Chapter VI: School Holidays
I have described my life in school and lodgings as if it was completely divorced from my life at home. We had long holidays at Christmas and Easter and a longer holiday in the summer. Add to these the frequent weekends at home I was able to enjoy from Form V onwards, and you can see that my time was more or less equally divided between Carmarthen and Panteg.
I have described myself as an introvert and as one who is fond of his own company, and so was happy enough in the comparative solitude of the countryside. Nevertheless the monotony of such a life had to be relieved in the company of others. One such company was that of my Uncle William. He was a cattle-dealer, who bought store-cattle from most of the farms within a radius of four or five miles of Panteg. During my holidays, even when I was attending Panteg Primary School, I used to accompany him to the nearer farms and watch the fascinating process of making a deal.
My uncle, through long experience, attained a certain amount of skill in his approach. He knew with what kind of farmer he was dealing. Some set their price very high so that a good deal of haggling was necessary in order to finalise the price, others asked for a more realistic price enabling the deal to be completed quickly. But I believe that my uncle had the reputation of always offering what could be called a fair price. He was no unscrupulous profiteer – all the profit he expected was five shillings for each head of cattle.
By going round the farms with Uncle William and watching the deals being made I could, even when only about twelve years of age, judge fairly accurately the value of each beast. The animals bought were usually year-old bullocks and heifers, and barren cows. Their prices ranged from about nine pounds to twelve pounds. So, with such a narrow range, it was comparatively easy to assess the going price. I remember visiting a neighbouring farm and being asked by the farmer to judge the viable price for each animal he had to sell. Mr Evans, Wenallt, was duly impressed with my valuation.
My uncle used to buy about thirty cattle each week in readiness for the weekly Wednesday mart in Carmarthen. The cattle bought were to be brought to Bryngwyn on the Tuesday evening or very early on the Wednesday morning. Those brought on the Tuesday evening were gathered into a field which my uncle owned. Early on Wednesday morning the thirty or so cattle were driven on the road and through the streets to the Mart in the centre of the town. There was no transport by lorries in those day, and, of course, motor traffic was very light.
During my holidays I always used to help with the driving along the six-mile route. This was no easy task, but the experience was quite exciting and exhilarating. We were three doing the job of driving – my uncle, myself, and the dog Gyp. Gyp was the most useful member of the driving team.
When we approached an entrance to a minor road, Uncle William would send Gyp through the hedge to cross the field diagonally so that he could come out on the side-road a good distance from its entrance. He would stalk towards the entrance slowly and just dare any bullock to turn off the main road. But there was a problem when we approached cross-roads. This was solved by Gyp going through this manoeuvre on one side and my doing the same on the other side by running as fast as I could and showing myself at one of the entrances. These manoeuvres had to be repeated several times before reaching Carmarthen – a more strenuous fitness exercise than any rugger match!
There were more problems on entering Carmarthen town! Some of the cattle had been reared on remote isolated farms and had hardly ever seen any human beings, except the farmer and his wife. So they were nervous and excitable and extremely difficult to control.
I remember very clearly an incident, which, though worrying and dangerous, had its humorous side. One of these nervous bullocks, while we were driving along through Priory Street, must have thought an open doorway led to a cowshed. I dashed into the long passage to the accompaniment of loud screams from the woman inside. Fortunately, no damage was done. But there is a sequel to that episode – a few years after I found lodgings on the opposite side of the road, and was reminded of the exciting incident every day when I saw the woman standing at her doorway – a favourite stance of hers. I was also reminded of the incident when I read in the daily papers the scores made by a famous Glamorgan cricketer, the son of this very woman.
When the cattle had been safely driven into their pens, my uncle would be approached immediately by one of the dealers who usually bought his cattle. Indeed, sometimes one of the dealers would meet the cattle even before they entered the town, so that he could forestall others. Deals were quickly made, as the dealer knew very well that all he had to do was add five shillings to the price at which my uncle had bought each beast. The dealer trusted my uncle implicitly; he knew that the price given to him was exactly the price at which the beast had been bought. I feel sure that my uncle would have become a much richer person if he had used less scrupulous methods of dealing. But then, would he have remained the trusted and dependable dealer that he was?
