10 "Useless" Presents mentioned by Dylan Thomas in A Child's Christmas in Wales

Go on to the Useless Presents.

1. Bags of moist and many-coloured jelly babies
2. and a folded flag and a false nose
3. and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell;
4. never a catapult; once, by a mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet;
5. and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow;
6. and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any color I please, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds.
7. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run.
8. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders.
9. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo!
10. And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall.

(Plus - And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it.)

10 Sorts of sweets mentioned by Dylan Thomas in A Child's Christmas in Wales

Tom Blackwell https://www.flickr.com/photos/tjblackwell/2885307131

1. Hardboileds
2. toffee
3. fudge
4. and allsorts
5. crunches
6. cracknel
7. humbugs
8. glaciers
9. marzipan
10. and butterwelsh for the Welsh

10 "Useful" Presents According to Dylan Thomas in A Child's Chistmas in Wales

There were the Useful Presents:

1. engulfing mufflers of the old coach days,
2. and mittens made for giant sloths;
3. zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes;
4. blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies
5. and bunny-suited busbies
6. and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes;
7. from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all;
8. and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us.
9. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles's pond and did and drowned;
10. and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why.

10 Writers Called Thomas

 



1 Dylan Thomas (1914–1953, E), poet
2 Gwyn Thomas (1936–2016, W), poet and academic
3 Gwyn Thomas (1913–1981, E), novelist
4 Ned Thomas (b 1936, EW), critic and editor
5 (Philip) Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
6 Leslie Thomas (1931–2014, E), novelist
7 R S Thomas (1913–2000, EW), poet
8 William Thomas (Gwilym Marles, 1834–1879, W), poet and minister
9 David Thomas (Dewi Hefin, 1828–1909, W), poet and schoolteacher
10 Ebenezer Thomas (Eben Fardd, 1802–1863, W), poet


(The above writers wrote in E(nglish) or W(elsh) or both)

10 Interesting facts about Dylan Thomas

Nora Summers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

1. Dylan Thomas Welsh. He was born in Swansea in 1914.
2. His middle name was Marlais, which means 'voice of the Sea'. Dyaln also menas something like son of the wave and so both names are apt as the sea was to be a recurring theme throughout much of his work, especially in 'Under Milk Wood'.
3. His father was Senior English Master at Swansea Grammar School.
4. His wife's name was Caitlin Macnamara. Born in Hammersmith, London, in 1913, she was of Irish descent. They married in 1937 and had three children (Llewelyn, Aeronwy and Colum). It was a very stormy relationship. They lived in Laugharne 1938-1940 and New Quay in 1944 and 1945.
5. They were introduced by Welshman Augustus John, who painted Thomas's portrait in  1937 and 1938 (Alfred Janes and Rupert Shephard also produced portraits).
6. He is one of the Beatles' heroes (John's?) on the cover for the Sgt Pepper album, gave Bob Dylan part of his name and has had his poems set to music by Welshman John Cale.
7. His 1940 work 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog' humorously parodies the title of James Joyce's 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' published 24 years earlier.
8. His most celebrated work was 'Under Milk Wood', subtitled a play for voices. It was in fact commissioned as a radio play. It was broadcast in January 1954 (having been previously performed on stage in New York in May 1953).
9. Under Milk Wood was narrated famously by Richard Burton. Sir Anthony Hopkins later did it too. Burton and Hopkins, born 1925 and 1937 respectively, were both from the Port Talbot area of South Wales.
10. Dylan Thomas died in New York in 1953. He was only 39. He was undertaking a lecture tour of the USA at the time. Caitlin arrived at the hospital shortly before his death. She was institutionalised for a while after. His excessive drinking led to pneumonia. (Nick Cave's 2012 song "There She Goes, My Beautiful World" includes the line "Dylan Thomas/he died drunk/in St. Vincent's Hospital".) 

Dylan Thomas

As hinted at I went today to the Dylan Thomas exhibition in the National Library of Wales with my three oldest sons. I did study Anglo-Welsh literature as part of my degree here in Aber many years ago but I don't recall looking at Dylan Thomas at all hardly. The exhibition was fairly random and quite populist but a nice gentle reminder of one of Wales's most famous sons. My son Dylan featured with other Dylans in a photo montage of Thomas.
I found elsewhere a list of notable works by him
1934: Eighteen Poems (poems, inc: The force that through the green fuse)
1936: Twenty-five Poems (poems inc: And death shall have no dominion)
1939: The Map of Love (poems and stories)
1940: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (stories)
1946: Deaths and Entrances (poems, inc: Fern Hill)
1951: In Country Sleep (poems inc: Do not go gentle into that good night)
1952: Collected Poems
1953: The Doctor and the Devils (screenplay)
1954: Under Milk Wood (radio play, published posthumously)
1955: Adventures in the Skin Trade (stories, published posthumously)
1957: Letters to Vernon Watkins
'A Child's Christmas in Wales' also deserves a mention.

Swansea again

I thought I might more or less repeat this blog from last year noting my Swansea stories, with this picture from the current Dylan Thomas exhibition in the National Library.

1. My wife was born in Swansea
2. When I was about 11 my father seriously considered taking a promotion to work in Swansea but didn't in the end
3. The only city I have seriously considered ministering in apart from London is Swansea
4. My parents-in-law lived in Swansea the first year they were married
5. On the first Sunday we were married we went to church in Swansea
6. We were in Swansea when we celebrated my parents in law's 25th anniversary using a tier from our wedding cake
7. My son is president in the CU at Swansea University

10 famous people with asthma

1. Christiaan Barnard (1922–2001) - pioneer heart surgeon 
2. Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827) – composer
3. Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) – composer and conductor
4. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) – novelist and short story author
5. Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) - British statesman, author
6. Che Guevara (1928-1967) – socialist revolutionary
7. John F. Kennedy (1928-1963) – 35th U.S. President
8. Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) – poet and short story author
9. Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) – composer and conductor
10. Orson Welles (1915-1985) - actor, director

Short Poem 12

Luigi Berti Public domain,
via Wikimedia Commons

A friend in college had this poem by Dylan Thomas on his wall I seem to remember. The nostalgic quality of it is quite powerful. Some of the lines are breathtakingly beautiful. I have a son called Dylan (we just like the name, we would have used it for our first son but had already decided his second name would be Tomos and we didn't want to have a Dylan Thomas/Tomos Brady).

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.