Read Ebook: Peeps at many lands: Wales by Wilmot Buxton E M Ethel Mary

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INTRODUCTION vii

FACING PAGE

CONWAY CASTLE 9

DISTANT VIEW OF CARNARVON BAY 16

VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY 25

CARNARVON CASTLE 32

BRAN THE BLESSED AT HARLECH CASTLE WATCHING MATHOLWCH'S FLEET ARRIVE FROM IRELAND 41

A DRUID PRIEST 48

ST. CATHERINE'S ROCK, TENBY 57

THE WYE NEAR RHAYADER 64

CARDIGAN BAY 73

OLD ROMAN BRIDGE NEAR SWANSEA 80

INTRODUCTION

These peeps at Wales will take us into a country busy with its various industries of coal-mining, slate-quarrying, and wool manufacture, yet one which, in spite of its modern developments and trade interests, has never lost the magic and glamour of an earlier age.

Every country-town, almost every hill and mound in the district, has its legend, its romance, which lives in the hearts of an intensely patriotic and imaginative people, and blends the past and the present into one.

This is the reason why, in these peeps at various spots in Wales, we have often chosen those unknown to the tourist, but interesting to those who care for the people as well as for the place, because of some legend or history that paints, as nothing else can do, their life in the days of old.

Romance broods over all: the spell of the wizard Merlin has touched vale and hill; Arthur and his Round Table, though belonging originally to the sister-country of Brittany, has migrated hither and left his name and those of his Knights in every part of the land; Taliesin, the marvellous child-bard, still sings beyond the mountain-peaks.

The actual history of Wales, too, stained with blood though it often is, has its romance as well; for what can be more romantic than the hopeless struggle for a lost cause as carried on by the last Llewelyn and by the brave Glendower?

Some of this history, some of these traditions, we shall read in these pages as we visit the places with which they are connected; and because of these we shall have to turn our backs upon many a spot, better known and more frequented than those we have chosen, but, perhaps, for that very reason, less interesting, since, owing to the crowds of English tourists which beset them, they have lost much of their Celtic character.

E. M. W.-B.

WALES

WILD WALES

Once upon a time, says a famous Welsh legend, a certain witch named Caridwen set to work to brew a cauldron of knowledge that might make her youngest son the wisest man in the world. Now, this cauldron had to boil for a year and a day, and at the end of that time it would yield three drops of precious liquid which would make whoever drank them the wisest of all men. So she set a passing tramp named Gwion Bach to stir the cauldron and to keep it on the boil, and made up her mind to kill him directly the time was up, lest he should learn the secret of the magic liquid.

But she miscalculated the time, and so it happened that one day, in her absence, the three magic drops flew up out of the cauldron and fell upon the finger of Gwion Bach. Feeling his finger thus scalded, he put it to his mouth and sucked it, and immediately he became very wise, and knew what Caridwen meant to do to him.

So he fled to his own people, and the cauldron, left unstirred, burst in two, so that the poisonous liquid that was left, poured out and flowed into a stream near by, and all the cattle that drank of that stream went mad and died.

When Caridwen saw this, she made haste to catch Gwion Bach and put him to death; but he, when he saw her running after him, changed himself into a hare, for the magic potion had given him skill of all kinds. But she immediately turned herself into a greyhound, and had nearly caught him, when he sprang into a river and changed himself into a fish. Then she became an otter, and chased him till, hard pressed, he took the form of a bird. Caridwen then became a hawk, and chased him till, dead-beat, he fell into a granary and changed himself into a grain of wheat. The witch promptly became a high-crested black hen, and scratched among the grains till she found him. She was about to swallow him, when he, now almost at the end of his resources, became a beautiful little child. Then Caridwen, not having the heart to kill him, put him into a leathern bag and cast him into the sea, not far from Aberystwith, just below the Weir of Gwyddno, on April 29.

Now, Gwyddno had a most unlucky son named Elphin, who was "always needing and never getting"; and in order that he might gain something for himself, his father granted him all the weir should contain on May-day. So the nets were set, but in the morning they were quite empty save for a leathern bag which had caught in one of them. Then said one of his companions: "Till this day, the weir has been worth a hundred pounds' worth of fish every May morning. Now see how your luck has turned them away, and left you nothing but a skin."

