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. {14}
According to the tradition of the country, he was the illegitimate son of
Sir John Wynn of Gwedir, by one Catherine 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 Catherine. 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 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 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 subjected 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. “Oh yes, he lives here,” replied the beggar. “Is he at home?”
“Oh yes, he is at home.” “Will you hold my horse whilst I go in and
speak to him?” “Oh 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, {15} 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.