Chapter I: Front Matter

MY NEIGHBORS STORIES OF THE WELSH PEOPLE

BY CARADOC EVANS

NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE 1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC.

THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY, N.J.

TO MY FRIEND THOMAS BURKE OF "LIMEHOUSE NIGHTS"

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

THE WELSH PEOPLE 3
I. LOVE AND HATE 11
II. ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN 31
III. THE TWO APOSTLES 59
IV. EARTHBRED 81
V. FOR BETTER 99
VI. TREASURE AND TROUBLE 117
VII. SAINT DAVID AND THE PROPHETS 131
VIII. JOSEPH'S HOUSE 155
IX. LIKE BROTHERS 173
X. A WIDOW WOMAN 187
XI. UNANSWERED PRAYERS 199
XII. LOST TREASURE 215
XIII. PROFIT AND GLORY 231

THE WELSH PEOPLE

Our God is a big man: a tall man much higher than the highest chapel in Wales and broader than the broadest chapel. For the promised day that He comes to deliver us a sermon we shall have made a hole in the roof and taken down a wall. Our God has a long, white beard, and he is not unlike the Father Christmas of picture-books. Often he lies on his stomach on Heaven's floor, an eye at one of his myriads of peepholes, watching that we keep his laws. Our God wears a frock coat, a starched linen collar and black necktie, and a silk hat, and on the Sabbath he preaches to the congregation of Heaven.

Heaven is a Welsh chapel; but its pulpit is of gold, and its walls, pews, floor, roof, harmonium, and its clock--which marks the days of the month as well as the hours of the day--are of glass. The inhabitants are clothed in the white shirts in which they were buried and in which they arose at the Call; and the language of God and his angels and of the Company of Prophets is Welsh, that being the language spoken in the Garden of Eden and by Jacob, Moses, Abraham, and Elijah.

Wales is Heaven on earth, and every Welsh chapel is a little Heaven; and God has favored us greatly by choosing to rule over us preachers who are fashioned in his likeness and who are without spot or blemish.

Every Welsh child knows that the preacher is next to God; "I am the Big Man's photograph," the preacher shouts; and the child is brought up in the fear of the preacher.

Jealous of his trust, the preacher has made rules for the salvation of our bodies and souls. Temptations such as art, drama, dancing, and the study of folklore he has removed from our way. Those are vanities, which make men puffed up and vainglorious; and they are unsavory in the nostrils of the Big Man. And look you, the preacher asks, do they not cost money? Are they not time wasters? The capel needs your money, boys bach, that the light--the grand, religious light--shall shine in the pulpit.

That is the lamp which burns throughout Wales. It keeps our feet from Church door and public house, and it guides us to the polling booth where we record our votes as the preacher has instructed us. Be the season never so hard and be men and women never so hungry, its flame does not wane and the oil in its vessel is not low.

White cabbages and new potatoes, eggs and measures of corn, milk and butter and money we give to the preacher. We trim our few acres until our shoulders are crutched and the soil is in the crevices of our flesh that his estate shall be a glory unto God. We make for him a house which is as a mansion set amid hovels and for the building thereof the widow must set aside portions of her weekly old age pension. These things and many more we do, for forgiveness of sin is obtained by sacrifice. Such folk as hold back their offerings have their names proclaimed in the pulpit.

Said the preacher: "Heavy was the punishment of the Big Man on Twm Cwm, persons, because Twm speeched against the capel. Was he not put in the coffin in his farm trowsis and jacket? And do you know, the Big Man cast a brightness on his buttons for him to be known in the blackness of hell."

It is no miracle that we are religious. Our God is just behind the preacher, and he is in the semblance of the preacher; and we believe in him truly. It is no miracle that we are prayerful. Our God is by us in our hagglings and cheatings. Becca Penffos prays that the dealer's eyes are closed to the disease of her hen; Shon Porth asks the Big Man to destroy his pregnant sister into whose bed Satan enticed him; Ianto Tybach says: "Give me a nice bit of haymaking weather, God bach. Strike my brother Enoch dead and blind and see I have his fields without any old bother. A champion am I in the religion and there's gifts I give the preacher. Ask him. That's all. Amen."

Although we know God, we are afraid of to-morrow: one will steal our seeds, a horse will perish, our wife will die and a servant woman will have to be hired to the time that we find another wife, the Englishman whom we defrauded in the market place will come and seek his rights.

We are what we have been made by our preachers and politicians, and thus we remain. Among ourselves our repute is ill. Our villages and countryside are populated with the children of cousins who have married cousins and of women who have played the harlot with their brothers; and no one loves his neighbor. Abroad we are distrusted and disdained. This is said of us: "A Welshman's bond is as worthless as his word." We traffic in prayers and hymns, and in the name of Jesus Christ, and we display a spurious heart upon our breast. Our politicians, crafty pupils of the preachers and now their masters, weep and moan in the public places as if they were women in childbirth; in their souls they are lustful and cruel and greedy. They have made themselves the slaves of the wicked, and like asses their eyes are lifted no higher than the golden carrot which is their reward from the wicked. Not of one of us it can be said: "He is a great man," or "He is a good man," or "He is an honest man."

Maybe the living God will consider our want of knowledge and act mercifully toward us.