How Green Was My Valley

  “Eh, dear,” my father sighed, when we were outside and walking up the Hill, “there is terrible, indeed. He could have had the old turkeys if he had asked.”

  “Let me carry one, Dada,” Ianto said.

  “No,” my father said. “All the people on the Hill shall see me with them. Then if there is trouble, it will come to me and not to you. Him and his English law.

  All the way up the Hill people looked and wished my father good night, but nobody asked questions. It was enough for them to know that the turkeys were home again. They could find out where they had been later.

  Mr. Gruffydd was in the house when we got in, so that was more shock to us. My father went round the back to hutch the turkeys, so he came in after, to a silence.

  “Good evening, Mr. Gruffydd,” he said, and went to the mantel for his pipe.

  “Good evening to you, Mr. Morgan,” Mr. Gruffydd said. “I hear you have had trouble with Mr. Elias?”

  “Bad news has good legs,” said my father.

  “It is all over the Valley,” Mr. Gruffydd said.

  “The trouble is finished,” my father said.

  “He stole your turkeys?” Mr. Gruffydd said, and watched the smoke from my father’s pipe.

  “The turkeys are in the hutch outside,” my father said. “Is there anything to be done for you, Mr. Gruffydd?”

  Mr. Gruffydd was quiet for a moment or two and then he started to laugh. It started in the depths of his chest and slowly rose until he was shouting laughing. Well, of course, when we had finished to be surprised, we started to smile first, then our cheeks went fat with laughter trying to get out, and then we laughed, too. We were in stitches. Nobody knew why. Mr. Gruffydd kept trying to say, but laughter would catch up with him, and off he would go again.

  Then Ianto, with tears, would point to his nose, then at my father and make a weak little punch, and that would start us all off again. Laughter is foolish to think about, but good to have.

  “Mr. Gruffydd,” my mother said, “have to eat.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “Indeed I will. Tomorrow night, I shall be speaking on the Chapel field down by the river, Mr. Morgan. I hope I shall see you beside me?”

  “Well,” my father said, and very pleased and surprised, too, “thank you, Mr. Gruffydd. I will be glad, indeed. What is the subject, sir?”

  “The bringing of men closer to the spirit of God,” said Mr. Gruffydd.

  “I punched a man’s nose to-night,” said my father.

  “I know a few more that would be the better for it,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “And if things are not better very soon, I will go out of my way to deal a few in person, too.”

  “Good,” said my father. “I will be with you to-morrow night, sir. Eat, now. Eat plenty.”

  The Chapel field was where Mr. Gruffydd baptized those who were ready. Along the river it was, outside the village, and in that day a little paradise, with the river so clear and broadly green, and silver about the rocks, and willows bending to wash, and reeds in plenty for the frogs, and fish for the herons, and quiet for the ducks and little water-hens.

  Everybody went that way on Saturday for Mr. Gruffydd’s meeting. There was a crowd in front of us, and a crowd behind. Up the mountain side we went and turned down for the gate leading to the field. There was a big crowd outside, and their voice came up like the low note of the north wind. When we got to them we saw why. There was a notice nailed on a board, and it said that the landlord had left the district and withheld permission, hitherto given, for meetings of any description.

  The landlord had signed his name Abishai Elias.

  The crowd wanted to go in, never mind the notice, but Mr. Gruffydd refused to set foot beyond the gateway. So we all walked a little farther up the mountain, and there Mr. Gruffydd found a place to stand where we could all see him, and spoke until the sun went, and evening put a coldness upon us. But if we were chilled outside, we were well warmed within from the heat of his discourse, and we walked home fast as well, to have the blood full pitch in us.

  He wanted to start his fight that evening down at the baptizing place, he said, because it seemed a fitting meeting place for crusaders. Wickedness was creeping into the Valley without halt or check. Thieves there were, and vagabonds, and drunkards by the score, and even bad women.

  “Before you are much older,” he shouted, and his voice was running in a ring all round the Valley, “you will have policemen here to stay. A magistrate next. Then perhaps even a jail. And the counterparts of those things are hunger and want, and misery and idleness. The night is coming. Watch and pray.”

