For this reason in our enquiry we[4] took the local magnates into counsel. Choosing some place central for two or more parishes, we invited the incumbent and the overseers to meet us. The incumbent brought the landowners, and the overseers brought the chapel dignitaries. From this collected wisdom we got all the information we wanted, and sometimes good advice. Above all, we got confidence; for those present saw and heard all the information that was given us: they learned the requirements of the Act, and were told exactly how far their district went towards satisfying the law. Confidence is a plant that for special reasons grows slowly in that land; and occasionally there were outbursts of fury; but, as we shall see later, the result was that our recommendations were received with hardly a single murmur.
Through these meetings sometimes one made friendships which lasted for years: less often one met men, whom, it was a consolation to think, one would never meet again in this world, or (with good fortune) in any other world. Sometimes in out of the way corners of the earth there were odd incidents which abide in the memory and after all the long interval blossom into mirth.
A dull June day, with cold rain hanging about: a mediæval gig, and an indigenous driver, lineally descended from Caliban, and all but monoglott. We meet an aged clergyman, and Caliban touches his hat.
“Who is that?” I ask, to make conversation.
“Well, they call him Menander.”
“Menander? What does that mean?”
“’Deed, I don’t know,” was the natural and national answer.
Menander—Greek poet—never read a word of him—must have been dead 2,000 years: perhaps he came to North Wales. Wasn’t there an Early Father of that name? I think I confused him with Neander,[5] though I could give no account of Neander then or now. But why? And who? A parson; perhaps an officer of the Church. Thus I mused. Then I put it to the driver: did he think it was the Welsh for a rural dean?
“Well, yes, I think,” said he, obviously having no idea what I meant.
On arriving at our meeting-place I told my chief that I had met Menander, and that I had ascertained that he was so called in virtue of the office of rural dean. He roared. I suppose the story is told of me to this day in Ruridecanal chapters. The holy man was a bard, and Menander was his bardic name; when he wrote poetry for an Eisteddfod, he took that for a pen-name.