In what is now the back garden of a house –

a between-the-wars semi – in Mold, a town

in North East Wales, a gang of labourers,

one hundred and seventy years ago,

hired to demolish a burial mound –

known as Bryn yr Ellyllon, Goblin’s Hill –

uncovered what seemed to be small sheets of brass

on a small, fragmentary skeleton.

Cleaned, fitted together, a local scholar

declared them a Bronze Age cape of gold,

perhaps made to fit a royal child.

Since then the cape has been exhibited

in a glass case in the British Museum.

Imperial kleptocracy at work.

An artefact of such exquisite design

and craftsmanship could not have been allowed

to remain in a small market town where most

did not speak English, and were illiterate

in their own language. It was a place ringed

by the mining of iron, lead and coal;

a place where a riot about workers’ rights –

a reduction in wages, and miners

forbidden their mother tongue underground –

required four rioters to be shot dead

by soldiers of the King’s Own regiment.

After the discovery the mound was

completely razed. No record has been found

of the disposal of the bones.

Note 1: Ellyllon is pronounced ‘ethleethlon’

Note 2: The poem has been published in the 2022 winter edition of EAP: The Magazine – https://exterminatingangel.com/the-mold-cape/.