Although One Moonlit Night was written in 1961, the first English Translation was made in 1995 and it has now been published by independent publishers Canongate (who’s new website, Meet at the Gate is rather good). While I read a lot of translated books, I think this is the first book I have read translated from the Welsh language.
Caradog Prichard was born and brought up in Bethesda and after working on Welsh newspapers as a journalist spent most of his working life in London on the Daily Telegraph. He was a noted Welsh-language poet and won the Crown in the National Eisteddfod in 1927.
One Moonlit night tells the story of a small boy in an un-named town in North Wales (but as Jan Morris tells us in the foreword to the book is almost certainly Prichard’s home town of Bethesda). This book sits well alongside Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, for this seemingly quiet backwater has a soap-opera life of sadism, sexual perversion, adultery, insanity and domestic violence. Add to that the backdrop of the mysterious Black Lake, the bogey-men who inhabit the adjoining forests, miraculous healings and visions, and the reader soon sees that beneath the “church-going” veneer, this book does not depict an idealised or nostalgic view of small town Wales.
Prichard was a wonderful writer. I found myself easily swept into the un-named boy’s stories as he roams the streets and quiet countryside around his home with his friends Huw and Moi. The boys are at that phase of boy-hood just before teen-age interests replace childhood inquisitiveness. This is matched with a relative independence which gives them a freedom to roam go where they please without too many restrictions. The village is full of gossip and stories and the boys pick up with relish on the intrigues and minor scandals of small town life, passing on stories to their scandalised parents who seem unable to wholly bring their own behaviours into line with their moral pronouncements. Continue reading Review: One Moonlit Night – Caradog Prichard
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