long after his celebrated introduction to abercorran house, and soon after philip and i had been asking old jack again about the blackthorn stick, mr stodham was reminded of the story of the welshman on london bridge who was carrying a hazel stick cut on craig-y-dinas. “do you remember it?” asked mr morgan.

“certainly i do,” replied mr stodham, “and some day the stick you gave me from that same craig-y-dinas shall carry me thither.”

“i hope it will. it is a fine country for a man to walk in with a light heart, or, the next best thing, with a heavy heart. they will treat you well, because they will take you for a red-haired welshman and you like pastry. but what i wanted to say was that the man who first told that story of craig-y-dinas was one of the prime walkers of the world. look at this portrait of him....”

[187]

here mr morgan opened a small book of our grandfather’s time which had for a frontispiece a full-length portrait of a short, old, spectacled man in knee breeches and buckled shoes, grasping a book in one hand, a very long staff in the other.

“look at him. he was worthy to be immortalised in stained glass. he walked into london from oxford one day and mentioned the fact to some acquaintances in a bookshop. they were rather hard of believing, but up spoke a stranger who had been observing the pedestrian, his way of walking, the shape of his legs, and the relative position of his knees and ankles whilst standing erect. this man declared that the welshman could certainly have done the walk without fatigue; and he ought to have known, for he was the philosopher, walking stewart.

“it was as natural for this man in the picture to walk as for the sun to shine. you would like to know england, mr stodham, as he knew wales, especially glamorgan. rightly was he entitled ‘iolo morganwg,’ or edward of glamorgan, or, rather, ned of glamorgan. the name will outlive most stained glass, for one of the finest collections of welsh history, genealogies, fables, tales, poetry, etc., all in old manuscripts, was made by him, and was named[188] after him in its published form—‘iolo manuscripts.’ he was born in glamorgan, namely at penon, in 1746, and when he was eighty he died at flimstone in the same county.

“as you may suppose, he was not a rich man, and nobody would trouble to call him a gentleman. but he was an ancient briton, and not the last one: he said once that he always possessed the freedom of his thoughts and the independence of his mind ‘with an ancient briton’s warm pride.’

“his father was a stonemason, working here, there, and everywhere, in england and wales, in town and country. when the boy first learnt his alphabet, it was from the letters cut by his father on tombstones. his mother—the daughter of a gentleman—undoubtedly a gentleman, for he had ‘wasted a pretty fortune’—taught him to read from the songs in a ‘vocal miscellany.’ she read milton, pope, ‘the spectator,’ ‘the whole duty of man,’ and ‘religio medici,’ and sang as well. but the boy had to begin working for his father at the age of nine. having such a mother, he did not mix with other children, but returned nightly to read or talk with her, or, if he did not, he walked by himself in solitary places. later[189] on, he would always read by himself in the dinner-hour instead of going with his fellow-workmen to the inn. once he was left, during the dinner-hour, in charge of a parsonage that was being repaired, and, having his own affairs to mind, he let all the fowls and pigs in. his father scolded him, and he went off, as the old man supposed, to pout for a week or two with his mother’s people at aberpergwm, near pont neath vaughan. it was, however, some months before he reappeared—from london, not aberpergwm. thus, in his own opinion, he became ‘very pensive, very melancholy, and very stupid,’ but had fits of ‘wild extravagance.’ and thus, at the time of his mother’s death, though he was twenty-three, he was ‘as ignorant of the world as a new-born child.’ without his mother he could not stay in the house, so he set off on a long wandering. he went hither and thither over a large part of england and wales, ‘studying chiefly architecture and other sciences that his trade required.’”

“there was a mason,” said mr stodham, “such as ruskin wanted to set carving evangelists and kings.”

