STUDIES piscatorial and fleshy, and certain tricks connected therewith.
Pork capers—a new dish.
Emboldened by the impunity with which they had foraged for themselves
during the last three months that had followed the doings in our last
chapter, both Twm and Moses grew somewhat daring in their gastronomical
speculations. Moses, among his restless peerings for something to
gratify appetite, had peeped into one of the mountain pools, and joyfully
detected the existence of a certain sizeable fish there. This was a
discovery which made the young Jew’s mouth water, and his eyes distend
with visions of future work for the jaws! Here was an El Dorado of good
food, and Moses went into proportionate rapture at the prospect. Twm
annoyed him not a little, by laughing at his futile attempts to spear a
pike with the dull and clumsy prongs of a dungfork.
Our hero was more successful in his warfare on the trout and eels that
abounded in a brook which ran through one of the tarns. Without any
contrivance that resembled fishing-tackle in the most remote degree, he
remarked a sweeping curve, of a horse-shoe shape, in one part of the
brook, and determined, with the assistance of Moses, on sporting his
engineering skill, in cutting a new channel for the water, so that it
might for the future, run a straight course, and leave the horseshoe
portion of it dry. This at different intervals, with no small labour,
they at last effected; and when the flood ran along the new channel, its
deserted curve became a mess of slimy mud. Into this, with naked feet,
they soon waded, and groping cautiously about, succeeded in gathering an
abundant harvest of trout and eels. Moses was noisy in his raptures at
the result, and so anxious to have them immediately cooked, that he could
scarcely wait for that tedious progress.
However, they soon kindled a fire by rubbing together some rotten wood,
and with the aid of some dry turf, the quarry under the precipice of Allt
y Craig became a temporary heath of blazing beauty. Utterly void of any
culinary utensils, they resolved on the primitive mode of broiling their
fish on hot stones, and Moses, all alacrity, proceeded on the task of
preparing them.
But, alas, for the sequel of their adventure! Before they could realize
their project, the dark countenance of Morris Greeg paralyzed their
efforts, as the serpent’s gaze is said to fascinate its victim. The
angry farmer gruffly demanded where they had been, how they had dared to
idle away their time, and what was the meaning of that wasteful fire
against the rock. The ready lie, or presence of mind as it is favourably
called, of Twm and Moses soon supplied answers, such as they were. Twm
said, that hearing the good woman of the house complain of a visit from
the old enemy the cholic, he determined to catch a dish of fish for her,
to drive it away, pointing triumphantly to his piscatory store; thus
beating a retreat with all the diplomacy and tact of a good general, who
when he finds he cannot obtain a victory, at any rate manages to gain
credit for a wise ‘retrograde.’
Moses followed up Twm’s assertion by declaring that the fire was to
frighten away the crows and the kites that might take fancy to the young
lambs, or the wheat in the neighbouring field; a manifestation of care
over his master’s property, which had, at any rate, the claim of
originality to back it. Morris was as great an economist of his words as
in matters of worldly goods, and therefore, whatever he thought, he did
not waste breath with reply; but suddenly ordered Moses to carry the fish
into the house, and Twm to give some hay to the cows. “And be sure,”
quoth the careful farmer, “that you give most hay to the cow that gives
most milk.”
“I will be sure of it!” replied Twm pointedly, and with sulky asperity.
The next moment, to the great astonishment, and greater anger of Morris
Greeg, he threw as much hay as his two arms could embrace, under the
water-spout. “There,” cried the redoubted son of Catty, “that is the cow
which gives me most milk, for that cursed broth and porridge is almost
wholly made from this never-failing animal.”
A precipitous retreat of course, followed this explanation, and Morris
Greeg was left alone to chew the cud of his resentment. At dinner the
next day, the wrath of Morris having evaporated, all grew smooth again.
While Twm and Moses bolted their insipid mess of dovery, otherwise called
burgoo, the gratification was rather questionable in having as their
share merely the smell of the fried fish, on which Sheeny and Shaan with
the younger daughters were regaling, and praising the flavour at every
mouthful they swallowed. Moses ground his teeth, and would have impaled
them in the excess of his rage, for the loss of his expected feast. Twm
said nothing, but inwardly resolved on faring better, and that very
speedily. Shaan grinned like a hyena as she treated her dainty gums with
fish after fish, and spitefully enjoyed their mortification, as she
whispered to Twm, “now we are even for the pancakes.”
Just at the finishing of this mid-day meal, the barking of a strange dog
drew Twm and Moses out to the yard. There they saw a half-starved cur,
belonging to a cottager who was cutting turf in the adjoining turbary.
This wretched animal, evidently a cut-throat leveller in principle, was
disputing with one of the pigs his right to engross the whole trough to
himself, which the bristly conservative at length resented by snapping in
two one of the hind legs of his canine enemy.
The dog set up a dismal howl as a requiem for the loss of the fourth part
of his understanding, which was soon silenced by Moses striking him on
the head with a large stone, which killed him on the spot. The cottager
hurried home, frightened by Twm, who told him would be sued for the
damages done by his dog. Our hero, with the assistance of Moses, to whom
he imparted the scheme he had now in hand, immediately bathed the
buttocks of the pig with the dog’s blood; and then pouring some dry sand
in his ear, drove him howling down the yard. Annoyed with the freedom
thus taken with his auricular organ, the offended gentleman of the sty
rushed to and fro, at a rate as violent as some of his celebrated
ancestors, when they sought to drown both themselves and the devils
within them in the sea. Morris lifted his hands amidst the assembled
household, and ruefully exclaimed, “the devil is in the pig!” His
gambols were certainly most extraordinary, and far surpassed the
evolutions’ of the bull’s frisky wife, commonly called the cow’s
courante. He sometimes aimed to stand on his hind legs, to emulate the
figure, intimating in pantomime, “I am as good a man as the best of you!”
