the Gower scene: “....this remarkable, self-effacing fellow, with his head in the clouds and his roots deep in the soil of Gower, seemed to have effaced himself completely and vanished from the scene. I heard he had gone abroad and, incredibly, never returned". He had left Gower for Neath Abbey, where he worked as an engineer for 10 years. At Hills Farm Winnie's health was deteriorating, and the doctor strongly advised a change from their isolated life on the farm. One of Cyril's daughters had emigrated to Australia, and urged her parents to visit for a holiday. In 1964, Cyril and Winnie went for a two months' holiday and stayed for good. They settled in Croydon, Victoria, where they found another close-knit farming community full of interest. In 1975 Cyril and Winnie Gwynn returned to Gower for a three-month visit, and in 1979, after Winnie had died, Cyril paid another short visit to Gower, before deciding to move into a retirement village in Australia. By 1987, Cyril was in poor health but was looked after by his daughter Dilys, who took him shopping and to the library. Arthur Cyril Gwynn died on 7 January 1988. Poetry According to Nigel Jenkins, among older Gower people: “...it is the name of Cyril Gwynn, and not that of Dylan Thomas, Vernon Watkins or Harri Webb, that comes first to their lips in any talk of poetry. He was, in his day, a Gower celebrity, while remaining entirely unknown outside the area – a state of affairs to be regarded as quite proper, for any notion of Swansea or Cardiff 'recognition' would have struck Cyril as meaningless.' However, he wrote with "no pretension to literary excellence or grammatical perfection." "Cyril Gwynn was the chronicler of a way of life and a pattern of social relationships that are now gone forever." At the height of his powers, he would go out two or three nights a week, to ploughing match dinners, weddings, wakes, Christmas parties, Court Leet and harvest suppers. He was considered the "Bard of Gower" and was, according to Nigel Jenkins: “...as near as the Englishry of Wales have come to producing a traditional bard gwlad, that peculiarly Welsh brand of country or folk poet whose function it is to sing his native heath’s praises and to celebrate in verse its communal life". Cyril could speak the Gower dialect, which was still strong