Yonder some subtle humorist has been at work, and given us his version of the priest under the guise of a fox administering the wafer to a goose of a layman: and it may be noticed that (after the olden custom) the priest reserves the wine flagon to himself. This forms the subject of our sketch at end of Chapter VIII. Two wolfish-looking dogs snarling over a bone may by some be thought to prove the antiquity of the familiar couplet,
'Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief,
Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef.'
The Boatbuilders.
Then we have a couple of sturdy boat-builders, one of whom, having laid aside his adze, drains the contents of a capacious cup, while a mighty beaker stands ready to his hand.
With such-like quaint original devices have those men of old encrusted the surface of these ancient stalls. So, having done justice to their curious details, we pass on through a second screen separating the chancel from the presbytery, an arrangement peculiar, we believe, to St. Davids Cathedral. This portion of the fabric was rebuilt with pointed arches after the fall of the central tower in 1220, and contains some extremely interesting features.
The place of honour in the centre of the presbytery is occupied by the tomb of Edmund Tudor, father of Henry VII., a massive table monument of Purbeck marble, enriched with shields and heraldic devices, and bearing the proud inscription: 'Under this Marble Shrine here enclos'd resteth the Bones of that noble Lord, Edmund Earl of Richmond, Father and Brother to Kings, the which departed out of this World in the Year of our Lord God a thousand four hundred fifty and six, the first Day of the Month of November, on whose Soul almighty Jesus have Mercy, Amen.'
