Welsh Journals

into which I was born, and its tradition has continued to maintain a liberal and peaceful way of life in spite of a turn of events in which the squire, the vicar, and the farmer himself have had no control. Jack Bremmell. I REMEMBER EXTRACTS FROM MEMBERS' MEMOIRS OXWICH, by Mrs. H. Lloyd Griffiths. My earliest recollection is of being carried to bed by my tall father, in Oxwich Castle. I remember his stopping in a shaft of bright sunlight cast through the narrow window set in the six foot deep wall for me to see the cuckoo pop out of the clock which hung in the long narrow corridor. On into the bedroom, in which there stood a huge fourposter bed, its posts exquisitely carved, roofed with imposing canopy and edged with curtains and valance of dazzling and crisp white I remember Boxing Day shooting parties, when we took sand- wiches and followed the men over the Point, and my uncle would fire a gorse bush to warm us while we ate our lunch and we would return later, tired and cold, but ready to enjoy the Christmas party to which the sons and daughters of neighbouring farmers were bidden. But with what terror was I inspired by the appearance of the Horse's Head of the Mari Lwyd on New Year's Eve There were long cold evenings in which we made mountains of toast and sat on the beautiful oak settle by the huge fire, while my grandfather sat in his chair and told us rare tales of pirates and smugglers and treasure- treasure reputedly hidden within the precincts of the Castle I remember Easter holidays-for me the loveliest time of year at Oxwich-when we picked great basketfuls of primroses to decorate the church and helped to mass them in the deep windows and around the pulpit and the font where we were one and all baptised. At Easter, too, I was held by my heels that I might peer over Raven's Tor into the nest of the ravens and watch the parents feed their one chick and I had to agree to go down to the end of the marsh, where the great swans had built their high nest, and distract father swan's attention whilst my brother tried to obtain that coveted swan's egg I remember going fishing with the drag net at midnight on a warm August night. My uncles and their friends took the net out into the bay to form a wide arc, and I can still feel the delicious shivers at the touch of the icy water and hear the shrieks as we caught a great six foot conger eel Lastly, I remember a dreadful wet August Bank Holiday weekend. Rain poured down unceasingly, so that my brother, just eighteen, and his five friends, who were to have camped under canvas on the Point, had encamped instead in the Great Barn. I remember watching the rain streaming down as they left, that same weekend, to stand in the queue at a recruiting office to join up for the First World War. For me, things were never the same again.