tones, ‘Ring the bell’. Two or three of us would then dash to be the first to get hold of the bell-rope.
I’m making no unusual statement when I state that all instruction in School was given in English. The medium of instruction, even in the few Welsh lessons, was English. And yet, the language of almost every person in the Waun was Welsh. Even those immigrants from England, Scotland, and Ireland who came to work in the pits eventually acquired a smattering of Welsh. An even more convincing example of this was given by the evacuees who came from Belgium at the beginning of the 1914-18 War. They soon became integrated with the locals and became fluent Welsh speakers.
The School, as far as I can recollect, had about two hundred pupils, and although the language of the classroom was English, nothing but Welsh was spoken in the playground. The Waun still maintains its Welshness, and the prevailing language heard in the streets and in the shops is Welsh. It’s quite probable, with the present revival of Welsh teaching in schools, that Welsh is now used normally and liberally in the classrooms.
I’m sure that most children remember only the very good and the very bad teachers in their schools. So why is it that I can remember only three members of the Waun School staff? And indeed my memories of them are not of their virtues but rather of their failings. I don’t remember being given a lesson by John Hugh, the Headmaster. My impression is that he was an Englishman, wholly uninterested in the Welsh language. Yes, the only words emanating from his mouth were, ‘ring the bell’. He was a remote, aloof, unapproachable type of Headmaster, typical, I believe, of many headmasters at the beginning of the century.
It’s by their nicknames that I remember the other two teachers, Twmpyn Pen Clust and Sara Moustache – obviously names given because of physiological characteristics. The first had a reddish purplish protrusion on the top of one of his ears. The second had an obvious rim of dark moustache. Did she shave, I wonder?
If I remember rightly Twmpyn Pen Clust’s real name was Ted Morgan, and I was impressed when I realised that he played the Cello in a small orchestra based in Brynaman. But I was not impressed by his class behaviour. He had an ungovernable temper and he would lunge at you unmercifully with his cane for the least misdemeanour, or he would shout ‘Hold your hand out’, and then give a few stinging swipes on your hand.
Sara Moustache was a complete opposite in temperament. She was a placid character, and seemingly lacked any enthusiasm for teaching. Her favourite pose was standing with her back leaning against the huge fire-guard surrounding the huge coal-fired stove, usually seen in schools before the introduction of central heating. She was continually eating monkey-nuts, the shells of which were strewn all around the stove. Another teacher who came to the school for a short while, either as a pupil-teacher or student in his training year, was David Thomas, Tymawr Farm, who became in later life a Head Teacher in Garnant and a prominent District Councillor, known as Alderman D. D. Thomas. It may be of interest to know that he was an uncle of Sian Philips, the actress.
The games played in school, I should think, differed a great deal from those in present-day schools. Most schools today have their playing fields, on which the boys play football and cricket and the girls play hockey or netball. Some of the larger primary schools have a gymnasium also, or a main hall which has gymnasium facilities.
My school had a large grassless yard, a section of which was covered by a slated roof. We had what could be called physical training in this covered section. The physical training was given by no specialist, but by our class-room teacher – just arms stretch, arms bend, knees bend etc. There were two playgrounds: one for the boys and one for the girls. The strange thing was that the boys rarely played any kind of football and that several of the games played were the same as those of the girls, such a hop-scotch and skipping.
Oh yes, the boys did play a game which was not played by the girls, and that was ‘marbles’. We had special names for the marbles, one of which was ‘alibop’. This we obtained by smashing pop-bottles that had round glass stoppers in their necks. Another term used was ‘niclo’, probably from the English word ‘knuckle’. You put the marble on the knuckle of the thumb and pressing it down with the tip of the forefinger, flicked it into the marbles in the ring, trying to drive a marble out of the ring. In this way, some of the cleverer boys would amass a bag full of marbles, which they would then sell to the losers. I don’t remember what was the going price – probably something like a penny for half a dozen.
However the typically boys’ games were played in the evenings on the street, and on Saturdays on the Common. But it was not often that we had a proper ball for playing with. I remember going to the slaughter-house near the Railway Station, on some Saturday mornings, to beg for a pig’s bladder. This then was blown soft or hard, which resembled a cricket-ball. The wickets were usually some tin contraption or a few sticks cut to size.