“no. he knew too much, or half-knew too much. besides, he hated kings.... those[190] travels confirmed him in the habit of walking. he was too busy and enthusiastic ever to have become an eater, and he found that walking saved him still more from eating. he could start early in the morning and walk the forty-three miles into bristol without any food on the way; and then, after walking about the town on business, and breaking his fast with bread and butter and tea, and sleeping in a friend’s chair, could walk back again with no more food; and, moreover, did so of choice, not from any beastly principle or necessity. he travelled thus with ‘more alacrity and comfort,’ than at other times when he had taken food more frequently. he always was indifferent to animal food and wine. tea was his vice, tempered by sugar and plenty of milk and cream. three or four distinct brews of an evening suited him. once a lady assured him that she was handing him his sixteenth cup. he was not a teetotaller, though his verses for a society of journeymen masons ‘that met weekly to spend a cheerful hour at the moderate and restricted expense of fourpence,’ are no better than if he had been a teetotaller from his cradle:

“‘whilst mirth and good ale our warm spirits recruit,

we’ll drunk’ness avoid, that delight of a brute:

[191]

of matters of state we’ll have nothing to say,

wise reason shall rule and keep discord away.

whilst tuning our voices jocundity sings,

good fellows we toast, and know nothing of kings:

but to those who have brightened the gloom of our lives,

give the song and full bumper—our sweethearts and wives.’

at one time he made a fixed resolve not to sit in the public room of an ale-house, because he feared the conviviality to which his talent for song-writing conduced. but it is a fact that a man who lives out of doors can eat and drink anything, everything, or almost nothing, and thrive beyond the understanding of quacks.

“iolo walked night and day, and would see a timid gentleman home at any hour if only he could have a chair by his fireside to sleep. he got to prefer sleeping in a chair partly because his asthma forbade him to lie down, partly because it was so convenient to be able to read and write up to the last moment and during any wakeful hours. with a table, and pen, ink, paper, and books beside him, he read, wrote, and slept, at intervals, and at dawn usually let himself out of the house for a walk. during a visit to the bishop of st david’s at abergwili he was to be seen in the small hours pacing the[192] hall of the episcopal palace, in his nightcap, a book in one hand, a candle in the other. probably he read enormously, but too much alone, and with too little intercourse with other readers. besides his native welsh he taught himself english, french, latin and greek. his memory was wonderful, but he had no power of arrangement; when he came to write he could not find his papers without formidable searches, and when found could not put them in an available form. i imagine he did not treat what he read, like most of us, as if it were removed several degrees from what we choose to call reality. everything that interested him at all he accepted eagerly unless it was one of the few things he was able to condemn outright as a lie. i suppose it was the example of nebuchadnezzar that made him try one day ‘in a thinly populated part of north wales’ eating nothing but grass, until the very end, when he gave way to bread and cheese.

“he had a passion for antiquities.”

“what an extraordinary thing,” ejaculated mr stodham.

“not very,” said mr morgan. “he was acquisitive and had little curiosity. he was a collector of every sort and quality of old manu[193]script. being an imperfectly self-educated man he probably got an innocent conceit from his learned occupation....”

“but how could he be an old curiosity man, and such an out-door man as well?”

“his asthma and pulmonary trouble, whatever it was, probably drove him out of doors. borrow, who was a similar man of a different class, was driven out in the same way as a lad. iolo’s passion for poetry was not destroyed, but heightened, by his travels. god knows what poetry meant to him. but when he was in london, thinking of wales and the white cots of glamorgan, he wrote several stanzas of english verse. sometimes he wrote about nymphs and swains, called celia, damon, colin, and the like. he wrote a poem to laudanum:

“‘o still exert thy soothing power,

till fate leads on the welcom’d hour,

to bear me hence away;

to where pursues no ruthless foe,

no feeling keen awakens woe,

no faithless friends betray.’”

“i could do no worse than that,” murmured mr stodham confidently.

