Into the Wind - The Life of Carwyn James

By Alun Gibbard

A comprehensive biography of one of the most iconic and popular figures in Wales' recent history. Carwyn James was not only a legend to rugby fans in Wales and further afield, but held a much wider appeal too, in the fields of politics, Welsh literature and culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Y Lolfa
• Release date: Oct 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781784614997

Book preview

Acknowledgements

Many people, without whom this work would not have seen the light of day, need thanking. They fall into three groups.

Practical help was received from Owain Meredith, Archif Sgrin a Sain; Helen Glenister; Jane Davies; Caru James, Llanelli Library; Tim Hamill, Sonic One Studio.

The following need to be thanked for their consultations: Peter Hughes Griffiths; D Ben Rees; Russell Davies; Huw Tregelles Williams; Cenwyn Edwards; Robert Lewis; Peter Jackson; T James Jones; Martyn Shrewsbury. Thanks to Professor Gareth Williams and Jon Gower for reading the proofs of the Welsh version: your comments have been incorporated into this English version. I’m indebted to Professor Dai Smith CBE for reading the proofs of this English biography. I value his support and insight greatly.

Many trusted me with their archive material: David Rees; David Rogers; Les Williams; John Jenkins; David Meredith; Maldwyn Pryse; Alcwyn Deiniol Evans; Tony Cash and Dennis Mills from the JSSL; Dai Gealey and the staff at Llandovery College. Angelo Morello is to be thanked for accessing archives from Rovigo, Italy on my behalf and for many talks we’ve had about Carwyn, in Italy and via email. Thanks also to Rovigo Rugby Club, the town’s Teatro and Accademia for their time when I visited them.

The fact that giants of rugby such as Willie John McBride and Colin Meads were prepared to have a chat on the phone with me about Carwyn says a great deal about the man himself. They were only two amongst many internationals, from many countries, who were so willing to talk about the man.

I acknowledge my debt to two volumes published on Carwyn’s life. Un o ‘Fois y Pentre’ (One of the ‘Boys from the Village’), edited by John Jenkins, was published less than a year after Carwyn died. It’s a collection of essays by people from every walk of Carwyn’s life. Carwyn: A Personal Memoir by Alun Richards is completely different. It’s an account of a life through the eyes of a friend who was also an author. Both volumes have been invaluable sources. Alun Richards is unfortunately no longer with us, but I had many conversations with John Jenkins, for which I am extremely grateful.

Without the financial backing of the Welsh Books Council, this work wouldn’t have happened at all. I thank them for their support. And equally the support of publishers Y Lolfa. It’s been a long journey putting both Welsh-language and English biographies together. They have been supportive and patient in equal measure. I thank Carolyn Hodges in particular for her thorough and thought-provoking editing. That creative process has certainly polished my original work. Any weaknesses that may remain are mine.

Working on a project for over three years does have a bearing on family life. The subject of a biography can permeate the biographer’s skin and take over every hour of the day. That might well be very difficult to live with! I thank my wife Fiona for putting up with this extra guest in our relationship. I thank her for practical and emotional support and for her insightful comments on so many aspects of Carwyn’s life. My father-in-law was one of my English teachers at Llanelli Boys Grammar School and he was one of the five teachers that have shaped my life. He played no little part in setting me off on the journey that led to this book. He also gave me a wife, along with my mother-in-law of course! Quite a double debt! It was a particular joy to show the manuscript of the biography to my parents before publication. My father was at school with Carwyn and my mother met him later. Sharing this work with them was very precious. These personal, family connections made everything just that little bit more special.

Preface

Just before Christmas last year my Welsh-language biography of Carwyn was published. This English biography is not a translation of that work, it’s a restructured rewrite. The context into which this book will be released is different to the context of the Welsh biography and therefore the expression needs to be different also. But, to borrow from Led Zeppelin, the song remains the same.

There’s a photograph of Carwyn in this book that captures much of the essence of the life that unfolds on these pages. He’s standing near a piano, singing. An elderly lady wearing a Christmas paper hat is obviously accompanying him. The room, in Tumble Village Hall, is full of people enjoying their Christmas party. It’s an important event in the community calendar. In the dim distance, the back wall of this room can be seen. It’s lined with books from floor to ceiling, bought by the spare pennies earned underground and collected to form a village library; evidence of the coal miners’ dedication to education and culture.