Gron Road, where I lived, was a street off the main road, and so there was no danger from motor traffic, not that there was much of that in those days. But there was the danger of broken windows. One of those games which could result in a broken window was ‘pren (or bando) a catti’. That was what we called the game, but there must have been a more acceptable English version.
The bando was about two or three feet of a broom-stick and the catti was about six inches of the same stick, with both ends whittled to a point. The catti was placed in a ring made on the road, and the bando was used to hit one of the pointed ends in such a way that it flew almost straight up, and then the player had to hit the catti as far as he could. The one who hit it furthest was the winner. You can imagine what would happen to an occasional window when the blow was misdirected. The result was that the few pennies we had as pocket-money had to be pooled to pay for the replacement of the window-pane. Another rather dangerous game was running iron-hoops as fast as we could. That often resulted in loss of control and the hoop landing where damage could be caused. These hoops were made by the local blacksmith from rods of iron.
These days there is a great deal of talk and press-reports about the increasing vandalism and lack of social conscience among children. It seems to me that there was little social conscience among the children of my childhood, even though, as I have mentioned before, parents had the Victorian attitude towards the up-bringing of their children. Children, indeed, may have been well-behaved at home, but once out of the sphere of its influence, moral standards were influenced by gang behaviour. Maybe there is more vandalism nowadays because housing estates are bigger and consequently gangs are bigger, and so the worse elements of those gangs tend to encourage greater acts of vandalism. Perhaps another factor is that children have far more pocket-money.
One example of vandalism in our childhood was the game of counting who had smashed the greatest number of what we called bottles on top of telegraph and electricity poles. One does not see bottles today. They were ceramic bottle-like fittings on the cross-bar of the poles, around which the wires conducting electricity were wound.
Another example of violence was the gang warfare between the boys of the Waun and the boys of Garnant. On many Saturday mornings, the Waun boys, equipped with rubbish-bin lids as shields and having a stock-pile of stones, stationed themselves on top of a viaduct facing another bridge, where the Garnant boys had congregated, similarly equipped. We then threw stones at each other. Sometimes the Garnant boys wilted and we were able to chase them as far as the bottom of the ‘cwm’. Once we had a serious problem on our hands. One of our boys had a facial injury, with a copious flow of blood, the result of being hit by a half-brick. The problem was how to carry him back to his home. I remember our trying to tie together some kind of stretcher, but I can’t remember whether we had any success.
I can also give more examples of behaviour which showed a lack of moral conscience These examples may give you, the reader, the impression that I am even now a man of doubtful moral and social conscience. No, I’m fairly convinced that children can go through this phase in childhood, and yet become responsible and morally sound citizens.
Looking back, I sometimes think that I should have been ashamed of certain irresponsible and inconsiderate tricks that we played. There was a sweets shop on the main road, not far from Gron Road. It was owned by the Hicks family, the son of which family, by the name of Haydn, I became very friendly with during my College days. There was a long passage leading from the shop to the kitchen. We were able to see through the glass door of the shop whether anyone was in the shop. If there was no-one there we assumed that the person on duty would be in the kitchen. We would then open the door a quietly a possible – there was no bell announcing an entry. There in front of us was a long row of glass-lidded boxes of sweets. So, before knocking for attention, we would lift the lids of several boxes and stuff our pockets with sweets. Then we knocked and when Dorothy – usually it was she who appeared – came to the shop we would ask for a pennyworth of sweets. A despicable act indeed! But did we have a conscience about it? Hardly, because it was repeated several times. It was no worse a crime than stealing apples from gardens!
There was another despicable piece of behaviour which was repeated several times. In a nearby street there lived on her own a woman, who was considered rather ’simple’ or ‘not quite sixteen ounces’. We used to play tricks on her, such as leaning a can full of water against her front door, and after knocking running round the corner to see what happened when the door was opened. Usually, the can of water tipped inside, accompanied by a loud scream. At other times we tied a black thread to the knocker, and pulled it from around a corner. As soon as she appeared and then closed the door, the knocker was pulled again – this being repeated several times.
