My Neighbors: Stories of the Welsh PeopleEvans, Caradoc
General
My Neighbors: Stories of the Welsh People
Evans, Caradoc
Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
So Josi, who in the fields and on his bed had exercised prayer in the
manner that one exercises singing, uttered his first petition in Capel
Sion. He told the Big Man to pardon the weakness of his words, because
the trousers of manhood had not been long upon him; he named those who
entered the Tavern and those who ate bread which had been swollen by
barm; he congratulated God that Bern-Davydd ruled over Sion.
At what time he was done, Bern-Davydd cried out: "Amen. Solemn, dear me,
amen. Piece quite tidy of prayer"; and the men of the Big Seat cried:
"Piece quite tidy of prayer."
The quality of Josi's prayers gave much pleasure in Sion, and it was
noised abroad even in Morfa, from whence a man journeyed, saying: "Break
your hire with your master and be a servant in my farm. Wanting a prayer
very bad do we in Capel Salem." Josi immediately asked leave of God to
tell Bern-Davydd that which the man from Morfa had said. God gave him
leave, wherefore Bern-Davydd, whose spirit waxed hot, answered: "Boy,
boy, why for did you not kick the she cat on the backhead?"
Then Josi said to his mother Mali: "A preacher will I be. Go will I at
the finish of my servant term to the school for Grammar in
Castellybryn."
"Glad am I to hear you talk," said Mali. "Serious pity that my
belongings are so few."
"Small is your knowledge of the Speeches," Josi rebuked his mother. "How
go they: 'Sell all that you have?' Iss-iss, all, mam fach."
Now Mali lived in Pencoch, which is in the valley about midway between
Shop Rhys and the Schoolhouse, and she rented nearly nine acres of the
land which is on the hill above Sion. Beyond the furnishings of her
two-roomed house, she owned three cows, a heifer, two pigs, and fowls.
She fattened her pigs and sold them, and she sold also her heifer; and
Josi went to the School of Grammar. Mali labored hard on the land, and
she got therefrom all that there was to be got; and whatever that she
earned she hid in a hole in the ground. "Handy is little money," she
murmured, "to pay for lodgings and clothes preacher, and the old scamps
of boys who teach him." She lived on potatoes and buttermilk, and she
dressed her land all the time. People came to remark of her: "There's no
difference between Mali Pencoch and the mess in her cow-house."
Days, weeks, and months moved slowly; and years sped. Josi passed from
the School of Grammar to College Carmarthen, and Mali gave him all the
money that she had, and prayed thus: "Big Man bach, terrible would
affairs be if I perished before the boy was all right. Let you me keep
my strength that Josi becomes as large as Bern-Davydd. Amen."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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