Tom was obliged to sell off everything, and left South Wales
without horses or waggon; his old friend the Muse, however, stood
him in good stead.
"Before I left," says he, "I went to Brecon, and printed the
'Interlude of the King, the Justice, the Bishop, and the
Husbandman,' and got an old acquaintance of mine to play it with
me, and help me to sell the books. I likewise busied myself in
getting subscribers to a book of songs called the 'Garden of
Minstrelsy.' It was printed at Trefecca. The expense attending
the printing amounted to fifty-two pounds, but I was fortunate
enough to dispose of two thousand copies. I subsequently composed
an interlude called 'Pleasure and Care,' and printed it; and after
that I made an interlude called the 'Three Powerful Ones of the
World: Poverty, Love, and Death.'"
The poet's daughters were not successful in the tavern speculation
at Llandeilo, and followed their father into North Wales. The
second he apprenticed to a milliner, the other two lived with him
till the day of his death. He settled at Denbigh in a small house
which he was enabled to furnish by means of two or three small sums
which he recovered for work done a long time before. Shortly after
his return, his father died, and the lawyer seized the little
property "for the old curse," and turned Tom's mother out.
After his return from the South Tom went about for some time
playing interludes, and then turned his hand to many things. He
learnt the trade of stonemason, took jobs, and kept workmen. He
then went amongst certain bricklayers, and induced them to teach
him their craft; "and shortly," as he says, "became a very lion at
bricklaying. For the last four or five years," says he, towards
the conclusion of his history, "my work has been to put up iron
ovens and likewise furnaces of all kinds, also grates, stoves and
boilers, and not unfrequently I have practised as a smoke doctor."
The following feats of strength he performed after his return from
South Wales, when he was probably about sixty years of age:-
"About a year after my return from the South," says he, "I met with
an old carrier of wood, who had many a time worked along with me.
He and I were at the Hand at Ruthyn along with various others, and
in the course of discourse my friend said to me: 'Tom, thou art
much weaker than thou wast when we carted wood together.' I
answered that in my opinion I was not a bit weaker than I was then.
Now it happened that at the moment we were talking there were some
sacks of wheat in the hall which were going to Chester by the
carrier's waggon.
