Twm’s eccentricities. His rural adventures with the two sheep, the white ox, and the grey horse. Teaches the farmer how to pound the squire’s trespassing pigeons.

When our hero arrived at Llandovery, his sorrows were augmented on learning that his faithful friend Rhys the curate was no longer to be his comforter, though much needed under his present mental depression; it was no small satisfaction to him, however, to be informed that he had been inducted into a good living in a distant part of the principality. The life he led at Llandovery, although lodging at an inn, was, for some days, that of a solitary; days! alas for the consistency of the lover,—days, we repeat, and not weeks or months, much less years, of seclusion from his kind. He soon illustrated the Shakspearian adage, “Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” But by him every thing was to done by strokes of boldness; to banish his cares, he plunged at once into intemperance; and from merely tolerating a little cheerful company, he entered the society of the greatest topers and madcaps to be found, till he emulated and outdid the highest, and became the very prince of wags and practical jokers. He was, of course, recognized as the capturer of the tremendous highwayman Dio the Devil, and the acknowledged preserver of the lady of Ystrad FÎn, which, with his relations of many freaks and vagaries in England, together with the assured fact that he had been once in London, and spent a year there, gained him no inconsiderable share of celebrity. One day, while the landlord of the Owen Glendower inn was trumpeting forth the humorous fame of his lodger, among a parlour full of country squires, who were dining together, after the business of Quarter Sessions was over; a merry magistrate named Prothero said, that he was certain he had a servant, a shrewd fellow, whose wits never slumbered, whom he would back in a bet against the vaunted cleverness of Twm ShÔn Catti, in any feat of dexterity that could be named. To come to the point, he said, he would lay a wager of five pounds that Twm could not steal a sheep from shrewd Roger, his ploughman, who the next morning should carry one to the village of Llangattock. Twm was sent for; and being invited to sit among these rural nobles, appeared as complete a high fellow as the best of them. Without the least hesitation, he accepted Mr. Prothero’s wager, and deposited five pounds with the landlord, as the merry magistrate had already done. Early the next morning shrewd Roger rose, and shouldered his sheep, vowing before his grinning fellow-servants, who grouped round to crack their jests on him, that the wild devil himself should not deprive him of his burthen. As he proceeded along a part of the high road, up a slight ascent, he discovered with surprise, a good leathern shoe lying in the mud. A shoe of leather, be it known, in a country where wooden clogs are generally worn, is no despicable prize. The shrewd servant looked at the object before him with a longing eye; but reflecting that one shoe, however good, was useless unmatched with a fellow, spared himself the trouble of stooping, for troublesome it would have been with such a weight on his shoulders, and passed on without lifting it. On walking a little further, and pursuing a bend in the road, great was his surprise on finding another shoe, a fellow to the former, lying in the sledge-mark, which, like the rut of a wheel, indented the mud with hollow stripes. In the height of his joy he laid down the sheep, with its legs tied, beside the shoe, and ran back for the other; when Twm ShÔn Catti, watching his opportunity, sprang over the hedge, and seized his prize, which he bore off securely, won his bet, and ate his mutton undisturbed.

Prothero, although the most good-humoured of country gentlemen, was rather angry with shrewd Roger, whose shrewdness became rather questionable. It was admitted, in excuse, that the most cunning, at times, may be accidentally overreached by his inferior in wit: on this plea the merry magistrate was conciliated, and induced to enter into another wager, precisely like the former, when a similar sum, against our hero, and in favor of his servant was laid and accepted. The man of shrewdness, as before, determined to use the utmost vigilance and caution to preserve his charge and redeem his reputation. He grasped his load, which was a fine fat ewe, most manfully, and swore violent oaths in answer to his master’s exhortation to chariness, that human ingenuity should never trick him again; but

“Great protestations do make that doubted,
Which we would else right willingly believe.”

In his way to Llangattock, he had to pass partly through a wood, which he scarce entered when the bleating of a sheep attracted his attention, and he came to a dead stand, as he intently listened to what he conceived a well-known voice. “Baa!—baa!” again saluted his ear: a sudden conviction rushed across his mind that this was the very sheep he had before lost, which he imagined might have been concealed by Twm in the rocky recesses of that woody dingle. What a glorious chance, thought he, of recovering his lost credit with his master, and depriving his antagonist at the same time, of his hidden prey, and the laurels achieved in the winning of it. He instantly deposited his burthen beneath a tree; and eagerly forcing his way through the copse and bushes, he followed the bleating a considerable way down the wood, when to his great dismay it ceased altogether. A thought now struck him, though rather too late, that the bleating proceeded from no sheep, but a most subtle ram, in the person of Twm ShÔn Catti: he hurried back in a grievous fright, and found his surmises but too true—the second sheep, and his high reputation for shrewdness, had both taken flight together.

