decaying sect, but they
have done good work in their day, and when they are extinct they are not
destined to be soon forgotten. Soon forgotten! How should a sect ever
be forgotten, to which have belonged three such men as George Fox,
William Penn, and Joseph Gurney?

Shortly after I left the Quakers' Yard the sun went down and twilight
settled upon the earth. Pursuing my course I reached some woodlands, and
on inquiring of a man, whom I saw standing at the door of a cottage, the
name of the district, was told that it was called Ystrad Manach--the
Monks' Strath or valley. This name it probably acquired from having
belonged in times of old to some monkish establishment. The moon now
arose and the night was delightful. As I was wandering along I heard
again the same wild noise which I had heard the night before, on the
other side of Merthyr Tydvil. The cry of the owl afar off in the
woodlands. Oh that strange bird! Oh that strange cry! The Welsh, as I
have said on a former occasion, call the owl Dylluan. Amongst the
cowydds of Ab Gwilym there is one to the dylluan. It is full of abuse
against the bird, with whom the poet is very angry for having with its
cry frightened Morfydd back, who was coming to the wood to keep an
assignation with him, but not a little of this abuse is wonderfully
expressive and truthful. He calls the owl a grey thief--the haunter of
the ivy bush--the chick of the oak, a blinking eyed witch, greedy of
mice, with a visage like the bald forehead of a big ram, or the dirty
face of an old abbess, which bears no little resemblance to the chine of
an ape. Of its cry he says that it is as great a torment as an agonizing
recollection, a cold shrill laugh from the midst of a kettle of ice; the
rattling of sea-pebbles in an old sheep-skin, on which account many call
the owl the hag of the Rhugylgroen. The Rhugylgroen, it will be as well
to observe, is a dry sheepskin containing a number of pebbles, and is
used as a rattle for frightening crows. The likening the visage of the
owl to the dirty face of an old abbess is capital, and the likening the
cry to the noise of the rhugylgroen is anything but unfortunate. For,
after all, what does the voice of the owl so much resemble as a
diabolical rattle. I'm sure I don't know. Reader, do you?

I reached Caerfili at about seven o'clock, and went to the "Boar's Head,"
near the ruins of a stupendous castle, on which the beams of the moon
were falling.