Transcribed from the 1900[?] W. Nicholson and Sons edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

THE
COMICAL ADVENTURES
OF
TWM SHON CATTY,
(THOMAS JONES, ESQ.)
COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE
Welsh Robin Hood.

“In Ystrad Feen a mirthful sound
Pervades the hollow hills around;
The very stones with laughter bound,
At Twm Shon Catty’s jovial round.”

PREFACE.

In presenting to the public the following Enlarged and Corrected Edition of “Twm Shon Catty,” the author cannot forget that on its first appearance in 1836, with “all its imperfections on its head,” it was received with a welcome quite unlooked for on the part of the writer, and he now presents this edition to the world, with several additions and alterations.

On examining the cause of such unlooked-for approbation, he found it, not in any merit of his own, but in the nationality of his subject, and the humiliating suggestion that, slight as it was, it was the first attempted thing that could bear the title of a Welsh Novel.

It is true others have made Wales the scene of action for the heroes of their Tales; but however talented such writers might be, to the Welshman’s feelings they lacked nationality, and betrayed the hand of the foreigner in the working of the web; its texture perchance, filled up with yams of finer fleeces, but strange and loveless to their unaccustomed eyes.

Were a native of one of the South Sea Islands to publish the life and adventures of one of their legendary heroes, it is probable that such a production would excite more attention, as a true transcript of mind and manners of the people he essayed to describe, than the more polished pages of the courtly English and French novelist, who undertook to write on the same subject. On the same principle, the author of this unpretending little provincial production accounts for the sunny gleams of favour that have flashed on the new tract which he has endeavoured to tread down, among briers and brambles of an unexplored way, while the smoother path of the practised traveller has been shrouded in gloom.

The expression of the Author’s gratitude is here presented to the Rev. W. J. Rees, Rector of Cascob, for numerous favours; and especially for the historic and traditional matter that his researches furnished. To the Critics of the Cambrian Quarterly for their favourable notice of the “Small Book,” a skeleton as it then was, compared to the present Edition, imperfect as it still remains. And lastly to the revered memory of the late Archdeacon Benyon of Llandilo. That lamented friend of Wales and Welshmen, (whose aims were ever directed to the enlargement of the narrow boundary within which prejudice and custom had encircled and enchained Welsh literature,) in the town-hall of Carmarthen, before his highly respectable Auditors, honoured this production with a favourable notice. He warmly eulogised the Author’s attempt at the production of the first Welsh Novel; and concluded by an offer of a pecuniary reward to the person who could give the best translation of it in the best Welsh language.

CHAPTER I.

The name of Twm Shon Catty, popular throughout Wales. “The Inn-Keeper’s Album,” and the drama founded thereon. Twm Shon Catty apparently born in different towns. A correct account of his birth and parentage.

It is often the custom, however foolish it may be, to frighten the occupants of an English nursery into submission by saying, “The bogie is coming,” and though the exact form or attributes of the said “bogie” are by no means definitely known, the mere mention of the individual has sufficient power to make the juveniles cover their heads, and dive under the bed-clothes, with fear. The preface to the once popular farce of “Killing no Murder” informs us, that many a fry of infant Methodists are terrified and frightened to bed by the cry of “the Bishop is coming!”—That the right reverend prelates of the realm should become bugbears and buggaboos to frighten the children of Dissenters, is curious enough, and evinces a considerable degree of ingenious malignity in bringing Episcopacy into contempt, if true. Be that as it may in England, in Wales it is not so; for the demon of terror and monster of the nursery there, to check the shrill cry of infancy, and enforce silent obedience to the nurse or mother is Twm Shon Catty.

But “babes and sucklings” are not the only ones on whom that name has continued to act as a spell; nor for fear and wonder its only attributes, for the knavish exploits and comic feats of Twm Shon Catty are, like those of Robin Hood in England, the themes of many a rural rhyme, and the subject of many a village tale; where, seated round the ample hearth of a farm house, or the more limited one of a lowly cottage, an attentive audience is ever found, where his mirth-exciting tricks are told and listened to with vast satisfaction, unsated by the frequency of repetition; for the “lowly train” are generally strangers to that fastidiousness which turns disgusted, from a twice-told tale.

Although neither the legends, the poetry, nor the history of the principality, seem to interest, or accord with the taste of our English brethren, the name of Twm Shon Catty, curiously enough, not only made its way among them, but had the unexpected honour of being woven into a tale, and exhibited on the stage, as a Welsh national dramatic spectacle, under the title, and the imposing second title, of Twn John Catty, or, the Welsh Rob Roy. The nationality of the Welsh residents in London, who always bear their country along with them wherever they go, was immediately roused, notwithstanding the great offence of substituting “John” for “Shon,” which called at once on their curiosity and love of country to pursue the “Inkeeper’s Album,” in which this tale first appeared, and to visit the Cobourg Theatre, where overflowing houses nightly attended the representation of the “Welsh Rob Roy.” Now this second title, which confounded the poor Cambrians, was a grand expedient of the Dramatist, to excite the attention of the Londoners, who naturally associated it with the hero of the celebrated Scotch novel. The bait was immediately swallowed, and that tale, an awkward and most weak attempt to imitate the “Great Unknown,” and by far the worst article in a very clever book, actually sold the volume.

As Twm Shon Catty was invariably known to every Crymrian as a great practical joker, they were of course proportionately surprised to find him manufactured into a stilted, injured, melo-dramatic chieftain, for the love of his Ellen, dying the death of a hero!

“This may do for London, but in Wales, where ‘Gwir yn erbyn y byd’ [9a] is our motto, we know better!” muttered many a testy Cambrian, which he felt doubly indignant at the authors’ and actors’ errors in the mis-writing and the mis-pronouncing the well-known “sponsorial or baptismal appellation,” [9b] as Doctor Pangloss would say: and another source of umbrage to them was, that an English author’s sacrilegiously dignifying Twm with the qualities of a hero, conveying the villanous inference that Wales was barren of real heroes—an insinuation that no Welshman could tamely endure to forgive. In an instant recurred the honoured names of Rodri Mawr, Owen Gwyneth, Caswallon ab Beli, Own Glyndwr, Rhys ab Thomas, and a vast chain of Cambrian worthies, not forgetting the royal race of Tudor, that gave an Elizabeth to the English throne; on which the mimic scene before them, and the high vauntings of Huntley in the character of Twm Shon Catty, sunk into the insignificance of a punch and puppet show, in comparison with the mighty men who then passed before the mental eye.

Sir John Wynn, of Gwydir, bart., was the father of our hero, who was a natural son by a woman called Catherine. Little or nothing is known of her, but surnames not being generally adopted in Wales, her son, by Universal consent, was called “Twn Shon Catty,” which means literally, “Thoms John Catherine.” One very astute English Commentator informs us that the name “Catty” originated in the fact that of his armorial bearings included a Cat’s Eye!! This is simply nonsense, as every Welshman can testify.

Like the immortal Homer, different towns have put forth their claims to the enviable distinction of having given our hero birth; among which Cardigan, Llandovery, and Carmarthen, are said to have displayed considerable warmth in asserting their respective pretentions. A native of the latter far-famed borough town, whose carbuncled face and rubicund nose—indelible stamps of bacchanalian royalty—proclaimed him the undisputed prince of topers, roundly affirmed that no town but Carmarthen—ever famed for its stout ale, large dampers, [10] and blustering heroes of the pipe and pot—could possibly have produced such a jolly dog. It is with regret that we perceive such potent authority opposed by the united opinions of our Cambrian bards and antiquaries, who place his birth in the year 1570, at Tregaron, that primitive, yet no longer obscure, Cardiganshire town, but long celebrated throughout the principality for its pony fair; and above all, as the established birthplace of Twm Shon Catty.

He first saw the light, it seems, at a house of his mother’s, situate on a hill south-east of Tregaron, called Llidiard-y-Fynnon, (Fountain-Gate,) from its situation beside an excellent well, that previous to the discovery of other springs nearer to their habitations, supplied the good people of Tregaron with water. That distinguished spot is now, however, more generally known by the more elevated name of Plâs Twm Shon Catty, (the mansion of Twm Shon Catty,) the ruins of which are now pointed out by the neighbouring people to any curious traveller who may wish to enrich the pages of his virgin tour by their important communications.

And now, having given our hero’s birth and parentage with the fidelity of a true historian, who has a most virtuous scorn of the spurious embellishments of fiction, a more excursive pen shall flourish on our future chapters.

CHAPTER II.

The grandfather of Twm Shon Catty. Squire Graspacre on morality. Sir Jno. Wynn, the practical exponent of it—and our hero the result thereof.

Catty, the mother of Twm, lived in the most unsophisticated manner at Llidiard-y-Fynnon, with an ill-favoured, hump-backed sister, who was the general drudge and domestic manager. Their mother had long been dead, and their father, the horned cattle, a small farm and all its appurtenances, had been lost to them about two years. This little farm was their father’s property, but provokingly situated in the middle of the vast possessions of Squire Graspacre, an English gentleman-farmer, who condescendingly fixed himself in the principality with the laudable idea of civilizing the Welsh.

The most feasible mode of accomplishing so grand an undertaking, that appeared to him, was, to dispossess them of their property, and to take as much as possible of their country into his own paternal care. The rude Welsh, to be sure, he found so blind to their own interests as to prefer living on their farms to either selling or giving them away, to profit by his superior management. His master-genius now became apparent to everybody; for after ruining the owners, and appropriating to himself half the neighbouring country, the other half became his own with ease, as the poor little freeholders found it better to accept a small sum for their property, than to have all wasted in litigation, and perhaps, ultimately, to end their days in prison.

The maternal grandfather of Twm Shon Catty, was the last who held out against the tyranny of the squire. He triumphantly won his cause; but because he could not pay the costs, he was imprisoned by his own solicitor, in the county gaol of Cardigan, where it is said he died of a broken heart. The squire then gained his ends. The farm-house (separated from the land, which was added to another farm) became the dwelling of the old farmer’s two daughters: not a gift, as they had to pay annually about twice as much rental as they ought to have paid.

It was soon after this admirable settlement of his affairs, that the squire had a grand visitor to entertain at Graspacre Hall, who was no less a personage than Sir John Wynn, of Gwydir, in North Wales, whose sister our deep-scheming squire had just married, with the politic view of identifying himself with the Cambrian principality, and becoming one of the landed proprietors of the country. One day, after a long ride with his noble guest, over his far-spreading hills and vales, it was poor Catty’s lot to be observed by these lordly sons of affluence. She was spinning wool at the cottage door, a work which she seldom performed without the accompaniment of a song; and at that time she was giving utterance to a mournful ditty, as the recent death of her father had naturally attuned her mind to melancholy, and cast a cloud over her usual cheerfulness.

The great men stopped their horses: “a fine girl, Sir John,” cried the squire.

“You are right!” said the baronet: “I wonder if she would object to a few delicate attentions from a man of honour?”

“Object! my dear sir, I am surprised that you should ask the question. The girl is poor and friendless, and has just buried her father. My dear sir, it would be kind of you, if you were to call and offer her those ‘delicate attentions’ of which you speak.”

The amorous baronet was not slow to avail himself of this very amiable suggestion, delivered with a significant leer which could not be mistaken; he called for several successive evenings at Llidiard-y-Fynnon; but we may very reasonably question the delicacy of the attentions he proffered to the fair Catty. The sequel to the adventure soon became notorious, and the maiden Catty became the mother of our redoubted hero, thence, with an illusion to his father, called Twm Shon Catty.

CHAPTER III.

The boy indicative of the man. Antiquarian propensities show themselves. His mother rises in the world, and assumes the dignified office of village schoolmistress. Her mode of tuition. Twm a member of the “academy.”

As the period of early infancy seldom contains incidents worthy the recording pen of history, we shall bring our hero at once at his fourth year. The biographers of great men have generally evinced a predilection to present their readers with certain early indications of the peculiar genius that has distinguished their heroes in after life; and far from us be the presumption of deviating from such a popular and legitimate rule, by any radical attempt at innovation or improvement.

Pope’s lispings in numbers, West’s quaker daublings in childhood, with many other instances, not forgetting Peter Pindar’s waggery on Sir Joseph Bank’s spreading spiders and butterflies on his bread and butter, (certain indication of the future Naturalist,) are cases in point, which are familiar to every reader; true or not, we have also heard the story of Sir Isaac Newton’s partiality for apples, in childhood; that Paganini’s first desire was for a sixpenny toy fiddle; that other great men in infancy exemplified the motto that “Coming events cast their shadows before them;” and it will not appear strange to those already acquainted with his fame, that we have to add to these eminent names that of our long neglected hero.

It is true he became neither a poet, a painter, nor a natural historian, but, according to the unbiassed opinions of geniuses of the same caste with himself, who could not be suspected of either egotism or partiality, a superior character to either—an eminent antiquary—to which may be added, though perhaps it ought to take the lead—a no less eminent thief—if thief he can be called whose illicit doings were prompted by no motives of selfishness, but were ever the spontaneous offspring of whim and madcap daring.

Twm’s mother affirms (and when a lady affirms anything the gentlemen feel bound to believe in, and swear by it,) that her son’s first predilection consisted of an intense affection for street rubbish. The gutters and sweepings of Tregaron furnished him with materials for an antiquarian exhibition which he held in a stable manger. The pottery of bygone days, somewhat the worse for wear and tear, but still exhibiting the taste and substantial ideas of the original manufactures—cutlery of Sheffield manufactures, discarded and useless, but not beneath the notice of our juvenile showman—twisted hemp and bits of figured rags and paper, relics of time past—all formed part and parcel of his “exhibition.”

To be sure his occupation was not of the cleanest. To secure these priceless relics, he coated hands, face, and clothes, with a thick crust of mud, and thus showed his origin, by the close affection he had for mother earth. As in these little fancies he spent the greater part of his time, it became a wonder to his mother that he seldom ran home for food; but it was soon discovered that he had a mode peculiar to himself of raising contributions on the public of which he was a member, by forcing them to part with a portion of their bread and butter—a praiseworthy act, and trebly commendable, as in the first place it showed his filial piety, in saving his mother the expense of his victuals; in the next, it taught courtesy to the churlish, who in time anticipated his demand by voluntary offerings; and thirdly, it engendered the principle of honesty in their tender minds, by marking the propriety of paying for their curiosity in gaping over the produce of his labours. This, it will also be observed, was another feature that announced his future character, which, it will be seen, “grew with his growth, and strengthened with his strength.”

Sir Jno. Wynn was made acquainted with the result of those “delicate attentions,” to which we have before alluded, and as some sort of compensation, he bought the cottage of Squire Graspacre, and presented it to Catty, as the reward of her kind compliance with his “delicate” wishes. The little property made her of great importance in the district. As the house was large, and not overstocked with inhabitants, it occurred to the good people of Tregaron, that a day-school might be established within its walls; and having with their own consent found a school-room, by the same indisputable right they fixed on Catty for its mistress, and instituted her governess, to rule their tender progeny.

Catty, with huge grin of approbation at her unexpected promotion, immediately ratified their election, and declared both her house and self ready for the reception of pupils at the moderate terms of a penny a week. Her hump-backed sister was by no means pleased with this arrangement, and very testily asked, “Who was to clean up the house after the grubby fry?” Catty made no reply, but in the pride of her heart hummed a gay song, scratched the mud off her boy’s clothes with an old birch broom, which being hardened by sweeping the house, answered the purpose better than a brush, and had some old coffers converted into benches for the service of her scholars.

