JENNY JONES.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1867, 17 February 1880, Page 2

JENNY JONES.

Daring my sojourn at Plaa Teg, we made a brilliant equestrian expedition to Llangollen. Dean Boper and his daughter, Mr, Mrs, and Miss Boper, myself, and the respective grooms, formed an imposing cavalcade. After a charming ramble up to Castle Dinaa Bran we had a jolly dinner at the hotel, and during the repast were entertained by a venerable white-bearded Druid, one of the most splendid specimens of his craft I ever encountered. The old fellow was a noted artist, and had a fine collection of all the most popular melodies, and among them one I had never heard before. He said it was some twenty years since he had first met with it. It was called “ Cader Idris ; ” and I made him p’ay it over to me till I bad learned it correctly. Elated with my discovery, for snch it really seemed to be—none of my friends having heard it before any more than myself—l lost no time in putting words to it, and the result was a great success. At the picturesque fatmhouse at Pontblyddyn. in which I lived, was a pretty little Welsh dairymaid, named Jenny Jones, and a simple ploughman called David Morgan. The ballad I th*>n composed to my newlydiscovered national air, bearing the young lady's name, has since made the interesting i couple familiar to London ears. They would, j perhaps, be astonished to know their history publicly recorded, and blush to find it fame. This, of course, was years before I had any idea of going upon the stage, and I only mention it in connection with the mortifying disenchantment that awaited me. I had been singing my new ballad one evening, at the house of some friends in London, to a tolerably large par'y, when an old gentleman in a voluminous white choker and a shiny suit of black, looking very like a Methodist parson, came up to me with a very serious face, to remonstrate with me, I feared, for the levity I had been guilty of, and to my surprise said, “ My dear sir, allow me to express to you the great gratification the perfect ballad you have just sung has afforded me, and to assure you that I appreciate the honor you have done me in selecting for its iPnstration an air of my humble composing ” With a look of ineffable pity, I answered the poor maniac, “ I am sorry, dear sir, to rob you of so pleasant a delusion, but unfortunately the air is one I picked np myself years ago among the Welsh mountains, and is, I flitter myself, quite original, and hitherto unknown ” “ Pardon me, in my turn, dear sir, said the old gentleman, smiling, “if I inform you that the air in question was composed by me for the eisteddfod in 1801, obtaining the prize at that festival. I named it ‘ Cader Idris,’ and I shall have gre <t pleasure in sending you the music, published at the time, with my name attached to it,” Patatraa 1 down went my great antiquarian discovery, and I was left desolate. The old gentleman was John Parry, the Welsh composer, and father of the illustrious John, whose genius has delighted thousands, and when, long afterwards, I introduced the ballad of “ Jenny Jones ” in my piece of 11 He Would be an Actor.” and it got to be whistled about the streets, he presented me with a handsome silver cup, with a complimentary inscription in most elegant Welsh, in commemoration of the event. —“ Life of 0. Mathews, by Charles Dickens.”