‘The scarlet men were very silent; if there were songs in the heads of two or three, none sang. They looked neither to left nor to right; they saw not their fellows, but only the enemy. The breadth of the plain was very great to them. With all their solidity they could hardly endure the barren interval — it had been planned that they should wait for the charge, but it was felt now that such a pause might be too much for them. Ponderous and stiff, not in a straight line, nor in a curve, nor with quite natural irregularity, but in half a dozen straight lines that never made one, they came on, like rocks moving out against the tide. I noticed that they were modern red-coats armed with rifles, their bayonets fixed.
‘The green men made a curved irregular front like the incoming sea. They rejoiced separately and together in these minutes of approach. And they sang. Their song was one which the enemy took to be mournful because it had in it the spirit of the mountain mists as well as of the mountains. It saddened the hearts of the enemy mysteriously; the green men themselves it filled, as a cup with wine, with the certainty of immortality. They turned their eyes frequently towards their nearest companions, or they held their heads high, so that their gaze did not take in the earth or anything upon it. The enemy they scarcely saw. They saw chiefly their leaping leader and his mighty twelve.
‘The first love of the scarlet men for the enemy had either died, or had turned into hate, fear, indignation, or contempt. There may have been joy among them, but all the passions of the individuals were blended into one passion — if such it could be called — of the mass, part contempt for the others, part confidence in themselves. But among the green men first love had grown swiftly to a wild passion of joy.
‘The broad scarlet men pushed forward steadily.
‘The tall green hero danced singing towards them. His men leaped after him — first a company of twelve, who might have been his brethren; then the whole green host, lightly and extravagantly. The leader towered like a fountain of living flame. Had he stood still he must have been gaunt and straight like a beech-tree that stands alone on the crest of a sea-beholding hill. He was neither young nor old — or was he both young and old like the gods? In his blue eyes burnt a holy and joyous fire. He bore no weapon save a dagger in his right hand, so small that to the enemy he appeared unarmed as he leaped towards them. First he hopped, then he leaped with one leg stretched forward and very high, and curved somewhat in front of the other, while at the same time the arm on the opposite side swung across his body. But, in fact, whenever I looked at him — and I saw chiefly him — he was high in the air, with his head uplifted and thrown back, his knee almost at the height of his chin. He also sang that seeming sorrowful melody of the mountain joy, accented to an extravagant exultation by his leaping and the flashing of his eyes.
‘If he had not been there doubtless the twelve would have astonished the scarlet men and myself just as much, for they too were tall, danced the same leaping dance, sang the mountain song with the same wild and violent joy, and were likewise armed only with short daggers.
‘Suddenly the leader stopped; the twelve stopped; the green army stopped; all were silent. The scarlet men continued to advance, not without glancing at one another for the first time, with inquiry in their looks, followed by scorn; they expected the enemy to turn and fly. They had no sooner formed this opinion than the tall green leader leaped forward again singing, the twelve leaped after him, the sea-like edge of the green army swayed onward. Almost a smile of satisfaction spread over the stiff faces of their opponents, for there was now but a little distance between the armies; how easily they would push through that frivolous prancing multitude — if indeed it ever dared to meet their onset. This was the one fear of the scarlet men, that the next minute was not to see the clash and the victory, that they would have to plunge once more into the forest, the mist, the silence, after a foe that seemed to them as inhuman as those things and perhaps related to them.
‘Suddenly again the green leader was rigid, his song ceased. The twelve, the whole green army, were as statues. A smile grew along the line of the scarlet men when they had conquered their surprise, a smile of furious pity for such a dancing-master and his dancing-school — a smile presently of uneasiness as the seconds passed and they could hear only the sound of their own tread. The silence of all those men unnerved them. Now... would the green men turn? Some of the scarlet men, eager to make sure of grappling with the enemy, quickened their step, but not all. The green men did not turn. Once again the dance and the song leaped up, this time as if at a signal from the low sun which smote across the green leader’s breast, like a shield, and like a banner. Wilder than ever the dance and the song of the green men. The scarlet men could see their eyes now, and even the small daggers like jewels in the hands of the leaders. Some were still full of indignant hate and already held the dancers firm on the points of their bayonets. Some thought that there was a trick, they knew not how it might end. Some wished to wait kneeling, thus to receive the dancers on their steadfast points. Some were afraid, looking to left and right for a sign. One tripped intentionally and fell. The line became as jagged as if it were a delicate thing blown by the wind. The green leader cut the line in two without stopping his dance, leaving his dagger in the throat of a rifleman. Not one of the twelve but penetrated the breaking line in the course of the dance. The whole green army surged through the scarlet without ceasing their song, which seemed to hover above them like spray over waves. Then they turned.
‘The scarlet men did not turn. They ran swiftly now, and it was their backs that met the spears of the green men as they crowded into the forest. The tall, weaponless, leaping singer seemed everywhere, above and round about, turning the charge and thrust of the green men into a lovely and a joyous thing like the arrival of Spring in March, making the very trees ghastly to the scarlet fugitives running hither and thither silently to their deaths. Not one of the defeated survived, for the few that eluded their pursuers could not escape the mist, nor yet the song of the green leader, except by death, which they gave to themselves in sadness.
‘I cannot wonder that the hero’s dancing and singing were not to be withstood by his enemies, since to me it was divine and so moving that I could not help trying to imitate both song and dance while I was walking and dreaming.’
‘Nothing like that ever happened to me,’ said Mr Stodham. ‘But I thought you meant a real battle. It was lucky you weren’t run over if you were dreaming like that along the road.’
‘I suppose I was not born to be run over,’ said Aurelius.
CHAPTER XIII. NED OF GLAMORGAN
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 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 certainl
y 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 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 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 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:
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 alehouse, 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.
Tolo 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 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 manuscript. 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:
‘“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;
&
nbsp; ‘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! 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 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.
Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas Page 23