Bred of Heaven (30 page)

‘You've got so many hills and on the hills you can't do nothing else,' he says. ‘Only put sheep on it.'

One summer's day I am summoned to a lunch party in Ascot, hosted by one of the grandsons of Corn Gafr. There are seventy of us spanning three generations, descendants of five of the nine siblings from Meidrim. (Two of the brothers did not have children, one line has died out, and the Australian diaspora couldn't make it.) Bert's line, I'm proud to say, is the only one that produces a full house: two sons, three grandsons (plus other halves), six great-grandchildren.

We are given name tags, and a noticeboard with a family tree explains who everyone else is. The photographs of the nine and their wives from 1952 sit alongside the portrait taken in Carmarthen of Thomas and Eliza Rees in their Sunday best towards the end of the nineteenth century. I look around and see the faces of Corn Gafr iterated across the generations, strong resemblances among the sons and daughters of the nine, genetically diluted until the great-grandchildren reveal little or no visible trace of their Welsh ancestry. Nor in the next generation down will many still bear the name. Of Thomas and Eliza's fifty-two great-great-grandchildren, four male Reeses seems a poor return. Thus does nature, which gave them eight sons, correct itself.

This is a revival of a tradition. When the Rees siblings were still alive they used to meet every couple of years for large family gatherings at hotels in southern England. I remember large crowds of people to whom I knew I was related but in whom, as a child, I had no interest. We kept ourselves to ourselves, or talked to our grandmother and those Reeses we knew. The same rules of disengagement now apply to the large brood of begrudging children hauled here along motorways from all over England. Various boys play cricket in the baking heat. Three smartly dressed young girls sit in a corner looking horribly bored, as do their parents. But most of us make an effort to work our way round the room. My part of the conversation is always the same.

‘Yes, we're descended from Bert and Dorothy. I've got two brothers and here are my two daughters. Girls, come and meet your second/third cousins once/twice removed.' In all this, Teilo is a phenomenon. The only person who has this family tree photocopied in his head, he could not be more in his element, making connections, tying up loops, telling people things they didn't know about their own grandparents.

The gathering is an abiding testament to the nineteenth-century Welsh belief in education, and the social mobility it catalysed in the twentieth century. There is much quiet wealth. The Reeses have carried on being farmers and doctors. And then among the quirkier callings we also have not only a monk but also a pilot, a bus driver, a violinist. And a writer. The majority of the assembled will have benefited from private schooling, or still do, or will. One little girl is freshly sprung from the womb. We eat and drink as we sit and mingle, and eventually my father takes it upon himself to stand and thank our hosts for their great generosity in reviving this tradition. I telepathically urge him to mention the remarkable fact that we are all the descendants of a small farm in the middle of Carmarthenshire. Or at the very least to give Wales a name check. The telepathy doesn't work. And maybe that is appropriate. Wales for most of these people is a ghostly memory, its DNA thinned out till it's all but imperceptible.

After lunch it's time for a group photograph. On such an occasion I cannot let the opportunity pass to slip off to my car and change into the appropriate dress. As the party ambles across the lawn towards the large tree under which a long row of chairs have been laid out for the elders, I come back in the other direction newly attired. Several people catch sight of me.

‘What the bloody hell are you wearing that for?' barks someone.

‘What in God's name do you call that garment?' parrots another.

Forgive them, I think, for they know not what they say. England has marinated their brains in old assumptions. Amid the chorus of snipes and catcalls is an approving smile or two.

‘Excellent choice, Jasper.'

‘Daad! Typical.' As seventy descendants of Corn Gafr in Meidrim smile for the camera on this boiling English summer afternoon, I quietly hope my daughters standing just in front of me are proud that I for one am wearing the red shirt of Wales.

On my last day in the Pughs' kitchen at Blaencywarch, Owain produces his passport. Out of curiosity I ask if I can glance through it and on the first page I notice that it has Welsh writing in it. I've not seen Welsh in a British passport before. It so happens that my passport is about to expire. Where better to renew it than in Wales? Perhaps I can get my mitts on one of those Welsh-language ones. How Welsh would that be?

