The Pulpit Leans on No-good Boyo

The Rebel
(From the French of Charles Baudelaire)

A hot-tempered angel, right out of the sky, swoops on a sinner
like an eagle in flight, and grabbing his hair in his tightly-clenched fist,
shakes him and yells, ‘I’ll teach you what’s right!
Because I’m your good angel, you hear? It’s like this –

Know you must love – and don’t make a face! –
the poor, the wicked, the twisted, the dim,
so’s you’ll have here for Jesus when he passes this way
a red carpet, made from your kind thoughts for him.

That’s what’s called love! And in case you delay,
for the glory of God – try to drum up some rapture!
(it’s the only ‘cool’ way any ‘kicks’ can be captured)’.

And the ‘angel’ – Good Lor’! – punched all the same;
with his gigantic fists he pummeled again.
But our sinner stands fast – with his standard: ‘No way!’

Le Rebelle
Un Ange furieux fond du ciel comme un aigle,
Du mécréant saisit à plein poing les cheveux,
Et dit, le secouant : ‘Tu connaîtras la règle!
(Car je suis ton bon Ange, entends-tu?) Je le veux!

‘Sache qu’il faut aimer, sans faire la grimace,
Le pauvre, le méchant, le tortu, l’hébété,
Pour que tu puisses faire à Jésus, quand il passe,
Un tapis triomphal avec ta charité.

‘Tel est l’Amour! Avant que ton couenne se blase,
A la gloire de Dieu rallume ton extase;
C’estl a Volupté vraie aux durables appas!’

Et l’Ange, chátiant autant, ma foi! qu’il aime,
De ses poings de géant torture l’anathème;
Mais le damné réponds toujours: ‘Je ne veux pas!’



When I first translated M. Baudelaire’s poem the result was, I think, a fair one. It was pretty accurate, with good attention paid to the original poet’s words. it was sober. But then the spirit of the poem got me to thinking all of a sudden of No-good Boyo, wayward No-good Boyo set down under no will of his own in his native Llan-, Cwm- or Pen- (together with whatever saintly or other affiliations history endowed it) and, unjustified sinner, I felt rather sorry for him. And I imagined the reverend minister of Horeb, or Ebenezer, or Tabernacl [*that added ‘e’ being quite superfluous to us, and, it will surely be agreed, altogether ‘Frenchifies’ things] 😉 – yes, that reverend, taken in a rush of uncharacteristic pique, descending upon the wayward Boyo in broad daylight in the middle of Stryd Fawr, taking him by the collar and shaking him and enquiring in a hot passion ‘Where were you on the past fifty-two Sundays?’ And as this idea became affixed, so the thought came to me that surely this what was on Monsieur’s mind when he penned his words – that his blessed ‘angel’ represented nothing less than the Church authorities. So you will find that from the aforementioned claim of tidy translation I have changed things a little and ushered punctiliousness somewhat into the aisles; although the playing about (often by the small means of punctuation, italics, etc.,) has by no means been sweeping, as a consideration of the original language will, I trust, show. (Take, for instance, in the most marked example, the overall comparativeness of phrase in the final line of stanza 3, where the good reverend, having acquainted himself by way of unintentional eavesdropping with the idioms of his younger parishioners, himself attempts to be, with perhaps a touch of sarcasm, persuasively ‘cool’). It was, sadly, a mission which may be equated with the audacity of the England XV taking on the Wales XV in the glorious, golden, never-ending seasons of the ‘70s and in more compact sequences since; it was a mission which was, in the best affirmation of predestination and in measure with the foreordained outcome of that famous game celebrated in song by a swig – without doubt offered in genuine, heartfelt sympathy, we all understand – from a bottle ‘which once held bitter ale’. A mission, pound as you will, Reverend Sir, doomed to fail.

Nogood Boyo made his first appearance, as many of us will know, when Dylan Thomas’ ‘play for voices’ was broadcast in 1954 to become immediately and universally popular. There, our Nogood Boyo was cast as the layabout dreamer wont to ‘play havoc in the washroom’. Among many reproductions since there stands out the 1972 film version, with Richard Burton as the ‘First Voice’ and a star-studded cast. Richard Burton was himself, I’ve always felt, regarded as a Nogood Boyo by whichever offshoot of the London establishment was responsible for the Queen of England’s New Year’s Honours List; Why, the boozy Welsh ruffian! I often haven’t wondered why he was never offered a knighthood. Yes, the doling out of knighthoods and all manner of Orders of ‘Merit’. A short epigram of mine springs to mind here, also written in the days when there was a queen:

Good Manners
We lined up at the palace
where they dish out OBEs.
I slipped my kidskin fingers on
and shook gloves with the Queen.

It doesn’t take long to work out what’s going on here. Not long after, I discovered that way, way up in the Jovian heights of the ruling class over there, exists something called ‘gloved society’. Say no more.

In today’s scene, many both within Wales and without will know ‘No Good Boyo’ as the name of a very successful Welsh band.

The picture in my mind is of an aimless lazybones of a village lad, a bit of a rascal who finds it easy to involve himself in trouble, but who is at heart a good ‘un. He has appeared previously in The Igam-Ogam Mabinogion in a past familial existence pleading for his life with the Almighty (‘A Rude Awakening’, August-May, 2022). And somehow I don’t think ‘The Ig-Og’ has seen the last of him.