If bards tell true, and hist’ry’s page Is right,--why, then, I would engage To tell you all about the age, When Cæsar used to speak; When dandy Britons painted,--were Dress’d in the skin of wolf or bear, Or in their own, if none were there, Before they wore THE LEEK. Ere Alfred hung in the highway, His chains of gold by night or day; And never had them stol’n away, His subjects were so meek. When wolves they danc’d o’er field and fen; When austere _Druids_ roasted men;-- But that was only now and then, Ere Welshmen wore THE LEEK. II. Like all good things--this could not last, And _Saxon_ gents, as friends, were ask’d, Our Pictish foes to drive them past The wall:--then home to seek, Instead of home, the cunning chaps Resolv’d to stop and dish the APs, Now here they are, and in their caps To day they wear THE LEEK. Yet tho’ our dads, they tumbled out, And put each other to the rout, We sons will push the bowl about;-- We’re here for fun or freak. Let nought but joy within us dwell; Let mirth and glee each bosom swell; And bards, in days to come, shall tell, How Welshmen love THE LEEK. * * * * * THE WELSH HARP. Mr. Leathart is the author of “_Welsh Pennillion_, with Translations into English, adapted for _singing to the Harp_,” an eighteenpenny pocket-book of words of ancient and modern melodies in Welsh and English, with a spirited motto from Mr. Leigh Hunt.--“The Ancient Britons had in them the seeds of a great nation even in our modern sense of the word. They had courage, they had reflection, they had imagination. Power at last made a vassal of their prince. There were writers in those times, harpers, and bards, who made the instinct of that brute faculty turn cruel out of fear. They bequeathed to their countrymen the glory of their memories; they and time together have consecrated their native hills, so as they never before were consecrated.”