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"Ye baines off Llywellyn app Tydwyll
"Lye in ys halie grounde

"He was a rite-gode wode-crafte manne
"And maide ye Table Rounde

Ob. A. D. 537."

Stanza 2d. It seems to have been the custom at King Arthur's court, that all the knights present, should dine at the king's table on Sunday; and we may in this stanza learn the antiquity of the English custom of having a plum pudding for dinner on Sundays. Vide the old ballad of Good Queen Bess.'

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"They thought they sinned on Sunday if they dined without a pudding." Stanzas 3d and 4th. The magnitude of King Arthur's kitchen establishment proves that he well understood the secret of Dutch courage, and that he fed his bully-boys,' in proportion to the work he wanted of them, I doubt whether any monarch of the holy alliance' can show such magnificent culinary utensils. Indeed, our forefathers had very enlarged notions on the subject of eating and drinking. The Heidelberg Tun' is an evidence of this. That vessel is of such capacity, that while the present generation are drinking the wine from the bottom, they are pouring in at the top that intended to wash the throats of their great grandchildren. Harmann Von Skunchbrüch in his Staaten der Bavaren'-a work on the Statistics of Bavaria,' mentions another, of which he writes, quaintly enough I confess, that it cost so much, and held so much, that the wine init, by the accumulation of compound interest, if it had not all been drank up in the second year, would in the year 1739, have cost twenty gold florins per gill. Vide page 1983. vol. 17th.

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Stanzas 5th and 6th present us with the component parts of this morsel of dainties," and it is enough to make one's mouth water to read them. From them we also learn, that the Cambrians were largely engaged in the West India trade, and also carried on a considerable traffick to Charleston for rice, and to Malaga for raisins. From some expressions of Aneuryn and Taliesin, in the fragments of the "Triads," we are informed that the Muscadel raisins of Barrell's brand were most esteemed; and Hoel ap Owen ap Gwyllwyn in his letter to Madog ap Owen Gwynedd, (commonly called Madoc,) `disproving his claim to the first discovery of a new continent, quotes a passage from Llywarc-Hen, expressly stating, that

the ships from Aberystwyth, were accustomed to bring home "barrells of BLACK HONEY from Yaymaykya."

Stanza 7th exhibits a delightful specimen of good housewifery. It is evident that the Queen, Guanharanhua or Gunaera, (for she is called by both names by Taliesin,) was overseer of the kitchen, and when she found the pudding bag too small, she is represented as piecing it with her "stuff petty-kote" to enlarge it. Such an instance of her desire to do every thing in her power to serve her husband, is so pleasing, and so unlike the conduct of the wives of the present age, that I am almost impelled with Don Quixote to declare myself her champion against the calumnies which have been cast upon her reputation. We also from these stanzas learn the antiquity of the woollen manufacture in the west of England, where it still continues to flourish. Whether the "stuffe" of which the petticoat was made was camblet, serge, bombazett or kersey, we unfortunately are not told.

In stanza 8th, we find the origin of the old proverb, that “a pudding over boiled is poison." In my note to the recipe for a plum pudding, in the "cook's oracle," I have proved that the meaning of this phrase is, that it cannot be over boiled.

Stanzas 10th, et infra. What a delightful picture is here presented of the bustle in the kitchen to dish up the ambrosial morsel, and the magnanimous attitude assumed by the knights, on taking their seats at the festal board. Then the king, drawing his sword excalibor, (which is a gaelic word, meaning slicer, and is used in the same sense as cheese toaster at the present day,) with a great flourish, and announcing the eagerness of his appetite-It is indeed a picture for painters to study. St. Toddy, who seems to have been the king's favourite and patron saint, was one of the missionary companions of St. Patrick. He preached chiefly in the southeastern part of Ireland, and was accustomed to baptize his converts, with a mixture of potsheen and hot water, to which they, in gratitude, gave his name, which it bears to this day. Llywarc-Hen in his hymn to St Tafy, (or David,) mentions this fact, and adds that the success of his labours was astonishing.

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And notwithstanding the craving of appetite, the court, more pious than courts in the present age, would not set down to eat, until grace before meat had been pronounced; when that was done, like true knights, and honest trencher-men, they did their devoirs to the pudding.

I am much pleased with the refined economy which they observed in those days, and which is evinced in the fact, that

the remains of the pudding was warmed over for breakfast the next morning; a mode of treatment, which you may believe, meo periculo, is much better than eating it cold.

