for himself a general
pardon, and likewise a commission as justice of the peace, which he held
to the time of his death, to the satisfaction of everybody except thieves
and ill-doers, against whom he waged incessant war, and with whom he was
admirably qualified to cope, from the knowledge he possessed of their
ways and habits, from having passed so many years of his life in the
exercise of the thieving trade. In his youth he was much addicted to
poetry, and a great many pennillion of his composition, chiefly on his
own thievish exploits, are yet recited by the inhabitants of certain
districts of the shires of Brecon, Carmarthen, and Cardigan.

Such is the history or rather the outline of the history of Twm Shone
Catti. Concerning the actions attributed to him, it is necessary to say
that the greater part consist of myths, which are told of particular
individuals of every country, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic: for
example, the story of cutting off the bull's tail is not only told of him
but of the Irish thief Delany, and is to be found in the "Lives of Irish
Rogues and Rapparees;" certain tricks related of him in the printed tale
bearing his name are almost identical with various rogueries related in
the story-book of Klim the Russian robber, {15} and the most poetical
part of Tom Shone's history, namely, that in which he threatens to cut
off the hand of the reluctant bride unless she performs her promise, is,
in all probability, an offshoot of the grand myth of "the severed hand,"
which in various ways figures in the stories of most nations, and which
is turned to considerable account in the tale of the above-mentioned
Russian worthy Klim.

CHAPTER XCIV

Llan Ddewi Brefi--Pelagian Heresy--Hu Gadarn--God of Agriculture--The
Silver Cup--Rude Tablet.

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning when I started from Tregaron;
the sky was still cloudy and heavy. I took the road to Lampeter, distant
about eight miles, intending, however, to go much farther ere I stopped
for the night. The road lay nearly south-west. I passed by Aber Coed, a
homestead near the bottom of a dingle down which runs a brook into the
Teivi, which flows here close by the road; then by Aber Carvan, where
another brook disembogues. Aber, as perhaps the reader already knows, is
a disemboguement, and wherever a place commences with Aber there to a
certainty does a river flow into the sea, or a brook or rivulet into a
river. I ne