‘The Bells Rang Woeful, Sad, and Long’

Introducing again the work of guest-poet Eric Bowen, whose previous contribution to The Igam-Ogam Mabinogion was the principal subject of the November, 2022 Armistice Day article The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of The Eleventh Month (2). What better, now, than to introduce the poet in his own words? This is what Eric has to say about himself:

‘Eric Bowen, 70, is an American and heir to a preposterously long tradition (four centuries) about his family’s Welsh roots. Part of that tradition is that every generation, one of the Bowens returns to Wales to renew the family’s ties to the old country. Eric’s roots journey got out of hand and included along the way his part in the establishment of the Welsh Assembly, with the Cyfamodwyr granting him an honorary Welsh passport for his contributions to the campaign. He has become moderately conversant in the Welsh language, his elder daughter having been born nine months after his honeymoon taking the course in ‘Welsh for the Family’ at Canolfan Iaith Genedlaethol Nant Gwerthyn.

Eric lives in northwest Washington State and supports his hobbies, including swimming across the Nooksack River and hiking the lower slopes of the Koma Kulshan volcano, by working as an accountant. That being a conversation stopper, the narrative stops here’.

Moderately? Only moderately conversant in the Welsh language, did he say? Having read a good number of Eric’s fine englynion, I would strongly contest that. Here, in Welsh followed by an English translation, is his tribute to the miners of Wales who lost their lives below ground, and to the lost children of Aberfan:



Clychau Cymru

Yn llawen iawn mae’r gân yn son
Am glychau’n canu dan y don
Ond un isel iawn yn gorwedd
Cantre Gwaelod a wnaeth ei fedd.

Clychau Aberdyfi chwe waith;
Six Bells aeth â glowyr i’w gwaith
Bwrodd tanchwa ei hergyd nwyol
Ar y glowyr, ergyd farwol.

Yn y pyllau roedd bywioliaeth
Cydblethiad bywyd a marwolaeth
Trist oedd y clychau, yn eu cân
I blant a gollwyd yn Aberfan.

Tramor, mae’r clychau’n llawenhau
Yn galw ar y bobl  i’w dathliadau
Ond mae ein clychau ar y gwynt
Yn canu am golledion, amser gynt.

The Bells of Wales

In merry tones the tale we tell
Of bells that ring below the swell;
But ‘neath Aberdyfi’s waves
Lie Cantre Gwaelod’s watery graves.

Six times rang Aferdyfi’s bells
Six Bells, the coal mine in the dell
Where firedamp struck a killing blow
And claimed the miners deep below.

A livelihood was in the mines;
But life and death they intertwined:
The bells rang woeful, sad, and long
for children lost at Aberfan.

So oft we hear as joyful bells
Of victories, worship, weddings tell;
But Welsh bells ring of long ago
For all we lost, who lie below.

Eric Bowen

The first stanza concerns Cantre’r Gwaelod, the mythical kingdom said to have been suddenly engulfed by the waves and inundated in the dim and distant past, and now lies beneath Cardigan Bay. (The  subject is dealt with in the essay accompanying my poem The Morlo, which appeared in the Feb-Apr. 2020 section of The Igam-Ogam Mabinogion). From this story arose the song Clychau Aberdyfi / ‘The Bells of Aberdyfi’ It is Aberdyfi’s bells which relate the separate tales contained in each of the stanzas of the poem.

The second stanza tells of the disaster which occurred at the Six Bells colliery, Abertyleri, Gwent, on June 28, 1960, when an underground explosion caused by the ignition of carbon monoxide gas killed 45 of 48 men working in that area of the mine. This particular tragedy was chosen, obviously, because of the coincidence of the pit’s name with the ‘bells’ theme of the poem, but stands, of course, for all the many, many thousands of Welsh coal miners who have died over the years at their workplace underground, and indeed for those who lost their lives in mining disasters everywhere. In 2010 an impressive 20-metre-high steel sculpture of a miner – called Y Gwancheidwad / ‘The Guardian’ – was erected close to the now landscaped site of the old colliery.

Y GWANCHEIDWAD / THE GUARDIAN


The subject of the third stanza – that most cruel of them all which occurred on October 21, 1966  which took the lives of 116 children of the village of Aberfan, Wales, and which provides with a line from Eric’s poem the title of this article, needs no introduction. It is one which will always be in our minds. Eric tells me that he remembers, as a child, reading of the Aberfan disaster in The Seattle Times,  and how it made a lasting impression on him.

The fourth and final stanza sums it all up for us. In his translation, and in keeping with the stages of a past here related, Eric has made use of all the conventions of traditional verse.