I allowed the ale in my glass to
remain untasted, and began to talk about the bards, and to quote
from their works. I soon found that the man in grey knew quite as
much of the old bards and their works as myself. In one instance
he convicted me of a mistake.
I had quoted those remarkable lines in which an old bard, doubtless
seeing the Menai Bridge by means of second sight, says:- "I will
pass to the land of Mona notwithstanding the waters of the Menai,
without waiting for the ebb" - and was feeling not a little proud
of my erudition, when the man in grey after looking at me for a
moment fixedly, asked me the name of the bard who composed them.
"Sion Tudor," I replied.
"There you are wrong," said the man in grey; "his name was not Sion
Tudor but Robert Vychan, in English, Little Bob. Sion Tudor wrote
an englyn on the Skerries whirlpool in the Menai; but it was Little
Bob who wrote the stanza in which the future bridge over the Menai
is hinted at."
"You are right," said I, "you are right. Well, I am glad that all
song and learning are not dead in Ynis Fon."
"Dead," said the man in grey, whose features began to be rather
flushed, "they are neither dead nor ever will be.
