Another lecture in Welsh. “Courting in bed.” Our hero’s education progresses. The Curate’s school.

Whilst our lovers were regaling themselves upon milk and flummery, Twm Shon Catty was concocting and putting into execution his first practical joke, for while they sat side by side at the goodly oak table, he fastened them together by the coat and gown with a peeled thorn spike, which before the introduction of pins, was used by the fair sex to unite about them their various articles of attire.

This freak being performed, Twm stole off unperceived, and getting on the outside of the door, he was joined by Watt the mole catcher, and a party of children instructed for the purpose, in a loud and astounding cry of mad bull! a mad bull! at the same time forcing before them into the house a little trotting calf, whose buttocks were tortured by Twm’s ox-goad till he reared and capered up to the very table where the lover’s sat. Catty screamed, and both jumped up mutually terrified, as sudden fear had magnified the little animal to the proportions of an enormous brute of an enraged bull, whose uninvited visit and uncalled for appearance at their dinner table, portending nothing less than death. When Twm and Watt’s laughter at length undeceived them, the spoon merchant, who had been so liberally assisted with spoon and meat, found to his dismay, that with his heart Catty had carried away the skirt of his coat, by the sudden jerk of rising from their seats; and had the gods made Jack poetical, he might have exclaimed with the renowned Mr. Tag,—[31]

The lovely maid on whom I dote
Hath made a spencer of my coat.

The wicked urchin who caused this unsanctioned union continued with his mischievous party, their laughter long and loud, and Catty’s grumpy sister Juggy, for the first time in her life, astonished them with a grin on the occasion. Twm received a severe rebuke from his parent, and poor hapless Jack, with the view of propitiating an evil spirit that might prove troublesome to him hereafter, made him a present of a new spoon, which, because it was merely a common one he ungratefully threw into the blazing turf fire, that on this festal occasion glowed on the hearth in a higher pile and wider dimensions than usual, and demanded one of his best box-wood ware.

Jack would have given it to him immediately but for the intervention of his mother, who forbade the indulgence. No sooner, however, was he gone than Twm watched his opportunity and purloined as many of the better sort as he could conveniently take away unperceived, and sold them at the cheap rate of stolen goods, to an old woman named, or rather nick-named, Rachel Ketch, from some supposed resemblance in her character to that finisher of the law, although some persons roundly asserted that she was in fact a relict of one John Ketch, Esquire, of Stretch-neck-Place, Session Court, Carmarthen.

As no further consequence followed this act of unprovoked delinquency, it was scarcely worth mentioning, except that it stands as the first of the kind on record; and when discovered, Twm’s over affectionate parent did not punish him for it,—an omission that might have watered the root of a vast tree of after enormities, but the mirthful mind rarely produces such an upas monstrosity.

We come now to the era of his history when our hero entered another scene of life, in that of a new school, which event was ushered in by an unlooked-for circumstance, that must be first narrated.

To our English readers it may be a piece of information if we make known that in some parts of Wales, “Courting in bed” is very common. It was so, at least when the first and second editions of this work were issued, but now is confined only to a few particular districts. Some of our readers may be shocked; but when they are assured that the custom embraces nothing which is not consistent with the strictest honour, they will perhaps accord our ancient custom a little more charity. This comfortable mode of forwarding a marriage connexion prevailed very generally at Tregaron, to the great scandal and virtuous indignation of the lady of Squire Graspacre. It was amazing to witness with what energy this good gentlewoman set about reforming the people, by the forcible abolishment of what she pleased to call, this odious, dangerous, blasphemous, and ungodly custom.

Her patronage was for ever lost to any man or woman, youth or maid, of the town or country, who was related to, or connected with any person who connived at bed courtship. There was not a cottager who called at the great house for a pitcher of whey, skim milk, or buttermilk, as a return for labour in harvest time, but was closely examined on this head; and woe to those who had the temerity to assert that there was no harm in the custom; or that the wooers merely laid down in their clothes, and thus conversed at their ease on their future plans or prospects; or who denied that such a situation was more calculated for amorous caresses and endearments than sitting by a scanty fire in a chimney corner.

Mrs. Graspacre was certainly a very virtuous—a very termagant of decorous propriety. If any person dared, in her presence, to advocate this proscribed and utterly condemned mode, disdaining to argue the point, she would settle the matter in a summary manner, peculiarly her own, by protesting she would have a woman burnt alive who would submit to be courted in bed.

In the course of two years there were no less than four young men, and twice as many damsels, turned away from her service for courting in the hay-loft; and on these occasions the poor girls never escaped personal violence from the indignant and persevering Mrs. Graspacre. She also assured them in language undistinguished for choiceness or delicacy, that “they were not to try and hoodwink her by telling her it meant nothing. She knew better, she had not lived all these years to be lied to and cheated by a common w—e.” In her flaming zeal for decorum, the tongs, the poker, the pitchfork, or the hay-rake, became an instrument of chastisement. A double advantage was discovered in the terror thus created, the dignity of her sex being in the first place asserted and supported: in the next, the offenders preferred running away without payment of their wages, to standing the chance of having their heads or arms broken with a poker, or their bodies pierced by the terrible prongs of a pitchfork.

All the lowly dependents of Mrs. Graspacre found it their interest to become her spies, who soon vied with each other in giving the earliest intimation of any amorous pair who committed this most diabolical offence; and those who were least forward in bringing intelligence on this score, immediately sunk in her esteem, and were mulct of their allowance of skim milk and blue whey.But in time the old hen-wives of the neighbourhood discovered the virtue of sycophancy and the efficacy of a little seasonable cant! and when they were not warranted by real occurrences, they contrived to conciliate their patroness by drawing upon their fertile imagination and inventions; at other times, their knowledge of Mrs. Graspacre’s failing served their own revenge. Let anybody offend them, and they immediately went to the lady with a manufactured tale, doing more credit to the imagination than the heart. Their enemy had been found courting in bed with Miss So-and-so, which was the signal for immediate condemnation without trial.