She then with singular alacrity, proceeded to cut from the hedge, with her own fair hand, one of the most engaging-looking birch rods, that ever was wielded by rural governess. This premature display of the sceptre of severity was far from fortunate, and nearly ruined the undertaking at the outset. The tender mothers of Tregaron were startled at so unexpected a proceeding, and practically declared they had rather their dear babes should be brought up like calves and pigs, in the most bestial ignorance, than have knowledge beaten into them at the nether end with a birch rod.

Catty immediately quieted their fears, by protesting that she entertained the utmost abhorrence of the flagellation system, and that the bunch of birch was but bound together for a very different purpose, namely, to be suspended as a sign over her door. As Catty was all compliance with their requisitions, every thing was set to rights; and without more ado children were sent from every house where the affluence of the inmates enabled them to give their offspring the first rudiments of education. The mother of Twm became the pink and paragon of schoolmistresses. ’Tis true, the noise and uproar of her school was so great, that the pigs were frightened from their trough, and the curate’s wife, who rode an ill-tamed horse, was thrown headlong into the well, when passing the academy, from the animal taking fright; but that was no fault of Catty’s; people should break in their horses properly, and curates’ wives should learn to ride and keep their seats better. Besides, the alleged uproar was the greatest evidence in her favour, as it proved the tenderness of her heart in not correcting her scholars—a quality more valued by their maternal parents than any other that could be substituted; and in their appreciation of this prime desideratum, they omitted to inquire minutely into her other qualifications for a governess.

Unreasonable people might have asserted that she should at least have been able to read and write with ordinary ability. But poor Catty was not troubled with either of these accomplishments, and believed with Dogberry, that “reading and writing came by nature,” and that “where ignorance is bliss, ’twere folly to be wise.” She congratulated herself that none could say to her “Too much learning hath made thee mad;” and inwardly thanked heaven that her sanity would be unquestioned if such a test was applied to her.

Many of Catty’s pupils had been taken by their wise and considerate mothers out of the curate’s school, fearful that his severity would break their hearts; and having there learnt their letters and a little spelling, they kept possession at least of what they had acquired, by teaching other children, which flattered their childish vanity, while it served their mistress, who, like a sage general that stands aloof from the broil of battle, takes to herself the credit of success, while the real operators are forgotten. Thus in time, with the powerful support of the matrons of Tregaron, who took the lead of their spouses, and directed the taste and opinions of the clodhopping community, Catty’s school became an alarming rival to the curate’s.

The mode of tuition adopted by Twm’s mother, was an entirely original one, as the reader will have surmised. It cost very little trouble in acquiring, because its chief secret consisted in tutor and pupils doing just what they chose. It may save a good deal of anxiety and trouble to those tutors who are too conscientious if we furnish them with a leaf from the book of this original preceptor.

“Come here, little Guenny Cadwgan,” said Catty one day, “Come here, my little pretty buttercup, and say your lesson, if you can; but if you can’t, never mind, I won’t beat nor scold you.” Guenny came forward bobbing a curtsey, and while his mistress broomed the mud from little Twm’s breeches, began her lesson.

Guenny.—a, b, hab.

Catty.—There’s a good maaid!

Guenny.—e, b, heb.

Catty.—There’s a good maaid!

Guenny.—o, b, hob.

Catty.—There’s a good maaid!

Guenny.—i, b,—can’t tell.

Catty.—Skipe it, child, skipe it—(meaning “skip it.”)

Guenny.—u, b, cub.

Catty.—There’s a good maaid! Twm you little wicked dog, don’t kick the child. Go on, Guenny vach.

Twm.—(who had been struggling for some time to get from under his mother’s combs,) I want to go a fishing.

Catty.—Lord love the darling child! You’ll fall into the river and be drowned.

Twm.—Oh! no, mother; I always fish in the gutters.

Dio Bengoch.—I want to go home for some bread and butter.

“And I! and I! and I!” squalls every urchin in the school; and out they would run in a drove, on perceiving the independent exit of master Twm, without waiting for the permission of his parent and governess.

CHAPTER IV.

A lecture on learning. Astuteness below stairs. A gentleman’s opinion on servants. A horse milliner. Intimacy with Catty. More suspicion of “delicate attentions,” which so far are not quite so criminal as the squire’s.

Perhaps our modern governesses who possess the vain accomplishment of reading and writing, may feel disposed to undervalue the acquirements of our rural Welsh governess. But let them not triumph; and be it recollected that tastes differ, and that many of our living patricians, as well as wealthy plebeians, who are considered the great, the mighty, and the respectable of the land, deprecate with becoming vehemence the prevailing mania for educating the poor. We have heard ladies, and great ones too, attired in silks and velvets, pall and purple, and “faring sumptuously every day,” declare most positively that they never knew a servant good for anything that could read and write.

No sooner were they capable of wielding a goose quill, than the impudent hussies presumed to have a will of their own, and their opinions mounted a step nearer to the attitude of their mistresses. And on men, they said, education had a worse effect, as thereby they became the idle readers of books and newspapers, which made them saucy to their superiors, and sometimes the most villanous cut-throat radicals. Now it will be readily admitted, we should think, that there was little danger of Catty’s scholars ever becoming such pernicious characters; and therefore, let not liberal envy withhold from her the well-merited meed of applause. Alas for the good old times—we see no such school-mistresses now-a-days! those days of the golden age of simplicity are gone for ever.

Perhaps we might wonder that the parents of the children, those who paid such a round sum every week for instruction administered to those “babes and sucklings,” did not grumble at the slow pace at which the process went on. But to criticise a subject properly, we must be “well up” in it, and the villagers of Tregaron were not exactly calculated to measure the amount of “book larning” their babes did, or did not acquire. They were satisfied if their children were “out of the way, the livelong day” and a penny per week was surely not so high a price to pay for that luxury.

Although our hero’s mother could not be called a woman of letters, she certainly possessed qualities more original than generally fell to the lot of persons in her station. At carding wool or spinning it, knitting stockings or mittens, the most envious admitted her superiority to every woman in Tregaron.

She moreover had gained no small consideration in another character, which her jealous neighbours satirically denominated a hedge milliner, whose province it was to mend hedging gloves and coarse frocks for ploughmen, to darn or patch with leather the heels of their stout woollen stockings, and also to repair horse collars at half the price charged by old Daff the saddler; the latter part of her occupation, which required a delicate hand to cut the slender sewing thongs from the raw bull hides, caused her to be called a horse milliner, which, after all, was not much more applicable than if she had been called a bull tailor. This malignant waggery, however, was unable to disturb the tranquil soul of Catty; she loved horses, and in her juvenile days had often whiled away her mornings and evenings in the rural pastime of driving them, both in plough and harrow, while carolling some rural ditty, till the rocks and mountains echoed with the cadence of her harmony.

Catty, with such capabilities and accomplishments, was of course an object of wonder, awe, and admiration, to many of the swains of Tregaron, notwithstanding those “delicate attentions” bestowed upon her by Sir Jno. Wynn, bart., but the success of her original method of tuition made her quite independent of their protestations. But, altering the sex in the quotation, we may say that, “There is a tide in the affairs of women;” and it proved to be so in Catty’s case.

The right man came at last. Like all her amiable sex, she professed the utmost abhorrence of mercenary motives in marriage, though many insinuated that she knew the value of property from having never possessed any worth mentioning. It was observed that she treated with indifference, if not aversion, those unprofitable lovers who had nothing but their goodly persons to recommend them.

Certain innuendoes were even thrown out respecting a suspicion of her coquettings with one of the most ugly, miserly, and repulsive of clowns;—one who was not only a clown, but a red-haired one;—not only knock-kneed, but squint-eyed;—not only squint-eyed, but a woman-hater; and worse than all, a foreigner!—being a native of a distant part of the adjoining county of Carmarthen, and known only by the nick-name of Jack of Sheer Gâr, or Carmarthenshire Jack.

This person was repulsive in the extreme. Clad in old, patched, dirty clothes, with such peculiar facial properties as we have before enumerated, he was apparently the last man upon whom one of the opposite sex would have cast her favouring eye. He was at this time chief husbandman and bailiff to the squire, an office which, giving him power over other servants, we may be very sure did not increase his popularity. But few showed their distaste and aversion openly; it would have been a dangerous experiment with Jack of Sheer Gâr.

The standing jest against him was, his qualifications as a trencherman, and his reputation as a “huge feeder” was certainly unrivalled. As there was not a single pastime under the head of amusement, that the ingenuity of man has ever devised for the entertainment of his fellows, save eating, that possessed a charm for him, it might of course be expected that this solitary recreation would be indulged in the proportion that he excluded all others. He not only performed all the functions of the gross glutton, but as the actors say, “looked the character,” to perfection.

The reader, measuring him by other men, would make a very erroneous guess on the most prominent feature of his face, if he fixed on the nasal protuberance—no such thing—his nose was flat and small, but his large projecting upper teeth, like “rocks of pearl jutting over the sea,” were ever bared for action, white as those of his only companion, the mastiff, and nobly independent of a sheathing lip.

Others more comely features might wear
But Jack was famed for his white teeth bare.

As the squire’s lady was not the most liberal in supplying the servants’ table, those wags, male or female, who were in the habit of committing the silent mimicry against Jack, were soon taught a severe lesson at the expense of their bowels. It was discovered that, whenever enraged at their treatment, instead of spending his breath in vain reproaches, or taking to the more violent proceeding of fisty-cuffs, Jack revenged himself by eating most outrageously, so that scoffers, deprived of their shares, often found their stomachs minus. His power of mastication increased with his anger; and the flaming energy that was mentally inciting him to give an enemy a fierce facer, or a destructive cross-buttock, was diverted from his knuckles to his teeth; and in every quantum which he ground in his relentless mill, he felt the glowing satisfaction of having annihilated a foe.

Woe to those who were his next neighbours at table, and sat so close to his elbows at those hours of excitement; fierce punches in the ribs, as if by accident, were among the slightest consequences; and those who were thus taught the manners to keep a respectable distance, declared that the fears they entertained was only of his knife. But his bloodthirsty propensities were not so great as they were represented to be. Jack believed in the “power of the eye,” and exemplified it, in his own case, by making that organ express what his head never meant to carry out. The squire knew his value as a faithful servant, and turned a deaf ear to all the evil that was reported of him.

Before fanaticism had cast its puritanic gloom over Wales, and identified itself almost with the Welsh in character, mirth and minstrelsy, dance and song, emulative games and rural pastimes were the order of the day; and, as the people worked hard all the week, it must be confessed that these sports often infringed upon the sanctity of the Sabbath.

Sundays were often entirely spent in dancing, wrestling, and kicking the foot-ball. The latter violent exercise, at this time prevalent in Cardiganshire, was performed in large parties of village against village, and parish against parish, when the country brought together its mass of population either to partake in the glories of the game or to enjoy the success of their friends, as spectators. On these occasions Carmarthen Jack loved to be present, but only as a spectator, as he was never known to take a part in the game.

Jack thought the exercise of play was waste of time and breath. He told others that he “kept his breath to cool his flummery, and his strength to make money.” Whilst the others were panting with efforts made in the game, Jack was quietly cutting and carving his wooden spoons, made out of the birch or alder which he stored all the week under his bed, for the purpose of drying it.

At fairs also, Carmarthen Jack would be equally punctual, and after having done his master’s business of buying or selling a horse or so, would be seen with a load of merchandise of his own manufacture, wooden spoons, ladles, and clog soles, in abundance, which drew about him all the rural house-keepers far and near. “No milliner could suit her customers with gloves” in greater variety than Jack with spoons to please his purchasers. He had spoons for man, woman and child, fashioned for every sort of mouth, from the tiny infant’s to the shark-jaws of the hungry ploughman, which, like his own, was said to present a gap from ear to ear. He had spoons for use, and spoons for ornament; the latter, meant to keep company with the showy polished pewter, were made of box or yew, highly polished and curiously carved with divers characters, supposed to be suns, moons, stars, hearts transfixed with the dart of cupid, and sometimes a hen and chickens; with hieroglyphics for fear of their being mistaken for a cat and mice, with other such misconstructions, Jack always explained at the time of bargaining, without any extra charge.

Nothing could more emphatically prove the excellency of Jack’s wares, than the circumstance of his being personally unpopular among the women, and yet his wares in the highest esteem. The frowns of the fair, which threw a gloom on the sunshine of his days, may be traced to a source not at all dishonourable to him. The girls at the squire’s had played him so many tricks, that once in the height of aggravation, Jack waged war against the whole sex, devoting to the infernal gods every creature that wore a petticoat, and vowing, from that day forward, not one of the proscribed race should ever enter his room, which was romantically situated over the stable, its wickered lattice commanding a full view of both the pigsty and the dunghill.

The consequence of this terrible row caused him, at first, some trouble, as, to keep it, he was obliged thenceforward to be his own chambermaid, laundress, and sempstress, offices that accorded ill with his previous habits. The laudable firmness of his nature, however, soon overcame these petty difficulties; and so far was he from backsliding from his previous determination, that he vowed to throw through the window the first woman who entered his chamber, which the satirical hussies called his den—a threat which effectually secured him from further intrusion.

Sometimes, indeed, while sitting at the door of the cow-house, or the stable, listening to the rural sounds of the cackling geese and grunting pigs, and darning his hose, or patching his leather breeches, or treading his shift in the brook by way of washing it, those eternal plagues of his, the girls, would be seen and heard behind the covert of a wall or hedge, smothering their tittering, which at last would burst out, in spite of suppression, into a loud horse-laugh, when, one and all, they would take to their heels, while Jack amused himself by pelting their rear, in their precipitate retreat, with clods of earth, small stones or anything that came in his way.

“Circumstances alter cases.” In time Jack gained the reputation of being rich. He had made spoons to some purpose, and however the fair sex may cry up their disinterestedness, we are all aware that money materially alters the position of a man in their eyes. One of the maids with this knowledge, became very suddenly enamoured of him, and tried to gain his good will. But having one day ventured to Jack’s “sanctum,” the wench was pitched into the dunghill below, and as a consequence the “pangs of despised love” raged in her bosom. The first act of her resentment was to spread about the insidious report that Jack Sheer was a woman-hater—an insinuation that rather preyed upon his mind, as he dreaded the effect such an unmerited stigma would have upon his private trade. But innocence is ever predestined to an ultimate triumph; and an event soon happened that proved the falsehood of those prevalent tales to his discredit, and convinced his greatest foes that he possessed a heart, if not overflowing with human charity, at least penetrable to the blandishments of beauty, and quick with sensibility to female merit.

On one auspicious market-day, Carmarthen Jack appeared in the streets of Tregaron where the market is held, loaded with his usual merchandise, which he spread on the ground, and sat beside them; but not meeting with a ready sale, and disdaining even momentary idleness, began with earnestness to cut and scoop away at a piece of alder, gradually forming it into a huge ladle, to correspond with the largest size three-legged iron pot. On this eventful morning Catty had occasion to perambulate the fair, to purchase a new ladle, her cross-grained sister having broken the old one, by thumping with it on the back of an overgrown hog, whose foraging propensities had led him to investigate the recesses of the schoolroom.

The notoriety occasioned by Jack’s peculiarities, and the fact of his having money, reached the ears of Catty, and our prudent tutor determined to make his acquaintance through the medium of the broken ladle. Some people say that Catty broke the ladle herself, broke it with a design and that design was an excuse for visiting and conquering one who hated all her sex. Be that as it may, she sought and found him in the fair, and fell in love with him and his ladle at the same instant. After an effort to conquer her native bashfulness, and to look as lovely as possible, she accosted him with such uncommon civility as utterly astounded the poor clownish misanthropic bachelor. She examined the ladle in his hand, and though not half finished, declared it to be the handsomest ever her eyes beheld, and paid for it without seeking the least abatement in the price. Jack gaped at her, with open mouth and staring eyes, and thought her a very interesting woman, though his first impression was, that she was mad, as he had asked double the selling price, on purpose to abate one half, according to the custom immemorial in Welsh dealings.

