It Is Full Of Abuse Against
The Bird, With Whom The Poet Is Very Angry For Having With Its Cry
Frightened Morfydd Back, Who Was Coming To The Wood To Keep An
Assignation With Him, But Not A Little Of This Abuse Is Wonderfully
Expressive And Truthful.
He calls the owl a grey thief - the
haunter of the ivy bush - the chick of the oak, a
Blinking eyed
witch, greedy of mice, with a visage like the bald forehead of a
big ram, or the dirty face of an old abbess, which bears no little
resemblance to the chine of an ape. Of its cry he says that it is
as great a torment as an agonizing recollection, a cold shrill
laugh from the midst of a kettle of ice; the rattling of sea-
pebbles in an old sheep-skin, on which account many call the owl
the hag of the Rhugylgroen. The Rhugylgroen, it will be as well to
observe, is a dry sheepskin containing a number of pebbles, and is
used as a rattle for frightening crows. The likening the visage of
the owl to the dirty face of an old abbess is capital, and the
likening the cry to the noise of the rhugylgroen is anything but
unfortunate. For, after all, what does the voice of the owl so
much resemble as a diabolical rattle. I'm sure I don't know.
Reader, do you?
I reached Caerfili at about seven o'clock, and went to the "Boar's
Head," near the ruins of a stupendous castle, on which the beams of
the moon were falling.
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