“A farmer, named Hugo Garonwy, lived in the neighbourhood of Llewyn Georie. Although he handled the small tilt plough, and other farming tools in their due season, yet the catching of the merlin, the fox, and the hare, were pursuits more congenial to his tastes; and the tumbles and thumps which he received, and from which no pony hunter was exempt, served but to attach him to the sport. Rugged, however, as were the Merioneddshire coast and its environs, and abounding with precipices and morasses, the hunter sometimes experienced worse mishaps, and so it happened with Garonwy.
“He set out one morning with his lasso coiled round his waist, and attended by two hardy dependents and their greyhounds. The lasso was then familiar to the Welshman, and as adroitly managed by him as by any Gaucho on the plains of South America. As the hunters climbed the mountain’s brow, the distant herd of ponies took alarm—sometimes galloping onwards, and then suddenly halting and wheeling round, snorting as if in defiance of the intruders, and furiously pawing the ground. Garonwy, with the assistance of his servants and the greyhounds, contrived to coop them up in a corner of the hills, where perpendicular rocks prevented their escape.
“Already had he captured three of the most beautiful little fellows in the world, which he expected to sell for £4 or £5 each at the next Bala fair, to him a considerable sum, and amounting to a fourth of the annual rent which he paid for his sheep walk. There remained, however, one most untamable creature, whose crested mane, and flowing tail, and wild eye, and distended nostril showed that he was a perfect Bucephalus of the hills; nor, indeed, was it safe to attack him in the ordinary way. Many of the three year olds had been known to break the legs of their pursuers, and some had been dismounted and trampled to death.
“Garonwy was determined to give the noble fellow a chase over the hills, and so overcome him by fatigue before the lasso was flung. The dogs were unslipped, and off they went swift as the winds, Garonwy following, and the two assistants posted in a neighbouring eminence. Vain was the effort to tire the merlin. Hugo, naturally impatient, and without waiting to ascertain that the coils were all clear, flung the lasso over the head of the wild horse. The extremity of the cord was twisted round his own body, and tightening as the animal struggled, the compression became insupportable, and at length, in spite of every effort to disengage himself, Garonwy was dragged from his horse.
“The affrighted merlin, finding himself manacled by the rope, darted off with all the speed of which he was capable, dragging poor Garonwy over the rocky ground and stunted brushwood. This occurred at some distance from the men. They called in their dogs that the speed of the merlin might not be increased: but ere they could arrive at the spot at which the accident happened, the horse and the man had vanished. Whether the sufferings of the hunter were protracted, or he was dashed against a rock at the commencement of the horrible race, was never known; but the wild animal, frenzied and blinded by terror, rushed over a beetling cliff, at a considerable distance, overhanging the sea-shore, and the hunter and the horse were found at the bottom, a misshapen semblance of what they had been when living.”
CHAPTER II
PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE HORSE—SAGACITY, FIDELITY, SOCIABILITY, &c.; ANECDOTES—INSANITY.
