arly an ancient rack, in which
stood a goodly range of pewter trenchers. A respectable dame kindly
welcomed us and invited us to sit down. We entered into conversation
with her, and asked her name, which she said was Evans. I spoke some
Welsh to her, which pleased her. She said that Welsh people at the
present day were so full of fine airs that they were above speaking the
old language--but that such was not the case formerly, and that she had
known a Mrs Price, who was housekeeper to the Countess of Mornington, who
lived in London upwards of forty years, and at the end of that time
prided herself upon speaking as good Welsh as she did when a girl. I
spoke to her about the abbey, and asked if she had ever heard of Iolo
Goch. She inquired who he was. I told her he was a great bard, and was
buried in the abbey. She said she had never heard of him, but that she
could show me the portrait of a great poet, and going away, presently
returned with a print in a frame.

"There," said she, "is the portrait of Twm o'r Nant, generally called the
Welsh Shakespeare."

I looked at it. The Welsh Shakespeare was represented sitting at a table
with a pen in his hand; a cottage-latticed window was behind him, on his
left hand; a shelf with plates, and trenchers behind him, on his right.
His features were rude, but full of wild, strange expression; below the
picture was the following couplet:--

"Llun Gwr yw llawn gwir Awen;
Y Byd a lanwodd o'i Ben."

"Did you ever hear of Twm o'r Nant?" said the old dame.

"I never heard of him by word of mouth," said I; "but I know all about
him--I have read his life in Welsh, written by himself, and a curious
life it is. His name was Thomas Edwards, but he generally called himself
Twm o'r Nant, or Tom of the Dingle, because he was born in a dingle, at a
place called Pen Porchell, in the vale of Clwyd--which, by the bye, was
on the estate which once belonged to Iolo Goch, the poet I was speaking
to you about just now. Tom was a carter by trade, but once kept a
toll-bar in South Wales, which, however, he was obliged to leave at the
end of two years, owing to the annoyance which he experienced from ghosts
and goblins, and unearthly things, particularly phantom hearses, which
used to pass through his gate at midnight without paying, when the gate
was shut."

"Ah," said the dame, "you know more about Tom o'r Nant than I do; and was
he not a great poet?"

"I daresay he was," said I