Carwyn would sing publicly, socially, throughout his adult life: in the student pubs of Aberystwyth, in the company of fellow National Servicemen, in Llandovery College staff gatherings and in rugby clubs throughout the world. This picture of him singing, in a hall next door to his birth village of Cefneithin, tells a story. Carwyn is in a crowd. Carwyn is also alone. Carwyn is singing. He has the attention of all in the room. However, as much as he is in the Hall, he is not of the Hall. It would be a safe bet that he was singing his usual ‘Myfanwy’ here, a song based on the Welsh legend of a man who thought he’d found love but was painfully rejected and then wandered aimlessly through fields and forests in his dejection. The song has permeated Welsh culture for over a century, predominantly through the Male Voice Choir tradition, and has found its way into films as diverse as How Green was my Valley and Twin Town. It’s a song in that minor key much loved by the Welsh. Carwyn’s own life would sing too often and too deeply in that minor key.

I’ve spent three years trying to understand the life of Carwyn James. It was always going to be a difficult task. A man who came as close as any to being a friend of his, the author Alun Richards, said of Carwyn that he was the man everybody knew about, but nobody knew. The process of trying to unravel the life of such a man is made all the more difficult when we consider that he played out his life on four stages: those of literature, broadcasting, politics and rugby. Add to this that by nature he was a very private person, and the task intensifies. But therein lies the fascination with the man who was Carwyn James. He really was unique, fascinating, stimulating, incisive, and a visionary whose view of the world went much further than the hedge at the bottom of the garden.

My research involved speaking to over a hundred people from Carwyn’s four areas of interest and expertise, the geographical areas he was associated with and the institutions he was part of. It also meant long discussions with his family members. Their support has been invaluable for one main reason: they allowed me the freedom to come to my own conclusions. I never felt the weight of the family hand on my shoulders as I wrote. Carwyn’s nephew Llyr James has been a strong support throughout, in allowing access to family photos and documents but also in many a discussion on various aspects of his uncle’s life. Two of Carwyn’s nieces, Non and Bethan, also contributed to the information and my understanding.

A shadow also hung over the enigma that was Carwyn’s nature. On learning that I had started this work, many responded by saying, ‘Oh, you’re going to prove that Carwyn is gay, are you?’ My answer was always, ‘No, I’m not.’ Why? Because, firstly, that wasn’t ever the aim of writing the biography. The issue of his sexuality was only one aspect of his life, not the whole. And then, secondly, I cannot prove something that Carwyn had not resolved for himself. What I mean by this is dealt with thoroughly in these pages.

It’s appropriate that Carwyn has had a biography commissioned in two languages. His Welsh dragon certainly had two tongues. He championed Wales and all things Welsh, and he championed the increasing use of Welsh in public life. But that was never to the exclusion of those who were Welsh but couldn’t speak the language. He avoided the ‘us and them’ attitude that can so often be shown by many who campaign for the language and the Welsh nation, but either wilfully or subconsciously imply that the true Welsh are those who speak the language. Carwyn’s speech as President for the Day at the pre-eminent Welsh cultural event, the National Eisteddfod, in Haverfordwest in 1972 shows that he did not take this standpoint. He stood firmly on an inclusive Welsh platform. He appealed to the Welsh of both languages, and was respected equally by both. More recently, a similar role was filled by the inimitable Welsh rugby international and British Lion, Ray Gravell.

So this is Carwyn, or at least my understanding of him. It was a life lived into the wind, not blown along by it. He faced the wind when it might well have been easier and more comfortable not to do so.

In the rugby world, he refused to go along with traditional rugby thinking and played into the wind every time. As these words are being written, the 2017 British and Irish Lions are preparing to go to New Zealand, under the leadership of Wales coach, New Zealander Warren Gatland. The question being asked as the present pride get ready to go to the southern hemisphere is: can they emulate what Carwyn achieved 46 years ago and beat the All Blacks in a Test series? There’s no doubt that no one would be happier for the near 50-year record to be broken than the mastermind of that 1971 success himself, Carwyn James. It would have been against his spirit to think that no one else would lead the Lions to the success he achieved. Carwyn’s legacy is certainly greatly appreciated in New Zealand, a legacy they have developed and nurtured from defeat.

In his personal life, he faced turbulent crosswinds and found himself walking in a different direction to almost anyone else. That proved to be a very isolated place to be. He liked that isolation, but he also suffered because of it.