“he wrote a sonnet to a haycock, and another to hope on an intention of emigrating to america:

[194]

“‘th’ american wilds, where simplicity’s reign

will cherish the muse and her pupil defend ...

i’ll dwell with content in the desert alone.’

they were blessed days when content still walked the earth with a capital c, and probably a female form in light classic drapery. there was felicity also. iolo wrote ‘felicity, a pastoral.’ he composed a poem to the cuckoo, and translated the famous latin couplet which says that two pilgrimages to st david’s are equivalent to one to rome itself:

“‘would haughty popes your senses bubble,

and once to rome your steps entice;

’tis quite as well, and saves some trouble,

go visit old saint taffy twice.’

he wrote quantities of hymns. once, to get some girls out of a scrape—one having played ‘the voice of her i love’ on the organ after service—he wrote a hymn to the tune, ‘the voice of the beloved,’ and fathered it on an imaginary collection of moravian hymns. one other virtue he had, as a bard: he never repeated his own verses. god rest his soul. he was a walker, not a writer. the best of him—in fact, the real man altogether—refused to go into verse at all.

“yet he had peculiarities which might have[195] adorned a poet. once, when he was on a job in a churchyard at dartford, his master told him to go next morning to take certain measurements. he went, and, having taken the measurements, woke. it was pitch dark, but soon afterwards a clock struck two. in spite of the darkness he had not only done what he had to do, but he said that on his way to the churchyard every object appeared to him as clear as by day. the measurements were correct.

“one night, asleep in his chair, three women appeared to him, one with a mantle over her head. there was a sound like a gun, and one of the others fell, covered in blood. next day, chance took him—was it chance?—into a farm near cowbridge where he was welcomed by three women, one hooded in a shawl. presently a young man entered with a gun, and laid it on the table, pointing at one of the women. at iolo’s warning it was discovered that the gun was primed and at full cock.

“another time, between cowbridge and flimstone, he hesitated thrice at a stile, and then, going over, was just not too late to save a drunken man from a farmer galloping down the path.

[196]

“in spite of his love of light and liberty, he was not above turning necromancer with wand and magic circle to convert a sceptic inn-keeper. he undertook to call up the man’s grandfather, and after some gesticulations and muttering unknown words, he whispered, ‘i feel the approaching spirit. shall it appear?’ the man whom he was intending to benefit became alarmed, and begged to be allowed to hear the ghost speak, first of all. in a moment a deep, sepulchral voice pronounced the name of the grandfather. the man had had enough. he bolted from the place, leaving iolo and his confederates triumphant.

“iolo should have been content to leave it unproved that he was no poet. but he had not an easy life, and i suppose he had to have frills of some sort.

“well, he walked home to glamorgan. there he took a glamorgan wife, margaret roberts of marychurch, and he had to read less and work more to provide for a family. by the nature of his handiwork he was able to make more out of his verses than he would have done by printing better poetry. the vile doggerel which he inscribed on tombstones gained him a living and a sort of an immortality. he was[197] one of the masons employed on the monument to the man of ross.

“though a bad poet he was a welsh bard. it was not the first or the last occasion on which the two parts were combined. bard, for him, was a noble name. he was a ‘christian briton and bard’—a ‘bard according to the rights and institutes of the bards of the island of britain’—and he never forgot the bardic triad, ‘man, liberty, and light.’ once, at the prison levee of a dissenting minister, he signed himself, ‘bard of liberty.’ to southey, whom he helped with much out-of-the-way bardic mythology for his ‘madoc,’ he was ‘bard williams.’

“bardism brought him into strange company, which i dare say he did not think strange, and certainly not absurd. anna seward, who mistook herself for a poet, and was one of the worst poets ever denominated ‘swan,’ was kind to him in london. he in return initiated her into the bardic order at a meeting of ‘ancient british bards resident in london,’ which was convened on primrose hill at the autumnal equinox, 1793. at an earlier meeting, also on primrose hill, he had recited an ‘ode on the mythology of the british bards in the manner of[198] taliesin,’ and, since this poem was subsequently approved at the equinoctial, and ratified at the solstitial, convention, it was, according to ancient usage, fit for publication. it was not a reason. nevertheless, a bard is a bard, whatever else he may or may not be.