The post office in Machynlleth is at the back of Spar, only yards from the seat of parliament where Owain Glyndwˆr was crowned Prince of Wales. It's after him that all Owains are implicitly named. Not to mention all Owens and Owenses – the surnames of my grandmother's parents. There's a queue. When they get to the counter everyone seems to speak Welsh. And the post-office mistress speaks Welsh back. I've taken the precaution of looking up a word or two and step forward confidently.

‘Oes ffurflen am gael pasport yn Gymraeg?' (
Ffurflen
= form.)

‘You can
apply
for a passport in Welsh.' Irritatingly she's decided I need to be addressed in English. She rummages on a shelf behind her and returns brandishing two envelopes. ‘Here is the Welsh-language form. But the language is quite technical so it might be an idea to have the English one as well.' She slips them both through the narrow slot on the counter.

‘Diolch,' I harrumph. But at least I have in my hand a Welsh-language passport form. No one can take that away from me.

A mile or so beyond Dinas Mawddwy Hedd pulls in at a house. We enter a low-ceilinged room full of large sofas and chairs and a kitchen table on which afternoon tea has been laid out by a small friendly woman in her eighties Hedd introduces me to as his mother Margaret. On the piano is a snap of Hedd and Sian on their wedding day in the 1980s. Hedd, looking uncomfortable in a suit with a fatly knotted tie, is rather thinner, but the same glint shines in his pebbly eyes. After tea we go out and help Margaret shift some of her flock into a trailer and thence up into a field at the near end of Cwm Cywarch. We do four trips in all, a dozen or so ewes plus their lambs quad-biked in from the field to an enclosed yard, gates positioned so that the sheep can be corralled into a tight space and pushed into the trailer, then taken up to the field to have their fleeces spray-painted with a green dot by me, shoulder or rump according to gender, then released. My movements become mechanical. I am aware of a pleasant sensation of feeling naturalised. The city is a fading memory. I am living and working in Welsh. In one week I have returned to the land without a backward glance. It helps of course that the weather has been unremittingly benign.

It's past my regular time for knocking off when we get back to Blaencywarch. Normally I'd slope off, but I slip into the barn to see how the lambs I've been helping to feed all week are doing while Hedd potters about. The smallest one has learned to take milk from the bottle. The ewe has accepted the lamb foisted upon it. My work here is done, I think. Radio Cymru still blares tinnily from the wireless. Suddenly I hear my name.

‘Jasper, ti eisiau tynnu?' Do I want to pull? Hedd is over among the pregnant ewes. One of them is prone on her side. He's kneeling next to her.

‘Pam lai?' Why not? I clamber over the metal fencing and into the enclosure. I've not seen another birth since the morning I arrived. Hundreds of lambs have appeared in ones and twos in the fields, but always when I've been looking the other way. I crouch down. Hedd tugs aside the vaginal membrane and two cloven feet materialise. This time I know to grip firmly and pull properly. I pull one, then the other slithery leg until they come clear, and soon enough a tiny snout has nudged out into the air. I take both legs. At first nothing happens. You really do have to haul hard on these things. I pull again and feel movement. A small head pops out and with one more determined heave the entire body of the lamb slips clear, followed by the dark shiny glob of the afterbirth.

Hedd pushes a finger into its mouth to check for amniotic blockage. The lamb lifts its head and emits the merest wobble of sound, a tiny bleat. The ewe looks round. We stand and retreat so that the mother can bond with her newborn. Hedd looks at me and smiles.

‘Da iawn,' says the Welsh Rural Community Champion. ‘Ti wedi tynnu cig oen o'r diwedd.' I've finally pulled a lamb out. I smile back.

AT FIRST SIGHT
it looks like any other countryside festival. Armies of attendants in Day-Glo livery wave you through muddy fields to park precisely where they tell you. Happy humanity in cagoules and fleeces brandishing costly tickets flows on foot towards clicking turnstiles. People of like mind congregate under open skies to cheer and drink and commune.