I must not give more examples of such behaviour or I shall give the impression of being a very wicked boy, with an incorrigible pattern of behaviour, with no right, when I became a teacher, to expect a better pattern of behaviour from my pupils.
We did indeed play games responsibly after reaching the age of nine or ten. We played some kind of football on the Common in the winter, and cricket in the summer. We used to watch the adult teams playing, but their games were usually played in Cwmgors, on what was called the Park. It hardly deserved the name of Park, being a stretch of grey poor land skirted on one side by a path, covered with some kind of gravel. Although I must have seen several matches there between Curwen Stars and the teams of other villages in the area, I can remember only one game, that between Curwen Stars and Cwmllynfell, and the particular reason for remembering that was that Cwmllynfell had a full-back with a bald head and only one hand. What was amazing was the sure way he handled the ball. Perhaps ‘handled’ is not the appropriate word.
We usually remember some treats that we had in our childhood. One of those treats for children of my generation was the Big Annual Fair. I should think that the Waun was unique in those areas in not having a Fair. The nearest Fair was in Brynaman, a fair generally known as Ffair y Gwter. Before Brynaman was so called it was called Y Gwter Fawr. My friends, probably David Morgan and Jos Thomas, and I would walk the mile from the Waun to the fair with a shilling in our pockets, supplemented by a few pence from our neighbours and relatives. It seems strange to me now that an only child like me was allowed by my parents to go all that way to a fair without their supervision even though I was only about eight years old.
Another treat was to go with my parents to Swansea. This happened a few times in the year, but, of course, more often in the summer than in the winter. There were two ways of going by train, one by G.W.R. to Swansea High St., and the other by L.M.S. to Swansea Victoria. If we went by G.W.R. we had a Motor Rail Coach to Garnant, and then changed for a train which connected with a train from Shrewsbury in Pantyffynon. Very often in the summer we came off at the Swansea Bay Station in order to spend the day on the Sands, or to go by the Electric Train to Mumbles.
In order to go by L.M.S., which was a shorter and cheaper route, we had to walk more than a mile to the L.M.S. station in Brynaman. An unusual phenomenon in Brynaman was that the L.M.S. station was on one side of the road, and on the other was the G.W.R. station, the starting point of the train through Garnant. I remember very little of what we did in Swansea, after getting off the train at Victoria Station (now closed), except that we always visited the Market, and that my mother always bought ‘bara lawr’ (laver bread) with the cockle women from Penclawdd, and that was the special treat we had for supper that evening – laver bread fried with fat bacon.
I should think that the two most important dates in the Calendar in the early decades of this century were Christmas and New Year’s Day. Christmas is even more important in recent decades. The number of Christmas Cards sent is increasing every year, children have more and more presents, and those very expensive ones. But New Year’s Day has seen more changes recently, and even more so with the children The only children who came to wish us a Happy New Year on New Year’s Day this time were John and Ruth, our grandchildren, and they came to our door to sing the traditional Welsh New Year song after we had asked Richard, their father, to come here before twelve o’clock, otherwise they would not be given Calennig (New Year’s gift).
On New Year’s Day in the Waun, when I was a child, there would be hordes of children of all ages roaming round the streets trying to make as many calls as possible before mid-day. Any child singing ‘Blwyddyn Newydd Dda’ at the door even minutes after mid-day would be refused ‘calennig’. Mother always hoped that the first one who knocked at the door would have dark hair, and that it would be a boy. A girl, or a boy with light hair, would bring bad luck.
We would consider ourselves very fortunate if we received from one house as much as threepence (a small silver coin). The usual gift was a penny, or sometimes an apple or an orange. You could make more money by going round on your own, rather than in a group. You often saw groups stopping to compare the amounts of money collected, and informing each other of those houses which gave most generously.
Chapel played an important part in the life of my family. Chapel played an important part in the lives of most families in the Waun, as it did in most villages, and even in towns, in the early part of the century. The Religious Revivals of 1859 and 1904 still retained their influence in the religious life of the working classes. This, of course, is a reflection gained in my adult life, but I remember as a boy the crowds that flocked to Carmel Chapel, especially for the evening service. Carmel is quite a large chapel, but, in order to be sure of a seat, people used to congregate there at least half an hour before the beginning of the evening service at six o’clock. However, it was not so in the chapel where my family were members – Siloh, the Methodist Chapel. The congregation, even in the evenings, was by no means numerous.
