This custom is, I believe, peculiar in European countries, to Wales, and the Swis Catholic Cantons; but in the latter, to an iron cross is suspended a bowl, containing holy water, with which the relatives sprinkle the graves of the deceased as often as they come to church.

Shakspeare fays, and with his accustom ed fweetnefs

"With faireft flowers, while fummer lafts,'

"I'll sweeten thy fad grave; thou shalt not lack
"The flow'r that's like thy face, pale primrose,
"Nor the azure harebell like thy veins; no, nor
"The leaf of Eglantine, which, not to flander,
"Outfcented not thy breath."

I trust, my friend, you will long continue your good wishes to the Pembrokeshire widow. It is in this part of Wales that the women drefs their heads in a peculiar manner; they wear a cumbrous gown of dark blue cloth, even in the midst of fummer; instead of a cap, a large handkerchief is wrapt over their heads, and tied under the chin: in other places, the women as well as the men, wear large hats with broadbrims, often flapping over their fhoulders.

These Gleanings, however, in the churchyard, are a little out of place, for when I was I 4

on

on the subject of Welch courtships, I ought to have immediately gone to Welch weddings; this being, you know, the natural order; unless you are of the opinion of not a few, who affert that marriage and death are pretty much the fame thing, and that the former is, only buy-. ing the living inftead of the dead. Many of my fair countrywomen, I fear, think the latter would be a resource to them.

The ceremonies of the Cambrian peasants, in the unpolished parts of the country, are no less fingular than those at their wooing. The friends and relations of both parties, not only teftify the ufual demonftrations of joy during the day-time, but keep it up the whole night, the men vifitors putting to bed the bridegroom, and the females the bride, after which the whole company remain in the chamber, drinking jocund healths to the new married couple, and their pofterity, finging fongs, dancing, and giving into every other feftivity, fometimes for two or three days together.

Prepofterous enough you will fay! but as this, generally speaking, happens to a man and woman but once in a life, and gives now and then an holiday, that is, a few hours or days labour to a race of harmless, hard-toiling creatures,

it may be dispensed with. Their relaxations are few, and our own many. There is, undoubtedly, lefs refinement, perhaps, lefs delicacy in theirs, but are they not as innocent, as reasonable as ours;

A little fofter but as fenfeless quite.'

To you, who are always-
"hleft yourself,”

"". To fee your fellows bleft."

I need not afk you to allow for the strange, but unoffending ufages of thefe humble children of nature. Pride looks down upon them, but is not pride more truly an object of pity? But for thefe clods of moving earth, as they are arrogantly called, feeling themselves contented in their " happy, lowly," fituations, what would become of that helpless part of the fpecies, who neither " toil nor fpin?" How frequently does it happen, that an honeft hind, who seems scarcely distinguishable from the foil which he works into bread, is of more ufe in the great community of mankind, and of course, a better member of it, than a whole generation of thofe conceited beings, who fpurn his cottage, and fquander the noble inheritance of their ancestors, amidst the vices of refinement! How preferable the virtues of rusticity!

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LETTER

LETTER X.

TO THE SAME.

I Afferted that the lower order of people in this country are fuperftitious. They were fo at all times. Anciently its contagion tinctured the more enlightened. One of the old hiftorians very gravely recounts numberless preter-natural inftances of cafualties, which he conftrued into divine judgments. Amongst

others, he tells us, that in the reign of Ivor, the third prince of Wales, there happened a remarkable earthquake in the Isle of Man, which much disturbed and annoyed the inhabitants, and in the year following that it rained blood both in Britain and Ireland; infomuch that the butter and milk refembled the colour of blood. What fanguinary torrents, my friend, must have fallen to have thus changed the nature of the grafs, and literally to make "the green, one red!" He adds, these accidents of nature might probably. prefage fome tumults and difturbances in the kingdom. The same author, I remember, afferts that as a prognostic of the death of Elbodius, archbishop of North Wales, there happened a very fevere eclipfe of the fun,

and

and the year following there was an eclipse of the moon, and upon Christmas day! and these he confiders as portents that boded no good to the Welch affairs. By way of making out the prediction of the effect of these fatalities, we are folemnly informed they were followed by a very grievous and general murrain of cattle, which impoverished the whole country, and the year preceding, A. D. 808, was marked by the West Saxons laying the city of St. David's in afhes. Thus it is, my friend, that foothefayers of every age firft frame their prophecies, and then inveterately fulfil them; for the very next good or evil event that takes place, is brought in evidence of what was foretold, and however abfurd in the nature of things, or contradictory to the point in queftion, at the time is tortured and twisted, to answer the purpose of illustrating. Hence the most improbable, phyfically speaking, the most impoffible and heterogeneous circumstances, are forced into contact, and effects are traced to causes with which they have no fort of connection.

The prefent defcendants of Cadwallader are true to the faith of their forefathers on this article. I faw it operating during my refidence amongst them in a thousand ways, but in none

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