To-night we felt that fate had been extraordinarily kind to us, as by the fire we sat listening to Matty’s weird tales and to Oli’s rendering of “The Shepherd of Snowdon” and other Welsh airs on his violin. A rare stock of tales has Matty—stories replete with enchanted castles, green dragons, witches, ghosts, and the hero is nearly always a clever Gypsy named Jack. Matty is Oli’s cousin, and it is charming to see how happy they are together.
To me this is a holiday indeed. The utter absence of conventionality, and the diversions of the Gypsy life, are as balm to one’s nerves.
May 15.—To-day is another blue and golden foretaste of summer. Along the banks of the Alwen, dodging in and out among huge boulders, climbing fences, scrambling through the masses of flowering gorse and broom, Gilderoy, Matty, and I made our way to Bettws-Gwerfil-Goch. In the old inn, a cool retreat after the broiling sunshine in the wooded valley, we sat awhile. Years ago I saw Matty and his sons dance on the blue-stone floor of this room, just after the New Year had come in—a time when all Welsh folk are merry with fiddle and song.
On getting back to our camp in the early evening, all hands set to work, some gathering sticks, others fetching water, and soon the supper was spread inside the roomy tent. Tales and talk till the late-rising moon glinted through the holes nibbled by field-mice in the tent blankets. Then to dreamland.
May 16.—This morning I find thin ice on a pail of water standing in the open. How bracing to complete your toilet in the cool air from the mountains. See with what tenderness the sunlight colours the rocks up there by the hillside farmstead. For the first time since coming into Wales I hear the cuckoo calling in the woods. High up on the slope I see a black horse dragging a hurdle with thorn boughs weighted by stones—a primitive harrow. I’ll have a scamper down the road through the keen air of morn, before the sun has drunk up all the dew.
After breakfast I go a-fishing. Home in the afternoon to find some of the Gypsy Locks coming down the Holyhead Road with their carts and ponies; a delightful party, and much rokerben (conversation) followed.
A little later Gilderoy and I drive in the tilt-cart to Corwen to fetch Fred o’ the Bawro Gav. This means more fun for us round the evening fire. When depressed in days to come, I want to remember that flow of Gypsy mirth away there under the shadow of Cader Dinmael, while the oak-groves outside our tent whispered in the rising wind of night.
May 17.—Farewell, tent and caravan and tilt-cart. Farewell, old pals beside your smoking fires. Farewell, sweet Wales and your beautiful mountains. To-day I return to civilization.