MOSES has many youthful yearnings. The exploits of the lads in fasting
and feasting.
Some say it is a comfort to have a brother in affliction, visited by
similar trials, and persecuted rigour. Now Moses and Twm could be
sympathetic enough, for they had to endure labour enough and too much,
but quite the opposite quantity of eatables; they, therefore, in their
misery, became firm and attached companions. Twm at first found much to
disgust him with his fellow sufferer, as he seemed disposed to talk of
nothing but culinary matters; the roast and boiled, the stewed, the
fried, were his darling topics. When Twm dilated on some of the festal
doings at Graspacre-hall, the prematurely sunken eyes of this wretched
starveling would glisten with a lambent flame that threatened the
immediate extinction of his senses, he exclaimed, “O Lord, how I should
like to make one of them!—I heard a strange man once talk of an ox being
roasted whole—can such a thing be? what a—what a sight! O Lord, how I
should like to tear two, three, four, hot ribs out of a roasting ox—I
would get into the carcass, and roast with it, so that I might tug, tear,
and eat my fill first. If I knew my way to any great town from this
awful place, I’ll tell thee Twm, how I should like to get my living—I
would eat for wagers—I have heard of such doings, and I know I could die
contented, if I had once my stomach full of flesh—ha! ha! ha! I would
tear it, and ha! ha! ha! Oh! how I would tear and swallow it!”
Twm felt horror-struck to hear these frantic ravings of this poor
famished being, his eyes starting from their sockets, and his thin
talon-like hands clutching vacantly at imaginary food. He strove to
comfort him with future hopes, but the wretch had now sunk into a fit of
weeping despondency, and as the tears ran down his young emaciated face,
he exclaimed, in a tone of utter hopelessness, “no, no, I shall sleep on
these mountains, and never have my fill of any thing but work and sorrow,
work and sorrow till I die!” Suddenly starting from his reclining
posture to his feet, and as suddenly changing his querulous tones to
those of maniac rapture that was alarming from the startling
transition—“Canst thee eat raw eggs, Twm? I have a store of them hid
away in the barn—we’ll have a feast of them to-night, boy!”
Previous to this scene, they had been thrashing together till over
fatigued they sat themselves down on the straw. The silence of their
flails informed the quick ears of old Sheeny of this pause in their
labour. Hastening with stealthy steps towards the barn, she unluckily
arrived the moment when Moses vaunted of the intended feast of eggs.
With the soundless steps and savage purpose of the taloned cat, that
marks the moment to dart upon the heedless bird, she reached over the
latch; unlatching it, she burst into the middle of the barn, and seizing
the first flail in her way, she vowed with a tremendous oath to break
every bone in his body with it unless the eggs were immediately produced.
As she had once broke his leg, which Evans the blacksmith had imperfectly
set for him, poor Moses made a virtue of necessity, and at once took her
to his little hoard. Poor lad; it was like drawing his blood, to take
away this prospect of a feed, and his eyes filled with tears as Sheeny
gathered them all in her apron and marched off triumphantly. The loss of
the eggs, valuable as they were in their hungry circumstances, was
trivial to the daily annoyances of the female tongues that trimmed and
stung them both within and without doors for many a day after, on this
subject.
Old Sheeny was certainly a notable manager, an economist to the back
bone. Abstemious moralists, those excellent friends of the human race,
have declared, that the new-fangled improvements in modern cookery have
inclined mankind to devour twice the quantity of food requisite or
beneficial for the health and happiness of our species. Sheeny Greeg,
the careful mistress of this mountain mansion, had no idea of inflicting
such an evil on those favoured beings confided to her protection.
Therefore, in a pure philosophic spirit, as an antidote to gluttony and
intemperance, she took care, like an ancient Spartan dame, that the food
and drink of her providing should be neither too rich nor too savory.
Consequently gout and plethora were never found among the maladies of her
inmates. She had an admirable contrivance that did honour to her
inventive powers, of substituting durability for the dangerous quality of
palatableness, in the food she administered.
