Subject: Fwd: Craigcefnparc
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:34:11 EDT
Thank you very much again Kerry! This is an excellent biography.
Dear Myron, Please find below the latest page of Crystal Spheres. Myron Wyn Evans was born in Craigcefnparc, near Swansea in Wales on May 26th 1950.  His parents were Edward Ivor Evans and Mary Evans. At only two years of age Myron was admitted to his local hospital, Morriston War Hospital for an emergency operation for intestinal twisting and was not expected to live more than half an hour. However, due to the then new National Health Service and a very skillful surgeon Myron survived the operation. In the next bed to Myron was a young patient with polio, which was prevalent before the polio vaccine was developed. The operation was successful, but the discomfort from this operation lasted many years.      In the fifties Craigcefnparc possessed a coal-mining culture in the Welsh language, similar to the slate quarry culture of North Wales.  Although coal-mining is a tough and very dangerous occupation, the level of indigenous culture was high.  Myron’s grandfather, Thomas Elim Havard-Jones, was a well known figure in the area, a head deacon and composer, brass band leader and conductor, for example of oratorio music by Handel and Haydn. Several of Myron’s cousins were pianists able to play the classical music of Mozart and Beethoven for example.  One Havard cousin was an organist able to play all of Bach and so on. The village produced the Archdderwydd (Arch druid) Crwys, who won four bardic crowns at the National Eisteddfod. So people who would normally be described as working class were obviously as cultured as any aristocrats or big city people.  Myron’s great-great grandfather, Thomas (Twm) Havard, farmed Cerdinen in a remote valley situated in wild moorland, and his grandfather was David (Dafydd) Havard of Defynnog, which is still today a small and beautiful village with one church near Pont Senni on the way to Brecon.  Bishop William Thomas Havard, 113th Bishop of St. David’s, came from the same tiny village, but was originally from a nonconformist family. From the eleventh century onwards the Havards were all fluent Welsh speakers, often monoglot Welsh speakers, despite their Norman French speaking roots.       Despite the arduous work of coal mining, each house in Craigcefnparc had a garden which produced all kinds of vegetables and fruits.  The society was totally different from today’s anonymous supermarket scene, and each village had its own very distinctive character.  Accents changed distinctly from one village or valley to another, similar to George Eliot’s fictitious but evocative Raveloe.  Myron is the first individual to be granted arms in the Parish of Mawr and this was achieved on merit.  About 40% of the People of Mawr still speak Welsh as their daily language inheritors of the ancient culture which once ran from Ireland to Anatolia, from Eastern Europe to northern Spain, and Italy. In the fifties the village of Craigcefnparc had about seven friendly village shops to cater for the miners and their families.  Now there is only one and the post office, reflecting the changes in the past fifty years in every village in Wales.      Craigcefnparc is a small town in the South Wales coalfield where most of the men folk, earned a living underground in the mines..  The coal miners would emerge from the drift covered in coal dust, and walk up the steep valley back to the village, wearing helmets and safety lamps. The dangers of coal mining were ever present in the village with frequent accidents, some of which were fatal, caused by badly supported gallery roofs. The roofs were held up by sprags or beams of wood, and the pressure often bent them. The most common cause of accidents was falling stones, and there was also the ever present danger of fire damp, or methane.  At the time of Myron’s birth his father Edward was a colliery shotman, responsible for bringing down the coal face with gunpowder and had already worked for fourteen years in the Nixon drift mine. Edward worked not only as a coal miner, but also for the Mines’ Rescue Service where he won bronze, silver and gold medals. Kerry
