Tregaron Church—The Minister—Good Morning—Tom Shone’s Disguises—Tom and
the Lady—Klim and Catti.
I experienced very good entertainment at the Tregaron Inn, had an
excellent supper and a very comfortable bed. I arose at about eight in
the morning. The day was dull and misty. After breakfast, according to
my usual fashion, I took a stroll to see about. The town, which is very
small, stands in a valley, near some wild hills called the Berwyn, like
the range to the south of Llangollen. The stream, which runs through it
and which falls into the Teivi at a little distance from the town, is
called the Brennig, probably because it descends from the Berwyn hills.
These southern Berwyns form a very extensive mountain region, extending
into Brecon and Carmarthenshire, and contain within them, as I long
subsequently found, some of the wildest solitudes and most romantic
scenery in Wales. High up amidst them, at about five miles from
Tregaron, is a deep broad lake which constitutes the source of the Towy,
a very beautiful stream, which, after many turnings and receiving the
waters of numerous small streams, discharges itself into Carmarthen Bay.
I did not fail to pay a visit to Tregaron church. It is an antique
building with a stone tower. The door being open, as the door of a
church always should be, I entered, and was kindly shown by the clerk,
whom I met in the aisle, all about the sacred edifice. There was not
much to be seen. Amongst the monuments was a stone tablet to John
Herbert, who died 1690. The clerk told me that the name of the clergyman
of Tregaron was Hughes; he said that he was an excellent charitable man,
who preached the Gospel, and gave himself great trouble in educating the
children of the poor. He certainly seemed to have succeeded in teaching
them good manners: as I was leaving the church, I met a number of little
boys belonging to the church school: no sooner did they see me than they
drew themselves up in a rank on one side, and as I passed took off their
caps and simultaneously shouted “Good morning!”
And now something with respect to the celebrated hero of Tregaron, Tom
Shone Catti, concerning whom I picked up a good deal during my short stay
there, and of whom I subsequently read something in printed books. {524}
According to the tradition of the country, he was the illegitimate son of
Sir John Wynn of Gwedir, by one Catharine Jones of Tregaron, and was born
at a place called Fynnon Lidiart, close by Tregaron, towards the
conclusion of the sixteenth century. He was baptised by the name of
Thomas Jones, but was generally called Tom Shone Catti, that is Tom
Jones, son of Catti, or Catharine. His mother, who was a person of some
little education, brought him up, and taught him to read and write. His
life, till his eighteenth year, was much like that of other peasant boys;
he kept crows, drove bullocks, and learned to plough and harrow, but
always showed a disposition to roguery and mischief. Between eighteen
and nineteen, in order to free himself and his mother from the poverty
which they had long endured, he adopted the profession of a thief, and
soon became celebrated through the whole of Wales for the cleverness and
adroitness which he exercised in his calling; qualities in which he
appears to have trusted much more than in strength and daring, though
well endowed with both. His disguises were innumerable, and all
impenetrable; sometimes he would appear as an ancient crone: sometimes as
a begging cripple; sometimes as a broken soldier. Though by no means
scrupulous as to what he stole, he was particularly addicted to horse and
cattle stealing, and was no less successful in altering the appearance of
animals than his own, as he would frequently sell cattle to the very
persons from whom he had stolen them, after they had been subject to such
a metamorphosis, by means of dyes and the scissors, that recognition was
quite impossible. Various attempts were made to apprehend him, but all
without success; he was never at home to people who particularly wanted
him, or if at home he looked anything but the person they came in quest
of. Once a strong and resolute man, a farmer, who conceived, and very
justly, that Tom had abstracted a bullock from his stall, came to
Tregaron well armed in order to seize him. Riding up to the door of
Tom’s mother, he saw an aged and miserable-looking object, with a
beggar’s staff and wallet, sitting on a stone bench beside the door.
“Does Tom Shone Catti live here?” said the farmer. “O yes: he lives
here,” replied the beggar. “Is he at home?” “O yes, he is at home.”
“Will you hold my horse whilst I go in and speak to him?” “O yes, I will
hold your horse.” Thereupon the man dismounted, took a brace of pistols
out of his holsters, gave the cripple his horse’s bridle and likewise his
whip, and entered the house boldly. No sooner was he inside than the
beggar, or rather Tom Shone Catti, for it was he, jumped on the horse’s
back, and rode away to the farmer’s house, which was some ten miles
distant, altering his dress and appearance as he rode along, having
various articles of disguise in his wallet. Arriving at the house he
told the farmer’s wife that her husband was in the greatest trouble, and
wanted fifty pounds, which she was to send by him, and that he came
mounted on her husband’s horse, and brought his whip, that she might know
he was authorised to receive the money. The wife seeing the horse and
the whip delivered the money to Tom without hesitation, who forthwith
made the best of his way to London, where he sold the horse, and made
himself merry with the price, and with what he got from the farmer’s
wife, not returning to Wales for several months. Though Tom was known by
everybody to be a thief, he appears to have lived on very good terms with
the generality of his neighbours, both rich and poor. The poor he
conciliated by being very free of the money which he acquired by theft
and robbery, and with the rich he ingratiated himself by humorous
jesting, at which he was a proficient, and by being able to sing a good
song. At length, being an extremely good-looking young fellow, he
induced a wealthy lady to promise to marry him. This lady is represented
by some as a widow, and by others as a virgin heiress. After some time,
however, she refused to perform her promise, and barred her doors against
him. Tom retired to a cave on the side of a steep wild hill near the
lady’s house, to which he frequently repaired, and at last, having
induced her to stretch her hand to him through the window bars, under the
pretence that he wished to imprint a parting kiss upon it, he won her by
seizing her hand and threatening to cut it off unless she performed her
promise. Then, as everything at the time at which he lived could be done
by means of money, he soon obtained for himself a general pardon, and
likewise a commission as justice of the peace, which he held to the time
of his death, to the satisfaction of everybody except thieves and
ill-doers, against whom he waged incessant war, and with whom he was
admirably qualified to cope, from the knowledge he possessed of their
ways and habits, from having passed so many years of his life in the
exercise of the thieving trade. In his youth he was much addicted to
poetry, and a great many pennillion of his composition, chiefly on his
own thievish exploits, are yet recited by the inhabitants of certain
districts of the Shires of Brecon, Carmarthen, and Cardigan.
Such is the history, or rather the outline of the history of Twm Shone
Catti. Concerning the actions attributed to him it is necessary to say
that the greater part consist of myths which are told of particular
individuals of every country, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic: for
example, the story of cutting off the bull’s tail is not only told of him
but of the Irish thief Delany, and is to be found in the “Lives of Irish
Rogues and Rapparees;” certain tricks related of him in the printed tale
bearing his name are almost identical with various rogueries related in
the story-book of Klim the Russian robber, {527} and the most poetical
part of Tom Shone’s history, namely, that in which he threatens to cut
off the hand of the reluctant bride unless she performs her promise, is,
in all probability, an offshoot of the grand myth of “the severed hand,”
which in various ways figures in the stories of most nations, and which
is turned to considerable account in the tale of the above-mentioned
Russian worthy Klim.