Stars on Its Face

Poised between the windswept coast and the stony volcanic spine of the land above Fishguard and Goodwick, the Pencaer peninsula’s acid soil has never borne rich harvests. Pembrokeshire’s early potato crop has become famous but once upon a time root vegetables were just the mainstay of everyday cooking, along with oats and the unreliable bounty of the sea. But every farm kept a pig  and as many sheep as could be grazed. The prime cuts of meat would sold at the market leaving the remainder for family fare.

‘Cawl’ – which translates simply as soup or stew – is the Welsh version of Irish stew and Scotch broth: a lump of meat (or meaty bone) cooked long and slow over the fire with leeks, potatoes, onions and other roots plus a handful of oats thrown in at the end. The broth could be served as a starter with the solids as the second course, and any leftovers would do for weekday meals, bread and cheese being the usual accompaniment.

Every family has its own version of cawl with preferences that can make for heated arguments: whether to fry the meat first or not, whether to include parsnips or not, and so on. Every autumn in Fishguard a “cawl crawl” around the town’s pubs and restaurants sees folk doing the rounds to sample and compare each offering, giving marks to establish that year’s winner.

In 1980 Fishguard restaurateur, food lover and passionate advocate of Welsh produce, Bobby Freeman, published a Welsh food guide and cookery book called First Catch Your Peacock. She devoted eight pages to cawl and included a poem by local poet and bard Dewi Emrys (1881- 1952) who spent his childhood on Pencaer and went to school in Fishguard. His poem Pwllderi recalls his memories of that area and includes a verse in praise of cawl:

There’s only one house near the place

And that hides in the arm-pit of Garn Fawr,

Dolgaer it is called, an old barn of a house

But a place for a welcome and a cup of tea

Or a bowl of cawl, and that’s a better feed

With leeks and potatoes and stars on its face.

You’ll see the cauldron on the tripod there

And the gorse blazing gaily beneath it.

You shall have the ladle full, and filled again

And that lovelier than any mixture;

You shall have the wooden spoon in the bowl as well

And a great hunk of fine old cheese.

[Translated from the Pencaer dialect by Dillwyn Miles, Herald Bard of Wales.]

The ‘stars’ are of course the spots of fat that float on the surface of the broth - good sustenance for lives lived on land and sea.