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"Is she Welsh?" said I. "Pure Welsh, master," said the man. "Purer Welsh flesh and blood need not be." Nothing farther worth relating occurred till we reached the toll- bar at the head of the hen ffordd, by which time the sun was almost gone down. We found the master of the gate, his wife and son seated on a bench before the door.
When we had dispatched the second jug of ale, and I had paid the reckoning, we departed and soon came to where stood a turnpike house at a junction of two roads, to each of which was a gate. "Now, sir," said John Jones, "the way straight forward is the ffordd newydd, and the one on our right hand is the hen ffordd. Which shall we follow, the new or the old?"
Ann and Morva had cut the generous hunches of barley bread and cheese overnight, and well it was that they were thus prepared, for before the hens and turkeys had flown down from their roosting-place, and before the cows had risen from their warm beds of straw in the beudy, or the sheep had begun to shake off the snow which had fallen on their fleeces in the night, fresh young voices were heard in the farmyard singing the old refrain familiar to generations of Welsh children: "Calenig i fi, calenig i'r ffon, Calenig i fytta ar hyd y ffordd.
Perhaps, however, it would have been well had we gone by the new, for the hen ffordd was a very dull and uninteresting road, whereas the ffordd newydd, as I long subsequently found, is one of the grandest passes in Wales.
"There is a proverb in the Gerniweg," said I, "which was the language of my forefathers, saying, 'ne'er leave the old way for the new, we will therefore go by the hen ffordd." "Very good, sir," said my guide, "that is the path I always go, for it is the shortest." So we turned to the right and followed the old road.
There it was, a kind of hollow in the stone wall, in the hen ffordd, fronting to the west, just above the gorge at the bottom of which murmurs the brook Ceiriog, there it was, something like a half barrel chair in a garden, a mouldering stone slab forming the seat, and a large slate stone, the back, on which were cut these letters signifying Huw Morus Bard.
There it was, a kind of hollow in the stone wall, in the hen ffordd, fronting to the west, just above the gorge at the bottom of which murmurs the brook Ceiriog, there it was, something like a half barrel chair in a garden, a mouldering stone slab forming the seat, and a large slate stone, the back, on which were cut these letters signifying Huw Morus Bard.
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