Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
There came one day at about that time a Welsh gipsy fortune-teller to
Llanyglo. Her name was Belle Lovell, she was a known character all over
the countryside, and she was some sort of a connection of Dafydd
Dafis's. There was always a packet of tobacco for her in the Squire's
kitchen when she appeared, and her companion on her travels was her
thirteen-years-old daughter Ynys.[1] Belle sold baskets and mended
chairs, and Ynys drew the cart, which was no more than a large deal
packing-case mounted on four perambulator wheels, and with two flat
shafts roughly nailed to its sides. The mother's boots, which you might
have hit with a hammer and not have dinted, resembled grey old wooden
dug-outs; the child went barefooted and barelegged, and it would have
been a stout thorn that could have pierced the calloused pads of her
hardened soles.
[Footnote 1: Pron. "Unnis."]
These two appeared at Llanyglo at midday, ate their frugal meal on the
doorstep of Dafydd's single-roomed cottage behind the Independent
Chapel, and then, leaving the cart behind them, strolled down to have a
look at that splendacious new caravan, Howell Gruffydd's shop. Belle,
her greenish light brown eyes never for a moment still, gossiped with
her old acquaintances; her daughter, whose head was as steadily held as
if she balanced an invisible pitcher on it, stood looking at the green
butterfly-nets and red-painted buckets, admiring, but no more desiring
them than she would have desired anything else impossibly beyond her
reach. Her mother joined a group about Mrs. Roberts's door; the
visitors, who had lunched, began to descend to the beach again; and
there approached down the path that led to the Hafod Unos Ned, the
oldest of the Kerrs.
Now Ned had run across Belle on many alder-expeditions, and, while the
invasion of "summer things" had not driven Ned into naturalisation as a
Welshman, it had, by emphasising the distinction between the well-to-do
and the poor of the world, shown him how to jog along in peace with his
neighbours. He gave Belle an intelligent grin, and jerked his head in
the direction of the bathing-tents.
"Well, mother," he said, "ye've dropped in at just about th' right
time."
"There iss no wrong time for seeing friends," Belle replied, in an
up-and-down and very musical Welsh accent.
"Nay, I wanna thinking-g o' that," Ned replied, strongly doubling the
"g" that terminated the present participle. "I wor thinking-g of a bit
o' fortune-telling. There's a lot ovver yonder wi' more brass nor sense,
and it allus tickles 'em to talk about sweethearts an' sich."
"Indeed Llanyglo has become grea-a-at big place, whatever," the gipsy
replied, and continued her conversation with Mrs. Roberts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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