Twm composes and sends to his mistress his Cywydd y Govid. Visits her in disguise, and obtains the solemn promise of her hand. Description of the romantic hill of Dinas, and the excavation in it, since called Twm ShÔn Catti’s cave. Twm suspects himself jilted.

While our hero was thus pursuing his vagaries, the unhappy lady of Ystrad FÎn, who had not known a day’s peace since his absence, was daily wavering between a resolution to send for him back, to bestow on him her hand, and a deference for her father and proud relatives, who insisted that if ever she married again, it should only be to a title and fortune; by which they should themselves share in the honor. In the mean time information was brought to her, of his wild tricks and excesses, greatly exaggerated to his disadvantage, which gave that kind-hearted lady the greatest concern, as she conceived herself in part the authoress of his misfortunes. Twm, at the same time, felt that his tedious absence from the fair widow was no longer to be endured; and as he knew her conduct to be daily watched by her father’s spies, he determined on paying her a visit in disguise. Previous to putting his design into execution, he composed and sent her the following poem, in which he dwells on, and over-rates his own misfortunes, in a strain calculated to move her tenderness in his favor.

CYWYDD Y GOVID. [208]

The outcast’s forced ally is mine,
Affliction is his name;
It is a ruthless savage mate,
And like a foe that’s pale with hate,
To crush me is his aim:
His cruel shafts are fiercely hurl’d,
He forced me friendless on the world.

If forward, seeking good, I wend,
My eager steps out-strips the fiend;
If backward, I retreat from ill,
My cruel foe arrests me still;
I seek the flood, to end despair.
Relentless Govid meets me there,
And tells of endless pangs for pride,
The wages of the suicide.

Fell Govid’s mighty in the land,
His children are a horrid band,
Who joy in hapless man’s distress,
Lo, one is Debt—one Nakedness;—
And Need against me doth combine,
(Fierce Govid’s loveless concubine);
And Care, that knows not how to yearn,
Is Govid’s consort, keen and stern:
And thus this family of ill,
E’er bruise my heart and bruise my will.

Though lost to me the tranquil day,
My vanquisher I hope to slay,
The fierce enormous giant fiend
No more the heart of Twm shall rend,
If thou, my lady-love! but smile,
Thou gentle fair, devoid of guile—
Thou darling object of my choice,
Oh bless me with assentive voice,
And soon shall Govid lay his length,
A corse! struck down by Rapture’s strength.

Lady Devereux had read this little poem over the third time, and repeatedly wiped the tears from her beautiful blue eyes, when the maid entered her chamber, and in a tone of complaint informed her mistress that there was a very importunate and troublesome gypsy in the kitchen, who, after having told the fortunes of all the servants in the house, and partook of the usual hospitalities, insisted on seeing her, to tell also, she said, the fortune of the lady of the house. “I am not in a mood to relish such foolery now, so send her about her business,” answered the lady, in a tone more sorrowful than angry. “It is quite useless,” replied the girl, “to attempt to send her away; big Evan the gardener tried to take her by the shoulders, and turn her out by force, but she whirled round, grasped him by the arms, tripped up his heels, and laid him in a moment on the floor. There she sits in the kitchen, and vows she will not budge from thence for either man or woman, till she sees the lady of Ystrad FÎn, whom she loves, she says, dearer than her life, and would not for millions harm a hair of her head.” Although too deeply absorbed in sorrow to have her curiosity much excited, she went down stairs, and approaching the sibyl, who had now taken her station in the hall, asked, “What do you want, my good woman?”—“To tell you,” answered she, “not your fortune, but what may be your fortune if you choose.” “Let me hear then,” said the lady of Ystrad FÎn, with a faint incredulous smile, walking before her, at the same time, into a little back parlour. Before she could seat herself, the apparent gypsy caught her right hand wrist, and looking round, whispered in her ear,

“To heal your torn bosom, and ease every smart,
Oh take—he’s before you—the youth of your heart.”

The colour fled the fair widow’s cheeks, and in a moment she sank in a swoon in her lover’s arms. Soon recovering, she desired her maid to deny her to every body that called, “as,” added she with a smile, “I have particular business with the gypsy.” A scene of tears and tenderness ensued; when Twm, with the utmost fervour, urged his suit with the young widow. She replied that her father had insisted on, and received her promise, that she would wed no being but who either bore a title, or stood within a relative to one. “You did well,” replied our hero, with the most impudent and easy confidence, “and your promise, so far from militating against me, is really in my favor; for am not I the son of a baronet? his natural child, ’tis true, but still his son; and you would break no promise to your father in marrying me; but if you did, so much the better, for a bad promise is better broke than kept. I have friends at this moment, who are doing their utmost to move my father, Sir John Wynne of Gwydir, to own me publicly for his right worthy son; and if he does not, the loss is his, for I shall certainly disown him else for a father, and claim the parentage of some greater man.”

Twm’s rattling assertions in this respect were more true than he was himself aware; for his friend Prothero, the merry magistrate, learning accidentally, by a chance rencontre with Squire Graspacre, many particulars of his birth, and the hardships of his neglected childhood, determined, if possible, to get him righted at last.

