And When The Next Morning We Went Down To The Boat Which
We Was Going To Take Our Day's Trip In, And I Saw The Man Who Was To
Row Us, David Llewellyn Popped Straight Into My Mind.
This man was elderly, with gray hair, and a beard under his chin, with
a general air of water and fish.
He was good-natured and sociable from
the very beginning. It seemed a shame that an old man should row two
people so much younger than he was, but after I had looked at him
pulling at his oars for a little while, I saw that there was no need
of pitying him.
It was a good day, with only one or two drizzles in the morning, and we
had not gone far before I found that the Wye was more of a river than I
thought it was, though never any bigger than a creek. It was just about
warm enough for a boat trip, though the old man told us there had been
a "rime" that morning, which made me think of the "Ancient Mariner."
The more the boatman talked and made queer jokes, the more I wanted to
ask him his name; and I hoped he would say David Llewellyn, or at least
David, and as a sort of feeler I asked him if he had ever seen a
coracle. "A corkle?" said he. "Oh, yes, ma'am, I've seen many a one and
rowed in them."
I couldn't wait any longer, and so I asked him his name.
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