Wild Wales: The People, Language, & Scenery
“Would you have any objection to tell me all you do?”
“Why I sells needles, as I said before, and sometimes I buys things of servants, and sometimes I tells fortunes.”
“Do you ever do anything in the way of striopachas?”
“O, no! I never do anything in that line; I would be burnt first. I wonder you should dream of such a thing.”
“Why surely it is not worse than buying things of servants, who no doubt steal them from their employers, or telling fortunes, which is dealing with the devil.”
“Not worse? Yes a thousand times worse; there is nothing so very particular in doing them things, but striopachas – O dear!”
“It’s a dreadful thing I admit, but the other things are quite as bad; you should do none of them.”
“I’ll take good care that I never do one, and that is striopachas; them other things I know are not quite right, and I hope soon to have done wid them; any day I can shake them off and look people in the face, but were I once to do striopachas I could never hold up my head.”
“How comes it that you have such a horror of striopachas?”
“I got it from my mother and she got it from hers. All Irish women have a dread of striopachas. It’s the only thing that frights them; I manes the wild Irish, for as for the quality women I have heard they are no bit better than the English. Come, yere hanner, let’s talk of something else.”
“You were saying now that you were thinking of leaving off fortune-telling and buying things of servants. Do you mean to depend upon your needles alone?”
“No; I am thinking of leaving off tramping altogether and going to the Tir na Siar.”
“Isn’t that America?”
“It is, yere hanner; the land of the west is America.”
“A long way for a lone girl.”
“I should not be alone, yere hanner; I should be wid my uncle Tourlough and his wife.”
“Are they going to America?”
“They are, yere hanner; they intends leaving off business and going to America next spring.”
“It will cost money.”
“It will, yere hanner; but they have got money, and so have I.”
“Is it because business is slack that you are thinking of going to America?”
“O no, yere hanner; we wish to go there in order to get rid of old ways and habits, amongst which are fortune-telling and buying things of sarvants, which yere hanner was jist now checking me wid.”
“And can’t you get rid of them here?”
“We cannot, yere hanner. If we stay here we must go on tramping, and it is well known that doing them things is part of tramping.”
“And what would you do in America?”
“O we could do plenty of things in America – most likely we should buy a piece of land and settle down.”
“How came you to see the wickedness of the tramping life?”
“By hearing a great many sermons and preachings, and having often had the Bible read to us by holy women who came to our tent.”
“Of what religion do you call yourselves now?”
“I don’t know, yere hanner; we are clane unsettled about religion. We were once Catholics and carried Saint Colman of Cloyne about wid us in a box; but after hearing a sermon at a church about images, we went home, took the saint out of his box and cast him into a river.”
“O it will never do to belong to the Popish religion, a religion which upholds idol-worship and persecutes the Bible – you should belong to the Church of England.”
“Well, perhaps we should, yere hanner, if its ministers were not such proud violent men. O, you little know how they look down upon all poor people, especially on us tramps. Once my poor aunt, Tourlough’s wife, who has always had stronger convictions than any of us, followed one of them home after he had been preaching, and begged him to give her God, and was told by him that she was a thief, and if she didn’t take herself out of the house he would kick her out.”
“Perhaps, after all,” said I, “you had better join the Methodists – I should say that their ways would suit you better than those of any other denomination of Christians.”
“Yere hanner knows nothing about them, otherwise ye wouldn’t talk in that manner. Their ways would never do for people who want to have done with lying and staling, and have always kept themselves clane from striopachas. Their word is not worth a rotten straw, yere hanner, and in every transaction which they have with people they try to cheat and overreach – ask my uncle Tourlough, who has had many dealings with them. But what is far worse, they do that which the wildest calleen t’other side of Ougteraarde would be burnt rather than do. Who can tell ye more on that point than I, yere hanner? I have been at their chapels at nights and have listened to their screaming prayers, and have seen what’s been going on outside the chapels after their services, as they call them, were over – I never saw the like going on outside Father Toban’s chapel, yere hanner! Yere hanner’s hanner asked me if I ever did anything in the way of striopachas – now I tell ye that I was never asked to do anything in that line but by one of them folks – a great man amongst them he was, both in the way of business and prayer, for he was a commercial traveller during six days of the week and a preacher on the seventh – and such a preacher. Well, one Sunday night after he had preached a sermon an hour and a half long, which had put half-a-dozen women into what they call static fits, he overtook me in a dark street and wanted me to do striopachas with him – he didn’t say striopachas, yer hanner, for he had no Irish – but he said something in English which was the same thing.”
“And what did you do?”
“Why I asked him what he meant by making fun of a poor ugly girl – for no one knows better than myself, yere hanner, that I am very ugly – whereupon he told me that he was not making fun of me, for it had long been the chief wish of his heart to commit striopachas with a wild Irish Papist, and that he believed if he searched the world he should find none wilder than myself.”
“And what did you reply?”
“Why I said to him, yere hanner, that I would tell the congregation, at which he laughed and said that he wished I would, for that the congregation would say they didn’t believe me, though at heart they would, and would like him all the better for it.”
“Well, and what did you say then?”
“Nothing at all, yere hanner; but I spat in his face and went home and told my uncle Tourlough, who forthwith took out a knife and began to sharp it on a whetstone, and I make no doubt would have gone and stuck the fellow like a pig, had not my poor aunt begged him not on her knees. After that we had nothing more to do with the Methodists as far as religion went.”
“Did this affair occur in England or Wales?”
“In the heart of England, yere hanner; we have never been to the Welsh chapels, for we know little of the language.”
“Well, I am glad it didn’t happen in Wales; I have rather a high opinion of the Welsh Methodists. The worthiest creature I ever knew was a Welsh Methodist. And now I must leave you and make the best of my way to Chepstow.”
“Can’t yere hanner give me God before ye go?”
“I can give you half-a-crown to help you on your way to America.”
“I want no half-crowns, yere hanner; but if ye would give me God I’d bless ye.”
“What do you mean by giving you God?”
“Putting Him in my heart by some good counsel which will guide me through life.”
“The only good counsel I can give you is to keep the commandments; one of them it seems you have always kept. Follow the rest and you can’t go very wrong.”
“I wish I knew them better than I do, yere hanner.”
“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 God 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 glasses 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 coarse 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 passed 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 noble 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 illustrious 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 principal 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 passed 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-class 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 END1
“The old land of my father is dear unto me.”
2
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.
3
All these three names are very common in Norfolk, the population of which is of Norse origin. Skarphethin is at present pronounced Sharpin, Helgi Heely. Skarphethin, interpreted, is a keen pirate.
4
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.
5
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.
6
Essay on the Origin of the English Stage, by Bishop Percy. London, 1793.
7
The above account is chiefly taken from the curious Welsh book called “Drych y prif Oesoedd.”
8
Spirits.
9
Eel.
10
For an account of this worm, which has various denominations, see article Fasciola Hepatica in any encyclopædia.
11
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.
12
Bitter root.
13
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.
14
Skazka O Klimkie. Moscow, 1829.
15
Hanes Crefydd Yn Nghymru.
16
The good gentlewoman was probably thinking of the celebrated king Brian Boromhe slain at the battle of Clontarf.
17
Fox’s Court – perhaps London.
18
Drych y Prif Oesoedd, p. 100.
19
Y Greal, p. 279.
20
Hanes Crefydd Yn NGhymru.
21
Fear caoch: vir cæcus.
22
Curses of this description, or evil prayers as they are called, are very common in the Irish language, and are frequently turned to terrible account by that most singular class or sect the Irish mendicants. Several cases have occurred corresponding in many respects with the one detailed above.