"Nay," said Elphin; "perhaps the skin bag may have something in it that is worth more than a hundred pounds."

So they opened it, and a little lad peeped out.

"See what a bright face!" they cried. And Elphin, heavy with disappointment, said, "Let him be called Taliesin, then" , and took him home behind him on his horse. But as they rode along the boy began to sing to him so sweet a song of consolation that Elphin marvelled, and asked where he had learnt a thing so beautiful. Then Taliesin replied that, though he was but little, he was, nevertheless, very wise. When they reached the house, Gwyddno asked his son if he had had a good haul. "Father," replied Elphin, "I have caught a poet-minstrel."

"Alas! What good will that do thee?" asked his father; but Taliesin answered for himself: "It will do him more good than the weir ever did for thee!"

And so it came about; for Taliesin, the magic child, not only saved Elphin's life and liberty when he was in great danger and made him a rich and fortunate man; he also brought high fame to the House of Gwyddno by his very name and connection with it. For Taliesin, the rest of whose wonderful story must be read elsewhere, became the minstrel, and bard, and prophet of the Britain of old days; and this was one of his prophecies made concerning the people of his land:

"Their Lord they shall praise, Their language they shall keep, Their land they shall lose Except Wild Wales."

Let us see how the prophecy has been fulfilled.

When the Romans conquered Britain, they found the hardest part of their task lay in that north-western part of the island which is now called Wales. The people were more uncivilized than the Britons of the south-east, but they knew how to fight to the death; and the Roman writer paints for us a vivid picture of the grim lines of warriors, urged on by the cries of wild women dancing a witch-dance in the van, and by the words of the white-robed, ivy-crowned Druids, who called down the curses of the sky-god upon the Roman foe.

Even when this part of Britain at length was subdued, the inhabitants were very little influenced by their conquerors. They used the fine Roman roads laid down for the passage of their conquerors' troops from Caerleon to Chester and along the coast; they marvelled at the pretty Roman villas that arose upon their borders; but they kept their own language and their own customs, and were influenced scarcely at all by the civilization which was spreading fast in the south and east of Britain. One thing, however, they eagerly embraced, and that was the Christian faith, and that is one reason why many Welsh words connected with the religious services of the Church are merely Latin words in disguise.

Fortunately for this Celtic spirit of imagination that turns all it touches to gold, the next attempt at conquest shook rather than shattered the independence of Wild Wales. But we shall best understand and enjoy this part of the story of the land if we read it in connection with the particular places at which the more striking events occurred.

SNOWDONIA, THE FASTNESS OF LLEWELYN

The story of the great struggle of Wales for freedom under a Prince of her own is laid, fitly enough, amid the wild scenery that surrounds the highest point in Southern Britain. The whole district of Snowdon, with its grim moorlands and towering heights forming a bulwark to the western shore, breathes an air of freedom, and it was here that the last Llewelyn defied the might of the first English Edward.

But the chieftains of Central and South Wales turned traitor, his own brother David deserted him, and the Prince, driven back to the inmost recesses of his mountain fastness, was forced to lay down his arms. Preferring to have him as friend rather than enemy, Edward behaved generously enough, merely seizing a large slice of his dominions, confining him to the Snowdon district, and providing that the title "Prince of Wales" should cease at his death.

Four years elapsed of outward peace and inward commotion. Then came a rumour of a strange event. Long years before, Merlin, a famous Welsh bard and prophet, had foretold that "when English money became round, a Prince of Wales should be crowned in London." In 1282 a new copper coinage had taken the place of the usual breaking of the silver penny into halves and quarters; and in that same year the traitor David, who had been rewarded with an English earldom, threw off his allegiance to Edward, and appeared with an army before his brother's dwelling-place. Gladly did Llewelyn once more raise the standard of revolt, and a desperate struggle for freedom began. The great army of the English King, encircling the Snowdon range, which was the headquarters of the Prince, drew in closer and closer; but meantime the English soldiers were suffering terribly in that hard winter of 1282, which the hardy Welshmen, living in the snowbound caves of the mountain, seemed to pass through unheeding. As long as Llewelyn was there to inspire and cheer, pain and even death were to be welcomed; but almost by chance the men of Wales lost their leader in a quite unimportant skirmish. Llewelyn had emerged from his mountain lair, and, hoping to drive the English from the Brecknock district, had ridden forth to meet some allies. He was met by a party of English horsemen and cut down by an almost unknown knight. With Llewelyn, "our last ruler," as the Welsh still call him, the cause of Welsh independence was lost. At Rhuddlan, in Flintshire, you may still see a bit of the wall remaining where the Statute of Wales was passed by the Parliament held there in 1284; and in that Statute Edward showed the greatest wisdom; for, instead of forcing English laws and customs upon them, he allowed the Welsh to keep their own as far as possible, altering them only where it was clearly for their own advantage.

