Bred of Heaven (20 page)

He seems to have been racked with insecurity. Time and again, as he sought out conversations with those he met in Wales, his instinct was always to best his interlocutor. He travelled with the humility of a pilgrim paying homage to his bardic heroes – Goronwy Owen, Twm o'r Nant, Dafydd ap Gwilym – but also the zeal of a preacher spreading his own certain knowledge. Nothing delighted him more than to engage lowly shepherds and innkeepers and indoctrinate them with his enthusiasm for their culture, often in absurdly long screeds. He wandered across Wales lecturing Welshmen about their own history, the derivation of their own place names, sometimes reciting his own poetic translations. His intentions can be read honourably as a project to re-inseminate Wales with its own oral history. But for all his evident love of language and landscape, how does one respond to a man who was so careful to record every compliment paid to him? After one pleasant encounter with a slate miner and a mountain ranger one Sunday on his way down to Beddgelert, he couldn't resist reporting what he overheard.

Wild Wales
is at its best when Borrow is tearing through the mountains, neither pace nor zeal dimmed by an August sun or an
autumn drenching, ingesting experiences of every stripe as they come at him. One of the finest passages finds him waking up one morning in Machynlleth, where memories linger of the freedom-fighting Owain Glynd
r, and setting off against all advice across the naked hostile hills of Mid Wales. Pumlumon is a passing landmark, the spectacular waterfalls of the Devil's Bridge his eventual destination. On a twenty-mile walk of epic drama, he meets a typical cross-section of Welsh society: a modest old man who believes the Church of England ‘is the best religion to get to heaven by', then two women who refuse to speak to an Englishman, four shoeless red-haired children, a sullen man with a donkey who ‘had the appearance of a rather dangerous vagabond' and a half-naked deaf mute working at a lead mine.

When he arrived at the inn in Ponterwyd, having traversed the barren hills, Borrow was greeted by a pompous innkeeper who affected not only to know ‘the ancient British language perfectly' but also to be a poet. As usual Borrow took pleasure in triumphantly besting him. In due course, having butted into the kitchen because the parlour fire was belching smoke, he explained to the host the reason for his visit: the stunning waterfalls in the river Mynach at the Devil's Bridge a couple of miles to the south. The host greeted the news indignantly. ‘We have a bridge here too quite as good as the Devil's Bridge; and as for scenery, I'll back the scenery about this house against anything of the kind in the neighbour-hood of the Devil's Bridge. Yet everybody goes to the Devil's Bridge and nobody comes here.'

A century and a half later I sit in the same room of the same inn, now upgraded to a hotel, and read out this testy lament to the current owner. ‘It's still a bit like that, to be honest.' She's a short woman from East Sussex. They bought the place a few years earlier, her husband being a quarter Welsh. Propping up the bar is a thin
retiree, all fag ash and burst capillaries, with a blotchy Black Country accent. There is a powerful sense that we are far from the beaten track. Outside, much as Borrow described it, the Rheidol still clatters noisily through a chasm at the end of the garden, as if in a roaring hurry to escape the region. The mountains of the Pumlumon range patrolling the horizon are quite as desolate and abandoned as they ever were. It feels like the ghostliest corner of Wales. Borrow was more than happy to move on to the Devil's Bridge. But in a sense Borrow has never left. The inn has had its revenge on him: of the many places he stayed in Wales, this was a long way from his favourite, but nowadays it's known as the George Borrow Hotel. He would have been appalled.

On Wednesday morning it's all change. If my comprehension is correct, Pegi has a domestic issue to attend to, though I wonder if she hasn't just seen the way the wind is blowing: after two days assessing the abilities of the class, she has perhaps determined that two-thirds of us are not as clever as we claimed to be on our application form. For the rest of the week
Cwrs Uwch
transforms imperceptibly into
Cwrs Canolradd
– from Higher to Intermediate – as we are placed in the hands of Eleri. Eleri has huge blue eyes and dresses with the discreet formality of a strict grammarian. On the downside, she is another northerner whose Ll
n accent mostly consists of sea breeze and the crackle of pebbles in surf. But she enunciates with marvellous over-emphatic clarity. At first my heart slightly sinks at the realisation that we are being brought down a notch or two. It feels like a firm slap to one's Welsh chops to be spoken to so slowly. But a firm slap is what, if one is being honest, one craves.

On Wednesday afternoon we go on an outing to Caernarfon. From the minibus I see in daylight for the first time the perilous route carved into the side of the deep valley of Nant Gwrtheyrn,
gouged out of the side of Yr Eifl. It might as well be Kashmir, the road teetering on the very ledge of a precipice. From this perch it's easy to see why the Nant, one of the ancient places of Wales, has many legends attached to it as limpets to rocks. As we sway about in our minibus, Eleri tells the story of Rhys and Meinir, two local cousins who were betrothed to wed in the church at Clynnog Fawr. On the morning of the wedding, Meinir sought out a hiding place from which, according to custom, Rhys would come and fetch her to the altar. He looked high and low but failed to find her. As the weeks passed he would climb each day to a cliff top and, next to an oak tree where they used to meet, howl her name. Years slid by. One night he sheltered from a storm under the oak tree when lightning split it open to reveal the skeletal remains of Meinir still encased in her wedding dress. When she couldn't escape from her hiding place, it became her tomb.

The cafe at the Nant is called Caffi Meinir. We stop at Clynnog Fawr, one of the way stations on the pilgrims' route to Bardsey Island (three trips to Bardsey were worth one to Rome), and inspect the church where the wedding would have been. I wonder if the story's moral has some kind of modern application. Could Meinir be taken for a symbol of the Welsh language, her death a dire warning of irretrievable loss?

