"Never mind. What about David?"
"Oh, ho! You know his name, then? Well, and that's all I do—pretty nigh. He lives with a woman who fostered him after his own mother died in travail with him, they do say, who has a little house, beyond that lump of a mountain, above all the others, we see by daylight; he has been in England, and is a strange one for music. He owes (owns, possesses,) a beautiful harp—beautiful! The Lord knows, some do say, that's all he owes in the world, so (except) his coracle and the salmon he takes, and what young people do give him at weddings and biddings, where he goes to play: and what's that to keep a wife? Poor Davy Telynwr! Yet, by my soul, we all say we'd rather see her his than this foreigner gentleman's, who has almost broke her heart, they say, by coming between her and her own dear one."
"He's not come yet," muttered the other, sullenly; adding, sharply and bitterly, "Mighty good friends you all are, to wish her married to a beggar, a vagabond harper, rather than to a gentleman."
"Why—to be sure, sir—but vows be vows—love's love—and to tell truth, sir," (the Welsh blood of the Cardy peasant was now up,) "if any foreign, half Welsh, half wild Indian, sort of gentleman had sent his fine letters, asking my sweetheart's friends to turn me off, in my courting days, and prepare my wench to be his lady, instead of my wife—I'd have—I'd have"—
"What would you have done?" asked the other, laughing heartily.
"Cursed him to St Elian!" roared the other; then, dropping his voice into a solemn tone, "put him into his well.[21] I'd have plagued him, I warrant. But for my part," added the man archly, "I don't believe there's any squire lover in the case—nor that your honour ever said there is." The agent here vanished, as if in haste, abruptly, down the steep path.
During this conversation, Winifred had reached the river. While she stands expectant, not in happiness, but in tears, it is time to say a few words of the lover so expected.
David, who was lately become known "on t'other side Tivy," by the name of Nosdethiol Telynwr, that is, "night-walking harper," was an idle romantic young man, almost grown out of youth, who had long lived away from Wales, where he had neither relative nor friend but one aged woman who had been his first nurse, he having been early left an orphan. Without settled occupation or habits, he was understood almost to depend for bread on the salmon he caught, and trifling presents received. A small portable harp, of elegant workmanship, (adorned with "real silver," so ran the tale,) was the companion of his moonlight wanderings. He had a whim of serenading those who had never heard of a "serenade," but were not the less sensible of a placid pleasure at being awakened by soft music in some summer sight. The simple mountain cottagers, whose slumbers he thus broke or soothed, often attributed the sweet sounds to the kindness of some wandering member of the "Fair Family," or Tylwyth Têg, the fairies. Nor did his figure, if discovered vanishing between the trees, if some one ventured to peep out, in a light night, dispel the illusion; for it appears, that the fairy of old Welsh superstition was not of diminutive stature."[22] That he was "very learned," had somewhere acquired much knowledge of books, however little of men, was reported on both sides of the river; and these few particulars were almost all that was known even to Winifred, who had so rashly given all her thoughts, all her hopes, all her heart almost, (reserving only one sacred corner for her beloved parents,) to this dangerous stranger—for stranger he was still to her in almost all outer circumstances of life. This was partly owing to the interposition of that narrow river, however trivial a line of demarcation that must appear to English people, accustomed to cross even great rivers of commerce, like the Thames, as they would step over a brook or ditch, by the frequent aid of bridges and boats. In Wales, bridges are too costly to be common. When reared, some unlucky high flood often sweeps them away. Intercourse by ferryboats and fords is liable to long interruptions. The dwellers of opposite sides frequent different markets, and belong frequently to different counties. The nature of the soil also often differs wholly. Hence it happens, that sometimes a farmer, whose eye rests continually on the little farm and fields of another, on the opposite "bank," rising from the river running at the base of his own confronting hill-side, lives on, ignorant almost of the name, quite of the character, of their tenant, to whom he could almost make himself heard by a shout—if it happens that neither ford, ferry, nor bridge, is within short distance.
"The people of t'other side," is an expression implying nearly as much strangeness, and contented ignorance of these neighbours, and no neighbours, as the same spoken by the people of Dover or Calais, of those t'other side the Channel. It was not, therefore, surprising that poor Winifred (albeit not imprudent, save in this new-sprung passion,) might have said with the poet, too truly,
"I know not, I ask not, what guilt's in that heart; I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art."