After my absurd and ridiculous idea about a Welsh Army, I called in to see a former prisoner and inmate of the school that I had attended. He still lives in the town that incarcerated us within its education system. The picture above is not of the school but the former prison where the Welsh Folk Hero 'Coch Bach y Bala' escaped from in 1913. I had just finished reading a book about him and on my journey South, called by the graveyard where he is buried. He escaped from the above prison when he was 60 years of age. This was not his first escape but his third having spent most of his adult life in prison. His nickname was the Welsh Houdini. I had not visited the graveyard before but had heard of the village so turned off on my route. I like to do these 'spur of the moment' things, mini adventures with a spiritual meaning. Coch Bach has become a hero to me because we have both spent time behind prison walls and he was like a Welsh Don Quixote, forever charging at windmills. It appears from reading his history that it was 'Give a dog a bad name' and that if there had been a robbery or burglary in the area then 'John Jones' was the first suspect that the police apprehended. The sentences were stiff in those days and he spent two seven year stretches in Dartmoor. Crimes against peoples' possessions were considered at the top of the heinous list. So all property is theft eh? His previous was always taken into account. When the Judge announced the sentence he would rant and rail against the police and the authorities but once in prison would behave like a model prisoner and would be let out on licence (which was unusual) It appears that either he could not or would not stop goading the authorities and after his last escape in 1913, he was a free but feral man for six days. The son of a local (unpopular) landowner, Reginald Jones Bateman caught up with him on the Nantclwyd estate and shot him in the leg. The shock and loss of blood was too much for the 60 year old. John Jones is a folk hero to the Welsh 'Werin Datws' who have fought a war of insolence against the British Establishment for centuries.
It was the only gravestone in Llanelidan churchyard that had flowers on it.
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