Closer to Caernarfon Richard points through the window up to a house in a field.

‘Dyna'r ty Bryn Terfel,' he says. That's Bryn's house. It seems a modest property for a man who towers over the musical landscape of Wales. I think of his recommendation to me: ‘If you showed any enthusiasm towards the language you would be welcome here with open arms.' Never has a truer word been spoken. I hope it counts as enthusiasm that I've not allowed English to pass my lips since Sunday afternoon.

Nor is any spoken in Caernarfon. The idea is to practise our Welsh in shops. The shops are presumably long used to tongue-tied adult learners from the Nant swarming the premises. We head for an outlet which sells books and music opposite the statue of David Lloyd George in the shadow of the castle. The cheerful face of Dafydd Iwan stares out from the racks of CDs. I tell the others I've got a signed copy of
Goreuon
at home. They are gratifyingly impressed that I move in the high echelons of Cymru Cymraeg. We split off and wander about the place like teenagers on a school outing, hands slumped in pockets against the cold under skies continuing clear. I find another more heavyweight bookshop and decide to make an impulse purchase. The moment has come to plunge headlong into the vasty deeps of Welsh literature. I've had it with
Pwtan y Gwningen
and
Harri Potter
. It's time to move through the gears. After a bit of browsing in the Welsh section I spot just the thing. The English part of me baulks at coughing up somewhat over the odds for a single book, but almost immediately it proves a worthwhile investment as I walk back through the darkening alleys of Caernarfon, the shops closing all around, while brandished under my arm in the traditional scholarly posture the name on the handsome hardback jacket is clearly visible for any impressionable passer-by to read and take in and admire: Dafydd ap Gwilym, the great medieval Welsh poet. Back in the minibus I open to the first poem and read what is, in effect, music.

The less euphonious English version opposite has this down as ‘Greetings, splendid greenwood choir'. I feel like George Borrow bar the small discrepancy that I recognise only half the words. But there's time yet.

The next morning Richard reports back from Anglesey, where he has had to return home for the night. He has a son who attends a Welsh-language primary school. For the first time ever, he says, the previous evening they had a conversation in Welsh. We practically burst into whoops and cheers. It feels as if a small but important victory has been won on behalf of all of us.

The morning is devoted to marrying Welsh verbs to Welsh prepositions. As with all languages, the little words in Welsh have their behavioural quirks which, like small boys picking their noses, one would like to erase but can't.
Gwrando ar y radio
. In Welsh they listen
on
the radio.
Chwarae dros y tîm
= to play over the team.
Maddau i rhywun
= to forgive to someone, which seems somehow more forgiving. Eleri wants to make us correct but also colloquial. Thus we spend the afternoon in the company of Welsh idioms.
Llyncu mul
: lit. swallow a mule = sulk.
Gwneud ei gorau glas
: lit. do his blue best = do his very best.
Tipyn o dderyn
: lit. a bit of a bird = a bit of a lad.
Mynd dros ben llestri
: lit. go over the top of the dishes = go too far. This is all done through games and competitions. During the breaks – morning, lunch, tea – as we continue to yak and crack jokes (‘Dyna Iwerddon!'), the feeling dawns that I have somehow known my classmates for aeons longer than four days. Such has been the intensity of the learning experience. I think of the Welsh camaraderie described by Charlie and Wayne whom I met half a mile underground in the Vale of Neath. We have bonded at our own kind of coalface.

In the evening we are sent up on our own to dine in the village pub in Llithfaen at the top of the hill. Our linguistic task after eating is to watch a weekly broadcast of a Welsh drama on the big screen. A big right-angled bar juts out under a low ceiling. There are a few cloth-capped hill farmers round one table by the fire. We sit at another next to the window and order a bottle of wine. Helen
and I somehow get into a discussion about hill farming, both of us obviously being experts in the field. Somehow it sharpens into an argument about the Welsh word for ‘ram'. I insist that it's
hwrdd
. She wrongly thinks it's
maharan
. As I've swallowed a dictionary I stick to my ground when, halfway down my first glass and thus duly emboldened, I decide to consult our neighbours. Being hill farmers, they can probably settle this one. I get up.

‘Esgusodwch fi.' The three hill farmers look up from their pints of
cwrw da
. ‘Dyn ni'n dadlau yma am gair Cymraeg.' We're arguing here about a Welsh word. It should be
am air
, but we'll let that pass; I am brimming with new-found Welsh confidence. The three of them hold their heads expectantly, exuding a general atmosphere of wizened tolerance and fertile sideburns. ‘Beth yw'r Cymraeg am ram?' What's the Welsh for ram? One of them – he's extremely old and has thick glasses – pipes up affirmatively.

‘Maharan!'

‘Diolch yn fawr iawn!' says Helen – thank you very much indeed – to whom the three of them now direct flirtatious nods and conspiratorial winks, which she disgracefully does nothing to discourage.

‘Dim hwrdd?' I ask disconsolately. Not my word then?

‘Hwrdd?' one of them expostulates. ‘Hwrdd? Hwrdd yw gair hwntw.'
Hwrdd
is a southerner's word. They chuckle among themselves, Helen complicit. ‘O ble dach chi'n dod?' Where do I come from? (
Dach
not
dych
, as per Gog usage.) I could give them the strict, literal truth, but my week at the Nant, plus the full glass now emptied into my system, induces a sudden fit of poetic licence.