This book answers many questions, contains new information and offers some definite conclusions. But I’m sure it leaves many questions unanswered. This fact may well be a reflection on the book itself for some readers, but the real, tragic relevance of such a statement is that the lack of answers was a living reality for Carwyn when he left this world at 53 years of age.

Alun Gibbard

May 2017

In every man… there is one part which concerns only himself and his contingent existence, is properly unknown to anybody else and dies with him. And there is another part through which he holds to an idea which is expressed through him with an eminent clarity, and of which he is the symbol.

Wilhelm von Humboldt, Autobiographical Fragment 1816

Introduction

Carwyn and the soil under his feet

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

The greatest coach Wales never had. The best Welsh coach ever. There’s a certain significance to the fact that two such seemingly-contradictory phrases were said of the same man. Carwyn was a man of dualities. In his small, diminutive frame, opposites could sit quite comfortably. He was a chapel deacon who served in two prominent Anglican educational establishments; he took part in protests opposing Ministry of Defence plans in Wales and he did his National Service in the Navy; he showed his opposition to the apartheid regime in the sporting world, but in the name of the same sport, he travelled to Communist countries where greater physical atrocities were committed; this fervent Welsh nationalist led a team of rugby internationals to New Zealand under the British and Irish flag. More such dualities will unfold over these pages.

Through all this, he was never accused of duplicity, or of changing his views with the wind. Where others might have been criticised for being weak for showing such a characteristic, Carwyn wasn’t. There was a consistency, an integrity to his view of the world that others respected, even if they couldn’t always understand it.

And then, back to those two coaching phrases at the start of the chapter. They say quite a lot about the man lauded as the Maestro because of his achievements in world rugby. When he died, alone in Amsterdam in 1983, these two phrases were amongst the most common on the lips of those paying tribute to him. This firstly shows that the popular perception of him is of a rugby man. And of course he was, as historic and unprecedented successes on the field of play showed: the first and only Lions Test series win against the All Blacks in New Zealand, coaching his club to beat the same opposition and developing an innovative rugby philosophy that influenced the world game. Achievements indeed.

But this work will argue that we do Carwyn a disservice by reducing him to being a rugby man above all else. There was more to him than that, much more. It might well be the case that rugby wasn’t even his first love, though there is certainly a correlation between the role that rugby played in his life at any particular time and the state of Carwyn’s mind at those particular times. That correlation might be an unexpected one, as rugby, success and happiness don’t necessarily relate to each other as might normally be perceived.

The phrases also show that things weren’t quite as they should be. While one praises him as the greatest, the other says that he didn’t get what many evidently believed he should have had: the opportunity to coach his country. Some had seemingly chosen to reject a greatness that others saw. Carwyn did have the opportunity to apply for the then-vacant job of Welsh coach, but contrary to popular perception, he wasn’t rejected by the WRU – he withdrew his own application. This raises another question, which has answers on two levels. Firstly, he had already had a few battles with the WRU before the coaching vacancy appeared. Maybe he didn’t fancy another one with people he didn’t wholeheartedly respect. But then, on a deeper level, he had other struggles within himself that might well have made him battle-weary. Perhaps the fight wasn’t in him anymore.

Into this arena of duality and identity come two new players: sexuality and community. There were some dualities which didn’t sit comfortably at all in Carwyn’s soul. Behind that warm smile and those kind eyes, battles raged; tormenting him, challenging the stillness he could otherwise exude. His body showed signs of this inner fight, glimpses of flaked and bloody skin to be seen under a risen trouser leg or shirt sleeve, signs of the psoriasis that was like fire on his skin, the outward blood of inner scars. The big question that burned inside him was that of his sexuality. He was having feelings that were diametrically opposed to the tenets of the faith he had been brought up in, as well as the particular values of the West-Walian heritage he came from. This was a very real duality and both sides fought inside Carwyn’s head and heart.

Many might expect conclusive proof in this volume that Carwyn was gay. They will be disappointed. It’s not up to an author to come to conclusions the subject himself didn’t have an opportunity to arrive at. Many, on the other hand, will be appalled at the fact that stories relating to Carwyn’s homosexuality are included at all, as they completely reject the idea that he might have been gay in the first place and hold that the whole story was nothing more than vicious gossip. The reaction of some to the Welsh-language version of this book suggests that this will be so, as some have reacted strongly to stories in the book relating to his gay encounters, saying that Carwyn never practised his ‘problem’. What is to be found here is an analysis of the evidence available and a definite conclusion as to where Carwyn was on this issue when his life was taken from him.

