# My People: Stories of the Peasantry of West Wales/Lamentations

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LAMENTATIONS
XIV
LAMENTATIONS
The Big Man despised Evan Rhiw, and said to the Respected Davydd Bern-Davydd, who then ruled from Capel Sion:
“Bern-Davydd, oppress Evan Rhiw. Go you off up and down the land now and say to the people: ‘Lo, you animals in the image of the Big Man, God’s blast is on the old male of Rhiw.’”
Bern-Davydd descended from the top of the moor and did according as he had been commanded; and his words got to the ears of Evan, who said: “Why must I be confused, dear me, because of that crow without sense, Bern-Davydd? Call you reasons to me.”
​Turning away from the man, the Judge of Sion answered by the mouth of Bertha Daviss (who was the tale-bearer of the district): “Evan Rhiw, what are your works in Capel Sion? 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.”
Evan did not regard this warning and stiffened his legs, because his substance consisted of fifty acres of land, a horse, three cows, and swine and hens: he was neither perfect nor upright, nor did he fear the men who sat in the high ​places in Capel Sion; and he revelled with loose, wild men in the inn which is kept by Mistress Shames.
Now the day the Big Man chastened him he drank much ale, and, unaware of what he was doing, he sinned against his daughter Matilda. In the morning he perceived what he had done, and was fearful lest his wife Hannah should revile him and speak aloud his wickedness. So, having laid a cunning snare for her, and finding that the woman did not know anything, he spoke to her harshly and without cause. This is what he said:
“Filthier you are than a cow.”
“Evan, indeed to goodness,” Hannah replied, “iobish you talk. Sober dear, do I not work to the bone?” With a knife she scraped through the refuse on her arm and displayed to him the thinness to which she referred. Then in her anger she spoke: “Slack you are, Evan Rhiw. Your little land you drink in the tavern ​of Mistress Shames. Are not the people mouthing your foolish ways on the tramping road and in Shop Rhys?”
Matilda entered the kitchen, and threw these words at him: “Dull and whorish you are, son of the Bad Spirit. Serious me, clean your smelly flesh in the pond.”
Hannah interpreted the meaning of Matilda’s words, and she reproached him bitterly.
But Evan answered none of the women. He went to the inn, and in his muddle he sorrowed: “Five over twenty years have I been wedded. When I took Hannah the servant of Bensha to my bed, rich was I. Did I not have six pairs of drawers, and six pairs of stockings, and six pairs of shirts of white linen? And three pairs of rib trousers? There’s rib, people bach. Ninepence over half a crown a yard it cost in the Shop of the Bridge in Castellybryn. Not a shirt of linen do I possess this day. Wasteful has Hannah been with mine. ​Sad is my lot. Disorderly is the female, and Matilda says this and that about me to my discredit.”
He brayed his woe also in the narrow Roman road which takes you past the Schoolhouse and in the path that cuts over Gorse Penparc into the field wherein stands Rhiw. At an early hour in the morning Matilda said to her mother: “Mam now, the cows fach are lowing to be milked,” and receiving no answer she looked into Hannah’s face and examined her body, and she saw that the woman was cold dead, whereupon she went out and into the stable, in the loft of which Evan slept, and cried up to him: “Father bach, do you stir yourself. Old mam has gone to wear a White Shirt.”
While Sara Ann was clothing herself in mournful raiment Evan put on his clogs and went to the house of Lias the Carpenter, and to Lias he said: “The nice man, for why you don’t know there is a desolate ​place in my heart this one minute? Come you with your little rule that shows the inches and measure the body of old Hannah for a coffin.”
The second day that Hannah rested in the burial-ground of Capel Sion, Evan rubbed his face and hands with small gravel in the little water which runs at the foot of the close of Rhiw, and he drew a comb through his thinnish beard, and he walked to the house of Bern-Davydd.
“Respected and religious preacher,” he said, “full of repentance am I, son of the little White Jesus.”
“Happy you make me, Evan Rhiw,” answered Bern-Davydd. “Grand will the angels sing, man, in the White Palace, when you take the communion. The wine, Evan, is it not the blood and the bread the flesh of the Big Man?”
“Discreet and wise ruler, let me make him a nice little offering.”
​“Religious proper, you are, Evan. Not to me, man, not to Mistress Bern-Davydd you make your sacrifices, but to the Big Man. I keep your gift in trust for Him. What shall I say is the name of the sacrifice, Evan bach?”
“This day the wench Sara Ann is churning, and is she not bringing him a pound of little butter?”