The earliest memory I have of attending a religious service was not of attending a service in Siloh Chapel but of going to a class-room in the Primary School. Children were expected to recite a verse from the Bible every Sunday morning service. So being a very young child, on my first attempt I was put to stand up on a long school bench, and asked to recite my verse (probably ‘Da yw Duw i bawb’). If I don’t remember crying on my first day in School, I remember quite well on this occasion my bursting out crying and refusing to utter a single word.
That was the time we belonged to what was called ‘Capel Split’, a phenomenon, it seems, fairly common in those days. A section of the members of Siloh broke away – the result of what was generally known as the ‘cythraul canu’, a literal translation of which is ‘the devil of singing’, or possibly a freer translation will convey the meaning better – ‘the curse of choral singing’. And indeed it is my impression that my family was at the root of the trouble. The quarrel had something to do with the playing of the chapel organ, and my father was one of the organists, although he could play only from sol-ffa.
After holding make-shift services in the Primary School for a while, a purpose-built corrugated-iron hall was built at the bottom of Maerdy Tip. And it was here that the Split members met for several years before being reconciled with the mainstream of the members in Siloh itself.
Not long ago there was a television programme giving a profile of Gareth Edwards, the rugby hero of the Waun, and the house where he was brought up was shown to be exactly on the spot where the Capel Split was built. Chapel in those days was the centre of village life. People of all ages used to attend. It was there that young people could eye each other on the gallery, and make secret signs for dating, as the Americans call the practice. Almost every Sunday evening after the service, weather permitting, people of all ages would take a walk down Heol y Cwm, the road leading down to Garnant. The road was thick with people, who were reluctant to give way for any vehicle to pass through. But then, in those days, very few vehicles did pass through, and especially on Sunday night. Many romances were started on that Sunday-night walk.
What kind of people were the colliers of the Waun? Now, although we moved again from the Waun when I was only ten years old, yet I have mature impressions and recollections of the colliers, as I kept a close connection with the area for many years afterwards through spending a large part of school and college holidays with my father’s family in the Waun.
The colliers were a close-knit community, as indeed they are today. This is shown by the solidarity of the striking miners in South Wales. This closeness is quite natural because they worked together in the coal-pit, and, on the whole, in the early days, worshipped together in the chapels. At a time when there was no Social Security and no Unemployment Benefit, they were ready at all times to help those families bereft of their wage-earner. That happened, not infrequently, because of an accident in the pit. They would hold concerts and make collections in the chapels.
They were people who were eager for their children to get a good education, and by so doing avoiding following their fathers down the mine and working in intolerable conditions. They were eager to be educated themselves by attending night school. Mind you, they were liable to accept the latest ideas and political theories, without making a balanced judgement. Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and the Hegelian dialectic promised to the worker under the oppression of the capitalist owners of the coal-pits a better world and fairer way of life under Communism. They were ready to listen to the gospel preached by such leaders as A.J. Cook, Arthur Horner, and Wil Paynter, names which suggest that they were immigrants rather than native Welsh.
I remember very vividly, when I was on holiday in the Waun, going down with my Uncle Evan on a Sunday afternoon to hear Arthur Horner speaking in the Welfare Hall in Glanaman – walking down about two or three miles, arriving at the Hall and finding a large number of colliers in their evening after-work clothes (dillad diwetydd) and not in their Sunday best, waiting outside for the arrival of Arthur Horner. After waiting for a while, we saw him coming on the pillion of a motor-bike, a B.S.A., I believe. And what a shock it was for me, as one living in the country, where people were always dressed ‘respectably’ on the Sunday, to see Arthur Horner in a cloth-cap with its peak turned back, a muffler round his neck instead of a collar and tie, and wearing a rather bedraggled coat and trousers.