She next purchased half a dozen common birch-wood spoons, and, as many ornamental ones made of box, to adorn her shelf, and, as before paid him his own price. Jack thought her very lovely indeed: and when she made another purchase of a pair of clog soles, quite irresistible!—her ready money opened his heart as the best key in the world would have done a patent lock; and he was almost ready to offer them as a present, but for fear of wounding her delicacy. As she found he had no further variety, she ordered half a dozen more common spoons, and Jack, with all the amiability that he could possibly throw into his hard features, presented her with one of his most finished articles in box. She received it with that peculiar smile with which a lady accepts a welcome love-token, and replied in the softest tone imaginable, “Indeed I will keep it for your sake, John bach!”

Jack had nothing to do but wonder—he never had been called John in his life before; at any other time he would have thought she mocked him—and the endearing term of “bach” too, was equally new to his ears, which seemed to grow longer as they tingled with the grateful sound. This interesting scene was closed by Catty asking him to her house to partake of a dinner of flummery and milk, which he accepted with the best grace imaginable, and trudged off with his wares on his back and dangling from his arms and button-holes; and thus gallanting her in the most amatory style; he walked by her side to Llidiard-y-Fynon.

Unaccustomed to kindness in either word or deed, poor Jack of Sheer Gâr, met her condescensions and advances with a sheepish sort of gratitude. A cordial invitation on the part of Catty to repeat his visit as soon, and as often, as possible, affected him almost to tears; and as a proof of his unbounded confidence, he left in her care his whole stock of ready-made spoons and ladles, and almost blubbered when he shook her hand at parting.

As a proof of the beneficial effect of kindness on a churlish nature, and the contrary, of ridicule and persecution, we need but contrast this rugged man’s previous character and conduct with what followed, after the tenderness of Catty had melted the frost of misanthropy which formed a crusty coat round his heart. The adventure of the day produced a most extraordinary revolution in his habits. None of the servants of the hall, male or female, could conceive what it portended, when Jack asked one of them, his fellow husbandman, to trim his hair; and while the fellow clipped his rough red locks with his sheep-shears, once mischievously pinching his ear with them till he roared, he was surprised at his questions about the price of a new pair of leather breeches, and a red neck-cloth. Greater still was the astonishment of the whole house, when, in a few days after, he appeared changed into a complete rustic buck in those very articles of dress, and while he thought nobody saw him, endeavoured to cut a dancing caper on the green, which they mistook for a frisky bullock. Changes like these are seldom without a reason, thought his fellow servants; and when they saw Jack’s elated steps lead him towards Catty’s house, they jeered, and laughed, and winked; and nothing knew of course, although their knowledge made him all the worse. Tregaron and its neighbourhood had now food for gossip, and gossip to some people is indeed the very acme of human felicity.

Flummery and milk, named here as the food on which those lovers regaled, has been considered in Wales a very popular mess, common, but still a favourite among high and low, and might be seen on the board of the lord lieutenant of county, as well as on that of the humblest cottager. The lofty of the land whose pampered stomachs have turned with loathing from more dainty dishes in sultry seasons, have welcomed the simplicity of milk and flummery, as the advocate of native charms would greet the smilings of a rustic beauty, while the meretricious fair of fashion would be passed by, neglected.

The English reader will not be offended if I dilate a little praise of my favourite bowl or platter, (too much to call it a dish perhaps,) while I explain its nature; and if he be a bloated son of affluence, overflowing with bile and spleen, he will thank us, after adopting our recommendation of feeding on it often during his rustication among our mountains. Our candid sages of the pill and potion, also recommend it as very effective in promoting an increase of good clear healthy blood.

Flummery is made of the inner hulls of ground oats, when sifted from the meal, some of which still adheres to it, by soaking it in water till it acquires a slight taste of acidity, when it is strained through a hair sieve and boiled till it becomes a perfect jelly. When poured from that prince of culinary vessels, the large three-legged iron pot, into a vast earthen dish, it presents a smooth smiling aspect of the most winning equanimity, till destroyed by the numerous invading spoons of the company, who plunge a portion of it, scalding hot, into their bowls of cool milk. Thus much of the descriptive history is given, to illustrate the following ode to its immortal praise, with which we shall now close this long chapter.

MILK AND FLUMMERY.

Let luxury’s imbecile train,
Of appetites fastidious,
Each sauced provocative obtain,
The draught or viand perfidious;
But oh! give me that simple food,
Lov’d by the sons of Cymru.
With health, with nourishment imbued,
The sweet cool milk and flummery.

Let pudding-headed English folk
With boast of roast-beef fag us;
Let Scottish Burns crack rural jokes,
And vaunt kail-brose and haggis;
But Cymrian sons, of mount and plain,
From Brecknock to Montgomery,
Let us the honest praise maintain,
Of sweet cold milk and flummery.

On sultry days when appetites
Wane dull, and low, and queasy,
When loathing stomachs nought delights,
To gulph our flummery’s easy.
Dear oaten jelly, pride of Wales!
Thou smooth-faced child of Cymry.
On the ruddy swain regales,
And blesses milk and flummery.

’Tis sweet to stroll on Cambrian heights
O’er-looking vales and rivers.
Where thin and purest air invites,
The soul from spleen delivers;
That foe of bile the light repast
To bloated gout may come wry.
But Nature’s child, thy mid-day fast
Break thou with milk and flummery.

CHAPTER V.

Another lecture in Welsh. “Courting in bed.” Our hero’s education progresses. The Curate’s school.

Whilst our lovers were regaling themselves upon milk and flummery, Twm Shon Catty was concocting and putting into execution his first practical joke, for while they sat side by side at the goodly oak table, he fastened them together by the coat and gown with a peeled thorn spike, which before the introduction of pins, was used by the fair sex to unite about them their various articles of attire.

This freak being performed, Twm stole off unperceived, and getting on the outside of the door, he was joined by Watt the mole catcher, and a party of children instructed for the purpose, in a loud and astounding cry of mad bull! a mad bull! at the same time forcing before them into the house a little trotting calf, whose buttocks were tortured by Twm’s ox-goad till he reared and capered up to the very table where the lover’s sat. Catty screamed, and both jumped up mutually terrified, as sudden fear had magnified the little animal to the proportions of an enormous brute of an enraged bull, whose uninvited visit and uncalled for appearance at their dinner table, portending nothing less than death. When Twm and Watt’s laughter at length undeceived them, the spoon merchant, who had been so liberally assisted with spoon and meat, found to his dismay, that with his heart Catty had carried away the skirt of his coat, by the sudden jerk of rising from their seats; and had the gods made Jack poetical, he might have exclaimed with the renowned Mr. Tag,—[31]

The lovely maid on whom I dote
Hath made a spencer of my coat.

The wicked urchin who caused this unsanctioned union continued with his mischievous party, their laughter long and loud, and Catty’s grumpy sister Juggy, for the first time in her life, astonished them with a grin on the occasion. Twm received a severe rebuke from his parent, and poor hapless Jack, with the view of propitiating an evil spirit that might prove troublesome to him hereafter, made him a present of a new spoon, which, because it was merely a common one he ungratefully threw into the blazing turf fire, that on this festal occasion glowed on the hearth in a higher pile and wider dimensions than usual, and demanded one of his best box-wood ware.

Jack would have given it to him immediately but for the intervention of his mother, who forbade the indulgence. No sooner, however, was he gone than Twm watched his opportunity and purloined as many of the better sort as he could conveniently take away unperceived, and sold them at the cheap rate of stolen goods, to an old woman named, or rather nick-named, Rachel Ketch, from some supposed resemblance in her character to that finisher of the law, although some persons roundly asserted that she was in fact a relict of one John Ketch, Esquire, of Stretch-neck-Place, Session Court, Carmarthen.

As no further consequence followed this act of unprovoked delinquency, it was scarcely worth mentioning, except that it stands as the first of the kind on record; and when discovered, Twm’s over affectionate parent did not punish him for it,—an omission that might have watered the root of a vast tree of after enormities, but the mirthful mind rarely produces such an upas monstrosity.

We come now to the era of his history when our hero entered another scene of life, in that of a new school, which event was ushered in by an unlooked-for circumstance, that must be first narrated.

To our English readers it may be a piece of information if we make known that in some parts of Wales, “Courting in bed” is very common. It was so, at least when the first and second editions of this work were issued, but now is confined only to a few particular districts. Some of our readers may be shocked; but when they are assured that the custom embraces nothing which is not consistent with the strictest honour, they will perhaps accord our ancient custom a little more charity. This comfortable mode of forwarding a marriage connexion prevailed very generally at Tregaron, to the great scandal and virtuous indignation of the lady of Squire Graspacre. It was amazing to witness with what energy this good gentlewoman set about reforming the people, by the forcible abolishment of what she pleased to call, this odious, dangerous, blasphemous, and ungodly custom.

Her patronage was for ever lost to any man or woman, youth or maid, of the town or country, who was related to, or connected with any person who connived at bed courtship. There was not a cottager who called at the great house for a pitcher of whey, skim milk, or buttermilk, as a return for labour in harvest time, but was closely examined on this head; and woe to those who had the temerity to assert that there was no harm in the custom; or that the wooers merely laid down in their clothes, and thus conversed at their ease on their future plans or prospects; or who denied that such a situation was more calculated for amorous caresses and endearments than sitting by a scanty fire in a chimney corner.

Mrs. Graspacre was certainly a very virtuous—a very termagant of decorous propriety. If any person dared, in her presence, to advocate this proscribed and utterly condemned mode, disdaining to argue the point, she would settle the matter in a summary manner, peculiarly her own, by protesting she would have a woman burnt alive who would submit to be courted in bed.

In the course of two years there were no less than four young men, and twice as many damsels, turned away from her service for courting in the hay-loft; and on these occasions the poor girls never escaped personal violence from the indignant and persevering Mrs. Graspacre. She also assured them in language undistinguished for choiceness or delicacy, that “they were not to try and hoodwink her by telling her it meant nothing. She knew better, she had not lived all these years to be lied to and cheated by a common w—e.” In her flaming zeal for decorum, the tongs, the poker, the pitchfork, or the hay-rake, became an instrument of chastisement. A double advantage was discovered in the terror thus created, the dignity of her sex being in the first place asserted and supported: in the next, the offenders preferred running away without payment of their wages, to standing the chance of having their heads or arms broken with a poker, or their bodies pierced by the terrible prongs of a pitchfork.

All the lowly dependents of Mrs. Graspacre found it their interest to become her spies, who soon vied with each other in giving the earliest intimation of any amorous pair who committed this most diabolical offence; and those who were least forward in bringing intelligence on this score, immediately sunk in her esteem, and were mulct of their allowance of skim milk and blue whey.

But in time the old hen-wives of the neighbourhood discovered the virtue of sycophancy and the efficacy of a little seasonable cant! and when they were not warranted by real occurrences, they contrived to conciliate their patroness by drawing upon their fertile imagination and inventions; at other times, their knowledge of Mrs. Graspacre’s failing served their own revenge. Let anybody offend them, and they immediately went to the lady with a manufactured tale, doing more credit to the imagination than the heart. Their enemy had been found courting in bed with Miss So-and-so, which was the signal for immediate condemnation without trial.

Not satisfied with these auxiliaries in the cause of virtue, the zealous Mrs. Graspacre enlisted on her side a very powerful champion, in the person of the reverend Mr. Inco Evans, the curate of Tregaron. Great was her mortification to find her attempts on the rector fail of success, as he declared it dangerous and ungenerous to interfere with the peculiarities and long-established customs of the people; especially as he conceived it was rarely that any bad consequences ensued from the mode in question; but when the evil really occurred, if the faithless swain delayed making due reparation, a gaol, exile from his native place, or a compelled marriage, was the consequence, a penalty incurred. “Besides,” quoth the worthy rector, with a hearty laugh, “that was the very way in which I courted my own wife, and many persons who are no enemies of virtue, consider it the best mode in the world, and were I young again, ha, ha, ha! egad, I think I should pursue the same fashion.”

“And I too!” cries Mr. Graspacre, “as I have no objection in the world to the custom.” The reader’s experience of the squire will certainly give him credit for speaking truth in this instance. The notions of morality would be highly forwarded by courting in bed. But as for Mrs. Graspacre, had the faces of all the foul-fiends been united in one for the purpose of producing a ne plus ultra of concentrated devilry, it would not have surpassed the amiable expression upon her face. “You, Mr. Graspacre! you! I’m astonished; but”—(with a severe glance at the rector) “when the shepherd goes astray, no wonder the silly sheep follow his example!” With that, she bounced out of the room, and slammed the door in a high fit of indignation, aggravated by the calm looks of the rector, and the provoking tittering of her liege lord.

The rector’s honest dissent from her scheme of reformation, Mrs. Graspacre considered a direct declaration of hostilities, and therefore, by her peculiar creed of morality, she felt herself bound to vilify his name, and most piously longed for his death, that the cause of virtue might be supported by the talents of her favourite curate, who was now, she said, on a poor stipend which he increased by keeping a school in the church.

The reverend Inco Evans, the curate, played his cards well; he was a hard-featured man, with lowering brows and a complete ploughman’s gate; insolent to his poor parishioners, and a very awkward cringer to the great. But flattery, direct or covert, does much, and in time completely won him the favour of the great lady. She encouraged his patience by assuring him that the vicar, in his declined state of health, could not possibly live long; and his death, happen when it might, must appear, to all unprejudiced christians, as a judgment, for advocating, or not prosecuting, that execrable custom courting in bed.

As the living had long been promised to him, the hopes and expectations of Mr. Inco Evans were very sanguine. Waiting for dead men’s shoes is rather a wearisome thing, especially if the object of your affectionate solicitude be apparently in the best of health; but the curate was hopeful, and patient; and as he was no less ambitious than sycophantic and impervious, he looked forward with confidence to the period when he should strut forth in a fire-shovel hat, as vicar of the parish, and a magistrate in the county.

Notwithstanding that the living was promised him by the lady, he was aware that she was not always paramount, and therefore lost no opportunity of insinuating himself in the squire’s favour. He would laugh loudly to the injury of his lungs, at the squire’s most vapid jokes; praise the beauty of his snub-nosed children, and call curs, pointers; tell him where the prettiest lasses in the parish were to be found; with many such honourable civilities, that Squire Graspacre at length discovered him to be a very useful sort of person.

When Sir John Wynn of Gwydir paid his before mentioned visit, his sister introduced and recommended our curate, as a right worthy divine who deserved preferment; and the baronet promised to remember her recommendation, if anything turned out, within his power, to benefit him. Much time had elapsed, and nothing followed this agreeable promise; but Inco Evans persevered in his sycophancy, and if the labour and dirty work be properly estimated, he certainly justified his claims to a good living—in his majesty’s plantations, beyond the seas; to which he ought to have been inducted at the expense of government, and, as the artful Dodger says, he should have

“Gone abroad for the good of his health,
But not at his own expense!”

He soon saw the weak side of his lady patroness: and anxious to strengthen his influence by promoting her views, he gave great encouragement to those boys in his school who brought him the piquant tales of their grown up brothers and sisters. Much scandal was afloat at this time respecting the loves of Carmarthen Jack and Catty of Llidiard-y-Fynnon; he would almost have given his right hand to know how it was carried on. But Jack was wily; and though Catty possessed little book-learning, she had enough knowledge to outwit the curate. These lovers only went out at night, and took care to choose a solitary place for their meetings, so that getting information was, in their case, difficult of attainment. At length the cunning man thought he had hit upon a plan.

