THE
ADVENTURES AND VAGARIES
OF
TWM SHÔN CATTI,

DESCRIPTIVE OF

LIFE IN WALES:

Interspersed with Poems.

BY T. J. LLEWELYN PRICHARD.

Mae llevain mawr a gwaeddi
Yn Ystrad Fîn eleni
A cherrig nadd yn toddi ’n blwm
Rhag ovn Twm Shôn Catti.

In Ystrad Fîn this year, appalling
The tumult loud, the weeping, wailing,
   That thrills with fear and pity;
The lightning scathes the mountain’s head,
The massy stones dissolve like lead,
All nature shudders at the tread
   And shout of Twm Shôn Catti.

ABERYSTWYTH:
PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR, BY JOHN COX.

1828

CHAP. I.

The popularity of Twm Shôn Catti’s name in Wales.  The resemblance of his character to that of Robin Hood and others.  An exposition of the spurious account of our hero in the “Innkeeper’s Album,” and in the drama founded thereon.  The honor of his birth claimed by different towns.  A true account of his birth and parentage.

The preface to the once popular farce of “Killing no Murder” informs us, that many a fry of infant Methodists are terrified and frightened to bed by the cry of “the Bishop is coming!”—That the right reverend prelates of the realm should become bugbears and buggaboos to frighten the children of Dissenters, is curious enough, and evinces a considerable degree of ingenious malignity in bringing Episcopacy into contempt, if true.  Be that as it may in England, in Wales it is not so; for the demon of terror and monster of the nursery there, to check the shrill cry of infancy, and enforce silent obedience to the nurse or mother, is Twm Shôn Catti.  But “babes and sucklings” are not the only ones on whom that name has continued to act as a spell; nor are fear and wonder its only attributes, for the knavish exploits and comic feats of the celebrated freebooter Twm Shôn Catti, are, like those of Robin Hood in England, the themes of many a rural rhyme, and the subject of many a village tale; where, seated round the ample hearth of the farm house, or the more limited one of the lowly cottage, an attentive audience is ever found, where his mirth-exciting tricks are told and listened to with vast satisfaction, unsated by the frequency of repetition: for the “lowly train” are generally strangers to that fastidiousness which turns, disgusted, from the twice-told tale.

Although neither the legends, poetry, nor history of the principality, seems to interest, or accord with the queasy taste of our English brethren, the name of Twm Shôn Catti, curiously enough, not only made its way among them, but had the unexpected honor of being woven into a tale, and exhibited on the stage as a Welsh national dramatic spectacle, under the title, and the imposing second title, of Twm John Catti, or the Welsh Rob Roy.  The nationality of the Welsh residents in London, who always bear their country along with them wherever they go or stay, was immediately roused, notwithstanding the great offence of substituting “John” for “Shôn,” which called at once on their curiosity and love of country to peruse the “Innkeeper’s Album,” in which this tale first appeared, and to visit the Cobourg Theatre, where overflowing houses nightly attended the representation of the “Welsh Rob Roy.”  Now this second title, which confounded the poor Cambrians, was a grand expedient of the author’s, to excite the attention of the Londoners, who naturally associated it with the hero of the celebrated Scotch novel; the bait was immediately swallowed, and that tale, an awkward and most weak attempt to imitate the “Great Unknown,” and by far the worst article in the book, actually sold a volume, in other respects well deserving the attention of the public.  “It is good to have a friend at court,” is an adage no less familiar than true; and Mr. Deacon’s success in this instance clearly illustrates this new maxim—“it is good to have a friend among the critics,” by most of whom his book has been either praised, or allowed quietly to pass muster, adorned with the insignia of unquestionable merit.

Great was the surprise of the sons of the Cymry to find the robber Twm Shon Catti, who partially resembled Bamfylde Moore Carew, Robin Hood, and the humorous but vulgar footpad, Turpin, elevated to the degree of a high-hearted, injured chieftain;—the stealer of calves, old women’s flannels, and three-legged pots, a noble character, uttering heroic speeches, and ultimately dying for his Ellen [3a] a hero’s death!

“This may do for London, but in Wales, where ‘Y gwir yn erbyn y byd’ [3b] is our motto, we know better!” muttered many a testy Cambrian, while he felt doubly indignant at the author’s and actors’ errors in mis-writing and mis-pronouncing their popular outlaw’s “sponsorial or baptismal appellation,” [4] as Doctor Pangloss would say: and another source of umbrage to them was, that an English author’s sacrilegiously dignifying a robber with the qualities of a hero, conveyed the villainous inference that Wales was barren of real heroes—an insinuation that no Welshman could tamely endure or forgive.  In an instant recurred the honored names of Rodri Mawr, Owen Gwyneth, Caswallon ab Beli, Owen Glyndwr, Rhys ab Thomas, and a vast chain of Cambrian worthies, not forgetting the royal race of Tudor, that gave an Elizabeth to the English throne; on which the mimic scene before them, and the high vauntings of Huntley in the character of Twm Shôn Catti, sunk into the insignificance of a Punch and puppet show, in comparison with the mighty men who then passed before the mental eye.

If the misrepresentation of historical characters, re-moulded and amplified, to suit the fascinating details of romance, be a fault generally, it is particularly offensive in the present case, where the being treated of, is so well known to almost every peasant throughout the principality; so that a real account of our hero, if not exactly useful, may at least prove amusing, in this age of inquiry, to stand by the side of the fictitious tale; and if this detail is found also to partake occasionally of the embellishments of fancy, it will at least be characteristic.  Little, it is true, of his life is known, and that little collected principally from the varying and uncertain source of oral tradition.  Some anecdotes and remarks respecting him have of late years been committed to record, in the writings of Theophilus Jones, the Breconshire historian, and in the “Hynafion Cymreig,” (Cambrian Popular Antiquities,) which Dr. Meyrick has