But what eloquence! Natural enough perhaps for one who had been a lay-preacher before he was converted to communism. His eloquence aroused and inspired the spirits of everyone present. He was, of course, fulminating against the inhuman and merciless capitalism of the coal-owners. He had the whole-hearted support of the colliers, for this speech was made during the Big Strike of 1926. I wonder what impact would have been made on the colliers if it had been Arthur Scargill who delivered the speech. I doubt whether I myself would be so impressed. It is highly significant the change in one’s attitude after living very many years away from a coal-mining community. I still have a strong sympathy with the stand being made by the colliers, but at the same time it is difficult to understand their faith in the leadership of Arthur Scargill and his tub-thumping oratory.
The study of the ifs of history is really a futile exercise. Still, I wonder what would have happened to me if my family had stayed in the Waun rather than moving to Panteg when I was only ten years old. It is quite probable that I would have passed the Eleven Plus examination and gone to Ystalyfera County School, as I would have had every encouragement to do my home-work. Indeed most of the children of my age were given such encouragement by their parents.
My mother, in order to supplement my father’s wages and to save a little money as an insurance for the future, kept lodgers. These lodgers, living in the same living-room as my parents, could have been a distraction and a nuisance to me, but this was no problem as I was given a room, with a coal-fire, in order to do my homework undisturbed. Most families were able to do this, as the colliers were allowed to have plenty of coal, either as part of their wages or at a very cheap price.
If I had gone to Ystalyfera County School, I would have had to walk to Brynaman L.M.S. Station to catch the Swansea train, stopping at Ystalyfera, and, of course, the fare would have had to be paid by me, or rather my parents. I would have had to get up early in the morning, and would have arrived home in the evening quite late. Still, I think I would have been happier doing that than what I had to do after moving to Panteg. Having gained a place in Carmarthen Grammar School, I had to stay in lodgings for the whole seven years spent in that school.
I have mentioned the fact that Mother kept lodgers, generally two at a time. Sometimes these were colliers, who returned home jet-black with coal dust. Can you imagine three colliers, my father being one of them, washing themselves one after the other in a tin-bath in front of a blazing fire, with more than one kettle of boiling water on the hob? The only contribution to modesty was covering their privates with one hand while washing with the other. They, of course, could wash each other’s back.
I can remember the names of three of the lodgers: Wil James, and David Thomas, both colliers, and James the Baker. The baker’s job was to drive a horse and van delivering bread to almost all the houses in the Waun. No, that’s an exaggeration, since many wives baked their own bread. The baker, naturally, had to do a lot of walking, and I remember well how his feet smelled when he returned home. He had to wash his feet every evening and put on a clean pair of socks. Washing his smelly socks could hardly have been a pleasant job for Mother.
The Waun people were very fond of giving nick-names or easily identifiable additions to such common names as Jones, Williams, Evans etc. Some of these names are very interesting. Some had the names of places of origin added, such as Joseph Williams Cymmer, a name given to my grandfather. This practice is still followed in Wales – when I retired from Llandeilo to Rhuddlan, I was generally known as Gwilym Williams Llandeilo. Sometimes the place of origin alone was used. One of the elders of Siloh Chapel was usually called Llanddeusant, without even using his Christian name or surname. One of the residents of Gron Road was called Cefnrhiwlas, a possessor of much medical lore.
There were, of course, proper nicknames, such as the Steaks family in Gron Road, Jim Steaks, Lisa Steaks, and Rhys Steaks, a contemporary of mine, who would these days be classed as mentally handicapped or retarded. There was a Twm Pen Tarw, a bogey man for children, and there was Twm Cwrcyn (a tom-cat). One can guess why Twm was given such a nick-name. One family, a highly respected and talented family, had the identifying word ‘machine’ added to their names. The word ‘machine’ was given to the progenitor of the family, because he looked after the machine which was used to lower and draw up coal trams along an incline from the Waun down to Garnant before the viaduct carrying the railway was built. We became very friendly with one of this family when we moved to Rhuddlan after I retired. He was Tom Evans, who used to be a Chemistry Master in Leigh Grammar School, Lancashire. We both used to indulge in a lot of reminiscing about the Waun and its people.
When people reminisce about their ‘native heath’ they like to refer to well-known personalities who lived there. I should think that the two persons who helped most to put the Waun on the map, as it were, are Gareth Edwards and Sian Philips. But, of course, the two were not born when I lived there.
