In the printed tale bearing his name
are almost identical with various rogueries related in the story-
book of Klim the Russian robber, (15) and the most poetical part of
Tom Shone's history, namely, that in which he threatens to cut off
the hand of the reluctant bride unless she performs her promise,
is, in all probability, an offshoot of the grand myth of "the
severed hand," which in various ways figures in the stories of most
nations, and which is turned to considerable account in the tale of
the above-mentioned Russian worthy Klim.
CHAPTER XCIV
Llan Ddewi Brefi - Pelagian Heresy - Hu Gadarn - God of Agriculture
- The Silver Cup - Rude Tablet.
IT was about eleven o'clock in the morning when I started from
Tregaron; the sky was still cloudy and heavy. I took the road to
Lampeter, distant about eight miles, intending, however, to go much
farther ere I stopped for the night. The road lay nearly south-
west. I passed by Aber Coed, a homestead near the bottom of a
dingle down which runs a brook into the Teivi, which flows here
close by the road; then by Aber Carvan, where another brook
disembogues. Aber, as perhaps the reader already knows, is a
disemboguement, and wherever a place commences with Aber there to a
certainty does a river flow into the sea, or a brook or rivulet
into a river.
