ILLUMINATIONS by Anthony Esolen
A Circle of Grace
A friend of mine and of this magazine is a beautiful elderly nun in a convent in Rhode Island, whose body is now confined to a wheelchair, but whose spirit is free. What I mean by that is not what the world means by it. We were chatting about the summers that my family and I spend in the country, in Canada, and I jested that someday I would give up my life of crime as a college professor and live with my wife in an old rectory on our island up in the northlands. Then I would have all the hours of the day to read or write, or talk to neighbors, or walk the dog, or do that most blessed nothing at all. "And time to pray," she added, with a sweet smile. Yes, time to pray, time to be in the presence of my Maker. She understands.
As I grow older, I find myself less and less impressed by Big. I shy away from cities. I haven't been in a shopping mall in about ten years. I don't subscribe to the newspaper—the ordinary bathroom tissue is cheaper, and more comfortable. National politics seems more and more like a loud, vulgar circus of buffoons. Recent novels seem literally jejune: thin, insipid stuff. Recent films manage to be bloody and insipid at once. Even the poetry I glance at in my favorite journals seems a kind of world-weary Big Editorializing in meter. If I wanted that, I'd go to Hardy or Eliot; but I don't want it.
A Small Welsh Lullaby
But my heart has warmed to small and useless things, and lately, the smallest and most useless thing I have begun to love is Welsh. I have not a drop of the Gael in me, but I pull for underdogs, and Welshmen have been among the underest dogs of them all. No one ever said that the sun did not set on Greater Wales. No one prophesied that Wales would be a shining or glaring city on a hill. Ivy League students do not cruise to Cardiff to see the old coal mines. I would not be surprised to learn that half of American high-school seniors thought that Wales were fish.
I don't know whether the Welsh have been better at keeping the hearth warm than have their Saxon neighbors. But there is something profoundly Christian in the spirit of the songs they still sing, even when they are not hymns. And something soothingly human; something that can never be Big; something that one will therefore never find in the great, rich, populous, vulgar wasteland.
Here for example is the Welsh lullaby, Suo Gan. The old melody, with its two or three variations on a simple repeated theme, is as soft and as quiet as the lyrics.
I'll translate as literally as I can:
Huna, blentyn, ar fy mynwes,
Clyd a chynnes ydyw hon.
Breichiau mam sy'n dynn amdanat,
Cariad mam sy dan fy mron.
Ni chaiff dim amharu'th gyntun,
Ni wna undyn a thi gam;
Huna'n dawel, annwyl blentyn,
Huna'n fwyn ar fron dy mam.Sleep, little child, upon my bosom,
Snug and warm it is.
Mother's arms are tight around you,
A mother's love is in my breast.
Nothing shall disturb your slumber,
There's no one shall do you harm;
Sleep in quiet, dearest child,
Sleep sweetly upon your mother's breast.Huna'n dawel, heno, huna,
Huna'n fwyn, y tlws ei lun;
Pam yr wyt yn awr yn gwenu,
Gwenu'n dirion yn dy hun?
Ai angylion fry sy'n gwenu
Arnat ti yn gwenu'n llon,
Tithau gwenu'n ol dan huno,
Huna'n dawel ar fy mron?Sleep in quiet, tonight, sleep,
Sleep sweetly, my beauty, my picture;
Why is it you are now smiling,
Smiling tenderly to yourself?
Is it the angels above are smiling
Upon you in your smile of joy,
And you smile back in your sleep,
Sleeping quietly upon my breast?Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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more from the online archives
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