Twm, disguised as a woman, sings ballads at Cardigan fair. Is alarmed on
seeing an unexpected person. Takes a sudden departure from thence.
TWM at length reached the end of his dreary journey, the latter part of
which was rendered more cheerful from having fallen into company with a
party of drovers, who gallantly treated the apparent fair one with bread
and cheese and ale. Thus he entered Cardigan in comparative good
spirits, and prepared to commence his whimsical new vocation. Although
naturally bold, and more full of confidence than beseemed the modesty of
youth, it was not without considerable efforts in struggling with some
remains of diffidence that he at length ventured to sing in the public
street; but the beer which he had drank was strong, and his voice he knew
was almost unequalled in the county of Cardigan; and with this persuasion
he thought it foolish to hesitate. He fixed himself in rather an obscure
part of the fair, but his musical voice and humorous execution of a comic
song soon drew a crowd about him, and put his ballads in speedy request.
According to the general custom with street melodists, he introduced each
song with a whimsical argument of its matter, in a strain of drollery
that set the grinning rustics in high glee: “Here my merry men and
maidens,” quoth he, “is a pretty song about a young damsel, who was taken
in by a false lover, that courted her only for what he could get, and
having wheedled her out of her heart and money, then ran away and left
her to wear the willow.”