Twm, as he had predetermined, used the present tete-a-tete to some purpose, and soon succeeded in obtaining from the fair object of his hopes a decisive promise that she would be his forever. The joy of our hero knew no bounds, nor did the lady very strenuously resist his rapturous embraces; but seemed to find her heart relieved by the resolution she had come to, that now, forever, put an end to the conflicting doubts as to her future course, which had so long torn her heart, and banished her peace.

Noon was now verging into evening, and at the earnest request of his mistress, Twm consented, to save appearances, immediately to quit her roof. She directed him to wait for her, and her confidential friend Miss Meredith, at the entrance to the ancient cave on the top of Dinas, which was the name of the conical hill exactly fronting the mansion of Ystrad FÎn. He accordingly took his departure; and winding round the base of Dinas, he crossed the river Towey, which, being then in summer, was there little more than a brook. After walking over a couple of fields, and a piece of rough common, he had to cross the Towey once more, when he commenced his ascent at the only part of this very steep hill where it was possible to climb. During his former stay at Ystrad FÎn, this wildly romantic height had been his favorite haunt, as the cave in its side was the greatest object of his wonder. It was, in fact, a mighty mound, that bore all the appearance of having been, at the period of its formation, convulsed by an earthquake, and in the height of nature’s tremendous heavings, suddenly arrested and becalmed, even while the huge crags were in the act of tumbling down its steep sides. A narrow valley circled its base, and the mountains around of equal height with itself, separated only by this deep and scanty dell, seemed as if rent from it, during the supposed convulsion of the earth, and Dinas left alone, an interesting monument of the memorable event. The surface of the acclivous ground was so speckled with huge loose stones, that it was dangerous to hold by them in ascending, as the slightest impetus would roll them downward.

Twm, at one time, when assisting his mistress to climb the steep sides of Dinas, in his wild way said, that he had no doubt but an earthquake had turned the bosom of the hill inside out, so that no secret could be therein concealed; archly insinuating that he trusted the time would soon come when without so violent a process, her own fair bosom would be equally open to him, while it rejected the stony barriers that then stood between him and her heart.

The entrance into this excavated work was no less singular that the petite cave itself. It was through a narrow aperture, formed of two immense slate rocks that faced each other, and the space between them narrower at the bottom than the top, so that the passage could be entered only sideways, with the figure inclined forward, according to the slant of the rocks: a thin person being barely able to make his way in, while a man of some rotundity might also succeed, by rising on his toes, and forcing himself upwards. Between these rocks of entrance, a massive stone block was wedged at the top, so that it formed a rude and faint resemblance of an arch. After sidling so far through a comparatively long passage, it was no small surprise to find that it led to so small a cave; scarcely large enough to shelter three persons huddled close together, from a shower of rain. What it wanted in breadth, in possessed however in height, as it ran up like a chimney, to the altitude of forty five feet, and was open at the top to the very summit of the mount, forming a skylight to the room below. Although the little cave was deficient of a solid roof, a very rural one was formed by the large tufts of heather, and fern, which sprung through the crevices of the rocks; the whole being surmounted by the pendant branch of a dwarf oak, that with many other trees stood like a crown on the elevated head of Dinas. However singular the interior of this cave might appear to our hero, he found a superior pleasure in examining the grand combinations that graced its exterior. There he saw, with never satiated delight and wonder, objects of the most romantic character, curiously united here near the junction of three counties. The rocky Dinas, with its many inaccessible sides, besides the loose crags before mentioned, was partially covered with aged dwarfish trees, all bending in the same direction; many with their heads broken by tempests, but still throwing out fantastic-looking branches, while others, stark, sere, and shrouded in grey moss, were things that seasons knew not.

The opposite mountain, called Maesmaddegan, facing the entrance of the cave, was more gaily bedecked with underwood, birch, oak, and the mountain ash; while the junction of the rivers Towey and Dorthea, [214] enlivened the gloom caused by the deep gulfs which separated Dinas from the parent mountain.

However interesting these objects might formerly have been to Twm, he looked now only in one direction,—towards the spot where he might catch the earliest glimpse of his approaching mistress. Out of all patience at her long delay, he now began to wonder at the cause of it, when at length, to his great dismay, he saw one female hurrying on, and her not the right one, although the faithful Miss Meredith. Having reached the side of the river, which separated her from the base of Dinas, and finding that he was watching her, she placed a paper on the rock and a stone upon it, then kissing her hand to him, sportively, she turned about, and hastened homeward with the utmost precipitation. In his eagerness to overtake her, Twm attempted to run down the declivity, but soon lost his footing, sliding and rolling down several yards, by which he was for a few moments rather stunned. Losing all hope of catching his mistress’s confidante, to learn the cause of her non-appearance, according to promise, he applied to the paper on the rock, which he found to be a note hastily scrawled with a pencil, containing merely these words—“My father has unexpectedly arrived, with several of his friends—can’t see you till at Llandovery on fair day. Yours ever.”—“By the Lord!” muttered Twm to himself, “if this is a coquette’s trick which she puts on me, it will avail her nothing in the end;—mine she is, by promise, and mine she shall be, in spite of the devil, and all her Brecknockshire friends to boot.” Determined to bring his affairs with the widow to a speedy crisis, he changed his clothes, and soon made his way to Llandovery.