Dylan Morlais Thomas was born in Swansea in 1914. His father was a teacher. Contemporary educational wisdom held that the ability to speak Welsh was a handicap - so although it was Dylan's parents' first language they did not pass it on to him. Yet his work is said to show strong Welsh linguistic influence. An unknown youth from a provincial town in a principality little heeded except as a source of coal & communists, he burst upon the London literary scene at just 19 years old. Soon he was being compared with Yeats & Joyce! In 1937 he married Caitlin MacNamara & they lived in several places near London and in Wales, notably at the 'Boathouse' in Laugherne, near Carmarthen.

"Under Milk Wood" is 'a play for voices' about a day in 'Llareggub' ( try saying it backwards in English):- - ------" To begin at the beginning: It is spring, a moonless night in the small town, starless & bible-black, the cobblestones silent & hunched----limping down to the sloeblack,---fishingboat bobbing sea." Old Captain Cat, asleep in the best cabin in Schooner House, meets his drowned crew - and the late Rosie Probert, whose loving he shared with them. In the blind-as-moles houses the babies are sleeping, while boys are "dreaming wicked"! At the sea-end of the town old Mr & Mrs Floyd the cocklers sleep quiet as death, side by wrinkled side, toothless & brown like two old kippers in a box. In Salt Lake Farm, Mr Utah Watkins counts the wife-faced sheep as they leap fences, smiling & knitting & bleating just like Mrs W.

Soon the town smells of seaweed & breakfast; Mr. Waldo in bowler & bib gobbles his bubble-&-squeak and kippers and swigs from a sauce bottle.

We follow the slightly-mad day with the inhabitants, like Nogood Boyo & Lily Smalls; Organ Morgan; baker Dai Bread with Mrs Dai Bread Two and Mrs Dai Bread One (deceased). Polly Garter sings of her old lovers Tom, Dic, & Harri - and the best of them all little Willy Wee, who is dead, dead, dead.

Afternoon & schoolmistress Gossamer Beynon high-heels home past the Sailors' Arms as from inside publican Sinbad Sailors' "strips her to the nipples".

At sunset as the Sailor's Arms fills up, the Rev. Eli Jenkins takes time out from writing the White Book of Llareggub, comes out onto his doorstep and recites his Evening Prayer ---"Every morning, when I wake---".

The play was first recorded for broadcasting by the BBC in January 1954; Richard Burton played First Voice in place of Dylan who had died two months earlier in New York - from the effects of alcohol, cortisone & sleeping pills. Troyte's Chant.

In 1988 a musical version was recorded by EMI, with Anthony Hopkins, Harry Secombe, Sian Phillips, Nerys Hughs, Tom Jones, Aled Jones & a score of other Welsh artists. Sir Geraint Evans sang the 'Sunset Poem', the Rev. Eli Jenkins' prayer set to an Anglican chant by A.H.D.Troyte (1811 - 1857).

The Reformation came little and late to England. Henry VIII had been given the title of "Fidei Defensor" by the Pope for being tough on English heretics. But after Rome had refused him another divorce, he pragmatically 'allowed' those mildly reform-minded clergy who had not been roasted for heresy, to form the Church of England. Meanwhile, any more radical continental-style "Protestants" continued to receive the old treatment!

So liturgically little changed; the main Daily Offices were retained as Morning Prayer, Holy Communion & Evensong - but they were sung in English and soon an "Anglican" form of chant evolved. In simple four-part harmony, it even owes something to the Byzantine chant of the Russian Orthodox church.

Chris Davies 2002

To listen to the Dublin Welsh Male Voice Choir version click here