My People: Stories of the Peasantry of West Wales/The Redeemer
THE REDEEMER
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THE REDEEMER
Adam the son of Bern-DavyddBern-Davydd being the Ruler of Capel Sion before the day of Bryn-Bevanwas walking along the Road of the Romans, the narrow way that begins at the forehead of the School and disappears in the heather of the moor. His companion was Lissi, the servant of Ellen the Weaver’s Widow.
Midway there is a breach in the hedge, wherein, on a big stone, Adam and Lissi rested, and while they rested Joshua Llanwen came upon them. Joshua said:
“Say you are Adam the son of Bern-Davydd, boy, and the wench Lissi?”
“Iss, iss, little Adam am I.”
“Now what for you mean to be here in the dark?” said Joshua.
Adam arose to his feet and answered:
“Goodness me, Josh bach, are we not going home?”
“What a big iob you are, you bull-calf!” Joshua shouted. “Why for you are an old cow, man? The other road is to the Shepherd’s Abode. Have I not pledged that this is not to happen?”
He clenched his hand and thrust out the joint of his second finger, and therewith dealt Adam three blows on the face. Adam fell into the hedge, and while he nursed his sores he moaned:
“Dear Josh bach, why then you are so hasty, man? Sure now you have cut my nice face!”
Joshua, ignoring the plaint, turned upon Lissi:
“Back you hie, you brazen slut! Turn your wicked eyes and foul heart to Ellen’s loom-shed. You sow, walk you off in front of me.”
Lissi obeyed; as she moved towards the School Joshua raised his foot and kicked her.
Presently Adam scrambled over the hedge and across pasture-land and gorse hurried to his father’s house. This he did because he was feared of meeting Joshua on the road.
Bern-Davydd heard the sound of the gate opening, whereupon he lifted his eyes to his son Lamech and to Lamech’s wife Puah, and said:
“Don’t you muchly catechise Adam. Is not Joshua an eager counsellor? Perhaps his sayings have brought reason into the boy’s heart. Make pretence you are reading your old books.”
Thus, when Adam came into the room, no face was raised to him, nor voice said to him: “Dear me now, who has come for fresh garments this day? Much silver the tailor is gathering,” or “Well-well, little Adam, now that you’ve come, our religious father will thank the Big Father for the mercies of the hour, and we’ll go to bed,” this latter being the fashion the household of Bern-Davydd had of spending the last wakeful moments of the eve of the Sabbath. The transparent china lamp on the tinsel-draped mantelpiece lit up the group on the hearth: Bern-Davydd, a loosely-woven rope of whitish hair like a coil of sheep’s wool which has been caught in a barbed wire, and exposed many days to the weather, extending from ear to ear ; Lamech, the ball of his small nose glittering against swarthy skin and bushy black beard and moustache: Puah, her feet resting on the fender, and the tuft of red hair on the right side of her mouth shivering like boar’s hairs between the fingers of an ancient cobbler as she turned over the leaves of the book she was not reading.
Adam unravelled his leather boot-laces, speaking the meanwhile:
“Dear folk, a sober thing has happened to me this night. Seven times did Joshua Llanwen beat my face. Puah, look you at me now. Touch my hand and speak to them how it trembles.”
Puah showed kindness to him and did as he had asked her.
“Iss, indeed,” she said, “there’s blood on your cheeks, Adam bach.”
“What foolish man Josh is! Has he not opened the gash I did with the razor?”
Lamech chided from his chair:
“Brother Adam, heard you never of the speech of the Man of Terror, saying, ‘Vengeance is mine’?”
“Little Lamech, did not Joshua strike me seven times on my nice chin?”
“Adam, the son of Bern-Davydd, listen you to me, man. Is it not written, ‘Hard is the way of the transgressor’?”
The Respected Bern-Davydd said:
“Let me speak to the Big Man.”
A period of twelve years divided these two sons of Bern-Davydd, the years of Lamech, the elder, being fifty-two. At the age of forty-eight Lamech wedded Puah the widow of John Shop Morfa, at whose death she inherited the shop, many book debts, and much gold; and now, the harvest of debts having been gathered in and the shop sold, Lamech received a call to preach the Word, and was spending a little time in the Shepherd’s Abode before entering College Carmarthen.
But Adam the younger son was imbued with little understanding; he had never risen above working in Shop Pugh Tailor. Six months before this night he had desired Lissi, the squint-eyed girl that Ellen the Weaver’s widow got from Castellybryn Poorhouse. He had sent her a letter, which Samson Post spoke in the public places. Thereafter Lissi waited for Adam every night outside Shop Pugh Tailor.
His doings came to the ears of Lamech and Puah, who shook their heads dismally, the wife saying to her husband:
“Vile is Adam to covet the flesh of a poorhouse brat.”
“Doleful is my heart and anxious,” said Lamech.
“Go you and tell our father about this madness,” observed Puah.
Lamech opened his Bible for spiritual guidance; he read aloud these words:
“Ye shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.”
“Throw you your light of wisdom on the speech, Lamech,” said Puah.
“The Big Man means that it’s better for others to tell our father. Adam may plead that what we say is not true, and we will be rebuked. Let some cunning one go and bear witness.”
Puah tied her wide bonnet strings under her chin, and drew on her feet her elastic-side boots, and went to Llanwen and told Joshua to go and inform her father-in-law of the wickedness of Adam.
“For why he is so blind, Respected Bern-Davydd?” said Joshua. “And he our ruler too! If he cannot perceive the enemy in his own household, how expect he to find him among the congregation? One of his own lambs goes astray.”
“Joshua Llanwen, speak you plain to me now.”
