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

Scene 8 – The Asylum

Boy

(Nar M): Mam wasn’t at Gran’s. So off we went, Gran and me, back home. There was Mam, still wearing her coat, soaking wet.

What is it Mam? Where have you been?

But she just looked through me with her steel pin eyes. Gran told me to go next door and ask Grace Evans to come straight away.

Is Mam very ill?

Mrs Evans

(Chorus altos):

Yes, she’s quite poorly. They want to take her to the hospital.

Boy

(Nar M): Mrs Evans, why can’t she go in an ambulance, her being so ill?

Mrs Evans

(Chorus altos):

She isn’t ill in the way you mean love.

Ellis Evans

(Chorus tenors):

She has a weakness, you know

Boy

(Nar M): They want to take her away to Denbigh.

The Asylum, the Asylum, the Asylum.

Em came back from there in his coffin.

Boy

(Nar M): (hesitantly) I know… what to do… Mrs Evans.

(bravely) Mam, You and me are going for a ride in the Corner Shop motor.

We’re having a holiday.

And into the car we went, Davey Corner Shop, Little Will Policeman’s Dad and a lady I’d never seen before. Mam talking to herself or as if to someone behind her.

Dew, I said, those singers from the South are good.

You should have heard them sing The Man Who Was Nailed To…

Mam

(Soprano

& Female Chorus):

Y Gŵr a fu gynt o dan hoelion

Dros ddyn pechadurus fel fi,

A yfodd y cwpan i’r gwaelod

Ei hunan ar ben Calfari;

Boy

(Nar M): …By now the two in the front had stopped talking and the next thing I heard was the pair of them singing with us, with Little Will Policeman’s Dad singing tenor, and then the lady too.

Soprano

& Full Chorus:

Fynhonell y cariad tragwyddol,

Hen gartre meddyliau o hedd

Dwg finnau i’r unrhyw gyfamod,

Na thorrir gan angau na’r bedd.

(The singing reaches a climax. Suddenly an ominous hush.)

Boy

(Nar M): At last we came to a big gate by the side of the road, up a gravel drive to the door of a huge building about four times as big as the Salem Chapel. Mam was shaking like a leaf as she got out of the car. The lady took Mam by the arm.

The Lady

(Chorus altos):

You come with me now, Everything will be alright.

Female Narrator looks around her, then slowly leaves the stage.

(Sombre music continues under narration.)

Boy

(Nar M): At last the lady came back, on her own. She put a little parcel, tied with string, in my hand and said “These are your Mam’s clothes”. Then she said, “You need to take these too.”

Boy

(Nar M): And now she’s putting two rings in my other hand: Mam’s wedding ring, and the other one that was always on her finger. I couldn’t say anything – only look at the little parcel that was in my right hand and the rings in my left hand. And I’m trying to think how they’d got all Mam’s clothes into such a small parcel.

Then I start crying. Not crying like I did years ago after falling and hurting myself, nor how I’d cry at some funerals. But crying like throwing up – crying as if it was the end of the world, and glad to be crying.

Dew, I’d never cried like that before and I’ve never cried like that since.