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THERE SHE BLOWS! New Welsh Writing
The Life and Times of Pentre Simon
Photo: Tom Salt
An extract translated from the Welsh (Croniclau Pentre Simon, 2003) and with an introduction by Christopher Meredith
What follows is my translation of the opening four chapters of Mihangel Morgan's 2003 novel, Croniclau Pentre Simon. The novel is typical of Morgan's work in its playful, lively treatment of language, its intermingling of a kind of magic realism with naturalism, in its parade of bizarre characters, and in the extreme blackness of its comedy, which is simultaneously celebratory and pessimistic in its vision of human nature.
The piece opens by introducing us, chapter by chapter and anecdote by anecdote, to the eccentric inhabitants of the mythical Victorian village of the title, Pentre Simon. We're fully sixty pages in when we start to get the first hints, in the form of parenthetic asides about research, that Pentre Simon is being constructed by an 'author'. More than a third of the way through, the story of Pentre Simon stops abruptly and another novel, a modern naturalistic one this time, begins at chapter one. Gradually we discover that the protagonist of this second novel is in fact the 'author' of Pentre Simon. From this point the two novels are interleaved and we begin to see how they interact.
This is a much more tightly constructed book than, say, Morgan's only other book to appear in English to date, Melog. In each of the two worlds of The Life and Times of Pentre Simon there's an examination of the power or powerlessness of belief and science to explain the world or to alleviate human suffering, and in each of them we see an act of kindness lead ultimately to disaster. It is typical of Morgan's deceptive art that that examination seems at first to be nothing more than a string of bizarre anecdotes. Meanwhile, in its metafictive game-playing, the novel examines the role and efficacy of story itself.
Part the First
Chapter One
In which we Meet the Frog-woman of Pentre Simon
Miss Sylvester does not have green skin, but she is very
like a frog. Please do not laugh. Her mother almost fell down in a swoon when she first saw the baby, with its eyes at the sides of its head, no nose to speak of but rather two little holes in the centre of its face, the thin lips of the wide mouth, which extended from one side of the round, flattened head to the other, and its legs folded under it, its long hands and feet, webbed between the digits, exactly like the hands and feet of a frog. Her father ran away, saying that this loathsome creature was not his child but, surely, the unnatural offspring of some demon with which his wife had had congress one night while he, her husband, was about his work in the fields of the Fron farm.
Miss Sylvester's mother knew better. She had no chance to explain how it was that she had been frightened by a frog whilst she sat under a tree by the river in the village, and she heavy with child at the time. Her conscience, therefore, was without blemish, and she raised the child, in very straitened circumstances, to frequent church regularly, to read a chapter from the Bible every day, to pray every morning and before each meal and on retiring at night, remembering all the while the needy and the suffering. Thus it was that Miss Sylvester grew into a very godly woman. When her mother was crippled with an inflammation of the joints while she was still a comparatively young woman of fifty-odd, Miss Sylvester it was who nursed her and fed her when she could no longer feed herself, and who comforted her in her final travails.
Alone in the world after this, Miss Sylvester had no alternative but to throw herself upon the mercy of the parish. Because she was a faithful and virtuous member of the congregation, and in consideration of all of her physical disadvantages, the vicar secured for her one of the little alms cottages in the centre of the village. These old cottages still stand today - luxurious, bijou, and desirable, with roses framing the doors, extensions at the rear containing jacuzzied bathrooms and Shaker kitchens, and Volvos and MGs parked at the front, but in Miss Sylvester's day no one went near them, because this was where the poor of the village lived. Nevertheless, Miss Sylvester was grateful to the parish for providing her with a home for the rest of her life.
It was pitiful to see her struggling through the village, because she could not walk, but hopped a little way at a time, a step and a jump, exactly like a frog.
Now, you must forgive me for saying this, but children are cruel and heedless, are they not? Be honest. They have only to see someone who is a little different from the rest, someone with a physical disability or of unusual appearance - eyes, unruly hair, of greater or lesser proportions than the usual - and children will go pursue him or her making merciless fun of them, calling him or her names and following him or her about, turning life into a nightmare. And I am sorry to say that matters were no different in Miss Sylvester's day, in spite of our tendency to idealise the past. Whenever Miss Sylvester came out of her small cottage she was followed by a gang of rough and noisy children who shouted, "Froggy shanks! Froggy shanks!" and who imitated frog sounds: "Cerrk! Cerrk!" Even though this wounded her terribly, when at church Miss Sylvester would pray for these children. Indeed, she was most fond of small children and babies and whenever she had the opportunity she would talk kindly with them and tickle their faces until she made them smile. It was only the older children who were a problem, and then mainly the boys. And a boy called Sam Rhisiart was the worst of all. He was the leader, as it were, and the most shameless and nastiest of them all He would come up close to her, croaking the malicious names loudly into the little round ears under her bonnet. But Miss Sylvester endured this mistreatment quietly. If she felt that she wanted to cry out - as who would not in the face of such barbarous assaults? - Miss Sylvester did not show it, not to anyone in the world.
