In Praise of Wales

hangela/Pixabay

My mum was from a mining family in the Aberdare Valley and I spent part of my childhood and many holidays there. Over 65 years ago it was dusty place where the production of coal ruled and massive slag heaps reared all around.

I recall women with their babies wrapped around them in chequered blankets, chattering in the streets, a language I couldn’t understand. My mum had left the poverty and the poor health behind as soon as she could and when we went to stay with my Grannie and Grancher she conveyed a shame to me about her language and culture that had been instilled in her from schooldays.

I recall dressing up in stove-pipe hats and shawls and lace for St David’s Day. The shawl was the one my own dolls were carried about in and the saint’s day was the only time I remember there being any pride in being Welsh.

It had been hard for my mum and her family growing up. Food was scarce and the men, her father and later her brother, were expected to work till they dropped, usually from lung disease or accidents down the pit. We bathed in front of the fire in an old tin bath which also doubled as a place to soak the clothes. My dad would talk about their courting days when waiting for my mum to get ready; he would take off his shoes and socks, roll up his trouser legs and stomp about in the soapy water, giving the clothes a good pounding.

We had an outside loo at the bottom of the garden and a potty under the bed for night time. We cut up pieces of newspaper and strung them on string as toilet paper.

In the only photo I have of Grannie taken not long before she died in her early sixties from a life of poverty and heart disease, she looks ancient and I can’t now recall her any other way.

Planet_Fox/Pixabay

I loved it there among the terraces with hardly any cars, where everyone knew everyone, so we wandered freely about. I loved the sing-song voices and how happily different cultures seemed to live in harmony. In the late 1950s the corner shop, the Chinese chip shop and the ice cream shop were run by people from other worlds who had settled among the slag heaps and mist. I could see mountains from the back window, the iron sculptural mining works, the black hills of slag and, for a brief time in the summer, the pit ponies released from their underground hell to graze in the sunshine.

I think it was my mum who told me about the Welsh Not and why she didn’t speak Welsh. For those who don’t know, the Welsh Not was a piece of slate or wood that was hung about a child’s neck if they were caught speaking Welsh. It was a cruel and barbaric practice that helped generations to be “kept in their place” from childhood.

I was horrified as a child that people should be punished for speaking their own language, but it was only when I came to Pembrokeshire that I began to see how truly important it has become to keep the language alive.

In the 19th century many cultures were seen as inferior to English; Britishness was held up as the answer to supposed immorality and poor standards among native people in their own lands.

Living now as I do in this little corner of such marvellous beauty, I am so grateful for the spirit of the Welsh people that has brought the language back and has such a pride in the song and the poetry of this beautiful and ancient people.