The Comical Adventures of Twm Shon Catty (Thomas Jones, Esq.), / Commonly known as the Welsh Robin Hood

by T. J. Llewelyn Prichard

While in this position, he would toss his head as loftily as an envious beauty that heard her rival praised; and then, as if to evince his unrivalled versatility, he aimed to reverse his position, and stand on his head.

Thus did he enliven the farm-yard, and cut sundry unusual capers, not at all in keeping with the hitherto grave tenor of all his modest life; at which Morris was scandalized, the women astonished, and the two mischievous imps that caused this torture, amused as if a party of mountebanks had exhibited before them. “Such things have been in the days of old,” cried Morris, with a pious whine, “the pig is possessed of a devil.”

“Of a legion of devils!” screamed Sheeny and Shaan, in the utmost alarm; “the pig is mad!” cried Moses; “the dog was mad that bit the pig!” cried Twm. This remark, which assigned a natural cause for the frisky gambols of the tortured grunter, had the effect of sobering every one from their wild supernatural speculations, to the no less alarming fact that poor porker was the victim of hydrophobia. Morris all at once turned pious, and remarked that “this might be one of the signs which were to precede the end of the world.”

“Ah!” whispered Twm to Moses, “it is a sign which certainly precedes the end of the pig.”

Convinced by the reiteration of Twm and Moses, that the pig was really stark staring maliciously and mischievously mad, Morris seemed more grieved at his prospect of worldly loss in so much hog’s flesh, than as if his first suggestion had been verified about the dissolution of the world. He pathetically lamented the loss it would be, to kill him before he was duly fattened. “He must be killed and eaten fresh,” whined Morris, “as he is too lean to be salted and baconed.”

“He shall be killed and buried like a dog!” cried Sheeny, “or we shall all be maddened and biting one another, if we swallow a bit of him, fat or lean—Oh! the pity to lose this precious griskin!” “I won’t eat mad pork!” cried Shaan; “nor I,”—“nor I!” cried the younger lasses, deeply horrified at the idea of being smothered between two feather-beds, which Twm assured them, with a very grave and serious face, was an easy and comfortable death, and such as was always allotted by law to those who got mad by the bite of a mad dog, or by eating what was venomed by his bite. “I will never touch a bit of him,” cried all the girls at once; “but I will!” muttered both Twm and Moses, to themselves, glowing with the thought of future feasting.

Morris in the deepest tribulation pondered on the perversity of his household, and at last decided on waiting till next morning before he would give his ultimatum as to how the pig was to be disposed of, in the meantime locking him up in a stable. It was a night of trial for Morris. To lose an entire porker at one fell swoop, and the household to be so very unaccommodating as not to eat him, was a really serious thing. He mentally prayed for the renewed health on the part of the pig, or else that some kind pig-drover would fall from the clouds and be the saving angel of him. The said Morris Greeg’s conscience did not see further than his own acts. If the imaginary drover bought the pig, and others were made mad, why it was none of Morris’s concern. So much for his refined morality. Thus he comforted himself by reflecting, that whoever got mad with eating him, that was their concern, not his; as it would be unbecoming in him to dictate to others what they were to buy or to eat. And as to mentioning his faults, as some unreasonable readers require, he defied any one to prove that to be a fault, which was evidently his misfortune.

Boundless was the mirth of Twm and Moses, as in their season of rest they agitated the question as to what report they were to make in the morning. “Suppose,” said the waggish Jew-boy “that we let the pig out, and say that he escaped into the yard, and bit a goose, (which we can kill and eat;) that the goose got mad and bit the wheel-barrow; that the wheel-barrow dashed itself frantically against the dung-cart; and that both together they rolled and rattled all night about the yard, like the capering of ten thousand devils.” Twm over-ruled this wild suggestion, and gave a report more consonant with probabilities that the animal was more mad than ever, and that he feared his malady would infect the stable, so as to make it unsafe to put the horses there again till the walls were white-washed and every part of it purified.

This was a grave and plausible position in which to place the affair, and quite fell in with Morris’s own way of thinking; and at last he determined on having the maddened monster, as he called him, killed and buried. This was at last carried into effect by our young worthies, with the assistance of Mike the mat-man, who inhabited a wretched hovel in the neighbourhood, and maintained himself, a wife, and one child, by making rush mats, and coarse willow baskets, which he hawked over the country. Mike, of course, was let into the secret, and in the night the worthy trio commenced their avocations of body-snatchers. The much injured porker was disinterred, and more honours were paid him after death, than had ever been conferred upon him in life. But this is the way with human beings, sometimes, as well as with the denizens of the sty; and if we choose to moralize, we have an excellent opportunity given us—but we forbear.

Many and merry were the evenings spent over the remains of the pork, by Twm and Moses, under the humble roof of Mike the mat-man and his wife, who were equal partakers of the feast. These promising youths, on pretending to retire to their nightly rest, made a point of hastening to the place of goodly food and pleasant smells, where they spent the greater part of the night, and thus acquired their earliest taste for dissipation.