For instance, in the article of bread, her custom was to bake an enormous
batch at once; so that it soon got hard, musty and mouldy, it must be
admitted that the temptation to gluttonize on it and its accompaniments,
was diminished. In preparing that standing dish of the Welsh farm, the
flummery, she would steep for a considerable time, a large portion of the
oaten commodity for that purpose, till thoroughly soured to the acidity
of crab-juice. The skim milk, in which this mess was soused, she
considered as too gross for their unsophisticated stomachs, till diluted
with the pure element from the brook.
The whey and butter-milk underwent the same process; and the cheese kept
for home consumption was manufactured of that fang-defying, heart of oak,
sort of toughness, which answers the patriotic purpose of cannon-balls,
to repel invaders, should their cupidity ever be inflamed by the reported
felicities of Cwmny Gwern Ddu: in which alarming supposition it is some
satisfaction to reflect, as a point to our moral, that the crime would
carry the punishment along with it. Whenever those rare and almost
denounced strangers to the table, the beef or bacon made their
appearance, the greedy fangs that seized them would suddenly relax their
tenacious grip, like the blind dog that mistook a red-hot poker for a
bone, in evident alarm, lest a portion of Lot’s wife had accidentally
fallen in their way; a cannibal impression that seemed to haunt them long
after, till washed away by many a copious draught of the fluid that cost
nothing. Morris Greeg himself was a fine example to his household, as a
scorner of unnecessary dainties. Doubtless it was very edifying to Twm
and Moses, to hear him descant on the enormities of gross feeding,
enlivened by anecdotes of people who had eaten themselves to death.
He would tell tales about the dreadful troubles brought upon a man by
being over fat—obesity was, to hear him, a state of existence only
equalled in horror by the pains and penalties of the lower regions. He
narrated a veritable instance of a Daniel Lambert, who got so fat, and so
immovable, that he rolled himself into a large trough of water, and
voluntarily died the death of a suicide. Moses, the young infidel, would
gape incredulously at such an intimation, and evidently doubted the
probability of such a death; and if it were possible, impious cormorant
as he was, he would have no objection to martyrdom on such a score.
“Plain food, and as little of it as possible,” quoth Morris, “is a fine
thing,” grinding as he spoke a mass of black-eyed winter-dried beans with
rusty bacon. “And leaven,” cried the sage of the mountains, “is far
better in the bread than barn; it warms the stomach with its generous
acid, and makes me content with little.”
Our hero, however, had a bold heart; and if a little better fed, would
have endured all with that indifference and vein of whim which were
natural to him. As it was, with the wild companionship of Moses, he
turned misery herself into a scarecrow of mirth rather than of terror.
Together those mischievously merry boys dispatched their breakfasts of
highly watered milk and porridge, thickened with mouldy bread, with
hungry yet loathing stomachs, and indulged in under currents of laughter,
as either of them aped some peculiarity of gait or visage in their
amiable hostess.
And when the rusty bacon liquor was enlarged for repeated messes of
broth, their wry faces gave indications of their inmost feelings, whilst
the latter manifested themselves by a waterspout movement generally
supposed to indicate disquietude of the stomach. Their patience was
severely tried; often when they felt a conviction that this species of
drenching was over, they had the unexpected mortification to find a
quantity of water added, to spin it out for another meal. This was truly
a sad change to Twm, compelled as he was daily to embrace his
antipathies, and disconnect himself from all that he had learned to love.
He loved ballad lore, rural festivities, rambling, and all those light
modes of passing his time that were most allied to idleness.
But in this dreary house, not a book was to be seen nor the sound of
mirth, harp, or song, ever heard; still Twm did not despond; his good
humour had the effect of brightening, by many a shade, the desponding
apprehensions of Moses; and more than once he actually won a smile from
one or two of the younger daughters of the house, who, however, soon
rebuked themselves for descending to be pleased with anything that a
parish apprentice boy could advance.
In the long winter evenings, when no one could possibly invent a task or
job for them, Twm and Moses would be allowed to sit a little by the turf
fire; when the latter would venture to narrate some hungry tale of
gastronomic heroism, in which his fancy revelled, Twm would recite ghost
stories that terrified the damsels; and war tales of olden times that he
had heard from Ianto Gwyn, or his master, Rhys, that astonished and
amused his auditors, at least part of them, for Sheeny Greeg and her echo
Shaan disdained to be among the number, but cried shame on him for
repeating such audacious lies.
