NOTES ON A TOUR OF THE DISTURBED DISTRICTS IN WALES.
BY JOSEPH DOWNES.
Author of "The Mountain Decameron."
Llangaddock, Carmarthenshire, September 9.
"And this is the 'disturbed district!'—this is the seat of war!—the 'Agrarian civil war!'—the headquarters of the 'Rebecca rebels!" I soliloquized, about the hour of one A.M. on the night of September 9, 1843—a night of more than summer beauty, sultry and light as day—while thrusting my head from the window of "mine inn" the Castle, in this pretty picturesque little village-town, to coin a term. The shadows of the rustic houses, and interspersed corn-stacks, trees, and orchards, stretched across the irregular street, without a causeway, in unbroken quiet; not a sound was heard but the voice of an owl from a "fold" in the very heart of "the town," and the low murmur of the river chafing against the buttresses of an antique bridge at the end of the said "street;" while an humble bow window of a shop, where at nightfall I had observed some dozens of watches (silver, too!) displayed, without a token of "Rebecca" terrorism appearing, was seen jutting into the road, only hidden, not defended, by such a weak apology for a shutter, as would not have resisted a burglar of ten years' old.
It was now Sunday morning, and the clean-swept neatness of the sleeping village, whose inhabitants we had seen busily engaged in this pleasing preparation for the day of rest, as we strolled there at twilight, confirmed the assurance of profound and fearless peace; for only in that happy condition of society could the mind be supposed disengaged enough to regard those minute decencies of rural English life. With a smile of well-pleased wonder at the exaggerations of the press, which were persuading the Londoners that the "dogs of war" were really "let slip" among these our green mountains and pastoral valleys, after enjoying this prospect of a village by moonlight at the foot of the majestic Mynydd Du, (black mountain,) whose range is seen by day, towering at a few miles' distance, and hugging myself in the security of life and purse, which warriors (if they would cross-question their own great hearts) do really prize as much as I do, I returned to bed, (the heat of which had first driven me forth to this air-bath of half an hour.) "And this is the seat of insurrection!" I reiterated sarcastically against all English and all Welsh purveyors of "news" for terror-loving readers.
I have a huge deal of patriotism in my composition—also, a great love of rural quiet, joined to some trifling degree of cowardice, as my family pretend; but that I impute to my over-familiarity with them. "No man is great to his valet," has been remarked. The domestics of Alexander wondered what the world found to wonder at, in the little man their master. However this may be, I confess it was very pleasant to me to find peace unbroken in these my old haunts. Here I had many a summer night enacted, as recorded in my "Mountain Decameron," the amateur-gipsy, "a long while ago," bivouacking in their wildest solitudes, between some wood and water, on moonlight greensward, or reading at our tents' mouth by a lamp, while two boys, my sons, slept soundly within; and in the blindness of human nature, thus sneering against the "gentlemen of the press," sneered myself to sleep, "shut up in measureless content."
"Most lame and impotent conclusion!" The peace of nature in that sweet night was weak assurance of any kindred feeling in the bosom of man. It so happened (as I afterwards learned) that felony—bloody felony—was at that very time busy, at no great distance; that murder, that arson in its direst character, were stamping their first damnable characters on a province noted, through ages, for innocence and simple piety; that the first victim to rebellion was, at that moment, bleeding to death under the hands of those wearing the shapes of men; that victim innocent, helpless, and—a woman!!
But of this in the course of my narrative. Sunday, September 10.