He was much flattered. He admitted that he was too many for them. When he first came there, he confessed it was uphill work, but he had learned by ex-pee-ri-ence, and he prolonged the word to indicate the time required for his complete education. It was in the autumn, after he came to Llanfair, that a young man came to him one Saturday evening, and asked him (in Welsh) “to cry the nuts in church next morning.” “Well, of course, I did not like to let him know that I did not understand, and I asked a few questions about it; in the end I found that his mother had an orchard full of nut-trees, and the nuts were ripe, and I was to give out after the Second Lesson that an-ny one that took them, you know, would be prosecuted by law.”
“With the Banns of Marriage? And what did you do, Mr. Morgan?”
He smiled in a superior manner. “I told him it wass no use for me to cry the nuts to the people that were in church; they would not touch his nuts; it wass the people outside that wanted to be told.”
What an admirable doctrine! and what simplification of sermons it would produce if generally promulgated. But most congregations prefer to
“Compound for sins they are inclined to”
in the manner indicated by Butler. “I suppose the population is scattered in your parish?” I rashly remarked.
The Druid seized his opportunity, and drew up his chair nearer to me.
“Well, yes, my dear sir, that is what I wanted to speak to you about. It is like this. Llanfair-castanwydd-uwch-y-mynydd—that is the Church of St. Mary of the chestnut trees on the mountain, and Harry there calls me ‘Old Chestnuts,’ and I tell him if there were no chestnut trees there would be no chestnuts, that is castanau, you know—well, the parish is divided in two: there is Llanfair-castanwydd-uwch-y-mynydd-uchaf, that is the upper part, and we call that Moriah, because of the big chapel up there; and there is uwch-y-mynydd-isaf, that is the lower part at the foot of the mountain, and they call it Llan; that is where the church is. Well, the chapel folk in Moriah say——”
But at this moment—sic me servavit Apollo—Phyllis Jones, parlourmaid, announced the Squire’s carriage, and the others, who had been watching my bewilderment with much delight, rose from their arm-chairs and came around us, laughing uproariously.
“Come with me, Mr. Morgan,” said the Squire; “I will put you down outside your gate.”