After the cattle were penned, Uncle William would turn to Gyp and would utter just two words, ‘Cer gartre’ (Go home). We would have probably finished the penning by about ten o’clock. About mid-day Gyp would arrive at the door of our house, having made his way through the narrow streets of Carmarthen and the six miles of country lanes. Mother would give him his reward – ‘cawl’ poured into a bucket.
After the operation of penning, I was allowed to roam around the mart and then the streets of the town, while Uncle William had a close look at the selling and at the prevailing prices. We had to find our own way home. Usually, we were lucky enough to have a lift with a neighbouring farmer. But, of course, before returning home we had to have a meal.
But what a meal! It had to be the cheapest in town, and that was to be had in the shop with ‘y ford zinc’. This shop had a small room having a table with a zinc top stretching along its length. The meal ordered was almost always a mug of tea, a bun and a piece of cheese, all for the princely sum of fourpence. But there came a time when such a meal in such a place was not considered respectable enough, and so a move was made to Jory’s shop where the café and the menu were less primitive, with, of course, a corresponding increase in price. In my student days, we graduated further up the scale – a hot meal of meat, potatoes and a vegetable, with a pudding, all for a shilling.
During the holidays there was no problem in finding occupations in the day-times, but what was one to do in the long winter evenings apart from reading and writing a few notes of school-work? Reading and writing too were rather a strain under the poor light of an oil-lamp. Surprisingly enough, I found plenty of entertainment to while away the long evenings of the Christmas holidays. I say ’surprisingly’ because the type of entertainment of a country boy in those days would in no way entertain the modern youth. Three evenings were taken up with Chapel activities – chapel indeed was the focus of social life! I hardly think that the young people of my age had any serious thoughts and convictions about religion. The attraction was the society.
Sunday evening old and young attended the chapel service. After the service the old would have a chat outside the doors of the chapel and then make their way home over roads, over paths, and over fields. But the young flocked together along a narrow lane until they came to the dispersing point. At the dispersing point efforts were made to pair off, some with success, others saddened by failure.
On Monday evening the weekly prayer meeting was held. Some of the teenage boys even took part, but I rebelled and flatly refused. So why go to the prayer meeting? The answer is the same as that given to the Sunday service – the company of contemporaries, male and female. Perhaps the emphasis should be put on ‘female’.
On Wednesday evening the Young People’s Society met. I have already described what was unique about this society. But there again these meetings were so successful because they brought together the young people of the area. However it must be admitted that the walk home after the meeting was not the only attraction, as we always had activities which were both entertaining and educational.
Nowadays churches and chapels have tried to attract their young members to attend their services by providing a games room, where they can play games such as table-tennis and can socialise with a cup of tea. In Panteg there was no need for such an amenity as there were no counter-attractions. But on occasions, when I had had enough of reading, I would satisfy my urge to play a game by walking a distance of about a mile to the one and only shop in the area of many square miles, in order to play ‘rings’. Sometimes I was accompanied by Uncle William, who was quite as keen to have a game.
The shop hardly deserved the name ’shop’. It was a tiny tin shed with shelves of groceries on one side, fronted by a counter, and in line with the opposite side there was a bench that had a seating for about four or five people, if jammed tightly together. On the wall at the end near the door a ring-board was hung. There was hardly enough room between the counter and the bench to stand up to throw the rings. We had to play for money (usually two or three pennies) so that the winner could buy something in the shop – a kind of token payment for the entertainment provided.
December and January were, as it were, intercalary months of the year when the agricultural year was at its quietest time. The main jobs to be carried out were feeding the stock and the mucking out of the cowshed, the stable, the pigsty and any other building occupied by animals. So the farmers, and especially the wives, had much more time for the preparations for Christmas itself, and for the entertaining of families between Christmas and the New Year. You could be invited out to supper several times during the Christmas period.
