Proper Cardi!

This was a common nickname for a  sharp Cardiganshire character intent on 'besting' you.  The article about clogs on Lois' Blog  (morgaine le fay antique textiles and more ) reminds me of a marvellous old girl  I knew as a child. She lived, alone,  on a little farm with a river running beside, near our favourite beach Traeth (beach)Penbryn .  She was a fine figure, with a head of snowy white hair usually worn with hairpins falling out, under a man's flat cap.  She was very bonny with lovely smooth pink cheeks, always wore a flannel shirt and a black wool skirt, with a red flannel petticoat underneath, often a shawl, also black wool with a fringe, round her shoulders, fastened with a big safety pin, and,over her skirt she tied with binder twine a big farm sack.  Below were thick black hand knitted wool socks and the clogs.  She had some cows and used to call them "Bwlch, Bwlch" in a tremendous voice we could hear in our holiday cottage just across a small valley.  One day she was completely toothless and she mumbled to us children that she was calling the cows on the little bridge beside her house and her false teeth had fallen out and been swept away.  My brother and I were quite hysterical with laughter - false teeth were a funny and slightly taboo subject for us anyway and I confess that it was a good story to repeat  to all our friends.  Actually there was another story about this old spinster that fascinated us.  When she was a child, Nanw was bitten by a mad rabid dog and she was taken to Paris and innoculated by the great Louis Pasteur himself at his clinic and cured of the rabies.   RIP Nanw Davies, Penbryn, Cards.