T. J. Llewelyn Prichard
The Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Shôn Catti
Descriptive of Life in Wales: Interspersed with Poems
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066205089
Table of Contents
CHAP. I.
The popularity of Twm Shôn Catti’s name in Wales. The resemblance of his character to that of Robin Hood and others. An exposition of the spurious account of our hero in the “Innkeeper’s Album,” and in the drama founded thereon. The honor of his birth claimed by different towns. A true account of his birth and parentage.
The preface to the once popular farce of “Killing no Murder” informs us, that many a fry of infant Methodists are terrified and frightened to bed by the cry of “the Bishop is coming!”—That the right reverend prelates of the realm should become bugbears and buggaboos to frighten the children of Dissenters, is curious enough, and evinces a considerable degree of ingenious malignity in bringing Episcopacy into contempt, if true. Be that as it may in England, in Wales it is not so; for the demon of terror and monster of the nursery there, to check the shrill cry of infancy, and enforce silent obedience to the nurse or mother, is Twm Shôn Catti. But “babes and sucklings” are not the only ones on whom that name has continued to act as a spell; nor are fear and wonder its only attributes, for the knavish exploits and comic feats of the celebrated freebooter Twm Shôn Catti, are, like those of Robin Hood in England, the themes of many a rural rhyme, and the subject of many a village tale; where, seated round the ample hearth of the farm house, or the more limited one of the lowly cottage, an attentive audience is ever found, where his mirth-exciting tricks are told and listened to with vast satisfaction, unsated by the frequency of repetition: for the “lowly train” are generally strangers to that fastidiousness which turns, disgusted, from the twice-told tale.
Although neither the legends, poetry, nor history of the principality, seems to interest, or accord with the queasy taste of our English brethren, the name of Twm Shôn Catti, curiously enough, not only made its way among them, but had the unexpected honor of being woven into a tale, and exhibited on the stage as a Welsh national dramatic spectacle, under the title, and the imposing second title, of Twm John Catti, or the Welsh Rob Roy. The nationality of the Welsh residents in London, who always bear their country along with them wherever they go or stay, was immediately roused, notwithstanding the great offence of substituting “John” for “Shôn,” which called at once on their curiosity and love of country to peruse the “Innkeeper’s Album,” in which this tale first appeared, and to visit the Cobourg Theatre, where overflowing houses nightly attended the representation of the “Welsh Rob Roy.” Now this second title, which confounded the poor Cambrians, was a grand expedient of the author’s, to excite the attention of the Londoners, who naturally associated it with the hero of the celebrated Scotch novel; the bait was immediately swallowed, and that tale, an awkward and most weak attempt to imitate the “Great Unknown,” and by far the worst article in the book, actually sold a volume, in other respects well deserving the attention of the public. “It is good to have a friend at court,” is an adage no less familiar than true; and Mr. Deacon’s success in this instance clearly illustrates this new maxim—“it is good to have a friend among the critics,” by most of whom his book has been either praised, or allowed quietly to pass muster, adorned with the insignia of unquestionable merit.
Great was the surprise of the sons of the Cymry to find the robber Twm Shon Catti, who partially resembled Bamfylde Moore Carew, Robin Hood, and the humorous but vulgar footpad, Turpin, elevated to the degree of a high-hearted, injured chieftain;—the stealer of calves, old women’s flannels, and three-legged pots, a noble character, uttering heroic speeches, and ultimately dying for his Ellen [3a] a hero’s death!
“This may do for London, but in Wales, where