As a proof of the beneficial effect of kindness on a churlish nature, and the contrary, of ridicule and persecution, we need but contrast this rugged man’s previous character and conduct with what followed, after the tenderness of Catti had melted the frost of misanthropy which formed a crusty coat round his heart. The adventure of the day produced a most extraordinary revolution in his habits. None of the servants at the hall, male or female, could conceive what it portended, when Jack condescended to ask one of his fellow husbandmen to trim his hair; and while the fellow clipped his rough red locks with his sheep-sheers, he was surprized at his questions about the price of a new pair of leathern breeches, and a red neck-cloth. Greater still was the astonishment of the whole house when, in a few days after, he appeared in those very buckish articles of dress, and while he thought nobody saw him, endeavouring to cut a dancing caper on the green, which they mistook for an imitation of a frisky bullock. His walking as well as dancing steps, were now watched; and when it was found that the former led to the house of Catti, the nods, winks, horse-laughs, and innuendoes, mentioned in the commencement of this chapter, took place, and gave food for scandal to the whole gossiping circle of the town of Tregaron and its vicinity for many miles around.
Flummery and milk, named here as the food on which these lovers regaled themselves, has been considered in Wales a very popular national mess, common, but still a favorite among high and low, and might be seen on the board of the lord lieutenant of the county, as well as on that of the humblest cottager. The lofty of the land whose pampered stomachs have turned with loathing from more dainty food in sultry seasons, have welcomed the simplicity of milk and flummery, as the advocate of native charms would greet the smilings of a rustic beauty, when the meretricious fair of fashion would be passed by, neglected. The English reader will not be offended if I dilate a little in praise of my favorite food, while I explain to him its nature; and if he is a bloated son of affluence, overflowing with bile and spleen, he will thank us, after adopting our recommendation of feeding on it often during his rustication among our mountains. Medical men also recommend it as very effective in promoting an increase of good clear healthy blood. Flummery is made of the inner hulls of ground oats, when sifted from the meal, some of which still adheres to it, by soaking it in water till it acquires a slight taste of acidity, when it is strained through a hair sieve and boiled till it becomes a perfect jelly. When poured from that picturesque prince of culinary vessels, the large three-legged iron pot, into a vast brown earthen dish, it presents a smooth smiling aspect of the most winning equanimity, till destroyed by the numerous invading spoons of the company, that plunge a portion of it, scalding hot, into their bowls of cool milk. Thus much of its descriptive history is given, to illustrate the following ode in its immortal praise, with which we shall now close this long chapter.
MILK AND FLUMMERY.
Let luxury’s imbecile train,
Of appetites fastidious,
Each sauced provocative obtain,
The draught or viand perfidious;
But oh! give me that simple food,
So dear to the sons of Cymru,
With health, with nourishment imbued,
The sweet new milk and flummery.
Let pudding-headed English folks
With boast of roast beef fag us;
Let Scottish Burns crack rural jokes,
And vaunt kail-brose and haggis;
But Cymru’s sons! of mount and plain,
From Brecknock to Montgomery,
Let us the honest praise maintain,
Of sweet new milk and flummery.
On sultry days when appetites
Wane dull, and low, and queasy,
When loathing stomachs nought delights,
To gulp thee flumm’ry! ’s easy:
Dear oaten jelly, pride of Wales!
Rude child of the vales of Cymru;
On thee the ruddy swain regales,
And blesses milk and flummery.
’Tis sweet to stroll on Cambrian heights,
O’erlooking vales and rivers,
Where bird-song sweet, with breeze unites,
Each, sunshine rapture givers!
To crown their gust the light repast—
So cool—can never come awry,
Oh sweet! to break the mid-day fast
On sweet new milk and flummery.
CHAP. V.
An essay on courting in bed. Our hero removed to the curate’s school.
The scene so lightly touched upon in the last chapter, between our schoolmistress and her beau, called forth the mischievous talents of little Twm Shôn Catti, who, while they sat side by side at the goodly oak table, fastened them together by the coat and gown with a peeled thorn spike, which, before the introduction of pins, was used by the fair sex to join together their various articles of attire. When his mother rose suddenly to help her spoon-merchant with more spoon meat, she rather surprized him by carrying away, with his heart, the greater part of the tattered skirt of his old coat, so that Jack might have said, with Tag the author,
“The lovely maid on whom I doat,
Has made a spencer of my coat.”
The wicked urchin who caused this unsanctioned union, set up a loud laugh, and Catti’s grumpy sister Juggy, for the first time in her life, astonished them with a grin on the occasion. Twm received a severe rebuke from his parent, and the hapless Jack, with the view of propitiating an evil spirit that might prove troublesome to him hereafter, made him a present of a new spoon, which, because it was merely a common one, he ungratefully threw into the blazing turf fire, which glowed on the hearth in a higher pile and wider dimensions than usual, and demanded one of his best box-wood ware. Jack would have given it to him immediately, but for the intervention of his mother, who forbade the indulgence. No sooner, however, was he gone than Twm watched his opportunity and purloined as many of the better sort as he could conveniently take away unperceived, and sold them at the cheap rate of stolen goods, to an old woman named, or rather nick-named, Rachel Ketch, from some supposed resemblance in her character to that of the finisher of the law, so surnamed, although some persons roundly asserted that she was in fact a relict one of those celebrated law officers, one John Ketch esquire, of Stretch-neck Place, Sessions Court, Carmarthen. As no further consequence followed this act of unprovoked delinquency, it was scarcely worth mentioning, except that it stands as the first of the kind on record; and when discovered, Twm’s over affectionate mother did not punish him for it—an omission much censured by rigid people, who construed this petty act into the slight root from which sprung the huge tree of his after enormities;
“But maudlin mothers, all, have tender hearts,
Too kind to root an early shoot of vice
By wholesome chastisement. The little darlings!
Who could punish them, whate’er their faults?”
We come now to an era in this history when our hero entered another scene of life, in that of a new-school, which event was ushered in by unlooked for circumstances that must be first narrated.
It may not be unknown to our readers that there has existed a custom, in some parts