  “Amen,” said the people, soft and deep.

  “How shall we fight?” Mr. Gruffydd asked us. “How? It is simple. Men lose their birthrights for a mess of pottage only if they stop using the gifts given them by God for their betterment. By prayer. That is the first and greatest gift. Use the gift of prayer. Ask for strength of mind, and a clear vision. Then sense. Use your sense. Not all of us are born for greatness, but all of us have sense. Make use of it. Think. Think long and well. By prayer and good thought you will conquer all enemies. And your greatest enemy now is coal. You must become stronger than coal. Coal is lifeless, but to subtle men it lives in the form of gold. To you it is so many trams at so much a ton. To others it is so many shiploads, so many credit notes, so many loans, investments, interests. Your enemy is usury. And the usurer takes no heed of men, or their lives, or their dependants’ lives. Behold, the night is coming. Prepare, for the time is at hand.”

  He went through the history of the Valley and spoke to them of the steady fall in wages, and their willingness to work for less and less, while others who had nothing to do with coal, but handled only paper, or owned the land above the workings, took more and more.

  “You must fight,” he said. “Fight. Fight now.”

  “Tell us what to do,” men were shouting. “Show us a way.”

  “Elect men to Parliament,” Mr. Gruffydd told them. “Gain for yourselves representation. Then form a society among yourselves. Elect a body of officers to tabulate your wrongs and give them authority to approach the chief men in the coal trade and in the Government. Do all things with order.”

  “Mr. Gruffydd,” shouted Mr. Rhys, a check-weighman with my father, “are you coming outside your position in life? Your business is spiritual.”

  “My business,” shouted Mr. Gruffydd, in a voice that made us jump, “is anything that comes between men and the spirit of God.”

  “Amen,” said the crowd.

  “Let it not be forgotten,” said Mr. Gruffydd, in the same voice and waving the people quiet, “that the Lord Jesus drove the money-changers from the Temple, not only because they profaned that holy place, but also because they were corrupting the people, who were too simple to see how they were being cheated, and by degrees, poisoned, till they were in their own way corrupt as their masters.”

  “Now then for you,” said Ianto to Davy, and Bronwen gave my hand a squeeze. “There is how to talk to them. Sense.”

  There was more talk then, and shouting, but Mr. Gruffydd said the women would be cold if the meeting went longer, so after a prayer and a good hymn we went back home singing.

  Even Ivor and my father were ready to work with the boys, and that had never happened before. Indeed, when Gwilym came over after tea, he was so surprised he stood looking in at the door.

  “Come on, my son,” my father said. “Sit you by here, now. You can take the message to the men on your side.”

  “What is this, then?” Gwilym asked, looking all round us, Ianto, Davy, and Owen with pen and ink, my father with a board and chalk, and Ivor with a ruler. Angharad and my mother were in Bron’s, fitting a dress on Ceridwen.

  Owen told him, while my father wrote a notice of a meeting to be held at the Three Bells a couple of nights later. Ianto, Davy, and Owen were writing notices to be sent to every colliery in the district, for the men to turn out in force. Then we all took copies of the noti
ce to take to the pits we had chosen, and my father took Mr. Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson from the shelf and read a couple of chapters aloud, and passed it round for us to read in turn.

  There is good were those nights, indeed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  HAPPY we were then, for we had a good house, and good food, and good work. There was nothing to do outside at night, except chapel, or choir, or penny-readings, sometimes. But even so, we always found plenty to do until bedtime, for if we were not studying or reading, then we were making something out in the back, or over the mountain singing somewhere. I can remember no time when there was not plenty to be done.

  I wonder what has happened in fifty years to change it all. I can remember nothing, except death, to account for it. Gaslight, when it came, made people want to read less, for comfort perhaps, and electric light sent them to bed earlier because it was dearer. But when did people stop being friends with their mothers and fathers, and itching to be out of the house, and going mad for other things to do, I cannot think. It is like an asthma, that comes on a man quickly. He has no notion how he had it, but there it is, and nothing to cure it.