Not satisfied with these auxiliaries in the cause of virtue, the zealous Mrs. Graspacre enlisted on her side a very powerful champion, in the person of the reverend Mr. Inco Evans, the curate of Tregaron. Great was her mortification to find her attempts on the rector fail of success, as he declared it dangerous and ungenerous to interfere with the peculiarities and long-established customs of the people; especially as he conceived it was rarely that any bad consequences ensued from the mode in question; but when the evil really occurred, if the faithless swain delayed making due reparation, a gaol, exile from his native place, or a compelled marriage, was the consequence, a penalty incurred. “Besides,” quoth the worthy rector, with a hearty laugh, “that was the very way in which I courted my own wife, and many persons who are no enemies of virtue, consider it the best mode in the world, and were I young again, ha, ha, ha! egad, I think I should pursue the same fashion.”

“And I too!” cries Mr. Graspacre, “as I have no objection in the world to the custom.” The reader’s experience of the squire will certainly give him credit for speaking truth in this instance. The notions of morality would be highly forwarded by courting in bed. But as for Mrs. Graspacre, had the faces of all the foul-fiends been united in one for the purpose of producing a ne plus ultra of concentrated devilry, it would not have surpassed the amiable expression upon her face. “You, Mr. Graspacre! you! I’m astonished; but”—(with a severe glance at the rector) “when the shepherd goes astray, no wonder the silly sheep follow his example!” With that, she bounced out of the room, and slammed the door in a high fit of indignation, aggravated by the calm looks of the rector, and the provoking tittering of her liege lord.

The rector’s honest dissent from her scheme of reformation, Mrs. Graspacre considered a direct declaration of hostilities, and therefore, by her peculiar creed of morality, she felt herself bound to vilify his name, and most piously longed for his death, that the cause of virtue might be supported by the talents of her favourite curate, who was now, she said, on a poor stipend which he increased by keeping a school in the church.

The reverend Inco Evans, the curate, played his cards well; he was a hard-featured man, with lowering brows and a complete ploughman’s gate; insolent to his poor parishioners, and a very awkward cringer to the great. But flattery, direct or covert, does much, and in time completely won him the favour of the great lady. She encouraged his patience by assuring him that the vicar, in his declined state of health, could not possibly live long; and his death, happen when it might, must appear, to all unprejudiced christians, as a judgment, for advocating, or not prosecuting, that execrable custom courting in bed.

As the living had long been promised to him, the hopes and expectations of Mr. Inco Evans were very sanguine. Waiting for dead men’s shoes is rather a wearisome thing, especially if the object of your affectionate solicitude be apparently in the best of health; but the curate was hopeful, and patient; and as he was no less ambitious than sycophantic and impervious, he looked forward with confidence to the period when he should strut forth in a fire-shovel hat, as vicar of the parish, and a magistrate in the county.

Notwithstanding that the living was promised him by the lady, he was aware that she was not always paramount, and therefore lost no opportunity of insinuating himself in the squire’s favour. He would laugh loudly to the injury of his lungs, at the squire’s most vapid jokes; praise the beauty of his snub-nosed children, and call curs, pointers; tell him where the prettiest lasses in the parish were to be found; with many such honourable civilities, that Squire Graspacre at length discovered him to be a very useful sort of person.

When Sir John Wynn of Gwydir paid his before mentioned visit, his sister introduced and recommended our curate, as a right worthy divine who deserved preferment; and the baronet promised to remember her recommendation, if anything turned out, within his power, to benefit him. Much time had elapsed, and nothing followed this agreeable promise; but Inco Evans persevered in his sycophancy, and if the labour and dirty work be properly estimated, he certainly justified his claims to a good living—in his majesty’s plantations, beyond the seas; to which he ought to have been inducted at the expense of government, and, as the artful Dodger says, he should have

“Gone abroad for the good of his health,
But not at his own expense!”

He soon saw the weak side of his lady patroness: and anxious to strengthen his influence by promoting her views, he gave great encouragement to those boys in his school who brought him the piquant tales of their grown up brothers and sisters. Much scandal was afloat at this time respecting the loves of Carmarthen Jack and Catty of Llidiard-y-Fynnon; he would almost have given his right hand to know how it was carried on. But Jack was wily; and though Catty possessed little book-learning, she had enough knowledge to outwit the curate. These lovers only went out at night, and took care to choose a solitary place for their meetings, so that getting information was, in their case, difficult of attainment. At length the cunning man thought he had hit upon a plan.

Little Twm Shon Catty, being the natural child of Sir John Wynn, was of course the illegitimate nephew of the great lady; a relationship which she, however, disdained to acknowledge; but the cunning curate took the liberty of observing one day, it was a great pity that the slightest drop of the noble blood of the Wynns, however perverted and polluted, should be run to waste and be neglected. Proceeding in this drift, he insinuated that if the boy Twm Shon Catty were removed to his school, he should not only be instructed and improved, but that he, the curate, might thereby learn from the youngster something of his mother’s proceedings; and especially, whether she entertained her lover in the legal or the proscribed manner. This was striking on the very string that made music to her busy, meddling, troublesome soul;—she of course warmly approved of his idea, and put it into immediate execution. Thus, the very next day, in her own and in her brother’s name, little Twm Shon Catty was ordered for the future to be sent to the curate’s school, which of course was complied with accordingly.