Caradoc Evans

“ Take you as a great gift this nice hymn-book."
"What are hymns?" asked God.
"Moses, Moses," cried Towy, "explain affairs to Him."
God spoke: "Satan, render your account of the mischief you made these men do."
"This is a travesty of the traditions of the House," said Ben. "Traditions that are dear to me, being taught them at my mother's knees. I refuse to be drenched in Satan's froth. Against one who was a member of the Government you are taking the evidence of the most discredited man in the universe—the world's worst sinner." ”

“ One afternoon, his legs dangling over the edge of the stone quarry, he fell asleep, and in his dream the Big Man—a white-bearded, vigorous, stern, elderly giant, broad as the front of Capel Sion and taller than the roof—came to him, saying:
“Eben bach, why for now do you waste your days in sleep? Go you, little son, and dig a hole in the place where stood Old Shaci’s hut.”
“It’ll be a big hole, little Big Man,” answered Eben, “if I must make it the size of Old Shaci’s hut.”
The Big Man replied: “There’s a boy you are for pleading! ”

“ Did not the Big Man say, ‘Bern bach, speak to me the sacrifices of Evan Rhiw for my Terrible Temple.’ ‘Little Big Man,’ I answered, ‘the least of my flock gives more than him.’” Then Bern-Davydd, by the mouth of Bertha, sang: “Evan Rhiw, swifter is the hand of the Lord than the water which turns Old Daniel’s mill. Awful are the fingers that will grasp you by your rib trousers and throw you through the spouting flames into the Fiery Pool.” ”

“ Our God is a big man: a tall man much higher than the highest chapel in Wales and broader than the broadest chapel. For the promised day that He comes to deliver us a sermon we shall have made a hole in the roof and taken down a wall. Our God has a long, white beard, and he is not unlike the Father Christmas of picture-books. Often he lies on his stomach on Heaven's floor, an eye at one of his myriads of peepholes, watching that we keep his laws. Our God wears a frock coat, a starched linen collar and black necktie, and a silk hat, and on the Sabbath he preaches to the congregation of Heaven. ”

“ Sadrach put his fingers through the thin beard which covered the opening of his waistcoat, closed his eyes, and murmured a prayer. “Your mother Achsah is not what she should be. Indeed to goodness, now, what disgrace this is! Is it not breaking my heart? You did hear how I said to the nice Big Man that I was like Job? Achsah is mad.”
Rachel sobbed.
“Weep you not, Rachel. It is not for us to question the all-wise ways of the Big Man. Do you dry your eyes on your apron now, my daughter. You, too, have your mother's eyes. Let me weep in my solitude. ”

“ Ben and Towy withdrew, and as they passed out they beheld that the scale of scarlet tablets touched the ground.
Then the Cloud vanished and God came out of the Cloud.
"My wrath is fierce," He said. "Bind these Welsh and torment them with vipers and with fire in the uttermost parts of Hell. They shall have no more remembrance before me."
"Will you destroy the just?" asked Moses.
"They have chosen."
"Shall the godly perish because of the godless?" ”

“ Turn you away from your purpose, and act as I bid you.”
“I shall wed him in front of all you say, Josh,” said Betti. “Boy bach swellish is Gwylim.”
“O Betti, is it a light thing to you that you take your possessions to a man who never goes to capel?”
“Little man senseless, you are eloquent! Do you think I could live for ten minutes with that old hare of your wife Priscila?”
Rhys Shop proclaimed in the Seiet that the Terrible Man’s anger was like the pierce of a new pitchfork against Betti Lancoch. Joshua fell on his knees in his pew, wept, and prayed. ”

“ Tim and Martha were perplexed and communed with each other; and Tim walked to Wimbledon where he was not known and so have his errand guessed. He bought a rabbit and carried it to the door of the minister's house. "A rabbit from Winnie fach in Wales," he said.
"Eat her I will before I judge her," replied Eylwin; and after he had eaten it he said: "Quite fair was the animal. Serious dirty is the capel. As I flap my hand on the cushion Bible in my eloquence, like chimney smoke is the dust. Clean you at once. ”

