My People: Stories of the Peasantry of West Wales/As it is Written
AS IT IS WRITTEN
XI
AS IT IS WRITTEN
Samson Post placed his arms on the gate of the close of Penyrallt, and cried loudly:
“Mali! Mali! Be you quick and come, woman. Have I not a letter from your son Dan ? Mali fach, do you haste now. Woe me, there's provoking you are to keep the post waiting!”
From the inside of the pigsty Mali answered:
“What old hurry you are in, man! Do you wait one little minute and I’ll be with you.”
Mali stooped her legs because she was too fat to bend the middle of her body, and came forth out of the pigsty, and while she scraped off the refuse from off the sides of her clogs, she called out:
“A writing from Dan, Samson bach?”
“Iss, iss,” answered Samson, “take you the old letter.”
“Goodness now, whatever does the boy say then? Little Samson, don’t you stand there like dolted idiot. Speak Dan bach’s words.”
“Dan says he is coming home for a small holiday,” said Samson, opening the envelope. “And he is bringing a maid with him.”
“What for you say jokes, man! Be serious and truthful.”
“Mali the daughter of Mati and the wife of Shaci, truthful I am, indeed, dear me.”
“Peer at the letter now, Samson bach, and interpret it to me without deceit,” said Mali.
“Woman alive, not joking am I. Do I not speech that Dan and his maid will be home on the third day then?”
“Dan bach and his maid! Serious now? Who may she be? Samson, Samson, there's shut up you are. Tell her name, man?”
“Curious was Mati your old mother, and curious you are, Mali. But wait a bit now while I have another peep at the old letter. … Dear, where is she? Here she is. Alice Wite—that's her name, Mali. Miss Wite.”
“That’s vile English,” said Mali.
“English, little Mali.”
“Doesn't the boy say how much yellow gold she possesses?”
“No-no, woman.”
“Then she hasn’t got any. Wite, indeed! There's a bad concubine! For what then Dan doesn’t throw gravel at the window of some tidy wench who can speak his native tongue!”
Mali threw her voice across the close and into the corner of the field which is behind the barn where Shaci her husband was thatching his hay.
“Shaci, man! Are you deaf then, for sure! Why you do not listen? Come you here at once.”
Shaci came down to the earth and walked to the gate slowly, for though he was not old, he stooped because of much earth toil.
When he was within twenty paces of her, Mali called to him:
“Samson the Post does say that Dan bach is coming home on the third day with an old bitch of an English maid. A cow as poor as a church mouse, I wager.”
“Iss, iss, Shaci bach,” said Samson the Post, “what talk there is in Shop Rhys about Dan! The religious Respected Bryn-Bevan was there, and did he not say that the abodes of the old English are refreshment places on the way to the Pool? Grand indeed he spoke. Like a sermon.”
“Whatever is the matter with the boy?” said Shaci. “Little Samson, read you writing of the letter now to me.”
“Shaci! Shaci!” Samson admonished him. “Inconsiderate you are, man. Know you not that I am the post? Has there not been a letter in my bag for three days for the owl of a Schoolin’ telling him the day of Sara’s funeral?”
Mali was sorrowful that her son Dan was to be charged with this fault, and she said to her husband:
“Shaci bach, here's disgrace. Put your old head into the words that Dan has written.”
But Samson the Post had taken away the letter.
“Full of wrath am I,” said Shaci.
“Heard you what the old Satan said about the Respected Bryn-Bevan?”
“Iss, iss.”
“This thing must not come to pass. How shall we hold up our heads in Capel Sion if Dan weds an old foreign leech?”
Shaci went out, and while he was labouring he thought out a device and he came into the house to take counsel of his wife.
This is what he said to Mali:
“Hearken to my speech, now, Mali fach. I will, dear me, go to Mistress Morgan Post and ask her to send a little telegram to Dan saying, ‘Remember Capel Sion, Dan bach.’”
“Why speak so wasteful?” Mali replied. “Six red pennies old telegrams cost, and is not Mistress Morgan meanly? She won’t take a small penny off the price.”
