Molawd Tref Caernarfon (In Praise of Caernarfon Town)

Songs from the Tin Tabernacl: A Roots Romance

Molawd Tref Caernarfon (A Hiraeth y Bardd Am Dani)
In Praise of Caernarfon Town (And the Bard’s Longing for It)

What relationship narrative can we imagine/re-invent of Martha Jones from Careg Iago, Menai, Ynys Mon (Anglesey) and her eventual husband my great grandfather Benjamin Francis (later Rev Benjamin Menai Francis) from Llanbeblig, Caernarfon town? She’d seen much sadness even by the age of 21, was bookish and devout, and sang, wrote poetry and played harmonium. He was smitten by her, embraced her devotion, and later grew to be a fiery preacher, poet & writer too. She knew him well even by the time he was 15. How their lives mingled even though she was six years older than him. One from the island, the other from the mainland.

Molawd Tref Caernarfon our fourth Song from the Tin Tabernacl sings of the indelible memories of the place where these two young people who became my Welsh great grandparents, met each other. In the early 1880’s in the hustle and bustle of Caernarfon’s Castle Square right by the imposing mediaeval fortress-castle. The song is a lament and is heavy with nostalgia.

Here in the town, for Martha there was both chapel and the bookshop & printers where young Benjamin Francis, printer’s apprentice & would-be preacher of 27 Pool Street nearby, dreams up a middle name 'Menai' for himself.. and we may also think, to impress Martha Jones from that old tenement farm across the Menai Straights..

Though born here in Caernarfon in 1864, and the fifth son of Richard Francis the master clogmaker, Benjamin Menai Francis finally left town aged twenty-one. He went to the farm on Ynys Môn, to join & marry Martha his childhood sweetheart at Careg Iago, and this is where he fathered four children with her. Their eldest became my musical grandfather Hywel Henry. Benjamin struggled to adapt to farming and support them all, and by 1893 Martha had decided they should emigrate for an English town life, like countless others seeking opportunity for themselves and for their children’s futures.

Benjamin’s English journey took him and his family first to Lancashire, where his dear Martha was to die, then on to the West Riding of Yorkshire, where by 1901 he had become the first pastor of our ‘Tin Tabernacl’ the Carlton Salem Welsh Chapel.

Though ten years had passed since their journey across the border he remained at heart an outsider amongst the English, separated from the passion of his roots & culture. He returned to Conwy in Wales in 1903. With this family story and its migration narrative in mind, and having a sense of the passing of perhaps a more innocent way of life and love, it’s not too difficult to imagine how vivid and constant his nostalgia for Caernarfon may have become…

Rather than re-imagine my great grandfather Benjamin’s journey of separation from his hometown for it to be recreated in song, Molawd Tref Caernarfon seeks an intense and beautifully resonant parallel by heading much further back in time. Our singer-harpist-songwriter Cerys Hafana steps back into the Welsh archives for the fourth new Song from the Tin Tabernacle and adopts a C16th poem by Syr Siôn Gruffydd who was Bard and Chaplain attached to one of the Earl of Leicester’s Welsh commanders at war in Flanders. Written in old Biblical Welsh by a man of God who is ‘a stranger’ living far from home, he is ‘full of sighs’ for Caernarfon which remains his ‘friend of a thousand sounds’. Deep in prayer, family reveries are still ‘trapped in his heart’ but he remains ‘One of the Land’.

The song is sung to the tune of the Welsh lament ‘Dewch i’r Frwydr’ (Come to Battle) published 1784, and incorporates a fiddle melody drawn from a traditional English dance tune the ‘Carlton Maggot’ published in 1740 (tunes were often called Maggots as they were intended to be catchy earworms!)

Molawd Tref Caernarfon (In Praise of Caernarfon Town)

Dyn wy’n byw trwy nerth y Tad,	
Y’mhell o’r wlad yn estron,		 
Wyf ofalus, (a phaham?)		
O hiraeth am Gaernarfon.		
Hoff yw genyf enwi ‘mro,		
Caiff filoedd o anerchion:
Anwyl ydoedd unrhyw ddydd,
Ac eto fydd Caernarfon.		

Nid all fod yn rhyfedd iawn,		
Fy mod yn llawn och’neidion:	
Rhaid im’ berchi ‘nhad a’m mam,	
Wrth feddwl am Gaernarfon.	
Am fy mrodyr dolur aeth,		
Ac alaeth caeth i’m calon,		
A’m chwiorydd, y mae’n hir,		
Sy’n tario’n sir Gaernarfon.

Ceraint ym, gwehelydd pêr,
A llawer o gymdeithion,		
Cyfar oeddych mil o sain
Yn harddu braint Caernarfon.
Cym’rwch hyn o anerch pell,
O eisiau gwell i’w ddanfon,
Petfawn berchen perl main ffluwch,
Mi roddwn uwch Caernarfon.


Un o’r wlad mewn gweddi wyf,	
Ar Grist er clwyf ei ddwyfron,	
Roddi ei ddoniau y’mhob rhith,	
A’i fendith yn Nghaernarfon.		
Yn iach eilwaith, un a dau,		
Gan wylo dagrau gloywon:		
Yn iach ganwaith, fawr a bach,	
Ac eto yn iach, Gaernarfon.	

Take a listen here to a live demo recording of Molawd Tref Caernarfon our 4th Song From the Tin Tabernacl