Town of Newport—The Usk—Note of Recognition—An Old Acquaintance—Connamara
Quean—The Wake—The Wild Irish—The Tramping Life—Business and
Prayer—Methodists—Good Counsel.
Newport is a large town in Monmouthshire, and had once walls and a
castle. It is called in Welsh Cas Newydd ar Wysg, or the New Castle upon
the Usk. It stands some miles below Caerlleon ar Wysg, and was probably
built when that place, at one time one of the most considerable towns in
Britain, began to fall into decay. The Wysg or Usk has its source among
some wild hills in the south-west of Breconshire, and, after absorbing
several smaller streams, amongst which is the Hondu, at the mouth of
which Brecon stands, which on that account is called in Welsh Aber Hondu,
and traversing the whole of Monmouthshire, enters the Bristol Channel
near Newport, to which place vessels of considerable burden can ascend.
Wysg or Usk is an ancient British word, signifying water, and is the same
as the Irish word uisge or whiskey, for whiskey, though generally serving
to denote a spirituous liquor, in great vogue amongst the Irish, means
simply water. The proper term for the spirit is uisquebaugh, literally
acqua vitæ, but the compound being abbreviated by the English, who have
always been notorious for their habit of clipping words, one of the
strongest of spirits is now generally denominated by a word which is
properly expressive of the simple element water.
Monmouthshire is at present considered an English county, though
certainly with little reason, for it not only stands on the western side
of the Wye, but the names of almost all its parishes are Welsh, and many
thousands of its population still speak the Welsh language. It is called
in Welsh Sir, or Shire, Fynwy, and takes its name from the town Mynwy or
Monmouth, which receives its own appellation from the river Mynwy or
Minno on which it stands. There is a river of much the same name, not in
Macedon, but in the Peninsula, namely the Minho, which probably got its
denomination from that race cognate to the Cumry, the Gael, who were the
first colonisers of the Peninsula, and whose generic name yet stares us
in the face and salutes our ears in the words Galicia and Portugal.
I left Newport at about ten o’clock on the 16th, the roads were very wet,
there having been a deluge of rain during the night. The morning was a
regular November one, dull and gloomy. Desirous of knowing whereabouts
in these parts the Welsh language ceased I interrogated several people
whom I met. First spoke to Esther Williams. She told me she came from
Pennow some miles farther on, that she could speak Welsh, and that indeed
all the people could for at least eight miles to the east of Newport.
This latter assertion of hers was, however, anything but corroborated by
a young woman, with a pitcher on her head, whom I shortly afterwards met,
for she informed me that she could speak no Welsh, and that for one who
could speak it, from where I was to the place where it ceased altogether,
there were ten who could not. I believe the real fact is that about half
the people for seven or eight miles to the east of Newport speak Welsh,
more or less, as about half those whom I met and addressed in Welsh
answered me in that tongue.
Passed through Penow or Penhow, a small village. The scenery in the
neighbourhood of this place is highly interesting. To the north-west at
some distance is Mynydd Turvey, a sharp-pointed blue mountain. To the
south-east, on the right, much nearer, are two beautiful green hills, the
lowest prettily wooded, and having on its top a fair white mansion called
Penhow Castle, which belongs to a family of the name of Cave. Thence to
Llanvaches, a pretty little village. When I was about the middle of this
place I heard an odd sound something like a note of recognition, which
attracted my attention to an object very near to me, from which it seemed
to proceed, and which was coming from the direction in which I was going.
It was the figure seemingly of a female, wrapped in a coarse blue cloak,
the feet bare and the legs bare also nearly up to the knee, both terribly
splashed with the slush of the road. The head was surmounted by a kind
of hood which just permitted me to see coarse red hair, a broad face,
grey eyes, a snubbed nose, blubber lips and great white teeth—the eyes
were staring intently at me. I stopped and stared too, and at last
thought I recognised the features of the uncouth girl I had seen on the
green near Chester with the Irish tinker Tourlough and his wife.
“Dear me!” said I, “did I not see you near Chester last summer?”
“To be sure ye did; and ye were going to pass me without a word of notice
or kindness had I not given ye a bit of a hail.”
“Well,” said I, “I beg your pardon. How is it all wid ye?”