These seeming dualities, contradictions, confrontations, battles and foibles were all different roots that fed the tree of Carwyn’s life, bringing creative energy from many different directions to that one same central core. They created a man who was a broadcaster, a literature lecturer, a rugby coach and a political candidate; a man who loved theatre, opera, cricket, and snooker; a man who spoke four languages, had a fine singing voice and was a chapel deacon.

And so to community. ‘What virtue has a tree without its roots?’ asks rural Welsh poet and farmer B T Hopkins, whose own roots reached deep into the same soil as that of Carwyn James’ family. A more renowned Welsh poet, and one who was to be a big influence on Carwyn James’ life, put it another way. ‘The influence of community is the greatest on each and every one of us,’ said Gwenallt, one of the twentieth century’s leading Welsh-language poets.

Carwyn knew the two individuals who shared those observations. He had come across one on the Eisteddfod (a competitive arts festival held entirely in Welsh) circuit, while the other was a poet whose works Carwyn studied at school before becoming one of his students at Aberystwyth University. He also knew the geography of these sayings. He was familiar with the Ceredigion of B T Hopkins, he knew of the industrial Glamorgan that was Gwenallt’s birthplace and he lived in the rural Carmarthenshire that Gwenallt longed for, as he wrestled with the strong but often conflicting cultural pull of the two landscapes. Carwyn would have understood that tension.

But on a deeper level, Carwyn was also familiar with the sentiment behind the words. He felt the force of the psycho-geography they emanated from. He was very much a man of his patch; a man who had a constant basic need to feel a connection with his square mile. A man who was lost if such a connection to place, or at least an awareness of such a connection, either wavered or disappeared completely.

In this respect, he had an affinity with another prominent Welshman: Dylan Thomas. Walford Davies, fellow citizen of the same Gwendraeth Valley as Carwyn and leading Dylan academic, hails the Bard of Cwmdonkin Drive as a poet of place and not time. He too needed territorial connections and losing them brought disarray, especially in behaviour. The relationship between the individual and the land his feet stand upon is clear in Dylan’s life.

As unexpected as it is to bring Dylan Thomas into Carwyn’s life story, Walford Davies argues his point about the bard with a left-field quote from novelist George Eliot:

‘A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for the labours men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakeable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neighbours, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood… The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one’s own homestead.’

It would be natural to think that the ‘spot of native land’ is the earth where we first saw the light of this world, the place from which we start and which we strive to arrive at. Normally it is, but it doesn’t have to be. And maybe this was the greatest duality of all for Carwyn. His human life was rooted in two distinct areas of his native land. He was born in Cefneithin, in the industrial part of the Gwendraeth Valley. His family, parents, brother and two sisters came from the remote rural village of Rhydlewis in Cardiganshire (present-day Ceredigion), further north and further west than Carwyn’s birthplace. Carwyn was the only one not born there and he felt that tear. One offered substance, the other the hope of substance. One ‘spot of native land’ was one of blood, the other was one of soil.

Unlike the three named bards, Carwyn was no poet, nor an author like George Eliot. But he had the heart of a poet, as described by American poet and essayist Ocean Vuong:

Every time we remember, we create new neurons, which is why memory is so unreliable. I thought, ‘Well, if the Greek root for poet is creator, then to remember is to create, and, therefore, to remember is to be a poet.’ I thought it was so neat. Everyone’s a poet, as long as they remember.

Carwyn, the man of words, remembered, remembered well and needed to remember. He had a heritage that his memory could and would draw deeply from. His heart beat to a rhythm that was in step with men of words – much more than it was in step with men of rugby, even.

He had a strong sense of place. He would always look for the familiar through every difference he would come across. He needed to feel the soil beneath his feet because that was for him a formative force, the very essence of who a person was. He needed the ‘definiteness of early memories’ to be a ‘habit of the blood’.

Every territory he placed his feet upon from then on was always seen in relation to the primal patch. He was a man who let the places where he lived and worked influence his memories, his feelings and his thoughts. Another Welsh poet, Waldo Williams, said that his beloved Preseli hills were always there for him as a support for every independent judgment he made. Carwyn needed that same awareness.

A clear question arises from the relationship between Carwyn and his human habitat. It’s a question that permeates this biography. If we come to a sense of who we are through the land that we are a part of, and this work argues that we do, what happens when the connection with that land changes, weakens, complicates, loses focus, or disappears?

