Her performances down mines were things of the underworld.  England clapped hands, merely objecting to her not having changed her garb for the picador’s or matador’s, before she seized the bull.  Wales adopted and was proud of her in any costume.  Welshmen North and South, united for the nonce, now propose her gallantry as a theme to the rival Bards at the next Eisteddfod.  She is to sit throned in full assembly, oak leaves and mistletoe interwoven on her head, a white robe and green sash to clothe her, and the vanquished beast’s horns on a gilded pole behind the dais; hearing the eulogies respectively interpreted to her by Colonel Fluellen Wythan at one ear, and Captain Agincourt Gower at the other.  A splendid scene; she might well insist to be present.

There, however, we are at the pitch of burlesque beyond her illustrious lord’s capacity to stand.  Peremptory orders from England arrive, commanding her return.  She temporizes, postpones, and supplicates to have the period extended up to the close of the Eisteddfod.  My lord’s orders are imperatively repeated, and very blunt.  He will not have her ’continue playing the fool down there.’  She holds her ground from August into February, and then sets forth, to undergo the further process of her taming at Esslemont in England; with Llewellyn and Vaughan and Cadwallader, and Watkyn and Shenkyn and the remains of the race of Owen Tudor, attending her; vowed to extract a receipt from the earl her lord’s responsible servitors for the safe delivery of their heroine’s person at the gates of Esslemont; ich dien their trumpeted motto.

Counting the number at four and twenty, it wears the look of an invasion.  But the said number is a ballad number, and has been since the antique time.  There was, at a lesser number, enough of a challenge about it for squires of England, never in those days backward to pick up a glove or give the ringing rejoinder for a thumb-bite, to ride out and tilt compliments with the Whitechapel Countess’s green cavaliers, rally their sprites and entertain them exactly according to their degrees of dignity, as exhibited by their ’haviour under something of a trial; and satisfy also such temporary appetites as might be excited in them by (among other matters left to the luck of events) a metropolitan play upon the Saxon tongue, hard of understanding to the leeky cocks until their ready store of native pepper seasons it; which may require a corresponding English condiment to rectify the flavour of the stew.

Now the number of Saxe-Normans riding out to meet and greet the Welshmen is declared to have not exceeded nine.  So much pretends to be historic, in opposition to the poetic version.  They would, we may be sure, have made it a point of honour to meet and greet their invading guests in precisely similar numbers a larger would have overshot the mark of courtesy; and doubtless a smaller have fallen deplorably short of it.  Therefore, an acquaintance with her chivalrous, if less impulsive, countrymen compels to the dismissing of the Dame’s ballad authorities.  She has every right to quote them for her own good pleasure, and may create in others an enjoyment of what has been called ‘the Mackrell fry.’