Now, Miss Sylvester had a secret. From her earliest childhood she had been attracted to water. In the deepest darkness of the night, when the rest of the village was fast asleep, Miss Sylvester would go down to the river, hard by the place where her mother had been sitting when she was frightened by the frog, and on the bank she would take off her clothes and jump into the water. The deeper the water and the stronger the current the better it was for Miss Sylvester, for though she could do little better than crawl on dry land, in water she was nimble and lithe and free. In water she was, as it were, in her element, and could swim like a fish, or, to be precise, she could swim like a frog. So far as she could tell, no one in the village knew of this.
It was rarely that Miss Sylvester would leave her home in daylight for fear of being abused by the children. Of course she had sometimes to go into the village to shop and regularly to go to church. She would never leave the confines of the village on foot, though she had swum along the river for miles. But one day in summer the weather was unbearably hot, and in her cottage with its little windows it was almost suffocating. The waters of the river drew her like a magnet. At last, Miss Sylvester decided that she could endure the stifling air of her rooms for not a second more, and so she went for a walk up the river to a quiet nook where there was a pool, and though she dared not swim in daylight for fear of being seen, perhaps she could sit upon a boulder and soak her big feet in the cold water for an hour or two.
Miss Sylvester had arrived at the place she had in mind before she realised how foolish her idea had been. And there were all the children of the village and some mothers, and one or two old men. It was not easy for Miss Sylvester to turn on her heel and run away. The journey from her home to this place, up a little hill, had meant an hour's hopping under the burning sun, and she was hot and tired. In any case, she was not able to run. So she could do nothing but carry on and join the company and rest for a while, though she dared not take off her shoes to dip her feet in the river, as she could not show them. There were adults present, and she hoped that they would not permit their children to bait her. But as soon as she sat among the mothers on the riverbank, the older children, who were swimming, noticed her and started to giggle. Amongst them, needless to say, was Sami Rhisiart, stripped to the waist, swimming in the deepest waters and demonstrating his prowess. When he saw the frog-woman, he moved towards the bank, splashed water over her, and swam away, croaking. And the men and the women said nothing. He was a big, rough boy, and nobody knew who his father was. He did the same trick again and again. The adults felt uncomfortable to see how Miss Sylvester was being insulted, but not one of them said a word to Sam.
Then, after throwing water over her a fifth time, Sam went further off than usual, laughing at his own achievements. Suddenly, in the open river, he was swept away by the current into and over a waterfall and from thence into a whirlpool. The grown-ups could see his struggle and called helplessly, "Sam! Sam!" None of the women could swim and the men were all old and knotted with arthritis. Some went on their knees and prayed for the boy's life. Some of his friends went as close as they dared and tried to grab him, without success. His head vanished under the waters, and at that, to the great astonishment of all, Miss Sylvester kicked off her clogs and dove into the water, exactly in the manner of a frog and in the blinking of an eye she was at the centre of the pool, had grasped the lad by the arm, had pulled him from the depths, and dragged him through the water to the riverbank. He lay insensible. The old men set to pressing his trunk and slapping his face until he recovered.
In church on the Sunday following this terrifying event, the vicar, Mr Muir, described how Miss Sylvester had saved the life of Sam Rhisiart, aged ten years.
Was Sam grateful? He continued to goad Miss Sylvester at every opportunity for the rest of her life, as we shall see.
Miss Sylvester went to the river to swim whenever she pleased after that. She was respected by all in the village, including the children, and numerous people would go to observe her skills as a swimmer.
Chapter Two
In which we Meet the Old Wizard of Llwyn y Llwynog
"Cashiel! Otiel! Barushiel!" The old wizard calls his dogs in his deep voice, a heavy sound dropped into an empty well, each word echoing around the hollow where hides his home, Llwyn y Llwynog. The dogs go to him obediently and lick his fingers.
The old wizard does not conform to the traditional image of an old wizard; he has no pointed hat, no cloak, no magic wand, no long nose, no long white hair, and no flowing white beard. Indeed, neither is he particularly old, although he is known locally as The Old Wizard. He is pleased with himself. His ruddy cheeks are scrubbed, his head bald at the crown with a fringe of short, crinkly black hair around his ears and across the nape of his neck. He is a tall man, powerfully built and healthy-looking. His stance and gait are as upright as if he has swallowed a poker; he glows with self-satisfaction and pride. This, you might say, is a wealthy man - a lawyer, a doctor, a man of property. But no. In fact he is a wise man, a magus. But it is true to say that he is a kind of physician. The villagers call him Doctor Marmaduke, and there are more who visit him concerning their illnesses than who go to Dr Stevens, the real doctor in the village. They have greater trust in the wizard than in the physician who enters your body and cuts pieces of you away in an attempt to cure, causing you to die in appalling pain within a month. Herbs and charms inscribed in a language which only the wizard himself can understand - these are the instruments of the magus, and in him the people of the village place their faith.