“Is not that ram of an Adam courting Lissi, the poorhouse bitch that works at Ellen’s loom? The pig that cackles his son to the Pool! The bellows that blows him into the arms of Satan! Why do Adam and her go each night on the Road of the Romans? Bern-Davydd, this is no light matter to him.”
“Woe is me!” cried Bern-Davydd.
“A sinner from my loins! … This must end. Joshua Llanwen, be you another Paul. Keep watch over my son on the Road of the Romans. Stay in hiding, and if you see anything wrong, show yourself, and counsel him, and drive the evil spirit out of him.”
So Adam came home with blood on his chin, hence Bern-Davydd knew that Joshua Llanwen had performed his services faithfully; and on many occasions Joshua chastised Adam with his tongue, and his fists, and with the oaken club he employed to break in horses. Yet Adam would not leave off courting Lissi.
One night Bern-Davydd and his son Lamech spoke to Adam of their grief.
Bern-Davydd said: “Uncomfortable you make us. There’s little you show yourself in the sight of Capel Sion.”
“Mouth you to us now,” said Lamech, “that you will let the bad wench be.”
“Iss, say you like that,” said Puah. “Think you the Big Man has chosen such as Lissi to be a Bern-Davydd?”
“Little people,” answered Adam, “shortsighted you be then. Expect you, Lamech, the Big Father to perform a miracle with Puah as He did with Sara? Will she conceive and bear for you a child? Puah has passed her fruitfulness, and am I not the hope of the Bern-Davydds?”
“But, dull Adam bach,” said Puah, “why do you go low for a female? Mercy me! Lissi a Bern-Davydd! Repent you now, and be a goldy boy.”
Bern-Davydd’s heart hardened against his stubborn son, and the colour of his face became that of the sun-dried walls of the quarry on the moor; and he informed God of a just punishment for those who rebel.
Soon people began to whisper that before long Adam would be a father; the whisper rose into a shout, and it was cried on the tramping way, and even at the gates of Capel Sion. Bern-Davydd and Lamech heard it, and they trembled.
The father proclaimed from the pulpit:
“I have searched my soul for some sin that, unbeknown to myself, I might have committed. Did I find any? No, indeed to goodness, now, I didn’t. Yet the Big Man’s hand is hard on the innocent. My clean heart is bowed with shame. Why does the Big Father punish His child so? Last night I said to Him: ‘Lead me, big Jehovah bach.’ Perhaps, dear me, Adam has inherited the vanity of his mother Silah. Pray for her, you boys bach religious of the Lord.”
Three mournful days passed, then Bern-Davydd said to Lamech:
“Go down and examine the dirty clod. Look you for signs if she is indeed with child. The wench may be crafty in the manner of her clothes. And, little saintly son, get you her to admit that others have been with her.”
Puah interrupted: “I will go with Lamech, for I am a woman, and do I not understand the signs?”
Lissi was at her loom when Lamech and Puah came into the shed.
“Hai, the dirty wench! Walk here and stand forth, you hussy,” cried Lamech.
Lissi rose from her loom and came to Lamech and his wife, and as she got near they observed that the front of the girl’s petticoat hung high and away from her clogs and grey stockings.
“Ach y fi! Take,” said Puah, “the stuffing away from your belly.”
“Indeed me,” answered Lissi, “not stuffing is here for surely. Full is my skin.”
“O you Jezebel!” Puah cried. “Tell me, you ugly creature, how with your squint you tempted Adam bach.”
“Speak of the others who have been bad with you,” said Lamech.
Lissi, her mouth expressing an unintelligible grin, her large fingers twisting and untwisting a length of yarn, stood before them mute as a sheep in the hands of the shearer.
“Indeed to goodness now,” Puah went on, “imagine you that Adam will marry you?”
The girl whined: “He’ll have to. Ellen says I can petty sessions him if he refuses.”
“For sure now, Lissi, Adam is not the father of the child,” Puah said.
“What for you talk,” Lissi replied, her spirit rising, “for was he not bad with me the night Josiah Llanwen’s bull-calf perished?”
“Iss, Lissi fach,” said Puah, “Josh Llanwen did this and that to your flesh.”
“No, indeed, he didn’t.”
“Lissi, Lissi, that night on the Road of the Romans, now. … Iss, iss, of course he was. Did he not put you on the old stone?”
“No, no.”
“Josh has repented,” Puah said. “Does he not say, ‘I am the father of Lissi’s child’?”
“Sure me, Joshua is the father,” said Lamech. “His poor old flesh couldn’t withstand the temptation. But Capel Sion won't be hard on you, Lissi, nor on Josh. Isn’t he the father, little daughter fach?”
“For sure, no,” answered Lissi. “Josh Llanwen is important in Sion. Is not Priscila his wife? The father of the child is Adam. Did not Ellen peep into the shed?”
“Be you religious, Lissi,” Puah urged. “Do you admit to Josh. If you die in childbirth there’s glad you'll be that you won’t cross the Jordan with a lie in your head.”
“Great will be your reward,” Lamech added. “You can say to the Large Spirit, ‘I am the truth.’”
“But Joshua has not been bad with me,” Lissi persisted.
After the result of this conversation had been reported to Bern-Davydd, Puah spoke to her father-in-law. Her words pleased him, and he marvelled at her skill and prudence.
Dusk having fallen, Puah went over pasture and gorse to the Road of the Romans. In the breach in the hedge she hid behind the stone, and she remained there until Adam and Lissi came by; and when she heard the girl coming back alone she placed over herself a bed sheet, and thus covered she stood in the middle of the way. Lissi saw her thus arrayed, and she was very frightened. She threw off her clogs and ran. Before she reached the forehead of the School she was over-taken by unfamiliar pains.… The child she delivereda man childwas dead, and from her travail Lissi passed into madness.