Aberystwyth is a coastal university town located in County Ceredigion (formerly Cardiganshire) at the confluence of the rivers Ystwyth and Rheidol. The name comes from the Welsh chieftain Ceredig, who drove the Irish out of much of Wales in the fifth century. Laetitia chose Aberystwyth as the day’s destination with a certain amount of trepidation, since it is a favorite place-name used by limerick writers, and writing a limerick that hadn’t already been done would be a challenge.
They began the day with a hike on the Dylan Thomas Trail. The trail runs from Llanon to New Quay in County Ceredigion. Points of interest include places where Thomas lived with his wife Caitlin and the homes of those who encouraged and published his writings. Back in town that afternoon, Laetitia took her group to the Aberystwyth Arts Center, where a special traveling exhibit was on display. The exhibit featured the work of Albrecht Dürer, the German engraver, printmaker, and painter from Nuremburg whose life spanned the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
As her group fanned out to inspect the exhibit’s offerings, Laetitia found Dürer’s 1507 painting of Adam and Eve especially interesting. The picture wouldn’t have struck her as odd if she hadn’t visited the herbosexual bar in Cockpole Green (Day 346) and remembered the bartender’s story about classical herbosexual art. In the painting, the figures are nude with their genitalia covered with leaves but the leaves are still attached to branches from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, so someone with a certain mindset might imagine that Adam and Eve are being fondled by the tree as Eve reached up to take the fruit from the serpent’s mouth. Laetitia smiled. She didn’t know whether she believed the Cockpole Green bartender’s story, and it really didn’t matter. Albrecht Dürer had given her the limerick of the day. Tomorrow, she was starting a new series of tours in the eastern United States and all of Canada. When she finished those tours she was coming back to Wales first before continuing around the world.
There’s a painting just now in Aberystwyth
Showing Eve just before she’s dismissed with
Young Adam, her man
When she ignores the ban
And takes fruit from the mouth the snake hissed with.