----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Richards" <krichard(a)interlog.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 21:50:59 -0500
To: WLS-MERIONETHSHIRE-L(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: [MER] Death in Dolgellau
Alwyn
Thanks for the explanation. When I read Jane's note my memory prodded me
about cemeteries at the rear of Salem and Judah Churches. Several years have
elapsed long since I lived on Cader Road that I thought old age was playing
tricks.
Thank goodness it wasn't!
Ken Richards
-----------------------
Hello Ken, it's nice to hear from you again.
I haven't visited either of the cemeteries in Judah or Salem, which are back-to-back,
for many years myself.
They must have been cleared sometime in the recent past to enable Gwynedd FHS to record
the monumental inscriptions, but when I was a child they were very overgrown with
brambles, particularly Judah.
Brambles are, of course, the source of Blackberries, so my sisters and I would often go to
Judah chapel to collect the blackberries to take home to my Mam for her to make a pie, or
if we got lots of them to make Bramble Jam.
There use to be an old man in Dolgellau at the time called Harry (I'm not sure of his
surname, but I think it use to begin with "White") who use to collect
Blackberries himself and hawk them from door to door for beer money.
Harry claimed every bramble bush within a 10 mile radius of the town as his own property
and if he saw a child picking blackberries he would chase them and beat them with his
walking stick; so my youngest sister would always be put on "Guard Duty" by the
gates of Judah, if she hollered "Harry's Coming" we would jump the wall into
Salem and run like .... down Park Lane towards the police station (where we though we
might get "protection").
Unfortunately for her, my baby sister was always the nearest to Harry and the furthest
from the Police Station, so he would invariably catch her and strike her with his walking
stick.
She still holds a grudge about it and she WILL NOT eat blackberry tarts to this day,
because they remind her too much of the pain she suffered from Harry's stick and the
betrayal she suffered by her siblins!!!.
All the best
Alwyn
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