The Customs and Traditions of Wales

With an Introduction by Emma Lile

Trefor M. Owen, Emma Lile

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781783168279
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Coutumes et traditions

Trefor M. Owen's seminal work educates, enlightens and entertains with a far-reaching yet accessible text, which paints a colourful and comprehensive portrait of a nation's rich folk culture. The Customs and Traditions of Wales is an illuminating and engrossing insight into a subject that continues to unfold and develop in contemporary life. Despite an increasingly globalised society that has transformed local communities, folk customs are still practised and enjoyed the world over as people combine modern-day and historical rituals and embrace opportunities to learn about their past, and Owen's influential study has maintained its relevance as customs change and evolve.

1

Working the Land

The highlands and lowlands

Many Welsh customs are grounded in a farming tradition which has evolved over many centuries and which was governed by the opportunities offered by the physical environment. The existence of the central highland mass and its radiating valleys, which geographers have identified as a major factor affecting the preservation of so many features of Welsh life, also set limits to the way in which the land could be exploited agriculturally. More than a quarter of the surface of the country lies over one thousand feet above sea level, where the climate is correspondingly colder and wetter, and thus, with its shorter growing season, less conducive to arable farming, particularly the cultivation of wheat. Historically, the clearing of the valley bottoms and the coastal plains made possible the development of permanent settlements from the Dark Ages on. The economy of these lowland areas was based on a pattern of mixed farming which included both the growing of corn for human and animal consumption, as well as the keeping of cattle. The moorland zones, which were more thickly wooded in medieval times than at the present day, afforded summer grazing for the cattle during the growing season on the upland pastures, thus clearing the meadows for hay and releasing fields in the lowlands for the cultivation of cereals.

Seasonal migration and the hafod economy

The system of migration or transhumance associated with the permanent settlement of the low-lying hendre and the hafod (pl. hafodydd) or upland summer pasture, with its seasonally occupied dwelling or hafoty (pl. hafotai), was an important feature of Welsh rural life, possibly from the Dark Ages until the end of the eighteenth century, or even later in some areas. It has left its mark on the landscape in the existence and layout of numerous hill farms, and on the place-names of the countryside.

Transhumance was practised in many parts of Europe as a means of exploiting the grazing which was available at higher altitudes during the brief period of summer growth. Only in the truly mountainous regions of the continent, however, was it practised on a dramatic scale involving the ascent of thousands of feet to the temporary pastures and settlements. In Wales, with the partial exception of Snowdonia, both the distances and the altitudes involved were considerably less. It is thought that the summer grazing of the hafodydd on the extensive unenclosed waste lands of the settled townships of medieval Wales did not necessarily involve the construction of the temporary hafotai which appear to have been a later development. Nor were the summer pastures all on high ground; the badly drained wetlands of low-lying Anglesey, for instance, were extensively grazed in this way. Nevertheless, as in Scotland and Ireland, transhumance played an important part in the traditional economy, with May Day (Calan Mai) and All Saints’ Day (Calan Gaeaf ), in all three countries, being the pivotal dates for the migration.

Life in the hafod

This mountainous tract scarcely yields any corn. Its produce is cattle and sheep, which, during summer, keep very high in the mountains, followed by their owners, with their families, who reside in that season in Hafodtai, or summer dairy-houses as the farmers in the Swiss alps do in their Sennes. These houses consist of a long low-room, with a hole at one end to let out the smoke from the fire, which is made beneath. Their furniture is very simple: stones are the substitutes of stools; and the beds are of hay, ranged along the sides . . . During summer, the men pass their time either in harvest work, or in tending their herds; the women in milking, or making butter and cheese. For their own use, they milk both ewes and goats, and make cheese of the milk, for their own consumption . . . Towards winter, they descend to their Hên Dref, or old dwelling, where they lead, during that season, a vacant life.

Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Wales,
2 vols (1778–83), vol. 2, pp. 325–6.

In the classical description of the hafod economy in Wales given by Thomas Pennant, who encountered it in Snowdonia in 1773, it will be noted that the seasonal migration involved tending cattle, sheep and goats, all of which were milked by the womenfolk. The cheese prepared from the milk of the ewes and goats was intended for immediate consumption, whereas the butter and cheese made from cows’ milk, it is implied, was for later use on returning to the hendre. Evidence of a slightly later date from Llanfachreth, Merioneth, when a farmhouse was plundered while the family was at the hafod, would appear to confirm Pennant’s statement that the entire family accompanied the animals to the high pastures, both men and women being engaged in their respective tasks of herding and milking in the vicinity of the ‘summer dairies’.