The pull of land is not a uniform influence. The relationship between it and an individual changes as that person moves away from the nursery soil and life happens to him or her. Sometimes the roots are stretched so far it’s impossible to feel their force and their certainty. One of Wales’ most prominent contemporary poets, Alan Llwyd, summed this up in describing leaving home to go to university as ‘ennill gradd a cholli gwreiddiau’ (gaining a degree but losing his roots).

In 1970, the year that Carwyn stood as a candidate in a General Election, Welsh philosopher J R Jones commented:

There is more than one quiet revolution happening in the world of men’s thoughts at the moment, and not least among them is the new understanding, which is slowly gathering momentum, of the importance of the need for roots. And at the core of such a need there is the need for a foothold – for soil under the separateness that gives you the right for recognition and respect.

Carwyn needed such a recognition in his own life. He came to feel a profound sense of separateness, accompanied by an aching need to be respected and accepted. People respond differently to a sense of distance from the familiar. As his life and times progressed, the land and the roots it carried shook more and more. It became a less and less firm foundation for him. Before the end, the connection between him and the soil under his feet was very fragile: the foothold was shifting. The relevance of this will become evident, but before seeing the shifts in the land, we need to see the land itself.

Chapter 1

Cefneithin’s cradle

Dyneiddiaeth y pwll glo, duwioldeb y wlad.

‘The humanity of the coal pit, the divinity of the countryside.’

Gwenallt, ‘Sir Forgannwg a Sir Gaerfyrddin’

(Glamorgan and Carmarthenshire)

According to a saying probably African in origin, but popularised in recent times by Hillary Clinton, it takes a village to raise a child. Carwyn was born into a village where that would have happened literally. At the height of his success in world rugby, having led the Lions to their first ever series win on New Zealand soil the year before, he wrote a series of articles for the Western Mail. The attention of the rugby world was very much on him, but he was always his own man and didn’t write what was expected of him. His articles weren’t to do with rugby, or how he achieved his successes. He didn’t share his sporting philosophy or his principles of excellence. He shared reminiscences about his childhood. Success hadn’t changed him.

He had occasionally kept notes for a future autobiography throughout his adult life. The notes have disappeared and the autobiography sadly never materialised. Reading what writing we have of his reminds us again of Dylan Thomas, as Carwyn’s words resonate with the spirit of Thomas’ prose in Return Journey and other similar stories of his.

I’m afraid to watch on my own lest I fall through the gap in the hedge, my hiding place, on to the playing field, and I don’t like the stinging nettles. I plead with my father to stop working in the garden, to stop admiring the grunting pig and to take me to watch the ‘beetball’. I hold his large, warm, collier’s hand and I feel safe, and I watch the huge men throwing the ball around. I enjoy watching them and I think my father does too, perhaps only because his three-year-old son is so quiet. Their voices, coarse and primitive, frighten me.

He starts with an account of this incident that happened when he was three years old, an early imprint on the mind of an impressionable child. The scene is the bottom of his garden, which backed on to the patch of land the Cefneithin men used at that time to play rugby. This was to prove a lasting influence.

I’m nine. A Saturday afternoon in late March and Cefneithin are at home to Trimsaran. My job is to recover the ball from the gardens. The gardens are neat and tidy, and I’ve had strict orders from Dat [what Carwyn called his dad] and the neighbours to tread gently and to avoid the onion beds during the match. The touchline which I guard is only a yard from the hedge protecting the gardens, so usually I’m kept busy. This afternoon is no exception as Trimsaran play to their forwards, and their halves kick a lot. Geraint, our fly half, is playing well, whilst on two occasions, running like a corkscrew, Haydn Top y Tyle (Top of the Hill) almost scores. He eventually does, and in my excitement I fall and I’m stung by the nettles. I swear under my breath as I get back on my perch just in time to see Iestyn converting from the touchline. The Trimsaran full back drops a lucky goal, but we win by five points to four. I dash on to the field to collect the balls and to pat the players on the back as they make their way to the school to bath in the small tubs. I accept my threepenny bit from Dai Lewis, the ironmonger, who is the club secretary, and I look forward to spending it later in Eunice’s fish-and-chip shop, which is opposite the Public Hall.