The important people in my days were those connected with the mines and those who took part in Eisteddfodau and musical performances. The managers of the pits and the miners’ agents were very important people. Miners’ agents often became Members of Parliament, although the most well-known, Johnnie James, Cwmgors, did not reach those heights.
Gwaun Cae Gurwen had a very famous Brass Band, who competed not only in the National Eisteddfod of Wales but in the competitions held in the Crystal Palace and in Belle Vue, Manchester. I remember well when the Band came first in Belle Vue. It was on a Saturday, and on that evening a telegram was received giving the result. There was, of course, much jubilation, and on Sunday morning, after the services in the chapels, almost every one in the Waun congregated on the platform of the Station, and on the road nearby, to welcome the Band on their return in the train at about mid-day. The star of the band was a cornet player, named Tal Morris, who later became the Bandmaster in Rhyl. Another later product of the Band was Rowland Jones, the well-known tenor.
There were two persons living opposite our house in Gron Road who were regular winners in Eisteddfodau – Wil Price Rees, a fine tenor, and Esther Cooper, the owner of a rich contralto voice. Wil Price Rees was almost stone deaf, but, like Beethoven, he knew very well whether his performance was a good one, and whether he was in tune. But, like Esther Cooper, and many Eisteddfod competitors, he was a bad loser. He never lost without thinking that he had been unfairly judged, or that the winner had been favoured by the adjudicator because of some personal relationship.
This kind of spirit, it seems, was rampant in the Aman Valley at that time. Huw Walters, in his talk to Capel y Garn Literary Society (Bow Street), related an amusing story in which J.T. Rees, Capel y Garn, a well-known musician and adjudicator, was involved. He was adjudicating in an Eisteddfod in Llandybie. There was a competition for a small choir and one for the main choir. After the first competition he adjudged that no choir was worthy of the prize, a result that did not please the audience at all. Later came the main competition, and the result again was the same – no worthy winner. The whole choir and the audience erupted into a riot, and J.T.. Rees had to be escorted by police to the Station, to catch the train back to Aberystwyth.
My Uncle Evan used to compete in Eisteddfodau. He had a fine baritone voice, but he was not fond of competition, being of a rather shy and unassuming disposition. But he always had a leading part in the operas which were produced annually in the Public Hall on the Common. My father too used to take part in these operas, but never in a leading role. Some of the operas performed were Olwen Plasgwyn, Blodwen, Ffrancod Abergwaun, the three in Welsh, and, in English, Maritana, Dogs of Devon, Bohemian Girl, and others whose titles I cannot remember.
At that time too, Brynaman had a fine choir, which won the Chief Choral competition in the National Eisteddfod. Father used to sing with the choir, and, of course, had to walk all the way to the Hall – about two miles – sometimes more than once a week.
Aunty Annie and her family, i.e. Uncle Evan, Cyril, and Irene May, were very musical, and it was a real treat to have a musical evening with them on a Sunday evening. I must have shared in those treats when on holiday in the Waun, after moving to Panteg. For by then Cyril was an accomplished pianist, and Irene May had a sweet soprano voice, winning many eisteddfodau as a child. In those days there was no television and no radio, and so families had to provide their own entertainment. I am afraid that entertainment in the home today gives just passive entertainment, and discourages any kind of creativity. You can imagine what a pleasure it was to listen to Cyril playing the piano, Uncle Evan with his baritone voice, Aunty Annie a contralto, and Irene May a young soprano voice, singing various songs, mainly hymns, perhaps, either solo or as a trio. In my first year teaching Latin in Llandeilo Grammar School, one of my fifth form pupils was my cousin, Irene May, and I was so impressed with her singing of the Welsh song ‘Pistyll y Llan’, I took her home to Panteg, so that she could sing in a local concert.
My memories of the introduction of motor transport in the Waun and in the Aman Valley are very vague. However I do remember that such provision as milk, butter and eggs, and fish were not delivered in motor-vans. Local farmers would deliver milk, either to the doors or to locations on the road outside the houses.
