[Men's Choir Singing in Welsh]
[Church Bell Ringing]
I am packing my belongings
in the shawl
my mother used to wear
when she went
to the market,
and I am going
from my valley,
and this time,
I shall never return
I am leaving behind me
my 50 years of memory
Memory
Strange that the mind
will forget so much
of what only this moment
has passed
and yet hold
clear and bright
the memory of what happened
years ago,
of men and women
long since dead
Yet who shall say
what is real
and what is not?
Can I believe
my friends all gone
when their voices
are still a glory in my ears?
No, and I will stand
to say no and no again,
for they remain a living truth
within my mind
There is no fence nor hedge
'round time that is gone
You can go back
and have what you like of it
if you can remember
So I can close my eyes
on my valley as it is today,
and it is gone,
and I see it as it was
when I was a boy
green it was and possessed
of the plenty of the earth
In all Wales,
there was none so beautiful
Everything I ever learnt
as a small boy
came from my father,
and I never found
anything he ever told me
to be wrong or worthless
The simple lessons
he taught me
are as sharp and clear
in my mind
as if I had
heard them only yesterday
In those days, the black slag,
the waste of the coal pits,
had only begun
to cover the side of our hill,
not yet enough
to mar the countryside
nor blacken the beauty
of our village
for the colliery
had only begun
to poke
its skinny black fingers
through the green
I can hear even now the voice
of my sister Angharad
(music) Huw (music)
(music) Angharad (music)(music)
Coal miners were my father
and all my brothers,
and proud of their trade
Gwilym Morgan,
Ј3 and 7
Thank you, sir
lanto Morgan,
Ј3 and 7
Ivor Morgan,
Ј3 and 7
Davy Morgan,
Ј2 and 5
Owen Morgan,
Ј2 and 5
Young Gwilym Morgan,
Ј1 and 10
Someone would
strike up a song,
and the valley would ring
with the sound of many voices,
for singing is in my people
as sight is in the eye
[Whistle Blows]
[Singing in Welsh]
Then came the scrubbing
out in the back yard
It was the duty
of my sister Angharad
to bring the buckets
of hot water and cold,
and I performed
what little tasks I could,
as my father
and brothers
scrubbed the coal dust
from their backs
Most would come off them,
but some would stay for life
This is the honorable badge
of the coal miner,
and I envied it on my father
and grown-up brothers
Scrub and scrub,
Mr. Coal would lie there
and laugh at you
Aah!
Oh!
There was always
a baron of beef
or a shoulder or leg of lamb
before my father
There was never any talk
while we were eating
I never met anybody whose talk
was better than good food
My mother was always
on the run,
always the last
to start her dinner
and the first to finish,
for if my father
was the head of our house,
my mother was its heart
After dinner,
when dishes had been washed,
the box was brought
to the table
for the spending money
to be handed out
No one in our valley
had ever seen a bank
We kept our savings
on the mantelpiece
My father used to say that
money was made to be spent,
just as men
spend their strength and brains
in earning it...
and as willingly...
but always with a purpose
Thank you, Dada
Ha ha ha!
Ha ha ha!
Out of the house
and across the street,
as I had run
a hundred times before
[Bell Ringing]
Softly now,
for respect for chapel
was the first thing
my father taught us
Then straight
to Mrs. Tossall,
the shop for that toffee
which you could chew for hours,
it seems to me now,
and even after
it had gone down,
you could swallow
and still find the taste of it
hiding behind your tongue
It is with me now,
so many years later
[Doorbell Rings]
It makes me think
of so much that was good
that is gone
It was on this afternoon
that I first saw Bron...
Bronwyn
She had come over
from the next valley
for her first call
on my