Novel Of Peasant Life In Wales By Welsh Writer

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 11 (Supplement)

Novel Of Peasant Life In Wales By Welsh Writer

A goodly proportion of the hooks dealing with the economic and social conditions of the workers at Home, both in the industrial towns and in the country, are novels. One such is "The Wooden Spoon" (Dent); the work of a Welsh ■writer, Wyn Griffith. One gets the impression in reading it that it is "a tale that ia more than a tale." It is written as the autobiography, or reminiscences, of an old man, a bachelor, who haa returned after many years from America, with a fair competence, to the Welsh hamlet and cottage where he was born. Ho tells of the extreme poverty of his childhood, of his farm labouring as a boy for a. pittance, of hia fellow-workers and neighbours, and his temptations, and of his emigration to the distant West. We see his intense sympathy with the poor, and his resentment when he thinks of the miserable conditions in which, they had to live in his earlier years. The book is something of a psychological study, and the garrulousness of the old man is cleverly brought out. If anything, it is a bit too garrulous in the two opening chapters, and their prolixity is only redeemed by two singularly vivid stories, one of them on wrecking. Some of the disclosures regarding his youth are unnecessarily intimate. But Mr. Griffith does give a true picture of peasant life in the remoter parte of the Principality some years ago, and of the people. The most original part of the story, and it is well told, is the love for him of the woman who, as a girl, stole the "wooden spoon" ho had made as a love token for another girl, and their quaint courtship in his old age.