A Child's Christmas in Wales (3 page)

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a
cousin sang “Cherry Ripe,” and another uncle sang “Drake's Drum.” It was very warm
in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song
about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was
like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed.
Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending
smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on
our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I
turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy
darkness, and then I slept.

 

 

ABOUT DYLAN THOMAS

Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales, in 1914. He began writing poetry as
a very young boy and his first book,
18 Poems
, was published when he was only
twenty.

Beginning in 1943, he often sat behind a BBC microphone, variously giving
radio talks, introducing poetry selections, participating in roundtable discussions, and
reading dramas, essays, and poems. He had a glorious and powerful speaking voice, one with
which many Americans became familiar when, in 1950, he made the first of four trips to the
U.S. on reading-lecture tours of American universities. By the time of his death in New York
City in 1953, he had won a worldwide audience for his poetry, and his fame continues to this
day.

Dylan Thomas was married to Caitlin MacNamara, and they had three children.
Among his most widely read works, aside from his poetry, are the stories in
Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Dog
and
Quite Early One Morning
, and his delightful
play for voices,
Under Milk Wood.

ABOUT ELLEN RASKIN

Ellen Raskin was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1928, grew up during the
Great Depression, and began her career in the 1950s.

Raskin wrote, designed, and illustrated fifteen books, including
The
Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel)
(1971),
Moe Q. McGlutch, He Smoked
Too Much
(1973), and
The Westing Game
, for which she received the 1979
American Library Association's Newbery Medal for the year's most distinguished children's
book. She designed dozens of dust jackets, including the first edition of Madeleine
L'Engle's classic
A Wrinkle in Time
. Ellen Raskin died in 1984 at the age of
fifty-six in New York City.

Copyright 1954 by New Directions

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper,
magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the Publisher.

This edition first published paperbound in 1959

Based on a design by Ellen Raskin

First published as New Directions Paperbook (ndp972) in 2003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data

Thomas, Dylan, 1914–1953.

A child's Christmas in Wales / by Dylan Thomas ; with woodcuts
by Ellen Raskin.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-0-8112-1731-6

ISBN: 978-0-8112-2470-3 (e-book)

1. Thomas, Dylan, 1914–1953 — Childhood and youth. 2. Thomas,
Dylan, 1914–1953 — Homes and haunts — Wales. 3. Poets, Welsh — 20th century — Biography.
4. Christmas — Wales. 5. Wales—Social life and customs

I. Raskin, Ellen, ill. II. Title.

PR6039.H52C48 2007

821'.912—dc22

[B] 2007024727

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

80 Eighth Avenue, New York
10011