A farm by the name of Black Bush boasted four attractive marriageable daughters – May, Maud, Edith and Olwen. Along with other boys, all teenagers, I would be approached, usually on the Sunday, by one of the girls and invited to supper on a night in the following week. It was a party to be looked forward to – plenty of home-cooked food followed by fun and games. It was not like a modern sophisticated party, with a liberal supply of intoxicating drinks. We were all dressed soberly in our Sunday best, and the fun and games were quite innocent. It was what could be called ‘good clean fun’.
Another farm, whose supper and entertainment we enjoyed very much, was my Uncle Dafydd’s farm, Llainbattis. We were usually invited as a family and quite royally entertained in what was called the ‘cegin orau’. This means literally the best kitchen, but kitchen seems hardly the appropriate word. The kitchen was the living-room where the family and the servants ate their meals, indeed where they lived all day and around whose blazing fire they would sit in the evenings. The ‘cegin orau’ was equivalent to the modern dining-room cum drawing-room, and it was here they entertained their special visitors. There was another room called the parlour – this was the show-place where very special visitors were entertained.
Llainbattis had another attraction for me. I had found interesting company in Dai, the farm servant. You might think that Dai, who had had very little school education and whose interests were confined to farming, would not be compatible company for a youngster, who presumed that he was much better educated and had wider interests than just those of farming. Perhaps an important feature of this relationship was the novelty, for me, of our meeting-place.
It was customary in the bigger farms for the senior male servant to sleep in a loft above the stable for the horses. It was also customary for the servants to have their supper soon after milking-time, that is between six and seven o’clock. Almost invariably, straight after supper Dai would leave the supper table and make his way to his own sanctuary, the loft above the stable. This he did summer and winter. The strange thing was that it was never cold in this loft, although it had no kind of fire. Heat was generated from the storm-lamp, which gave the light, from the horses beneath, and from the fodder stacked all around the loft. Dai and I had many a long chat in these seemingly unattractive surroundings, and yet the strangeness of the surroundings held some peculiar enchantment. But there was a drawback! These surroundings were also an ideal breeding-place for bugs.
Making my way home from these places in the darkness of the winter nights held no terrors for me. But I remember one particular night when I was on the verge of panic. The way from Llainbattis to Bryngwyn was along a rough track and then on paths through two fields before coming out on the road leading to Bryngwyn. There was a path in the second of the two fields, which was not well marked and which led through the middle. On this particular night it was so dark that you could hardly see your hand in front of you. As soon as I stepped through a wicket-gate I realised that I was not walking on the path, and at the same time I had become completely disorientated. I had no idea in which direction to go. There was only one action to take – move along until I came to the head on one side and then feel my way along the hedge until I came to the wicket-gate that gave entry to the road.
We had to use the paths through these fields to make our way to school and chapel in Panteg. On very dark nights you could see the swinging lights of lamps approaching from different directions. Our lamp was unique among all those lamps – it was a collier’s Davy lamp that had been given to my father because of a certain fault in it.
While on the subject of making my way in the dark, I have to relate a very unnerving experience I had when, I should think, I was about fourteen or fifteen years old, soon after I had had my new bicycle, the Coventry Eagle.
You often read in today’s papers complaints about the Health Service, about delays in treatment and about dilatory responses to emergency calls by the Ambulance. No such calls could be made from Panteg – there were no private telephones and no telephone kiosks. If there was a sudden illness in the family, the journey to fetch the doctor from the town had to be made by the quickest possible transport.
When Mrs Jones, Rhydganol (a neighbouring farm), was taken very ill suddenly in the middle of the night the husband must have thought that the one who could cover the distance of six miles to fetch the doctor was the young boy with the bicycle. So we were awakened in the dead of night by a loud banging on the front door. Mr Jones, almost in tears, implored my parents to send me down to Carmarthen to fetch Dr Harries. In spite of the fact that I had no light on the bicycle I bravely responded to the request. There was no danger of being caught without lights by a policeman until I approached the outskirts of the town. So I rode along the country roads, downhill almost all the way, in very poor visibility, but with good progress and without any mishap. I dismounted on entering the town, and pushed the bicycle through Tanerdy and along Priory Street until I arrived at a very large and imposing-looking house with a flight of steps leading to the front door.