On being confronted with shrewd Roger, in his master’s parlour, Twm recognized in him an old acquaintance, and no other than the clever youth with whom he had exchanged his feminine attire at Cardigan fair, and made off with his coat. On being reminded of that affair, and told by Twm that he was the fair ballad-singer with whom he was so deeply captivated, the poor fellow was absorbed in wonderment. He then related to his master the whole of that adventure, with the episode of the parson tossed in a blanket for a bum-bailiff, in such a manner as to excite the most immoderate laughter on the part of the jest-loving Prothero, who good-naturedly assured his man that he lost but little credit with the sheep, when it was considered that he stood opposed to an arch wag of so much celebrity.

Fortune was not so scurvy a stepmother to Twm as to confine him long to a diet of mere mutton, but took occasion to vary it very agreeably with a change of beef.

Determined to have more mirth with our hero, at the hazard of some loss, Prothero offered to oppose to his cunning, the collective vigilance of his husbandmen and maidens; laying a bet with him that he should not steal a white ox, which, with a black one, was to be yoked to the plough. The plough to be held by Roger and driven by another servant; while two girls, driving each a harrow, should also be on their guard to prevent his aim if possible.

Twm accepted the bet, and obligingly undertook to convey away the white ox, and eat the gentleman’s beef, provided it turned out sufficiently tender; protesting, with a half yawn and the perfect ease of a modern Corinthian, that he was absolutely tired of mutton, which he had too long persisted in eating, against the judgement and advice of his physician.

The day arrived, the great, the important day, big with the fate of the white ox. The plough was guided and the cattle driven, while the two bare-footed maidens giggled and laughed till the rocks echoed, as they whipped the horses and ran by their sides, till the harrows bounced against the stones, and sometimes turned over; their mirth was excited by the idea of Twm’s folly in accepting such a bet, and thinking to steal the white ox from under their noses, the impossibility of which was so evident. The two servants at the plough also cracked and enjoyed their joke at the thoughts of our hero’s temerity, at the same time keeping a wary eye in every direction, armed against surprisals, and exulting in the thought that for once, at least, the dexterous Twm would be baffled in his aim. Time passed on; the day waned away towards evening, and as their fatigue increased, their vigilance gradually lessened.

A Llandovery-man, known to them all, passing through the green lane by the field, now addressed these husbandmen, laughing at their caution, and assuring them that Twm had given up the idea of outwitting such a wary and clever party, and was at that moment drinking his wine with their master, whom he had allowed to win the wager. “Allowed, indeed!” quoth a sharp-tongued lass, as she stopped her harrow to listen, “pretty allowing, when he could not help himself.” “Aye,” cried the other girl, “so the fox allowed the goose to escape, when she took to flight and escaped his clutches.” Roger and the plough-boy exulted in their anticipated reward of a skin full of strong beer; thus the whole party was excited to a high pitch of triumphant mirth. The Llandovery-man was of course a decoy, and his report had really the effect of throwing them off their guard, which another circumstance contributed to aid. The rural party had rested, sitting on their ploughs and harrows, at one end of the field, while they listened to their informant; and now were about to resume their labours, when a hare started from an adjoining thicket, crossing the ground towards the opposite hedge. Suddenly the halloo arose, away ran the ploughmen and girls, and away ran the yapping sheep-dog, amid the clamour of shouting and barking; but still stood the wondering oxen, whose grave looks of astonishment gradually changed to a more animated expression of alarm on the arrival of Twm ShÔn Catti. Having loosed his captive hare to decoy the clowns, he availed himself of their absence to dress the black ox in a white morning gown,—that is to say, a sheet, which became him much, and contrasted with his complexion amazingly; and the white ox he attired in a suit of mourning, formed of the burial pall, which he had borrowed of the clerk of Llandingad church for that express purpose, and having loosened his fair friend from the yoke, they suddenly disappeared through a gap in the hedge. Although busily engaged in the gentlemanly pastime of the chase, the husbandry worthies now and then glanced towards the plough, but seeing, as they thought, the white ox safe, returned to it at a leisurely pace, till quickened as they neared it by the singular sight before them: and their petty vexation at losing the hare was now swallowed up by the terrible circumstance of the loss of their especial charge. A suitable lamentation followed of course, which was succeeded by fear and trembling, from a conviction that Twm ShÔn Catti dealt with the devil; and that the hare which they had chased was no other than the foe of man in disguise. This reasonable and self-evident assumption quite satisfied their merry master, who deemed himself well compensated for his loss by the hearty laugh he enjoyed.