Iestyn James, one of my heroes, is out practising his place-kicking. I can hear the thud of the ball on the hard ground, I join him. He is a tall man with fair, wavy hair and freckles, and for the occasion, he wears large, brown shoes and has a kick like a mule. Standing behind the goalposts, miles from Iestyn, I try to catch the ball before it bounces and then I use all my strength to kick it back to him. I’m pleased when he says that one day I shall play for Cefen [Cefneithin].

These words echo a contribution he made to the first ever Welsh-language sports book of its kind, Crysau Cochion, (Red Shirts) published in 1958. In his chapter in that book, he says:

I heard my parents tell the story of losing me one Saturday afternoon – a shy lump of a three year old who wouldn’t normally dare to wander out of sight of his house. They found me, following many anxious hours of looking, hiding quietly and peeping at the play on the park that was at the end of our garden.

A child’s stone’s throw away from the house in which he was born is the village school. His family’s address was Heol (or Hewl, in the local dialect) yr Ysgol – School Road.

I go to school early in the morning. Vivi, Gwyn and Llyn are already there and we play soccer with a small, soft ball on the hard playground. The smallest and youngest, I play with Cliff because he is bigger and older, but we lose. I loathe playtime. I have to drink milk, which I hate, so I stuff my mouth with chocolate biscuits before gulping the cold milk down. I feel sick. I lose most of my break and most of the game and I’m very angry. I sulk in the lesson: refuse to listen to Miss Jones, Standard Two, who in her anger raps me on the knuckles.

The coarse and primitive voices of the rugby players and the anger of Miss Jones obviously left an impression on young Carwyn. His was evidently an active childhood, an outdoor one, full of fresh air.

Every evening after school, we play on our road, Hewl yr Ysgol. Two brothers versus two brothers: Meirion, the eldest and I, the youngest, against our brothers, Dewi and Euros. We play touch rugby but, as always, touch becomes tackle. We quarrel: Meirion fights Euros, and I kick Dewi on the shins, before bolting to hide in the cwtch-dan-stâr (cupboard under the stairs). In the afternoon we play again, and sometimes I can beat them with a side-step. I believe I’m Haydn Top y Tyle or Bleddyn. I love these games, but especially I love playing cricket on the road, for the ball somehow grips better on the road and I can bowl Peter round his legs. I think I’m Doug Wright and occasionally I’m Johnny Clay, but although I bowl better when I’m Doug Wright, I support Glamorgan and a photo of the team hangs in my bedroom.

On the shoulders of giants

The reference to Haydn Top y Tyle is significant. He, along with another Cefneithin man, Lloyd Morgan, were big influences on Carwyn throughout his childhood. The two men lived next door to each other in Heol y Dre in the village – or Heol y Baw (Dirt Road), as it’s called locally.

Haydn was the star of the rugby team, the talented outside half who was admired by his fellow players and the young boys alike. Like Carwyn, all the other boys believed they were Haydn when they were at the heights of their flights of fancy, speeding through the long grass of the park. Carwyn reached the age when an important village rite of passage was bestowed on him: he was chosen to carry Haydn’s rugby boots on match days. It was an honour not lost on the young Carwyn. Through this one simple, innocent task, Carwyn was established into the warp and weft of Cefneithin rugby club and into the deeper weave of Welsh rugby culture.

The Second World War arrived, and along with many Cefneithin men, Haydn had to leave the village to fight for the cause. He joined the Navy and was posted on the HMS Hood, the largest vessel in the Navy at the time. In May 1941, the ship was destroyed. It had been ordered to pursue two German warships out in the Atlantic: the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen. HMS Hood was hit by German missiles and sank in three minutes, with 1,400 men on board. Only three managed to escape alive, and Haydn Top y Tyle wasn’t one of them. The village and the surrounding area were rocked by this tragedy. They had lost a true star.

The other influence on Carwyn, Lloyd Morgan, was a collier who had gone to work underground at 14 years of age. Around the same time that Haydn lost his life, Lloyd came up from underground for the very last time and was given the label ‘hundred percenter’. That was no comment on his ability or work ethic, but recognition that the ‘niwmo’ (pneumoconiosis) that had blighted hundreds of miners had taken a 100% grip on Lloyd and it was no longer possible for him to work in the pit. He was 30 years old.

Carwyn would have seen quite a lot of Lloyd when he was growing up in Cefneithin. Lloyd was the man who would go from house to house collecting betting slips for the local bookie, and was known as Lloyd y Bwci (the Bookie). Michael James, Carwyn’s father, liked a bet and Lloyd would call for his slips weekly.