“Quite well. How is it wid yere hanner?”
“Tolerably. Where do you come from?”
“From Chepstow, yere hanner.”
“And where are you going to?”
“To Newport, yere hanner.”
“And I come from Newport, and am going to Chepstow. Where’s Tourlough
and his wife?”
“At Cardiff, yere hanner; I shall join them again to-morrow.”
“Have you been long away from them?”
“About a week, yere hanner.”
“And what have you been doing?”
“Selling my needles, yere hanner.”
“Oh! you sell needles. Well, I am glad to have met you. Let me see.
There’s a nice little inn on the right: won’t you come in and have some
refreshment?”
“Thank yere hanner; I have no objection to take a glass wid an old
friend.”
“Well, then, come in; you must be tired, and I shall be glad to have some
conversation with you.”
We went into the inn—a little tidy place. On my calling a
respectable-looking old man made his appearance behind a bar. After
serving my companion with a glass of peppermint, which she said she
preferred to anything else, and me with a glass of ale, both of which I
paid for, he retired, and we sat down on two old chairs beneath a window
in front of the bar.
“Well,” said I, “I suppose you have Irish: here’s slainte—”
“Slainte yuit a shaoi,” said the girl, tasting her peppermint.
“Well, how do you like it?”
“It’s very nice indeed.”
“That’s more than I can say of the ale, which, like all the ale in these
parts, is bitter. Well, what part of Ireland do you come from?”
“From no part at all. I never was in Ireland in my life. I am from
Scotland Road, Manchester.”
“Why, I thought you were Irish!”
“And so I am; and all the more from being born where I was. There’s not
such a place for Irish in all the world as Scotland Road.”
“Were your father and mother from Ireland?”
“My mother was from Ireland; my father was Irish of Scotland Road, where
they met and married.”
“And what did they do after they married?”
“Why, they worked hard, and did their best to get a livelihood for
themselves and children, of which they had several besides myself, who
was the eldest. My father was a bricklayer, and my mother sold apples
and oranges and other fruits, according to the season, and also whiskey,
which she made herself, as she well knew how; for my mother was not only
a Connacht woman, but an out-and-out Connamara quean, and when only
thirteen had wrought with the lads who used to make the raal cratur on
the islands between Ochterard and Bally na hinch. As soon as I was able,
I helped my mother in making and disposing of the whiskey and in selling
the fruit. As for the other children, they all died when young, of
favers, of which there is always plenty in Scotland Road. About four
years ago—that is, when I was just fifteen—there was a great quarrel
among the workmen about wages. Some wanted more than their masters were
willing to give; others were willing to take what was offered them.
Those who were dissatisfied were called bricks; those who were not were
called dungs. My father was a brick; and, being a good man with his
fists, was looked upon as a very proper person to fight a principal man
amongst the dungs. They fought in the fields near Salford for a pound a
side. My father had it all his own way for the first three rounds, but
in the fourth, receiving a blow under the ear from the dung, he dropped,
and never got up again, dying suddenly. A grand wake my father had, for
which my mother furnished usquebaugh galore; and comfortably and decently
it passed over till about three o’clock in the morning, when, a dispute
happening to arise—not on the matter of wages, for there was not a dung
amongst the Irish of Scotland Road—but as to whether the O’Keefs or
O’Kellys were kings of Ireland a thousand years ago, a general fight took
place, which brought in the police, who, being soon dreadfully baten, as
we all turned upon them, went and fetched the military, with whose help
they took and locked up several of the party, amongst whom were my mother
and myself, till the next morning, when we were taken before the
magistrates, who, after a slight scolding, set us at liberty, one of them
saying that such disturbances formed part of the Irish funeral service;
whereupon we returned to the house, and the rest of the party joining us,
we carried my father’s body to the churchyard, where we buried it very
dacently, with many tears and groanings.”
“And how did your mother and you get on after your father was buried?”
