s no such power; perhaps, indeed, at the present day the term
carn-lleidyr is more applicable to the Pope than to any one else, for he
is certainly the arch thief of the world. So much for Carn-lleidyr. But
I must here tell you that the term carn may be applied to any who is
particularly bad or disagreeable in any respect, and now I remember, has
been applied for centuries both in prose and poetry. One Lewis Glyn
Cothi, a poet, who lived more than three hundred years ago, uses the word
carn in the sense of arrant or exceedingly bad, for in his abusive ode to
the town of Chester, he says that the women of London itself were never
more carn strumpets than those of Chester, by which he means that there
were never more arrant harlots in the world than those of the cheese
capital. And the last of your great poets, Gronwy Owen, who flourished
about the middle of the last century, complains in a letter to a friend,
whilst living in a village of Lancashire, that he was amongst Carn
Saeson. He found all English disagreeable enough, but those of
Lancashire particularly so--savage, brutish louts, out-and-out John
Bulls, and therefore he called them Carn Saeson."

"Thank you, sir," said my companion; "I now thoroughly understand the
meaning of carn. Whenever I go to Chester, and a dressed-up madam
jostles against me, I shall call her carn-butein. The Pope of Rome I
shall in future term carn-lleidyr y byd, or the arch thief of the world.
And whenever I see a stupid, brutal Englishman swaggering about
Llangollen, and looking down upon us poor Welsh, I shall say to myself
Get home, you carn Sais! Well, sir, we are now near Llangollen; I must
turn to the left. You go straight forward. I never had such an
agreeable walk in my life. May I ask your name?"

I told him my name, and asked him for his.

"Edward Jones," he replied.

CHAPTER X

The Berwyn--Mountain Cottage--The Barber's Pole.

On the following morning I strolled up the Berwyn on the south-west of
the town, by a broad winding path, which was at first very steep, but by
degrees became less so. When I had accomplished about three parts of the
ascent I came to a place where the road, or path, divided into two. I
took the one to the left, which seemingly led to the top of the mountain,
and presently came to a cottage from which a dog rushed barking towards
me; an old woman, however, coming to the door called him back. I said a
few words to her in Welsh, w