THE WELL OF PEN-MORFA.

IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.

OF a hundred travellers who spend a night
at Trê-Madoc, in North Wales, there is not
one, perhaps, who goes to the neighbouring
village of Pen-Morfa. The new town, built
by Mr. Maddocks, Shelley's friend, has taken
away all the importance of the ancient
village—formerly, as its name imports, " the
head of the marsh;" that marsh which
Mr. Maddocks drained and dyked, and
reclaimed from the Traeth Mawr, till Pen-Morfa,
against the walls of whose cottages the
winter tides lashed in former days, has come
to stand high and dry, three miles from the
sea, on a disused road to Caernarvon. I do
not think there has been a new cottage built
in Pen-Morfa this hundred years; and many
an old one has dates in some obscure corner
which tell of the fifteenth century. The
joists of timber, where they meet overhead,
are blackened with the smoke of centuries.
There is one large room, round which the
beds are built like cupboards, with wooden
doors to open and shut; somewhat in the old
Scotch fashion, I imagine; and below the bed
(at least, in one instance I can testify that
this was the case, and I was told it was not
uncommon,) is a great wide wooden drawer,
which contained the oat-cake baked for some
months' consumption by the family. They
call the promontory of Llyn (the point at the
end of Caernarvonshire), Welsh Wales; I
think they might call Pen-Morfa a Welsh
Welsh village; it is so national in its ways,
and buildings, and inhabitants, and so
different from the towns and hamlets into which
the English throng in summer. How these
said inhabitants of Pen-Morfa ever are dis-
tinguished by their names, I, unitiated, can-
not tell. I only know for a fact, that in a
family there with which I am acquainted, the
eldest son's name is John Jones, because his
father's was John Thomas; that the second
son is called David Williams, because his
grandfather was William Wynn, and that the
girls are called indiscriminately by the names
of Thomas and Jones. I have heard some of
the Welsh chuckle over the way in which
they have baffled the barristers at Caernarvon
Assizes, denying the name under which they
had been subpoenaed to give evidence, if they
were unwilling witnesses. I could tell you of
a great deal which is peculiar and wild in
these true Welsh people, who are what I
suppose we English were a century ago; but
I must hasten on to my tale.

I have received great, true, beautiful kindness
from one of the members of the family of
whom I just now spoke as living at Pen-Morfa;
and when I found that they wished me to
drink tea with them, I gladly did so, though
my friend was the only one in the house, who
could speak English at all fluently. After
tea, I went with them to see some of their
friends; and it was then I saw the interiors
of the houses of which I have spoken. It
was an autumn evening; we left mellow
sunset-light in the open air when we entered
the houses, in which all seemed dark save in
the ruddy sphere of the firelight, for the
windows were very small, and deep set in the
thick walls. Here were an old couple, who
welcomed me in Welsh, and brought forth
milk and oat-cake with patriarchal hospitality.
Sons and daughters had married away from
them; they lived alone; he was blind, or
nearly so; and they sat one on each side of
the fire, so old and so still (till we went in
and broke the silence) that they seemed to
be listening for Death. At another house,
lived a woman stern and severe-looking. She
was busy hiving a swarm of bees, alone and
unassisted. I do not think my companion
would have chosen to speak to her, but seeing
her out in her hill-side garden, she made some
enquiry in Welsh, which was answered in the
most mournful tone I ever heard in my life;
a voice of which the freshness and " timbre"
had been choked up by tears long years ago.
I asked who she was. I dare say the story is
common enough, but the sight of the woman,
and her few words had impressed me. She
had been the beauty of Pen-Morfa; had been
in service; had been taken to London by the
family whom she served; had come down, in
a year or so, back to Pen-Morfa, her beauty
gone into that sad, wild, despairing look which
I saw; and she about to become a mother.
Her father had died during her absence, and
left her a very little money; and after her
child was born she took the little cottage
where I saw her, and made a scanty living by
the produce of her bees. She associated with
no one. One event had made her savage and
distrustful to her kind. She kept so much
aloof that it was some time before it became
known that her child was deformed, and had
lost the use of its lower limbs. Poor thing!
when I saw the mother, it had been for fifteen
years bedridden; but go past when you
would, in the night, you saw a light burning;
it was often that of the watching mother,
solitary and friendless, soothing the moaning
child; or you might hear her crooning some
old Welsh air, in hopes to still the pain with
the loud, monotonous music. Her sorrow
was so dignified, and her mute endurance and
her patient love won her such respect, that
the neighbours would fain have been friends;
but she kept alone and solitary. This is a
most true story. I hope that woman and her
child are dead now, and their souls above.

Another story which I heard of these old
primitive dwellings I mean to tell at somewhat
greater length:—

There are rocks high above Pen-Morfa;
they are the same that hang over Trê-Madoc,
but near Pen-Morfa they sweep away, and are
lost in the plain. Everywhere they are beautiful.
The great sharp ledges which would otherwise
look hard and cold, are adorned with the
brightest-coloured moss, and the golden lichen.