CHAPTER LIX.
History of Twm O'r Nant--Eagerness for Learning--The First Interlude--The Cruel Fighter--Raising Wood--The Luckless Hour--Turnpike-Keeping--Death in the Snow--Tom's Great Feat--The Muse a Friend--Strength in Old Age--Resurrection of the Dead.
"I am the first-born of my parents," says Thomas Edwards.

"They were poor people and very ignorant.

I was brought into the world in a place called Lower Pen Parchell, on land which once belonged to the celebrated Iolo Goch.

My parents afterwards removed to the Nant (or dingle) near Nantglyn, situated in a place called Coom Pernant.

The Nant was the middlemost of three homesteads, which are in the Coom, and are called the Upper, Middle, and Lower Nant; and it so happened that in the Upper Nant there were people who had a boy of about the same age as myself, and forasmuch as they were better to do in the world than my parents, they having only two children whilst mine had ten, I was called Tom of the Dingle, whilst he was denominated Thomas Williams." After giving some anecdotes of his childhood he goes on thus:--"Time passed on till I was about eight years old, and then in the summer I was lucky enough to be sent to school for three weeks; and as soon as I had learnt to spell and read a few words I conceived a mighty desire to learn to write; so I went in quest of elderberries to make me ink, and my first essay in writing was trying to copy on the sides of the leaves of books the letters of the words I read.