How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Llewellyn

  Silence, and Cynlais Pritchard trying to hold his tears with eyes shut blind, and fists digging into his thighs.

  “To hand her murderer over to the police will give him an extra day to live, which your daughter was denied,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “He shall be fed and housed until the day he meets the rope, but your daughter will lie beneath the dead wreaths long before then, and the rope gives a good death, quick and clean, without blood, without pain, without torture of the soul and body. Is justice done, then, with a rope about the neck of a man, and his victim, a child of seven years, torn and twisted, long in her grave?”

  “No,” said the crowd.

  “Shall we burn him?” asked Mr. Gruffydd. “But if we do, he will die a death of honour, for martyrs died in the flame. What then?”

  “Give him to me,” said Cynlais Pritchard.

  “Is that your common decision?” Mr. Gruffydd asked the crowd.

  “Yes,” they all shouted back.

  “Take him,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “and as we do with him, so shall we do with the next, if next there is. And remember, if you bury him, however deep, you pollute innocent ground. Burden not the earth with such.”

  One son took a torch, and the others helped their father to take swine from there, and we all knew without the telling that they would have him up where they had found the girl in her blood, and on that spot he would suffer.

  So we stood, and the light got smaller as they climbed, and the screams passed, and presently they were over a shoulder of the hill and out of sight.

  “Let us pray,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “Lord God, we are weak men. If we have done wrong to-night, so be it. I will face Thy wrath at the Bar, and I will answer that we did right. Unto each his just reward. In Christ’s Holy Name, Amen.”

  “Amen,” said the crowd, and when Mr. Gruffydd got down, they started for home in quiet, saying nothing, watching for the light of the torch to appear above them on the mountain.

  The spark appeared, and with it a deep note from the crowd, but nobody stood. It went slowly to the right until it came to the briars beside the path that went up to the farm. There they had found the girl.

  It stopped, and went out, and the mountain was black.

  The houses of the Hill hid us from it as we went up, but when we went round the back to go in, a strong light was burning, as though they had fired the grass up there, and in the smoothness of the flame I thought I saw the movements of men. But I thought of Marged, too, and went in fear to bed.

  A policeman with a silver spike in his helmet, and a silver chain hanging on it, came to the Valley next day, but nobody knew what he wanted, and nobody could be found to answer his questions, so he went off again.

  All the morning, I watched Clydach Howell, in his wheelwright’s shop, making the little coffin from the white heart of an old oak, and learnt a lot from him in the matter of putting joins instead of nails and screws, and nails and screws where they are not to be seen. I helped to quilt silk for the lining and tap studs in the shape of flowers all round the edge to keep it in place. So good was the job when it was done, I felt it a shame to put it in the ground.

  But I let Clydach take it to the house.

  I have never been one for a funeral.

  Cynlais and his wife and sons, and their married daughters, and their husbands, and families were all down in the house when I took Mr. Gruffydd’s books down to him. All the people in front of the house were in their best, ready to walk in the funeral procession up to the graveyard over the mountain. As they waited they spoke of the night before, and many looked up at the black patch among the browns and greens of the mountain side.

  Inside the house no other sound but the long indrawn breathing and choking dolour of women long in tears, and weeping with eyes that are puffed to red soreness, and throats thick with hours of wailing. The children were in the kitchen, sitting stiff in their best, the men were in the front, and the women were all upstairs sitting about the body in its coffin.

  Mr. Gruffydd was in the front with the men.

  “Thank you, my son,” he said, when I gave him the books, and speaking as though he had been quiet for a long time. “Go you in the kitchen and bring the children up, will you?”

  So out in the kitchen I went, and tried to make the small ones stop their tears, but they could hear their mothers crying, and so cried with them. Then the women came downstairs, and the coffin was brought down, and Mr. Pritchard came in to me and gave me a sign with the thumb to bring the children from the house.

