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Friday
We spent yesterday traveling around Wales with John Beech (a third cousin) and his wife Sue. I thought of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as we entered the country from the Cheshire direction since the 14th century poem was probably composed in the area, with Gawain possibly venturing into the Welsh wilderness to meet up with the Green Knight. At Bryn Celli Ddu on Anglesey Island we toured a 4000-year-old burial mound, and I could imagine such ancient Celtic structures inspiring the poet in his creation of “the green chapel,” where Gawain has his final showdown with GK.
But we were mostly in Wales to visit places where Julia’s ancestors had lived. Robert and John Jones (her great-great grandfather and great-grandfather) at one time resided in Llangwyfan, an out-of-the-way farming community, and we visited the church they may have attended. (There were lots of Joneses buried there but, given how common the name is, that in itself means nothing.) Today we’re in Holyhoke, from where the Joneses left for America somewhere between 1851 and 1854, ultimately ending up in Yellow Springs, Iowa. (Julia’s grandmother, Mary Jones, would marry Ira Miksch—Julia’s maiden name—and join the Grace Hill Moravian community in Iowa.) To reach Llangwyfan we squeezed our way down one-way lanes, bordered by high hedgerows, that sometimes went on for miles.
We’ll be visiting the Anglesey shoreline later today so here’s a poem by English poet John Betjeman about the bay. Apparently Betjeman was excited to learn that he too had Welsh ancestry and, like Julia, visited places where his family had lived.
The poem reminds me of W.B. Yeat’s “Lake Isle of Innisfree,” with the waves gently lapping (or in Betjeman’s language, sometimes sleepily slapping, sometimes sweetly susurrating). We too have seen Mount Snowdon, which is still capped with snow. As in the poem, all appears quiet and peaceful.
A Bay In Anglesey
By John Betjeman
The sleepy sound of a tea-time tide
Slaps at the rocks the sun has dried,
Too lazy, almost, to sink and lift
Round low peninsulas pink with thrift.
The water, enlarging shells and sand,
Grows greener emerald out from land
And brown over shadowy shelves below
The waving forests of seaweed show.
Here at my feet in the short cliff grass
Are shells, dried bladderwrack, broken glass,
Pale blue squills and yellow rock roses.
The next low ridge that we climb discloses
One more field for the sheep to graze
While, scarcely seen on this hottest of days,
Far to the eastward, over there,
Snowdon rises in pearl-grey air.
Multiple lark-song, whispering bents,
The thymy, turfy and salty scents
And filling in, brimming in, sparkling and free
The sweet susurration of incoming sea.