“True-true. Iss, indeed.”
Night came on, and Shaci read the words with which Moses praised the Big Man for the deliverance of the children of Israel from the hands of the Egyptians.
But Mali did not hear anything of that which Shaci said under the open chimney or that which he read by the light of the tallow candle. She felt shame for Dan, her son, whose name would be denounced from the pulpit and spoken with scorn by the congregation, and she remembered his deeds, first and last. Dear people, why was it destined for Dan to trespass in the eyes of Sion? Heart alive, are not the evil ways of the English known far and wide? And their helpless wastefulness? Look you at Owen, the son of Antony. Owen was in a grand shop draper in Swansea. He took to himself as wife a daughter of the English, and she kept a house for lodgers. Goodness me, is it not engraved on Owen’s tombstone in the Old Burial Ground in Capel Sion that he left only one hundred yellow sovereigns? Does not Antony lament to this day that Owen bach would have left half a hundred more yellow sovereigns if he had wedded a Welsh maid? Little Big Man, for why has not a Welsh maid, with a bit of land in her own name, found favour with Dan bach? There’s sad it is.
Shaci closed his Bible.
“Pray will I now, Mali fach,” he said, “for Dan.”
“What for you pray, Shaci,” answered Mali, ”and do nothing? Say now we got Sadrach Danyrefail to come and speak to the boy.”
“Good that would be.”
“And Joshua Llanwen.”
“He too is a man of God.”
Shaci went to Llanwen and spoke to Joshua by the ditch under the house.
“Mali is wanting you to speak wise words to Dan,” he said.
“Dan’s sins have reached my ears,” said Joshua. “By and by I will say phrases to the dear Big Man, and the words of the Terrible One will scorch your son Dan.”
Shaci then went across the fields (for this horrid thing made him fearsome of showing his face to his neighbours, lest they should reproach him) to Danyrefail.
“Shaci! Shaci! Go you and wash your dirty old heart,” cried Martha to him.
“Unworthy you are.”
“Now-now, humble is my carcase,” replied Shaci.
“But are you humble before the Almighty?” cried Martha the stranger woman of Danyrefail. “Drato, go on your dirty knees, old boy ugly.”
“There’s no more spirit left in me, little Martha,” said Shaci. “Do you now in the godliness of your heart say to Sadrach the Large that I seek his instruction.”
Sadrach took Shaci aside to speak to him quietly.
“Sure, little Shaci,” he ended, “come I will to prove this foreign hussy with hard questions.”
So Shaci’s heart was lightened, and he walked home over the tramping road; and though many asked him this and thus, he saw none mocking him to his face.
When he got home Mali was moaning her grief to Bertha Daviss, and Rhys Shop, and Sali the wife of Old Shemmi.
“For why does poor Dan bach want to bring home a bad woman from the English?” she said. “Alice Wite. There’s a nasty wench! The cunning serpent to lure away my boy bach. And I dare wager she is as poor as Old Nanni’s rats.”
Rhys Shop opened his lips and made utterance:
“Vain are the English women who work in these shops. Did not Tom Hughes, the traveller, say they are all wasteful?”
“And, little Rhys,” Bertha Daviss said, “did he not say they are barren? Sober! Sober!”
“Recollect you the female maid who stayed with Wynne the vicar?“ said Sali the wife of Old Shemmi. “Goodness, what an old girl she was, for sure! She washed her flesh on the Sabbath in Avon Bern.”
“Say not like that,” Rhys Shop interrupted.
“Iss, she did. Did not word of her doings reach Shemmi’s ears, and did he not hide himself behind Sadrach’s hedge to see the shameless woman for himself? And she used to take her old pagan dog for walks over the fields on the afternoons of the Sabbath.”
“Dear people,” said Rhys Shop, “have we not much to be thankful for to the Big Man?”
“Indeed, iss,” said Bertha Daviss.
“The white little Jesus will do me badly if I give the bitch a bed in my house,” said Mali.
“Tell you me now what you are going to do with her?” asked Sali the wife of Old Shemmi.
