Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851Various
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
Of a hundred travelers who spend a night at Tre-Madoc, in North Wales,
there is not one, perhaps, who goes to the neighboring village of
Pen-Morfa. The new town, built by Mr. Maddocks, Shelley's friend, has
taken away all the importance of the ancient village--formerly, as its
name imports, "the head of the marsh;" that marsh which Mr. Maddocks
drained and dyked, and reclaimed from the Traeth Mawr, till Pen-Morfa,
against the walls of whose cottages the winter tides lashed in former
days, has come to stand high and dry, three miles from the sea, on a
disused road to Caernarvon. I do not think there has been a new cottage
built in Pen-Morfa this hundred years; and many an old one has dates in
some obscure corner which tell of the fifteenth century. The joists of
timber, where they meet overhead, are blackened with the smoke of
centuries. There is one large room, round which the beds are built like
cupboards, with wooden doors to open and shut; somewhat in the old
Scotch fashion, I imagine: and below the bed (at least, in one instance
I can testify that this was the case, and I was told it was not
uncommon), is a great wide wooden drawer, which contained the oat-cake
baked for some months' consumption by the family. They call the
promontory of Llyn (the point at the end of Caernarvonshire), _Welsh_
Wales; I think they might call Pen-Morfa a Welsh Welsh village; it is so
national in its ways, and buildings, and inhabitants, and so different
from the towns and hamlets into which the English throng in summer. How
these said inhabitants of Pen-Morfa ever are distinguished by their
names, I, uninitiated, can not tell. I only know for a fact, that in a
family there with which I am acquainted, the eldest son's name is John
Jones, because his father's was John Thomas; that the second son is
called David Williams, because his grandfather was William Wynn, and
that the girls are called indiscriminately by the names of Thomas and
Jones. I have heard some of the Welsh chuckle over the way in which they
have baffled the barristers at Caernarvon Assizes, denying the name
under which they had been subpoenaed to give evidence, if they were
unwilling witnesses. I could tell you of a great deal which is peculiar
and wild in these true Welsh people, who are what I suppose we English
were a century ago; but I must hasten on to my tale.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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