After staying about half-an-hour I took leave of the good kind man, who wished me all kind of happiness, spiritual and temporal, and said that he should always be happy to see me at Llan Silin. My friend R— walked with me a little way and then bade me farewell. It was now late in the afternoon, the sky was grey and gloomy, and a kind of half wintry wind was blowing. In the forenoon I had travelled along the eastern side of the valley, which I will call that of Llan Rhyadr, directing my course to the north, but I was now on the western side of the valley journeying towards the south. In about half-an-hour I found myself nearly parallel with the high crag which I had seen from a distance in the morning. It was now to the east of me. Its western front was very precipitous, but on its northern side it was cultivated nearly to the summit. As I stood looking at it from near the top of a gentle acclivity a boy with a team, whom I had passed a little time before, came up. He was whipping his horses, who were straining up the ascent, and was swearing at them most frightfully in English. I addressed him in that language, inquiring the name of the crag, but he answered Dim Saesneg, and then again fell to cursing his horses in English. I allowed him and his team to get to the top of the ascent, and then overtaking him I said in Welsh: “What do you mean by saying you have no English? you were talking English just now to your horses.”
“Yes,” said the lad, “I have English enough for my horses, and that is all.”
“You seem to have plenty of Welsh,” said I; “why don’t you speak Welsh to your horses?”
“It’s of no use speaking Welsh to them,” said the boy; “Welsh isn’t strong enough.”
“Isn’t Myn Diawl tolerably strong?” said I.
“Not strong enough for horses,” said the boy; “if I were to say Myn Diawl to my horses, or even Cas András they would laugh at me.”
“Do the other carters,” said I, “use the same English to their horses which you do to yours?”
“Yes,” said the boy, “they all use the same English words; if they didn’t the horses wouldn’t mind them.”
“What a triumph,” thought I, “for the English language that the Welsh carters are obliged to have recourse to its oaths and execrations to make their horses get on!”
I said nothing more to the boy on the subject of language, but again asked him the name of the crag. “It is called Craig y Gorllewin,” said he. I thanked him, and soon left him and his team far behind.