Oh, There Never Was A Cat
So Persecuted As That Poor Church Of England Animal, And Solely On
Account Of
The opinions which it was supposed to have imbibed in
the house of its late master, for I never could
Learn that the
dissenters of the suburb, nor indeed of Llangollen in general, were
in the habit of persecuting other cats; the cat was a Church of
England cat, and that was enough: stone it, hang it, drown it!
were the cries of almost everybody. If the workmen of the flannel
factory, all of whom were Calvinistic-Methodists, chanced to get a
glimpse of it in the road from the windows of the building, they
would sally forth in a body, and with sticks, stones, or for want
of other weapons, with clots of horse dung, of which there was
always plenty on the road, would chase it up the high bank or
perhaps over the Camlas; the inhabitants of a small street between
our house and the factory leading from the road to the river, all
of whom were dissenters, if they saw it moving about the perllan,
into which their back windows looked, would shriek and hoot at it,
and fling anything of no value, which came easily to hand, at the
head or body of the ecclesiastical cat. The good woman of the
house, who though a very excellent person, was a bitter dissenter,
whenever she saw it upon her ground or heard it was there, would
make after it, frequently attended by her maid Margaret, and her
young son, a boy about nine years of age, both of whom hated the
cat, and were always ready to attack it, either alone or in
company, and no wonder, the maid being not only a dissenter, but a
class teacher, and the boy not only a dissenter, but intended for
the dissenting ministry. Where it got its food, and food it
sometimes must have got, for even a cat, an animal known to have
nine lives, cannot live without food, was only known to itself, as
was the place where it lay, for even a cat must lie down sometimes;
though a labouring man who occasionally dug in the garden told me
he believed that in the springtime it ate freshets, and the woman
of the house once said that she believed it sometimes slept in the
hedge, which hedge, by-the-bye, divided our perllan from the
vicarage grounds, which were very extensive. Well might the cat
after having led this kind of life for better than two years look
mere skin and bone when it made its appearance in our apartment,
and have an eruptive malady, and also a bronchitic cough, for I
remember it had both. How it came to make its appearance there is
a mystery, for it had never entered the house before, even when
there were lodgers; that it should not visit the woman, who was its
declared enemy, was natural enough, but why if it did not visit her
other lodgers, did it visit us? Did instinct keep it aloof from
them? Did instinct draw it towards us? We gave it some bread-and-
butter, and a little tea with milk and sugar. It ate and drank and
soon began to purr. The good woman of the house was horrified when
on coming in to remove the things she saw the church cat on her
carpet. "What impudence!" she exclaimed, and made towards it, but
on our telling her that we did not expect that it should be
disturbed, she let it alone. A very remarkable circumstance was,
that though the cat had hitherto been in the habit of flying, not
only from her face, but the very echo of her voice, it now looked
her in the face with perfect composure, as much as to say, "I don't
fear you, for I know that I am now safe and with my own people."
It stayed with us two hours and then went away. The next morning
it returned. To be short, though it went away every night, it
became our own cat, and one of our family. I gave it something
which cured it of its eruption, and through good treatment it soon
lost its other ailments and began to look sleek and bonny.
CHAPTER VIII
The Mowers - Deep Welsh - Extensive View - Old Celtic Hatred - Fish
Preserving - Smollet's Morgan.
NEXT morning I set out to ascend Dinas Bran, a number of children,
almost entirely girls, followed me. I asked them why they came
after me. "In the hope that you will give us something," said one
in very good English. I told them that I should give them nothing,
but they still followed me. A little way up the hill I saw some
men cutting hay. I made an observation to one of them respecting
the fineness of the weather; he answered civilly, and rested on his
scythe, whilst the others pursued their work. I asked him whether
he was a farming man; he told me that he was not; that he generally
worked at the flannel manufactory, but that for some days past he
had not been employed there, work being slack, and had on that
account joined the mowers in order to earn a few shillings. I
asked him how it was he knew how to handle a scythe, not being bred
up a farming man; he smiled, and said that, somehow or other, he
had learnt to do so.
"You speak very good English," said I, "have you much Welsh?"
"Plenty," said he; "I am a real Welshman."
"Can you read Welsh?" said I.
"Oh, yes!" he replied.
"What books have you read?" said I.
"I have read the Bible, sir, and one or two other books."
"Did you ever read the Bardd Cwsg?" said I.
He looked at me with some surprise. "No," said he, after a moment
or two, "I have never read it. I have seen it, but it was far too
deep Welsh for me."
"I have read it," said I.
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