In 1693 they had a lot of fires in the Parish of Llanfihangel. Haystacks would catch fire and the animals would die and they could not find the cause although the farmers kept watch night and day.
The Ynysfor farm near Llanfrothen had a pack of fox hounds and you could see them around every year as they were trying to keep the number of foxes down as the farmers were losing their lambs. I went with them once and when they were near Moel y Glo the men, who were in charge, put the terriers in amongst the rocks and a fox came out but they kept their hounds until the fox had gone a good way and then the sport, as they called it, started. I went home and we heard afterwards that the fox was caught near Dolgelau late in the evening.
The farmers used to take all the dead cattle to Ynysfor to be cut up as there was a lot of dogs to be fed.
There was a brass band in Talsarnau in the old times and my grandmother would name some of the men to me, here are some of the names:- Salmon Jones, Dafydd Jones y Crydd and his brother John Jones, they would march through the village.
We would catch big eels in the cut and take them to Miss Jones, Cottage as she was fond of them, and when the diver was repairing the sluice gates at Ty Gwyn he caught a big eel and we took it to Miss Jones. The sad tale was that he lost his watch when he caught the eel.
I had a good laugh in the quarry once. I took a big crab with me in a tin and let it crawl and if you had seen the faces of the men, I'm sure many of them had never seen a crab before.
During the first war they quarried quite a lot of manganese from the mountain above Llyn Eiddew Bach down to the station to be loaded up on the railway. Humphrey Williams was one that was with the horse and cart. Some of the men slept up there, I don't know what their huts were like.