  When we got outside, the people had formed up two by two, stretching all the way down the street. Some, friends of the family, were walking behind the coffin, but most went on before. The hymn rose up in majesty, and white handkerchiefs were alive in the long untidy lines of black as the procession slowly went through the village and up for all in the Valley were in the procession, excepting only those who were bed-ridden and those who looked after them, and the men who were tending fires down at the colliery.

  Up and up, slowly we went, one hymn going into another, all singing, and the echo getting less and less as we neared the top and came free of trees. Then we stopped for the bearers of the coffin to have a rest, and handkerchiefs went, not to the eyes, but to foreheads and the backs of necks, and coats came off and cloaks were folded, and boots that were pinching were eased off. The everyday things, those little jewels that stud the action of living, were making themselves known. A blister on the heel, sweat about the neckband, a wrinkle in the stocking, were coming to mean more than the feelings brought forth by that which filled the little white coffin.

  Then up with the coffin again, and on, with another hymn to light the way, up and up, walking behind the lift and fall, lift and fall, of the little white coffin and the bowler hats about it, and the lines of black that now were breaking into threes and fours, with spaces coming wider, as men went to help women, and the slope got more and more. Now the leaders were going over the edge up there and passing from sight, then the carriers were up there, dark against the deep blue of the sky, with the sun dancing upon the brass ornaments and making the whiteness sing.

  Over the other side, then, and faster because we were going down, though not too fast, but easier and with more of relief, down to the field, that had been made into a graveyard. Everybody made a big ring about the hole where they were going to bury the coffin, but Mr. Pritchard and his family went to stand close by where the carriers had put it to rest on the mound of gravel.

  Handkerchiefs were busy again among the lines of black as Mr. Gruffydd started to read, and all about and around his voice were the sounds of weeping, and the voices of many men calling out to affirm the truth of his words.

  Mrs. Pritchard had to be held down by her husband and sons when Mr. Gruffydd signed to the men to put the coffin down the hole, and she screamed herself red as all the people came near to pass by and look at it down there at the bottom. Women were fainting and men carrying them to the sides to slap the backs of their hands and fan them, and the children with me were crying and crying with none to take notice of them except me, and I could do nothing for them, or say anything, for I was never easy with small children.

  At last the people had stopped coming and Mr. Gruffydd gathered a handful of earth to throw in. Then Mr. Pritchard let Mrs. Pritchard go to the edge and throw in some flowers and earth, and would have thrown herself in but she was held tight and pulled back. All the Pritchard women were shouting crying with their men holding them, and their children holding their skirts and wild with crying, except one little boy by me who had cried himself out, and stood with his hands in his pockets and his mouth turned down, with nothing in his eyes but tiredness.

  Men came from behind me with shovels and threw in the hard earth, and it rattled and bumped on the wood, and with that sound, Mrs. Pritchard went forward, white in the face, and her husband lifted her like a baby and carried her away.

  I could hear nothing of Mr. Gruffydd’s prayer for his voice was low, and the
sounds of weeping covered it. Then a hymn, uncertain in time and tone, and the burial was over.

  We went home faster than we had come and not so tidily, with people going up the shortest way, not in lines now, but in families, and with friends. I was slower at first for the children wanted to play as soon as we were outside, but when they started to shout they were hushed by men who turned round with frowns and fists. So we found our own way up and over, and we were long in front of the first when we got back to the Pritchard house.

  As soon as the first women got there they took off their coats and cloaks and rolled their sleeves to get out plates and boil water for the tea. More and more came, and then Mrs. Pritchard, who looked better, but still quick to cry if the wrong word was said or the wrong look given. As soon as she came in the food was set out and the tables were laid, and the setting and laying seemed to take her out of herself, for she worked with the best, and the first to notice what wanted doing, or had not been done properly, and no sign of tears then.