Behind us, as we look towards the mountains, lie the Menai Straits, spanned by the fine suspension bridge, so strong and yet so fairy-like with its arches of Anglesey marble, that it has been called a "poem in stone and iron." This bridge continues the Holyhead road to the island of Anglesey, the home of the Llewelyns, where the soil is so fertile that an old saying declares that it can provide corn enough for all the people in Wales; and thence, across the island, we may reach Holyhead, the starting-point for the Irish mail-boats.

Travelling towards Snowdon by rail to Llanberis, the scenery changes rapidly from pretty woods and pastures to that of rugged heights, crags, and rock-bound lakes. The mountain valley in which the village lies is commanded by the very ancient Welsh castle of Dolbadarn, once the prison of Owen, the brother of the ill-fated Llewelyn, Lord of Snowdon. Below is the great lake, and beyond the wild Pass of Llanberis, bounded by a "tumultuous chaos of rock and crag, as if Titans in some burst of fury had been rending cliffs and flinging their fragments far and wide." If we are lazy, we may climb Snowdon by the little mountain train, but if not, we set off up the ascent till, just below the steepest part, we turn off a little from the path to look at the wonderful hollow of Cwmglas, high up in the mountain-side, with its two tiny tarns, surrounded by "striated" or glacier-marked rocks.

A steep scramble brings us to the top of Snowdon, and if it is a clear day a glorious view rewards us. Beyond the line of sea is the blue range of the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland; below us, half hidden by the crags and shoulders of the huge mass, lie lakes and valleys, and the quiet lowlands stretching to the borders of the Atlantic.

Through one of the loveliest of these valleys we reach the mountain-girt village of Beddgelert. You all know the story of Llewelyn and his faithful dog, killed by his master because he thought he had eaten the child he had in reality saved from a wolf. Here you may see the stones which mark his tomb; but you will probably be told that the story is but a myth, and that the grave is really that of a Welsh chieftain named Gelert, and not of a dog at all. You may console yourselves with knowing that, whether this is true or not, the picturesque little village was a favourite hunting-spot for the Llewelyn whose story we know in history, and that the curious little church there is part of one of the oldest monasteries in Wales.

Another beautiful valley leads to the famous pass and bridge of Aberglaslyn. Here the huge cliffs on either hand approach so closely to one another that there is barely room for road and river; and the wooded slopes, as they near the water, afford a strong contrast to the wild rocks above.

The town of Conway, "rugged without, beautiful within," is a fine example of the fortified walled towns of the Middle Ages. The walls are triangular, and are said to represent a Welsh harp, and are entered by crumbling stone gateways.

The poet Gray makes this neighbourhood the scene of an event upon which the light of history throws grave doubt. The English King, believing that the conquest of Wales would never be completed while the bards remained to stir up the patriotic zeal of their fellow-countrymen, is said to have ordered a general massacre of them on the banks of the River Conway. It was the prophetic curse pronounced on the King by one of these bards, standing "on a rock, whose haughty brow frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood," which

"Scattered wild dismay As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He wound with toilsome march his long array."

In spite of "Cambria's curse and Cambria's tears," the English King must have felt fairly secure within the massive walls of the castle, whose banqueting-hall, now open to the sky, and ivy-grown, is of such noble length and breadth that it might well have contained a regiment of retainers. The passionate patriotism of Wales had little chance against the solid strength of English builders and English troops.

IN GLENDOWER LAND

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