A poor half-starved looking fellow, with a merry eye, that poverty had sunk, but could not quench, now made up to him, and strove to bargain for a few yards of his flannel; but on reckoning his money, found he could not come up to his price, as he said he had to buy a three-legged iron pot, in addition to a winter petticoat for his wife: “and,” observed the man of tatters, with a grin of miserable mirth, “it will be better for her to go without flannel than our whole family to want a porridge pot.” Twm liked this man, but not his logic; conceiving he made too light an affair of what was perhaps heavy about his dame, who might be no sylph in figure; which implied a want of courtesy and due deference to that fair train, whose indisputable right to warm petticoats claimed precedence of all pots, pans, and every earthly consideration. “Here, take this bale, take it all, for I have lost my yard and scissors, and pay me when you grow rich;—confound your thanks! away with you, bestow it safe, then return here; perhaps I may get thee an iron pot at as cheap a rate as the flannel.”
This ragged man, by his alacrity and silent obedience, seemed to understand the spirit he had to deal with. Off he ran with his enormous present, and immediately returned; when our hero accompanied him to the shop of an old curmudgeon of an ironmonger, whose face, hardly distinguishable behind his habitual screen of snuff and spectacles, seemed of the same material as his own hard ware. The man of rags was quite in luck, and, as instructed, followed his benefactor into the shop in silence. Twm examined the culinary ware, with all the caution of an old farm wife, asking the prices of various articles, and turned up the whites of his eyes in the most approved puritanic fashion, expressive of astonishment at such excessive charges. Old Hammerhead indignantly repelled the insinuation, and swore that cheaper or better pots were never seen in the kitchen of a king. “Then you must mean the king of the beggars,” quoth Twm, “for you have nothing here but damaged ware.” “Damaged devil! what do you mean?” roared the enraged ironmonger. “I mean,” replied Twm Shôn Catti, with provoking equanimity, “that there is scarcely a pot here without a hole in it; now this which I hold in my hand, for instance, has one.” “Where! where!” asks the fiery old shopkeeper, holding it up between his eyes and the light; “if there is a hole in this pot I’ll eat it: where is the hole that you speak of?” “Here!” bawls the inexorable hoaxer, pulling it over his ears, and holding it there, while the necessitous man, who did not seem much unlike a thief, took the wink from his patron, and was walking off with a choice article, which he had selected from the whole lot, when Twm whispered in his ear, “Take better care of it than you did of the two sheep and white ox.” “Thou art either the devil or Twm Shôn Catti,” replied the other, in an under tone. “Mum! and be off,” said Twm, and off went shrewd Roger, for he it was, who now deemed himself more than paid for his coat lost at Cardigan some years ago, by a freak of Twm’s.
Loudly roared the hardwareman, but his voice was drowned in the fatal cavity. Having tied his hands behind his back, Twm left him howling and sweating beneath the huge extinguisher, and made, as he took his departure, this consolatory and effective exit speech—“Had there not been a hole in it, how could that large stupid nob of yours have entered such a helmet?”
As he reached the street, and mixed with the crowd, he noticed a general and very rapid movement towards the town-hall. As the assemblage increased, its course, like a choked mill-dam, became more and more impeded, until the whole restless mass became consolidated, and stood still perforce. Our hero had forced his way till near the entrance of the hall, when he ventured to ask what cause had drawn together such a crowd; but he got no immediate answer, as many came there, like himself, drawn by the powerful influence of curiosity. At length he heard his own name buzzed about, by many voices; one said that Twm Shôn Catti, whose humorous tricks were the themes of every tongue, was discovered to be a great thief: and that he who had fought against highwaymen, was at last become one himself, and committed all the robberies which had taken place in that country for years past. One said that he could never be taken; and a third contradicted that assertion, declaring that he was then fettered in the hall, and waiting to be conveyed to Carmarthen gaol. One assigned him the gallows as his due, while another tenderly replied that hanging was too good for him. Opposing the sentiments and opinions of all these, more than one declared that the hemp was neither spun nor grown, that would hang Twm; and pity it should, as he was the friend of the poor, and an enemy to none but the stupid, the cruel, and the oppressive.
