Let it be noted that there was something remarkable as to the manner in
which the sound of the bell was heard--or supposed to be heard. There
are, no doubt, mysteries in sound as in all else; indeed, I am informed
that during one of the horrible outrages that have been perpetrated on
London during this autumn there was an instance of a great block of
workmen's dwellings in which the only person who heard the crash of a
particular bomb falling was an old deaf woman, who had been fast asleep
till the moment of the explosion. This is strange enough of a sound that
was entirely in the natural (and horrible) order; and so it was at
Llantrisant, where the sound was either a collective auditory
hallucination or a manifestation of what is conveniently, if
inaccurately, called the supernatural order.
For the thrill of the bell did not reach to all ears--or hearts. Deaf
Mrs. Parry heard it in her lonely cottage garden, high above the misty
sea; but then, in a farm on the other or western side of Llantrisant, a
little child, scarcely three years old, was the only one out of a
household of ten people who heard anything. He called out in stammering
baby Welsh something that sounded like "Clychau fawr, clychau
fawr"--the great bells, the great bells--and his mother wondered what he
was talking about. Of the crews of half a dozen trawlers that were
swinging from side to side in the mist, not more than four men had any
tale to tell. And so it was that for an hour or two the man who had
heard nothing suspected his neighbour who had heard marvels of lying;
and it was some time before the mass of evidence coming from all manner
of diverse and remote quarters convinced the people that there was a
true story here. A might suspect B, his neighbour, of making up a tale;
but when C, from some place on the hills five miles away, and D, the
fisherman on the waters, each had a like report, then it was clear that
something had happened.
* * * * *
And even then, as they told me, the signs to be seen upon the people
were stranger than the tales told by them and among them. It has struck
me that many people in reading some of the phrases that I have reported,
will dismiss them with laughter as very poor and fantastic inventions;
fishermen, they will say, do not speak of "a song like heaven" or of "a
glory about it." And I dare say this would be a just enough criticism if
I were reporting English fishermen; but, odd though it may be, Wales has
not yet lost the last shreds of the grand manner. And let it be
remembered also that in most cases such phrases are translated from
another language, that is, from the Welsh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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