  Dear little house that I have lived in, there is happiness you have seen, even before I was born. In you is my life, and all the people I have loved are a part of you, so to go out of you, and leave you, is to leave myself.

  That great black bully who presses upon you with such hurt will soon cover you. Your windows will break, and your doors, and slag will fill your rooms. Your roof may fall, and this room and the others may become filled with slag. But you will stand upright inside, with the slag behind, above, and beyond you, but you will never fall. You shall be buried, but you will never fall.

  Ceridwen stood in that doorway by there, with her new dress tight about her shoulders, and her face laughing among her long hair hanging down, bending forward to do up the fastenings at the back, and struggling to reach.

  “Come you, Huw,” she said, pretending to be halfway to crying, “do these old things up for me. Tight it is, see.”

  How soft, warm, pale, the skin, and touched with the light, not flashing, not even shining, but as though polished soft, and then breathed on with half of half a breath.

  “Ceridwen,” my mother was shouting, downstairs, “you will be late, girl.”

  “O, dammo,” Ceridwen said, and struggled again. “Hurry up, boy. There is slow.”

  “Keep still, then,” I said to her for when she moved, all I had done up came loose again. “Like an old eel in the pocket you are.”

  “Right, you,” she said. “So an eel I am, is it? No present from Town for you, now.”

  “Right,” I said, and stopped working. “No present, no dress done up. So now for you.”

  “O, Huw, my little one,” she said, all eyes and soft voice, and laugh tears, “nasty you are to your sister. You will have me late and then no Town and no bottom drawer, and Dada will be angry and Blethyn will marry someone else. Come you, now, is it?”

  “Will I have a present from Town, then?” I said.

  “O, God, boy,” Ceridwen said, making claws at me, “nine old presents you have said. But put me in this old dress before I will jump from that window.”

  And the dress was done up, and downstairs we went, to see her go off with my mother and father with Thomas the Carrier to catch the train to Town.

  “Another one off,” Davy said, when we were waving to them down the Hill.

  “When is it your turn?” Owen asked him.

  “Yes,” Ianto said, “while there is still something left in the box.”

  “O,” Davy said, “plenty of time.”

  “Bring her home, man,” Ianto said. “Are you afraid one of us will take her?”

  “One of you?” Davy said, and pushed back his hat to laugh. “Just for that, I will have her home here on Saturday.”

  “By damn,” Ianto shouted, “I knew well he had a girl, see. There is an old devil, keeping quiet. Roll him down the bank, boys.”

  But Davy had too long a start and they had no chance.

  That was the first I knew of Davy having a girl.

  But it was no wonder when we saw her.

  Ceridwen came home with my father and mother on Saturday afternoon, full of parcels, and talk of Town, and the railway, and the sea, but everybody was talking so much, all at the same time, nobody had a good listen, except me to a lot of old noise and words piled up on one another.

  Blethyn Llywarch was a good size and fair looking, with a broken nose from fighting and black hair in a mop that got in his eyes when he was excited. He was shy at first, and blushing when he was near Ceridwen, but she was cool as a stream up the mountain, pushing his tie, and patting his handkerchief and putting the flaps straight on his pockets, but his hair was too high for her to reach.

  My father was trying to make him sit back in his chair instead of having a bit of himself on the edge, and my mother got a him a cup of tea and took the spoon away after he had dropped it twice and splashed his good trews. Everybody trying to think of something to say, not to be rude, and our faces with smiles so tight as to be stitched.

  In came Davy and Ethelwyn on top of it.

  Well.

  Wyn we called her from the start, see. Nothing else to be done with a girl like that. Brown eyes she had, big, with eyelashes that touched her brows, and a smile in her voice, and looking to Davy as to a brother of God.

  There is a big family we were that night. My father and mother, Ivor and Bronwen, Ianto, Davy and Wyn, Owen, Gwilym, Ceridwen and Blethyn, Angharad and me, and little Olwen upstairs and sleeping these hours, and Mr. Gruffydd, and old Mrs. Rowlands the Villa, who was managing his lodgings for him, Mr. Evans from the colliery and more who called and went. I did so much washing up that night, because Ceridwen was out in the back with Blethyn, I never wanted to see another old pot while I lived.

