The Black Lake (Festival Edition) - III. Home (Live at Hereford Cathedral, Hereford, 7/27/2025)

Scene 2 – Home

Boy

(Nar M): Dew, there’s a nice smell coming from somewhere. Could it be coming from our house. Yes! It is too! Hello Mam. Dew, I’m hungry.

Mam

(Nar F): Come on then, cyw bach. You eat your fill.

Where did you get those potatoes that were under the stairs?

Are you sure you didn’t steal them, are you, cyw bach?

Boy

(Nar M): Steal them? No, I got them from the lad at Gorlan Farm. Don’t tell anybody, he said.

Dew, these mushrooms are good. I’ll get a whole capful again tomorrow.

Did you have a hard wash to do today, Mam?

Mam

(Nar F): Just a bit tired, you know, cyw bach.

Go to bed quickly now so I can iron these clothes.

The Vicarage wants them first thing.

Boy

(Nar M): Mam thought the world of Canon, our vicar then. It was worth you seeing her ironing his surplice and his stole on our table. She did all the men’s and boys’ first, then his very slowly. No one would ever think that Canon was such a kind man by looking at his face; he’d had smallpox long ago and it left a scar on the side of his mouth.

(innocently) Mam, where did Canon get smallpox?

Mam

(Nar F): Don’t ask foolish questions.

Boy

(Nar M): Will there be a scar on his head in Heaven?

Then Mam stopped ironing and started to cry..

Mam was always crying quietly about something. I was used to it.

Mam

(Nar F): No, there won’t be, cyw bach. There’ll not be one scar in heaven.

(Soprano stands near Female Narrator to make it clear she is the singing voice of Mam)

Soprano: Y Gŵr a fu gynt o dan hoelion Dros ddyn pechadurus fel fi,

Boy

(Nar M): She had tears rolling down her cheek and was laughing at the same time, till she stopped and went on with her ironing while singing:

Soprano &

Chorus; A yfodd o’r cwpan I’r gwaelod

Ei hunan ar ben Calfari;

Ffynhonnell y Cariad Tragwyddol,

Hen gartre meddyliau o hedd,

Dwg finnau I’r unrhyw gyfamod,

Na thorrir gan angau na’r bedd.

Boy

(Nar M): Dew, Mam had a good voice. And she could take people off really well too.

Is that Will Starch Collar’s collar Mam?

Mam

(Nar F): No indeed. You know they’re all Canon’s.

Boy

(Nar M): Only a joke, Mam.

Mam

(Nar F): Don’t joke about Will Collar Starch.

He was a bad old rascal long ago, drunk in the Blue Bell and out all night.

Boy

(Nar M): How did he get to be a good man?

Mam

(Nar F): He heard the Voice.

It was the time of the Revival, before you were born and lots of people were hearing the Voice. But Will Collar Starch was the only one who heard and saw the Voice.

Chorus: Blow ye the trumpet, blow,

The gladly solemn sound.

The year of jubilee is come,

Return ye ransom’d sinners home.

(Revival music continues under dialogue)

Mam

(Nar F): He was going home rolling drunk, and put his head over the bridge to be sick.

And what did he see but a huge wheel of fire coming down the river.

And a Voice came from the wheel of fire:

Chorus: ‘Will, you old sinner, Don’t you know you’re going headfirst to eternal damnation?’

Mam

(Nar F): And Will starts shouting ‘Oh Dear Mam what shall do, what shall I do?’

Chorus: Will, you old sinner,

Turn back, sinner, turn back.

Don’t you know you’re going headfirst to eternal damnation,

Into the middle of the fire and brimstone?

Turn back, you old sinner!

Haven’t you been saved yet?

Will, you old sinner,

Haven’t you been saved?

Mam

(Nar F): (roaring with laughter) He never went to the Blue Bell again and had a clean collar every night. And where do you think they saw him next?

Boy

(Nar M): I don’t know.

Mam

(Nar F): On his knees in the Sinner’s Seat in Salem Chapel, shouting with all his might like a madman, “Salvation is like the sea, ever rolling to the shore!” (They both laugh.)

Boy

(Nar M): Dew, Mam was good that night and I was rolling about laughing in the chair.

(Mysterious music)

Though there was a night when Huw and I looked down from that bridge and the moon in the river looked just like a wheel of fire. Perhaps that’s what Will Collar Starch saw when he was drunk.

(Oppressive music)

But Good Friday was miserable – until tea-time anyhow.

Mam, why do you always go to Church at midday and stay till after three?

Mam

(Nar F): To suffer with Him. He took three hours to die you know.

Boy

(Nar M): Then, after being in Church all afternoon she was laughing at everything I said to her and going around the house singing. But somehow she was never the same after Canon died. She never went to the Vicarage to wash for Huws the Parson who came after him.