Welsh Journals

Gothic Halls By NIGEL HESELTINE IN the gothic halls of Rhiwsaeson there was a blast from the ancestral trumpets, and the shields shook on the walls and the suits of armour clashed together, for John Belial was to be elected, was to go up to London to sit in the Parliament for the county of Cariad. Like ferns in their pots his supporters sat about the rooms of John Belial mopping like ferns at the dew which fell from his decanters. The shields are plaster, bearing the arms of all the families in Wales with which John Belial is unconnected, and they are all the families of Wales; but the armour is good and was bought in Liverpool. Like ferns in their pots his supporters flourish in the halls of this. proper Welsh landlord, and the Hon. Mrs. Belial-for John has married among the nobility-pours out the decanters for them and the hearts of these Welshmen are glad. With a bushel of true-blue-tory ribbon in his button-hole, Cam-Vaughan, the rich and unambitious descendant of Welsh kings and chairman of the English Conservative Association in Wales, caught up the threads of discourse, the backbone of argument: Shall the county be given over to reform ? And from the potted princelings around came shouts of "No!" "Social reform is for hotheads, said Cam-Vaughan; Thwaite, who has been driving a car for the Blue Cause and giving lifts to Socialists in secret, took a large glassful from the decanter. It warmed him, it would improve his driving. Relays of car-owning Conservatives come beaming into the room; others go out to take up the same work. Forty people I took to the Poll and beat off the Socialists with a box-spanner Sixteen miles from the Poll, and cannot vote now Ha Ha from the assembly. And in Thwaites' view the bottles which surrounded these landed and landless squires were filled with roses, which sprouting, twined in the hair and moustaches of the gentry, and when they spoke their mouths were filled with thorns. Distilled from the Roses, Thwaite read aloud from the label of a bottle near, That grow along the banks of the River of Tongues where languages and speeches are invented among the stones that rumble under the flowing of the stream, and all are washed down to the sea.