The notion of the general Welsh education which her intelligence
gave us was carried indefinitely farther by the grocer's boy to
whom our friend presented me one evening, after he had been
struggling to make me understand what an _englyn_ was. I am
able now to explain that it is a polite stanza which the Welsh
send with a present of fruit or flowers, or for a greeting upon
any worthy occasion. It is rhymed, sometimes at both ends of the
lines, and sometimes in the middle of them, and it presents all
the difficulties of euphony which the indomitable Welsh glory in
overcoming. But when my friend took me in hand, my ignorance was
of so dense a surface that he could make no impression on it, and
he said at last, "Let us go into this grocery. There's a boy here
who will _show_ you what an englyn is," and after I was
introduced the kind youth did so with pleasure, while he sold
candles to one customer, soap to another, cheese to another, and
herring to another. He first wrote the englyn in Welsh, and when
I had sufficiently admired it in that tongue (for which no
atavistic knowledge really served me), he said he would put it
into English, and he did so.
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