SOWING IN WALES

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 151, 23 December 1935, Page 5

SOWING IN WALES

OLD WAY WITH SEED

NOVELIST'S PICTURE

I had climbed the hill and was siting looking down into.the valley below me, conscious of, two things, the dealhi like stillness around me, and my complete immunity from human contacts, writes James Hanlcy in "The Spectator." Away across the mountains I 1 knew there existed the desperate mass . of life that symbolises the cities and towns of today. A March wind was blowing, but the sky was quite clear. Once a whole colony of rooks passed by cawing loudly. Below me were • the brown lands, and here and there a. farmstead. Then suddenly what looked to me like a scarecrow began to move. I stood up then and focused my attention upon it. ■ Yes, this strange figure was walking up and down a ploughed field. I began to descend. As I drew nearer I saw it was a man, but could not yet make out what Jie was doing in this field. At last I ■came to the field itself and climbed •the gate (an awkwark job this) topped by barbed wire (unusual in Wales). I discovered then that he was sowing corn. LIKE A RUSSIAN. At first glance I should take him for ' a man of seventy. Later 1 discovered 1 that he was eighty-one. He was the : nearest thing to a Russian moujik I have ever seen. He wore a huge black • overcoat, its collar buttoned tightly ; about his throat. He wore a' black ' beard. His nose was hooked, and set : between eyes of light brown.- Such : penetrating eyes. Seeing me he waved : his hand and called out in a voice like • bronze, "Borthddada" (good morning). The picture was almost biblical. He • looked like one of the old prophets. In ■ his left hand he held a wooden-bowl, • half full of seed. On his head he wore ; a black felt hat, mudi the worse for ■ wear, the only thing that marred the ■ prophet iri him. For an old man he . had .marvellous teeth. But. most .won- •. derful of all was bis vitality. He ; breathed an energjh and earnestness ; which one rarely associates with a man ' eighty years ■ old. , This energy, this i tensity, he seemed to communicate to the atmosphere around him. I remarked how.early.he?was on the job. • Laughing, he replied that he had been up since a quarter to 5 o'clock, had brought in the cattle for milking, set the separator, lighted the fires,' made breakfast, and seen to the calf-feed. Not bad I thought for a man of his age. WITHOUT MACHINES. I knew, of course, that in most parts of Wales they sow the corn: by hand as in the days of old, for Wales is a country most untouched by the mod^ crn spirit. One can travel through the country completely oblivious to the fact ■ that these are factory and machine-made days. And, this Indifference to progress, this indifference to, modern ideas, manifested itself for me in the person in front of-me; his ; very demeanour was a sort of threat to such things. One felt he hated machines; one could even see him disgustedly refusing any present of a machine-made sower. But then how odd this figure would have looked standing behind a mechanical sower. Here was a hang-over from the past. I asked him if he liked sowing by ■hand, to which he replied laughingly, "But there, is no other way that is good." I teased him about the milk separator, for I felt a two-dog power churn was much more in his line. Ah, no. It wasn't any of his business, he had nothing to do with, its purchase. His son had bought the milk separator. This reassured me a little. Then he began to sow. Arid, watching that tall, ungainly figure wrapped in its overcoat, treading down the- field, I realised that he was bom to sow corn, to sow it in this old, old way. The beautiful rhythm of his casting, the sway of his body, the way he. held his head, the graceful swing of his arm only served to fortify this realisation. One could imagine he experienced a sort of ecstasy.as he trod the firm earth beneath: his feet, that as he flung this corn towards it he was in essence symbolising his faith iri the soil, his duty towards the mother earth. With this corn he was writing his own message upon the brown lands. He was in deep communication with the oldest mother of all. THE PROPHET. Up and down he went, and so he came into the very middle of the field. ;It was as though some intoxicating 1 essence rose from the earth itself. His ' movements. were more; graceful, and he was smiling, not at ,me, but at the soil beneath him. Here. was the ■ core of movement, mpvement made ; rhythmical, made poetic. ' I stood by the gate ftor a long while watching him. The aft: was still as '. before, and only a single gull come in from the sea appeared over his head. As he turned round I saw his beard blowing in the ■wind., Thenxhis hat blew off and the -picture was complete. Here was the prophet sowing his seed. Here was no deluge of mechanical sounds, ortly the scraping of his hands in the coral bowl. Against the light the corn had the appearance of, golden dust as he filing it handful • after handful into the hungry earth. ■ Then I went back up the hill. For a ; long time I sat watchiag the old man ;at his work. He would always sow, , year in year out. Thbt I thought is [ his destiny, to go on. serving the • brown^ lands until deaf-h. As I rose to ;go I stood for a moment to take a ■ last look. His tall figure stood out ' clearly against the skyline, and far to his left I noticed a single horse. May- ' be I thought he has seen it too, for [ it had just appeared on the horizon. ! A good sign so they say to see a horse outlined on a hilltojp. - Suddenly he stopped. He had finished his • work. He looked my way, saw, me, gave a wave of the hand, andtthen disappeared behind the hedge. '