Ti won kew dnalla kcuf o' dew

TI WON KEW DNALLA KCUF O’ DEW!!  BY JUSTIN BARWICK

It must have been way back in the sultry summer of 1953 when I was hitch hiking in the rolling hills of north Wales.  I happened to stumble across a most peculiar little village which went by the tortuous name of: Ti won kew dnalla kcuf o’ dew.  When I reached the fringes of this particularly picturesque corner of Wales it must have been around seven o’clock in the morning.  I stumbled across the milkman busy on his rounds.  He lifted a crate of milk bottles and muttered the following curious phrase under his breath: ‘When a dog is drowning everyone offers him drink.’  I said a quick hello and carried on my way through the village.  I also saw the postman on his rounds.  He knocked at a door and handed over a large and shapeless parcel to the stocky woman waiting within with tightly folded arms.  He cheerfully came out with another bizarre phrase: ‘Many men have many minds, But women have but two: Everything would they have, And nothing would they do.’ I followed him at a cautious distance and observed him handing over five more parcels to five more unsmiling and stocky women, each one accompanied by another bizarre turn of phrase.  They were in order of telling: ‘Many estates are spent in the getting, Since women for tea forsook spinning and knitting.  And men for punch forsook hewing and splitting.’,
‘Many hands will carry off much plunder.’ to which the second woman replied rather sharply:  ‘Ingratitude is worse than witchcraft.’ His comment to the third houswife was most peculiar: ‘All the dogs follow the salt bitch.’ The third woman replied:
‘A man without reason is a beast in season.’ To the fourth woman - who was clad entirely in black, as though in mourning for a close relative - he proclaimed:
‘He that lets his horse drink at every lake and his wife go to every wake; shall never have a good horse, Nor a good wife which is worse.’ The fourth woman replied:
‘He that gapeth till he be fed, Well may he gape until he be dead.’  And this is what he said to the fifth very elderly woman: ‘Long life hath long misery.’ She replied in bitter tones: ‘Idle brains are the devil’s workshop.’ 

Not long after that rather odd interlude in my thus far fairly uneventful life I happened to glimpse a small sign in a cottage window it said in bold green capital letters:

HE WILL NEVER HAVE A GOOD THING CHEAP
THAT IS AFRAID TO ASK THE PRICE!
THESE GREAT RICH MEN MUST TAKE THEIR EASE
I’ THEIR INN!

I deciphered these unusual words as being an invitation to stay in the cottage for a reasonable fee.  It didn’t mention if breakfast was included or not, but I was too tired to care.  I knocked on the door and heard the sound of footsteps hesitantly approaching.  Another grim faced woman answered the door. She said: ‘To take out of one pocket to put in the other.’ I enquired about the price of a single night’s bed and board and she replied rather obscurely: ‘Poor foks are glad of porridge.’  and ushered me inside the gloomy hallway.  I assumed this to mean that the price of a night’s rest would be my preparing the breakfast for my hosts and any other guests early the next day.

The woman showed me around her poky kitchen chattering away in broad Welsh, so that I didn’t have the faintest notion of what she could be talking about.  All of a sudden as we re-entered the hallway I felt a throbbing pain in my temple.  It felt like the mother of all headaches.  I touched my head and grimaced as though in pain.  My landlady understood me immediately and hurriedly showed me into her front parlour. 

I was startled to see a stout chap reclining in a moth eaten old armchair.  The startling thing about him was the state of his bald head.  It was a mass of raw and bloody blisters.  The landlady attempted to reassure me with the following mind blowing words:
‘I merely applied several blistering plasters to my poor husband’s head after detaching the leeches which had successfully removed a healthy quantity of my poor tormented lover’s diseased blood.  That would be the source of his headache as you well know.  It is sometimes proper to blister the whole head to achieve a good clean outcome.  Now then, just you sit down here and I’ll fetch the leeches!’  I let the deluded woman settle me down on a creaky sofa and as soon as she had left the room and clambered stiffly upstairs I ran out of the front door, slamming it vengefully shut behind me. 

What bizarre and surreal hinterland had I stumbled into?  I didn’t bother looking for any more bed and breakfast establishments in the godforesaken village of  ‘Ti won kew dnalla kcuf o’ dew’  Instead I hitched up my weighty rucksack more securely and set off along the road out of the village at a speedy pace.  About three miles beyond the village I came across a horse and cart.  The driver waved down at me and said remarkably cheerfully: ‘Sudden joy kills sooner than excessive grief.’ before moving on towards Ti won kew dnalla kcuf o’ dew accompanied by the hypnotic clip clopping of a sturdy pair of shire horses. 

I never went near the place again, but for all I know it might very well still exist, somewhere in the misty hinterlands of northern Wales, still entirely populated by its proverb spouting eccentrics with their crazy quack remedies for headaches and fevers.  And that is all that I have to say on the matter...