“Sadrach the Large and Joshua Llanwen will prove her,” answered Shaci.
“Proper indeed to ask the Respected Bryn-Bevan to speak to her also,” said Bertha. “Go you off, the two of you together, and speak to him.”
Mali followed closely behind Shaci, and she was weeping the whole of the way, and her grief was so much that she spoke to none of the people who asked of her: “Mali fach, what for you weep, woman nice?”
“Come into the cowshed, sinners bach,” said the Respected Bryn-Bevan; “the mistress has been washing the flags. Ho, iss, the hand of the Lord is hard upon you this day.”
“Iss, Respected bach,” said Shaci.
“This thing, Shaci, does not please me. Samson Post came to me for guidance, and we agreed that Wite is not a Welsh word. Ho, Shaci, no one in the Book of Words is named Wite.”
“Mishtir Bryn-Bevan!”
“Not one, indeed.”
“Awful,” said Shaci.
“Sinful,” said the minister.
“Do him come in the neighbourhood of five in the afternoon and say a speech,” said Mali. “Thankful will we be if he do this great deed.”
“Sure me, I’ll come, Shaci. Has not the Big Man called me to judge over Sion? I’ll talk fair to the wench, and if she bears herself without modesty in my presence then I will deal mightily with her.”
Now in the order of their importance these are they that went up to Penyrallt the day that Dan brought home a daughter of the English: the Respected Bryn-Bevan, Sadrach the Large, Joshua Llanwen, Rhys Shop, Sali the wife of Old Shemmi, Bertha Daviss.
The Respected Bryn-Bevan sat at the round table in the parlour, and the door of the parlour was kept open so that his voice reached the others who sat in the kitchen.
Mishtir Bryn-Bevan’s reading of the seventh chapter of Proverbs ended when Shaci brought his horse and cart into the close.
Rhys Shop rose to his feet and moved towards the outer door.
Mishtir Bryn-Bevan spoke wrathfully.
“Rhys Shop,” he cried, “an old black you are to forget that I am here!”
The minister strode through the kitchen: the people remarked the dignity of his stride and marvelled.
Shaci approached him, shaking his head, and saying,
“The old wench does not speak Welsh.”
Mishtir Bryn-Bevan stood on the threshold, his feet far from each other; and he stretched forth his right arm, and his hand was covered in black kid, and he cried:
“Halt, you female woman. Why you come here to spoil this godly house? Dan who is in a shop draper in Llanelly and who is the son of Mali and Shaci, why must you tempt the Big Man to anger, boy? Mournful is your dirt. Pack you the woman about her business; let her walk in shame back to her own people.”
The woman’s lips quivered, and she was neither young nor pretty.
Mali came down to her.
“Our little daughter,” she said, “dost her come here to take our son bach away from us now? Let her him be. Shaci will take her back to Castellybryn in the old cart.”
The woman whom Dan had brought home could not answer a word, because she did not know the meaning of the words Mali had spoken. Dan was about to open his lips, when Sadrach addressed the minister.
“Mishtir Bryn-Bevan,” he said, “you are a great scholar. Do you inquire of the fool if she can milk a cow.”
“Iss,” said Joshua Llanwen, “and if she can clean a stable.”
“And tell the rat of a bitch,” shouted Mali, “that Dan won’t get a red penny piece after us.”
“But, mam fach,” Dan broke in, “what does that matter? Is not Alice the owner of a nice shop draper?”
Mali now went to Dan, and she called him her own boy bach, and the son of his mother; and she took Dan and his maid into the parlour, and closed the door on them.
Returning to the congregation, she delivered to them this speech:
“There’s good you were to come. Dan’s maid, dear me, has travelled a long distance this day. Weary she is. Gracious now, isn’t she tidy? English she may be, but has not the Big Man told us to love our enemies? Shop Draper! There’s wealth for you. Rhys, come you up on a night and speak to her.”
To her husband Shaci she said:
“Go you off away down to the Shop and get white flour. I will make a little lot of pancakes for Dan’s maid. Be you fleet of foot.”