“ Josi's mother Mali touched her son, whispering this counsel: "Put to shame the last prayer, indeed now, Josi."
By and by Josi lifted his head and stood on his feet. This is what he said: "Asking was I if I was religious enough to spout in the company of the Respected."
"Out of the necks of young youths we hear pieces that are very sensible," said Bern-Davydd. "Come you, Josi Mali, to the saintly Big Seat." ”

“ Eben, having walked over the mile and a half of heather, and having come to the point from which you can on a clear day see the waters of Cardigan Bay, opened the gate of the enclosure in which Shames’s sheep spent the night.
This Eben did every day till he grew out of knee-breeches into long corduroy trousers. His life was lonely; books were closed against him, because he had not been taught to read; and the sense of the beautiful or the curious in Nature is slow to awake in the mind of the Welsh peasant. After a time Eben began to hold whispered conversations with himself. ”

“ Dear me, have I not put her in the harness loft? It is not respectable to let her out. Twm Tybach would have sent his wife to the madhouse of Carmarthen. But that is not Christian. Rachel, Rachel, dry your eyes. It is not your fault that Achsah is mad. Nor do I blame Sadrach the Small, nor Esau, nor Simon, nor Sarah, nor Daniel, nor Samuel, nor Miriam. Goodly names have I given you all. Live you up to them. Still, my sons and daughters, are you not all responsible for Achsah’s condition? With the birth of each of you she has got worse and worse. Child-bearing has made her foolish. ”

“ Her joy was increased exceedingly when Josi was called to minister unto Capel Beulah in Carmarthen, and she boasted: "Bigger than Sion is Moriah and of lofts has not the Temple two?"
"Idle is your babbling," one admonished her. "Does a calf feed his mother?"
Josi heard the call. His name grew; men and women spoke his sayings one to another, and Beulah could not contain all the people who would hear his word; and he wrote a letter to his mother: "God has given me to wed Mary Ann, the daughter of Daniel Shop Guildhall. Kill you a pig and salt him and send to me the meat." ”

“ Nanni spoke the truth, for she did remember Abel in her prayers. But the workhouse held for her none of the terrors it holds for her poverty-stricken sisters. Life was life anywhere, in cottage or in poorhouse, though with this difference: her liberty in the poorhouse would be so curtailed that no more would she be able to listen to the spirit-laden eloquence of the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan. ”

“ As that night Hugh cast off his silk hat and his frock coat, he shouted: "Got the money all tightly?"
"Yes," replied Millie quickly. "As safe as in the Bank of England."
"Can't be safer than that. Keep him close to you and tell no one. Paper money has funny ways." Hugh then prophesied that in a year his wealth in a mass would be fifty pounds. ”

“ Will you bring discredit on me then?”
“Josh bach, there's good you are to call, man. Do you take this bucket of wash to the old pigs, and ask Madlen Tybach to come over and milk the cow on your way home.”
“My sister Betti, for what you do not know that the wages of sin is death?” said Joshua.
“Don’t you get savage, Josh. Am I not making myself look pretty for to see Gwylim’s father and mother tomorrow?”
“Pretty! This too on the eve of the Sabbath! Is not a pretty woman a snare to the godly? Look you at Potiphar’s wife now.” ”

“ He ordered Gwen to go to Ben.
"Recall to him this and that," he said. "A very good advert an M.P. would be for the business. Be you dressed like a lady. Take a fur coat on appro from the shop."
Often thereafter he bade his wife to take such a message. But Gwen had overcome her distress and she strew abroad her charms; for no man could now suffice her. So she always departed to one of her lovers and came back with fables on her tongue.
"What can you expect of the Welsh?" cried Enoch in his wrath. "He hasn't paid for the goods he got on tick from the shop. ”