Little Twm Shon Catty, being the natural child of Sir John Wynn, was of course the illegitimate nephew of the great lady; a relationship which she, however, disdained to acknowledge; but the cunning curate took the liberty of observing one day, it was a great pity that the slightest drop of the noble blood of the Wynns, however perverted and polluted, should be run to waste and be neglected. Proceeding in this drift, he insinuated that if the boy Twm Shon Catty were removed to his school, he should not only be instructed and improved, but that he, the curate, might thereby learn from the youngster something of his mother’s proceedings; and especially, whether she entertained her lover in the legal or the proscribed manner. This was striking on the very string that made music to her busy, meddling, troublesome soul;—she of course warmly approved of his idea, and put it into immediate execution. Thus, the very next day, in her own and in her brother’s name, little Twm Shon Catty was ordered for the future to be sent to the curate’s school, which of course was complied with accordingly.

CHAPTER VI.

Twm progresses at the opposition school. Flogging made easy. Out of the frying-pan into the fire. Sports at Whirligoogan.

The great success of Catty’s school excited the ill-will of parson Inco; although he had far more scholars than he could possibly attend to. His indignation at his wife’s fall from her horse into the well, while passing his humble rival’s seminary, together with the humiliating consideration that many of the most juvenile deserted his rule, to submit to hers, wounded this consequential personage to the quick. Like the fox and the grapes, he sneered at that which was out of his reach, protested that the “room” of those scholars who had deserted him was much better than their company.

This new arrangement respecting Twm, they thought could not but be vexatious to Catty, and therefore Mistress Evans felt herself avenged for the tittering that she heard in her school, on her fall into the well as before mentioned. But far different was the case from what they anticipated, for Catty no sooner heard the order, than in the sincerity of her heart, she exclaimed, “Thank God! the boy will learn something from the parson, but I could teach him nothing.”

Little Twm was now in his seventh year, and as refractory a pupil as ever was spoiled by a dawdling mother. Kept aloof from his dear duck-ponds and puddles, and compelled to explore the mysteries of the horn-book, this first change in his life was acutely felt. Self-willed and stubborn, he conceived the utmost abhorrence of horn-books, cross curates, and birch-rods; he wept and sulked, struck the boys who mocked him, stayed away from school, and was flogged so often, that at length he found it much easier to learn his book than endure the consequence of neglecting it.

Once arrived at this happy mood, and being one day praised by his master, a new spirit possessed the boy; he resolved to revenge himself on those youths who formerly had made him their butt of ridicule, by getting the start of them in learning. The horn-book was soon thrown by; the Reading-made-easy and Spelling-book shared a similar fate; and the pride of a young heart sparkled in his eyes when his great lady aunt, on hearing a good account of him from his master, presented him with a bible, on the inside of the cover of which was the following couplet:—

“Take this Holy Bible book,
God give thee grace therein to look.”

A specimen of poetry which was considered by everybody to be the index to a master-mind. Mount Parnassus was scaled, and that by an inhabitant of Tregaron! Poor Catty proudly showed the book and the poetry to all her neighbours, who sagely declared Mrs. Graspacre’s bounty and poetry equally fine.

Notwithstanding his rapid advancement in book learning, parson Evans was far from being satisfied with his pupil, nor was his main end answered in having brought him to his school. Twm loved his mother, and felt no great affection for his master, nor gratitude for the floggings which had enforced so much learning into his head; and never could the generous boy be brought to tell any tales to her disadvantage. The curate’s severity increased, and no longer praised or encouraged; Twm became not only indifferent to his tasks, but wanton and unjust severity had the effect of blunting his feelings; and making him stubborn and revengeful; until at length he arrived at such an extremity of youthful recklessness, as to study tricks for the annoyance of his master, and the scholars whom he found unfriendly.

In the eleventh year of his age, some decisive shoots of character made their appearance; a taste for sharp sayings, a skilful trickery in outwitting his opponents, appear to be his striking peculiarities, as well as boldness and resolution on the play-ground, where none could surpass him in robust or violent exercises. His faithful ally and constant instructor, Watt the mole catcher, taught him many useful and striking lessons when the pedagogue had done with our hero for the day. Twm, under his tuition, soon became proficient in the use of cudgels and quarter-staff.

More particular in the latter he excelled; and his superiority in this ancient and national exercise was exemplified by the loud cries and broken heads of his defeated schoolfellows. A catastrophe of that kind one day, even in school-time, brought the enraged master out, who severely asked Twm what he meant by such conduct. “Why, sir,” cried the little rogue, “You always say that you never can beat anything into the head of Peter Penddwl, so I tried what I could do with the cudgel, that’s all!” For this he was booked for a future flogging. A few days after, his master sent him from the school to his house, for a book which he wanted.

Twm found the mistress and maid out, the first at the Hall, and the last had made a present of her little leisure to her sweetheart, Watt the mole-catcher. On entering the parlour, he saw there a fine bunch of grapes, which his great lady aunt had sent his master. As this was a fruit hitherto unknown to him, he deliberately tasted two or three to discover whether they were eatable. Having gradually seen the bunch grow “beautifully less,” it seemed a pity to separate the lovely fruit, so Twm thought they should all go the same way.

He therefore resolved to finish it, and lay the blame on the cat, if charged with the theft; as to dividing the spoil, and leaving a portion for the owner, the scheme was impracticable, he decided to abide by his master’s maxim, “that it was not decent for two to eat from the same dish.” Lifting up the remains of the luscious bunch with affected ceremony, he exclaimed in a lofty tone, mimicking his master, “I publish the banns of marriage between my mouth and this bunch of grapes; if any one knows just cause or impediment why they should not be joined together, let him now declare it, or hereafter forever, hold his peace!” And as no dissentient voice intervened, he abruptly cried—“silence gives consent,” and hastily consummated the delicious union.

No sooner had he gulped the grapes than his master made his appearance. Suspecting the cause of his delay, he had followed after, and witnessing the imposing ritual, he stood, rod in hand, surrounded by his scholars, whom he had called. When all was in readiness, he exclaimed, “I publish the banns of marriage between my rod and your breech; if any one knows just cause or impediment why they may not be lawfully joined together in wedlock, let him now declare it.”

“I forbid the banns!” roared Twm Shon Catty; “For what reason?” cried the awful pedant, flourishing his rod in eager preparation.

“Because,” cried the waggish urchin, “the parties are not agreed.” At this moment a servant from Graspacre Hall brought a message from the lady of that mansion, that she wished to see the Reverend Mr. Inco Evans immediately; on which Twm obtained a remission of his flogging. History does not furnish us with satisfactory particulars as to whether Twm was liberated on account of his ready wit, or because necessity demanded it, the pedagogue being in a hurry.

The boys were now thrilled to ecstasy with that magic word, a “holiday!” and away scampered each and all to their respective amusements. Briefly, however, was their gust of enjoyment, for parson Inco’s voice was soon heard, vociferating his wrath in no gentle terms; and now he appeared in his shirt sleeves, his best Sunday sable coat in his hand, divested of every button.

His face at no time prepossessing, was now terrible to look on, inflamed with anger, with a slight tint of blue-black over his native strong ground of turkey-red. Great was the terror of the poor enslaved scholars as he howled out “What villain has cut off all the buttons from my coat?” A general whimper of, “it was not I, sir,” passed among the shivering train. And upon Mr. Inco’s threat to flog them all round unless the culprit was instantly discovered, one blue-nosed wretch, upon whom Evans had seized to commence his vengeance, roared out that it was Twm Shon Catty. “Where is the young catiff?” roared the Reverend Mr. Inco Evans.

“Playing at whirligoogan on the horseblock.”

“I’ll whirligoogan him with a vengeance,” roared the Tyro, at the same time snatching up his terrific bunch of birch which he had facetiously christened the tree of knowledge. Either from having a foreboding of the cause of this bustle, or being timely warned of the approaching danger, Twm had now made good his retreat, wisely considering that “Discretion was the better part of valour,” and that “He who fights and runs away, may live to fight another day.” So that at the precise moment when the curate thought Twm’s presence desirable, that happy individual, not the least afraid, was busy sketching a caricature of his master.

The materials were blank wall, a piece of chalk, and an extensive imagination, whilst he took care to place this artistic production within the precincts of a small house never visited except when absolutely necessary, but where he knew the curate would be able to study the fine arts at his leisure, though possibly it might turn out to be the “pursuit of knowledge under difficulties.” On the horse-block, however, was found his stock of whirligigs, which the Welsh boys called the whirligoogans. These were no other than the identical button moulds, which our hero had cut from the best gala-day coat of the Reverend Inco Evans, with pegs driven through each centre hole, so that when twirled between finger and thumb, on the surface of the horse-block, they became the puerile pastime of the younger scholars, who preferred “Whirligoogan” to the more robust exercise of the ball or bandy.

Baffled in his present vengeance, parson Inco shuffled off towards the house, and covered his buttonless coat with his gown and cassock, vowing inwardly, as he adjusted his dress, future chastisement, in the superlative degree, against our hero. Unfortunately at this luckless moment, a perverse hog that seemed to enter into the spirit of this disastrous hour, having risen from his bed of mud in the horse-pond, where he had dreamed and philosophised away the whole morning, was making his way towards the feeding trough, when a lean and sour household cur which appeared to envy him his swinish beauty, and easy-life rotoundity, maliciously bit him in the breech, and drove him snorting between the legs of the newly-dressed curate; so that the reverend gentleman was thrown headlong into the mass of muck, uniting the nature of matter and fluidity.

“The son of Catty shall pay for all,” muttered the enraged Inco Evans, as the servant cleansed his soiled sables. Thus when poor Twm was flogged next morning, with the leniency that the tired arm of the pedagogue alone afforded, he had to answer for the sins of the hog and the dog as well as his own—and all for playing whirligoogan with the parson’s buttons!

CHAPTER VII.

Mr. Graspacre upholds the national customs, and Welsh custom receives his support. A “tiff” with Lady Graspacre. The squire defends bed courtships. Newcastle Emlyn Ale. Thirsty rats.

At this time a warm altercation one day took place between the squire and his lady, which terminated in consequences little expected by either. Notwithstanding the prejudice to which Squire Graspacre’s harsh conduct had given birth, on his first settlement in Cardiganshire, he had about him certain saving points, that not only reconciled them to his rule, but really gained their esteem. He was a plain, bold, sensible man, and although entertaining a most exalted opinion of English superiority, generally, in particular instances he had the liberality to confess that he found things in this nation of mountaineers highly worthy of imitation among his more civilized brethren.

There are many exceptions like the squire, but we are sorry to add that in Wales we have more illiberal Englishmen, who sneer at all Welsh customs, because they are Welsh, than people would dream of. They forget that our usages are as dear to us, as theirs to them, and that however peculiar they may be in the eyes of an Englishman, the Welshman considers them a sine qua non of his own nationality. But these instances are fast dying out. Railroads, free and continued intercourse, and a liberal spirit of toleration, enable the Englishman to see our custom and our usages in a different light.

He had formerly expressed his disapprobation of a custom prevalent among Welsh farmers of leaving their corn a long time on the ground after being cut, instead of housing it as soon as possible; but experience taught him that they were right and himself in error; among the corn was a large quantity of weeds, which required to be dried, before it could with safety be brought to the barn or the rick, otherwise the grain was sweated, and literally poisoned with the rank juice. He found the Cardiganshire mode of cropping the young mountain furze, and giving it as food for horses and cattle, worthy of his attention, and after various trials, decided on its efficacy so far as to adopt it for the future; and actually set Carmarthen Jack to gather the seed of that mountain plant, which he forwarded to England to be sown and reared on his Devonshire farms.

The planting of flowers on the graves of deceased friends, he eulogized as a beautiful and endearing custom, forming an agreeable contrast to the clumsy English tombstones with barbarous lines, often setting truth, rhyme and reason at defiance. The Welsh harp he declared the prince of all musical instruments, and Welsh weddings the best contrived, and conducted in the best manner in the world, and proved his sincerity by always giving something at the Biddings of the peasantry, and patronizing all those who entered that happy state. Above all things he admired the female costume in Wales, and protested with much truth, that the poor people in England were not half so well or so neatly clothed.

His lofty lady, although a Welshwoman bred and born, entertained a very different set of ideas on these subjects. Whenever her husband related the anecdote of Polydore Virgil’s ecstacy on his first landing in Britain, when he beheld the yellow-blossomed furze, which gave a golden glow to the swelling bosom of the hills—how he knelt on the ground beside a bush of it, fervently worshipping the God of Nature, that beautified the world with the production of such a plant; she would instantly reply, “The man was a fool! for my part I see nothing in the nasty prickly thing to admire, but wish the fire would burn them all from one end of the mountains to the other.”

“And yet, my dear,” he would answer, “Polydore Virgil was a native of no rude soil, but came from the land of the laurel, the cypress, and the vine, the orange, the lemon, and the citron, and many other splendid plants, the very names of which you perhaps never heard of; yet he had the liberality to admire what he justly deemed beautiful, even in a northern clime, and a comparatively harsh mountainous district.”

As to the harp, whenever he praised its melody, she declared it odious and unbearable, and gave preference to the fiddle, the bagpipes, or even the hurdy-gurdy; and the Welsh female costume she protested still more loudly against, and asked him with a sneer if he did not conceive it capable of improvement.

“Oh, certainly, my dear,” would he reply; “for instance, I would have the Glamorganshire girls wear shoes, and feet to their stockings, and convert their awkward wrappers into neat gowns; the Cardiganshire fair ones should doff their clogs, and wear leathern shoes; and the Breconshire lass, with all others who follow the abominable habit, should be hindered from wearing a handkerchief around the head; but I know of no improvement that can be suggested for the Pembrokeshire damsel, except one which would be equally applicable to all Welsh girls,—namely, to throw off their flannel shifts and wear linen ones.”

Now this good gentlewoman, whose leading weakness it was to suspect her husband’s fidelity when from home, kindled with rage at this remark. “Shifts, Mr. Graspacre,” exclaimed the angered lady, “what business have you to concern yourself about such matters? You ought, at least, to know nothing about such matters, but I dare say you know too much. There’s but one woman’s shifts in the world of which you ought to know anything, but no, you seem to know the cut of every girl’s shifts, and you couldn’t get that experience without other of a different kind.”

Anxious as a seaman to turn his bark from the direction of a dangerous rock, he mildly replied, “Surely, my dear, I may exercise my eyes, when the washed clothes are bleaching on the hedge,” and then adding in the same breath, “indeed, if I were you, my dear, I would make some improvements, such as your good taste will suggest, among our own maids; taking care however, not to destroy the stamp of nationality on their garbs at any rate.” This was a well-judged hit on his part, and had the effect of averting the impending storm.

It should have been mentioned before, that the squire, soon after his marriage, had made a tour of South Wales, and, as his lady expressed it, taken a whim in his head of engaging a maid servant in every county through which he passed; so that in Graspacre Hall there were to be found maiden representatives in their native costumes, of all the different shires in South Wales, except Radnor, in which, the squire said, the barbarous jargon of Herefordshire, and the English cottons, had supplanted the native tongue and dress of Wales. There might you see the neat maiden of Pembrokeshire in her dark cloth dress of one hue, either a dark brown approximating to black, or a claret colour, made by the skill of a tailor, and very closely resembling the ladies’ modern riding-habit,—a perfect picture of comfort and neatness, in alliance with good taste.