“iolo was proud to declare that the old welsh bards had kept up a perpetual war with the church of rome, and had suffered persecution. ‘man, liberty, and light.’ you and i, mr stodham, perhaps don’t know what he meant. but if iolo did not know, he was too happy to allow the fact to emerge and trouble him.

“of course, he connected the bards with druidism, which he said they had kept alive. a good many sectarians would have said that he himself was as much a druid as a christian. he accepted the resurrection of the dead. he did not reject the druid belief in transmigration of souls. he identified druidism with the patriarchal religion of the old testament, but saw in it also a pacific and virtually christian spirit. he affirmed that ancient british christianity was strongly tinctured by druidism, and it was his opinion that the ‘dark ages’ were only dark through our lack of light. he hated the stories of cæsar and others about[199] human sacrifices, and would say to opponents, ‘you are talking of what you don’t understand—of what none but a welshman and a british bard can possibly understand.’ he compared the british mythology favourably with the ‘barbarous’ scandinavian mythology of thor and odin. he studied whatever he could come at concerning druidism, with the ‘peculiar bias and firm persuasion’ that ‘more wisdom and beneficence than is popularly attributed to them’ would be revealed.

“in the french revolution he recognised the spirit of ‘man, liberty, and light.’ his friends deserted him. he in turn was willing to leave them for america, ‘to fly from the numerous injuries he had received from the laws of this land.’ he had, furthermore, the hope of discovering the colony settled in america, as some believed, by the mediæval welsh prince madoc.”

“that was like borrow, too,” suggested mr stodham.

“it was, and the likeness is even closer; for, like borrow, iolo did not go to america. nevertheless, to prepare himself for the adventure, he lived out of doors for a time, sleeping in trees and on the ground, and incurring rheumatism.

[200]

“but though he did not go to america for love of liberty, he had his papers seized, and is said to have been summoned by pitt for disaffection to the state. nothing worse was proved against him than the authorship of several songs in favour of liberty, ‘perhaps,’ said his biographer, ‘a little more extravagant than was quite commendable at that inflammatory period.’ they expected him to remove his papers himself, but he refused, and had them formally restored by an official. when he was fifty he gave up his trade because the dust of the stone was injuring his lungs. he now earned a living by means of a shop at cowbridge where books, stationery, and grocery were sold. his speciality was ‘east india sweets uncontaminated by human gore.’ brothers of his who had made money in jamaica offered to allow him £50 a year, but in vain. ‘it was a land of slaves,’ he said. he would not even administer their property when it was left to him, though a small part was rescued later on by friends, for his son and daughter. the sound of the bells at bristol celebrating the rejection of wilberforce’s anti-slavery bill drove him straight out of the city. believing that he was spied upon at cowbridge he offered a book for sale[201] in his window, labelled ‘the rights of man.’ he was successful. the spies descended on him, seized the book, and discovered that it was the bible, not the work of paine.

“he was personally acquainted with paine and with a number of other celebrities, such as benjamin franklin, bishop percy, horne tooke, and mrs barbauld. once in a bookshop he asked dr johnson to choose for him among three english grammars. johnson was turning over the leaves of a book, ‘rapidly and as the bard thought petulantly’: ‘either of them will do for you, young man,’ said he. ‘then, sir,’ said iolo, thinking johnson was insulting his poverty, ‘to make sure of having the best i will buy all’; and he used always to refer to them as ‘dr johnson’s grammars.’ it was once arranged that he should meet cowper, but the poet sat, through the evening, silent, unable to encounter the introduction.

“the excesses of the revolution, it is said, drove iolo to abandon the idea of a republic, except as a ‘theoretic model for a free government.’ he even composed an ode to the cowbridge volunteers. above all, he wrote an epithalamium on the marriage of george the fourth, which he himself presented, dressed[202] in a new apron of white leather and carrying a bright trowel. his ‘english poems’ were dedicated to the prince of wales.”

“what a fearful fall,” exclaimed mr stodham, who may himself have been a bard of liberty.

“but his business, apart from his trade, was antiquities, and especially the quest of them up and down wales.”

