Jack would have given it to him immediately but for the intervention of his mother, who forbade the indulgence. No sooner, however, was he gone than Twm watched his opportunity and purloined as many of the better sort as he could conveniently take away unperceived, and sold them at the cheap rate of stolen goods, to an old woman named, or rather nick-named, Rachel Ketch, from some supposed resemblance in her character to that finisher of the law, although some persons roundly asserted that she was in fact a relict of one John Ketch, Esquire, of Stretch-neck-Place, Session Court, Carmarthen.
As no further consequence followed this act of unprovoked delinquency, it was scarcely worth mentioning, except that it stands as the first of the kind on record; and when discovered, Twm’s over affectionate parent did not punish him for it,—an omission that might have watered the root of a vast tree of after enormities, but the mirthful mind rarely produces such an upas monstrosity.
We come now to the era of his history when our hero entered another scene of life, in that of a new school, which event was ushered in by an unlooked-for circumstance, that must be first narrated.
To our English readers it may be a piece of information if we make known that in some parts of Wales, “Courting in bed” is very common. It was so, at least when the first and second editions of this work were issued, but now is confined only to a few particular districts. Some of our readers may be shocked; but when they are assured that the custom embraces nothing which is not consistent with the strictest honour, they will perhaps accord our ancient custom a little more charity. This comfortable mode of forwarding a marriage connexion prevailed very generally at Tregaron, to the great scandal and virtuous indignation of the lady of Squire Graspacre. It was amazing to witness with what energy this good gentlewoman set about reforming the people, by the forcible abolishment of what she pleased to call, this odious, dangerous, blasphemous, and ungodly custom.
Her patronage was for ever lost to any man or woman, youth or maid, of the town or country, who was related to, or connected with any person who connived at bed courtship. There was not a cottager who called at the great house for a pitcher of whey, skim milk, or buttermilk, as a return for labour in harvest time, but was closely examined on this head; and woe to those who had the temerity to assert that there was no harm in the custom; or that the wooers merely laid down in their clothes, and thus conversed at their ease on their future plans or prospects; or who denied that such a situation was more calculated for amorous caresses and endearments than sitting by a scanty fire in a chimney corner.
Mrs. Graspacre was certainly a very virtuous—a very termagant of decorous propriety. If any person dared, in her presence, to advocate this proscribed and utterly condemned mode, disdaining to argue the point, she would settle the matter in a summary manner, peculiarly her own, by protesting she would have a woman burnt alive who would submit to be courted in bed.
In the course of two years there were no less than four young men, and twice as many damsels, turned away from her service for courting in the hay-loft; and on these occasions the poor girls never escaped personal violence from the indignant and persevering Mrs. Graspacre. She also assured them in language undistinguished for choiceness or delicacy, that “they were not to try and hoodwink her by telling her it meant nothing. She knew better, she had not lived all these years to be lied to and cheated by a common w—e.” In her flaming zeal for decorum, the tongs, the poker, the pitchfork, or the hay-rake, became an instrument of chastisement. A double advantage was discovered in the terror thus created, the dignity of her sex being in the first place asserted and supported: in the next, the offenders preferred running away without payment of their wages, to standing the chance of having their heads or arms broken with a poker, or their bodies pierced by the terrible prongs of a pitchfork.
All the lowly dependents of Mrs. Graspacre found it their interest to become her spies, who soon vied with each other in giving the earliest intimation of any amorous pair who committed this most diabolical offence; and those who were least forward in bringing intelligence on this score, immediately sunk in her esteem, and were mulct of their allowance of skim milk and blue whey.
But in time the old hen-wives of the neighbourhood discovered the virtue of sycophancy and the efficacy of a little seasonable cant! and when they were not warranted by real occurrences, they contrived to conciliate their patroness by drawing upon their fertile imagination and inventions; at other times, their knowledge of Mrs. Graspacre’s failing served their own revenge. Let anybody offend them, and they immediately went to the lady with a manufactured tale, doing more credit to the imagination than the heart. Their enemy had been found courting in bed with Miss So-and-so, which was the signal for immediate condemnation without trial.
Not satisfied with these auxiliaries in the cause of virtue, the zealous Mrs. Graspacre enlisted on her side a very powerful champion, in the person of the reverend Mr. Inco Evans, the curate of Tregaron. Great was her mortification to find her attempts on the rector fail of success, as he declared it dangerous and ungenerous to interfere with the peculiarities and long-established customs of the people; especially as he conceived it was rarely that any bad consequences ensued from the mode in question; but when the evil really occurred, if the faithless swain delayed making due reparation, a gaol, exile from his native place, or a compelled marriage, was the consequence, a penalty incurred. “Besides,” quoth the worthy rector, with a hearty laugh, “that was the very way in which I courted my own wife, and many persons who are no enemies of virtue, consider it the best mode in the world, and were I young again, ha, ha, ha! egad, I think I should pursue the same fashion.”