There would you see the extreme contrast, the Glamorganshire lass in stockings cut off at the ankle, and without shoes; and, although a handsome brunette with fine black eyes, dressed in a slammatkin check wrapper of cotton and wool, utterly shapeless, and tied about the middle like a wheat-sheaf, or a faggot of wood; possessing, however, the peculiar convenience that it could be put on in an instant, without the loss of time in dressing tastefully, and that it would fit every body alike, as it is neither a gown nor a bedgown, but between both, and without a waist.

There would you see the young woman of Breconshire, with her pretty blushing face, half hidden in a handkerchief which envelops her head that at first you would fancy the figure before you to be a grandmother at least. Her long linsey gown is pinned up behind, each extreme corner being joined together in the centre, and confined a few inches below her waist; she has her wooden-soled shoes for every day, and leathern ones for Sunday, or for a dance, which, with her stockings, she very economically takes off should a shower of rain overtake her on a journey; and when it ceases, washes her feet in the first brook she meets, and puts them on again. Some might term this a curious method of appreciating the protective excellence of the shoemaker’s art, but a Welsh girl, or rather, a Breconshire girl studies economy quite as much as comfort, and considers her shoes to be made as much for ornament as for use, and rather more.

This fair one takes especial care that her drapery shall be short enough to discover her pretty ankle, and her apron sufficiently scanty to disclose her gay red petticoat with black or white stripes, beneath, and at the sides. Then comes the stout Carmarthenshire lass, with her thick bedgown and petticoat of a flaring brick-dust red, knitting stockings as she walks, and singing a loud song as she cards or spins.

Lastly, though not least in importance, behold the clogged and cloaked short-statured woman of Cardiganshire. She scorns the sluttish garb and bare feet of the Glamorganshire maiden, and hates the abominable pride of the Pembrokeshire lass who is vain enough to wear leathern shoes instead of honest clogs; proving at the same time that her own vanity is of a more pardonable stamp. “Thank God too, that she is not vain like the others are. Yet in her thanks shows vanity,” while she boasts with truth, that her dress costs twice as much as either of the others. The Cardiganshire woman’s dresses, in fact—generally blue, with red stripes and bound at the bottom with red or blue worsted caddis, are entirely of wool, solidly woven and heavy, consequently more expensive than those made of linsey or minco, or of the common intermixture of wool and cotton, and presenting an appearance of weighty warmth, equally independent of a comely cut and tasty neatness.

It was one of the squire’s fancies never to call these girls by their proper names, but by that of their shires, as thus, “Come here little Pembroke, and buckle my shoe: and you Carmarthen, bring me a bason of broth; Cardigan, call Glamorgan and Brecon, and tell them they must drive a harrow a piece through the ploughed part of Rockfield.”

On his return to dinner, a few days after the suggestion about the dresses of the maids, he was astonished to find that Mrs. Graspacre had used her privilege with a vengeance; having with decided bad taste, put them all, at their own expense, to be deducted from their wages, into glaring cotton prints.

The girls were unhappy enough at this change, as well as at the expense thus incurred, and they could not enter the town without experiencing the ridicule of their friends and neighbours; the Cardiganshire maid, who considered such a change in the light of disowning her country, and like a renegade putting on the livery of the Saxon, in something of a termagant spirit, tendered her resignation to her master rather than comply with such an innovation.

This ungenerous invasion of his harmless rules, roused his indignation; and after venting a few “damns,” a la John Bull, against draggle-tail cotton rags, without a word of expostulation with his rib, he desired the girls to bring all their trumpery to him, which they gladly did, and he made them instantly into a bonfire in the farm-yard. Then in a firm undertone of subdued resentment, gave strict injunctions that no further liberties should be taken with their national costume; to which his lady made the polite and submissive reply, that the girls might all walk abroad without any dress at all if he chose, and go to the devil his own way.

At this juncture little Pembroke came in with rosy smiles, and told her master that Carmarthen Jack wanted to speak to him very particularly, on which the squire laughed, and asked on what important matter. “Why, sir,” said the rustic beauty, while arch smiles and blushes contended in her sweet oval face, “Parson Inco has found out that he has been courting in bed, with Catty the schoolmistress, and he has run here before the parson to say it is all a falsehood.”

“There’s an impious rascal for you!” cried the lady of the house, “to charge the clergyman with a falsehood; but I am sure ’tis true, for I long suspected it.”

“Madam, your own dignity and delicacy ought to suggest to you that the less you interfere in these matters the more creditable it will be to your own common sense,” said the squire, in a tone which was unmistakable. “I insist,” cried the imperious dame, “that he be put in the stocks, and be ducked in the river.”

“Neither shall be done,” said he firmly, “and from henceforward no person shall be annoyed or persecuted on that score, but everyone shall court as he or she pleases.” “What!” cried the indignant lady, “would you fill the country with bastards!”

“No, madam,” was the reply, “but with as happy a set of people as possible.”

Encouraged by the turn which affairs had taken, the Cardiganshire maid now asked her master for her discharge; as her mistress, she said, had thrown a slur on her brewing abilities, which had almost broken her heart; “for” said she, with a ludicrous whimper, “she says my brewing is unfit for the drinking of Christian people, and hardly worthy of the hogs!—but,” cried the sturdy little wench, raising her voice to an accusatory pitch, and at the same time a tone of triumph, “I came from Newcastle Emlyn, the country of good beer, the very home where the Cwrw da of Hen Gymru [50a] is bred and born, and I would rather die than be told that I can’t brew!”

“Indeed, Cardy,” said the squire, with a smile, “though your mistress may have been too severe in her censure, I must say that your two last brewings were unequal to the first.” “A good reason why, sir; who can brew without malt and hops? who can make bricks without straw? I hear some of the great London brewers do without either malt or hops, but I wouldn’t drink their brewings, I know; their brewings won’t do for us at Newcastle Emlyn! and your wheat, [50b] sir, which has grown by being cut in the wet harvest, so as to be unfit for bread, is but a poor make-shift for malt—it may do for the wish-wash paltry brewers’ ale of Haverfordwest and Fishguard, or the Swansea folk, Merthyr blacks, and Cardiff boys, but our ploughboys would turn up their noses at such stuff at Newcastle Emlyn!

“Damn Newcastle Emlyn!” cried the squire, provoked by her continual reference to her native place. “Master! master!” cried the girl, as if rebuking him for the greatest impiety conceivable, “don’t damn Newcastle Emlyn; I had rather you should knock me down than damn Newcastle Emlyn! it is the country of decent people and good home-brewed ale,—the country where”—

“You brewed good ale from the grown wheat the first time,” said the squire, not deeming it necessary to notice her observations.

“Good! was it?” retorts the girl, struggling between respect for her master and contempt for his taste in the matter of malt drink; “good was it! I tell you what, master, you are a good master, and I have nothing to say against mistress, for it would not be decent, but you never tasted beer like ours at Newcastle Emlyn! the real hearty cwrw da! which I could make you to-morrow, if you would give me good malt and hops, and let it stand long enough untapped.”

“But Cardy, there must be a sound reason for your two last brewings being inferior to the first. You could brew a well-flavoured, palatable beer, but you don’t now, although you have the same ingredients given you.”

“The last was better, a good deal, than the other. The first would have turned the devil’s stomach, had he known what was in it.”

“Explain yourself,” said the squire, surprised. “I will, sir, if I were to be hanged for it,” cried the girl in a tone of confidence; “it seems that rats love beer as well as any christian folks, and get drunk and die in drink, as a warning to all sober-minded rats; but that is neither here nor there, and I hate to tell a rigmarole story; the long and the short of it is, that when I came to wash out the barrels after the first brewing, I found three rats in one, and two in the other.”

“You found what?” asked the squire and his lady at the same time.

“I found three rats, sir, that had burst themselves with drinking beer, and afterwards fell in and were drowned—they were then putrid, and it was that, it seems, that made the ale so palatable; there were no dead animals in the last brewing, so that of course it wasn’t so ‘palatable’ and well-flavoured as the other. But had I known your mind I might have killed a couple of cats, or put you in a bushel of lively cockroaches.”

This explanation excited a titter among the girls, and a loud laugh from the squire, while the lady evinced the shock which her delicacy had sustained, by making wry faces, and snuffing violently at her smelling-bottle to avoid fainting.

The squire good-humouredly addressed the girl,—“now, Cardy, you are perfectly right in the praise you bestow on your own country ale, and I promise you shall have the best of malt and hops for your next attempt, when I expect it to be equal to the best cwrw da of Newcastle Emlyn—and, do you hear? we shall dispense with either rats or cats in it for the future.”

This amicable settlement of differences set every one in good humour, except the haughty mistress, who, embittered with her double defeat, retired in gloom, while her husband went to give audience to Jack of Sheer Gâr.

CHAPTER VIII.

“The manners and customs” attendant on a Welsh Wedding. The Bidding. The Gwahoddwr. The Ystavell. Pwrs a Gwregys. Pwython. In which our hero and his friend Watt play rather important parts.

Carmarthen Jack had not been long waiting for his master, before little Pembroke full of glee, ran to inform him that the embargo had been taken for ever off bed courtship; and that he was now free whether guilty or not. This happy news affected him so well that he met his master with comparative ease; and after some struggles with his native bashfulness, an important secret came out—that he was going to be married to Catty the schoolmistress; and wished to know whether he should be retained in the squire’s service after that event.

Now this was a circumstance exactly to the squire’s taste; as a Welsh wedding portrayed many national features in the character of the peasantry, that pleased him; and, as he was generally a donor on these occasions, his vanity was flattered by being looked up to as their patron. He of course acquiesced in his servant’s request, and after a little jocular and rough rallying, proposed that the Bidding should be immediately commenced.

A Bidding was another of the excellent customs peculiar to the Welsh, but of late years confined exclusively to the lower classes, which the squire so much admired, and considered worthy of imitation, he said, throughout the world. It signifies a general and particular invitation to all the friends of the bride and bridegroom elect, to meet them at the houses of their respective parents, or any other place appointed. Any strangers who choose to attend are also made welcome. It is an understood thing that every person who comes, contributes a small sum towards making a purse for the young pair to begin the world with. They have a claim on those persons whose weddings they had themselves attended; and at these times their parents and friends also make their claims in their favour on all whom they may have at any time befriended in a similar manner. These donations are always registered, and considered as debts, to be repaid, on the occurrence of weddings only; but there are many contributors, especially the masters and mistresses of the parties, that of course require no repayment. These returns being made only by small instalments, and only at the weddings of their donors, are easily accomplished; and the benefit derived from this custom is great, where the parties are respected.

A novel feature, to those who have been unaccustomed to the Welsh wedding, is the Gwahoddwr or Bidder, who goes from house to house, with his staff of office—a white wand embellished with ribbons. His hat, and often the breast of his coat, is similarly decorated. Thus attired, he enters each house with suitable “pride of place,” amidst the smiles of the old people, and giggling of the young ones; and taking his stand in the centre of the house, and striking his wand on the floor to enforce silence, announces the wedding which is to take place, sometimes in rhyme, but more frequently in a set speech of prose.

The banns were immediately put in, and every preparation made for the wedding. Watt the mole-catcher, as the greatest wag in the parish, was appointed by the squire to the enviable office of Gwahoddwr. The following homely lines, from a correct and liberal translation of those written for the purpose of giving Watt’s oratory full scope on this occasion. The Rev. John David Rhys, a young poetical clergyman, at this time a visitor with Squire Graspacre, was the author; and though they do not betoken the “unapproachable of Parnassus,” they yet suited the purpose for which they were penned.

List to the Bidder!—a health to all
Who dwell in this house, both great and small;
Prosperity’s comforts ever attend
The Bride and Bridegroom’s generous friend.

His door may it never need a latch;
His hearth a fire, his cottage a thatch;
His wife a card, or a spinning-wheel;
His floor a table, nor on it a meal!

On Saturday next a wedding you’ll see,
In fair Tregaron, as gay as can be,
Between John Rees, called Jack o Sheer Gâr,
And Catherine Jones, his chosen fair.

Haste to the wedding, its joy to share!
Mirth and good humour shall meet you there;
Come one, come all: there’s a welcome true
To master and mistress and servants too!

Stools you will find to sit upon,
And tables, and goodly food thereon,
Butter and cheese, and flesh and fish,
(If you can catch them!) all you wish.

There many a lad shall a sweetheart find,
And many a lass meet a youth to her mind,
While nut-brown ale, both good and strong,
Shall warm the heart for the dance and song.

Oft at the wedding are matches made,
When dress’d in their best come youth and maid,
And dance together, and whisper and kiss.—
Who knows what wedding may rise from this.

Whoever may come to the bidding note,—
There’s thanks to the friend who brings three groat;
And ne’er may they hobble upon a crutch
Whoe’er gives the lovers twice as much!

Whatever is given, so much they’ll restore—
One shilling or two, or three, or four,
Whenever in similar case ’tis claim’d,
Else were defaulters ever shamed. [55]

So haste to the wedding, both great small,
Master and mistress and servants all!
Catty at home, Jack’s at the sign of the Cat;
Now God save the king and the bidder Watt!

During this hubbub and preparation, Twm Shon Catty was granted the glorious privilege of a week’s holiday, and his friend Watt took him along with him to every house where he had to act as bidder. To see, was to learn with Twm, and to learn was to imitate. The thought soon struck him that he might be a Gwahoddwr; so he at once cut a stout willow wand, peeled it, and tacked a bunch of carpenter’s shavings and rush flags to the top. Forth he went, and standing in the midst of a group of admiring boys and girls, proceeded to imitate Watt in every motion. On this occasion it is said he invoked the aid of the tuneful nine, and composed the following effusion, but we suspect that he was only the mouthpiece to the real poet.

After Watt had finished, our hero struck his emblem of office upon each floor, and repeated the following:—

Who’ll come to the wedding of Catty my mother?
Come mother, come daughter, son, father, brother,
And bring all your cousins, and uncles, and aunts,
To revel the feast at our jolly courants.
Haste, haste to the Bidding, ye stingy scrubs!
And out with your purses, and down with your dubs.

Come Gwenny and Griffith, and Roger and Sal;
Morgan, Meredith, and Peggy and Pal;
Come one, come all, with your best on back,
To see mother married to spoon-making Jack;
He’s a spoon for his pains, as ye all shall see soon,
But lucky at finding a bowl to his spoon.

Haste, haste to the Bidding! my friends, if you please,
For lack of white money bring good yellow cheese,
And butter, but not in your pockets alack,
Bring bacon or mutton well dried on the rack.
So endeth my story; come, haste we, friend Watty;
Now God save the King, and his friend Twm Shon Catty!

Twm’s delivery of these lines excited much mirth and laughter, and, added to those of the real Gwahoddwr, drew more than ordinary attention to this Bidding. Many of the children of the different houses had been Twm’s school-fellows, and the pupils of his mother, which had the effect of influencing them, and became a sort of tie, to claim their presence at her bidding. As Jack’s friends were in Carmarthenshire, another Gwahoddwr was appointed by his master to go with him to call on his at his own native place; and so liberal was the squire on this occasion, that he sent them both mounted on horses of their own.

Jack and his Bidder had no great success, as his friends reproached him for his perverse intention of marrying a strange woman in a far land; and finding but little pleasure in the subject or manner of their lectures, he made a precipitate retreat. Jack blushed for his countrymen, and he had sufficient native delicacy to see that their liberality would contrast disadvantageously with the warm generosity of Catty’s friends. He therefore bribed Ianto Gwyn, the harper, who had acted as his bidder, to silence; and brought with him to Tregaron, in a hired cart, the common contribution of a bridegroom,—namely, a bedstead, a table, a stool, and a dresser. These, he feigned had been bought with his bidding-money, received at Carmarthen. Friday is always allotted to bring home the Yestavell, or the woman’s furniture; consisting generally of an oaken coffer or chest; a feather-bed and blankets; all the crockery and pewter; wooden bowls, piggings, spoons, and trenchers, with the general furniture of the shelf; but as Catty was already provided with every thing of this kind, she had but little to add to her stock.

