ABSTRACT
In the neighbouring village, not far from Mr. Evans’s house, there dwelt a poor man whose name was John Price: in his youthful days he had addicted himself to poetry and music, talents not uncommon in Wales; but nding, like other poets, that the Muses seldom could maintain their votaries, he listened to the noble trumpet of ambition, and enlisted in a marching regiment, in the twentieth year of his age. He served his country with courage and delity for several years, though he found Mars a severer master, and almost as bad a patron as Apollo. At last having received a wound in the head at the unfortunate battle of Fontenoy,38 which ended in a de uxion,39 by which he lost his sight; he was discharged the service, and returned to his native soil, to subsist on a small pension which the bounty of his country allowed him./
Here he returned to his rst mistresses the Muses, and composed ballads on his achievements and misfortunes, which he set to the ancient music of his country, and sung, accompanied with the harp, on which he played with tolerable skill. e charms of his music and of his pension got him a wife, and they between them got a daughter, who was now grown a rosy, buxom girl, with hazel eyes, and auburn hair, whose curling tresses used to ensnare the hearts of all the young fellows who came to listen to her father’s music, and enjoy a pot of ale; for the good housewifery of the wife brewed excellent ale, which, accompanied with their music, they retailed in the village, and, to say the truth, it was an entertainment not altogether inelegant. Even Ned himself was charmed; and though he never descended to sit with the company that usually resorted there, yet he loved the old man, and used to go at times, when he knew the country people were otherwise engaged, to hear his tales and his songs, and to play/ himself upon the harp – on which he soon made such pro ciency as to touch it with far more delicacy and taste than Price himself.
