Traits and stories of the Welsh peasantry

Front matter

VALE OF THE TOWEY.

NiOM TC. BE.

Tue Publishers of this work beg to state that it is private property, protected by the late Copyright Act, the 5 & 6 Victoria, c.45. They beg also to state that any person having in his possession, within the United Kingdom, for sale or hire, one or more copies printed abroad of any English work protected by the Act referred to, is liable to a penalty, which, in cases affecting their interests, they intend to enforce.

Preface

I rear the majority of those who may open this volume will expect to find in its pages some record of the agrarian excitement which lately spread itself through South Wales, and in which the “ Vale of the Towey ” largely participated ; and that they will, consequently, look for descriptions of stirring events, and portraitures of a people of determined, if not of a turbulent and rebellious, character. Their anticipations will be, however, disappointed, for these sketches were imagined, and, indeed, nearly completed, before our tranquil vales and mountains witnessed the outbreaks of a disease which, I hope, is now cured, and became scenes of civil warfare and midnight violence.

When I came hither, a stranger, I was struck by the loveliness of the country, as well as by the character, manners, and language of its primitive vill PREFACE.

inhabitants. My nearer observation brought me acquainted with many traditional observances, many general usages, and many national peculiarities, which appeared to me novel and entertaining. In the small compass of this beautiful valley I had a world completely closed in from the outer world, in which I soon became deeply interested, and I began to attempt sketches of scenery, and simple annals of simple folk, as they, from time to time, drew my admiration, or excited my fancy.

In bringing these before the public, I neither expect them to attract great attention, nor to obtain general perusal. They are no highly-coloured paintings, wrought up to the taste of the time — no tales of breathless interest —no whimsical or burlesque delineations of character; they are simply attempts at portraying persons and things truthfully as they exist, and if my art has not enabled me to bring them out as strongly as I could have wished, I have not, consciously, overcharged or distorted them.

There are many, I know, amongst us, who love the country for its own sake, and who enjoy rural scenes and pleasures for their freedom from the deception and false glitter too frequently the attendant of more refined and cultivated life. There are many who delight to fly from the noise and bustle of the world to regions of seclusion and peace, where they can look upon Nature as she came fresh from the

PREFACE. 1x hand of her Maker, and find in her children something of their original simplicity and purity.

By such, I hope, these sketches may not be totally disregarded, and to such I venture to offer them, feeling conscious, the while, that I am adding no fresh evergreen to the well-stored gardens of literature, but am simply planting an annual, which may perish as soon as set, or which, at best, may live out its little season, and then fall, like thousands of similar frail productions, into forgetfulness and decay.

ANNE BEALE.

Llwynhelig, Llandilo, 1844,