Wild Wales Part 107

"Can't you read?"

"O no, yere hanner, I can't read, neither can Tourlough nor his wife."

"Well, learn to read as soon as possible. When you have got to America and settled down you will have time enough to learn to read."

"Shall we be better, yere hanner, after we have learnt to read?"

"Let's hope you will."

"One of the things, yere hanner, that have made us stumble is that some of the holy women, who have come to our tent and read the Bible to us, have afterwards asked my aunt and me to tell them their fortunes."

"If they have the more shame for them, for they can have no excuse.

Well, whether you learn to read or not still eschew striopachas, don't steal, don't deceive, and worship G.o.d in spirit, not in image. That's the best counsel I can give you."

"And very good counsel it is, yere hanner, and I will try to follow it, and now, yere hanner, let us go our two ways."

We placed our gla.s.ses upon the bar and went out. In the middle of the road we shook hands and parted, she going towards Newport and I towards Chepstow. After walking a few yards I turned round and looked after her.

There she was in the damp lowering afternoon wending her way slowly through mud and puddle, her upper form huddled in the rough frieze mantle, and her coa.r.s.e legs bare to the top of the calves. "Surely,"

said I to myself, "there never was an object less promising in appearance. Who would think that there could be all the good sense and proper feeling in that uncouth girl which there really is?"

CHAPTER CIX

Arrival at Chepstow-Stirring Lyric-Conclusion.

I pa.s.sed through Caer Went, once an important Roman station, and for a long time after the departure of the Romans a celebrated British city, now a poor desolate place consisting of a few old-fashioned houses and a strange-looking dilapidated church. No Welsh is spoken at Caer Went, nor to the east of it, nor indeed for two or three miles before you reach it from the west.

The country between it and Chepstow, from which it is distant about four miles, is delightfully green, but somewhat tame.

Chepstow stands on the lower part of a hill, near to where the beautiful Wye joins the n.o.ble Severn. The British name of the place is Aber Wye or the disemboguement of the Wye. The Saxons gave it the name of Chepstow, which in their language signifies a place where a market is held, because even in the time of the Britons it was the site of a great cheap or market. After the Norman Conquest it became the property of De Clare, one of William's followers, who built near it an enormous castle, which enjoyed considerable celebrity during several centuries from having been the birthplace of Strongbow, the conqueror of Ireland, but which is at present chiefly ill.u.s.trious from the mention which is made of it in one of the most stirring lyrics of modern times, a piece by Walter Scott, called the "Norman Horseshoe," commemorative of an expedition made by a De Clare of Chepstow with the view of insulting with the print of his courser's shoe the green meads of Glamorgan, and which commences thus:-

"Red glows the forge"-

I went to the princ.i.p.al inn, where I engaged a private room and ordered the best dinner which the people could provide. Then leaving my satchel behind me I went to the castle, amongst the ruins of which I groped and wandered for nearly an hour, occasionally repeating verses of the "Norman Horseshoe." I then went to the Wye and drank of the waters at its mouth, even as sometime before I had drunk of the waters at its source. Then returning to my inn I got my dinner, after which I called for a bottle of port, and placing my feet against the sides of the grate I pa.s.sed my time drinking wine and singing Welsh songs till ten o'clock at night, when I paid my reckoning, amounting to something considerable. Then shouldering my satchel I proceeded to the railroad station, where I purchased a first-cla.s.s ticket, and ensconcing myself in a comfortable carriage was soon on the way to London, where I arrived at about four o'clock in the morning, having had during the whole of my journey a most uproarious set of neighbours a few carriages behind me, namely some hundred and fifty of Napier's tars returning from their expedition to the Baltic.

THE END

RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

Footnotes

{0} "The old land of my father is dear unto me."

{169} One or two of the characters and incidents in this Saga are mentioned in the _Romany Rye_. London, 1857, vol. i. p. 240; vol. i. p.

150.

A partial translation of the _Saga_, made by myself, has been many years in existence. It forms part of a mountain of unpublished translations from the Northern languages. In my younger days no London publisher, or indeed magazine editor, would look at anything from the Norse, Danish, etc.

{172a} All these three names are very common in Norfolk, the population of which is of Norse origin. Skarphethin is at present p.r.o.nounced Sharpin, Helgi Heely. Skarphethin, interpreted, is a keen pirate.

{172b} Eryri likewise signifies an excrescence or scrofulous eruption.

It is possible that many will be disposed to maintain that in the case of Snowdon the word is intended to express a rugged excrescence or eruption on the surface of the earth.

{177} It will not be amiss to observe that the original term is gwyddfa; but gwyddfa being a feminine noun or compound commencing with g, which is a mutable consonant, loses the initial letter before y the definite article-you say Gwyddfa a tumulus, but not y gwyddfa _the_ tumulus.

{349} _Essay on the Origin of the English Stage_, by Bishop Percy.

London, 1793.

{371} The above account is chiefly taken from the curious Welsh book called "Drych y prif Oesoedd."

{397} Spirits.

{398} Eel.

{400} For an account of this worm, which has various denominations, see article Fasciola Hepatica in any encyclopaedia.

{402} As the umbrella is rather a hackneyed subject two or three things will of course be found in the above eulogium on an umbrella which have been said by other folks on that subject; the writer, however, flatters himself that in his eulogium on an umbrella two or three things will also be found which have never been said by any one else about an umbrella.

{506} Bitter root.

{524} Amongst others a kind of novel called _The Adventures of Twm Shon Catty_, _a Wild Wag of Wales_. It possesses considerable literary merit, the language being pure, and many of the descriptions graphic. By far the greater part of it, however, would serve for the life of any young Welsh peasant, quite as well as for that of Twm Shone Catti. Its grand fault is endeavouring to invest Twm Shone with a character of honesty, and to make his exploits appear rather those of a wild young waggish fellow than of a robber. This was committing a great mistake. When people take up the lives of bad characters the more rogueries and villanies they find, the better are they pleased, and they are very much disappointed and consider themselves defrauded by any attempt to apologise for the actions of the heroes. If the thieves should chance to have reformed, the respectable readers wish to hear nothing of their reformation till just at the close of the book, when they are very happy to have done with them for ever.

{527} Skazka O Klimkie. Moscow, 1829.

{529} Hanes Crefydd Yn Nghymru.

{538} The good gentlewoman was probably thinking of the celebrated king Brian Boromhe slain at the battle of Clontarf.

{570} Fox's Court-perhaps London.

{579} Drych y Prif Oesoedd, p. 100.

{583} Y Greal, p. 279.

{587} Hanes Crefydd Yn NGhymru.

{591} Fear caoch: vir caecus.