“I have learnt something,” said I, “of Welsh cottage life and feeling from that poor sickly child.”
I had passed the first and second of the hills which stood on the left, and a huge long mountain on the right which confronted both when a young man came down from a gulley on my left hand, and proceeded in the same direction as myself. He was dressed in a blue coat and corduroy trowsers and appeared to be of a condition a little above that of a labourer. He shook his head and scowled when I spoke to him in English, but smiled on my speaking Welsh and said: “Ah, you speak Cumraeg: I thought no Sais could speak Cumraeg.” I asked him if he was going far.
“About four miles,” he replied.
“On the Bangor road?”
“Yes,” said he; “down the Bangor road.”
I learned that he was a carpenter, and that he had been up the gully to see an acquaintance—perhaps a sweetheart. We passed a lake on our right which he told me was called Llyn Ogwen, and that it abounded with fish. He was very amusing and expressed great delight at having found an Englishman who could speak Welsh. “It will be a thing to talk of,” said he, “for the rest of my life.” He entered two or three cottages by the side of the road, and each time he came out I heard him say: “I am with a Sais, who can speak Cumraeg.” At length we came to a gloomy-looking valley trending due north; down this valley the road ran having an enormous wall of rocks on its right and a precipitous hollow on the left, beyond which was a wall equally high as the other one. When we had proceeded some way down the road my guide said: “You shall now hear a wonderful echo,” and shouting, “taw, taw,” the rocks replied in a manner something like the baying of hounds. “Hark to the dogs!” exclaimed my companion. “This pass is called Nant yr ieuanc gwn, the pass of the young dogs, because when one shouts it answers with a noise resembling the crying of hounds.”
The sun was setting when we came to a small village at the bottom of the pass. I asked my companion its name. “Ty yn y maes,” he replied, adding as he stopped before a small cottage that he was going no farther, as he dwelt there.
“Is there a public-house here?” said I.
“There is,” he replied, “you will find one a little farther up on the right hand.”
“Come, and take some ale,” said I.