He Was In A Dreadful Condition,
And Many Thought He Would Die.
On the morrow there came an alarm
that he was dead, whereupon I escaped across the mountain to Pentre
y Foelas to the old man Sion Dafydd to read his old books."
After staying there a little time, and getting his wounds tended by
an old woman, he departed and skulked about in various places,
doing now and then a little work, until hearing his adversary was
recovering, he returned to his home. He went on writing and
performing interludes till he fell in love with a young woman
rather religiously inclined, whom he married in the year 1763, when
he was in his twenty-fourth year. The young couple settled down on
a little place near the town of Denbigh, called Ale Fowlio. They
kept three cows and four horses. The wife superintended the cows,
and Tom with his horses carried wood from Gwenynos to Ruddlan, and
soon excelled all other carters "in loading and in everything
connected with the management of wood." Tom in the pride of his
heart must needs be helping his fellow-carriers, whilst labouring
with them in the forests, till his wife told him he was a fool for
his pains, and advised him to go and load in the afternoon, when
nobody would be about, offering to go and help him. He listened to
her advice and took her with him.
"The dear creature," says he, "assisted me for some time, but as
she was with child, and on that account not exactly fit to turn the
roll of the crane with levers of iron, I formed the plan of hooking
the horses to the rope, in order to raise up the wood which was to
be loaded, and by long teaching the horses to pull and to stop, I
contrived to make loading a much easier task, both to my wife and
myself. Now this was the first hooking of horses to the rope of
the crane which was ever done either in Wales or England.
Subsequently I had plenty of leisure and rest instead of toiling
amidst other carriers."
Leaving Ale Fowlio he took up his abode nearer to Denbigh, and
continued carrying wood. Several of his horses died, and he was
soon in difficulties, and was glad to accept an invitation from
certain miners of the county of Flint to go and play them an
interlude. As he was playing them one called "A Vision of the
Course of the World," which he had written for the occasion, and
which was founded on, and named after, the first part of the work
of Master Ellis Wyn, he was arrested at the suit of one Mostyn of
Calcoed. He, however, got bail, and partly by carrying and partly
by playing interludes, soon raised money enough to pay his debt.
He then made another interlude, called "Riches and Poverty," by
which he gained a great deal of money. He then wrote two others,
one called "The Three Associates of Man, namely, the World, Nature,
and Conscience;" the other entitled "The King, the Justice, the
Bishop and the Husbandman," both of which he and certain of his
companions acted with great success.
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