Miserly people often overshoot their mark, and it was so in this
farm-house. Old Elwes would have called Morris Greeg a worthy disciple,
whilst other misers of even greater note would have looked upon the
farm-house and its ways as the very acme of human felicity. But “greed”
begets greater evils; and when Morris was by chance called away, the
girls indulged themselves in the best way they could find. Theft was
largely patronized, and as we should charitably think not without very
reasonable excuse. One fair, day when Morris and Sheeny had betaken
themselves to a distant corn and cattle mart, the girls, as usual,
commenced their preparation for a regular junketing. Twm and Moses, whom
they kept at the humble distance of lowly menials, were out together,
mending some gaps in the hedges, when Moses sniffing the wind that blew
from the direction of the house, with the gifted nose of a dog of the
chase, called out with ecstacy, “Twm, I smell pan-cake!”
“So do I, Moses,” returned our little hero, expanding his nostrils with
jocular comicality, “Ha!” cried Moses, with an envious snarl, “The
selfish wenches of the house are treating their dainty chops with
something nice.”
“Aye!” retorted Twm, quoting from some learned Theban, “when the cat’s
away the mice will play. But stop thee here, Moses, and see if I don’t
bring thee a share of what is going, in five minutes.” Moses grinned and
licked his lips in eager anticipation as Twm hurried off. He entered the
house with a sudden startling step, and a bundle of firewood under his
arm as an excuse for the intrusion. All was panic within an instant.
Two of the girls dashed their jug of sweetened small beer into the pail
of hog’s wash, as they heard the first rattle of the wooden latch on
Twm’s entrance; Shaan turned pale as the unfried pancake before her, so
great was their fear that their parents had returned in the midst of
their underhand clandestine doings. “It is only that devil Twm Shon
Catty,” cried Shaan, who was the first to recover from the general
terror; “Never mind, girls, go and sweeten more beer, for father and
mother can’t be home before night.”
“Aye, go and sweeten more beer, and let poor Moses and I have a share of
your beer and pancakes,” cried Twm, pointedly eyeing a raised heap of
them in a wooden platter before the fire;—“let _us_ have a part, and we
won’t tell.”
“Get along to thy work, thou saucy cur!” cried Shaan, striking him with
all her strength with the hot frying-pan. “Not till I have our share to
take with me,” cried our hero, making a grasping snatch at the heaped
pancakes, which he bore off in spite of the united efforts of the lasses
to re-capture them. His manner of bestowing them was more commendable on
the score of security than of delicacy, as the greater portion was thrust
into his shirt-breast and breeches pockets; off he ran over the wooden
bridge and along the path through the wood.
In this chase the great heat against his breast gave him considerable
pain, and almost arrested his steps, half persuaded to throw away the
larded delicacy; St. Vitus never danced faster nor more spasmodically
under his pains, than did our hero under the effects of his hot pancakes.
They gave him shocks equal in intensity to those from the voltaic pile;
in fact he may be said to have been a Salamander enduring the scorchings
of heat, but with this difference.—Twm Shon Catty could not well bear
them, whereas the Salamander was represented as rather enjoying them than
otherwise.
But, like the Spartan boy, Twm heroically determined to bear the
self-inflicted torture, and endure to the last. However, it must be
confessed, to the minoration of his fame, that not having been favoured
with so stoical an education as the aforesaid Lacedemonian, he yielded to
nature, and ran and roared, and roared and ran, till he outran his
pursuers, who returned breathless home, and he as breathless joined young
Moses, where, in their secret haunt, they enjoyed the fruit of his
dexterity.
The spot they occupied was one of the discoveries of Moses, before Twm’s
arrival, the craggy recesses of which became the depositaries of his
filching achievements, and which recurring to in after years, he called
his larder. It was situated above the torrent, beside the mountain, at
the extreme end of the farm—just where the wilderness had refused to
yield another patch to add to former accumulation. But these
gormandizing youths were at present too busily engaged to remark on
either the beauties or the horrors of the scene.