T. Llew Jones; Foremost children's writer in Welsh literature
Hyfler/Rosner
literature
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
T. Llew Jones wrote some of the best-loved children's books
in the Welsh language. Long before Roald Dahl and J.K.
Rowling, he enjoyed cult status among young readers in
Wales, turning out some 80 books that were snapped up for
their exciting yarns, thumping rhymes and sheer
entertainment value.
As both poet and prose-writer, he seemed to know
instinctively what children like to read and, with no
thought for adult taste or the approval of literary critics,
provided them with just what they wanted, whether adventure
stories, folk tales, whodunits, magic realism, historical
romances, ghost stories or humorous verse. There is no
school in Wales that does not have his books on its library
shelves and hardly one he did not visit, often to a
rapturous reception of the sort usually reserved for pop
singers.
He set such store by the response of his young readers that
on one occasion, having been awarded the prestigious Tir na
n-Og Prize for his Tâ*ar y Comin ("Fire on the common",
1975), a story about gypsies, he was prepared to bite the
hand of the adjudicators because they had announced that, in
their opinion, the book was good only in parts. "This prize
has somewhat tarnished my reputation," he told them
pointedly. "It was grudgingly given and I am accepting it in
the same spirit. You are grown-up readers with jaded
appetites, but the many thousands of children who have
enjoyed my book have better judgement and theirs is the only
one that matters."
His interest in folklore provided Jones with themes for
several of his best books, including novels about the pirate
Bartholmew Roberts, known in Welsh tradition as Black Bart,
and Siô*Cwilt, a smuggler who kept his contraband in caves
on the wild coast of Cardiganshire in the 18th century. But
his prose masterpiece is a trilogy about Twm Siô*Catti, the
real-life highwayman who has a place in the hearts of Welsh
children similar to Dick Turpin's among young English
readers: Y Ffordd Beryglus ("The dangerous road", 1963),
Ymysg Lladron ("Among thieves", 1965) and Dial o'r Diwedd
("Revenge at last", 1968). These novels are enjoyed by adult
readers for their polished style and gripping plots.
Born at Pentre-cwrt in Cardiganshire in 1915, Thomas
Llewelyn Jones, a weaver's son, belonged to a hardy breed of
small farmers and sailors who had worked the land and gone
to sea for generations.
His interest in story-telling was awoken when, at the age of
seven, as reward for good behaviour, he was allowed to
listen to his headmaster begin reading a tale about a man
who left his infant child with the keeper of a toll-gate and
then disappeared into the night. Since, on account of some
misdemeanour, he was not allowed to hear the next episode,
Jones never discovered what happened to man or child, and
for years thereafter wondered what had become of them. The
unfinished narrative troubled him until, in 1973, he was
able to write the story from beginning to end as Un Noson
Dywyll ("One dark night"), perhaps his finest novel.
A voracious reader by the time he entered the grammar school
at Llandysul (he once told me that, before leaving primary
school, he had read everything in the classroom cupboard,
including The Life of Gladstone), he began writing a novel
in English about a hard-hearted squire whom he called Enoch
Allstone, but abandoned it after a friend who had read the
first few pages complained that he knew exactly how it would
end. A second attempt at writing a story during an English
lesson came to naught when the teacher thought it so good
that he accused the boy of plagiarism and caned him for it;
this incident persuaded him that it was more important for
primary-school children to read than it was for them to be
given exercises in "creative writing".
Having left school at the age of 16, but unable to train for
Anglican orders on account of his father's death, Jones
spent the next few years doing what manual work he could
find in the vicinity of his home. His marriage in 1940 to
one of the daughters of the Cilie family - a remarkable
group of country poets renowned in Welsh literary circles -
proved the making of him, for it brought him into close
contact with poets like Isfoel, Alun Cilie and Die Jones,
with whom he learned his craft in bardic contention, though
not before he was called up (on his wedding day) and sent to
serve with the RAF, and later the Army, in Egypt and Italy.
From camp he began sending home poems which his wife passed
on to Dewi Emrys, editor of a poetry column in the weekly
paper Y Cymro.
At the same time he began learning chess, a game at which he
and his younger son, Iolo, represented Wales in the Chess
Olympiads and about which they wrote a book together. His
older son, Emyr Llewelyn, born while his father was overseas
in 1941, is among the most seasoned of Welsh-language
militants; Jones backed his son in all his bruising
confrontations with the law, sharing his determination to
defend the Welsh-speaking communities of west Wales from the
influx of English settlers.
On demobilisation in 1946, Jones underwent a year's
fast-track training as a teacher in Cardiff and took up a
headmaster's post at the primary school in Tre-groes,
Cardiganshire. It was there he began publishing his short
stories, written to supplement his meagre salary. In 1958,
having moved to Coed-y-bryn, near Llandysul, he won the
Chair at the National Eisteddfod with a poem on the theme
"Caerleon-on-Usk", the reputed site of King Arthur's court.
The poem was praised by the adjudicators for its mastery of
traditional prosody and for its relevance to contemporary
Wales; this feat he repeated in the year following with the
poem "Y Dringwr" ("The climber"). The best of his poems for
adults are to be found in Swn y Malu ("The sound of
breaking", 1967) and Canu'*Iach! ("Farewell!", 1987).
Although he was never asked to become Archdruid, T. Llew
Jones played a prominent part in maintaining the Welsh Rule
at the National Eisteddfod against those who were calling
for it to be slackened in the late 1970s so that some use
could be made of English in competitions and concerts. He
also proved a redoubtable champion of standard literary
Welsh, deploring any attempt by the Welsh Books Council and
the Welsh Joint Education Committee to promote a simplified
version for the sake of those learning the language. For
him, the vigorous speech of his boyhood would always be good
enough as the medium for his writing.
In his literary precepts he was conservative, resisting any
attempt totinker with the traditional rules of prosody. In
1979 he caused a stir onthe Welsh literary front by
castigating, in a foreword to an anthology hehad edited,
what he considered tobe "difficult poetry", by which he
meant writing that was "capable of more than one
interpretation". In the same year he refused to become a
member of the Welsh Academy, the national association of
writers in Wales, on the grounds that he did not believe
writers should form "cliques" and, anyway, he thought the
invitation had come too late.
Ultra-sensitive to criticism, especially when it came from
people who were not themselves writers, T. Llew could be
prickly towards those who failed to pay him his full meed of
praise. Nor was he very keen to see his work translated into
English, relenting only once to let the poet Gillian Clarke
make, under the title One Moonlit Night, a version of his
book Lleuad yn Olau (1989), a collection of folktales. He
gave a typically spirited account of his own life in his
autobiography, Fy Mhobl I ("My people", 2002).
T. Llew Jones enjoyed his reputation as the foremost
children's writer in Wales but only on his own terms. The
University of Wales awarded him an honorary MA in 1977, but
he took more pleasure in appearing as Day President at the
Welsh League of Youth's Eisteddfod in 1981. During his
speech, to his great delight, children swarmed on to the
stage with placards illustrating the titles of his many
books, to thunderous applause. He, in turn, paid
affectionate tribute to his young fans because "they read
with their hearts" and spoke of his belief that, like Peter
Pan, he had inside him "a child who refused to grow up".
Meic Stephens
Thomas Llewelyn Jones, poet and children's writer: born
Pentre-cwrt, Cardiganshire, 11 October 1915; married 1940
Margaret Jones (two sons); died Pontgarreg, Ceredigion 9
January 2009.