“i shouldn’t be surprised,” said mr stodham, “if the old man hoped for some grand result from meddling with those mysterious old books and papers—perhaps nothing definite, health, wealth, wisdom, beauty, everlasting life, or the philosopher’s stone,—but some old secret of bardism or druidism, which would glorify wales, or cowbridge, or old iolo himself.”

“very likely. he was to a scientific antiquary what a witch is to an alchemist, and many a witch got a reputation with less to her credit than he had.

“as a boy he remembered hearing an old shoemaker of llanmaes (near lantwit) speak of the shaft of an ancient cross, in lantwit churchyard, falling into a grave that had been dug too near it for will the giant of lantwit. as a middle-aged man he dug up the stone. it was less love of antiquity than of mystery,[203] buried treasure, and the like. he was unweariable in his search for the remains of ancient british literature. at the age of seventy, when the bishop of st david’s had mislaid some of his manuscripts and they had thus been sold, iolo walked over caermarthenshire, pembrokeshire, and cardiganshire, and recovered the greater part. he took a pony with him as far as caermarthen, but would not allow it to carry his wallets until at last it was arranged that his son should walk on one side and himself on the other, which made him remark that ‘nothing was more fatiguing than a horse.’ the horse appears in a triad of his own composition:

“there are three things i do not want. a horse, for i have a good pair of legs: a cellar, for i drink no beer: a purse, for i have no money.

“he would not ride in lord dunraven’s carriage, but preferred to walk. that he did not dislike the animal personally is pretty clear. for at one time he kept a horse which followed him, of its own free will, upon his walks.

“iolo was a sight worth seeing on the highways and byways of glamorgan, and once had the honour of being taken for a conjuror. his biographer—a man named elijah waring, who[204] was proud to have once carried his wallets—describes him ‘wearing his long grey hair flowing over his high coat collar, which, by constant antagonism, had pushed up his hat-brim into a quaint angle of elevation behind. his countenance was marked by a combination of quiet intelligence and quick sensitiveness; the features regular, the lines deep, and the grey eye benevolent but highly excitable. he was clad, when he went to see a bishop, in a new coat fit for an admiral, with gilt buttons and buff waistcoat, but, as a rule, in rustic garb: the coat blue, with goodly brass buttons, and the nether integuments, good homely corduroy. he wore buckles in his shoes, and a pair of remarkably stout well-set legs were vouchers for the great peripatetic powers he was well known to possess. a pair of canvas wallets were slung over his shoulders, one depending in front, the other behind. these contained a change of linen, and a few books and papers connected with his favourite pursuits. he generally read as he walked....’”

“tut, tut,” remarked mr stodham, “that spoils all.”

“he generally read as he walked, ‘with spectacles on nose,’ and a pencil in his hand,[205] serving him to make notes as they suggested themselves. yet he found time also, mr stodham, to sow the tea-plant on the hills of glamorgan. ‘a tall staff which he grasped at about the level of his ear completed his equipment; and he was accustomed to assign as a reason for this mode of using it, that it tended to expand the pectoral muscles, and thus, in some degree, relieve a pulmonary malady inherent in his constitution.’

“he did not become a rich man. late one evening he entered a cardiganshire public-house and found the landlord refusing to let a pedlar pay for his lodging in kind, though he was penniless. iolo paid the necessary shilling for a bed and rated the landlord, but had to walk on to a distant friend because it was his last shilling. yet he wrote for the gentleman’s magazine and corresponded with the monthly and others, so that towards the end he was entitled to advances from the literary fund. an annual subscription was also raised for him in neath and the neighbourhood. his last three years he spent at flimstone, where he is buried. he was a cripple and confined to the house, until one day he rested his head on the side of his easy chair and told his daughter that he[206] was free from pain and could sleep, and so he died.”

“i will certainly go to craig-y-dinas,” said mr stodham solemnly, “and to penon, and to cowbridge, and to flimstone.”

“you will do well,” said mr morgan, shutting up elijah waring’s little book and getting out the map of glamorgan.