The clearest memory I have is of Archie, Beili Glas, carrying a heavy milk-can to the door, and asking how much milk was wanted. Then he picked the appropriate measure – half-pint, pint, or a quart – dipped it into the can and then poured it into the jug Mother had produced. (These measures can be seen today in Aberystwyth Museum). The milkman was expected to add a little drop more – for good will, as it were. But, really, very little more was added, if any to the exact measure; he very often was clever enough not to fill the first measure right to the brim, without seeming to do that purposely.
Butter and eggs, that had been collected from the farms in the area, were delivered by what we called ‘the carrier’. Thomas the carrier brought his horse and cart around once a week. What I remember of fish deliveries is a man named Pike carrying a wicker basket of fish, mainly fresh herrings, on his back and shouting ‘Fresh fish’, in a very loud and penetrating voice. As far as I remember, he used to travel by train up to the Waun, bringing fresh fish from Swansea.
There is much said about a healthy diet these days, and it is very strongly maintained that food should be eaten as fresh as possible, and should not have been processed in factories. Perhaps the method of delivery was not very hygienic in those days, but the produce delivered was indeed fresh, with no added preservatives. The milk, of course, was not pasteurised. I wonder whether that was one of the reasons for the high incidence of tuberculosis at the end of the last century and the beginning of this.
Before closing my chapter on Gwaun Cae Gurwen, I must give a brief account of the many tragedies suffered by my father’s family, an account, of course, which covers not only the period of my childhood in the Waun but the whole period up to the present. My father was one of a family of thirteen children; in my mother’s family there were ten children. It is rather significant that the ten of my mother’s family all lived to a good old age, all living beyond the promised age of three score and ten, while only five of my father’s family survived beyond seventy years of age. Does that signify that a rural environment is conducive to a long and healthy life, while an industrial one precludes such a long life? But then, three of my father’s family survived past the uncommon age of ninety. Aunty Annie died last year aged ninety five, Aunty Lizzie is now ninety two and Aunty Irene ninety.
I can remember nine of my father’s family – Gwilym (my father), Thomas, Gomer, Mary, Maria, Rosina, Annie, Lizzie and Irene. As far as I know, the other four died very young, probably when babies. My father and Thomas were two of the five who survived beyond seventy. Gomer was killed in a motor-cycle accident when he was about twenty years of age. He and his friend had bought a new motor-cycle, and on their first ride down Heol y Cwm, they crashed and both were killed instantaneously. This happened on a nasty bend at the bottom of the hill. Since then the road has been straightened and widened.
Uncle Gomer was on of those young colliers who were eager to be educated. He read widely on the subjects of politics, economics and sociology and spent a lot of money on books. He even bought a complete set of Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’. His books were passed on to me after he died, and when we moved on my retirement, in order to lighten the load of books for the removal, I foolishly sold all the volumes of the ‘Golden Bough’ for the ridiculously low price of ten pounds at Ralph’s Second-Hand Bookshop in Swansea.
Aunty Mary, who lived in Cymmer, died in middle age, leaving two young sons, Joseph Emlyn and Gomer, who themselves died comparatively young. Aunty Maria lived in Llansamlet. I can’t remember the exact age at which she died, but it could not have been much over fifty. What was tragic about her death was that it was followed by the death within a week of her husband, John Leyshon, leaving a daughter and son, Sarah May and Trevor. Aunty Rosina lived in what I should think was the most polluted area in South Wales, Upper Bank near Clydach and Swansea. The smoke from the Mond Smelting works in Clydach denuded the land all around of every blade of grass. This area was given a designation of Special Development Area only a few years ago. She soon became ill after marrying and died without any offspring.
Aunty Annie, Aunty Lizzie, and Aunty Irene, as I have mentioned, lived to a grand old age, but not without their tragedies. Aunty Annie’s husband, Evan Howells, died when he was forty nine, after suffering the most harassing and excruciating pains, caused by silicosis of the lungs, for three years after being compelled to finish working in the pit. Uncle David, Aunty Lizzie’s husband, again when comparatively young, was killed by a fall caused by an explosion, when on night-shift in Cwmgors Colliery. It was rather ironic that this happened after he was asked to stand in for a mate, who had been taken ill. Aunty Irene’s husband Will, lived a little longer, but he too died in his early sixties, suffering from the lesser lung disease, pneumoconiosis.