Eli Jenkins

First, thanks Gloria for your excellent comments on "Night of the Hunter" and the useful info you've given. I didn't know Agee wrote "The African Queen".

I was sitting in the Eli Jenkins pub, in Cardiff Bay, this morning with my wife who asked "who was Eli Jenkins?" I said the only Eli Jenkins I know of is a character in "Under Milk Wood", the Reverend Eli Jenkins who stands on the threshold of his home and prays:

Every morning when I wake,
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please do keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die.....

I always felt that Dylan Thomas was being rather cynical here in his depiction of this good hearted vicar, feeling that the hymn/prayer is a spoof of what a simple soul might say. The ironic thing about it is that it is probably the most liked and certainly most popular part of the play - put "Eli Jenkins' prayer" on Google and you get numerous choirs singing it, also Bryn Terfel is there somewhere doing his version.
In the Eli Jenkins pub (excellent beer by the way, and good, cheap, British style food in an old-fashioned style pub) I noticed a game machine which had Trivial Pursuit as one of the games. This surprised me because I thought the makers had withdrawn these machines because certain people had learned how to win. But maybe now the winnings are not big. I say this because about ten years ago I overheard a conversation in a sports centre where two young men were telling another how they travelled the country playing these machines and making a living that way.
Didn't dine in the Eli Jenkins since we had vouchers "2 for the Price of 1" in Strada, nearby. Excellent food and a very nice table red wine.