"Have a care, Mr. Dulberry: don't talk too loud. There's some of our country friends outside, that, if they should overhear you, might take a fancy for trying the strength of your head with ice-clods--or put you under the pump."
"Or perhaps," said the manager, "give you a leek to eat; and not in so courtly a manner as I once saw Fluellen administer his leek to Pistol on the London boards; the part of Fluellen on that particular night by Garrick; to whom, by the way, in that part I was myself considered equal."
"All rank superstition, trash, and mummery from the days of darkness and barbarism," continued Dulberry. "And hence it comes that sound principles make so little progress in Wales. As if we hadn't red-letter days in the calendar more than enough already from national and general superstition, but these local superstitions must step in to add another. Gentlemen! it seems to me that Parliament should put a stop to all bell-ringing, wearing of leeks, flaunting about with ribbons, and flocking together in the street. Suppose, gentlemen, we should have an Address prepared against leeks."
"No addresses," Mr. Dulberry, said the landlord, "for this day at any rate! Sir Morgan Walladmor would send the beadle to you with a rod of nettles, if he was to hear of such a thing: for he doats upon the leek and St. David's day. This is one of his great jollification days: and he sends bread, meat, drink, coals, and money, to every poor cottage for a dozen miles round: nay, I may go farther and tell no lie: for though the baronet's an old man now, and has had some sorrow to bear of his own, by his good will there shouldn't be a sad heart in Machynleth on St. David's day; and that's five and twenty long miles from Castle Walladmor."
"Abominable despotism! and the poor oppressed creatures do actually swallow his drink?"
"Swallow it? Aye, Mr. Dulberry, it's no physic."
"And they dance too, I suppose?"
"Every mother's child of them, Mr. Dulberry: not a soul but'll dance to-day except babies and cripples. Lord! Mr. Dulberry, if you don't like to see poor labouring folks happy for one day in the year, I'll tell you this--you must keep out of Machynleth on St. David's day."
"Well! this tyranny goes beyond any thing I've seen: we all know that Lord Londonderry has compelled Manchester and all England to wear mourning: but this rustic tyrant is determined to make people merry when, as every body must know, they want to cry."
"Come, come, Sir, the Baronet's a good man and no tyrant; though he may have his fancies and his faults, like the rest of us: but we most of us like him pretty well, tenants and all: and, as to his niece--Miss Genevieve, I believe there's not many between this and the Castle but would go through fire and water for her."