Checking the sky, tasting the air, Billy Bray knew the time was right. He tapped his hat and set off on the London road. Although he was small, his little legs were capable of long strides. An onrushing breeze lifted his coat tails as he trod a path carved through the fields and forests by multitudes going up, going down the London road.
Tidy face, had Billy Bray. Sticking out ears and a wet nose. He had the same face on the portrait they displayed by his coffin. Just a shade darker. Eyes lowered down his beak nose. A man who had lived a life of spiritual fervour in the glare of the kingdom of God
Was not always so. In the mines, scratching for tin. Did a few years of that. A sinful life of drink. Sloshing through the freezing mud before the light of day, going down in the bucket. Cold and wet the livelong day. Brandy wine in the lurching streets. Fighting and cussing.
Grandfather Bray were a man of God. He preached in the methodist hall, standing on a box among the crowd.
‘God is here. And we love him completely. What is this love? What is this blinding light that flashes through our souls? The sinner finds relief in the glory of the Lord. And we are all sinners. Let us sing.
The congregation lifted their burnt faces to the preacher and sang,
Teach me at last thy love to know— That this new light which now I see May both the work and workman show: A sun-beam lifts me then to thee!
The chapel house sat in reverent silence while Grandfather Bray composed his sermons behind the heavy library door of a Saturday evening. Dark wood furniture leaned into the narrow hallway where little Billy sat waiting to be blessed. At last The silhouette of the old Preacher filled the doorway.
Take this blessing to bed. Little Billy. So small yet so full of sin. Think on your father, my son, blown to pieces in the mine and your poor mother sinking into the grave. Think of these sinners on their path to heaven. Take this blessing and sleep the sleep of righteousness.
His tiny grandmother, in black dress and bonnet, instructed the boy Billy in reading, writing and arithmetic every morning except Sunday. The afternoons, he was out in the yard with the pigs, or mending, with his canvas bag, with the hammer, the chisel and the saw. Weren’t allowed in until tea. That’s what it was like.
And it was out there in the yard, on endless winter afternoons, that he made the hat. Good with his hands was Billy. And with his feet. He would caper and spin among the pigs and shout out made up songs until Grandmother Bray appeared in the door way, her head next to the handle.
Boy. Music is a sacred gift that has been given to us by the Lord to sing his praises. Not for roaring out diddle daddles to the pigs. Creatures of God so they are. Sing with your heart and sing to Him, who is sitting above in Glory. Tomorrow I shall bring down the harmonium and we shall study the hymns of Reverend John, God rest his soul.
Turn around, said Preacher Bray on his box. Turn around sinners and greet each other. Feel that love that burns within. Love your neighbour as you love your God. Let us sing our praises. Come Billy lad lead us.
They put him on the box, but you still couldn’t see him. So they got a young lad to lift little Billy on to a shoulder and now you could see him. His face shining, eyes wide, he lifted his gaze to the roof and sang,
Praise him. Praise him. Praise him.
People said you could hear him outside in the rain, over the rocks all the way to the sea. Maybe across the water to the solitary fishermen. But people say all sorts don’t they. But it is not all straight sailing for Billy. A certain lassitude crept over him. The house oppressed him and the stuff spouted in the chapel, before eating, before sleeping, this constant repetition became intolerable, turned him against his Grandfather and chased him down the lanes to the mine.
He were built for a miner, small and strong, and he done well. Near the end of a shift, when the hammers slow before the final burst, he would sing in the tunnels. But they weren’t songs of praise. They were songs of the courage and valour of the miner. Of the tragedy. He sang about women, their aching beauty and the pleasures of marriage. He sang of the mine owner who lived up in heaven.
He had the devil in him they said. Out in the streetlight staggering away from the bar, pissing in the gutter, cursing Him up there in all his glory, Him up in paradise, blinded by praise, praise, not seeing the struggle of his precious sheep in the filth. And he drank the more before collapsing on his rags.
Lightning shot down the tunnels, threw him about in the black rock. They dragged him to the shaft got him in the bucket.
Thanks lads, he said. The pully creaked, the old horse turned, and they got him up, put him in a barrow, and wheeled him to the chapel house, where he lay in the yard in all sorts of weather.
This is what you get, Billy Bray, said his grandmother. Embrace the slough and despair as just punishment for following a life of chaos. Come back to the fold. Read this book.
It was that Pilgrim’s Progress. Huddled over, protecting the brittle pages from rain, squinting in windy candlelight, Billy followed Christian on his journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City of Light.
He started on the hat. He tramped down through the damp fields to a copse of birch trees. He tapped and smelled til he found a likely piece of wood and felled in, trimmed it to a cylinder. he lit a candle grubbed into the wood and over a few days carefully burned out the centre till he had a length of wooden pipe. With a patient knife he carved a brim which he pegged to the cylinder. He fitted a top and gave the hat a tap.
So his mind refilled with the Lord and his wooden hat to keep off the rain, he set off for his own Celestial City.
They say he lived another forty years or so. The say he preached in London where he attracted crowds by dancing and singing and preaching, but all we can remember is the hat. Billy Bray. He were a character for sure. But it strikes me, that a wooden hat would be a difficult one to wear. My kind of hat, this one here, is soft and moulds itself to your head. And he didn’t have a lot of hair.
Lyrical David 