Wild Wales: The People, Language, & SceneryBorrow, George
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Wild Wales: The People, Language, & Scenery
Borrow, George
Borrow, George, 1803-1881 -- Travel -- Wales; Wales -- Description and travel
I learned that he was a carpenter, and that he had been up the gully to
see an acquaintance—perhaps a sweetheart. We passed a lake on our right
which he told me was called Llyn Ogwen, and that it abounded with fish.
He was very amusing and expressed great delight at having found an
Englishman who could speak Welsh. “It will be a thing to talk of,” said
he, “for the rest of my life.” He entered two or three cottages by the
side of the road, and each time he came out I heard him say: “I am with a
Sais, who can speak Cumraeg.” At length we came to a gloomy-looking
valley trending due north; down this valley the road ran having an
enormous wall of rocks on its right and a precipitous hollow on the left,
beyond which was a wall equally high as the other one. When we had
proceeded some way down the road my guide said: “You shall now hear a
wonderful echo,” and shouting, “taw, taw,” the rocks replied in a manner
something like the baying of hounds. “Hark to the dogs!” exclaimed my
companion. “This pass is called Nant yr ieuanc gwn, the pass of the
young dogs, because when one shouts it answers with a noise resembling
the crying of hounds.”
The sun was setting when we came to a small village at the bottom of the
pass. I asked my companion its name. “Ty yn y maes,” he replied, adding
as he stopped before a small cottage that he was going no farther, as he
dwelt there.
“Is there a public-house here?” said I.
“There is,” he replied, “you will find one a little farther up on the
right hand.”
“Come, and take some ale,” said I.
“No,” said he.
“Why not?” I demanded.
“I am a teetotaller,” he replied.
“Indeed,” said I, and having shaken him by the hand, thanked him for his
company, and bidding him farewell, went on. He was the first person I
had ever met of the fraternity to which he belonged, who did not
endeavour to make a parade of his abstinence and self-denial.
After drinking some tolerably good ale in the public-house I again
started. As I left the village a clock struck eight. The evening was
delightfully cool; but it soon became nearly dark. I passed under high
rocks, by houses and by groves, in which nightingales were singing, to
listen to whose entrancing melody I more than once stopped. On coming to
a town, lighted up and thronged with people, I asked one of a group of
young fellows its name.
“Bethesda,” he replied.
“A scriptural name,” said I.
“Is it?” said he; “well, if its name is scriptural the manners of its
people are by no means so.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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