You can imagine with what trepidation a young boy, at the unearthly time of three o’clock in the morning, mounted the steps and nervously rang the push-pull bell. What kind of reception was I going to have from whoever came to the door? What a relief when a maid appeared, and managed, although bleary-eyed, to give a welcoming smile and to say that the doctor would be told immediately. The uphill journey home was made in a more relaxed mood, although I had to push the bicycle most of the way.
Eisteddfodau have long since lost their interest and attraction for me, but, in my boyhood, they were events that were very popular in the countryside. Again the question arises – whether they were an attraction because they brought people together in a sparsely populated area or was it because of their cultural value, and indeed because of the competitive element. An eisteddfod held during the Christmas holidays that attracted the young people of Panteg was that at the small village of Felingwm. It was not unlike Panteg, except that it boasted a Post Office and Public House, the Plough Inn.
On the afternoon of the Eisteddfod, two or three of my pals would join with me to walk down to Panteg up the hill and then down again to Felingwm, all cross-country and a distance of at least three miles. The eisteddfod was held in a school class-room with enough seating to cover two-thirds of the floor, while it was standing-room only on the back third.
After ten o’clock, when it was stop-tap at the Pub, the standing-room became a mass of heaving half-drunk and rowdy spectators, not very unlike, but on a smaller scale, what you see on football terraces these days. The M.C. had an almost hopeless task to keep the rowdy element under control so that the competitors could perform in reasonable quiet.
There was one competitor who always demanded attention and quiet, he himself again half-drunk and having had to be summoned specially from the nearby Pub. Todd Jones had a magnificent tenor voice, and his rendering of ‘Arafa Don’, which he invariably sang, produced tumultuous cheers. I am sure that Todd Jones, were it not for his drink problem, could have become a highly-rated professional singer.
However late the eisteddfod ended – usually about one o’clock in the morning – none of us made a move to get on our way home. It was then that you could have the company of the whole group from Panteg, male and female. Here again was the chance to pair off with one of the girls. I would arrive home between two and three o’clock expecting to be given a row at breakfast for being so late. But I cannot remember that I was unduly reprimanded. My memory of the period of these happenings is rather hazy but I must have been seventeen or eighteen at that time. If I were much younger I hardly think that my parents would have been so tolerant.
Almost the whole of every Friday evening was spent in Llainbattis. Many of the surrounding farmers would bring their produce there to be bought by Uncle Dafydd, who acted as a kind of middle-man for a grocer from Gorseinon. The produce was taken on the Saturday morning to Carmarthen to be collected there by the grocer.
It was my job, when at home during the Christmas holidays, to take our produce, which consisted mainly of eggs and butter. It was a pleasant chore for several reasons. I would sit on the settle in front of a bright and blazing fire, chatting with my cousin and with the servants, watching the farmers entering with their varied produce, and watching the fixing of the price, generally less than a shilling for a dozen eggs, and also less than a shilling for a pound of butter. But the full price would not be given for the butter and cheese if the taste did not satisfy Uncle Dafydd. Very often, large tubs of butter, that had been made in the course of two or three weeks from milk from cows fed on winter feed in the cowsheds and approaching the end of their lactation period, would have what the Welsh farmers called ‘cwt’, meaning a tail, that is an unpleasant after-taste. Such butter did not receive the going price.
Some of the people bringing their produce were interesting characters, one more so than the others. She was an old woman of about eighty years of age, dressed in dirty unwashed rags, or rather old hessian sacking, heavy hob-nailed boots covered with caked mud, and a shabby hat almost covering a face of scaly wrinkles. She was made to sit on a chair apart from the others in the room. Nevertheless she was a good customer, bringing with her a huge heavy basket full of eggs, and taking away her basket full of provisions for the week. It was amazing how she was able to carry such a weight, but even more amazingly, she often carried on her back a bag of indian corn (maize) for her hens.