  “Good God,” Angharad said, with impatience and a stamp on the wet stone, “are they using six plates for every bit of devil-ridden food they are stuffing in their old bellies, out by there?”

  “Down on the floor I will put them,” Gwilym said, for the sink was crowded. “Nearly finished they have, now. Have heart, girl.”

  “Heart?” Angharad said, and nearly crying in temper. “Fifty pairs of hands, a new sink and dry feet is what I want, not heart. Tell them in by there to take their old snouts from the trough before I will come in and push the rest down their gullets with the poker.”

  Wash and wipe, wash and wipe, plates and dishes and knives and forks and spoons and basins and cups. More kettles to boil for more hot water. More steam, more soda, more wash and wipe, more wet on the floor. Wash and wipe. Dear, dear, there is glad I was that night that I was born a boy. A man will never know a woman until he knows her work. Wash and wipe, hot water and soda, kettles and saucepans, heat and steam, and always the water.

  At last we finished, and Angharad threw the last wet dishcloth over the line.

  “Let us go out up the mountain, Huw,” she said, and there is surprised I was.

  “What for?” I asked her. “Let us go in by there now, and listen to the talk.”

  “Talk,” she said, and her eyes were dull with contempt. “I have had enough for one day. Come on up the mountain where we shall be quiet. Talk? I would be looking at their old mouths and thinking how many platefuls that one took in it. Come, you.”

  So up the mountain we went, and sat on the branch of a big oak that the storm had pulled off. There is beautiful to watch a mountain sleeping, and other mountains in the other valleys rising up like bits of blue velvet to make you feel you could cut a piece and wear it for a coat, to dance in above the fat clouds.

  We had been there only a minute or two and then somebody came up toward us, a man, and whistling as though he expected to meet somebody. Right, too, for Angharad got up quickly and ran headlong down to meet him.

  Young Iestyn Evans, son of Christmas Evans the Colliery, it was with her. He had just left Oxford Univer
sity and a proper swell, and starting with his father. There is surprised I was.

  “Iestyn,” Angharad said, “this is Huw.”

  “Hulloa, Huw,” Iestyn said, in an English manner. “It is very kind of you to bring your sister to meet me.”

  “I knew nothing about you or I should have stayed at home,” I said. “And if my father knew Angharad was meeting you, he would strangle her.”

  “For shame, Huw Morgan,” Angharad said, but still on Iestyn’s arm, “only meeting for a moment, I am.”

  “The moment has gone these minutes,” I said, “come you home.”

  “Wait,” Iestyn said, “and I will come with you.”

  “If you do,” I said, “my father will know about this meeting. Better for you to call after Chapel to-morrow.”

  “How old is this Daniel?” Iestyn asked Angharad.

  “Fourteen, I think he is,” Angharad said. “Not old enough to give orders. Come. Let us go to the top of the mountain.”

  “I am going home this minute,” I said.

  “Wait,” said Iestyn.

  “I am too young to give orders, perhaps,” I said, “but too old to take orders from you.”

  “There is a mean old thing you are,” Angharad said, and almost crying, this time properly. “Only a minute.”

  “Home, me,” I said, and started down the mountain.

  “Huw,” she called. “Wait. I am coming.”

  So I waited, and I heard them kiss, and then Angharad caught up with me and home we went.

  “What is the matter with you?” she asked me, and there is a temper for you. “I could kill you. Five minutes would have been no harm.”

  “That is what Meillyn Lewis might have said,” I told her.

  “Huw,” she said, with her face white and her eyes black and her hair blowing about her, and her cloak like a witch’s in coils with the wind, “you would say that to me?”

  “I would rather say it now than after,” I said. “Why does he want to see you up the mountain? Why not come home?”

  “I hate you,” she said, and wrapped her cloak round her so that she was a black pillar, with a white face and her eyes with glitter and shine to make you afraid.