While in this position, he would toss his head as loftily as an envious
beauty that heard her rival praised; and then, as if to evince his
unrivalled versatility, he aimed to reverse his position, and stand on
his head.
Thus did he enliven the farm-yard, and cut sundry unusual capers, not at
all in keeping with the hitherto grave tenor of all his modest life; at
which Morris was scandalized, the women astonished, and the two
mischievous imps that caused this torture, amused as if a party of
mountebanks had exhibited before them. “Such things have been in the
days of old,” cried Morris, with a pious whine, “the pig is possessed of
a devil.”
“Of a legion of devils!” screamed Sheeny and Shaan, in the utmost alarm;
“the pig is mad!” cried Moses; “the dog was mad that bit the pig!” cried
Twm. This remark, which assigned a natural cause for the frisky gambols
of the tortured grunter, had the effect of sobering every one from their
wild supernatural speculations, to the no less alarming fact that poor
porker was the victim of hydrophobia. Morris all at once turned pious,
and remarked that “this might be one of the signs which were to precede
the end of the world.”
“Ah!” whispered Twm to Moses, “it is a sign which certainly precedes the
end of the pig.”
Convinced by the reiteration of Twm and Moses, that the pig was really
stark staring maliciously and mischievously mad, Morris seemed more
grieved at his prospect of worldly loss in so much hog’s flesh, than as
if his first suggestion had been verified about the dissolution of the
world. He pathetically lamented the loss it would be, to kill him before
he was duly fattened. “He must be killed and eaten fresh,” whined
Morris, “as he is too lean to be salted and baconed.”
“He shall be killed and buried like a dog!” cried Sheeny, “or we shall
all be maddened and biting one another, if we swallow a bit of him, fat
or lean—Oh! the pity to lose this precious griskin!” “I won’t eat mad
pork!” cried Shaan; “nor I,”—“nor I!” cried the younger lasses, deeply
horrified at the idea of being smothered between two feather-beds, which
Twm assured them, with a very grave and serious face, was an easy and
comfortable death, and such as was always allotted by law to those who
got mad by the bite of a mad dog, or by eating what was venomed by his
bite. “I will never touch a bit of him,” cried all the girls at once;
“but I will!” muttered both Twm and Moses, to themselves, glowing with
the thought of future feasting.
Morris in the deepest tribulation pondered on the perversity of his
household, and at last decided on waiting till next morning before he
would give his ultimatum as to how the pig was to be disposed of, in the
meantime locking him up in a stable. It was a night of trial for Morris.
To lose an entire porker at one fell swoop, and the household to be so
very unaccommodating as not to eat him, was a really serious thing. He
mentally prayed for the renewed health on the part of the pig, or else
that some kind pig-drover would fall from the clouds and be the saving
angel of him. The said Morris Greeg’s conscience did not see further
than his own acts. If the imaginary drover bought the pig, and others
were made mad, why it was none of Morris’s concern. So much for his
refined morality. Thus he comforted himself by reflecting, that whoever
got mad with eating him, that was _their_ concern, not _his_; as it would
be unbecoming in him to dictate to others what they were to buy or to
eat. And as to mentioning his faults, as some unreasonable readers
require, he defied any one to prove _that_ to be a fault, which was
evidently his misfortune.
Boundless was the mirth of Twm and Moses, as in their season of rest they
agitated the question as to what report they were to make in the morning.
“Suppose,” said the waggish Jew-boy “that we let the pig out, and say
that he escaped into the yard, and bit a goose, (which we can kill and
eat;) that the goose got mad and bit the wheel-barrow; that the
wheel-barrow dashed itself frantically against the dung-cart; and that
both together they rolled and rattled all night about the yard, like the
capering of ten thousand devils.” Twm over-ruled this wild suggestion,
and gave a report more consonant with probabilities that the animal was
more mad than ever, and that he feared his malady would infect the
stable, so as to make it unsafe to put the horses there again till the
walls were white-washed and every part of it purified.
This was a grave and plausible position in which to place the affair, and
quite fell in with Morris’s own way of thinking; and at last he
determined on having the maddened monster, as he called him, killed and
buried. This was at last carried into effect by our young worthies, with
the assistance of Mike the mat-man, who inhabited a wretched hovel in the
neighbourhood, and maintained himself, a wife, and one child, by making
rush mats, and coarse willow baskets, which he hawked over the country.
Mike, of course, was let into the secret, and in the night the worthy
trio commenced their avocations of body-snatchers. The much injured
porker was disinterred, and more honours were paid him after death, than
had ever been conferred upon him in life. But this is the way with human
beings, sometimes, as well as with the denizens of the sty; and if we
choose to moralize, we have an excellent opportunity given us—but we
forbear.
Many and merry were the evenings spent over the remains of the pork, by
Twm and Moses, under the humble roof of Mike the mat-man and his wife,
who were equal partakers of the feast. These promising youths, on
pretending to retire to their nightly rest, made a point of hastening to
the place of goodly food and pleasant smells, where they spent the
greater part of the night, and thus acquired their earliest taste for
dissipation.