THE family of the Welsh farmer. Not a bright look-out for our hero.
Morris Greeg, the farmer to whom the parish had consigned our hero, as an
apprentice, possessed a small freehold farm, fourteen miles up the
mountain; and thither, in the company or custody of Watt the
mole-catcher, Twm was now marched. Dull and joyless was their journey,
unenlivened either by incident or the charms of scenery. On their
arrival at the destined spot, Twm could scarcely forbear shuddering at
the prospect before him. The farm-house was a low long building, under
the same roof as the cow-house and stable, and as the whole was covered
with a black mass of rotten thatch, composed of varied patches of
half-perished straw and fern, the only signs of its being inhabited by
humanity were a chimney, with two or three farm implements lying at the
hovel door.
The farm, called Cwm y Gwarm Ddu, (Black marsh dingle,) was abbreviated
usually to Gwern Ddu; the latter word, be it known to our English
readers, is pronounced _Thee_. The land of which it was composed, had
been anciently cribbed from the mountain, according to the Havod un-nôs
{72} system. Being too remote from any other settlements to be noticed
by any of the parishioners but the shepherds, who were bribed to silence
by occasional refreshment as they passed that way, the appropriation
remained long unquestioned. And when of later years some of the nearest
farmers became troublesome busy-bodies on the occasion, a few days’
labour given gratis in harvest time by Morris Greeg’s grandfather and
father, made all quiet again, till latterly, the farm of Gwern Ddu became
incontestably a freehold property.
Twm felt no great wonder that its existence, as narrated by Watt,
remained so long unknown, and wished an earthquake had been so good as to
swallow it before he had been destined to enter its precincts.
“It was in sooth a landscape harsh.
On one side rock, and three sides marsh:
With naught to please the restless eye,
A scene to cause a weary sigh.”
The farm occupied one side of a dreary dingle, being one field’s breadth
only from the rocky mountain above, and divided from a swampy turbary
marsh by a roaring torrent-like brook. The house and the farm
appertainments, with a view to shelter at the expense of a healthier
foundation, were situated on the marsh-side of the brook, the waters of
which were crossed by a rustic bridge formed of a fallen tree, that led
towards the fields, and by a short lane and a path through the wood, to
the mountain above them. Instead of the hawthorn, willow, birch, and the
nut-bearing pleasant hazel, that usually form the hedges in more favoured
lands, these poor little fields had their boundary ditches surmounted by
that rude bantling of barrenness, the prickly gorse, more poetically
called the yellow-blossomed furze; intermingled here and there, as in the
adjoining mountain, with its brunette sister, the purple-flowering heath,
immortalized in Scottish literature as the mountain heather.
Above the rustic bridge, the bright pure water, yet unpolluted by the
touch of man, rolled in a small cascade over the smooth black rock,
contrasting by its foaming whiteness, with the sable bed from which it
sprung. This little water-fall was called—Y Pistyll, or the spout; from
which was obtained the water destined for household uses. From its side
the farm lasses scooped the gravel wherewith they scoured their
milk-pails, hoops and staves, rivalling by their whiteness, the
nectarious stream within. Below the bridge, the brook had been widened
by human art, so as to form a considerable pool, wherein the aquatic
members of the farm-yard, the stately silent geese and the noisy ducks,
at times floated gravely, with their young yellow brood, at others,
ploughing and gambolling merrily and undisturbed; save when the horses,
cows, or oxen were driven across; for the upper part of the pool formed
part of the regular road.
Through this wood, ran an oblique path, that after turning the corner of
an angular rising whose upper end was bounded by a terrific precipice of
no less than ninety feet perpendicular height, and known by the name of
Allt y Craig Llwyd, or Acclivious Forest of the Grey Rock, which
indicated that trees at some period clothed the scene now defaced by
hideous nakedness. On winding round and gaining the summit of the peak
above this quarry, an extensive tract of level mountain appeared in one
direction; in another, the dreary monotony was broken by the appearance
of petty lakes or mountain pools, on which floated at times certain
families of migratory aquatic birds, that here made their temporary
resting place, in their hasty journeys to more favoured regions.
Ravines, and caves, the reputed bed-chambers of evil spirits, long-maned
unbroken horses, and numerous flocks of wild-looking small sheep, were
the other objects that diversified the scene; and the horizon was closed
by the distant mountain peaks, one above another, wildly strange, but
most grandly clustered.
On Watt’s presenting Twm to a tall, gaunt, swarthy-faced man, who proved
to be Morris Greeg himself, as the apprentice which the parish had sent
him, his brows contracted, and his sunken eyes threw out their fires in a
flash of indignation.
“Ha!” cried the old man, after eyeing our hero with the contempt which a
sordid clown might evince towards a puny insect, as he wondered, in the
dulness of his conception, why heaven should trouble itself in creating a
thing incapable of hewing wood or carrying burdens—“a pretty help they
have sent me truly! Of what service will a weak creature like this be to
me?”
“None!” screamed a thin hag of a yellow-faced woman, “but to eat up all
the victuals; I warrant, by his thin carcass and long crane neck, that he
has the stomach of a hound. This neck looks as if it had been stretched
already. But if it hasn’t, it soon will be by the looks of him.”
Four damsels, the daughters of the house, now made their appearance, and
scrutinized our hero over each other’s shoulder, as if he had been a
reptile of some unquestionable species, whom it was not safe to approach
too near. A sturdy ploughman in a white frock sat at the table,
silently, but sullenly, descanting on the merits of the food before him,
by alternately sneering and masticating what appeared to be more
necessary to his stomach than agreeable to his palate. On the left of
the ploughman sat a singular-looking thin parrot-nosed boy, the only one
that appeared to greet him with a look of welcome; his small black eyes
actually laughed with satisfaction.
“Well, Moses, thou hast now a companion to help thee to devour food, and
do nothing,” said farmer Greeg, as he motioned to Watt and Twm to sit and
eat.
“Yes, thee hast now a companion to help thee to eat and do nothing,”
repeated the farmer’s eldest daughter Shaan, whose habit it was to echo
all the sayings of her father and mother, so as to publish herself as one
of the authorities of the house. Moses said nothing audibly, but a
rueful expression of countenance gave it the lie to the insinuation most
pointedly, and Twm fancied that he brushed away a tear with his sleeve,
as he rose hastily and walked out of the house.
Watt had been busy “taking stock” of the ploughman’s countenance; a
compliment apparently by no means appreciated by the object of his
regard. The ploughman hastily finished his dinner, and was about to beat
a retreat, when Watt enquired, “Is’nt thy name Abel Prosser?”
“No!” cried the man.
“Yes,” cried Shaan, “what does thou deny thy name for?”
“Then, I have a warrant against thee, as the runaway father of Palley
Bais Wen’s bantling,” cried Watt; “help to secure him in the king’s
name!”
The man made a dart from the house, and Watt after him. The event of the
chase remained long unknown as neither were seen again by the present
party for many a month.
“The devil take that Watt Gwathotwr!” screamed Sheeny Greeg the farmer’s
wife, “for he brings us nothing but trouble. Two years ago he brought us
this Moses, the deserted bantling of a rascally Jew, who deceived the
silly wench of a hedge-ale-house maid, where he lodged; and now he has
brought another of no more strength than a grey-hound puppy; and worse
than all, he has scared away Abel Prosser. What are we to do now?”
“Do!” cried Shaan scornfully, “we shall do very well; make these two
fellows do Abel’s work, and their own.” With this very comfortable
prospect before him, Twm went to rest with the Jew boy in the hay-loft,
this first night after his arrival in the alpine region of Cwmny Gwern
Ddu.