“As well as we could, yere hanner; we sold fruit and now and then a drop
of whiskey which we made; but this state of things did not last long, for
one day mother seeing the dung who had killed my father she flung a large
flint stone and knocked out his right eye, for doing which she was taken
up and tried and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, chiefly it was
thought because she had been heard to say that she would do the dung a
mischief the first time she met him. She, however, did not suffer all
her sentence, for before she had been in prison three months she caught a
disorder which carried her off. I went on selling fruit by myself whilst
she was in trouble, and for some time after her death, but very lonely
and melancholy. At last my uncle Tourlough, or as the English would call
him, Charles, chancing to come to Scotland Road along with his family, I
was glad to accept an invitation to join them which he gave me, and with
them I have been ever since, travelling about England and Wales and
Scotland, helping my aunt with the children and driving much the same
trade which she has driven for twenty years past, which is not an
unprofitable one.”
“Would you have any objection to tell me all you do?”
“Why I sells needles, as I said before, and sometimes I buys things of
servants, and sometimes I tells fortunes.”
“Do you ever do anything in the way of striopachas?”
“O, no! I never do anything in that line; I would be burnt first. I
wonder you should dream of such a thing.”
“Why surely it is not worse than buying things of servants, who no doubt
steal them from their employers, or telling fortunes, which is dealing
with the devil.”
“Not worse? Yes a thousand times worse; there is nothing so very
particular in doing them things, but striopachas—O dear!”
“It’s a dreadful thing I admit, but the other things are quite as bad;
you should do none of them.”
“I’ll take good care that I never do one, and that is striopachas; them
other things I know are not quite right, and I hope soon to have done wid
them; any day I can shake them off and look people in the face, but were
I once to do striopachas I could never hold up my head.”
“How comes it that you have such a horror of striopachas?”
“I got it from my mother and she got it from hers. All Irish women have
a dread of striopachas. It’s the only thing that frights them; I manes
the wild Irish, for as for the quality women I have heard they are no bit
better than the English. Come, yere hanner, let’s talk of something
else.”
“You were saying now that you were thinking of leaving off
fortune-telling and buying things of servants. Do you mean to depend
upon your needles alone?”
“No; I am thinking of leaving off tramping altogether and going to the
Tir na Siar.”
“Isn’t that America?”
“It is, yere hanner; the land of the west is America.”
“A long way for a lone girl.”
“I should not be alone, yere hanner; I should be wid my uncle Tourlough
and his wife.”
“Are they going to America?”
“They are, yere hanner; they intends leaving off business and going to
America next spring.”
“It will cost money.”
“It will, yere hanner; but they have got money, and so have I.”
“Is it because business is slack that you are thinking of going to
America?”
“O no, yere hanner; we wish to go there in order to get rid of old ways
and habits, amongst which are fortune-telling and buying things of
sarvants, which yere hanner was jist now checking me wid.”
“And can’t you get rid of them here?”
“We cannot, yere hanner. If we stay here we must go on tramping, and it
is well known that doing them things is part of tramping.”
“And what would you do in America?”
“O we could do plenty of things in America—most likely we should buy a
piece of land and settle down.”
“How came you to see the wickedness of the tramping life?”
“By hearing a great many sermons and preachings, and having often had the
Bible read to us by holy women who came to our tent.”
“Of what religion do you call yourselves now?”
“I don’t know, yere hanner; we are clane unsettled about religion. We
were once Catholics and carried Saint Colman of Cloyne about wid us in a
box; but after hearing a sermon at a church about images, we went home,
took the saint out of his box and cast him into a river.”
“O it will never do to belong to the Popish religion, a religion which
upholds idol-worship and persecutes the Bible—you should belong to the
Church of England.”
“Well, perhaps we should, yere hanner, if its ministers were not such
proud violent men. O, you little know how they look down upon all poor
people, especially on us tramps. Once my poor aunt, Tourlough’s wife,
who has always had stronger convictions than any of us, followed one of
them home after he had been preaching, and begged him to give her God,
and was told by him that she was a thief, and if she didn’t take herself
out of the house he would kick her out.”
“Perhaps, after all,” said I, “you had better join the Methodists—I
should say that their ways would suit you better than those of any other
denomination of Christians.”
“Yere hanner knows nothing about them, otherwise ye wouldn’t talk in that
manner. Their ways would never do for people who want to have done with
lying and staling, and have always kept themselves clane from
striopachas. Their word is not worth a rotten straw, yere hanner, and in
every transaction which they have with people they try to cheat and
overreach—ask my uncle Tourlough, who has had many dealings with them.
