With a cry of delight the old dame rushed away, and returned with a large bowlful of liquid, of which the traveller eagerly partook. It was fine thick butter-milk, but, alas! it was quite sour!
Perhaps, however, the chief regret in the visitor’s mind was the impossibility of explaining why the bowl was returned full to the brim, for the old dame’s puzzled look said plainly enough: “What more could the stranger want than good Welsh butter-milk?”
Meantime the market-women have spread out their goods—poultry, butter, eggs, and flowers—on the market-stalls in a picturesque fashion enough. Many of the women themselves are worth the attention of an artist, with their strong brown faces, black crisp hair, and very dark blue eyes, “put in with a smutty finger,” as someone has well described them.
Fifty years ago you would have seen them dressed in short red skirts, buckled shoes, crossed bodices, and tall steeple-crowned hats worn over caps; but these, unfortunately, have vanished.
The men—farmers or cattle-drovers for the most part—differ in face more than they do in name. To English ears everyone seems to be called either David Mor-r-gan (with a beautiful roll to the “r”) or Owen Jones. But to the careful eye the difference between the two original races is clear. The one is still short, smaller in build, and very dark-haired; the other is tall, ruddy, with long loose limbs and fiery red hair.
Borrow, whose amusing description of his walks in “Wild Wales” you will like some day to read, thus describes a fair at Llangollen some fifty years ago, and from what one knows of these country-towns, one would not expect to find things very different to-day.
“The fair,” he says, “was held in and near a little square in the south-east quarter of the town. It was a little bustling fair, attended by plenty of people from the country. A dense row of carts extended from the police-station half across the space. These carts were filled with pigs, and had stout cord nettings drawn over them, to prevent the animals escaping.
“By the sides of these carts the principal business of the fair appeared to be going on—there stood the owners, male and female, higgling with Llangollen men and women who came to buy. The pigs were all small, and the price given seemed to vary from eighteen to twenty-five shillings. Those who bought pigs generally carried them away in their arms, and then there was no little diversion. Dire was the screaming of the porkers, yet the purchaser always knew how to manage his bargain, keeping the left arm round the body of the swine, and with the right hand fast gripping the ear. Some few were led away by strings.
“There were some Welsh cattle, small, of course, and the purchasers of these seemed to be Englishmen—tall, burly fellows in general, far exceeding the Welsh in height and size....
“Now and then a big fellow made an offer, and held out his hand for a little Celtic grazier to give it a slap—a cattle bargain being concluded by a slap of the hand—but the Welshman generally turned away with a half-resentful exclamation.