fool,” cried he, “I was foretelling of my two callings—­as lawyer and poet—­and which sayest thou now bears greatest resemblance, whether a lawyer to a raven, or a poet to a whale?  How many will a single lawyer lay bare of flesh to swell his own paunch, and oh! so callously doth he shed blood and leave the man half dead!  The poet, too, what fish can gulp as much as he?  And though he hath always a sea round him, not all the ocean can quench his thirst.  And when a man is both a poet and a lawyer, who can tell whether he is fish or flesh, and especially if he be a courtier as well, as I was, and had to change his taste with every mouth.  But tell me, are there many of these folk now on earth?” “Yes, plenty,” answered I, “if a man can patch together any sort of metre, straightway he becomes a chaired bard.  And of the others, there is such a plague of barristers, petty lawyers, and clerks that the locusts of Egypt preyed less heavily on the country than they.  In your time, sir, there were only roadside bargains and a hands-breadth of writing on the purchase of a hundred pound farm, and a cairn or an Arthur’s quoit {49b} raised as a memorial of the purchase and boundaries.  People have not the courage to do so nowadays, but more cunning, knavery, and written parchment, wide as a cromlech, is necessary to bind the bargain, and for all that it would be strange if no flaw existed or were contrived therein.”  “Well, well,” said Taliesin, “I would not be worth a straw there, I may as well be here; truth will never be found where there are many bards, nor justice where many lawyers, until health be found where there be many doctors.”

Upon this a grey-haired, writhled shrimp, who had heard of the presence of an earthly man, came and fell at my feet, weeping profusely.  “Alack, poor fellow,” cried I, “what art thou?” “One who suffers too much wrong on earth day by day,” he replied, “and your soul must obtain me justice.”  “What is thy name?” I enquired.  “I am called Someone,” was the answer, “and there is no love-message, slander, lie, or tale to breed quarrels, but that I am blamed for most of them.  ‘In sooth,’ said one, ’she is an excellent wench, and has spoken highly of you to Someone, although someone great was seeking her.’  ‘I heard Someone,’ said another, ‘reckoning a debt of nine hundred pounds on such and such an estate.’  ’I saw Someone yesterday,’ said the beggar, ’with a mottled neckerchief, like a sailor, who had come with a grain vessel to the next port;’ and so every rag and tag mauls me to suit his own evil purpose.  Some call me ‘Friend.’  ‘A friend told me,’ saith one, ’that so and so does not intend leaving a single farthing to his wife, and that there is no love lost between them.’  Others further disgrace me and call me a crow:  ’a crow tell me there is some trickery going on,’ they say.  Yea, some call me by a more honoured name—­Old Man, and yet not a half of the omens, prophecies, and cures attributed to me are really mine.  I never counselled