  The men were all smoking out in the street in front, but when they were called in they tapped their pipes against the walls and sat where Mrs. Pritchard pointed to put them. Four houses had opened their doors for the funeral tea, and in every house rooms were full of people eating and drinking, but in quiet, not like a birthday, with the food all coming from the back of Mrs. Pritchard’s, and carried by the girls and some of the boys to us, and to those outside who could not have places in.

  I had mine in the corner of Mrs. Pritchard’s front room, with two small Pritchard boys, near to the table where Mr. Gruffydd and Mr. Pritchard and the chief people were having theirs. Nobody spoke for a long time, but they were busy with the knife and fork and women were in and out with the tea, never stopping.

  “Sad,” Mr. Evans the Colliery said, “Sad.”

  He was leaning back, done, with a stick at his teeth, looking through the window.

  “Yes, indeed it is,” Rhys Howells said. “But a beautiful funeral, indeed. Clydach Howell made a lovely job of that coffin. Nothing so pretty I have seen in my days.”

  “Thank you, Rhys,” said Clydach, and going a bit red, so pleased he was, “I will be glad to do it for you, one day, man.”

  “I will see you safe in for one,” Rhys said. “And no danger. And that will be years, I hope.”

  “If I will go as that little one did to-day,” Clydach said, “I will go to-morrow. Beautiful, it was indeed.”

  And everybody nodded, and Mr. Pritchard smiled a bit about the table as though happier to think so.

  “I wish she could have seen it,” he said. “Do you think she saw it, Mr. Gruffydd? Is she in heaven yet, or is she waiting for her turn to come?”

  “In heaven,” said Mr. Gruffydd, and looking at his plate, “there is no waiting for children. Come unto me, said the Lord, and suffer the little children to come unto me. He said nothing about waiting.”

  “Glad I am,” said Mr. Pritchard, and tears coming. “But why she had to go there is no telling. She was happy enough here with us. She used to bring down my box to the colliery every dinner time so happy as a bird in the sky, and always at the top here to meet me, early shift. Why, I wonder?”

  “Who can read the mind of the Lord?” Mr. Owen the Mill said.

  “Why is it, Mr. Gruffydd?” Mr. Pritchard asked, and trembling in the voice, and the other men clearing their throats, and going to their cups for tea to drink, not to look at him.

  “I cannot tell you, Mr. Pritchard, my little one,” Mr. Gruffydd said, and his voice deep and full of sorrow, and bringing the room to quiet. “No man can tell you. I could say she was taken as a punishment, or as a visitation. But what have you done? Or your good wife? And if you were to be punished, why your little girl and not you? No, Mr. Pritchard. I cannot answer you, for nothing I could say would be the truth. The truth is beyond us, and is not in us. We go forward in faith. That is all.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Pritchard. “I suppose so, indeed. But it is very hard.”

  “Nobody can tell why the Son of Man had to go,” Mr. Gruffydd said. “He was Prince of Light. He could have ruled the world. But He was crucified, and when men would have fought for Him, He told them to put up their swords. He allowed a rabble to crucify Him. Why did He die in that way when He could have chosen any? To save us, we know. But why did He die in only that way? It was ordained? Then dare we say that Dilys was ordained to die as she did?”

  “But why not me?” Mr. Pritchard said. “I have had my life. Not good, but I have done my best. I was ready to go in her place.”

  “I have no answer for you, Mr. Pritchard, my little one,” Mr. Gruffydd said, and putting out a hand to touch Mr. Pritchard’s arm. “She was taken, and all argument is useless. We can only have faith in God, and resolve that the things which made her death possible shall be swept away, and now.”

  “Hear that, all,” Mr. Evans said. “What can be done to that end, Mr. Gruffydd? Say, and I will do all I can.”

  “First,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “let me call a meeting for to-morrow night. Now, and in this house, is not the time or the place. But this you shall make clear in your minds. That little soul has not gone from us for nothing. She shall be heard of for long to come.”

  “Amen,” said all the men.

  “Thank you, Mr. Gruffydd,” said Mr. Pritchard, “that is a comfort to me, indeed. But not much.”