I have recently seen a fragment of the Welsh verses among the Celtic manuscripts in the British Museum, and found a marginal note upon it in the hand writing of our friend Laurence Templeton Esq. stating that the author is supposed to be Aneuryn-Llwyrdych, or Aneuryn of the silver mouth, who, with Taliesin, was considered as chief of the bards of Wales in the middle of the sixth century, and whose heroic exploits against the Saxons, are celebrated in the fragments of the Triads.-Vide archæology of Wales, vol. 2d.

'W. K.

TO A LADY, ON THE DEATH OF HER DAUGHTER WHO KAD JUST

TAKEN THE VEIL.

(From the French of Gresset.)

Shall grief perverse, with midnight gloom,

Thy fairest days o'ercast,

While prostrate by a daughter's tomb,

Thy ceaseless sorrows last?

Ere the glad morn her gates unfolds,

They wake thee with a sigh,

And evening's pensive shade beholds
Tears dim thy lucid eye.

Just was the debt to sacred grief
For her whose fate I sing,
Whose bloom was lovely, as 'twas brief,

And perished in its spring.

The earlier hours of passionate wo
A secret joy mysterious know,
To jealous sorrow dear;

I did not then forbid their flow,
But gave thee tear for tear.

But short the term that nature gives
To unavailing sighs;

The constant grief that longer lives,
Seems morbid to the wise.

Thy dear remains, oh shade beloved!
In their dark prison pent,

Sleep on by all our moans unmoved,
Nor hear our sad lament.

Nor funeral dirge, nor anguish wild
Relentless fate can stay;

The mother mourns in va'n her child,
For death retains his prey.

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Still, still, the heartless monster calls
For victims, still he waves
The sickly torch that man appals
Still bowls around our frighted walls,
And covers earth with graves.

Still under the same cypress shade,
A common urn beneath,

Sees parents with their children laid,
Who followed them in death.
Down to that grave, by anguish worn,
Despairing should'st thou go,
Friendship a double loss must mourn,
Our tears anew must flow.

Or dost thou, with enforced sighs,
Mourn like the common train,
Who in their solemn liveries
Decorous sadness feign?

That it was sweet to weep, a school
Of yore maintained; but false their rule,
And false their poets sing;
From grief so lingering and so dull,
No joy can ever spring.

Deep in the glooms of savage wood,
The turtle wails her mate,
But reconciled to widowhood,

Forgets at length her state.
So faithful grief will strive in vain
Its cherished misery to retain
Nor lift its funeral pall;
Time will at last a triumph gain,
Who triumphs over all.

See by the smoaking altar, where
Her Iphigénia bled,

The mother stand in wild despair,

And ask to join the dead..

But other cares her bosom knew,

The wings of time as swift they flew,

Brushed off the parent's tears;

Our Iphigénia's memory, too,

Must yield to fleeting years.

Since then those pinions, broad and strong,

Must bear, perforce, away

Thy melancholy, nurst so long,

Why wail the dull delay ?

Chase the black poison from thy soul,

And time anticipate,

Thine altered mood let use controul,

And reason vindicate.

Not so complained the Grecian dame,
But armed her noble breast;
Her nature's weakness she o'eroame,
Her natural sighs represt.

'For why should I consume,' she said,
'With vain regrets my heart?
When smiling in its infant bed,
I knew one day its fragile thread
The fatal shears must part.'

Ah no! your rules, ye stoics cold,
In vain would I enforce-
Great God! thy temple's gates unfold,
And show our sole resource.
A hand divine alone can heal

The wounds the bleeding heart must feel,
Vain human counsels were;
Beside the sacred altar kneel,
The comforter is there.

Go, christian mother, to the shrine,
And wing thy griefs above,
Submissive to the power divine,
That chastens in its love.

Tho' rankles yet thy recent smart,
Eternal wisdom own,

That breaks the tenderest ties apart,
To fix the undivided heart

Upon itself alone.

Ere the decree of fate went forth,

Already she had died;

Snatched from the dangerous snares of earth,

Heaven claimed her as its bride,

From that vain world its votaries paint

With each delusive dye,

Shut out by every firm restraint,
Lived, for her God alone, the saint,

And knew no other tie.

Self-dedicated to the rite

Behold the victim move,

Where stands prepared the altar bright

Of everlasting love.

The incense mounts, the wreaths are hung;

Attends the sacrifice;

But whence those shrieks the crowd among?

Her bridal hymn I should have sung,

I chant her obsequies.

So fades a rose untimely strown,

Of all its petals shorn;

Plucked, with its budding charms half blown, An altar to adorn.

Its perfumes sweet, at morning light,

Through all the fane it si d;

Eve came, and dark descending night

Saw all its glories fled.

Just heaven! we mourn her young career

Cut short by sudden blight;

But own thy wisdom; every year
Was numbered in thy sight.

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