Satire, English; Upper class -- England -- Fiction
"Cot pless your honour, I should n't have thought of meeting any pody
here at this time of the morning, except, look you, it was the
tevil--who, to pe sure, toes not often come upon consecrated
cround--put for all that, I think I have seen him now and then, in
former tays, when old Nanny Llwyd of Llyn-isa was living--Cot teliver
us! a terriple old witch to pe sure she was--I tid n't much like
tigging her crave--put I prought two cocks with me--the tevil hates
cocks--and tied them py the leg on two tombstones--and I tug, and the
cocks crowed, and the tevil kept at a tistance. To pe sure now, if I
had n't peen very prave py nature--as I ought to pe truly--for my
father was Owen Ap-Llwyd Ap-Gryffydd Ap-Shenkin Ap-Williams Ap-Thomas
Ap-Morgan Ap-Parry Ap-Evan Ap-Rhys, a coot preacher and a lover of
_cwrw_[9.2]--I should have thought just now pefore I saw your honour,
that the foice I heard was the tevil's calling Nanny Llwyd--Cot pless
us! to pe sure she should have been puried in the middle of the river,
where the tevil can't come, as your honour fery well knows."
"I am perfectly aware of it," said Mr Escot.
"True, true," continued the sexton; "put to pe sure, Owen Thomas of
Morfa-Bach will have it that one summer evening--when he went over to
Cwm Cynfael in Meirionnydd, apout some cattles he wanted to puy--he
saw a strange figure--pless us!--with five horns!--Cot save us!
sitting on Hugh Llwyd's pulpit, which, your honour fery well knows, is
a pig rock in the middle of the river----"
"Of course he was mistaken," said Mr Escot.
"To pe sure he was," said the sexton. "For there is no toubt put the
tevil, when Owen Thomas saw him, must have peen sitting on a piece of
rock in a straight line from him on the other side of the river, where
he used to sit, look you, for a whole summer's tay, while Hugh Llwyd
was on his pulpit, and there they used to talk across the water! for
Hugh Llwyd, please your honour, never raised the tevil except when he
was safe in the middle of the river, which proves that Owen Thomas, in
his fright, did n't pay proper attention to the exact spot where the
tevil was."
The sexton concluded his speech with an approving smile at his own
sagacity, in so luminously expounding the nature of Owen Thomas's
mistake.
"I perceive," said Mr Escot, "you have a very deep insight into
things, and can, therefore, perhaps, facilitate the resolution of a
question, concerning which, though I have little doubt on the subject,
I am desirous of obtaining the most extensive and accurate
information."
The sexton scratched his head, the language of Mr Escot not being to
his apprehension quite so luminous as his own.
"You have been sexton here," continued Mr Escot, in the language of
Hamlet, "man and boy, forty years."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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