Wild Wales: The People, Language, & Scenery

by George Borrow

“Merely curiosity,” said I.

He then observed that, as the examination would be a private one, my being permitted or not was quite optional.

“I am aware of that,” said I, “and if you think my remaining is objectionable, I will forthwith retire.” He looked at the clerk, who said there could be no objection to my staying, and turning round to his superior, said something to him which I did not hear, whereupon the magistrate again bowed, and said that he should be very happy to grant my request.

We went upstairs, and found the wounded man in bed, with a bandage round his forehead, and his wife sitting by his bedside. The magistrate and his officials took their seats, and I was accommodated with a chair. Presently the prisoner was introduced under the charge of a policeman. He was a fellow somewhat above thirty, of the middle size, and wore a dirty white frock coat; his right arm was partly confined by a manacle—a young girl was sworn, who deposed that she saw the prisoner run after the other with something in his hand. The wounded man was then asked whether he thought he was able to make a deposition; he replied in a very feeble tone that he thought he was, and after being sworn, deposed that on the preceding Saturday, as he was going to his stall, the prisoner came up to him and asked whether he had ever done him any injury? he said no. “I then,” said he, “observed the prisoner’s countenance undergo a change, and saw him put his hand to his waistcoat pocket and pull out a knife. I straight became frightened, and ran away as fast as I could; the prisoner followed, and overtaking me, stabbed me in the face. I ran into the yard of a public-house, and into the shop of an acquaintance, where I fell down, the blood spouting out of my wound.” Such was the deposition of the wounded butcher. He was then asked whether there had been any quarrel between him and the prisoner? He said there had been no quarrel, but that he had refused to drink with the prisoner when he requested him, which he had done very frequently, and had more than once told him that he did not wish for his acquaintance. The prisoner, on being asked, after the usual caution, whether he had anything to say, said that he merely wished to mark the man, but not to kill him. The surgeon of the place deposed to the nature of the wound, and on being asked his opinion with respect to the state of the prisoner’s mind, said that he believed that he might be labouring under a delusion. After the prisoner’s bloody weapon and coat had been produced, he was committed.

It was generally said that the prisoner was disordered in his mind; I held my tongue, but judging from his look and manner, I saw no reason to suppose that he was any more out of his senses than I myself, or any person present, and I had no doubt that what induced him to commit the act was rage at being looked down upon by a quondam acquaintance, who was rising a little in the world, exacerbated by the reflection that the disdainful quondam acquaintance was one of the Saxon race, against which every Welshman entertains a grudge more or less virulent, which, though of course very unchristianlike, is really, brother Englishman, after the affair of the long knives, and two or three other actions of a somewhat similar character, of our noble Anglo-Saxon progenitors, with which all Welshmen are perfectly well acquainted, not very much to be wondered at.

CHAPTER LIII

The Dylluan—The Oldest Creatures.

Much rain fell about the middle of the month; in the intervals of the showers I occasionally walked by the banks of the river, which speedily became much swollen; it was quite terrible both to the sight and ear near the “Robber’s Leap;” there were breakers above the higher stones at least five feet high, and a roar around almost sufficient “to scare a hundred men.” The pool of Catherine Lingo was strangely altered; it was no longer the quiet pool which it was in summer, verifying the words of the old Welsh poet that the deepest pool of the river is always the stillest in the summer and of the softest sound, but a howling turbid gulf, in which branches of trees, dead animals, and rubbish were whirling about in the wildest confusion. The nights were generally less rainy than the days, and sometimes by the pallid glimmer of the moon I would take a stroll along some favourite path or road. One night, as I was wandering slowly along the path leading through the groves of Pen y Coed, I was startled by an unearthly cry—it was the shout of the dylluan, or owl, as it flitted over the tops of the trees on its nocturnal business.

Oh, that cry of the dylluan! what a strange, wild cry it is; how unlike any other sound in nature! a cry which no combination of letters can give the slightest idea of. What resemblance does Shakespear’s to-whit-to-whoo bear to the cry of the owl? none whatever; those who hear it for the first time never know what it is, however accustomed to talk of the cry of the owl and to-whit-to-whoo. A man might be wandering through a wood with Shakespear’s owl-chorus in his mouth, but were he then to hear for the first time the real shout of the owl, he would assuredly stop short and wonder whence that unearthly cry could proceed.

Yet no doubt that strange cry is a fitting cry for the owl, the strangest in its habits and look of all birds, the bird of whom by all nations the strangest tales are told. Oh, what strange tales are told of the owl, especially in connection with its long-lifedness; but of all the strange, wild tales connected with the age of the owl, strangest of all is the old Welsh tale. When I heard the owl’s cry in the groves of Pen y Coed, that tale rushed into my mind. I had heard it from the singular groom, who had taught me to gabble Welsh in my boyhood, and had subsequently read it in an old tattered Welsh story-book, which by chance fell into my hands. The reader will perhaps be obliged by my relating it.