But here, in a small town in the British Isles in the twenty-first century, you pass through a portal and something is definitely different. As I wander along tented avenues among families, couples, teenagers and busy-looking officials, the scene could not be more English. Beers and beverages are sold along with sandwiches and salads from outlets in a manner recognisable the length and breadth of these isles. Plastic awnings flap in the wind. Gun-metal skies glower overhead. There's a classic August chill on. They've managed to get every detail right. It's uncanny. This could be anywhere in England. But there's one thing that's different. Everyone –
everyone
– seems to be speaking Welsh.

This is the annual celebration of Welshness, of
Cymreictod
, known as the National Eisteddfod. There are local
eisteddfodau
galore across Wales, held in village halls, theatres, churches, chapels and sundry other makeshift performance spaces. There's an
eisteddfod
for the young known, somewhat sinisterly, as the
Urdd
, or Order. But this is the big one. Every summer, in the first week of August, Cymru Cymraeg attracts thousands of visitors to its festival of nationhood. The venue alternates each year between north and south. This year it's in Ebbw Vale. I hand over my ticket to a smiling attendant and wander into what in effect, with only one or two small discrepancies, is indistinguishable from the Quidditch World Cup.

Every conceivable representative of Welsh life has an outlet. The political parties are all here, from Plaid Cymru to the Tories. So are the farming and teaching unions, the universities from Lampeter up to Bangor, museums and tourist trusts. You can have your fill of Welsh publishers and printers, manufacturers and designers, harpists, jewellers, cottage rental companies, single-issue agitators of various hues. I buy a hoody blazoned with the legend ‘Cymdeithas yr Iaith cymraeg': the Welsh Language Society.

And then there is the parked pantechnicon of S4C, who are broadcasting round the clock from a gated paddock. Presenters with bright faces and cheerful hair sit on garden furnishings under television arc-lamps. The focus of their attention is a huge pink pavilion, a jaunty big top which dominates the Maesfield. Inside here, Welsh musicians, actors, singers and choirs compete across a range of categories defined not only by art form but also age, gender, number. The Welsh Learner of the Year is presented with his or her prize on the stage of the pavilion (in this case her: my mate Dai got to the final but did not win). The competitions are numerous enough to fill the week from Monday morning through to Saturday afternoon.

It's Friday today. I am here on reconnaissance as I follow a stream of people flowing into the auditorium. I take my place and turn to be greeted by one of the great Welsh sights. Onstage is a seated array of Druids and bards in various shades of eye-catching hoods and robes: forthright blue, searing turquoise, ultimate white. This must be the Gorsedd, the bardic circle. To their right and left are big screens. Television cameras are in fixed positions, lights hanging from rigs. The National Eisteddfod has journeyed a long way from the earliest gathering at Cardigan Castle in 1176.

The lights dip. An organ softens the atmosphere with gentle mood music. From the back of the auditorium various figures process wearing robes of burgundy or British racing green, variously bearing cushions, trumpets and, in one case, a huge monumental sword. Soon enough a man in a white robe and a small round hat enters holding a book, whom I recognise as the Archdruid of Wales.

The Archdruid's bardic name is Jim Parc Nest, after the farm near Newcastle Emlyn where he was born. He also trades as T. James Jones. He is the Welsh equivalent of the Poet Laureate, but with one key difference: the Archdruid is at the hub of a long poetic tradition which is still central to the contemporary culture.

I first met Jim and his wife Manon Rhys, the eminent Welsh-language novelist, through my friends Leighton Jones (aka Leight or L8) and his wife Rhian. Rhian and Manon were at school together in Prestatyn. ‘We'll get you round and introduce you to the bards,' said Leighton. Since then, Jim and I have corresponded by email. I have taken him as my guest to an international at the Millennium. But this is the first time I've seen him operating in an archdruidical capacity.

When the group reaches the stage, the Archdruid takes his place on a throne as the trumpets blow a fanfare to all corners. We are open for business. The Archdruid comes forward to say some
words, which, not being adept at understanding amplified Welsh, I allow to wash over me very much like the mood music of the organ, now taken up by two onstage harps. A dainty Arcadian tune brings green-clad children haloed in flowers to their feet to perform a pixyish sort of dance.