James's Hobnail Boot

Now it is almost full moon, but the sky is still shrouded in cloud. We should be sitting in the garden in the warmth of a late summer evening, heads back, looking up at the stars to catch a falling one. Instead we walk the bounds of the village on swift feet, past the whispering well, beneath the sky paths of the aerymice. It is cold.
Earlier today we sent Her off to St Davids Cathedral to see if She could find the memorial. She found James Price from Treleddid Fawr. Perhaps this was James's hobnail boot?

A place of belonging

From the first day She came to the house She had known it was there, hidden somewhere in the roof. The woman who lived here before told Her about it. But we learned the story from the cats who had lived here before.

So when the builders came and tore the house apart we kept a watchful eye for it, waited, until it came to light. It was almost swept out with the rubble, all bent and tangled with cobwebs, it looked like nothing. But the young one saw it, picked it out, and put it safe up high. Something called to him, through the years, told him to keep it safe. Something, or someone.

Years ago there was a tradition that when a child left home you would place one of their shoes in the eaves of the house. This way they would always return, no matter how far they roamed, no matter where. This boot, now bent with age, now dry and dusty, this hobnailed boot belonged to a child, much loved. This was the Sunday best, going to church boot, all groomed and shod. All week the child would run barefoot over the hills, wild with the wonder of heather and gorse, seals and the sea, barefoot in the grass in the sand in the waves. On Sundays they would march together into church and sit in solemn rows.
Once this boot shone, polished with love, caressed by a mother's hands. She would tie the laces for the restless child, hug him close and breath in his summer scent, then lose him on the world and watch him run, between the high banks, all the way to the big church.
And when he grew too big for his child's shoe she kept it safe.
Then came the day that she dreaded, when the world called her boy away to war. She watched him march away with the other lads from Treleddyd Fawr, excited, full of themselves and full of the joy of being alive. She watched until he was long gone and still she stood. Then she fetched the shoe from its draw and placed it in the eaves of the house and said a small prayer.


In St Davids Cathedral there is a war memorial that carries the names of three of the sons from Treleddyd Fawr who died in the Great War.
It is said that if the shoe in the eves did not bring the child home that it would draw back their spirit to rest at home so it would not wander the earth in some foreign land, forever lost.
Sometimes, when the day is calm, we think we can hear the laughter of a child, the click clack and clatter of hobnail boots on the stairs.

She will put the boot back in the eaves. This is where it belongs.

nb. Read Carol Ann Dufy's poem for the last two veterans of the First World War.