I Gathered From Him That He Was A Native Of The Southdown
Country And A Shepherd By Profession; That He
Had been engaged by
the squire of Porkington in Shropshire to look after his sheep, and
that he had lived
There a year or two, but becoming tired of his
situation he had come to Llangollen, where he had married a
Welshwoman and set up as a butcher. We told him that as he was our
countryman we should be happy to deal with him sometimes; he,
however, received the information with perfect apathy, never so
much as saying "thank you." He was a tall lanikin figure with a
pair of large, lack-lustre staring eyes, and upon the whole
appeared to be good for very little. Leaving him we went some way
up the principal street; presently my wife turned into a shop, and
I observing a little bookstall went up to it and began to inspect
the books. They were chiefly in Welsh. Seeing a kind of chap
book, which bore on its title-page the name of Twm O'r Nant, I took
it up. It was called Y Llwyn Celyn or the Holy Grove, and
contained the life and one of the interludes of Tom O' the Dingle
or Thomas Edwards. It purported to be the first of four numbers,
each of which amongst other things was to contain one of his
interludes. The price, of the number was one shilling. I
questioned the man of the stall about the other numbers, but found
that this was the only one which he possessed. Eager, however, to
read an interlude of the celebrated Tom, I purchased it and turned
away from the stall. Scarcely had I done so when I saw a wild-
looking woman with two wild children looking at me. The woman
curtseyed to me, and I thought I recognised the elder of the two
Irish females whom I had seen in the tent on the green meadow near
Chester. I was going to address her, but just then my wife called
to me from the shop and I went to her, and when I returned to look
for the woman she and her children had disappeared, and though I
searched about for her I could not see her, for which I was sorry,
as I wished very much to have some conversation with her about the
ways of the Irish wanderers. I was thinking of going to look for
her up "Paddy's dingle," but my wife meeting me, begged me to go
home with her, as it was getting late. So I went home with my
better half, bearing my late literary acquisition in my hand.
That night I sat up very late reading the life of Twm O'r Nant,
written by himself in choice Welsh, and his interlude which was
styled "Cyfoeth a Thylody; or, Riches and Poverty." The life I had
read in my boyhood in an old Welsh magazine, and I now read it
again with great zest, and no wonder, as it is probably the most
remarkable autobiography ever penned.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 242 of 450
Words from 126346 to 126864
of 235675