She was known to all as Sara Ffowls. She had one small field at the side of the road, about half a mile from Bryngwyn, far from any farm or dwelling house, so that no one complained of the unsavoury smells emanating from this field. Yes, it was a most amazing field, beyond any credible description. Not far from the gateway (that had no gate) there was a hen-house, but you saw no hens inside, but Sara herself. It was here that Sara lived and slept, and when she slept her feet, shod with dirty hob-nailed boots, could be seen through the open door.
Most of the time she kept about a hundred hens and about twenty goats. The food for the hens and the goats was kept in sacks, laid out in the open near the hedge, an ideal breeding-place for rats. At one time these rats had become such a plague that a number of neighbouring farmers decided one day to take their guns and dogs there, resulting, as they said, in the slaughter of around a hundred rats.
The goats could go out through the top end of the field to graze on common land, a rough moor of peat and bog. I remember, when taking a walk along the edge of the moor, seeing two billy-goats fighting. I had never seen such a sight before, but since then I have seen on the television in nature programmes many similar sights. The two he-goats must have been trying to establish which of them was the leader of the pack. They would face each other, stand up straight on their hind legs, and then at the same second they would descend and crash against each other’s horns with tremendous force.
Every now and again Sara would get a neighbouring farmer, who was a kind of amateur butcher, to slaughter one or two of the kids, and then she would take a basketful of the meat to sell around the farms. Because she was so dirty some of the wives were loath to buy from her. I remember after one Sunday dinner my mother, with a serious look on her face, asking us if we liked the meat, and after she had us to say that it was alright, she confessed that it was meat sold by Sara Ffowls.
In these days we take great care with our hygiene – washing our hands many times a day, cleaning our teeth at least once a day, having frequent baths and so on. I do not think Sara ever saw a tooth-brush. I am sure that not only did she not have a modern bath, but not even a tin-bath, such as the colliers used, and indeed such as we had in Bryngwyn. But think of this! She had to be moved from her hen-house to the work-house in Carmarthen, where she died when she was short of a century by only six years. It tempts me to ask, ‘What is the recipe for a long life?’.
People of my generation talk a lot about the characters that they knew in their early years. In this context ‘character’ has a special connotation. Characters were people with special attributes or characteristics – these would distinguish them from the rest of their community. Often their way of life was different from that of the others. But apart from Sara I cannot remember any that deserved this description.
Perhaps the local craftsmen had some special characteristics that distinguished them from the ordinary farmer: such craftsmen as the smith, the shoemaker, the carpenter, and the tailor. Many people who have had a country up-bringing talk of the cultural centres in their neighbourhood, such as the smithy and the shoemaker’s workshop. It was here that the locals discussed the Sunday sermon, talked politics, and recited their poetical efforts, especially ‘englynion’, a four-lined verse unique to Welsh literature. Panteg had its smithy, its shoemaker’s shop, but no tailor’s shop, but I have never heard that any one of these places attracted this kind of clientele, nor were the smith and the shoemaker literary connoisseurs. The carpenter’s shop could not very well have been such a centre, because it was situated on a remote spot on the edge of the moor. But I think that the carpenter himself deserved the appellation ‘character’.
Tomos Zacharias was in my time an old man with fine flowing white whiskers, but more than that what distinguished him from others was his mode of transport to Carmarthen. He was the only one in the area who had a donkey – in addition to his workshop he had a very small small-holding of two fields, with very poor soil, which could support only a cow and a donkey. He had made a small gambo suitable for his donkey, and it was in this he brought home from Carmarthen his weekly provisions and necessary timber. Progress to and from the town would naturally be painfully slow. I am sure that it must have been very trying and exhausting on the way back, uphill almost all the way. So, even in his old age, he would have to walk alongside the donkey most of the way.