The rise of sheep-farming and the decline of the hafod

Pennant was writing at a time when the seasonal migration of human beings, if not of animals, was declining. Indeed, by the beginning of the nineteenth century the practice had virtually ceased. Its effect on the landscape and settlement pattern of the moorland districts, however, was long-lasting, as the temporary summer dwellings of the post-medieval period evolved into independent farms under the pressure of population growth and land scarcity. The hafoty at first probably consisted of a primitive cottage together with one or two small enclosures located on the edge of the summer pastures. Enclosure of the adjoining grazing seems frequently to have taken place during the sixteenth century and later, as contemporary disputes over ownership testify. A hafod, however, could become a viable independent farm only if it could grow enough fodder to feed its cattle during the winter months. The spread of sheep-farming in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought about a change in the hafod economy. Sheep did not require to be stall-fed and part of the flock, if there was insufficient fodder, could be sent to ‘winter’ on farms in the coastal or other low-lying districts while the cattle in those districts were being stall-fed – a practice which has continued on a large scale and over long distances down to the present day. Whether the relationship was causal or not, the rise of sheep-farming on the mountain pastures coincided with the decline of the seasonal hafod and its replacement by a permanent farmstead usually bearing the same name. In central Wales the word lluest was commonly used for the simple shepherd’s hut built on the sheep-walks and subsequently replaced by a small cottage, a process which Lewis Morris recorded in a survey of Crown wastes and commons on the western slopes of the Pumlumon upland in north Cardiganshire in 1744. Many of these moorland settlements, whether hafod or lluest, remained occupied only as long as the pressure of the population on the land remained. Today many are empty, except during the shearing season in June; others are ruins or have become summer homes, while the land is grazed by flocks from lowland farms.

Peat-cutting and the harvest of the moorlands

The tradition represented by the hafod is only one example of the exploitation of the extensive moorlands of Wales which, together with the mountains, even as late as the end of the eighteenth century, accounted for as much as two-fifths of the land area of the country. As deforestation took place in medieval times, and later, on the lower slopes and in the valleys, not only were the supplies of timber for building and for fuel depleted, but the peat deposits on the moorlands themselves were extensively worked for fuel. Peat-cutting traditionally began soon after Calan Mai (May Day), after the last frost on the exposed bogs and soon after the preparatory work on the cultivated land had been completed. Using the special paring irons and peat spades, the skilled work of trimming and cutting the peat bank was carried out, usually by a team of six or seven men. The drying of the cut peat, laid out and systematically turned over by the women and children, so as to ensure that the stiff breezes of the uplands could ‘cure’ the fuel, took place during late spring and early summer. At this juncture attention was temporarily diverted from peat-cutting to harvesting the bog-hay which was vital to the cattle-rearing of the low-lying farms of the moorland regions. Pennant’s description, quoted above, refers to this activity in the hafodydd of Snowdonia, but on the lower undulating moorlands to the east the hiring of labour for the bog-hay harvest at midsummer, as at Llanuwchllyn in Merioneth, seems to have been more important in the local economy. In Ysbyty Ifan, Denbighshire, at the beginning of the last century, the farm of Cefn-garw was said to have two haystacks, each eighteen yards long, one of ‘leafy hay’ (deilwair), and the other of bog-hay. The latter crop, however, despite its importance, was usually very sparse, and a man might carry on his back what had taken him a whole day to cut. After the bog-hay harvest, work on the peat was resumed, and the building of stacks of the now dry fuel took place on the moorland, at least some of it being subsequently transported to the peat shed in the farmyard.

Cutting peat on the moorland above Llanuwchllyn, Merioneth. © National Museum Wales.

Gathering lichen in Llanuwchllyn in 1816

I remember that our new house was a very poor new house. We were by then a large family, and a shilling a day, with his own food, was my father’s wage during the winter half of the year, and half a peck of oatmeal cost us ten shillings and sixpence; so we could hardly obtain bread, not to mention relish, because of the expense. We were for a fortnight, once, without any bread, cheese, butter, meat or potatoes.

The main thing we had to depend on was my father’s wage; but, little by little, we children learned to knit stockings for sale, and in this way we earned a little. Eventually, my father and mother and the whole family were taken ill by a heavy sickness. We remained thus for a long time, and had to obtain parish assistance on that occasion . . . We all recovered gradually; my father took up his work once more, and we began to knit stockings, gather lichen, which we sold for a penny-ha’penny a pound, more or less, and thus helped our parents a little. There was hardly a stone of any size in all the mountains around our home that we did not know in the same way as we knew our neighbours, because we had been lichen-gathering so often in their midst. We had often been in peril of our lives as we climbed to search for the lichen; especially Margaret and I, on one occasion on a rock called Clogwyn-yr-eglwys in Pennantlliw-bach. Somehow we went to a place where we were for hours unable to get out of; but after we had been prisoners throughout the afternoon, we managed to come from there safe and sound in the evening, trembling above the frightening abyss.