The landlord of the public-house originally called “The Lion,” but with a sign resembling a more ignoble animal, causing it to be ultimately known by no other designation than that of “the cat,” offered Jack his parlour to receive his Cardiganshire friends in. Accordingly, on the Friday before the wedding, he was busily employed in receiving money, cheese, and butter, from them, while Catty was similarly engaged at her residence, with her partizans, which were not a few. This custom in Welsh is called Pwrs a Gwregys, or purse and girdle; and is, doubtless, of very remote origin.

At length the long-looked-for, the important Saturday arrived; a day generally fixed upon for the celebration of the hymeneal ordinances, in Wales, from the sage persuasion that it is a lucky day, as well as for the convenience of the Sabbath intervening between it and a working day—a glorious season of sunshine to the children of labour.

Jack was agreeably disappointed to see a great many of his Carmarthen friends had repented of their unkind treatment of his bidder, and had now come to make amends. They came mounted on their ponies, and honourably paid their Pwython; that is to say, returned the presents which he or his relatives or friends had made at different weddings. Jack’s resentful and sudden disappearance, had a beneficial effect on the feelings of his friends and countrymen; and a jealousy of yielding the palm for liberality to a neighbouring country, stirred a spirit of emulous contention among them, which ended in a resolution that a party should attend the wedding, and bear with them the Pwython of the others, who had an aversion to travel such a very distant journey, being nearly five and twenty miles, a distance in those days which was considered no joke, but which we now, in this age of steam and locomotion, bridge over in five and twenty minutes.

After depositing their offerings, and partaking of a little refreshment, twelve of the bridegroom’s friends, headed by Ianto Gwyn the harper, mounted their ponies and called at Catty’s house, to demand the bride; and Watt the mole-catcher and Gwahoddwr, who added to these functions the father to Catty, expecting their arrival, at length heard without appearing, the following lines, delivered by the merry harper, from the back of his pony.

Open windows, open doors,
And with flowers strew the floors,
Heap the hearth with blazing wood,
Load the spit with festal food
The crochen [58] on its hook be placed,
And tap a barrel of the best!
For this is Catty’s wedding day!
Now bring the fair one out, I pray.

On which Watt, with the door still closed, made this reply without appearing.

Who are ye all! ye noisy train!
Be ye thieves, or honest men,
Tell us now what brings you here,
Or this intrusion costs you dear!

Ianto Gwyn then rejoins,

Honest men are we, who seek
A dainty maid both fair and meek,
Very good and very pretty,
And known to all by name of Catty;
We come to claim her for a bride;
Come, father! let the pair be tied
To him who loves her ever well:—

Watt still within, answers;

So ye say, but time will tell;
My daughter’s very well at home,
So ye may pack and homeward roam.

Ianto Gwyn exclaims, in resolute tones,

Your home no more she’s doom’d to share,
Like every marriageable fair,
Her father’s roof she quits for one
Where she is mistress: woo’d and won,
It now remains to see her wedded,
And homeward brought and safely bedded;
Unless you give her up, we swear
The roof from off your house to tear,
Burst in the doors, and batter walls
To rescue her whom wedlock calls.

Another of the bridegroom’s party then calls aloud, in a voice of authority,

Ho! peace in the king’s name, here peace!
Let vaunts and taunting language cease;
While we, the bridesmen, come to sue
The favour to all bridesmen due,
The daughter from the father’s hand,
And entertainment kindly bland.

Now the great Watt, the famous entrapper of moles, with airs mighty and grand, well befitting the dignity of the occasion—and however absurd our English brethren may term the custom, it is considered of serious importance with us—throws open the door of Catty’s dwelling, sallies forth to give the querists a warm welcome, and as a preliminary helps them to dismount. After taking a little more refreshment, consisting of newly-baked oaten cakes, with butter and cheese, washed down with copious draughts of ale, they all remounted, and were joined by those of the bridegroom’s party; the whole rustic cavalcade making their way towards the church. A motley assemblage, in truth it was, but withal picturesque, and agreeable to contemplate, for every face was happy; save when now and then a cautious damsel, mounted behind her father or brother, would exhibit a touch of the dismals in the length of her features, on discovering that the cwrw had any other effect but that of rendering her protector steady in his seat on the saddle. Almost every sort of animal, large or small, lame or blind, good or bad, seemed to have been pressed into the service, and reduced to the levelling system, and without regard to either size or quality, doomed to carry double.

And thus they went on at a walking pace, while the loud chat of many seemed drowned in the loud laughter and shouting of others, till now and then rebuked by some of the elders; who however, to little purpose, vociferated the words decency—propriety—sober purposes—&c. &c., the tendency of which seemed but little understood. Jack, the happy bridegroom elect, bestrode a wretched apology for a horse, whose antiquated legs trembled like an aspen leaf; as for its bones, they were painfully apparent, and the very curs seemed, as they looked upon this time worn piece of cattle, to anticipate their feast. Elevated behind her temporary father on a fleet horse of the squire’s, poor Catty was doomed to present purgatory to contrast her enjoyment of future happiness, for, unprovided with a pillion, she sat on the crupper, holding fast by Watt’s coat. The quiet pace which commenced this little journey was soon changed into rough horsemanship, for the mad-cap mole-catcher turning his steed into the Cardigan road, gave him the spur, and commenced an outrageous gallop; the wedding party followed him with all the might of their little beasts, and like valiant villagers in chase of a highwayman, strove their utmost to rescue the bride. Ianto Gwyn, the rural bard and harper, ever ready with an extempore, produced on this occasion:—

Oh yes! lost, strayed, or run away
This moment from the king’s highway,
A tall and sightly strapping woman,
A circumstance which is a rum ’un;
’Tis said a murderer of vermin
On her abduction did determine;
Whoe’er will bear to gaol th’ offender,
The lost one to her owner render,
Shall be as handsomely rewarded,
As can be readily afforded.

Having considerably distanced his pursuers, he stopped at length, at Catty’s request, who complained sadly of being sorely bumped upon the buckle of the crupper. Dexterously turning to the bye-road toward the church, he was soon perceived and followed by the party, and altogether they soon arrived at their journey’s end, and alighting, they entered the sacred fane with due decorum. Evans the curate, to enhance his own services and increase his importance, took care to damp their hilarity by keeping them waiting full three quarters of an hour, before he made his appearance; and when he came, his looks and demeanour partook more of the rigid priest of Saturn, than the heart-joining, bliss-dispensing Hymen. His cherished plans, which were to result in a discovery of dishonour to poor Catty, were terribly overthrown by this decent Welsh marriage, and the curate was in a corresponding temper. His nature was not such as would rejoice at virtue triumphant, more especially as he had calculated upon vice occupying the same position.

He very sternly rebuked their smiles and happy looks, and actually threatened not to perform the marriage ceremony, until, alarmed at the menace, they all became perfectly joyless, and most orthodoxically gloomy. The indissoluble knot was soon tied; and no longer dependent on the good offices of the magisterial churchman, their spirit of joyousness burst forth; while in the churchyard the mellow harp of Ianto Gwyn was playing the sprightly air of Morwynion Glan Meirionydd, or the Fair Maids of Merionethshire; while many of the party joined in the words which belong to that beautiful and animating tune. Suddenly changing the air, the eccentric harper struck up “Megan has lost her garter,” which was succeeded by “Mentra Gwen,” and a string of such national melodies, equally gay and appropriate.

After the marriage ceremony, they returned in much the same order, or rather disorder; with the difference that the bride sat behind her husband, instead of her father; the harper playing the whole time, and many sweet voices joining in the words of the airs.

Coming to Catty’s house, the company found that Juggy had been useful and hospitable. There was a first-rate dinner provided, in ample proportions, of which all could and did partake freely; every one had to pay for his own ale, but the females, by courtesy, were “treated” at the expense of males. In the course of the evening, jigs, reels, and country dances, were successfully gone through with much spirit. Catty danced with much agility; Jack, pressed on all sides, and at length compelled to make one in a country dance, showed every indication of this being his virgin attempt at “the poetry of motion;” and alternately stumping and blowing, while copious streams ran down his rugged forehead, as they every instant corrected his erratic course, and literally pushed him down the dance, he vowed that this his first, should also be his last exhibition on the “light fantastic toe.”

Young Twm, who had been playing at sweethearts, with little Gwenny Cadwgan on his knee, to the great mirth of his seniors, soon brought her out to try her foot at the dance with him. The poor little wench blushed scarlet deep, made her first essay with one equally young and inexperienced with herself; and the juvenile pair were very good-naturedly instructed in the figure of the dance, and they contributed not a little to the general harmony. Juggy, the sister of Catty, absolutely refused to sport her figure among the dancers, and treated Watt the mole-catcher with a hard favour in the face for attempting to drag her in perforce. At length, fatigued with the dancing, and alarmed for the state of their inebriated friends and companions, many, especially the females, turned their serious thoughts towards home.

It was now drawing towards the hour of retiring for the night, when the usual trick was played of concealing the bride from the bridegroom. Poor Jack, whom nature had not favoured with a great share of facetiousness, and who never mixed with such a company before, began to be seriously alarmed. Great was the mirth of the company, while, with a strange expression of countenance, he sought her up and down in every corner of the house. At length he discovered a part of her red petticoat sticking out from under the bottom of the straw arm-chair, and soon drew her out from the place of concealment.

The parting hour had now arrived; then came the general shaking of hands, and serious expressions of good wishes among the sober; while the tipsy folks vented their wit in jocular allusions to their conjugal felicity: some offering themselves for godfathers and godmothers to their future offspring, while others far gone in drink, laid bets on the probability that the first child would be either a boy or a girl. At this time considerable surprise was excited by the conduct of an individual who had been remarkably unsocial the whole evening, no person having heard him speak a word; and when asked a question, or in answer to a health being drank, he merely nodded in a hurried manner, and immediately drew hard at his pipe, and puffed forth volumes of smoke, as if to envelop himself in a cloud of invisibility.

The mysterious stranger had been evidently “taking stock” the whole of the evening, but whether pleased or displeased with the proceedings did not appear, as reticence seemed to be about the only accomplishment he possessed. Every one was too much engaged with their own pleasure to give him much attention, and thus he remained till the moment of departure, when he was observed to stagger as he rose from his seat. Somebody then observed, that it must have been with smoke and not the beer that affected his brains, as he drank but little; a remark that imputed niggardly and curmudgeon propensities to him. Determined to give him something of a roast, a young farmer asked him, with a defying air, whether he had paid his Pwython.

“No!” roared the hitherto silent man, “but here it is—take it ‘Catty’ my girl, and much good may it do thee!” On which he put five golden angels into her hand. With emotions of wonder and gratitude, while catching an eager glance at his face, Catty involuntarily exclaimed—“the squire!” when he darted out, mounted his horse, as did the rest of the party, rode off, and disappeared.

CHAPTER IX.

Twm Shon Catty improves under a more able tuition. Watt’s vagaries, and the troubles and trials of a poor pedlar. Twm begins his apprenticeship to a Cardiganshire farmer.

Determined to witness the humble festivities of the “lowly train,” Squire Graspacre had been among them the whole evening, disguised like a rough mountaineer husbandman, and was heartily gratified, although his apparent incivility of conduct had nearly subjected him to harsh treatment from the jovial ale-fraught rustics, who, of course, but little relished his strange behaviour. His deficiency in the Welsh language had been concealed by alternately feigning deafness and drunkenness, which, with the aid of the pipe left him free from suspicion. The morning of Sunday after the wedding, which is called Neithior, being come, the happy pair stayed at home, receiving their friends who called with their good-will, which they manifested by the payment of Pwython. The day was drank out, but not as in every other respect, save the diminishing of ale, each seemed to recollect it was the Sabbath, and tossed off their cups in quietness.

On Monday morning the supply of ale was exhausted, tottering legs waggled homeward, and all was again quiet. Like prudent accountants, Jack and Catty reckoned up the amount of their wedding gifts, and found the amount to be twenty-seven pounds eight shillings and sixpence, besides fourteen whole, and twenty-two half cheeses, the greater part of which they soon turned into cash.

In these days, when the value of money has been so much decreased, the amount of the Pwython, and presents at a Welsh wedding, have been known to reach more than treble the sum here stated; especially when the friends of the party have been numerous, and headed by the patronage of a wealthy and liberal master and mistress, who generally enlist their friends and visitors under the hymeneal banners of a faithful servant, the architects of whose humble fortunes they become, by laying themselves the foundation stone.

As, from this part of our history, the hero will rise in importance, those who have hitherto stood forward, must proportionably draw back, to give him due place; especially Jack and Catty; the grand drama of whose lives has been closed by a matrimonial union; whence, henceforth, they must sink into inconsiderable personages.

In consequence of the squire’s liberality on the celebration of Catty’s wedding, and a general report prevailing that he was inclined towards the Welsh, a protector of their customs, a general good-will towards him was manifested by the country people. But his popularity reached its culminating point when he gave forth the opinion that the Welsh female costume was a useful, elegant, and picturesque one, and for once, a scion of John Bull became popular with us.

When he eulogized the Welsh harp, and gave, in addition to various pieces of silver at different times, a golden angel to Ianto Gwyn for his performances at Jack and Catty’s wedding, he gained a few steps more into their good opinion. But when he declared that bed courtship should not be abolished, there was a burst of enthusiasm in his favour in every breast, especially among the females. During this new impulse given to the reign of happiness, the great lady at the hall and her favourite curate hid their diminished heads; the former declaring that it was utterly impossible that the world could last many months longer, while such immorality and ungodliness was practiced under the auspices of a declared patron.

Whether it was the influence of this alarm, or the bitterness of baffled malignity, that preyed on her mind, certain it is, she was soon thrown on a sick bed, and considered seriously indisposed. The squire, to his honour be it said, although unfortunately married to a very disagreeable woman, allowed a sense of duty to supply the place of affection, when his attentions were so indispensably needed. During her illness, the worthy old rector, who had been ill but a single week, died; and Squire Graspacre, against his own judgment and feelings, well knowing that such an arrangement would be agreeable to his wife, inducted the curate, Evans, into the vacant living. In a fortnight after, however, she died herself; a circumstance, perhaps, that gave no real sorrow to any creature breathing.

The general report of a liberal English squire in Cardiganshire, who patronized and upheld the customs of the Welsh, penetrated to the extremities of the neighbouring counties, and became at last so strangely exaggerated, that he was represented as the patron of the learned; consequently many of the humbler sons of the church took long journeys to be undeceived. Of the many who called upon him with a view of seeking his patronage of their literary undertakings, one especially took his fancy; a young clergyman named John David Rhys, before named as the author of the Bidder’s song.

But poetry was not his forte; his energy and perseverance in the favourite study of Welshmen, British antiquities, and systemizing his native language, deserved encouragement and applause. He had been composing a Welsh grammar, and had actually commenced a dictionary. As he spoke English very well, the squire soon understood the merit of his undertakings, and promised his patronage and good offices; in the mean time requesting him to remain on the footing of a friend beneath his roof, till something could be done for him. This excellent person he now fixed upon to succeed Evans in the school and curacy; stipulating, that for his fulfilment of the latter, he was to have thirty pounds, and for the former ten pounds a-year.