But what is far worse, they do that which the wildest calleen t’other
side of Ougteraarde would be burnt rather than do. Who can tell ye more
on that point than I, yere hanner? I have been at their chapels at
nights and have listened to their screaming prayers, and have seen what’s
been going on outside the chapels after their services, as they call
them, were over—I never saw the like going on outside Father Toban’s
chapel, yere hanner! Yere hanner’s hanner asked me if I ever did
anything in the way of striopachas—now I tell ye that I was never asked
to do anything in that line but by one of them folks—a great man amongst
them he was, both in the way of business and prayer, for he was a
commercial traveller during six days of the week and a preacher on the
seventh—and such a preacher. Well, one Sunday night after he had
preached a sermon an hour and a half long, which had put half-a-dozen
women into what they call static fits, he overtook me in a dark street
and wanted me to do striopachas with him—he didn’t say striopachas, yer
hanner, for he had no Irish—but he said something in English which was
the same thing.”
“And what did you do?”
“Why I asked him what he meant by making fun of a poor ugly girl—for no
one knows better than myself, yere hanner, that I am very ugly—whereupon
he told me that he was not making fun of me, for it had long been the
chief wish of his heart to commit striopachas with a wild Irish Papist,
and that he believed if he searched the world he should find none wilder
than myself.”
“And what did you reply?”
“Why I said to him, yere hanner, that I would tell the congregation, at
which he laughed and said that he wished I would, for that the
congregation would say they didn’t believe me, though at heart they
would, and would like him all the better for it.”
“Well, and what did you say then?”
“Nothing at all, yere hanner; but I spat in his face and went home and
told my uncle Tourlough, who forthwith took out a knife and began to
sharp it on a whetstone, and I make no doubt would have gone and stuck
the fellow like a pig, had not my poor aunt begged him not on her knees.
After that we had nothing more to do with the Methodists as far as
religion went.”
“Did this affair occur in England or Wales?”
“In the heart of England, yere hanner; we have never been to the Welsh
chapels, for we know little of the language.”
“Well, I am glad it didn’t happen in Wales; I have rather a high opinion
of the Welsh Methodists. The worthiest creature I ever knew was a Welsh
Methodist. And now I must leave you and make the best of my way to
Chepstow.”
“Can’t yere hanner give me God before ye go?”
“I can give you half-a-crown to help you on your way to America.”
“I want no half-crowns, yere hanner; but if ye would give me God I’d
bless ye.”
“What do you mean by giving you God?”
“Putting Him in my heart by some good counsel which will guide me through
life.”
“The only good counsel I can give you is to keep the commandments; one of
them it seems you have always kept. Follow the rest and you can’t go
very wrong.”
“I wish I knew them better than I do, yere hanner.”
“Can’t you read?”
“O no, yere hanner, I can’t read, neither can Tourlough nor his wife.”
“Well, learn to read as soon as possible. When you have got to America
and settled down you will have time enough to learn to read.”
“Shall we be better, yere hanner, after we have learnt to read?”
“Let’s hope you will.”
“One of the things, yere hanner, that have made us stumble is that some
of the holy women, who have come to our tent and read the Bible to us,
have afterwards asked my aunt and me to tell them their fortunes.”
“If they have the more shame for them, for they can have no excuse.
Well, whether you learn to read or not still eschew striopachas, don’t
steal, don’t deceive, and worship God in spirit, not in image. That’s
the best counsel I can give you.”
“And very good counsel it is, yere hanner, and I will try to follow it,
and now, yere hanner, let us go our two ways.”
We placed our glasses upon the bar and went out. In the middle of the
road we shook hands and parted, she going towards Newport and I towards
Chepstow. After walking a few yards I turned round and looked after her.
There she was in the damp lowering afternoon wending her way slowly
through mud and puddle, her upper form huddled in the rough frieze
mantle, and her coarse legs bare to the top of the calves. “Surely,”
said I to myself, “there never was an object less promising in
appearance. Who would think that there could be all the good sense and
proper feeling in that uncouth girl which there really is?”