“This may do for London, but in Wales, where ‘_Y gwir yn erbyn y byd_’ {3b} is our motto, we know better!” muttered many a testy Cambrian, while he felt doubly indignant at the author’s and actors’ errors in mis-writing and mis-pronouncing their popular outlaw’s “sponsorial or baptismal appellation,” {4} as Doctor Pangloss would say: and another source of umbrage to them was, that an English author’s sacrilegiously dignifying a robber with the qualities of a hero, conveyed the villainous inference that Wales was barren of _real_ heroes—an insinuation that no Welshman could tamely endure or forgive. In an instant recurred the honored names of Rodri Mawr, Owen Gwyneth, Caswallon ab Beli, Owen Glyndwr, Rhys ab Thomas, and a vast chain of Cambrian worthies, not forgetting the royal race of Tudor, that gave an Elizabeth to the English throne; on which the mimic scene before them, and the high vauntings of Huntley in the character of Twm Shôn Catti, sunk into the insignificance of a Punch and puppet show, in comparison with the mighty men who then passed before the mental eye. If the misrepresentation of historical characters, re-moulded and amplified, to suit the fascinating details of romance, be a fault generally, it is particularly offensive in the present case, where the being treated of, is so well known to almost every peasant throughout the principality; so that a real account of our hero, if not exactly useful, may at least prove amusing, in this age of inquiry, to stand by the side of the fictitious tale; and if this detail is found also to partake occasionally of the embellishments of fancy, it will at least be characteristic. Little, it is true, of his life is known, and that little collected principally from the varying and uncertain source of oral tradition. Some anecdotes and remarks respecting him have of late years been committed to record, in the writings of Theophilus Jones, the Breconshire historian, and in the “Hynafion Cymreig,” (Cambrian Popular Antiquities,) which Dr. Meyrick has quoted in his “History of Cardiganshire;” but his rover’s exploits and vagaries I met with principally in a homely Welsh pamphlet of eight pages, printed on tea-paper, and sold at the moderate price of two-pence. Twm Shôn Catti was the natural son of Sir John Wynne, of Gwydir, bart. author of that quaint and singular work, the “History of the Gwydir Family,” by a woman whose name was Catherine. Of her condition little has hitherto been made known; but as surnames were not then generally adopted in Wales, her son became distinguished only by the appellation of Twm Shôn Catti; literally, Thomas John Catherine, though it implied “Thomas the son of John and Catherine.” {5}