“ Is not our graveyard the fullest in all the land?”
“You say wisely, Bertha Daviss,” said the minister. “You say wisely, Bertha fach. Iss not the grave our last home then? We must begrudge it to no man. O little ones, there is largish space in the Big Man’s acre.”
“No, no, Respected bach,” cried Bertha. “For why? The graveyard is full. Father was the last to be laid there. And in comfort did he go up when he knew of that glory.”
Rhys Shop looked upon the minister. ”

“ Withal she gave Enoch pleasure. She clothed herself with costly garments, adorned her person with rings and ornaments, and she modeled her hair in the way of a bob-wig. Enoch gave in to her in all things; he took her among Welsh master builders, drapers, grocers, dairymen, into their homes and such places as they assembled in; and his pride in his wife was nearly as great as his pride in the twenty plate-glass windows of his shop.
In her vanity Gwen exalted her estate.
"I hate living over the shop," she said. "It's so common. Let's take a house away from here." ”

“ What occurred in the loft over the cowshed before dawn crept in through the window with the iron bars I cannot tell you. God can. But the rising sun found Achsah crouching behind one of the hedges of the lane that brings you from Danyrefail to the tramping road, and there she stayed, her eyes peering through the foliage, until the procession came by: first Old Shemmi and Sadrach, with Sadrach the Small between them; then the minister of Capel Sion and his wife; then the men and the women of the congregation; and last came Martha and Sara Ann. ”

“ Madlen rejoiced at her labor and sang: "Ten acres of land, and a cow-house with three stalls and a stall for the new calf, and a pigsty, and a house for my bones and a barn for my hay and straw, and a loft for my hens: why should men pray for more?" She ambled to Moriah, diverting passers-by with boastful tales of Joseph, and loosened her imaginings to the Respected.
[p 162] "Pounds without number he is earning," she cried. "Rich he'll be. Swells are youths shop." ”

“ The face of the earth was as the face of a cancerous man. There was no water in any of the ditches of Rhydwen and none in those of Penlan. But the spring which Dan had found continued to yield, and from it Aben's wife took away water in pitchers and buckets; and to the pond Aben brought his animals.
One day Aben spoke to Dan in this wise: "Serious sure, an old bother is this."
"Iss-iss," replied Dan. "Good is the Big Man to allow us water bach."
"How speech you if I said: 'Unfasten your pond and let him flow into my ditches'?"
"The land will suck him before he goes far," Dan answered. ”

“ But Mali did not hear anything of that which Shaci said under the open chimney or that which he read by the light of the tallow candle. She felt shame for Dan, her son, whose name would be denounced from the pulpit and spoken with scorn by the congregation, and she remembered his deeds, first and last. Dear people, why was it destined for Dan to trespass in the eyes of Sion? Heart alive, are not the evil ways of the English known far and wide? And their helpless wastefulness? Look you at Owen, the son of Antony. Owen was in a grand shop draper in Swansea. ”

“ At once Lisbeth and Olwen embraced.
"My sister is my best friend," was the testimony of the elder; "we shan't go astray if we follow the example of the dad and mother," was that of the younger.
"Take two or three excursion trains to Aberporth for the holidays," said Adam, "and get a little gravel for the mother's grave in Beulah. And a cheap artificial wreath. They last better than real ones. It was in Beulah that me and your mother learnt about Jesus." ”

“ Abram said. “Angry is the Big Man against you.”
“Has she not laid with Jos Gernos? Has not the boy bought a ring for wedding?”
Abram Bowen sang:
“O Silas Penlon, why you are not religious? Is it for you to throw stones? Old male you are, Silas, indeed to goodness, and the time is shortly coming for you to be screwed down in your coffin.”
“Abram Bowen,” Silas urged, “do you listen to reason now, there's a nice, godly little boy bach.”
“Silas Penlon,” answered Abram, “I say unto you, sinner, that you will go down on your knees and thank the Big Man that I came to Penlon. ”

“ In the ripeness of time Dinah sorely repented herself, and was much shamed; she drew in the seams of her garments, and pressed herself as butter is pressed into an over-full cask.
People remarked her, and said things one to another. ”