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
Having made arrangements for “boxing Harry” I went into the tap-room,
from which I had heard the voice of Mr. Pritchard proceeding during the
whole of my conversation with his wife. Here I found the worthy landlord
seated with a single customer; both were smoking. The customer instantly
arrested my attention. He was a man seemingly about forty years of age
with a broad red face, with certain somethings, looking very much like
incipient carbuncles, here and there upon it. His eyes were grey and
looked rather as if they squinted; his mouth was very wide, and when it
opened displayed a set of strong white, uneven teeth. He was dressed in
a pepper-and-salt coat of the Newmarket cut, breeches of corduroy and
brown top boots, and had on his head a broad, black, coarse, low-crowned
hat. In his left hand he held a heavy white whale-bone whip with a brass
head. I sat down on a bench nearly opposite to him and the landlord.
“Well,” said Mr. Pritchard; “did you find your way to Llanfair?”
“Yes,” said I.
“And did you execute the business satisfactorily which led you there?”
said Mr. Pritchard.
“Perfectly,” said I.
“Well, what did you give a stone for your live pork?” said his companion
glancing up at me, and speaking in a gruff voice.
“I did not buy any live pork,” said I; “do you take me for a pig-jobber?”
“Of course,” said the man in pepper-and-salt; “who but a pig-jobber could
have business at Llanfair?”
“Does Llanfair produce nothing but pigs?” said I.
“Nothing at all,” said the man in the pepper-and-salt; “that is nothing
worth mentioning. You wouldn’t go there for runts, that is if you were
in your right senses; if you were in want of runts you would have gone to
my parish and have applied to me Mr. Bos; that is if you were in your
senses. Wouldn’t he, John Pritchard?”
Mr. Pritchard thus appealed to took the pipe out of his mouth, and with
some hesitation said that he believed the gentleman neither went to
Llanfair for pigs nor black cattle but upon some particular business.
“Well,” said Mr. Bos, “it may be so, but I can’t conceive how any person,
either gentle or simple, could have any business in Anglesey save that
business was pigs or cattle.”
“The truth is,” said I, “I went to Llanfair to see the birth-place of a
great man—the cleverest Anglesey ever produced.”
“Then you went wrong,” said Mr. Bos, “you went to the wrong parish, you
should have gone to Penmynnydd; the clebber man of Anglesey was born and
buried at Penmynnydd; you may see his tomb in the church.”
“You are alluding to Black Robin,” said I, “who wrote the ode in praise
of Anglesey—yes, he was a very clever young fellow, but excuse me, he was
not half such a poet as Gronwy Owen.”
“Black Robin,” said Mr. Bos, “and Gronow Owen, who the Devil were they?
I never heard of either. I wasn’t talking of them, but of the clebberest
man the world ever saw. Did you never hear of Owen Tiddir? If you
didn’t, where did you get your education?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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