Fortunate for Rhys would it have been had the old rector outlived the squire’s lady, in which case it is more than probable he would have filled the living instead of Evans, whom the squire never liked. The change was a fortunate one for Twm Shon Catty, who, as we have before seen, had already a name for composing doggerel, and had even tried his muse in the orthodox four-and-twenty Welsh measures. When he found his new master a kind young man, an historian, antiquarian, and something of a poet, the homage of the heart was immediately paid him. Twm thought he was the wisest man in the world, when he heard him speak of the battles fought by the Britons in ancient times, against the Romans, Danes, and Saxons. This was to him a knowledge the most estimable, and he longed to be enabled also to talk about battles and to write patriotic songs. Having now his information from a better source, he soon learnt to despise the jargon and misstatements of Ianto Gwyn, with whom he argued boldly, and proved to him that Geoffry of Monmouth was a fabulist, and no historian; that it was not Joseph of Arimathea who christianized Britain, but Brân ab Llyr, the father of renowned Caractacus, with various other such knotty points.

The great deference which he paid his master, his attention to every word which fell from his lips, with his close and successful application to his lessons, gained him the esteem and admiration of Rhys, with whom he became a great favourite. The amiable young clergyman found much satisfaction on discovering a youngster with taste, sufficient to appreciate his favourite pursuits, and took pleasure in explaining to him every subject of his enquiries. A thirst for information possessed the boy; and he rummaged the most dry and tedious works connected with Welsh antiquities, with an avidity that was astonishing even to his master.

It would perhaps have been fortunate for Twm had this thirst for study remained unchecked by any less noble desire. But joking and learning, “larks” and Latin, practical jests and Welsh history, are scarcely likely to agree well. Watt the mole-catcher occupied his attention, and, in the end, his acquaintance with that personage was an ill wind which blew nobody good.

About eighteen months after Rhys’s appointment to the school, one evening in the Christmas holidays, Watt asked him if he would take a share in a freak that would keep him up the greater part of the night. Twm immediately assented, without enquiring its nature; enough for him it was that it was a scheme of merry mischief, in the prospect of which his heart ever bounded.

This idle whim of Watt’s was nothing more than to pull down the signs of all the public-houses and shops; which being few, was easily done, but the greater difficulty was to suspend them from, or attach them to, the tenements of others, in which they however succeeded. This trick elicited some humour; and a satirical application was discernible in the new disposal of the boards. When the light of day discovered their handy-work, great was the astonishment of the ale-house-keepers and others, to find their signs vanished, and gracing the fronts of their neighbours’ private houses; and the anger of the reverend Inco Evans was boundless, on perceiving the “Fox and Goose” over the rectory house door, with the words proceeding from the mouth of reynard, “I have thee now;” and under the pictorial figures “Good entertainment for man or horse.”

A crowd was in consequence collected about his door, and the provoking laughter of the people stung him to the bitterest degree of resentment. A most unlucky old carl of a Scotch pedlar at this moment very innocently entered the house, taking it, as the sign imported, for a tavern, and unstrapping his huge pack, laid it on the clerical magistrate’s table, calling about, “hollow! Fox and Goose;” on which the reverend host and his spouse appeared, she laughing at the jest, and he frowning with the aspect of a demon.

“Ah ye ’re come,” said the facetious Scot, “by my saul aw never kenn’d twa that looked the characters sa weal afore—a merry guse an a sour fox! come gi us a pot of your best half and half.” The lady ran out laughing, but Inco sourly answered, “O yes! friend, thou shalt have half and half to thy heart’s content;” and turning his back, shut and locked the door, leaving the poor pedlar in gaping wonderment.

“They’re an aufu’ time coming! I’se warrant they’re brewing the beer. Hech, sirs, this is a strange place o’ ca’, and they wouldna’ find sic a vile ’yun, frae John o’Groat’s to John o’ Aberdeen’s!” But his rumination on the subject was cut short by the return of Inco, who unlocking the door, was followed in by two serving damsels, each bearing a pewter vase containing something less fragrant than the sweets of Araby, which they duly discharged in the face of the unconscious pedlar, accompanied with Inco’s exclamation “there’s half and half for you!” and the girls retreated in roars of laughter, while their poor victim cursed them for vile nanny goats of the mountains.

At this moment young Twm, humanely feeling for the stranger’s ill treatment, informed him of his error in mistaking that house, the residence of the clergyman and magistrate of the town, for a tavern. Adding that be feared the constables were sent for, to put him in the stocks. It need scarcely be added, that Sawney was soon many miles away from Tregaron. Hop-o-my-Thumb never used his legs and his seven-leagued boots to such express purpose as did Sawney, for he pushed on as though he knew terrors were behind, and the safety of the body depended upon the speed of his legs. Squire Graspacre from indolence or dislike to all business except farming, declined being in the commission of the peace himself, and put the parson in his stead. Having now attained the summit of his ambition, as rector and justice of the peace, his overweening presumption and conceit became daily more conspicuous; and therefore this slur upon his consequence was intolerable. The actor in this simple freak became at length known in consequence of the secret being intrusted, a very common case, to a confidential friend.

Although the twenty shillings reward which the parson offered could not induce the poorest to be base enough to become an informer, yet an idle spirit of tattling among the women brought it at length to the ears of Mistress Evans, and her husband soon became possessed of the whole particulars. He instantly made his complaint to the squire against both Twm and Watt, who were merely reprimanded, cautioned for the future, and dismissed.

The circumstances under which Twm Shon Catty was educated, now suddenly occurred to him. “What the goodness is to become of that young imp of mischief?” said he, one day, to Rhys the curate, whom he had informed of the particulars of the birth, and his deceased wife’s whim of having him well educated, in consequence of him being a slip of Sir John Wynn’s. That connection being entirely closed by the death of his wife, he no longer felt himself bound or inclined to notice him. When Rhys gave so good an account of his proficiency, he was surprised to hear the squire exclaim—“I am sorry for it, for he has no prospect in the world but labour and beggary. As he had already had too good an education for his circumstances, he must be instantly dismissed from the school. Since Sir John does not think proper to protect his son, I don’t see why I should. As the poet very properly says:—

“Too much learning makes a man a fool;
I’d have no lad attend too long at school:
Give him a taste, then turn him out adrift;
In knowledge, at the least, he’s had a lift.”

Twm and his master parted with mutual regret, for latterly they were more like companions than master and scholar; and the generous Rhys could not restrain a tear on beholding a youth of so much promise destined to the uncertain wilderness of a hard and cold world, especially after having evinced a superiority of taste and intellect, that under favourable auspices would have entitled him to shine and flourish in his day. Twm remained awhile at his mother’s, a big boy of fifteen, idling away his days without any view to the future. Greatly concerned on his account and her own inability to support him, Catty went one day to the squire, and implored him to do something for her son; and he at last generously decided to send him as a parish apprentice to a farmer, whose grounds were situate in the neighbouring mountains.

CHAPTER X.

The family of the Welsh farmer. Not a bright look-out for our hero.

Morris Greeg, the farmer to whom the parish had consigned our hero, as an apprentice, possessed a small freehold farm, fourteen miles up the mountain; and thither, in the company or custody of Watt the mole-catcher, Twm was now marched. Dull and joyless was their journey, unenlivened either by incident or the charms of scenery. On their arrival at the destined spot, Twm could scarcely forbear shuddering at the prospect before him. The farm-house was a low long building, under the same roof as the cow-house and stable, and as the whole was covered with a black mass of rotten thatch, composed of varied patches of half-perished straw and fern, the only signs of its being inhabited by humanity were a chimney, with two or three farm implements lying at the hovel door.

The farm, called Cwm y Gwarm Ddu, (Black marsh dingle,) was abbreviated usually to Gwern Ddu; the latter word, be it known to our English readers, is pronounced Thee. The land of which it was composed, had been anciently cribbed from the mountain, according to the Havod un-nôs [72] system. Being too remote from any other settlements to be noticed by any of the parishioners but the shepherds, who were bribed to silence by occasional refreshment as they passed that way, the appropriation remained long unquestioned. And when of later years some of the nearest farmers became troublesome busy-bodies on the occasion, a few days’ labour given gratis in harvest time by Morris Greeg’s grandfather and father, made all quiet again, till latterly, the farm of Gwern Ddu became incontestably a freehold property.

Twm felt no great wonder that its existence, as narrated by Watt, remained so long unknown, and wished an earthquake had been so good as to swallow it before he had been destined to enter its precincts.

“It was in sooth a landscape harsh.
On one side rock, and three sides marsh:
With naught to please the restless eye,
A scene to cause a weary sigh.”

The farm occupied one side of a dreary dingle, being one field’s breadth only from the rocky mountain above, and divided from a swampy turbary marsh by a roaring torrent-like brook. The house and the farm appertainments, with a view to shelter at the expense of a healthier foundation, were situated on the marsh-side of the brook, the waters of which were crossed by a rustic bridge formed of a fallen tree, that led towards the fields, and by a short lane and a path through the wood, to the mountain above them. Instead of the hawthorn, willow, birch, and the nut-bearing pleasant hazel, that usually form the hedges in more favoured lands, these poor little fields had their boundary ditches surmounted by that rude bantling of barrenness, the prickly gorse, more poetically called the yellow-blossomed furze; intermingled here and there, as in the adjoining mountain, with its brunette sister, the purple-flowering heath, immortalized in Scottish literature as the mountain heather.

Above the rustic bridge, the bright pure water, yet unpolluted by the touch of man, rolled in a small cascade over the smooth black rock, contrasting by its foaming whiteness, with the sable bed from which it sprung. This little water-fall was called—Y Pistyll, or the spout; from which was obtained the water destined for household uses. From its side the farm lasses scooped the gravel wherewith they scoured their milk-pails, hoops and staves, rivalling by their whiteness, the nectarious stream within. Below the bridge, the brook had been widened by human art, so as to form a considerable pool, wherein the aquatic members of the farm-yard, the stately silent geese and the noisy ducks, at times floated gravely, with their young yellow brood, at others, ploughing and gambolling merrily and undisturbed; save when the horses, cows, or oxen were driven across; for the upper part of the pool formed part of the regular road.

Through this wood, ran an oblique path, that after turning the corner of an angular rising whose upper end was bounded by a terrific precipice of no less than ninety feet perpendicular height, and known by the name of Allt y Craig Llwyd, or Acclivious Forest of the Grey Rock, which indicated that trees at some period clothed the scene now defaced by hideous nakedness. On winding round and gaining the summit of the peak above this quarry, an extensive tract of level mountain appeared in one direction; in another, the dreary monotony was broken by the appearance of petty lakes or mountain pools, on which floated at times certain families of migratory aquatic birds, that here made their temporary resting place, in their hasty journeys to more favoured regions. Ravines, and caves, the reputed bed-chambers of evil spirits, long-maned unbroken horses, and numerous flocks of wild-looking small sheep, were the other objects that diversified the scene; and the horizon was closed by the distant mountain peaks, one above another, wildly strange, but most grandly clustered.

On Watt’s presenting Twm to a tall, gaunt, swarthy-faced man, who proved to be Morris Greeg himself, as the apprentice which the parish had sent him, his brows contracted, and his sunken eyes threw out their fires in a flash of indignation.

“Ha!” cried the old man, after eyeing our hero with the contempt which a sordid clown might evince towards a puny insect, as he wondered, in the dulness of his conception, why heaven should trouble itself in creating a thing incapable of hewing wood or carrying burdens—“a pretty help they have sent me truly! Of what service will a weak creature like this be to me?”

“None!” screamed a thin hag of a yellow-faced woman, “but to eat up all the victuals; I warrant, by his thin carcass and long crane neck, that he has the stomach of a hound. This neck looks as if it had been stretched already. But if it hasn’t, it soon will be by the looks of him.”

Four damsels, the daughters of the house, now made their appearance, and scrutinized our hero over each other’s shoulder, as if he had been a reptile of some unquestionable species, whom it was not safe to approach too near. A sturdy ploughman in a white frock sat at the table, silently, but sullenly, descanting on the merits of the food before him, by alternately sneering and masticating what appeared to be more necessary to his stomach than agreeable to his palate. On the left of the ploughman sat a singular-looking thin parrot-nosed boy, the only one that appeared to greet him with a look of welcome; his small black eyes actually laughed with satisfaction.

“Well, Moses, thou hast now a companion to help thee to devour food, and do nothing,” said farmer Greeg, as he motioned to Watt and Twm to sit and eat.

“Yes, thee hast now a companion to help thee to eat and do nothing,” repeated the farmer’s eldest daughter Shaan, whose habit it was to echo all the sayings of her father and mother, so as to publish herself as one of the authorities of the house. Moses said nothing audibly, but a rueful expression of countenance gave it the lie to the insinuation most pointedly, and Twm fancied that he brushed away a tear with his sleeve, as he rose hastily and walked out of the house.

Watt had been busy “taking stock” of the ploughman’s countenance; a compliment apparently by no means appreciated by the object of his regard. The ploughman hastily finished his dinner, and was about to beat a retreat, when Watt enquired, “Is’nt thy name Abel Prosser?”

“No!” cried the man.

“Yes,” cried Shaan, “what does thou deny thy name for?”

“Then, I have a warrant against thee, as the runaway father of Palley Bais Wen’s bantling,” cried Watt; “help to secure him in the king’s name!”

The man made a dart from the house, and Watt after him. The event of the chase remained long unknown as neither were seen again by the present party for many a month.

“The devil take that Watt Gwathotwr!” screamed Sheeny Greeg the farmer’s wife, “for he brings us nothing but trouble. Two years ago he brought us this Moses, the deserted bantling of a rascally Jew, who deceived the silly wench of a hedge-ale-house maid, where he lodged; and now he has brought another of no more strength than a grey-hound puppy; and worse than all, he has scared away Abel Prosser. What are we to do now?”

“Do!” cried Shaan scornfully, “we shall do very well; make these two fellows do Abel’s work, and their own.” With this very comfortable prospect before him, Twm went to rest with the Jew boy in the hay-loft, this first night after his arrival in the alpine region of Cwmny Gwern Ddu.

CHAPTER XI.

Moses has many youthful yearnings. The exploits of the lads in fasting and feasting.

Some say it is a comfort to have a brother in affliction, visited by similar trials, and persecuted rigour. Now Moses and Twm could be sympathetic enough, for they had to endure labour enough and too much, but quite the opposite quantity of eatables; they, therefore, in their misery, became firm and attached companions. Twm at first found much to disgust him with his fellow sufferer, as he seemed disposed to talk of nothing but culinary matters; the roast and boiled, the stewed, the fried, were his darling topics. When Twm dilated on some of the festal doings at Graspacre-hall, the prematurely sunken eyes of this wretched starveling would glisten with a lambent flame that threatened the immediate extinction of his senses, he exclaimed, “O Lord, how I should like to make one of them!—I heard a strange man once talk of an ox being roasted whole—can such a thing be? what a—what a sight! O Lord, how I should like to tear two, three, four, hot ribs out of a roasting ox—I would get into the carcass, and roast with it, so that I might tug, tear, and eat my fill first. If I knew my way to any great town from this awful place, I’ll tell thee Twm, how I should like to get my living—I would eat for wagers—I have heard of such doings, and I know I could die contented, if I had once my stomach full of flesh—ha! ha! ha! I would tear it, and ha! ha! ha! Oh! how I would tear and swallow it!”

