"We call him a clog-maker," said the woman, "but the truth is that he merely cuts down the wood and fashions it into squares, these are taken by an under-master who sends them to the manufacturer at Bolton, who employs hands, who make them into clogs.""Some of the English," said Jones, "are so poor that they cannot afford to buy shoes; a pair of shoes cost ten or twelve shillings, whereas a pair of clogs only cost two.""I suppose," said I, "that what you call clogs are wooden shoes.""Just so," said Jones - "they are principally used in the neighbourhood of Manchester.""I have seen them at Huddersfield," said I, "when I was a boy at school there; of what wood are they made?""Of the gwern, or alder tree," said the woman, "of which there is plenty on both sides of the brook."John Jones now asked her if she could give him a tamaid of bread;she said she could, "and some butter with it."She then went out and presently returned with a loaf and some butter.
"Had you not better wait," said I, "till we get to the inn at Llansanfraid?"The woman, however, begged him to eat some bread and butter where he was, and cutting a plateful, placed it before him, having first offered me some which I declined.
"But you have nothing to drink with it," said I to him.
"If you please," said the woman, "I will go for a pint of ale to the public-house at the Pandy, there is better ale there than at the inn at Llansanfraid. When my husband goes to Llansanfraid he goes less for the ale than for the conversation, because there is little English spoken at the Pandy however good the ale."John Jones said he wanted no ale - and attacking the bread and butter speedily made an end of it; by the time he had done the storm was over, and getting up I gave the child twopence, and left the cottage with Jones. We proceeded some way farther up the valley, till we came to a place where the ground descended a little. Here Jones touching me on the shoulder pointed across the stream. Following with my eye the direction of his finger, I saw two or three small sheds with a number of small reddish blocks in regular piles beneath them. Several trees felled from the side of the torrent were lying near, some of them stripped of their arms and bark. A small tree formed a bridge across the brook to the sheds.
"It is there," said John Jones, "that the husband of the woman with whom we have been speaking works, felling trees from the alder swamp and cutting them up into blocks. I see there is no work going on at present or we would go over - the woman told me that her husband was at Llangollen.""What a strange place to come to work at," said I, "out of crowded England. Here is nothing to be heard but the murmuring of waters and the rushing of wind down the gulleys. If the man's head is not full of poetical fancies, which I suppose it is not, as in that case he would be unfit for any useful employment, I don't wonder at his occasionally going to the public-house."After going a little further up the glen and observing nothing more remarkable than we had seen already, we turned back. Being overtaken by another violent shower just as we reached the Pandy Ithought that we could do no better than shelter ourselves within the public-house, and taste the ale, which the wife of the clog-maker had praised. We entered the little hostelry which was one of two or three shabby-looking houses, standing in contact, close by the Ceiriog. In a kind of little back room, lighted by a good fire and a window which looked up the Ceiriog valley, we found the landlady, a gentlewoman with a wooden leg, who on perceiving me got up from a chair, and made me the best curtsey that I ever saw made by a female with such a substitute for a leg of flesh and bone.