And they fear him also. It is said that there is in Llwyn y Llwynog a library in which there are books that tell everything that will happen in the future. One night, two boys, Sami Rhisiart and Ianto Mwnsh of Pentre Simon, went to the garden of Llwyn y Llwynog and climbed a tall tree and looked in through a window of the house where they saw the dancing of candlelight. And there, so the boys said, was the wizard in his library, standing at the centre of circles of stars drawn in chalk on the floor, and there was the skull of a curly-horned animal in the middle of the circle too, candles burning in each corner of the room. The wizard himself stood in the middle of a great star, a knife in his right hand, the boys said, and a big black book in his left, his eyes, thank goodness, closed, and he was chanting. The boys could hear the words, but they were in neither Welsh nor English. They saw all this in a single glimpse and needless to say neither of them stayed long in the tree, rather they both leapt from the boughs like scalded cats and fled the scene.
But here is something very strange. One market day when it was crowded with people, these boys were walking through Pentre Simon, when bump! They came face to face with the old wizard. He had them cornered and several of Pentre Simon's most respectable inhabitants were eye- and ear-witnesses to what passed between the magus and the two wretches.
"Aha," said Dr Bevan. "How strange that none of my dogs barked the other night when you two spied on me, from my own tree, trespassing on my land!"
His voice beat like a drum; his brow was as dark as a storm cloud. The faces of the two boys, on the other hand, were like chalk, white to the very lips.
"If I see you two - eyes shut or no eyes shut - or if I see anybody - "said the doctor, casting a threatening glance at the crowd that stood around him "- see anybody I say, I shall turn Cashiel, Otiel and Barushiel on you, and after they have caught you and brought you to me, I shall turn you into snails and feed you both into the beak of Abracadabra."
The boys ran away as fast as they could go.
Abracadabra, by the way, as everyone in Pentre Simon knew, was the jackdaw which the doctor kept caged at Llwyn y Llwynog. They also knew that the cage door was more often than not left open and the bird was free to come and go at will, walking through the house with the same air of authority as Dr Marmaduke Bevan himself. Yes, the bird called Abracadabra chose to walk rather than fly, though he could fly - some had seen him flying. He preferred to walk, to stroll, to promenade, to swagger indeed, through the rooms of Llwyn y Llwynog and around the garden, just like a human. And that was what he truly was, some said. The jackdaw was human, a woman in fact. A beautiful, black-haired woman who had been enchanted by the wizard and changed by his dark arts into a bird. That, they say, was why Abracadabra followed Dr Bevan as he went about his mysterious business at his home. By night, so the gossips said, the bird would assume the form of a woman once more and sleep with the old wizard in his bed. Perhaps some boys had once spied through windows of Llwyn y Llwynog and seen this. How else could the gossips know? But others said that the jackdaw was not really a woman at all, but rather a fiend, a servant of the devil, a familiar spirit; with the assistance of this demonic bird the wizard could cure ailments, get rid of warts, predict whether a pregnant woman would be brought to bed of a boy or girl, place a charm on a house to protect it from thieves; with the assistance of this most extraordinary bird he could charm you a lover - if only you'd pay him - and lay a curse on your greatest enemy; he could shape the weather according to his wishes; and he could see deep into the future. Not everyone believed this. Abracadabra was just a tame bird which the wizard had cured when he discovered it in the garden at Llwyn y Llwynog, its wing injured. No. This faction maintained that all the wizard's knowledge was in his library. There were contained mystical books in languages of which only a magus could have knowledge. There was a book telling how to cure warts, a book explaining how to say whether a baby would be a boy or a girl, a book on how to foretell and control the weather, a book of love charms, other books full of black curses. And one great and luxurious book by the great French wizard, Michel de Nostradamus, in which the entirety of the future was written as though it were already history. The old wizard knew, so people said, the exact date and manner of his own death.
Chapter Three
In which we Meet the Old Witch, Lisi Dyddyn Iago
Lisi Dyddyn Iago was a hundred years old, or nineteen and fourscore years old, perhaps older, perhaps younger, when this history befell.
Dr Marmaduke Bevan of Llwyn y Llwynog was not the only person in Pentre Simon who possessed supernatural powers, at least, not according to the beliefs of most villagers. After all, if the doctor was a wizard, then Lisi Dyddyn Iago was truly a witch. She was feared even more than the magus. The inhabitants of Pentre Simon are in no doubt that Lisi Dyddyn Iago can freeze the blood in your veins with one look, and by putting her hand on your fence or gatepost can kill everything in your garden, cause every plant to shrink and wither, give fevers to your children, cause your mother to lose her mind so that she cannot recognise you, you her own child, or she can infect your husband's body with cancers and drive your wife to drown herself in the river. And she can undo all these misfortunes too.
Here is Tyddyn Iago, her home. Though it is called 'tyddyn', it is not much of a smallholding. In all honesty is it not a hovel? It is hard to believe that any living person could make a home in such a hut, far from the village, at the edge of the forest, in the cr
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