  Quiet came, then, and my father winked me from the house and I went home to my lessons.

  Though I did no work in school I did plenty at night, and Mrs. Tom Jenkins or Davy or Ianto were always ready to help. Ianto and Davy had plenty of work of their own now, for the Union was growing day by day and Ellis the Post was outside our house morning and night with big bundles of Post for them, but they would always stop to give me help, and in return I wrote letters for them.

  Davy was working in our front, with Wyn to fold the letters as he finished, and Angharad to stick them down, and Ianto was painting a big sign for a meeting when I went in.

  “How was the funeral?” Davy asked me.

  “Very good,” I said.

  “Was Jones Pentre Bach there?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I thought so,” Davy said. “Nobody could be buried without him at the funeral. Not one funeral missed in twenty years, him. A graveyard haunter. Such people make me sick.”

  “Well, Davy,” Wyn said, in surprise, “the old man is only showing his respect for the dead, boy.”

  “Respect?” Davy said, with heat and contempt equal. “It is not respect to go crawling after every coffin you can find. Worshippers of death and the rites of burial. Human crows. They stink in the nostrils.”

  “The only part of the funeral they have got any interest in is the tea,” Ianto said. “Tears out and tea in, and thus the status quo.”

  “You are too lazy to walk over the mountain,” Wyn said, and angry. “That is your excuse. Laziness.”

  “I will walk to Town and back before I will go in any graveyard,” Ianto said. “Not laziness, sense. Graveyards, indeed. If there is one place more ugly or sour to the taste than a graveyard, I hope my senses will never be burdened to see it.”

  “What will you have, then?” Angharad asked. “Will you have the poor little girl put in the cess?”

  “Let a flame have her,” said Davy. “Dust to dust. And the quicker and cleaner, the better. Quiet, now, and let us work.”

  “Huw,” Ianto said, “get a hammer and nails from the back. We are going to have this up before dark.”

  Ianto carried the sign and I the tool box, down to the village and outside the Three Bells where there was an old stump of a tree, and to that we nailed the notice. It asked for all men interested in their own, and in the welfare of their dependants, to meet in Jones the Chapel’s field at six o’clock the next night, and to come in force, to reach a decision against the operation of the sliding scale as a basis of the weekly wages, and to convene a committee to present that decision to the owne
rs.

  A crowd of men gathered round us as we finished the nailing, and those who could read, read out for those who could not. A lot of them coming from the funeral stopped too, and Isaac Wynn, a deacon, looked at the notice and clicked his tongue.

  “When are you Morgan boys going to mind your own business?” he said to Ianto, and without good feeling. “You are always pulling the men this way and that. What right have you got to stand and speak to us? Let us see you more at Chapel and less at Jones the Chapel’s field. You will have a lot more respect from a lot of people.”

  “If I can have more wages, I will have less respect and gladly,” Ianto said. “Children eat from wages. No use to give them respect. And as for our noses, they will go where we think. I will speak to you of a wrong as long as you will stand to listen. That is my right. And if you think I am wrong, stand to speak against me. That is your right, and I will never question it. As for Chapel, it is good in its place, but it is not a place I like because there are too many of your sort in it. That is why I like Jones the Chapel’s field better. Good night to you.”

  “Retribution shall come to you,” Isaac Wynn called out after us.

  “Good,” said Ianto, “so long as it will come with more wages.”

  “Go on back to London,” Isaac Wynn shouted. “Leave your silly notions with them up there.”

  “I will tell that to the owners,” Ianto shouted back, “for that is where your proper wages are spent. If you are content to see what should be going into your pocket falling into the pockets of landlords, and bankers, and Jews, and on the backs of whores, I am not. And I will stay here to say so.”

  “How do whores get our money?” I asked Ianto, as we went back.

  “I am sorry I had to use the word in front of you,” Ianto said, “but I was angry with that old fool. You are too young for such things. You will learn in time to come.”