The town crier now came out of the court, and, obtaining silence, he informed the assembled multitude that the magistrates who were now sitting, required that any “person or persons” who might have been defrauded in the fair, should now come forward, so as to form a clue towards the identity of the robber, which it was generally believed was no other than the notorious Twm Shôn Catti. The crier retired, and in a few minutes made his appearance again, and read the court’s proclamation, offering a reward of twenty pounds to any person who would apprehend the said Twm Shôn Catti; which was answered with loud hisses by the majority of the crowd, that effectually drowned the applause of the rest.
Pleased with this evidence of his popularity, the pride of desperate daring seemed to have blinded his better judgment, as he immediately formed the singular and hazardous resolution of entering the hall, to learn the cause of the present discussion, for he was utterly ignorant of the precise act of his that now engaged the polite attention of their worships.
That any person in the perilous predicament of our hero should venture on such an expedient, will doubtless astonish the common-place man of weak nerves and prudent views; but when enthusiasm, and the pride of achievement, even in a worthless cause, actuates the passion-fraught breast, supplanting the place of reasoning calculation, the wonder vanishes. The desperate outlaw, whose temerity is applauded, feels the gust of heroism in as warm a degree as the generous patriot whose claim to renown is better founded, and graced with national approbation. Twm soon found himself in the hall; for his own native energies stood him in better stead than the fabled cap of Fortunatus: he wished, and obtained; hated, and was revenged; desired to tread a difficulty under foot, and obtained his purpose, while the generality of men would be analysing every shadow of obstruction that impeded their aim. He took his stand in a conspicuous place near the bench, the “awful judgment seat,” which was at this time filled by his laughter-loving friend Prothero, whose ruddy happy round face had deprived law itself of all its terrors. Before him, among others, he found his old friend, Evans of Tregaron, who had been sputtering a confused account of our hero’s gracelessness, from his childhood, to the last trick which he had played him, by stealing his grey horse at Machynlleth.—How he had cheated a purchaser of the stolen horse at Welshpool; and how the said horse was traced into the possession of a simple fellow in straw boots and cow-hide breeches, who that very day had sold it to his friend Mr. Powell; which sale, he contended, could not stand good, as the stolen horse was his property to all intents and purposes, which he could prove by creditable witnesses. This recapitulation of Twm’s tricks tickled the gravity of Prothero amazingly; and at every close which Evans made in his narration, he was answered by the loud “ho, ho, ho!” of the sitting magistrate. Mr. Powell then told his story, and, in conclusion, said he was in the commission of the peace in the town of Brecon. “Ho, ho, ho!” roared Prothero, “here we are, three magistrates, ho, ho, ho! three magistrates, and all fooled by Twm Shôn Catti.—Clever fellow, ho, ho, ho! wild dog, ho, ho, ho! means no great harm—never keeps what he steals—gives all to the poor fellows that want—did me out of two sheep and a white ox, ho, ho, ho!—I wish him joy of them, ho, ho, ho! Never mind, gentlemen, the fun of the thing repays the loss, which can be shared between you. Let Mr. Evans take the horse, on paying Mr. Powell what he gave young cow-breeches, ho, ho, ho! better that than lose all.” Mr. Powell immediately acceded to this arrangement, but the unaccommodating Evans insisted on having the horse without any payment, and made some tart remarks on conniving at a rascal’s tricks and villanies. “For my part I’d shoot him dead like a dog!” cried the reverend preacher of peace and concord; drawing, at the same time, a pair of pistols from his coat pocket, and replacing them, in a fiery fit of passion. “Ho, ho, ho!” roared Prothero, “but you’d catch him first, brother, ho, ho, ho!—too cunning for you, for me, and all of us—might be here this moment, laughing in his sleeve at us, for what we know, ho, ho, ho!”
