In the past Georgian day
When men were less inclined to say
That time is gold, and overlay
With toil their pleasure.
Nor troubled they about the morrow—or the gout.
Unlike many other coaching inns, Cann Office never seems to have fallen upon evil days, for when it lost its travelling and posting custom, anglers, just in the nick of time, happily discovered it, and ever since have haunted the troutful rivers and streams around. One angler indeed said to me, "If you can't catch fish here, you won't catch them anywhere." By my map I see that the rivers Banwy, Gam, and Twrch meet close at hand, and many a minor stream runs near by. "Twrch"—there is a fine specimen of a Welsh name, without a vowel in it, for a Saxon to pronounce! Truly it is short, but there are others that are long, and still have not a helpful vowel in all their astonishing array of consonants.
An angler friend, who in years gone by had fished the rivers about Cann Office, told me that on bringing back his catch to the inn one day, by some mischance his fish got mixed with those of another angler who had fished another river there. He was somewhat vexed, but the landlord said he could quite easily sort them out, for the trout of the one river differed in appearance from the trout of the other—and he sorted them to the satisfaction of both parties. The same angler friend told me a story, for the truth of which he vouched. It appears that though a fairly good fisherman there were days when his sport was poor, and even he had to return at times with an empty creel, yet another angler there on those very days generally came back to the inn with a more or less satisfactory show of fish. So he consulted a native on the matter who knew, or was supposed to know, all about local conditions. The native replied that the man mentioned had a special fly to which the trout rose greedily, but he kept it a secret. One day, however, the man lost his cast on the branches of a tree; this the native discovered and recovered, and, for a consideration, handed to my friend. "All's fair in love—and fishing," so my friend sent the fly to his rod-and-tackle maker to be copied. The fly was unlike any fly my friend had ever seen, but he used it with marked success, and during the rest of his stay he used no other.
At Llanerfyl, a little village beyond Cann Office, I pulled up to inspect a long printed notice I observed on the church door there. I found this related to the proposed Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Welsh Church. A great deal has been said of late, both in Parliament and out of it, about the neglect of the Welsh parsons of their parishes in past times.
But to go back to the eighteenth century, here is the story told by the author of The Spiritual Quixote, published in 1772, who in his Welsh wanderings found "a poor Welsh vicar of the diocese of Llandaff, sitting in his humble kitchen paring turnips for dinner, while he read a book and listened to one of his children repeating his lesson." Then he repeats what the vicar said to him:—
"Now you must observe, sir, that after spending some years in the University and taking a Master of Arts degree, I am possessed of a little rectory of about £30 a year, and of this vicarage which, if I could make the most of it, might bring me in £20 more. Now each of these preferments these poor people consider a noble benefit, and though you see in what way I live, yet because I am possessed of half a dozen spoons and a silver tankard, they envy me as living in a princely state and lording it over God's heritage. And, what is worse, as my whole income in this parish arises from the small tithes, because I cannot afford to let them cheat me out of half my dues, they represent me as carnal and worldly-minded, and as one who regards nothing but the good things of this life, and who is always making disturbances in the parish, and this prejudice against me prevents my doing that good amongst them which I sincerely wish to do. One man has left the church and walks miles to a Methodist meeting, because I took one pig out of seven as the law directs; another has complained to the Bishop of my extortion because I would not take three shillings and sixpence in lieu of tithes for a large orchard, as my predecessor had done. In short, sir, there are two or three Dissenters in the parish, who give out that all tithes are remnants of Popery; and would have the clergy consider meat and drink as types and shadows, which ought to have been abolished with the Levitical Law."
In the churchyard of Llanerfyl I noticed a large and ancient yew-tree, its extended branches shadowing the ground far around, its roots amongst the dead. In the shade of it I discovered what I took to be, from the look, the shape, and the lettering on it, a Roman inscribed stone, a stone weathered and worn, with much of the inscription wasted away; still, with difficulty, I managed to decipher a part of it—not that the deciphering left me much the wiser—and this is what I recovered:—
HIC . . . . . .