"Do you put your legs through the hole and tie the four corners over your head?"
"No," answered Mr. Martyn. "I will fetch you mine, and you shall try it on."
The poncho was produced; it was dark blue, and the vicar was delighted with it. Next time he went to Bideford he bought a yellowish brown rug, and had a hole cut in the middle through which to thrust his head.
"I wouldn't wear your livery, Martyn," said he, "nor your political colours, so I have got a yellow poncho."
Those who knew him can picture to themselves the sly twinkle in his eye as he informed his credulous visitor that he was invested in the habit of S. Padarn and S. Teilo.
But his dress was extraordinary enough without the poncho. He was wont to wear a knitted blue sailor's jersey, sea-boots above his knees, and a claret-coloured coat and a clerical wide-awake of the same colour. He had a great aversion to black. "Why should we parsons be like crows--birds of ill-luck?" he would say. "Black--black--are we children of darkness? Black is the colour of devils only."
A real poet he was, but desultory, rarely able to remain fixed at work and carry out a project to the end. He was an excellent ballad-writer, but he could do better than write ballads. He began a great poem on the "Quest of the Sangreal," but it remains a fragment.
Here is one short specimen of a ballad, the lament of a Cornish mother over her dead child:--
"They say 'tis a sin to sorrow--
That what God doth is best,