Lloyd’s sister lived in the same village. She had six children and when a new council estate was built in Cefneithin, she moved there, to Heol y Parc. Her home backed on to the park, directly opposite where Carwyn’s home backed on to it. Colliers lived in 21 of the 24 houses in Heol y Parc. When Iestyn James’ words came true and Carwyn did play for Cefneithin, one of Lloyd’s sister’s six children was given the honour of being boot-carrier to Carwyn James. He was Barry John.

Barry John begins his autobiography, The Barry John Story, by saying that he regretted the fact that his Uncle Lloyd didn’t live long enough to see his nephew play for Wales. When Lloyd died, the entire village went to the funeral. That says a great deal about Lloyd Morgan. Such a sight would not be seen again in Cefneithin until Carwyn’s death.

According to Llyr James, Carwyn’s nephew, Haydn and Lloyd were two large presences in his uncle’s life and Carwyn would speak of them often and admiringly. The lives of Haydn and Lloyd tell us a lot about the life of the village they were a part of. The two men embodied the values and the life patterns that formed Cefneithin.

A killing and some plays

There were many threads to such a pattern. One of those was an immediate link to the natural world, one that meant they experienced nature red in tooth and claw. Where coal was king, there was no hiding from the fragility of life, as an ambulance siren would often remind them. But even in an industrial world, the natural world was never far away in Cefneithin. In most houses, it was at the bottom of the garden.

Today it is our neighbours Rhys and Menna’s turn to kill the pig, so their uncle JP is there, fretful and fussy, to cast a critical eye on the operation. Soon we shall have the bladder to play rugby, and faggots for supper. I hate the killing. Hiding behind my brother, I’m drawn by fear to peep round his legs, fearful, even while eager to see. How I despise Wil y Mochwr (the Pig Man) for his sharp knife, his scraper which I shall hear and feel for a long time to come, perhaps forever. I despise him even more for his not being afraid. The fat creature, overfed by a few score pounds, maintains a piercing, high-pitched screech as he fights for life. His hind legs hang from the ceiling in a vanquished V formation, his warm, red blood drips on the cold, stone floor. It is all over, he is dead as the last one. Suddenly, in defiance of death, he twitches and I run away.

Another entry says more about his love of cricket and shows his awareness of the shadows that lurked under the surface of Cefneithin life.

Cricket on the road and I’m batting. The ball runs down the hill from an immaculate Emrys Davies drive over the bowler’s head. An ambulance, the one vehicle feared by a miner’s son, turns the corner and is coming towards us. We step on to the pavement. I can feel the uneasy silence. The dreaded ambulance comes slowly up the slope, over the pitch and the three stones, our wickets, and, at least, passes my home. In relief, I hit the next ball wildly on the leg side into Ffynnon Cawr’s hayfield, and I’m out.

The boys mentioned are farm boys from the Ffynon Cawr farm, backing on to Heol yr Ysgol. The connections in those early days were with boys of the land, not the colliers’ boys who would have been far more numerous in Cefneithin. Meirion and Euros were the only two boys whose fathers didn’t work underground. They were also older than Carwyn, as was his brother Dewi. He chose to play soccer in school with Cliff as he said, because he was bigger and older.

Rugby, school and street play were only three sets on the Cefneithin stage. Other cultural influences came into his life too.

In Standard Five my favourite afternoon is Friday, an afternoon of drama, music and games. I like drama except when the teacher asks me to do something on my own in front of the class. I feel proud that our teacher, Mr Evans (we call him Gwyn Shop behind his back because his parents run the combined Post Office and shop opposite the school), writes plays and is a drama producer. He also helps Cecil James, a fine local musician, to produce the opera, and once I was invited to take part in Smetana’s The Bartered Bride. I thus prefer the Welfare Hall to the Cinema, and I often go with my mother to the Hall to see the plays of Dan Mathews, Edna Bonnell, Gwynne D Evans and Emlyn Williams, and on one memorable occasion, I even went to see Lewis Casson and Sybil Thorndike.

The Welfare Hall was the official name of an important building in Carwyn’s life. Locally however, it was always referred to as Neuadd y Cross (Cross Hall) In writing the history of the Hall, Lyn T Jones says that the occupations of the Hall’s founding members reflect the nature of the changing community at the time: two doctors, a shopkeeper, a colliery manager, a furniture maker, two