Our hero, in his primitive attire, now attracted the attention of the justices, by the utterance of a deep groan, while he appeared wrapt in the perusal of a small book. Prothero, alive to every thing allied to comicality, burst out into a loud ho, ho, ho! Evans arrayed his naturally gloomy brows in a magisterial frown, and Powell smiled, with an expression of wonder. “What are you reading, friend?” asked Prothero, chuckling as he surveyed the black Welsh wig. “The wisdom of Solomon,” quoth the man of solemnity, drawing the muscles of his face most ludicrously long; “but mark you, worshipful gentlemen, I mean not the Solomon of scriptures, but our own Cambrian Solomon—that is to say, Catwg the Wise, the excellent and erudite abbot of Llancarvan, and teacher of the bard Taliesin.”
“A fine fellow, no doubt, but can’t you read him at home? why do you bring him here?” asked Prothero, good-humoredly. “Wherever I go, I have resolved to make his wisdom known, and to reprove all deviators from it, in the sage’s own words,” quoth Twm. “Poor man, poor man, he’s crazy, his brain turned, perhaps, by too much study,” observed Prothero. “An impudent fellow!” cried Evans; “but you are strangely lenient here in Carmarthenshire; were I the king, I would have all such fellows put in Bedlam.” Twm looked at the clerical magistrate, then read from the book, “If a crown were worn by every fool, we should all of us be kings.” “Gentlemen, he calls us all fools!” cried Evans. Twm, without raising his eyes from the book, read on, “Were there horns on the head of every fool, a good sum might be gained by shewing a bald man.” “Gentlemen, he makes us all cuckolds!” cried Evans, in his usual passionate sputter; “however it may fit you, gentlemen, I can safely say, that no such disgrace as a horn belongs to my brow.” Twm read on;—“If the shame of every one were written on his forehead, the materials for masks would be surprisingly dear.” “Ho, ho, ho!” roared Prothero, till the hall echoed with his loud laughter, which the Cardiganshire magistrate seemed to take as a personal affront, and sulkily observed, that this was no place for foolery, but for gravity, wisdom, and truth. Twm read on, “If no tongue were to speak other than truth and wisdom, the number of mutes would be astonishingly great.” The consequential Evans, mumbled something about his own mode of doing business at Cardigan, and declared that he would commit such a fellow to gaol for three months, at least, for disturbing a court of justice. Twm cut him short with another passage from Catwg; “Were the talkative to perceive the folly of his chattering, he would save his breath to cool his broth.” Here Powell of Brecon entered a little into the spirit of the scene, by quoting also from the well-known aphorisms of Catwg, applying the passage to Twm himself;—“If the buffoon were to see the vanity of his feat, he would leave it off for shame.” This feeble hit excited the applause of the good-humoured Prothero, who clapped the speaker heartily on the back, and, amid his eternal ho, ho, ho! exclaimed, “Well said, brother, well said; better silence him with wit than by authority; well done, well done!”
Our hero now very pointedly directed his quotation against the Breconshire magistrate; “If the lover were to see his weakness, terror would drive him to a premature end.” A general laugh at the expense of Powell, instantly followed. To him that passage was considered peculiarly applicable, as the known unsuccessful woer of the gay widow of Ystrad Fîn. It was a tender string to touch so roughly; losing his ease and temper at the same instant, he cast a most ungracious frown at the utterer of proverbs, and said in an under tone of threatening energy, “Whoever you may be, it were not wise of you to repeat such conduct towards me again.” “Again?” said Twm, pretending to misunderstand him, “Oh, certainly, I’ll give you the passage again, or any other, to please you, ‘If the lover—’” (here Powell’s face blazed with anger, as he clenched his fist, and cried, “You had better not.”) Twm began again,—“If the lover—of war, were to see his cruelty, he would fear that every atom in the sunbeam might stab him as a sword.” This dexterous evasion, with the point given to the words “of war,” had its full effect in restoring the good humour so suddenly disturbed; but that beautiful passage from the aphorisms of the old Welsh abbot failed to elicit the applause which its moral merits deserved: nor could we expect to find decriers of war among farmers and country squires.