W. Lliedi Williams (ed.), Hunangofiant ac Ysgrifau
Ap Fychan (1948), pp. 10–12. (Translated pp. 325–6.)

Late summer, too, was the time to visit the moorlands to gather the rushes which would be made into candles during the winter evenings. In predominantly upland counties, such as Merioneth, similar forays would be undertaken over the summer months to collect lichen for use in colouring cloth; this was usually done by children, who took with them their sacks and pieces of old scythes, with which to scrape the lichen from the rocks, usually collecting from six to twelve pounds in the course of a day. At the beginning of the last century a penny or two per pound was paid for the lichen gathered in this way, often at great danger to the children working on precipitous slopes. The upland areas also afforded an opportunity to harvest bracken for burning into ashes which were then taken to the coastal ports and exported to England for use in the making of soap. Oak and pitch pine unearthed during peat-digging were used as laths and lighting spills respectively, and heather from the drier slopes was useful for a variety of purposes, including burning as fuel (especially for kindling fires and for baking), spreading as a dry base for hay stacks, and making serviceable brooms.

The wool-gatherers

As sheep-farming became more important during the eighteenth century and later, wool-gathering (or gwlana) was widely practised on the upland pastures, especially in central Wales. Parties of women from the coastal areas of Cardiganshire walked over twenty miles to the hill country between Tregaron and Llanwrtyd and combed the mountains and hedgerows for wool. Each party, consisting of about six women, brought sufficient food for a week or a fortnight, together with sacks for carrying the wool. Permission was sought to comb the land and to use barns or other buildings for accommodation, and the hospitality of the farmers was enjoyed in return for chores carried out around the farmyard. From two to four pounds of wool were gathered in the course of a day which started as early as four o’clock in the morning. A severe winter, followed by good growing weather in spring, led to shedding of more wool for the women to gather. Farther north, in parts of Denbighshire and Montgomeryshire, one or two fleeces would be set aside at shearing time for the wool-gatherers who visited the same farms every year and benefited from this sanctioned form of begging. The role of the moorland in the traditional economy and its ‘culture of poverty’ thus included far more than the seasonal grazing of the hafod.

The crops of the lowlands

Lower down the slopes of the central mass of mountains and moorlands with which we have been concerned in the last few pages, climatic and soil conditions are more favourable to cultivation and settlement. It is here, in the valleys radiating from the heartland and in the fertile coastal plains and plateaux which fringe it, that the agriculture of Wales has supported the bulk of the rural population for centuries. Even here, however, farming has been based more on a pastoral tradition, involving the rearing of cattle and sheep, than on arable farming to which the climate is not ideally suited. Nevertheless, although grass-growing for fodder has always been more important than the cultivation of cereals, there were many variations in farming patterns and in the emphasis placed on corn-growing. Far more importance was given to corn and roots for livestockfattening in lowland Glamorgan and Gwent than in Gwynedd, which was a cattle-rearing area. The border counties of north Wales, on the other hand, devoted more attention to the production of butter and cheese, the central core of Wales, as we have seen, being sheep country. Despite the significance of animal husbandry, the cultivation of cereals was necessary for both human and animal consumption until the importing of foreign food and fodder began in Victorian times. Oats, and to a lesser extent barley, were grown more widely than wheat; nevertheless, wheat cultivation was to be found in the more climatically favourable areas. A traveller in 1796 commented that ‘along the north coast of Wales and up the Vale of Clwyd a great deal of fine wheat is grown; it seems the principal object of the farmer’s attention’. Significantly, the same traveller adds that ‘as you approach Wrexham the farmhouses improve and you begin to find them by outhouses as Barns, stables, etc. which is never seen on the West coast’.

Corn-drying kilns and the shimli gatherings

The grain from the hardier crops more generally grown, particularly on the higher farms, often had to be ripened in the prolonged heat of the corn-drying kilns before it could be ground in the flour mills. From the eighteenth until the middle of the nineteenth century, which was the heyday of arable farming in Wales, corn-drying kilns were attached to many mills. Because of the warmth of the kiln floor, which was heated from below during the drying process lasting up to forty-eight hours, the kilns were commonly frequented by young people. The shimli, from the English ‘assembly’, as the informal meeting in the corn-drying kilns was called, ...