“Evan Rhiw, there is no sound of such a sacrifice in the Bible.”
“And a tin pitcher full of buttermilk.”
“Did Abram offer the three Strangers buttermilk, Evan?”
“And a big cabbage with a white heart.”
“The Children of Israel, Evan bach, ate flesh.”
“And a full wheelbarrow of potatoes.”
“Tarry you awhile,” said Bern-Davydd, “and I will commune with the Big Man.”
Presently he made utterance: “This is what the Great One of Capel Sion says: ​‘I will abate my oppression of Evan Rhiw if he makes a sacrifice of a pig.’”
Evan brought the pig; and he was admitted into Sion, and for two years he sinned not, and there was much pious joy in his way, and he prospered exceedingly.
People said one to another: “Behold now, this man Evan is among the wisest in the Capel. And there’s rich he is.” Moreover he had given over feasting on the Devil’s brew with loose, wild men, and his lips constantly moved in silent prayer, and he had respect for those who sat in the high places.
But as the man’s possessions multiplied, his daughter Matilda got dull and became a cumbersome thing on him: and he charged the Big Man foolishly before the congregation of the Seiet. “Why, God bach,” he said, “is your foot so heavy on me? Am I not religious? Ask you the Respected Davydd Bern-Davydd. Matilda is strange and amazed in her eyes, ​and she is set on mischief, and why brawls she loudly about me? Ach, indeed! Bad is this for your male son.” For this God cursed his belongings: two horses sickened and perished, great rain fell upon his hay, which was ripe to be stacked; a cow destroyed her calf. The congregation was sore and murmured against him: “Pity now that our hay is rotting because of the bad sin of Evan Rhiw.” A body of them wailed to Bern-Davydd.
“Speech him to the Great Harvester about this man Evan Rhiw,” they said.
“Children bach,” said Bern-Davydd, “run you about and about, and I will go to the top of the old moor and sing this lamentation to Him: ‘Now then, why for you see our costly hay ruined? Is it a light thing that our precious animals starve throughout the hard days?’”
They looked at one another and ​marvelled at the familiarity between Bern-Davydd and the Big Man. “Sure,” they said, “he is as important as God.”
The third day the Judge of Sion commanded his flock to him, and he said to them: “Boys, boys, glad was the Big Man that I spoke to Him. Do you know what He said? ‘Large thanks, Bern bach. Religious are you to remind me of the sin of Evan Rhiw. The man has a clean heart, and an adder in his house.’ ‘Big Man, don’t you vex me,’ I said. ‘Whisper you me the name of the adder.’ The Big Man said, ‘Maltida. Evan may sin again, grievously, but I will restore him to Capel Sion, and I will bless him abundantly, for his freewill offerings to my Temple are generous.’ Little boys, He went back to Heaven in a cloud, and the cloud was no bigger than the flat of this old hand.”
The night of the Hiring Fair Evan drank ​in the inn, and the ale made him drunk, and he cried a ribald song; the men with whom he drank mocked him, and they carried him into the stable and laid him in a manger, and covered him with hay; and in the stall they put a horse, thinking the animal would eat Evan’s hair and beard. But the Big Man watched over Evan, and the horse did not eat his beard.
“What shall we do,” said the light men, “to humble him before the congregation?”
One said: “Let us strip the skin from the horse that perished, which is buried in the narrow field, and we will throw it over his head.”
Thus they did, and Evan went home with the skin of the horse covering the back of him like a mantle.
His daughter Maltida saw him and was disturbed, and she kept out of his way until he slept. Then she issued forth from her ​hiding place, and said to herself: “Jesus bach, if the sons of men wear the habit of horses the daughters of God must go naked.” She cast from her body her clothes, and went down the Roman road and into the village. The people closed their doors on her, and for four days she wandered thereabouts nakedly. The men of the neighbourhood laid rabbit traps on the floor of the fields, and one trap caught the foot of Maltida, and she was delivered into Evan’s hands. Having clothed her, he took a long rope, the length and thickness that is used to keep a load of hay intact, and one end of the rope he fastened round her right wrist and one end round the left wrist. In this wise he drove her before him, in the manner in which a colt is driven, to the madhouse of the three shires, which is in the town of Carmarthen, and the distance from Manteg to Carmarthen is twenty-four miles.
After that Evan did not sin any more; ​his belongings increased, and he had ten milching cows and five horses, and he hired a manservant and a maidservant, and he rented twenty-five acres of land over and beyond the land that was his, and his house remained religious as long as he lived.