“I remember hearing an instance which happened, I believe, about one hundred and fifty years ago. The ploughing oxen at Bodeon, on April 25th, took fright when at work, and ran over a steep rock and perished in the sea. This being S. Mark the Evangelist’s Day, it was considered that having done work on it was a transgression of a divine ordinance, and to prevent such accident for the future the proprietor of the farm ordered that this festival of S. Mark should be for the future invariably kept a holy day, and that two wax candles should annually on that day be kept burning in the church porch of Llanddwyn, which was the only part of the building that was covered in, as an offering and memorial of this transgression and accident, and as a token that S. Dwynwen’s aid and protection was solicited to prevent such catastrophe any more. This was only discontinued about eighty years ago, _i.e._ 1720.” The Penrhyn slate quarries are reached by a branch line from Bangor to Bethesda. The quarrying is carried on upon a vast scale, and the place is interesting to the geologist on account of the presence, in the midst of a great dyke of greenstone, of an eruptive rock which has traversed the beds, and which has been left untouched. The slates are cut to various sizes. Duchesses are the largest; then come Countesses and Ladies. About the beginning of last century a slate merchant of the name of Docer, going through the quarry with Lord Penrhyn, advised him that the slates should be made of such-and-such a size, and this is the origin of the name of “Docer.” By this time the skill of the quarryman and of the slater found some new plan continually. One wanted to do this, and another that. His lordship failed to please everybody. His lady, seeing him in this plight, and in continual trouble, advised him to call the slates after the names of the degrees in the aristocracy. He took up the suggestion, and called the 24 by 12 slate a Duchess, the 20 by 10 a Countess, and the 16 by 8 a Lady. This has given occasion to some witty verses by an old Welsh judge, Mr. Leycester, and I venture to quote a few of them, though they have already been enshrined in that most delightful of all handbooks, _The Gossiping Guide_. “It has truly been said, as we all must deplore, That Grenville and Pitt have made peers by the score; But now, ’tis asserted, unless I have blundered, There’s a man who makes peeresses here by the hundred. By the stroke of a hammer, without the King’s aid, A Lady, or Countess, or Duchess is made. And where’er they are seen, in a palace or shop, Their rank they preserve, they are still at the top. This Countess or Lady, though crowds may be present, Submits to be dressed by the hands of a peasant, And you’ll see, when Her Grace is but once in his clutches, With how little respect he will handle a Duchess.”