Page:My people stories of the peasantry of West Wales.djvu/278



morsel now, before you go back to the old plough.” Having eaten to his liking of the beaten potatoes and buttermilk, Owen resumed his labour, and while he was labouring he rehearsed a prayer he would make for a male child, and that prayer he said to the Big Husband at the far end of the light. His petition reached the ears of God, and after twenty months it was answered: the cry of the infant woke him, and he got out of bed and lit a tallow candle, and read his Bible, because he was very glad. With the rising of the sun he brought his three cows into the close. “Lissi Mari,” he said to his daughter, who slept at the foot of the bed, “get you up now, wench fach, and milk the creatures, for things are so-so with Shan. Are not their old udders bursting?”

The child was named Samuel, and in Capel Sion on the Sabbath Owen glorified the Big Man.