Thank you! It’s so easy to take the landscape we see now at face value. My village is small and quiet now. It used to be a hive of activity - miners who worked at the mine in the village just down the road, two pubs, two churches and a chapel (with more pubs and churches in the village down the road!). People being thrown in the local jail for herding sheep while drunk… and those mines are everywhere around here. The noise and the smells and the traffic… it must have been mindblowing.
This is beautiful and sad. It definitely pulled on my heartstrings. You were able to hit the core of real lives inside the industry of their grueling jobs with your poetic, sing-song, message. The splashes of Welsh throughout give it a deep touch. What went on beneath the beauty that is visible to the outside.
Thank you so much, Jill. The romantic in me likes to think that the old inhabitants of my village and the surrounding area feel remembered, even though they are now long gone.
I can only imagine how many died mining. I’m sure I’m pronouncing the Welsh words all kinds of fucked up in my head, but I read this like a ritualistic voodoo chant with bongos in the background. There’s just this natural pounding quality to it.
I’d like to learn some bad words. I know you’ve got them!
I sensed the word even before I learned its meaning. Next, I'm going to Google some more.
You make me feel things I didn't even know I was capable of feeling - this deeply, that is.
Thank you! It’s so easy to take the landscape we see now at face value. My village is small and quiet now. It used to be a hive of activity - miners who worked at the mine in the village just down the road, two pubs, two churches and a chapel (with more pubs and churches in the village down the road!). People being thrown in the local jail for herding sheep while drunk… and those mines are everywhere around here. The noise and the smells and the traffic… it must have been mindblowing.
This is beautiful and sad. It definitely pulled on my heartstrings. You were able to hit the core of real lives inside the industry of their grueling jobs with your poetic, sing-song, message. The splashes of Welsh throughout give it a deep touch. What went on beneath the beauty that is visible to the outside.
Thank you so much, Jill. The romantic in me likes to think that the old inhabitants of my village and the surrounding area feel remembered, even though they are now long gone.
It's always a super cool perspective when you write these pieces.
I can only imagine how many died mining. I’m sure I’m pronouncing the Welsh words all kinds of fucked up in my head, but I read this like a ritualistic voodoo chant with bongos in the background. There’s just this natural pounding quality to it.
I’d like to learn some bad words. I know you’ve got them!
I purposefully didn’t include how to pronounce them - it’s more fun that way!
I’m glad you got the pounding nature, mimicking machinery and mining and relentlessness. Not to be read with a headache!
As for sweary words…
cont wirion - silly cunt is a goodun. Especially as in Welsh you roll your ‘r’ rather expressively!
fel rhech mewn pot jam -
like a fart in a jam jar, which means something or someone is useless. In England the variation is ‘like a chocolate teapot’.
Thank you! I quite like cont wirion and with a fancy r roll! Yeah, that’s good stuff! 🤣
Beautiful. And then there came coal... the story of the Welsh miners in Appalachia is undertold.
Thank you. Yes, coal. Appalachia and Wales have much in common.