Twm entered Llandovery, leading his white ox in triumph; having tied together several silk handkerchiefs of various colours and thrown them across its horns, while the head and neck were adorned with a gay garland, formed of a profusion of wild flowers. Loud were the huzzas and laughter with which he was received by the juvenile part of the population of Llandovery; not one of whom enjoyed the sight more than the good-humoured Prothero, who cheerfully paid the bet, and from a tavern window had a full view of the scene, which he declared excited his laughter till his heart and sides ached with the agreeable convulsion.

Our hero loved variety; without altogether alienating his affections from beef and mutton, he evinced a very ardent passion for horse-flesh; and pursued it with all the fiery zest of a first-love, when impeded by difficulties the most insurmountable. The lady of Ystrad FÎn still sitting on his heart like a night-mare, and pinching it with pain, rendered him, however amusing to others, miserable enough within himself. Lassitude, chagrin, and bitterness, often betrayed themselves in his countenance and manners, and were only transiently removed by the hilarity of the company with which he mixed, or the freaks which he played in his ill-combined humours of mirth and sorrow. Reckless of consequences, he now entered into follies less innocent than hitherto detailed, led to them more by a spirit of youthful wildness than any really criminal intention.

Being one day at Machynlleth, Montgomeryshire, he saw his old enemy, Evans of Tregaron, riding into the town on a fine grey horse; he determined in an instant that he would deprive him of a property which he deemed too good for such a churl; and as self-will was with him the sole ruling power that claimed either his attention or obedience, the affair was at once settled. Off rode the dauntless Twm, on the parson’s horse, to Welshpool fair, where he soon found a purchaser for it, and received the amount in hard cash. The new proprietor of the grey steed was well pleased with his bargain, and Twm took a generous pleasure in making him still happier, by descanting further on the noble creature’s merits, which, certainly, was very generous, as he was not interested in vaunting its qualities. “I protest to you, in honesty and truth,” said he with much earnestness, “you have a greater bargain than you imagine; as I was not at all anxious to sell him, I have omitted to inform you of half his good points: he is capable of performing such wonderful feats as you never saw or heard of.” “You don’t say so!” exclaimed the elated purchaser, staring alternately at his horse and in the face of our hero. “A fact I assure you,” cries Twm, with the most sober face imaginable; “and if you don’t believe me, I’ll convince you in a moment, if you will allow me to mount him.” “Oh certainly, with many thanks,” quoth the delighted Jemmy Green of past days. Twm very leisurely mounted, and after a variety of postures and curvetings, gradually got out of the fair into the high road; suddenly giving spur and rein to the “gallant steed,” he astonished his new friend by his disappearance. The “green one” had to confess with bitterness of heart that the jockey had certainly kept his word, as he shewed him such a trick as he never before saw or heard of.

Twm had scarcely been seated at the Owen Glendower, on his return to Llandovery, when a person called upon him, who described himself as a small farmer living in the neighbourhood, his name Morgan Thomas, and having heard so much of his cleverness, he came to consult him on an affair of great weight. He had been sadly annoyed, he said, by the continual trespassing of a certain squire’s pigeons on his ground, which made such a havoc amid his wheat, yearly, that the loss was grievous to him: he had computed his damages, and applied for the amount, for the four last years, reckoning that the forty pigeons would devour at least a bushel of wheat each, annually. The squire only laughed at his claims and complaints, telling him he might pound them, and be d—ned, if he liked, when he would pay the alledged damages, and not till then. “Now, to pound them I should like vastly,” quoth Morgan Thomas, “but without the squire’s polite invitation to be d—ned at the same time. But,” added the poor farmer, “pounding pigeons, I look upon as impossible; yet as you have the fame of performing feats no less wonderful, if you will pound those mischievous pigeons for me, I will engage to give you half the amount of my claims.” “Agreed!” cried Twm, and grasped his hand, in token that he undertook the task. He sent a quantity of rum to the farmer’s, next morning, and steeped in it a peck of wheat, which he afterwards scattered about the farm-yard. The pigeons came, as usual, and eagerly devouring the grain, each and all soon appeared as top-heavy as the veriest toss-pot in Carmarthenshire; and, like the said fraternity, incapable of returning home, they fell in a stupor on the ground. Our hero, assisted by the farmer, picked them up, tied their legs, and put the whole party in the pound. The squire, who was no other than Prothero the laughing magistrate, ever pleased with a jest, especially when cracked by our hero, immediately paid the farmer’s demand; and Twm generously refused the proffered remuneration for his very effective assistance.