Twm felt horror-struck to hear these frantic ravings of this poor famished being, his eyes starting from their sockets, and his thin talon-like hands clutching vacantly at imaginary food. He strove to comfort him with future hopes, but the wretch had now sunk into a fit of weeping despondency, and as the tears ran down his young emaciated face, he exclaimed, in a tone of utter hopelessness, “no, no, I shall sleep on these mountains, and never have my fill of any thing but work and sorrow, work and sorrow till I die!” Suddenly starting from his reclining posture to his feet, and as suddenly changing his querulous tones to those of maniac rapture that was alarming from the startling transition—“Canst thee eat raw eggs, Twm? I have a store of them hid away in the barn—we’ll have a feast of them to-night, boy!”

Previous to this scene, they had been thrashing together till over fatigued they sat themselves down on the straw. The silence of their flails informed the quick ears of old Sheeny of this pause in their labour. Hastening with stealthy steps towards the barn, she unluckily arrived the moment when Moses vaunted of the intended feast of eggs. With the soundless steps and savage purpose of the taloned cat, that marks the moment to dart upon the heedless bird, she reached over the latch; unlatching it, she burst into the middle of the barn, and seizing the first flail in her way, she vowed with a tremendous oath to break every bone in his body with it unless the eggs were immediately produced. As she had once broke his leg, which Evans the blacksmith had imperfectly set for him, poor Moses made a virtue of necessity, and at once took her to his little hoard. Poor lad; it was like drawing his blood, to take away this prospect of a feed, and his eyes filled with tears as Sheeny gathered them all in her apron and marched off triumphantly. The loss of the eggs, valuable as they were in their hungry circumstances, was trivial to the daily annoyances of the female tongues that trimmed and stung them both within and without doors for many a day after, on this subject.

Old Sheeny was certainly a notable manager, an economist to the back bone. Abstemious moralists, those excellent friends of the human race, have declared, that the new-fangled improvements in modern cookery have inclined mankind to devour twice the quantity of food requisite or beneficial for the health and happiness of our species. Sheeny Greeg, the careful mistress of this mountain mansion, had no idea of inflicting such an evil on those favoured beings confided to her protection. Therefore, in a pure philosophic spirit, as an antidote to gluttony and intemperance, she took care, like an ancient Spartan dame, that the food and drink of her providing should be neither too rich nor too savory. Consequently gout and plethora were never found among the maladies of her inmates. She had an admirable contrivance that did honour to her inventive powers, of substituting durability for the dangerous quality of palatableness, in the food she administered.

For instance, in the article of bread, her custom was to bake an enormous batch at once; so that it soon got hard, musty and mouldy, it must be admitted that the temptation to gluttonize on it and its accompaniments, was diminished. In preparing that standing dish of the Welsh farm, the flummery, she would steep for a considerable time, a large portion of the oaten commodity for that purpose, till thoroughly soured to the acidity of crab-juice. The skim milk, in which this mess was soused, she considered as too gross for their unsophisticated stomachs, till diluted with the pure element from the brook.

The whey and butter-milk underwent the same process; and the cheese kept for home consumption was manufactured of that fang-defying, heart of oak, sort of toughness, which answers the patriotic purpose of cannon-balls, to repel invaders, should their cupidity ever be inflamed by the reported felicities of Cwmny Gwern Ddu: in which alarming supposition it is some satisfaction to reflect, as a point to our moral, that the crime would carry the punishment along with it. Whenever those rare and almost denounced strangers to the table, the beef or bacon made their appearance, the greedy fangs that seized them would suddenly relax their tenacious grip, like the blind dog that mistook a red-hot poker for a bone, in evident alarm, lest a portion of Lot’s wife had accidentally fallen in their way; a cannibal impression that seemed to haunt them long after, till washed away by many a copious draught of the fluid that cost nothing. Morris Greeg himself was a fine example to his household, as a scorner of unnecessary dainties. Doubtless it was very edifying to Twm and Moses, to hear him descant on the enormities of gross feeding, enlivened by anecdotes of people who had eaten themselves to death.

He would tell tales about the dreadful troubles brought upon a man by being over fat—obesity was, to hear him, a state of existence only equalled in horror by the pains and penalties of the lower regions. He narrated a veritable instance of a Daniel Lambert, who got so fat, and so immovable, that he rolled himself into a large trough of water, and voluntarily died the death of a suicide. Moses, the young infidel, would gape incredulously at such an intimation, and evidently doubted the probability of such a death; and if it were possible, impious cormorant as he was, he would have no objection to martyrdom on such a score.

“Plain food, and as little of it as possible,” quoth Morris, “is a fine thing,” grinding as he spoke a mass of black-eyed winter-dried beans with rusty bacon. “And leaven,” cried the sage of the mountains, “is far better in the bread than barn; it warms the stomach with its generous acid, and makes me content with little.”

Our hero, however, had a bold heart; and if a little better fed, would have endured all with that indifference and vein of whim which were natural to him. As it was, with the wild companionship of Moses, he turned misery herself into a scarecrow of mirth rather than of terror. Together those mischievously merry boys dispatched their breakfasts of highly watered milk and porridge, thickened with mouldy bread, with hungry yet loathing stomachs, and indulged in under currents of laughter, as either of them aped some peculiarity of gait or visage in their amiable hostess.

And when the rusty bacon liquor was enlarged for repeated messes of broth, their wry faces gave indications of their inmost feelings, whilst the latter manifested themselves by a waterspout movement generally supposed to indicate disquietude of the stomach. Their patience was severely tried; often when they felt a conviction that this species of drenching was over, they had the unexpected mortification to find a quantity of water added, to spin it out for another meal. This was truly a sad change to Twm, compelled as he was daily to embrace his antipathies, and disconnect himself from all that he had learned to love. He loved ballad lore, rural festivities, rambling, and all those light modes of passing his time that were most allied to idleness.

But in this dreary house, not a book was to be seen nor the sound of mirth, harp, or song, ever heard; still Twm did not despond; his good humour had the effect of brightening, by many a shade, the desponding apprehensions of Moses; and more than once he actually won a smile from one or two of the younger daughters of the house, who, however, soon rebuked themselves for descending to be pleased with anything that a parish apprentice boy could advance.

In the long winter evenings, when no one could possibly invent a task or job for them, Twm and Moses would be allowed to sit a little by the turf fire; when the latter would venture to narrate some hungry tale of gastronomic heroism, in which his fancy revelled, Twm would recite ghost stories that terrified the damsels; and war tales of olden times that he had heard from Ianto Gwyn, or his master, Rhys, that astonished and amused his auditors, at least part of them, for Sheeny Greeg and her echo Shaan disdained to be among the number, but cried shame on him for repeating such audacious lies.

Miserly people often overshoot their mark, and it was so in this farm-house. Old Elwes would have called Morris Greeg a worthy disciple, whilst other misers of even greater note would have looked upon the farm-house and its ways as the very acme of human felicity. But “greed” begets greater evils; and when Morris was by chance called away, the girls indulged themselves in the best way they could find. Theft was largely patronized, and as we should charitably think not without very reasonable excuse. One fair, day when Morris and Sheeny had betaken themselves to a distant corn and cattle mart, the girls, as usual, commenced their preparation for a regular junketing. Twm and Moses, whom they kept at the humble distance of lowly menials, were out together, mending some gaps in the hedges, when Moses sniffing the wind that blew from the direction of the house, with the gifted nose of a dog of the chase, called out with ecstacy, “Twm, I smell pan-cake!”

“So do I, Moses,” returned our little hero, expanding his nostrils with jocular comicality, “Ha!” cried Moses, with an envious snarl, “The selfish wenches of the house are treating their dainty chops with something nice.”

“Aye!” retorted Twm, quoting from some learned Theban, “when the cat’s away the mice will play. But stop thee here, Moses, and see if I don’t bring thee a share of what is going, in five minutes.” Moses grinned and licked his lips in eager anticipation as Twm hurried off. He entered the house with a sudden startling step, and a bundle of firewood under his arm as an excuse for the intrusion. All was panic within an instant. Two of the girls dashed their jug of sweetened small beer into the pail of hog’s wash, as they heard the first rattle of the wooden latch on Twm’s entrance; Shaan turned pale as the unfried pancake before her, so great was their fear that their parents had returned in the midst of their underhand clandestine doings. “It is only that devil Twm Shon Catty,” cried Shaan, who was the first to recover from the general terror; “Never mind, girls, go and sweeten more beer, for father and mother can’t be home before night.”

“Aye, go and sweeten more beer, and let poor Moses and I have a share of your beer and pancakes,” cried Twm, pointedly eyeing a raised heap of them in a wooden platter before the fire;—“let us have a part, and we won’t tell.”

“Get along to thy work, thou saucy cur!” cried Shaan, striking him with all her strength with the hot frying-pan. “Not till I have our share to take with me,” cried our hero, making a grasping snatch at the heaped pancakes, which he bore off in spite of the united efforts of the lasses to re-capture them. His manner of bestowing them was more commendable on the score of security than of delicacy, as the greater portion was thrust into his shirt-breast and breeches pockets; off he ran over the wooden bridge and along the path through the wood.

In this chase the great heat against his breast gave him considerable pain, and almost arrested his steps, half persuaded to throw away the larded delicacy; St. Vitus never danced faster nor more spasmodically under his pains, than did our hero under the effects of his hot pancakes. They gave him shocks equal in intensity to those from the voltaic pile; in fact he may be said to have been a Salamander enduring the scorchings of heat, but with this difference.—Twm Shon Catty could not well bear them, whereas the Salamander was represented as rather enjoying them than otherwise.

But, like the Spartan boy, Twm heroically determined to bear the self-inflicted torture, and endure to the last. However, it must be confessed, to the minoration of his fame, that not having been favoured with so stoical an education as the aforesaid Lacedemonian, he yielded to nature, and ran and roared, and roared and ran, till he outran his pursuers, who returned breathless home, and he as breathless joined young Moses, where, in their secret haunt, they enjoyed the fruit of his dexterity.

The spot they occupied was one of the discoveries of Moses, before Twm’s arrival, the craggy recesses of which became the depositaries of his filching achievements, and which recurring to in after years, he called his larder. It was situated above the torrent, beside the mountain, at the extreme end of the farm—just where the wilderness had refused to yield another patch to add to former accumulation. But these gormandizing youths were at present too busily engaged to remark on either the beauties or the horrors of the scene.

CHAPTER XII.

Studies piscatorial and fleshy, and certain tricks connected therewith. Pork capers—a new dish.

Emboldened by the impunity with which they had foraged for themselves during the last three months that had followed the doings in our last chapter, both Twm and Moses grew somewhat daring in their gastronomical speculations. Moses, among his restless peerings for something to gratify appetite, had peeped into one of the mountain pools, and joyfully detected the existence of a certain sizeable fish there. This was a discovery which made the young Jew’s mouth water, and his eyes distend with visions of future work for the jaws! Here was an El Dorado of good food, and Moses went into proportionate rapture at the prospect. Twm annoyed him not a little, by laughing at his futile attempts to spear a pike with the dull and clumsy prongs of a dungfork.

Our hero was more successful in his warfare on the trout and eels that abounded in a brook which ran through one of the tarns. Without any contrivance that resembled fishing-tackle in the most remote degree, he remarked a sweeping curve, of a horse-shoe shape, in one part of the brook, and determined, with the assistance of Moses, on sporting his engineering skill, in cutting a new channel for the water, so that it might for the future, run a straight course, and leave the horseshoe portion of it dry. This at different intervals, with no small labour, they at last effected; and when the flood ran along the new channel, its deserted curve became a mess of slimy mud. Into this, with naked feet, they soon waded, and groping cautiously about, succeeded in gathering an abundant harvest of trout and eels. Moses was noisy in his raptures at the result, and so anxious to have them immediately cooked, that he could scarcely wait for that tedious progress.

However, they soon kindled a fire by rubbing together some rotten wood, and with the aid of some dry turf, the quarry under the precipice of Allt y Craig became a temporary heath of blazing beauty. Utterly void of any culinary utensils, they resolved on the primitive mode of broiling their fish on hot stones, and Moses, all alacrity, proceeded on the task of preparing them.

But, alas, for the sequel of their adventure! Before they could realize their project, the dark countenance of Morris Greeg paralyzed their efforts, as the serpent’s gaze is said to fascinate its victim. The angry farmer gruffly demanded where they had been, how they had dared to idle away their time, and what was the meaning of that wasteful fire against the rock. The ready lie, or presence of mind as it is favourably called, of Twm and Moses soon supplied answers, such as they were. Twm said, that hearing the good woman of the house complain of a visit from the old enemy the cholic, he determined to catch a dish of fish for her, to drive it away, pointing triumphantly to his piscatory store; thus beating a retreat with all the diplomacy and tact of a good general, who when he finds he cannot obtain a victory, at any rate manages to gain credit for a wise ‘retrograde.’

Moses followed up Twm’s assertion by declaring that the fire was to frighten away the crows and the kites that might take fancy to the young lambs, or the wheat in the neighbouring field; a manifestation of care over his master’s property, which had, at any rate, the claim of originality to back it. Morris was as great an economist of his words as in matters of worldly goods, and therefore, whatever he thought, he did not waste breath with reply; but suddenly ordered Moses to carry the fish into the house, and Twm to give some hay to the cows. “And be sure,” quoth the careful farmer, “that you give most hay to the cow that gives most milk.”

“I will be sure of it!” replied Twm pointedly, and with sulky asperity. The next moment, to the great astonishment, and greater anger of Morris Greeg, he threw as much hay as his two arms could embrace, under the water-spout. “There,” cried the redoubted son of Catty, “that is the cow which gives me most milk, for that cursed broth and porridge is almost wholly made from this never-failing animal.”

A precipitous retreat of course, followed this explanation, and Morris Greeg was left alone to chew the cud of his resentment. At dinner the next day, the wrath of Morris having evaporated, all grew smooth again. While Twm and Moses bolted their insipid mess of dovery, otherwise called burgoo, the gratification was rather questionable in having as their share merely the smell of the fried fish, on which Sheeny and Shaan with the younger daughters were regaling, and praising the flavour at every mouthful they swallowed. Moses ground his teeth, and would have impaled them in the excess of his rage, for the loss of his expected feast. Twm said nothing, but inwardly resolved on faring better, and that very speedily. Shaan grinned like a hyena as she treated her dainty gums with fish after fish, and spitefully enjoyed their mortification, as she whispered to Twm, “now we are even for the pancakes.”

Just at the finishing of this mid-day meal, the barking of a strange dog drew Twm and Moses out to the yard. There they saw a half-starved cur, belonging to a cottager who was cutting turf in the adjoining turbary. This wretched animal, evidently a cut-throat leveller in principle, was disputing with one of the pigs his right to engross the whole trough to himself, which the bristly conservative at length resented by snapping in two one of the hind legs of his canine enemy.

The dog set up a dismal howl as a requiem for the loss of the fourth part of his understanding, which was soon silenced by Moses striking him on the head with a large stone, which killed him on the spot. The cottager hurried home, frightened by Twm, who told him would be sued for the damages done by his dog. Our hero, with the assistance of Moses, to whom he imparted the scheme he had now in hand, immediately bathed the buttocks of the pig with the dog’s blood; and then pouring some dry sand in his ear, drove him howling down the yard. Annoyed with the freedom thus taken with his auricular organ, the offended gentleman of the sty rushed to and fro, at a rate as violent as some of his celebrated ancestors, when they sought to drown both themselves and the devils within them in the sea. Morris lifted his hands amidst the assembled household, and ruefully exclaimed, “the devil is in the pig!” His gambols were certainly most extraordinary, and far surpassed the evolutions’ of the bull’s frisky wife, commonly called the cow’s courante. He sometimes aimed to stand on his hind legs, to emulate the figure, intimating in pantomime, “I am as good a man as the best of you!”