About an hour’s walk from Tan y Bwlch brought me to Festiniog, which is situated on the top of a lofty hill looking down from the south-east, on the valley which I have described, and which, as I know not its name, I shall style the Valley of the numerous streams. I went to the inn, a large old-fashioned house, standing near the church; the mistress of it was a queer-looking old woman, antiquated in her dress, and rather blunt in her manner. Of her, after ordering dinner, I made inquiries respecting the chair of Rhys Goch, but she said that she had never heard of such a thing; and after glancing at me askew for a moment, with a curiously formed left eye which she had, went away muttering chair, chair, leaving me in a large and rather dreary parlour, to which she had shown me. I felt very fatigued, rather I believe from that unlucky short cut than from the length of the way, for I had not come more than eighteen miles. Drawing a chair towards a table, I sat down, and placing my elbows upon the board, I leaned my face upon my upturned hands, and presently fell into a sweet sleep, from which I awoke exceedingly refreshed, just as a maid opened the room door to lay the cloth.
After dinner I got up, went out, and strolled about the place. It was small, and presented nothing very remarkable. Tired of strolling, I went and leaned my back against the wall of the churchyard, and enjoyed the cool of the evening, for evening, with its coolness and shadows, had now come on.
As I leaned against the wall, an elderly man came up and entered into discourse with me. He told me he was a barber by profession, had travelled all over Wales, and had seen London. I asked him about the chair of Rhys Goch. He told me that he had heard of some such chair a long time ago, but could give me no information as to where it stood. I know not how it happened that he came to speak about my landlady, but speak about her he did. He said that she was a good kind of woman, but totally unqualified for business, as she knew not how to charge. On my observing that that was a piece of ignorance with which few landladies, or landlords either, were taxable, he said that, however other publicans might overcharge, undercharging was her foible, and that she had brought herself very low in the world by it—that to his certain knowledge she might have been worth thousands instead of the trifle which she was possessed of, and that she was particularly notorious for undercharging the English, a thing never before dreamt of in Wales. I told him that I was very glad that I had come under the roof of such a landlady; the old barber, however, said that she was setting a bad example, that such goings on could not last long, that he knew how things would end, and finally working himself up into a regular tiff, left me abruptly without wishing me good night.
I returned to the inn, and called for lights; the lights were placed upon the table in the old-fashioned parlour, and I was left to myself. I walked up and down the room some time, at length, seeing some old books lying in a corner, I laid hold of them, carried them to the table, sat down, and began to inspect them; they were the three volumes of Scott’s “Cavalier”—I had seen this work when a youth, and thought it a tiresome, trashy publication. Looking over it now, when I was grown old, I thought so still, but I now detected in it what from want of knowledge I had not detected in my early years, what the highest genius, had it been manifested in every page, could not have compensated for—base, fulsome adulation of the worthless great, and most unprincipled libelling of the truly noble ones of the earth, because they, the sons of peasants and handycraftsmen, stood up for the rights of outraged humanity, and proclaimed that it is worth makes the man, and not embroidered clothing. The heartless, unprincipled son of the tyrant was transformed, in that worthless book, into a slightly dissipated, it is true, but upon the whole brave, generous, and amiable being; and Harrison, the English Regulus, honest, brave, unflinching Harrison, into a pseudo-fanatic, a mixture of the rogue and fool, Harrison probably the man of the most noble and courageous heart that England ever produced; who, when all was lost, scorned to flee, like the second Charles from Worcester, but braved infamous judges and the gallows; who, when reproached on his mock trial with complicity in the death of the king, gave the noble answer that “It was a thing not done in a corner,” and when in the cart on the way to Tyburn, on being asked jeeringly by a lord’s bastard in the crowd, “Where is the good old cause now?” thrice struck his strong fist on the breast which contained his courageous heart, exclaiming, “Here, here, here!” Yet for that “Cavalier,” that trumpery publication, the booksellers of England, on its first appearance, gave an order to the amount of six thousand pounds. But they were wise in their generation; they knew that the book would please the base, slavish taste of the age, a taste which the author of the work had had no slight share in forming.
Tired after a while with turning over the pages of the trashy “Cavalier,” I returned the volumes to their place in the corner, blew out one candle, and taking the other in my hand marched off to bed.
CHAPTER XLVIII
The Bill—The Two Mountains—Sheet of Water—The Afanc-Crocodile—The Afanc-Beaver—Tai Hirion—Kind Woman—Arenig Vawr—The Beam and Mote—Bala.
After breakfasting I demanded my bill. I was curious to see how little the amount would be, for after what I had heard from the old barber the preceding evening about the utter ignorance of the landlady in making a charge, I naturally expected that I should have next to nothing to pay. When it was brought, however, and the landlady brought it herself, I could scarcely believe my eyes. Whether the worthy woman had lately come to a perception of the folly of undercharging, and had determined to adopt a different system; whether it was that, seeing me the only guest in the house, she had determined to charge for my entertainment what she usually charged for that of two or three—strange, by the bye, that I should be the only guest in a house notorious for undercharging—I know not, but certain it is the amount of the bill was far, far from the next to nothing which the old barber had led me to suppose I should have to pay, who, perhaps, after all had very extravagant ideas with respect to making out a bill for a Saxon. It was, however, not a very unconscionable bill, and merely amounted to a trifle more than I had paid at Bethgelert for somewhat better entertainment.
Having paid the bill without demur, and bidden the landlady farewell, who displayed the same kind of indifferent bluntness which she had manifested the day before, I set off in the direction of the east, intending that my next stage should be Bala. Passing through a toll-gate I found myself in a kind of suburb consisting of a few cottages. Struck with the neighbouring scenery, I stopped to observe it. A mighty mountain rises in the north almost abreast of Festiniog; another towards the east divided into two of unequal size. Seeing a woman of an interesting countenance seated at the door of a cottage, I pointed to the hill towards the north, and speaking the Welsh language, inquired its name.
“That hill, sir,” said she, “is called Moel Wyn.”