Читать книгу Travels in an Old Tongue: Touring the World Speaking Welsh - Pamela Petro - Страница 18

The National Express coach slows as all coaches must. I’ve never crossed the Severn Bridge when it wasn’t crippled by road construction. What’s that fairytale about some luckless soul’s work being perpetually undone in the night, so that for all eternity he has to start over again in the morning? The possibility should be investigated.

The River Severn marks the southern end of the boundary between Wales and England. Small cars have blown off the bridge in fierce side winds, or so I’m told. I remember reading in 1988 about a woman who was stuck in construction traffic so long that she got out of her car, and jumped. Unlike her, I’m not in a rush today because I missed the Croeso i Gymru sign on the way into Wales, and I want to see it now. I spin around in my seat, jabbing my ribs into the armrest. There it is. A yellow sign with a red dragon, the symbol of Wales. I’m pushed harder into the armrest as the coach suddenly accelerates toward Heathrow. Welcome to Cymru. The ‘C’ has mutated and become a ‘G’. That happens a lot in Welsh.

For a long time I wonder about the woman who jumped back in ’88. I sometimes feel that for me, an American with no Welsh ancestry, with no tangible connection to the place, learning Welsh – especially under the circumstances I’ve chosen – is a lot like jumping off the bridge of common sense. And to make matters worse I’m taking Marguerite with me. Before I fall asleep these thoughts give way, mercifully, to a poem by Harri Webb called ‘Ode to the Severn Bridge’, which I hum in a made-up singsong:

Two lands at last connected

Across the rivers wide

And all the tolls collected

On the English side.