Wild Wales: The People, Language, & SceneryBorrow, George
General
Wild Wales: The People, Language, & Scenery
Borrow, George
Borrow, George, 1803-1881 -- Travel -- Wales; Wales -- Description and travel
We were in a maze of tangled shrubs, the boughs of which, very wet from
the rain which was still falling, struck our faces, as we attempted to
make our way between them; the girl led the way, bare-headed and
bare-armed, and soon brought us to the wall, the boundary of the new
road. Along this she went with considerable difficulty, owing to the
tangled shrubs, and the nature of the ground, which was very precipitous,
shelving down to the other side of the enclosure. In a little time we
were wet to the skin, and covered with the dirt of birds, which they had
left whilst roosting in the trees; on went the girl, sometimes creeping,
and trying to keep herself from falling by holding against the young
trees; once or twice she fell and we after her, for there was no path,
and the ground, as I have said before, very shelvy; still as she went her
eyes were directed towards the wall, which was not always very easy to be
seen, for thorns, tall nettles, and shrubs were growing up against it.
Here and there she stopped, and said something, which I could not always
make out, for her Welsh was anything but clear; at length I heard her say
that she was afraid we had passed the chair, and indeed presently we came
to a place where the enclosure terminated in a sharp corner.
“Let us go back,” said I; “we must have passed it.”
I now went first, breaking down with my weight the shrubs nearest to the
wall.
“Is not this the place?” said I, pointing to a kind of hollow in the
wall, which looked something like the shape of a chair.
“Hardly,” said the girl, “for there should be a slab, on the back, with
letters, but there’s neither slab nor letters here.”
The girl now again went forward, and we retraced our way, doing the best
we could to discover the chair, but all to no purpose; no chair was to be
found. We had now been, as I imagined, half-an-hour in the enclosure,
and had nearly got back to the place from which we had set out, when we
suddenly heard the voice of the old lady exclaiming, “What are ye doing
there?—the chair is on the other side of the field; wait a bit, and I
will come and show it you.” Getting over the stone stile, which led into
the wilderness, she came to us, and we now went along the wall at the
lower end; we had quite as much difficulty here, as on the other side,
and in some places more, for the nettles were higher, the shrubs more
tangled, and the thorns more terrible. The ground, however, was rather
more level. I pitied the poor girl who led the way and whose fat naked
arms were both stung and torn. She at last stopped amidst a huge grove
of nettles, doing the best she could to shelter her arms from the
stinging leaves.
“I never was in such a wilderness in my life,” said I to John Jones, “is
it possible that the chair of the mighty Huw is in a place like this;
which seems never to have been trodden by human foot. Well does the
Scripture say ‘Dim prophwyd yw yn cael barch yn ei dir ei hunan.’”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive