Wild Wales: The People, Language, & Scenery
by George Borrow · English · Gutenberg #37665 · 1,313,126 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Wild Wales: The People, Language, & Scenery
Author: George Borrow
Editor: Theodore Watts-Dunton
Release date: October 8, 2011 [eBook #37665]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37665
Credits: Transcribed from the June 1906 J. M. Dent edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILD WALES: THE PEOPLE, LANGUAGE, & SCENERY ***
Transcribed from the June 1906 J. M. Dent edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
WILD WALES:
_The_ PEOPLE
LANGUAGE
& SCENERY
by GEORGE BORROW
INTRODUCTION
TALK ABOUT “WILD WALES”
BY
THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON
I
WHY “WILD WALES” IS A SIMPLE ITINERARY
I have been invited by the editor of this series to say a few words upon
Borrow’s “Wild Wales.” The invitation has come to me, he says, partly
because during the latter days of Borrow’s life I had the privilege as a
very young man of enjoying his friendship, and partly because in my
story, “Aylwin,” and in my poem, “The Coming of Love,” I have shown
myself to be a true lover of Wales—a true lover, indeed, of most things
Cymric.
Let me begin by saying that although the book is an entirely worthy
compeer of “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” and although like them it is
written in the autobiographic form, it belongs, as I propose to show
further on, to an entirely different form of narrative from those two
famous books. And it differs in this respect even from “The Bible in
Spain.” Unlike that splendid book, it is just a simple, uncoloured
record of a walking tour through the Principality. As in any other
itinerary, events in “Wild Wales” are depicted as they actually occurred,
enriched by none of that glamour in which Borrow loved to disport
himself. I remember once asking him why in this book he wrote an
autobiographic narrative so fundamentally different from “Lavengro” and
“The Romany Rye”—why he had made in this book none of those excursions
into the realms of fancy which form so charming a part of his famous
quasi-autobiographic narratives. It was entirely characteristic of him
that he remained silent as he walked rather sulkily by my side. To find
an answer to the queries, however, is not very difficult. Making a tour
as he did on this occasion in the company of eye-witnesses—eye-witnesses
of an extremely different temper from his own, eye-witnesses, moreover,
whom he specially wished to satisfy and please—his wife and
stepdaughter—he found it impossible to indulge in his bohemian
proclivities and equally impossible to give his readers any of those
romantic coincidences, those quaint arrangements of incidents to
illustrate theories of life, which illuminate his other works. The tour
was made in the summer and autumn of 1854; during the two or three years
following, he seems to have been working upon this record of it. The
book was announced for publication in 1857, but it was not until 1862
that his publisher, who had been so greatly disappointed by the reception
given to “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” took courage to offer it to the
public.
II
BORROW’S EQUIPMENT FOR WRITING UPON THE WELSH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
In 1860 Borrow’s interest in Wales and Welsh literature had specially
been shown by the publication of his English version of “Gweledigaethau y
Bardd Cwsg,” a curious kind of allegory in the form of a vision, written
in the early years of the eighteenth century by a Welsh clergyman named
Ellis Wynne. The English reader of Borrow’s works will remember the
allusion made to this book. As might have been expected, Borrow’s
translation of this Welsh prose classic is not very trustworthy, and it
has been superseded by the translation of Mr. R. Gwyneddon Davies,
published in 1897. A characteristic matter connected with Borrow’s
translation is that in the _Quarterly Review_ for January 1861 he himself
reviewed it anonymously, and not without appreciation of its merits—a
method which may be recommended to those authors who are not in sympathy
with their reviewers. The article showed a great deal of what may be
called Borrovian knowledge of the Welsh language and Welsh literature,
and perhaps it is not ungenerous to say a good deal of Borrovian
ignorance too. For never was Nature’s love of whim in the fashioning of
individuals more delightfully exemplified than in the case of Borrow’s
irresistible desire for scholarship. Nothing whatever had he of the
temperament of the true scholar—nothing whatever of the philologist’s
endowment, and yet to be recognized as a scholar was the great ambitious
dream of his life. I wish I had time to compare his disquisitions upon
the Welsh language and literature in this article with a very rare little
book on the same subject, the “Sketch of the History of the Welsh
Language and Literature,” by a remarkable man as entirely forgotten now
as Borrow is well remembered—Thomas Watts of the British Museum. In the
one case we get nebulous speculation and fanciful induction based upon
Borrovian knowledge; in the other, a solid mass of real learning
accompanied by the smallest possible amount of speculation or fanciful
induction.
Borrow had a certain something of Mezzofanti’s prodigious memory for
words, accompanied by the great Italian’s lack of philological science.
It may be remembered in this connection that Mr. Thomas St. E. Hake in
his reminiscences in _Notes and Queries_ of a relation of mine, the late
Mr. James Orlando Watts, says that the learned recluse used to express a
good deal of humorous contempt of Borrow’s “method of learning languages
from dictionaries only,” without any grammatical knowledge. And these
strictures, if we consider them, will explain much in regard to the
philological disquisitions in “Lavengro,” “The Romany Rye,” and “Wild
Wales,” where the knowledge is all “dictionary knowledge.” But it was
not the shaky philology that caused “Wild Wales” to fall almost dead from
the press. What, then, was the cause? It arose from the fact, as I
hinted above, that “Wild Wales” belongs to a different kind of
autobiographic narrative from “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” and also,
if the truth must be said, from “The Bible in Spain.”
At the period when Borrow wrote this book the great and vigorous
renascence of the Cymric idea, the new and deep interest that Welshmen
are now taking in the preservation of the Welsh tongue, had not begun.
That Borrow did not live to this day, when Welsh is much more spoken
among the cultivated class than in his time, is to be lamented. With
regard to this revival, whatever may become of it (whether the Welsh
language can really be made to survive in the great linguistic struggle
for life, which will be one of the principal features of the twentieth
century), no one will deny that it is a language which from the poetic
side as well as from the historic ought to survive. If I tread here upon
dangerous ground, I may yet venture to say that one great obstacle
against the spread of the Welsh language beyond Wales is the strange
orthography. It is difficult for a person unacquainted with Welsh to
believe that the sounds represented by such awkward arrangements of
consonants as Welsh displays are otherwise than unmusical. And yet as a
matter of fact those sounds are very musical. It may be remarked here
that there is another language spoken in Europe which suffers from the
same misfortune in regard to phonetics—the Magyar language. I have
elsewhere in a novel, whose scene is partly laid in Hungary, made a
character speak of the disappointment expressed by the traveller in
Central Europe, when crossing the Austrian frontier into Hungary by rail,
at the sight of the Hungarian names with which the stations become
suddenly placarded. German is an ugly-looking language enough, but in
this respect it is nothing to the Hungarian. And yet it would be hard to
find in the whole of Europe a more musical tongue than that which is
represented by the uncouth consonantal syllables. It is not a little
striking too that between the Cymric race and the Magyar race there are
many points of likeness; one of these is the intense love of music
displayed by the two, another is the blending of poetic imagination with
practical sagacity. The Magyars have been called a race of lawyers, but
their love of law-points and litigation is not greater than that of the
Welsh, and yet how poetical is each race to the core!
With regard to languages—to survive will in the present century mean to
spread. Languages that do not spread will be crushed out. People who
talk glibly about the vast expansion of the English language all over the
world do not seem to realize that it is not the excellence of a tongue
which makes it survive and causes it to spread over the earth, but the
energy, military or commercial, of the people who speak it. It is not
the excellence of the tongue of Shakespeare and Milton that has carried
it all round the globe, but the busy energy of the commonplace people who
migrated for the most commonplace ends imaginable, and took the language
with them, and then increased and multiplied, building up new
English-speaking communities. It is for this reason that the English
language seems destined to become, if not the “universal language,” at
least the _lingua franca_ of the world. And nothing is more pathetic
than to observe the dread among Continental nations that this will be the
case in the future; and nothing is more humorous than the passionate
attempts to invent artificial languages, Volapük, Esperanto and what not,
to do the work that the English language is already doing all over the
sea, and will, apparently, soon be doing all over the land.
I dwell here upon this interesting subject in order to say that if Welsh
does not survive it will not be because it is not a fine language, but
simply because Destiny has decreed that it shall share the fate of many
another language spoken at present much more widely than Welsh.
III
IS NOT “WILD WALES” WRITTEN BY A CELT AND NOT BY AN ANGLO-SAXON?
In speaking of any one of Borrow’s books it is always necessary to say a
good deal about Borrow as a man. Besides being the very child of
Nature’s fantasy, he was the prince of literary egotists. Everything in
human life and everything in nature upon which he looked was enveloped in
a coloured atmosphere shed by the eccentric ego. That his love of Wales
was genuine there can be no doubt whatever. For this there was perhaps a
very special reason—a reason quite unrecognized by himself. I have
somewhere—but I forget where—remarked upon a curious and common mistake
in regard to Borrow—I mean the mistake of speaking of him as an East
Anglian. Very gratifying was this mistake to Borrow himself. When
walking with me in Richmond Park, or elsewhere, he would frequently stop,
look round and murmur, “Beautiful England!” and then begin to declare
eloquently that there was not in the world a country to be compared with
it, and that the race which lived in this beloved land was equally
incomparable in most things, especially in what he valued so
much—athleticism in all its forms. This was merely because England was
his place of birth. Born in East Anglia he was, to be sure; but Dr.
Johnson long ago held to the opinion that a man born in a stable need not
necessarily be described as a horse. When a man’s father is pure Cornish
(Celtic) and when his mother is mainly French, the fact of his having
been born in Norfolk is not enough to make him an East Anglian. By an
accident the regiment to which his father belonged was located in Norfolk
at the time of his birth, just as by an accident it might have been
located in Ireland or Scotland. In either of these cases he would have
been George Borrow the Celt, or rather, George Borrow the Unique, but not
a Scotsman—not an Irishman. It is the blood in a man’s veins, it is not
the spot in which he is born, that decides the question of his race.
Does one call the daughters of the Irishman, Patrick Bronte, who were
Celtic to the marrow, Yorkshire girls because they were born at Thornton?
Does one call Mr. Swinburne a Londoner because he, a Northumbrian by a
long line of ancestors, chanced to be born within a stone’s-throw of
Belgrave Square? Does one call the Rossettis Londoners, because it was
in London, and not in Italy, that they were born? To imagine any man
more Celtic than Borrow is impossible. Not a single East Anglian
characteristic exhibited by him do I remember—except perhaps his Norfolk
accent, and his very worthy and exemplary passion for “boiled leg of
mutton with turnips and caper sauce,” which he pronounced to be “food for
the gods.” It was his own way of writing and talking about himself,
however, that fostered if it did not originate the conception that Borrow
was an East Anglian. There is no more unreasonable, as there is no more
winsome, trait in human nature than the form of egotism which I will call
provincial patriotism—a quality of which Borrow was so full. No matter
what unlovely spot in any country had given Borrow birth, it would have
become in his eyes sanctified because of the all-important fact that it
gave birth to George Borrow, the “word-master.” Rest assured that had he
been a fenman he would have been as proud of his treeless, black-earthed
fen as he would have been proud of the Swiss mountains had his birthplace
chanced to be Switzerland. Rest assured that had he been born upon the
barren soil of Damaraland he would have been proud of his desert, as
proud as he would have been of any hilly district that had chanced to
have the honour of giving him birth. But being born in East Anglia, to
feel that he was the typical Anglo-Saxon of all Anglo-Saxons around him,
gave him a mighty joy. At “The Bald-faced Stag” his eloquent addresses,
to me and the little band of friends who loved him, about Norfolk ale
were inspired by the same cause. Compared to that East Anglian nectar
all other nectars were “swipes.” I know East Anglia well; few men know
it better—few men love it better. I say emphatically that a man more out
of sympathy with the East Anglian temperament never lived than he who
wished to be taken, and was taken, as the representative East Anglian.
Moreover, one very potent reason why he was such a failure in Norfolk—one
very potent reason why he was such a failure in his contact with the
Anglo-Saxon race generally—was this: he was a Celtic duckling hatched at
Dereham, who took himself for a veritable Norfolk chicken. It is no
wonder, therefore, that, without knowing it, his sympathy with the Celt,
especially the Cymric Celt, which he himself fully believed to be
philological, was racial.
The scenery of Wales had a very especial appeal for him, and no wonder;
for there is nothing like it in the world. Although I am familiar with
the Alps and the other mountain ranges of Europe in their wildest and
most beautiful recesses, it is with me as it was with Borrow: no hill
scenery has the peculiar witchery of that around Eryri. It is unique in
the scenery of Europe. Grander scenery there is on the Continent, no
doubt—much grander—and scenery more soft and lovely; but none in which
grandeur and loveliness meet and mingle in so fascinating a way as in
Wales. Moreover, to Borrow, as to all lovers of Wild Wales, beautiful as
its scenery is, it is the romantic associations of that scenery which
form so large a portion of its charm. For what race in Europe has a
story so poetic, so romantic, so pathetic as the Welsh? Over every inch
of the Principality hovers that great Spirit who walks the earth hand in
hand with his brother, the Spirit of Poetry, and throws a rainbow
radiance over it—the Spirit of Antiquity. Upon this Borrow and the
writer of these lines have often talked. No man ever felt more deeply
than he that part and parcel of the very life of man is the atmosphere in
which the Spirit of Antiquity lives. Irrational the sentiment about this
Spirit may be, if you will, but stifled it will never be. Physical
science strengthens rather than weakens the magical glamour of the Spirit
of Antiquity. Even the most advanced social science, try to hate him as
it may, cannot dim his glory. To the beloved poet of the
socialists—William Morris—he was as dear, as great and as strong as to
the most conservative poet that has ever lived. Those who express
wonderment that in these days there should be the old human playthings as
bright and captivating as ever—those who express wonderment at the
survival of all the delightful features of the old European
raree-show—have not realized the power of this Spirit and the power of
the sentiment about him. What is the use of telling us that even in
Grecian annals there is no kind of heroism recorded which you cannot
match in the histories of modern countries—even of new countries, such as
the United States and the Australias and Canada? What is the use of
telling us that the travels of Ulysses and of Jason are as nothing in
point of real romance compared with Captain Phillip’s voyage to the other
side of the world, when he led his little convict-laden fleet to Botany
Bay—a bay then as unknown almost as any bay in Laputa—that voyage which
resulted in the founding of a cluster of great nations any one of whose
mammoth millionaires could now buy up Ilium and the golden fleece
combined? The Spirit of Antiquity knows not that captain, and hence the
Spirit of Poetry has nothing to say about him. In a thousand years’
time, no doubt, these things may be as ripe for poetic treatment as the
voyage of the Argonauts, or the voyage of the Cymric Prince Madoc, who
the romantic lover of Wales, in spite of the arguments of Thomas
Stephens, will still believe sailed westward with his fleet and
discovered America before Columbus,—returned, and then sailed westward
again into eternity. Now every peak and cliff of Snowdonia, and every
matchless valley and dale of the land of the Druids, is very specially
beloved by the Spirit of Antiquity. The land of Druidism—the land of
that mysterious poetic religion which more than any other religion
expresses the very voice of Nature, is the land painted in this
delightful volume—Wild Wales. Compared with Druidism, all other
religious systems have a sort of commonplace and modern ring, even those
which preceded it by centuries. The scenic witchery of Wild Wales is
great, no doubt, but it is enormously intensified by the memory of the
heroic struggle of the unconquerable remnant of the ancient Britons with
the brutal, physical power of Roman and Saxon. The history of Wales is
an epic not to be surpassed for poetry and for romance. And even these
things did not comprise all the points in connection with Wild Wales that
delighted Borrow. For when the student of Welsh history and the lover of
Welsh scenery is brought into contact with the contemporary Welsh people,
the charm of the land does not fade, it is not fingered away by personal
contact: it is, indeed, augmented tenfold. I have in “Aylwin” dwelt upon
the poetry of Welsh common life, the passionate love of the Welsh people
for a tiny strip of Welsh soil, the religion of hearth and home, the
devotion to wife and children. In the Arvon edition of that book,
dedicated to a Welsh poet, I have said what I had previously often said
to Borrow, that, “although I have seen a good deal of the races of
Europe, I put the Cymric race in many ways at the top of them all. They
combine, as I think, the poetry, the music, the instinctive love of the
fine arts, and the humour of the other Celtic peoples with the
practicalness and bright-eyed sagacity of the very different race to
which they were so closely linked by circumstance—the race whom it is the
fashion to call the Anglo-Saxon. And as to the charm of the Welsh girls,
no one who knows them as you and I do, can fail to be struck by it
continually. Winifred Wynne I meant to be the typical Welsh girl as I
have found her—affectionate, warm-hearted, self-sacrificing and brave.”
IV
BORROW’S METHOD OF AUTOBIOGRAPHIC NARRATIVE COMPARED WITH THE METHODS OF
DEFOE, WILKIE COLLINS, DICKENS AND THE ABBÉ PRÉVOST
It seems almost necessary that in this desultory talk upon “Wild Wales” I
should, before proceeding any further, say a few words upon the book in
its relations to two of Borrow’s other autobiographic narratives,
“Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” and I do not know any literary subject
more suggestive of interesting criticism.
Although Borrow always acknowledged Defoe as his master, he had, of
course, qualities of his own that were as unlike Defoe’s qualities as
they were unlike those of any other writer. And as this speciality of
his has, so far as I know, never been discussed, I should have liked, had
space permitted, to give interest to my remarks upon “Wild Wales” by a
thorough comparison between Borrow’s imaginative works and Defoe’s
“Robinson Crusoe.” This is impossible in the space at my command. And
yet a few words upon the subject I cannot resist indulging in, for it
relates to the very core and central light of Borrow’s genius; and I may
now never have another opportunity of touching upon it.
I remember a long talk I once had with him upon the method of Defoe as
contrasted and compared with his own method in “Lavengro,” “The Romany
Rye,” and “Wild Wales,” and the method of other writers who adopt the
autobiographic form of fiction. He agreed with me that the most
successful of all stories in the autobiographic form is “Robinson
Crusoe,” although “Jane Eyre,” “David Copperfield” and “Great
Expectations” among English novels, and “Gil Blas” and “Manon Lescaut”
among French novels, are also autobiographic in form. It is of all forms
the most difficult. But its advantages, if they can be secured without
making too many artistic sacrifices, are enormous. Flexibility is, of
course, the one quality it lacks, but, lacking that, it cannot secure the
variety of picture and the breadth of movement which is the special
strength of the historic form.
The great pupils of Defoe—and by pupils I mean those writers who try to
give as much commonplace ἀπάτη as possible to new and striking
incidents—Edgar Poe, Wilkie Collins, Gaboriau and others, recognize the
immense aid given to illusion by adopting the autobiographic form.
The conversation upon this subject occurred in one of my rambles with
Borrow and Dr. Gordon Hake in Richmond Park, when I had been pointing out
to the former certain passages in “Robinson Crusoe” where Defoe adds
richness and piquancy to the incidents by making the reader believe that
these incidents will in the end have some deep influence, spiritual or
physical, upon the narrator himself.
Borrow was not a theorizer, and yet he took a quaint interest in other
people’s theorizings. He asked me to explain myself more fully. My
reply in substance was something like this: Although in “Robinson Crusoe”
the autobiographer is really introduced only to act as eye-witness for
the purpose of bringing out and authenticating the incidents of the
dramatic action, Defoe had the artistic craftiness to make it appear that
this was not so—to make it appear that the incidents are selected by
Crusoe in such a way as to exhibit and develop the emotions moving within
his own breast. Defoe’s _apparent_ object in writing the story was to
show the effect of a long solitude upon the human heart and mind; but it
was not so—it was simply to bring into fiction a series of incidents and
adventures of extraordinary interest and picturesqueness—incidents such
as did in part happen to Alexander Selkirk. But Defoe was a much greater
artist than he is generally credited with being, and he had sufficient of
the artistic instinct to know that, interesting as these external
incidents were in themselves, they could be made still more interesting
by humanizing them—by making it appear that they worked as a great
life-lesson for the man who experienced them, and that this was why the
man recorded them. Those moralizings of Crusoe upon the way in which the
disasters of his life came upon him as “judgments,” on account of his
running away from his parents, seem to humanize the wheels of
circumstance. They create in the reader’s mind the interest in the man’s
personality which Defoe wished to create.
In reply to my criticism, Borrow said, “May not the same be said of Le
Sage’s ‘Gil Blas’?”
And when I pointed out to him that there was a kind of kinship between
the two writers in this particular he asked me to indicate in “Lavengro”
and “The Romany Rye” such incidents in which Defoe’s method had been
followed by himself as had struck me. I pointed out several of them.
Borrow, as a rule, was not at all given to frank discussion of his own
artistic methods, indeed, he had a great deal of the instinct of the
literary _histrio_—more than I have ever seen in any other writer—but he
admitted that he had consciously in part and in part unconsciously
adopted Defoe’s method. The fact is, as I said to Borrow on that
occasion, and as I have since had an opportunity of saying more fully in
print, there are two kinds of autobiographic stories, and these two kinds
are, if properly examined, really more unlike each other than the
autobiographic form is unlike what is generally supposed to be its
antithesis—the historic form. In one kind of autobiographic story, of
which “Rob Roy” is a typical example, the narrator, though nominally the
protagonist, is really not much more than the passive eye-witness of the
dramatic action—not much more than the chorus to other characters who
govern, or at least influence, the main issue. Inasmuch as he is an
eye-witness of the dramatic action, he gives to it the authenticity of
direct testimony. Through him the narrative gains a commonplace ἀπάτη
such as is beyond the scope of the scattered forces of the historic form,
howsoever powerfully handled. By the first-hand testimony of the
eye-witness Frank Osbaldistone in Scott’s fascinating novel, the more
active characters, those who really control the main issue, Di Vernon,
Rashleigh Osbaldistone, Rob, and Bailie Nicol Jarvie, are painted in much
more vivid and much more authentic colours than the method of the
historic form would allow.
It is in the nature of things that this kind of autobiographic fiction,
howsoever strong may be the incidents, is not nearly so absorbing as is
the other kind I am going to instance, the psychological, to which
“Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye” belong; for in literature, as in life,
the more interest we feel in the character, the more interest we feel in
what befalls the character. Unlike the kind of autobiographic fiction
typified by “Rob Roy,” in which, as I have said, the main issue is little
influenced and not at all controlled by the narrator but by other
characters, or, if not by other characters, by the wheels of
circumstance;—in the psychological kind of autobiographic fiction, the
personality of the narrator controls, or largely controls, the main issue
of the dramatic action. In other words, the incidents in the latter kind
of autobiographic fiction are selected and marshalled for the purpose of
declaring the character of the narrator. The most superb exemplars of
this kind of autobiographic narrative are stories which in all other
respects are extremely unlike Borrow’s—“Caleb Williams,” “Manon Lescaut,”
“Jane Eyre,” and “Villette.”
A year or two ago I recurred to this subject in some comments I made upon
some judgments of a well-known and admirable critic. I will take the
liberty of referring here to one or two of the remarks I then made, for
they seem to bear very directly upon Borrow’s method as compared with
Defoe’s. The same artistic instinct which we see in Defoe and in
Borrow’s quasi autobiographic work is exhibited by the Abbé Prévost in
“Manon Lescaut.” The real object of the last-mentioned story (which, it
will be remembered, is an episode in a much longer story) was to paint
vivid pictures of the careless life of Paris at the period of the story,
and especially to paint in vivid colours a kind of character which is
essentially peculiar to Paris, the light-hearted, good-natured, unheeding
_grisette_. But by making it appear that the incidents in Chevalier des
Grieux’s life are selected by him in order to show the effect of the
life-lesson upon himself, Prévost gives to every incident the piquancy
which properly belongs to this, the psychological form of autobiographic
fiction. It must, however, be admitted that at its best the
autobiographic form of fiction is rarely, very rarely, broad enough to be
a satisfactory form of art, even when, as in “The Woman in White,” the
story consists of a series of autobiographic narratives stitched
together. It was this difficulty which confronted Dickens when he wrote
“Bleak House.” When he was writing “David Copperfield” he had felt the
sweetness and fascination of writing in the autobiographic form, and had
seen the sweetness and fascination of reading it; but he also felt how
constricted the form is in regard to breadth, and it occurred to him that
he could combine the two forms—that he could give in the same book the
sweetness and the fascination and the authenticity of the autobiographic
form and the breadth and variety of the historic form. To bring into an
autobiographic narrative the complex and wide-spreading net that forms
the story of “Bleak House” was, of course, impossible, and so he mixed up
the chapters of Esther Summerson’s autobiographic narrative with chapters
of the history of the great Chancery suit and all that flowed from it.
In order to minimize as much as possible the confusion of so very
confused a scheme as this, he wrote the historic part of the book in the
present tense; and the result is the most oppressively-laboured novel
that was ever produced by a great novelist.
I have dwelt at length upon this subject because if I were asked to name
one of the greatest masters of the autobiographic form, in any language,
I should, I think, have to name Borrow. In one variety of that form he
gave us “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye,” in the other, “Wild Wales.”
V
WHY ARE THE WELSH GYPSIES IGNORED IN “WILD WALES”?
“Wild Wales” seems to have disappointed Borrovians because it ignores the
Welsh gypsies, the most superior branch of all the Romany race, except,
perhaps, the gypsy musicians of Hungary. And certainly it is curious to
speculate as to why he ignores them in that fashion. Readers of “The
Romany Rye” wonder why, after his adventure with Mrs. Herne and her
granddaughter, and his rescue by the Welshman, Peter Williams, on
reaching the Welsh border, Borrow kept his mouth closed. Several reasons
have occurred to me, one of which is that his knowledge of Welsh Romany
was of the shakiest kind. Another reason might have been that in “The
Romany Rye,” as much of his story as could be told in two volumes being
told, he abruptly broke off as he had broken off at the end of the third
volume of “Lavengro.” Or did the same reason that caused him to write,
in “Wild Wales,” an autobiographic narrative without any of the fantasies
and romantic ornamentation which did so much to win popularity for his
previous books, govern him when he decided to ignore the gypsies—the
presence of his wife and stepdaughter? There is a very wide class,
including indeed the whole of British Philistia, that cherishes a
positive racial aversion to the Romany—an aversion as strong as the
Russian aversion to the Jew.
Anyhow, it was very eccentric to write a book upon Wales and to ignore so
picturesque a feature of the subject as the Welsh gypsies. For, beyond
doubt, the finest specimens of the Romany race are—or were in Borrow’s
time—to be found in Wales. And here I cannot help saying
parenthetically, that as Borrow gave us no word about the Welsh Romanies
and their language, the work of Mr. Sampson, the greatest master of the
Welsh Romany that ever lived, is especially precious. So great is the
work of that admirable scholar upon the subject that he told me when I
last saw him that he was actually translating Omar Khayyam into Welsh
Romany! Although the Welsh gypsies have a much greater knowledge of
Welsh Romany than English gypsies have of English Romany, and are more
intelligent, I am a little sceptical, as I told him, as to the Welsh
Romanies taking that deep interest in the immortal quatrains which, it
seems, atheists and Christians agree in doing among the gorgios.
VI
CELT _v_ SAXON
Those who have seen much of the writing fraternity of London or Paris,
know that the great mass of authors, whether in prose or in verse, have
just as much and just as little individuality—have just as much and just
as little of any new and true personal accent, as the vast flock of human
sheep whose bleatings will soon drown all other voices over land and sea.
They have the peculiar instinct for putting their thoughts into written
words—that is all. This it is that makes Borrow such a memorable figure.
If ever a man had an accent of his own that man was he. What that accent
was I have tried to indicate here, in the remarks upon his method of
writing autobiographic fiction. Vanity can make all, even the most
cunning, simple on one side of their characters, but it made of Borrow a
veritable child.
If Tennyson may be accepted as the type of the man without guile, what
type does Borrow represent? In him guile and simplicity were blent in
what must have been the most whimsical amalgam of opposite qualities ever
seen on this planet. Let me give one instance out of a thousand of this.
Great as was his love of Wales and the Welsh, the Anglo-Saxonism—the John
Bullism which he fondly cherished in that Celtic bosom of his, was so
strong that whenever it came to pitting the prowess and the glories of
the Welshman against those of the Englishman, his championship of the
Cymric race would straightway vanish, and the claim of the Anglo-Saxon to
superiority would be proclaimed against all the opposition of the world.
This was especially so in regard to athletics, as was but natural, seeing
that he always felt himself to be an athlete first, a writing man
afterwards.
A favourite quotation of his was from Byron—
“One hates an author that’s _all author_—fellows
In foolscap uniforms turned up with ink.”
Frederick Sandys, a Norfolk man who knew him well, rarely spoke of Borrow
save as a master in the noble art of self-defence.
It was as a swimmer I first saw him—one of the strongest and hardiest
that ever rejoiced to buffet with wintry billows on the Norfolk coast.
And to the very last did his interest in swimming, sparring, running,
wrestling, jumping remain. If the Welshman would only have admitted that
in athletics the Englishman stands first—stands easily first among the
competitors of the world, he would have cheerfully admitted that the
Welshman made a good second. General Picton used to affirm that the
ideal—the topmost soldier in the world is a Welshman of five feet, eight
inches in height. Such a man as the six-feet-three giant of Dereham knew
well how to scorn such an assertion even though made by the great Picton
himself. But suppose Borrow had been told, as we have lately been told,
that the so-called “English archers” at Crecy and Agincourt were mainly
made up of Welshmen, what a flush would have overspread his hairless
cheek, what an indignant fire would have blazed from his eyes! Not even
his indignation on being told, as we would sometimes tell him at “The
Bald-faced Stag,” that Scottish Highlanders had proved themselves
superior to their English brothers-in-arms would have equalled his scorn
of such talk about Crecy and Agincourt—scenes of English prowess that he
was never tired of extolling.
But you had only to admit that Welshmen were superior to all others save
Englishmen in physical prowess, and Borrow’s championship of the Cymric
athlete could be as enthusiastic and even as aggressive as the best and
most self-assertive Welshman ever born in Arvon. Consequently I can but
regret that he did not live to see the great recrudescence of Cymric
energy which we are seeing at the present moment in “Cymru, gwlad y
gân,”—an energy which is declaring itself more vigorously every day, and
not merely in pure intellectual matters, not merely in political matters,
but equally in those same athletics which to Borrow were so important.
Sparring has gone out of fashion as much in the Principality as in
England and Scotland; but that which has succeeded it, football, has
taken a place in athleticism such as would have bewildered Borrow, as it
would have bewildered most of his contemporaries. What would he have
said, I wonder, had he been told that in this favourite twentieth-century
game the Welsh would surpass all others in these islands, and save the
honour of Great Britain? No one would have enjoyed witnessing the great
contest between the Welsh and the New Zealand athletes at the Cardiff
Arms Park on the 16th of last December with more gusto than the admirer
of English sparring and of the English pugilistic heroes, from Big Ben
Bryan to Tom Spring. No one would have been more exhilarated than he by
the song with which it opened—
“Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn anwyl i mi.” {0}
But one wonders what he would have said after the struggle was over—after
Wales’s latest triumph over the Saxon record of physical prowess. One
can imagine, perhaps, his mixed feelings had he been a witness of that
great athletic struggle which is going to be historic—the immortal
contest in which after England had succumbed entirely to the Colonials,
the honour of the old country was saved by Wales at the eleventh hour.
His cheek would have glowed with admiration of the exploits of the only
footballers whose names will be historic, and being historic must be
mentioned in connection with his own Welsh pages,—I mean the names of
Travers, of Bush, of Winfield, of Owen, of Jones, of Llewellyn, of Gabe,
of Nicholls, of Morgan, of Williams, of Hodges, of Harding, of Joseph,
and the names of the two Pritchards. Whatsoever might have been his
after-emotions when provincial patriotism began to assert itself, Borrow
would in that great hour of Cymric triumph have frankly admitted, I
think, that for once England’s honour was saved by Wales.
* * * * *
The following is a list of the works of George Borrow—
Faustus, His Life, Death [from the German of F. M. von Klinger], 1825;
Romantic Ballads [from the Danish of Öhlenschläger, and from the Kiempé
Viser], and miscellaneous pieces [from the Danish of Ewald and others],
1826; Targum, or Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and
Dialects, 1835; The Talisman of A. Pushkin, with other pieces [from
Russian and Polish], 1835; New Testament (Luke), Embéo e Majaró Lucas . . .
El Evangelio segun S. Lucas, traducido al Romani, 1837; The Bible in
Spain, 3 vols., 1843; The Zincali (Gypsies in Spain), 2 vols., 1841;
Lavengro, 1851; The Romany Rye, 2 vols., 1857; The Sleeping Bard,
translated from the Cambrian British, 1860; Wild Wales, 3 vols., 1862;
Romano Lavo-Lil: Word-Book of the Romany, 1874; Násr Al-Din, Khwājah, The
Turkish Jester [from the Turkish], 1884; Death of Balder [from the Danish
of Ewald], 1889.
The Life, Writings, and Correspondence of George Borrow, by Knapp (W.
I.), appeared in 1899.
ITINERARY
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Proposed Excursion 5
II. The Start, Peterborough, Birmingham 10
III. Chester 14
IV. Chester, Camp-meeting 19
V. Chester, Book-Stall, Wrexham 24
VI. Llangollen, the Dee 30
VII. Llangollen, Lodgings 34
VIII. The Robber’s Leap 37
IX. Llangollen, Pengwern 43
X. The Berwyn 48
XI. Pont Fadog 50
XII. Pont y Cysswllt 58
XIII. Llangollen, the Abbey of the Vale of the 64
Cross
XIV. Expedition to Ruthyn, the Column 69
XV. The Turf Tavern, Ruthyn 74
XVI. Return from Ruthyn, Agricola’s Hill 80
XVII. Llangollen, Plas Newydd, Llyn Ceiriog 84
XVIII. Llangollen, the Parish Clerk 92
XIX. Llangollen, the Vicar, the Pool of 100
Catherine Lingo, Robber’s Leap
XX. The Valley of Ceiriog, Huw Morris’s Chair, 107
Pont y Meibion
XXI. Pandy Teirw 116
XXII. Llangollen Fair 124
XXIII. Pont y Pandy, Glendower’s Mount, Corwen 125
XXIV. The Rock of Heroes, the Italian at the Inn 134
XXV. On the way to Bangor, the Irishman 142
XXVI. Pentre Voelas, the Conway, Swallow Falls, 149
Capel Curig
XXVII. Bangor 159
XXVIII. Menai bridges 165
XXIX. Snowdon, the Wyddfa 172
XXX. Gronwy Owen 179
XXXI. Anglesea, Pentraeth Coch 181
XXXII. Llanfair Mathafarn Eithaf, the Birthplace 186
of Gronwy Owen
XXXIII. The Inn at Pentraeth Coch 199
XXXIV. Conversation at the Inn 203
XXXV. A Brilliant Morning 206
XXXVI. Leaving Pentraeth Coch, Penmynnydd, Tomb 209
of Owen Tudor
XXXVII. Dyffryn Gaint 213
XXXVIII. The Inn at L— 225
XXXIX. Bound for Holy Head 231
XL. Caer Gybi 237
XLI. The Pier 240
XLII. Town of Holy Head, Pen Caer Gybi 244
XLIII. Bangor, Port Dyn Norwig, Caernarvon 251
XLIV. Pont Bettws, Llyn Cwellyn 255
XLV. Inn at Bethgelert 265
XLVI. The Valley of Gelert 267
XLVII. Tan y Bwlch, Festiniog 273
XLVIII. Mynydd Mawr and Mynydd Bach, Tref y Talcot 279
XLIX. Bala 288
L. The Tomen Bala 298
LI. Back at Llangollen 300
LII. Llangollen, Attempted Murder 304
LIII. Pen y Coed 308
LIV. Chirk 310
LV. Llangollen, Some of the Inhabitants 320
LVI. Llangollen, News of the Fall of Sebastopol 324
LVII. Pentré y Dwr 329
LVIII. Sunday at Llangollen 334
LIX. Llangollen, History of Twm O’r Nant 338
LX. Twm O’r Nant, his Interludes 348
LXI. Walk to Wrexham, Methodistical Volume 354
LXII. Rhiwabon Road 360
LXIII. Last Night at Llangollen 364
LXIV. Departure for South Wales 367
LXV. Inn at Llan Rhyadr 373
LXVI. Sycharth 378
LXVII. Llan Silin 384
LXVIII. Llan Silin Church, Tomb of Huw Morris 388
LXIX. Church of Llan Rhyadr 393
LXX. Rhyadr, Mountain Scenery 395
LXXI. Wild Moors, Arrival at Bala 398
LXXII. Bala, The White Lion 403
LXXIII. Llyn Tegid 409
LXXIV. Bala to Dinas Mawddwy 414
LXXV. Inn at Mallwydd 423
LXXVI. Mallwydd and its Church, Cemmaes 424
LXXVII. The Vale of Dyfi 428
LXXVIII. Machynlleth 432
LXXIX. Machynlleth, Historic Events 438
LXXX. Machynlleth to Esgyrn Hirion 442
LXXXI. The Mining Compting Room 450
LXXXII. Inn at Pont Erwyd 457
LXXXIII. Conversation at the inn and on the way to 465
the Devil’s Bridge
LXXXIV. The Devil’s Bridge 474
LXXXV. Dinner at the Hospice 477
LXXXVI. Dafydd Ab Gwilym 481
LXXXVII. Start for Plynlimmon 489
LXXXVIII. Plynlimmon, and back to the Devil’s Bridge 491
LXXXIX. Hafod 499
XC. Spytty Ystwyth 503
XCI. Strata Florida, burial-place of Dafydd Ab 507
Gwilym
XCII. Rhyd Fendigaid to Tregaron 512
XCIII. Tregaron Church 523
XCIV. Llan Ddewi Brefi 527
XCV. Lampeter to the Bridge of Twrch 532
XCVI. Llandovery 539
XCVII. Llandovery Church 544
XCVIII. Llandovery to Gutter Vawr 553
XCIX. Inn at Gutter Vawr 561
C. Gutter Vawr to Swansea 568
CI. Swansea 579
CII. Swansea to Neath 581
CIII. Town of Neath, the Glowing Mountain 583
CIV. Merthyr Tydvil 586
CV. Start for Caerfili 589
CVI. Pen y Glas to Caerfili 599
CVII. Caerfili 602
CVIII. Town of Newport 606
CIX. Arrival at Chepstow 616
CHAPTER I
Proposed Excursion—Knowledge of Welsh—Singular Groom—Harmonious
Distich—Welsh Pronunciation—Dafydd Ab Gwilym.
In the summer of the year 1854 myself, wife, and daughter determined upon
going into Wales, to pass a few months there. We are country people of a
corner of East Anglia, and, at the time of which I am speaking, had been
residing so long on our own little estate, that we had become tired of
the objects around us, and conceived that we should be all the better for
changing the scene for a short period. We were undetermined for some
time with respect to where we should go. I proposed Wales from the
first, but my wife and daughter, who have always had rather a hankering
after what is fashionable, said they thought it would be more advisable
to go to Harrowgate or Leamington. On my observing that those were
terrible places for expense, they replied that, though the price of corn
had of late been shamefully low, we had a spare hundred pounds or two in
our pockets, and could afford to pay for a little insight into
fashionable life. I told them that there was nothing I so much hated as
fashionable life, but that, as I was anything but a selfish person, I
would endeavour to stifle my abhorrence of it for a time, and attend them
either to Leamington or Harrowgate. By this speech I obtained my wish,
even as I knew I should, for my wife and daughter instantly observed,
that, after all, they thought we had better go into Wales, which, though
not so fashionable as either Leamington or Harrowgate, was a very nice
picturesque country, where, they had no doubt, they should get on very
well, more especially as I was acquainted with the Welsh language.
It was my knowledge of Welsh, such as it was, that made me desirous that
we should go to Wales, where there was a chance that I might turn it to
some little account. In my boyhood I had been something of a
philologist; had picked up some Latin and Greek at school; some Irish in
Ireland, where I had been with my father, who was in the army; and
subsequently whilst an articled clerk to the first solicitor in East
Anglia—indeed I may say the prince of all English solicitors—for he was a
gentleman, had learnt some Welsh, partly from books and partly from a
Welsh groom, whose acquaintance I had made. A queer groom he was, and
well deserving of having his portrait drawn. He might be about
forty-seven years of age, and about five feet eight inches in height; his
body was spare and wiry; his chest rather broad, and his arms remarkably
long; his legs were of the kind generally known as spindle-shanks, but
vigorous withal, for they carried his body with great agility; neck he
had none, at least that I ever observed; and his head was anything but
high, not measuring, I should think, more than four inches from the
bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead; his cheek-bones were high,
his eyes grey and deeply sunken in his face, with an expression in them,
partly sullen, and partly irascible; his complexion was indescribable;
the little hair which he had, which was almost entirely on the sides and
the back part of his head, was of an iron-grey hue. He wore a leather
hat on ordinary days, low at the crown, and with the side eaves turned
up. A dirty pepper and salt coat, a waistcoat which had once been red,
but which had lost its pristine colour, and looked brown; dirty yellow
leather breeches, grey worsted stockings, and high-lows. Surely I was
right when I said he was a very different groom to those of the present
day, whether Welsh or English? What say you, Sir Watkin? What say you,
my Lord of Exeter? He looked after the horses, and occasionally assisted
in the house of a person who lived at the end of an alley, in which the
office of the gentleman to whom I was articled was situated, and having
to pass by the door of the office half-a-dozen times in the day, he did
not fail to attract the notice of the clerks, who, sometimes
individually, sometimes by twos, sometimes by threes, or even more, not
unfrequently stood at the door, bareheaded—mis-spending the time which
was not legally their own. Sundry observations, none of them very
flattering, did the clerks and, amongst them, myself, make upon the
groom, as he passed and repassed, some of them direct, others somewhat
oblique. To these he made no reply save by looks, which had in them
something dangerous and menacing, and clenching without raising his
fists, which looked singularly hard and horny. At length a whisper ran
about the alley that the groom was a Welshman; this whisper much
increased the malice of my brother clerks against him, who were now
whenever he passed the door, and they happened to be there by twos or
threes, in the habit of saying something, as if by accident, against
Wales and Welshmen, and, individually or together, were in the habit of
shouting out “Taffy,” when he was at some distance from them, and his
back was turned, or regaling his ears with the harmonious and well-known
distich of “Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief: Taffy came to my
house and stole a piece of beef.” It had, however, a very different
effect upon me. I was trying to learn Welsh, and the idea occurring to
me that the groom might be able to assist me in my pursuit, I instantly
lost all desire to torment him, and determined to do my best to scrape
acquaintance with him, and persuade him to give me what assistance he
could in Welsh. I succeeded; how I will not trouble the reader with
describing: he and I became great friends, and he taught me what Welsh he
could. In return for his instructions I persuaded my brother clerks to
leave off holloing after him, and to do nothing further to hurt his
feelings, which had been very deeply wounded, so much so, that after the
first two or three lessons he told me in confidence that on the morning
of the very day I first began to conciliate him he had come to the
resolution of doing one of two things, namely, either to hang himself
from the balk of the hayloft, or to give his master warning, both of
which things he told me he should have been very unwilling to do, more
particularly as he had a wife and family. He gave me lessons on Sunday
afternoons, at my father’s house, where he made his appearance very
respectably dressed, in a beaver hat, blue surtout, whitish waistcoat,
black trowsers and Wellingtons, all with a somewhat ancient look—the
Wellingtons I remember were slightly pieced at the sides—but all upon the
whole very respectable. I wished at first to persuade him to give me
lessons in the office, but could not succeed: “No, no, lad,” said he;
“catch me going in there: I would just as soon venture into a nest of
parcupines.” To translate from books I had already, to a certain degree,
taught myself, and at his first visit I discovered, and he himself
acknowledged, that at book Welsh I was stronger than himself, but I
learnt Welsh pronunciation from him, and to discourse a little in the
Welsh tongue. “Had you much difficulty in acquiring the sound of the
ll?” I think I hear the reader inquire. None whatever: the double l of
the Welsh is by no means the terrible guttural which English people
generally suppose it to be, being in reality a pretty liquid, exactly
resembling in sound the Spanish ll, the sound of which I had mastered
before commencing Welsh, and which is equivalent to the English lh; so
being able to pronounce llano I had of course no difficulty in
pronouncing Lluyd, which by the bye was the name of the groom.
I remember that I found the pronunciation of the Welsh far less difficult
than I had found the grammar, the most remarkable feature of which is the
mutation, under certain circumstances, of particular consonants, when
forming the initials of words. This feature I had observed in the Irish,
which I had then only learnt by ear.
But to return to the groom. He was really a remarkable character, and
taught me two or three things besides Welsh pronunciation; and to
discourse a little in Cumraeg. He had been a soldier in his youth, and
had served under Moore and Wellington in the Peninsular campaigns, and
from him I learnt the details of many a bloody field and bloodier storm,
of the sufferings of poor British soldiers, and the tyranny of haughty
British officers; more especially of the two commanders just mentioned,
the first of whom he swore was shot by his own soldiers, and the second
more frequently shot at by British than French. But it is not deemed a
matter of good taste to write about such low people as grooms, I shall
therefore dismiss him with no observation further than that after he had
visited me on Sunday afternoons for about a year he departed for his own
country with his wife, who was an Englishwoman, and his children, in
consequence of having been left a small freehold there by a distant
relation, and that I neither saw nor heard of him again.
But though I had lost my oral instructor I had still my silent ones,
namely, the Welsh books, and of these I made such use that before the
expiration of my clerkship I was able to read not only Welsh prose, but,
what was infinitely more difficult, Welsh poetry in any of the
four-and-twenty measures, and was well versed in the compositions of
various of the old Welsh bards, especially those of Dafydd ab Gwilym,
whom, since the time when I first became acquainted with his works, I
have always considered as the greatest poetical genius that has appeared
in Europe since the revival of literature.
After this exordium I think I may proceed to narrate the journey of
myself and family into Wales. As perhaps, however, it will be thought
that, though I have said quite enough about myself and a certain groom, I
have not said quite enough about my wife and daughter, I will add a
little more about them. Of my wife I will merely say that she is a
perfect paragon of wives—can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset,
and is the best woman of business in Eastern Anglia—of my
step-daughter—for such she is, though I generally call her daughter, and
with good reason, seeing that she has always shown herself a daughter to
me—that she has all kinds of good qualities, and several accomplishments,
knowing something of conchology, more of botany, drawing capitally in the
Dutch style, and playing remarkably well on the guitar—not the trumpery
German thing so-called—but the real Spanish guitar.
CHAPTER II
The Starting—Peterborough Cathedral—Anglo-Saxon Names—Kæmpe
Viser—Steam—Norman Barons—Chester Ale—Sion Tudor—Pretty Welsh Tongue.
So our little family, consisting of myself, my wife Mary, and my daughter
Henrietta, for daughter I shall persist in calling her, started for Wales
in the afternoon of the 27th July, 1854. We flew through part of Norfolk
and Cambridgeshire in a train which we left at Ely, and getting into
another, which did not fly quite so fast as the one we had quitted,
reached the Peterborough station at about six o’clock of a delightful
evening. We proceeded no farther on our journey that day, in order that
we might have an opportunity of seeing the cathedral.
Sallying arm in arm from the Station Hotel, where we had determined to
take up our quarters for the night, we crossed a bridge over the deep
quiet Nen, on the southern bank of which stands the station, and soon
arrived at the cathedral—unfortunately we were too late to procure
admission into the interior, and had to content ourselves with walking
round it and surveying its outside.
It is named after, and occupies the site, or part of the site, of an
immense monastery, founded by the Mercian King Peda in the year 665, and
destroyed by fire in the year 1116, which monastery, though originally
termed Medeshamsted, or the homestead on the meads, was subsequently
termed Peterborough, from the circumstance of its having been reared by
the old Saxon monarch for the love of God and the honour of Saint Peter,
as the Saxon Chronicle says, a book which I went through carefully in my
younger days, when I studied Saxon, for, as I have already told the
reader, I was in those days a bit of a philologist. Like the first, the
second edifice was originally a monastery, and continued so till the time
of the Reformation; both were abodes of learning; for if the Saxon
Chronicle was commenced in the monkish cells of the first, it was
completed in those of the second. What is at present called Peterborough
Cathedral is a noble venerable pile, equal upon the whole in external
appearance to the cathedrals of Toledo, Burgos, and Leon, all of which I
have seen. Nothing in architecture can be conceived more beautiful than
the principal entrance, which fronts the west, and which, at the time we
saw it, was gilded with the rays of the setting sun.
After having strolled about the edifice surveying it until we were weary,
we returned to our inn, and after taking an excellent supper retired to
rest.
At ten o’clock next morning we left the capital of the meads. With
dragon speed, and dragon noise, fire, smoke, and fury, the train dashed
along its road through beautiful meadows, garnished here and there with
pollard sallows; over pretty streams, whose waters stole along
imperceptibly; by venerable old churches, which I vowed I would take the
first opportunity of visiting: stopping now and then to recruit its
energies at places, whose old Anglo-Saxon names stared me in the eyes
from station boards, as specimens of which, let me only dot down Willy
Thorpe, Ringsted, and Yrthling Boro. Quite forgetting everything Welsh,
I was enthusiastically Saxon the whole way from Medeshampsted to
Blissworth, so thoroughly Saxon was the country, with its rich meads, its
old churches, and its names. After leaving Blissworth, a thoroughly
Saxon place by the bye, as its name shows signifying the stronghold or
possession of Bligh or Blee, I became less Saxon; the country was rather
less Saxon, and I caught occasionally the word “by” on a board, the
Danish for a town; which “by” waked in me a considerable portion of
Danish enthusiasm, of which I have plenty, and with reason, having
translated the glorious Kæmpe Viser over the desk of my ancient master,
the gentleman solicitor of East Anglia. At length we drew near the great
workshop of England, called by some Brummagem or Bromwicham, by others
Birmingham, and I fell into a philological reverie, wondering which was
the right name. Before, however, we came to the station, I decided that
both names were right enough, but that Bromwicham was the original name;
signifying the home on the Broomie moor, which name it lost in polite
parlance for Birmingham, or the home of the son of Biarmer, when a
certain man of Danish blood, called Biarming, or the son of Biarmer, got
possession of it, whether by force, fraud, or marriage—the latter, by the
bye, is by far the best way of getting possession of an estate—this
deponent neither knoweth nor careth. At Birmingham station I became a
modern Englishman, enthusiastically proud of modern England’s science and
energy; that station alone is enough to make one proud of being a modern
Englishman. Oh, what an idea does that station, with its thousand trains
dashing off in all directions, or arriving from all quarters, give of
modern English science and energy. My modern English pride accompanied
me all the way to Tipton; for all along the route there were wonderful
evidences of English skill and enterprise; in chimneys high as cathedral
spires, vomiting forth smoke, furnaces emitting flame and lava, and in
the sound of gigantic hammers, wielded by steam, the Englishman’s slave.
After passing Tipton, at which place one leaves the great working
district behind, I became for a considerable time a yawning, listless
Englishman, without pride, enthusiasm or feeling of any kind, from which
state I was suddenly roused by the sight of ruined edifices on the tops
of hills. They were remains of castles built by Norman barons. Here,
perhaps, the reader will expect from me a burst of Norman enthusiasm: if
so he will be mistaken; I have no Norman enthusiasm, and hate and
abominate the name of Norman, for I have always associated that name with
the deflowering of helpless Englishwomen, the plundering of English
homesteads, and the tearing out of poor Englishmen’s eyes. The sight of
those edifices, now in ruins, but which were once the strongholds of
plunder, violence, and lust, made me almost ashamed of being an
Englishman, for they brought to my mind the indignities to which poor
English blood had been subjected. I sat silent and melancholy, till
looking from the window I caught sight of a long line of hills, which I
guessed to be the Welsh hills, as indeed they proved, which sight causing
me to remember that I was bound for Wales, the land of the bard, made me
cast all gloomy thoughts aside and glow with all the Welsh enthusiasm
with which I glowed when I first started in the direction of Wales.
On arriving at Chester, at which place we intended to spend two or three
days, we put up at an old-fashioned inn in Northgate Street, to which we
had been recommended; my wife and daughter ordered tea and its
accompaniments; and I ordered ale, and that which always should accompany
it, cheese. “The ale I shall find bad,” said I; Chester ale had a
villainous character in the time of old Sion Tudor, who made a first-rate
englyn upon it, and it has scarcely improved since; “but I shall have a
treat in the cheese, Cheshire cheese has always been reckoned excellent,
and now that I am in the capital of the cheese country, of course I shall
have some of the very prime.” Well, the tea, loaf, and butter made their
appearance, and with them my cheese and ale. To my horror the cheese had
much the appearance of soap of the commonest kind, which indeed I found
it much resembled in taste, on putting a small portion into my mouth.
“Ah,” said I, after I had opened the window and ejected the
half-masticated morsel into the street; “those who wish to regale on good
Cheshire cheese must not come to Chester, no more than those who wish to
drink first-rate coffee must go to Mocha. I’ll now see whether the ale
is drinkable;” so I took a little of the ale into my mouth, and instantly
going to the window, spirted it out after the cheese. “Of, a surety,”
said I, “Chester ale must be of much the same quality as it was in the
time of Sion Tudor, who spoke of it to the following effect:—
“‘Chester ale, Chester ale! I could ne’er get it down,
’Tis made of ground-ivy, of dirt, and of bran,
’Tis as thick as a river below a huge town!
’Tis not lap for a dog, far less drink for a man.’
Well! if I have been deceived in the cheese, I have at any rate not been
deceived in the ale, which I expected to find execrable. Patience! I
shall not fall into a passion, more especially as there are things I can
fall back upon. Wife! I will trouble you for a cup of tea. Henrietta!
have the kindness to cut me a slice of bread and butter.”
Upon the whole we found ourselves very comfortable in the old-fashioned
inn, which was kept by a nice old-fashioned gentlewoman, with the
assistance of three servants, namely, a “boots” and two strapping
chambermaids, one of which was a Welsh girl, with whom I soon scraped
acquaintance, not, I assure the reader, for the sake of the pretty Welsh
eyes which she carried in her head, but for the sake of the pretty Welsh
tongue which she carried in her mouth, from which I confess occasionally
proceeded sounds which, however pretty, I was quite unable to understand.
CHAPTER III
Chester—The Rows—Lewis Glyn Cothi—Tragedy of Mold—Native of
Antigua—Slavery and the Americans—The Tents—Saturday Night.
On the morning after our arrival we went out together, and walked up and
down several streets; my wife and daughter, however, soon leaving me to
go into a shop, I strolled about by myself. Chester is an ancient town
with walls and gates, a prison called a castle, built on the site of an
ancient keep, an unpretending-looking red sandstone cathedral, two or
three handsome churches, several good streets, and certain curious places
called rows. The Chester row is a broad arched stone gallery running
parallel with the street within the façades of the houses; it is partly
open on the side of the street, and just one story above it. Within the
rows, of which there are three or four, are shops, every shop being on
that side which is farthest from the street. All the best shops in
Chester are to be found in the rows. These rows, to which you ascend by
stairs up narrow passages, were originally built for the security of the
wares of the principal merchants against the Welsh. Should the
mountaineers break into the town, as they frequently did, they might
rifle some of the common shops, where their booty would be slight, but
those which contained the more costly articles would be beyond their
reach; for at the first alarm the doors of the passages, up which the
stairs led, would be closed, and all access to the upper streets cut off,
from the open arches of which missiles of all kinds, kept ready for such
occasions, could be discharged upon the intruders, who would be soon glad
to beat a retreat. These rows and the walls are certainly the most
remarkable memorials of old times which Chester has to boast of.
Upon the walls it is possible to make the whole compass of the city,
there being a good but narrow walk upon them. The northern wall abuts
upon a frightful ravine, at the bottom of which is a canal. From the
western one there is a noble view of the Welsh hills.
As I stood gazing upon the hills from the wall, a ragged man came up and
asked for charity.
“Can you tell me the name of that tall hill?” said I, pointing in the
direction of the south-west. “That hill, sir,” said the beggar, “is
called Moel Vamagh; I ought to know something about it as I was born at
its foot.” “Moel,” said I, “a bald hill; Vamagh; maternal or motherly.
Moel Vamagh, the mother Moel.” “Just so, sir,” said the beggar; “I see
you are a Welshman, like myself, though I suppose you come from the
South—Moel Vamagh is the Mother Moel, and is called so because it is the
highest of all the Moels.” “Did you ever hear of a place called Mold?”
said I. “Oh, yes, your honour,” said the beggar; “many a time; and
many’s the time I have been there.” “In which direction does it lie?”
said I. “Towards Moel Vamagh, your honour,” said the beggar, “which is a
few miles beyond it; you can’t see it from here, but look towards Moel
Vamagh and you will see over it.” “Thank you,” said I, and gave
something to the beggar, who departed, after first taking off his hat.
Long and fixedly did I gaze in the direction of Mold. The reason which
induced me to do so was the knowledge of an appalling tragedy transacted
there in the old time, in which there is every reason to suppose a
certain Welsh bard, called Lewis Glyn Cothi, had a share.
This man, who was a native of South Wales, flourished during the wars of
the Roses. Besides being a poetical he was something of a military
genius, and had a command of foot in the army of the Lancastrian Jasper
Earl of Pembroke, the son of Owen Tudor, and half-brother of Henry the
Sixth. After the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, in which the Earl’s forces
were defeated, the warrior bard found his way to Chester, where he
married the widow of a citizen and opened a shop, without asking the
permission of the mayor, who with the officers of justice came and seized
all his goods, which, according to his own account, filled nine sacks,
and then drove him out of the town. The bard in a great fury indited an
awdl, in which he invites Reinallt ap Grufydd ap Bleddyn, a kind of
predatory chieftain, who resided a little way off in Flintshire, to come
and set the town on fire, and slaughter the inhabitants, in revenge for
the wrongs he had suffered, and then proceeds to vent all kinds of
imprecations against the mayor and people of Chester, wishing, amongst
other things, that they might soon hear that the Dee had become too
shallow to bear their ships—that a certain cutaneous disorder might
attack the wrists of great and small, old and young, laity and
clergy—that grass might grow in their streets—that Ilar and Cyveilach,
Welsh saints, might slay them—that dogs might snarl at them—and that the
king of heaven, with the saints Brynach and Non, might afflict them with
blindness—which piece, however ineffectual in inducing God and the saints
to visit the Chester people with the curses with which the furious bard
wished them to be afflicted, seems to have produced somewhat of its
intended effect on the chieftain, who shortly afterwards, on learning
that the mayor and many of the Chester people were present at the fair of
Mold, near which place he resided, set upon them at the head of his
forces, and after a desperate combat, in which many lives were lost, took
the mayor prisoner, and drove those of his people who survived into a
tower, which he set on fire and burnt, with all the unhappy wretches
which it contained, completing the horrors of the day by hanging the
unfortunate mayor.
Conversant as I was with all this strange history, is it wonderful that I
looked with great interest from the wall of Chester in the direction of
Mold?
Once did I make the compass of the city upon the walls, and was beginning
to do the same a second time, when I stumbled against a black, who, with
his arms leaning upon the wall, was spitting over it, in the direction of
the river. I apologized, and contrived to enter into conversation with
him. He was tolerably well dressed, had a hairy cap on his head, was
about forty years of age, and brutishly ugly, his features scarcely
resembling those of a human being. He told me he was a native of
Antigua, a blacksmith by trade, and had been a slave. I asked him if he
could speak any language besides English, and received for answer that
besides English, he could speak Spanish and French. Forthwith I spoke to
him in Spanish, but he did not understand me. I then asked him to speak
to me in Spanish, but he could not. “Surely you can tell me the word for
water in Spanish,” said I; he, however, was not able. “How is it,” said
I, “that, pretending to be acquainted with Spanish, you do not even know
the word for water?” He said he could not tell, but supposed that he had
forgotten the Spanish language, adding, however, that he could speak
French perfectly. I spoke to him in French—he did not understand me: I
told him to speak to me in French, but he did not. I then asked him the
word for bread in French, but he could not tell me. I made no
observations on his ignorance, but inquired how he liked being a slave?
He said not at all; that it was very bad to be a slave, as a slave was
forced to work. I asked him if he did not work now that he was free? He
said very seldom; that he did not like work, and that it did not agree
with him. I asked how he came into England, and he said that wishing to
see England, he had come over with a gentleman as his servant, but that
as soon as he got there, he had left his master, as he did not like work.
I asked him how he contrived to live in England without working? He said
that any black might live in England without working; that all he had to
do was to attend religious meetings, and speak against slavery and the
Americans. I asked him if he had done so. He said he had, and that the
religious people were very kind to him, and gave him money, and that a
religious lady was going to marry him. I asked him if he knew anything
about the Americans? He said he did, and that they were very bad people,
who kept slaves and flogged them. “And quite right too,” said I, “if
they are lazy rascals like yourself, who want to eat without working.
What a pretty set of knaves or fools must they be, who encourage a fellow
like you to speak against negro slavery, of the necessity for which you
yourself are a living instance, and against a people of whom you know as
much as of French or Spanish.” Then leaving the black, who made no other
answer to what I said, than by spitting with considerable force in the
direction of the river, I continued making my second compass of the city
upon the wall.
Having walked round the city for the second time, I returned to the inn.
In the evening I went out again, passed over the bridge, and then turned
to the right in the direction of the hills. Near the river, on my right,
on a kind of green, I observed two or three tents resembling those of
gypsies. Some ragged children were playing near them, who, however, had
nothing of the appearance of the children of the Egyptian race, their
locks being not dark, but either of a flaxen or red hue, and their
features not delicate and regular, but coarse and uncouth, and their
complexions not olive, but rather inclining to be fair. I did not go up
to them, but continued my course till I arrived near a large factory. I
then turned and retraced my steps into the town. It was Saturday night
and the streets were crowded with people, many of whom must have been
Welsh, as I heard the Cambrian language spoken on every side.
CHAPTER IV
Sunday Morning—Tares and Wheat—Teetotalism—Hearsay—Irish Family—What
Profession?—Sabbath Evening—Priest or Minister—Give us God.
On the Sunday morning, as we sat at breakfast, we heard the noise of
singing in the street; running to the window, we saw a number of people,
bareheaded, from whose mouths the singing or psalmody proceeded. These,
on inquiry, we were informed, were Methodists, going about to raise
recruits for a grand camp-meeting, which was to be held a little way out
of the town. We finished our breakfast, and at eleven attended divine
service at the cathedral. The interior of this holy edifice was smooth
and neat, strangely contrasting with its exterior, which was rough and
weather-beaten. We had decent places found us by a civil verger, who
probably took us for what we were—decent country people. We heard much
fine chanting by the choir, and an admirable sermon, preached by a
venerable prebend, on “Tares and Wheat.” The congregation was numerous
and attentive. After service, we returned to our inn, and at two o’clock
dined. During dinner, our conversation ran almost entirely on the
sermon, which we all agreed was one of the best sermons we had ever
heard, and most singularly adapted to country people like ourselves,
being on “Wheat and Tares.” When dinner was over, my wife and daughter
repaired to a neighbouring church, and I went in quest of the
camp-meeting, having a mighty desire to know what kind of a thing
Methodism at Chester was.
I found about two thousand people gathered together in a field near the
railroad station; a waggon stood under some green elms at one end of the
field, in which were ten or a dozen men with the look of Methodist
preachers; one of these was holding forth to the multitude when I
arrived, but he presently sat down, I having, as I suppose, only come in
time to hear the fag-end of his sermon. Another succeeded him, who,
after speaking for about half an hour, was succeeded by another. All the
discourses were vulgar and fanatical, and in some instances
unintelligible, at least to my ears. There was plenty of vociferation,
but not one single burst of eloquence. Some of the assembly appeared to
take considerable interest in what was said, and every now and then
showed they did by devout hums and groans; but the generality evidently
took little or none, staring about listlessly, or talking to one another.
Sometimes, when anything particularly low escaped from the mouth of the
speaker, I heard exclamations of “How low! well, I think I could preach
better than that,” and the like. At length a man of about fifty,
pock-broken and somewhat bald, began to speak: unlike the others who
screamed, shouted, and seemed in earnest, he spoke in a dry, waggish
style, which had all the coarseness and nothing of the cleverness of that
of old Rowland Hill, whom I once heard. After a great many jokes, some
of them very poor, and others exceedingly threadbare, on the folly of
those who sell themselves to the Devil for a little temporary enjoyment,
he introduced the subject of drunkenness, or rather drinking fermented
liquors, which he seemed to consider the same thing; and many a sorry
joke on the folly of drinking them did he crack, which some half-dozen
amidst the concourse applauded. At length he said—
“After all, brethren, such drinking is no joking matter, for it is the
root of all evil. Now, brethren, if you would all get to heaven, and
cheat the enemy of your souls, never go into a public-house to drink, and
never fetch any drink from a public-house. Let nothing pass your lips,
in the shape of drink, stronger than water or tea. Brethren, if you
would cheat the Devil, take the pledge and become teetotalers. I am a
teetotaler myself, thank God—though once I was a regular lushington.”
Here ensued a burst of laughter in which I joined, though not at the
wretched joke, but at the absurdity of the argument; for, according to
that argument, I thought my old friends the Spaniards and Portuguese must
be the most moral people in the world, being almost all water-drinkers.
As the speaker was proceeding with his nonsense, I heard some one say
behind me—“A pretty fellow, that, to speak against drinking and
public-houses: he pretends to be reformed, but he is still as fond of the
lush as ever. It was only the other day I saw him reeling out of a
gin-shop.”
Now that speech I did not like, for I saw at once that it could not be
true, so I turned quickly round and said—
“Old chap, I can scarcely credit that!”
The man whom I addressed, a rough-and-ready-looking fellow of the lower
class, seemed half disposed to return me a savage answer; but an
Englishman of the lower class, though you call his word in question, is
never savage with you, provided you call him old chap, and he considers
you by your dress to be his superior in station. Now I, who had called
the word of this man in question, had called him old chap, and was
considerably better dressed than himself; so, after a little hesitation,
he became quite gentle, and something more, for he said in a
half-apologetic tone—“Well, sir, I did not exactly see him myself, but a
particular friend of mine heer’d a man say, that he heer’d another man
say, that he was told that a man heer’d that that fellow—”
“Come, come!” said I, “a man must not be convicted on evidence like that;
no man has more contempt for the doctrine which that man endeavours to
inculcate than myself, for I consider it to have been got up partly for
fanatical, partly for political purposes; but I will never believe that
he was lately seen coming out of a gin-shop; he is too wise, or rather
too cunning, for that.”
I stayed listening to these people till evening was at hand. I then left
them, and without returning to the inn strolled over the bridge to the
green, where the tents stood. I went up to them: two women sat at the
entrance of one; a man stood by them, and the children, whom I had before
seen, were gambolling near at hand. One of the women was about forty,
the other some twenty years younger; both were ugly. The younger was a
rude, stupid-looking creature, with red cheeks and redder hair, but there
was a dash of intelligence and likewise of wildness in the countenance of
the elder female, whose complexion and hair were rather dark. The man
was about the same age as the elder woman; he had rather a sharp look,
and was dressed in hat, white frock-coat, corduroy breeches, long
stockings and shoes. I gave them the seal of the evening.
“Good evening to your haner,” said the man. “Good evening to you, sir,”
said the woman; whilst the younger mumbled something, probably to the
same effect, but which I did not catch.
“Fine weather,” said I.
“Very, sir,” said the elder female. “Won’t you please to sit down?” and
reaching back into the tent, she pulled out a stool which she placed near
me.
I sat down on the stool. “You are not from these parts?” said I,
addressing myself to the man.
“We are not, your haner,” said the man; “we are from Ireland.”
“And this lady,” said I, motioning with my head to the elder female, “is,
I suppose, your wife.”
“She is, your haner, and the children which your haner sees are my
children.”
“And who is this young lady?” said I, motioning to the uncouth-looking
girl.
“The young lady, as your haner is pleased to call her, is a daughter of a
sister of mine who is now dead, along with her husband. We have her with
us, your haner, because if we did not she would be alone in the world.”
“And what trade or profession do you follow?” said I.
“We do a bit in the tinkering line, your haner.”
“Do you find tinkering a very profitable profession?” said I.
“Not very, your haner; but we contrive to get a crust and a drink by it.”
“That’s more than I ever could,” said I.
“Has your haner then ever followed tinkering?” said the man.
“Yes,” said I, “but I soon left off.”
“And became a minister,” said the elder female. “Well, your honour is
not the first indifferent tinker, that’s turn’d out a shining minister.”
“Why do you think me a minister?”
“Because your honour has the very look and voice of one. Oh, it was kind
of your honour to come to us here in the Sabbath evening, in order that
you might bring us God.”
“What do you mean by bringing you God?” said I.
“Talking to us about good things, sir, and instructing us out of the Holy
Book.”
“I am no minister,” said I.
“Then you are a priest; I am sure that you are either a minister or a
priest; and now that I look on you, sir, I think you look more like a
priest than a minister. Yes, I see you are a priest. Oh, your
Reverence, give us God! pull out the crucifix from your bosom, and let us
kiss the face of God!”
“Of what religion are you?” said I.
“Catholics, your Reverence, Catholics are we all.”
“I am no priest.”
“Then you are a minister; I am sure you are either a priest or a
minister. O sir, pull out the Holy Book, and instruct us from it this
blessed Sabbath evening. Give us God, sir, give us God!”
“And would you, who are Catholics, listen to the voice of a minister?”
“That would we, sir; at least I would. If you are a minister, and a good
minister, I would as soon listen to your words as those of Father Toban
himself.”
“And who is Father Toban?”
“A powerful priest in these parts, sir, who has more than once eased me
of my sins, and given me God upon the cross. Oh, a powerful and
comfortable priest is Father Toban.”
“And what would he say if he were to know that you asked for God from a
minister?”
“I do not know, and do not much care; if I get God, I do not care whether
I get Him from a minister or a priest; both have Him, no doubt, only give
Him in different ways. O sir, do give us God; we need Him, sir, for we
are sinful people; we call ourselves tinkers, but many is the sinful
thing—”
“Bi-do-hosd,” said the man: Irish words tantamount to “Be silent!”
“I will not be hushed,” said the woman, speaking English. “The man is a
good man, and he will do us no harm. We are tinkers, sir; but we do many
things besides tinkering, many sinful things, especially in Wales,
whither we are soon going again. Oh, I want to be eased of some of my
sins before I go into Wales again, and so do you Tourlough, for you know
how you are sometimes haunted by Devils at night in those dreary Welsh
hills. O sir, give us comfort in some shape or other, either as priest
or minister; give us God! give us God!”
“I am neither priest nor minister,” said I, “and can only say: Lord have
mercy upon you!” Then getting up I flung the children some money and
departed.
“We do not want your money, sir,” screamed the woman after me; “we have
plenty of money. Give us God! give us God!”
“Yes, your haner,” said the man, “Give us God! we do not want money;” and
the uncouth girl said something, which sounded much like Give us God! but
I hastened across the meadow, which was now quite dusky, and was
presently in the inn with my wife and daughter.
CHAPTER V
Welsh Book-Stall—Wit and Poetry—Welsh of Chester—Beautiful Morning—Noble
Fellow—The Coiling Serpent—Wrexham Church—Welsh or English?—Codiad yr
Ehedydd.
On the afternoon of Monday I sent my family off by the train to
Llangollen, which place we had determined to make our headquarters during
our stay in Wales. I intended to follow them next day, not in train, but
on foot, as by walking I should be better able to see the country,
between Chester and Llangollen, than by making the journey by the flying
vehicle. As I returned to the inn from the train I took refuge from a
shower in one of the rows or covered streets, to which, as I have already
said, one ascends by flights of steps; stopping at a book-stall I took up
a book which chanced to be a Welsh one—the proprietor, a short red-faced
man, observing me reading the book, asked me if I could understand it. I
told him that I could.
“If so,” said he, “let me hear you translate the two lines on the
title-page.”
“Are you a Welshman?” said I.
“I am!” he replied.
“Good!” said I, and I translated into English the two lines which were a
couplet by Edmund Price, an old archdeacon of Merion, celebrated in his
day for wit and poetry.
The man then asked me from what part of Wales I came, and when I told him
that I was an Englishman was evidently offended, either because he did
not believe me, or, as I more incline to think, did not approve of an
Englishman’s understanding Welsh.
The book was the life of the Rev. Richards, and was published at
Caerlleon, or the city of the legion, the appropriate ancient British
name for the place now called Chester, a legion having been kept
stationed there during the occupation of Britain by the Romans.
I returned to the inn and dined, and then yearning for society, descended
into the kitchen and had some conversation with the Welsh maid. She told
me that there were a great many Welsh in Chester from all parts of Wales,
but chiefly from Denbighshire and Flintshire, which latter was her own
county. That a great many children were born in Chester of Welsh
parents, and brought up in the fear of God and love of the Welsh tongue.
That there were some who had never been in Wales, who spoke as good Welsh
as herself, or better. That the Welsh of Chester were of various
religious persuasions; that some were Baptists, some Independents, but
that the greater parts were Calvinistic-Methodists; that she herself was
a Calvinistic-Methodist; that the different persuasions had their
different chapels, in which God was prayed to in Welsh; that there were
very few Welsh in Chester who belonged to the Church of England, and that
the Welsh in general do not like Church of England worship, as I should
soon find if I went into Wales.
Late in the evening I directed my steps across the bridge to the green,
where I had discoursed with the Irish itinerants. I wished to have some
more conversation with them respecting their way of life, and, likewise,
as they had so strongly desired it, to give them a little Christian
comfort, for my conscience reproached me for my abrupt departure on the
preceding evening. On arriving at the green, however, I found them gone,
and no traces of them but the mark of their fire and a little dirty
straw. I returned, disappointed and vexed, to my inn.
Early the next morning I departed from Chester for Llangollen, distant
about twenty miles; I passed over the noble bridge and proceeded along a
broad and excellent road, leading in a direction almost due south through
pleasant meadows. I felt very happy—and no wonder; the morning was
beautiful, the birds sang merrily, and a sweet smell proceeded from the
new-cut hay in the fields, and I was bound for Wales. I passed over the
river Allan and through two villages called, as I was told, Pulford and
Marford, and ascended a hill; from the top of this hill the view is very
fine. To the east are the high lands of Cheshire, to the west the bold
hills of Wales, and below, on all sides a fair variety of wood and water,
green meads and arable fields.
“You may well look around, Measter,” said a waggoner, who, coming from
the direction in which I was bound, stopped to breathe his team on the
top of the hill; “you may well look around—there isn’t such a place to
see the country from, far and near, as where we stand. Many come to this
place to look about them.”
I looked at the man, and thought I had never seen a more powerful-looking
fellow; he was about six feet two inches high, immensely broad in the
shoulders, and could hardly have weighed less than sixteen stone. I gave
him the seal of the morning, and asked whether he was Welsh or English.
“English, Measter, English; born t’other side of Beeston, pure Cheshire,
Measter.”
“I suppose,” said I, “there are few Welshmen such big fellows as
yourself.”
“No, Measter,” said the fellow, with a grin, “there are few Welshmen so
big as I, or yourself either, they are small men mostly, Measter, them
Welshers, very small men—and yet the fellows can use their hands. I am a
bit of a fighter, Measter, at least I was before my wife made me join the
Methodist connexion, and I once fit with a Welshman at Wrexham, he came
from the hills, and was a real Welshman, and shorter than myself by a
whole head and shoulder, but he stood up against me, and gave me more
than play for my money, till I gripped him, flung him down and myself
upon him, and then of course ’twas all over with him.”
“You are a noble fellow,” said I, “and a credit to Cheshire. Will you
have sixpence to drink?”
“Thank you, Measter, I shall stop at Pulford, and shall be glad to drink
your health in a jug of ale.”
I gave him sixpence, and descended the hill on one side, while he, with
his team, descended it on the other.
“A genuine Saxon,” said I; “I dare say just like many of those who, under
Hengist, subdued the plains of Lloegr and Britain. Taliesin called the
Saxon race the Coiling Serpent. He had better have called it the Big
Bull. He was a noble poet, however: what wonderful lines, upon the
whole, are those in his prophecy, in which he speaks of the Saxons and
Britons, and of the result of their struggle—
“A serpent which coils,
And with fury boils,
From Germany coming with arm’d wings spread,
Shall subdue and shall enthrall
The broad Britain all,
From the Lochlin ocean to Severn’s bed.
“And British men
Shall be captives then
To strangers from Saxonia’s strand;
They shall praise their God, and hold
Their language as of old,
But except wild Wales they shall lose their land.”
I arrived at Wrexham, and having taken a very hearty breakfast at the
principal inn, for I felt rather hungry after a morning’s walk of ten
miles, I walked about the town. The town is reckoned a Welsh town, but
its appearance is not Welsh—its inhabitants have neither the look nor
language of Welshmen, and its name shows that it was founded by some
Saxon adventurer, Wrexham being a Saxon compound, signifying the home or
habitation of Rex or Rag, and identical, or nearly so, with the Wroxham
of East Anglia. It is a stirring bustling place, of much traffic, and of
several thousand inhabitants. Its most remarkable object is its church,
which stands at the south-western side. To this church, after wandering
for some time about the streets, I repaired. The tower is quadrangular,
and is at least one hundred feet high; it has on its summit four little
turrets, one at each corner, between each of which are three spirelets,
the middlemost of the three the highest. The nave of the church is to
the east; it is of two stories, both crenelated at the top. I wished to
see the interior of the church, but found the gate locked. Observing a
group of idlers close at hand with their backs against a wall, I went up
to them and addressing myself to one, inquired whether I could see the
church. “O yes, sir,” said the man; “the clerk who has the key lives
close at hand; one of us shall go and fetch him; by the bye, I may as
well go myself.” He moved slowly away. He was a large bulky man of
about the middle age, and his companions were about the same age and size
as himself. I asked them if they were Welsh. “Yes, sir,” said one, “I
suppose we are, for they call us Welsh.” I asked if any of them could
speak Welsh. “No, sir,” said the man, “all the Welsh that any of us
know, or indeed wish to know, is Cwrw da.” Here there was a general
laugh. Cwrw da signifies good ale. I at first thought that the words
might be intended as a hint for a treat, but was soon convinced of the
contrary. There was no greedy expectation in his eyes, nor, indeed, in
those of his companions, though they all looked as if they were fond of
good ale. I inquired whether much Welsh was spoken in the town, and was
told very little. When the man returned with the clerk I thanked him.
He told me I was welcome, and then went and leaned with his back against
the wall. He and his mates were probably a set of boon companions
enjoying the air after a night’s bout at drinking. I was subsequently
told that all the people of Wrexham are fond of good ale. The clerk
unlocked the church door, and conducted me in. The interior was modern,
but in no respects remarkable. The clerk informed me that there was a
Welsh service every Sunday afternoon in the church, but that few people
attended, and those few were almost entirely from the country. He said
that neither he nor the clergyman were natives of Wrexham. He showed me
the Welsh Church Bible, and at my request read a few verses from the
sacred volume. He seemed a highly intelligent man. I gave him
something, which appeared to be more than he expected, and departed,
after inquiring of him the road to Llangollen.
I crossed a bridge, for there is a bridge and a stream too at Wrexham.
The road at first bore due west, but speedily took a southerly direction.
I moved rapidly over an undulating country; a region of hills or rather
of mountains lay on my right hand. At the entrance of a small village a
poor sickly-looking woman asked me for charity.
“Are you Welsh or English?” said I.
“Welsh,” she replied; “but I speak both languages, as do all the people
here.”
I gave her a halfpenny; she wished me luck, and I proceeded. I passed
some huge black buildings which a man told me were collieries, and
several carts laden with coal, and soon came to Rhiwabon, a large village
about half way between Wrexham and Llangollen. I observed in this place
nothing remarkable, but an ancient church. My way from hence lay nearly
west. I ascended a hill, from the top of which I looked down into a
smoky valley. I descended, passing by a great many collieries, in which
I observed grimy men working amidst smoke and flame. At the bottom of
the hill near a bridge I turned round. A ridge to the east particularly
struck my attention; it was covered with dusky edifices, from which
proceeded thundering sounds, and puffs of smoke. A woman passed me going
towards Rhiwabon; I pointed to the ridge and asked its name; I spoke
English. The woman shook her head and replied, “Dim Saesneg.”
“This is as it should be,” said I to myself; “I now feel I am in Wales.”
I repeated the question in Welsh.
“Cefn Bach,” she replied—which signifies the little ridge.
“Diolch iti,” I replied, and proceeded on my way.
I was now in a wide valley—enormous hills were on my right. The road was
good; and above it, in the side of a steep bank, was a causeway intended
for foot passengers. It was overhung with hazel bushes. I walked along
it to its termination, which was at Llangollen. I found my wife and
daughter at the principal inn. They had already taken a house. We dined
together at the inn; during the dinner we had music, for a Welsh harper
stationed in the passage played upon his instrument “Codiad yr ehedydd.”
“Of a surety,” said I, “I am in Wales!”
CHAPTER VI
Llangollen—Wyn Ab Nudd—The Dee—Dinas Bran.
The northern side of the vale of Llangollen is formed by certain enormous
rocks, called the Eglwysig rocks, which extend from east to west, a
distance of about two miles. The southern side is formed by the Berwyn
hills. The valley is intersected by the River Dee, the origin of which
is a deep lake near Bala, about twenty miles to the west. Between the
Dee and the Eglwysig rises a lofty hill, on the top of which are the
ruins of Dinas Bran, which bear no slight resemblance to a crown. The
upper part of the hill is bare with the exception of what is covered by
the ruins; on the lower part there are inclosures and trees, with, here
and there, a grove or farm-house. On the other side of the valley, to
the east of Llangollen, is a hill called Pen y Coed, beautifully covered
with trees of various kinds; it stands between the river and the Berwyn,
even as the hill of Dinas Bran stands between the river and the Eglwysig
rocks—it does not, however, confront Dinas Bran, which stands more to the
west.
Llangollen is a small town or large village of white houses with slate
roofs, it contains about two thousand inhabitants, and is situated
principally on the southern side of the Dee. At its western end it has
an ancient bridge and a modest unpretending church nearly in its centre,
in the chancel of which rest the mortal remains of an old bard called
Gryffydd Hiraethog. From some of the houses on the southern side there
is a noble view—Dinas Bran and its mighty hill forming the principal
objects. The view from the northern part of the town, which is indeed
little more than a suburb, is not quite so grand, but is nevertheless
highly interesting. The eastern entrance of the vale of Llangollen is
much wider than the western, which is overhung by bulky hills. There are
many pleasant villas on both sides of the river, some of which stand a
considerable way up the hill; of the villas the most noted is Plas Newydd
at the foot of the Berwyn, built by two Irish ladies of high rank, who
resided in it for nearly half-a-century, and were celebrated throughout
Europe by the name of the Ladies of Llangollen.
The view of the hill of Dinas Bran, from the southern side of Llangollen,
would be much more complete were it not for a bulky excrescence, towards
its base, which prevents the gazer from obtaining a complete view. The
name of Llangollen signifies the church of Collen, and the vale and
village take their name from the church, which was originally dedicated
to Saint Collen, though some, especially the neighbouring peasantry,
suppose that Llangollen is a compound of Llan a church and Collen a
hazel-wood, and that the church was called the church of the hazel-wood
from the number of hazels in the neighbourhood. Collen, according to a
legendary life, which exists of him in Welsh, was a Briton by birth, and
of illustrious ancestry. He served for some time abroad as a soldier
against Julian the Apostate, and slew a Pagan champion who challenged the
best man amongst the Christians. Returning to his own country, he
devoted himself to religion, and became Abbot of Glastonbury, but
subsequently retired to a cave on the side of a mountain, where he lived
a life of great austerity. Once as he was lying in his cell he heard two
men out abroad discoursing about Wyn Ab Nudd, and saying that he was king
of the Tylwyth Teg or Fairies, and lord of Unknown, whereupon Collen
thrusting his head out of his cave told them to hold their tongues, for
that Wyn Ab Nudd and his host were merely devils. At dead of night he
heard a knocking at the door, and on his asking who was there, a voice
said: “I am a messenger from Wyn Ab Nudd, king of Unknown, and I am come
to summon thee to appear before my master to-morrow, at midday, on the
top of the hill.”
Collen did not go. The next night there was the same knocking and the
same message. Still Collen did not go. The third night the messenger
came again and repeated his summons, adding that if he did not go it
would be the worse for him. The next day Collen made some holy water,
put it into a pitcher and repaired to the top of the hill, where he saw a
wonderfully fine castle, attendants in magnificent liveries, youths and
damsels dancing with nimble feet, and a man of honourable presence before
the gate, who told him that the king was expecting him to dinner. Collen
followed the man into the castle, and beheld the king on a throne of
gold, and a table magnificently spread before him. The king welcomed
Collen, and begged him to taste of the dainties on the table, adding that
he hoped that in future he would reside with him. “I will not eat of the
leaves of the forest,” said Collen.
“Did you ever see men better dressed?” said the king, “than my attendants
here in red and blue?”
“Their dress is good enough,” said Collen, “considering what kind of
dress it is.”
“What kind of dress is it?” said the king.
Collen replied: “The red on the one side denotes burning, and the blue on
the other side denotes freezing.” Then drawing forth his sprinkler, he
flung the holy water in the faces of the king and his people, whereupon
the whole vision disappeared, so that there was neither castle nor
attendants, nor youth nor damsel, nor musician with his music, nor
banquet, nor anything to be seen save the green bushes.
The valley of the Dee, of which the Llangollen district forms part, is
called in the British tongue Glyndyfrdwy—that is, the valley of the Dwy
or Dee. The celebrated Welsh chieftain, generally known as Owen
Glendower, was surnamed after the valley, the whole of which belonged to
him, and in which he had two or three places of strength, though his
general abode was a castle in Sycharth, a valley to the south-east of the
Berwyn, and distant about twelve miles from Llangollen.
Connected with the Dee there is a wonderful Druidical legend to the
following effect. The Dee springs from two fountains, high up in
Merionethshire, called Dwy Fawr and Dwy Fach, or the great and little
Dwy, whose waters pass through those of the lake of Bala without mingling
with them, and come out at its northern extremity. These fountains had
their names from two individuals, Dwy Fawr and Dwy Fach, who escaped from
the Deluge, when all the rest of the human race were drowned, and the
passing of the waters of the two fountains through the lake, without
being confounded with its flood, is emblematic of the salvation of the
two individuals from the Deluge, of which the lake is a type.
Dinas Bran, which crowns the top of the mighty hill on the northern side
of the valley, is a ruined stronghold of unknown antiquity. The name is
generally supposed to signify Crow Castle, bran being the British word
for crow, and flocks of crows being frequently seen hovering over it. It
may, however, mean the castle of Bran or Brennus, or the castle above the
Bran, a brook which flows at its foot.
Dinas Bran was a place quite impregnable in the old time, and served as a
retreat to Gruffydd, son of Madawg, from the rage of his countrymen, who
were incensed against him because, having married Emma, the daughter of
James Lord Audley, he had, at the instigation of his wife and
father-in-law, sided with Edward the First against his own native
sovereign. But though it could shield him from his foes, it could not
preserve him from remorse and the stings of conscience, of which he
speedily died.
At present the place consists only of a few ruined walls, and probably
consisted of little more two or three hundred years ago: Roger Cyffyn, a
Welsh bard who flourished at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
wrote an englyn upon it, of which the following is a translation:—
“Gone, gone are thy gates, Dinas Bran on the height!
Thy warders are blood-crows and ravens, I trow;
Now no one will wend from the field of the fight
To the fortress on high, save the raven and crow.”
CHAPTER VII
Poor Black Cat—Dissenters—Persecution—What Impudence!
The house or cottage, for it was called a cottage though it consisted of
two stories, in which my wife had procured lodgings for us, was situated
in the northern suburb. Its front was towards a large perllan or
orchard, which sloped down gently to the banks of the Dee; its back was
towards the road leading from Wrexham, behind which was a high bank, on
the top of which was a canal called in Welsh the Camlas, whose
commencement was up the valley about two miles west. A little way up the
road, towards Wrexham, was the vicarage, and a little way down was a
flannel factory, beyond which was a small inn, with pleasure grounds,
kept by an individual who had once been a gentleman’s servant. The
mistress of the house was a highly respectable widow, who with a servant
maid was to wait upon us. It was as agreeable a place in all respects as
people like ourselves could desire.
As I and my family sat at tea in our parlour, an hour or two after we had
taken possession of our lodgings, the door of the room and that of the
entrance to the house being open, on account of the fineness of the
weather, a poor black cat entered hastily, sat down on the carpet by the
table, looked up towards us, and mewed piteously. I never had seen so
wretched a looking creature. It was dreadfully attenuated, being little
more than skin and bone, and was sorely afflicted with an eruptive
malady. And here I may as well relate the history of this cat previous
to our arrival, which I subsequently learned by bits and snatches. It
had belonged to a previous vicar of Llangollen, and had been left behind
at his departure. His successor brought with him dogs and cats, who
conceiving that the late vicar’s cat had no business at the vicarage,
drove it forth to seek another home, which, however, it could not find.
Almost all the people of the suburb were dissenters, as indeed were the
generality of the people of Llangollen, and knowing the cat to be a
church cat, not only would not harbour it, but did all they could to make
it miserable; whilst the few who were not dissenters, would not receive
it into their houses, either because they had cats of their own, or dogs,
or did not want a cat, so that the cat had no home, and was dreadfully
persecuted by nine-tenths of the suburb. O, there never was a cat so
persecuted as that poor Church of England animal, and solely on account
of the opinions which it was supposed to have imbibed in the house of its
late master, for I never could learn that the dissenters of the suburb,
nor indeed of Llangollen in general, were in the habit of persecuting
other cats; the cat was a Church of England cat, and that was enough:
stone it, hang it, drown it! were the cries of almost everybody. If the
workmen of the flannel factory, all of whom were Calvinistic Methodists,
chanced to get a glimpse of it in the road from the windows of the
building, they would sally forth in a body, and with sticks, stones, or
for want of other weapons, with clots of horse-dung, of which there was
always plenty on the road, would chase it up the high bank or perhaps
over the Camlas—the inhabitants of a small street between our house and
the factory leading from the road to the river, all of whom were
dissenters, if they saw it moving about the perllan, into which their
back windows looked, would shriek and hoot at it, and fling anything of
no value, which came easily to hand at the head or body of the
ecclesiastical cat. The good woman of the house, who though a very
excellent person, was a bitter dissenter, whenever she saw it upon her
ground or heard it was there, would make after it, frequently attended by
her maid Margaret, and her young son, a boy about nine years of age, both
of whom hated the cat, and were always ready to attack it, either alone
or in company, and no wonder, the maid being not only a dissenter, but a
class teacher, and the boy not only a dissenter, but intended for the
dissenting ministry. Where it got its food, and food it sometimes must
have got, for even a cat, an animal known to have nine lives, cannot live
without food, was only known to itself, as was the place where it lay,
for even a cat must lie down sometimes; though a labouring man who
occasionally dug in the garden told me he believed that in the springtime
it ate freshets, and the woman of the house once said that she believed
it sometimes slept in the hedge, which hedge, by the bye, divided our
perllan from the vicarage grounds, which were very extensive. Well might
the cat after having led this kind of life for better than two years look
mere skin and bone when it made its appearance in our apartment, and have
an eruptive malady, and also a bronchitic cough, for I remember it had
both. How it came to make its appearance there is a mystery, for it had
never entered the house before, even when there were lodgers; that it
should not visit the woman, who was its declared enemy, was natural
enough, but why if it did not visit her other lodgers, did it visit us?
Did instinct keep it aloof from them? Did instinct draw it towards us?
We gave it some bread-and-butter, and a little tea with milk and sugar.
It ate and drank and soon began to purr. The good woman of the house was
horrified when on coming in to remove the things she saw the church cat
on her carpet. “What impudence!” she exclaimed, and made towards it, but
on our telling her that we did not expect that it should be disturbed,
she let it alone. A very remarkable circumstance was, that though the
cat had hitherto been in the habit of flying not only from her face, but
the very echo of her voice, it now looked her in the face with perfect
composure, as much as to say, “I don’t fear you, for I know that I am now
safe and with my own people.” It stayed with us two hours and then went
away. The next morning it returned. To be short, though it went away
every night, it became our own cat, and one of our family. I gave it
something which cured it of its eruption, and through good treatment it
soon lost its other ailments and began to look sleek and bonny.
CHAPTER VIII
The Mowers—Deep Welsh—Extensive View—Old Celtic
Hatred—Fish-Preserving—Smollett’s Morgan.
Next morning I set out to ascend Dinas Bran; a number of children, almost
entirely girls, followed me. I asked them why they came after me. “In
the hope that you will give us something,” said one in very good English.
I told them that I should give them nothing, but they still followed me.
A little way up the hill I saw some men cutting hay. I made an
observation to one of them respecting the fineness of the weather; he
answered civilly, and rested on his scythe, whilst the others pursued
their work. I asked him whether he was a farming man; he told me that he
was not; that he generally worked at the flannel manufactory, but that
for some days past he had not been employed there, work being slack, and
had on that account joined the mowers in order to earn a few shillings.
I asked him how it was he knew how to handle a scythe, not being bred up
a farming man; he smiled, and said that, somehow or other, he had learnt
to do so.
“You speak very good English,” said I, “have you much Welsh?”
“Plenty,” said he; “I am a real Welshman.”
“Can you read Welsh?” said I.
“O, yes!” he replied.
“What books have you read?” said I.
“I have read the Bible, sir, and one or two other books.”
“Did you ever read the _Bardd Cwsg_?” said I.
He looked at me with some surprise.
“No,” said he, after a moment or two, “I have never read it. I have seen
it, but it was far too deep Welsh for me.”
“I have read it,” said I.
“Are you a Welshman?” said he.
“No,” said I; “I am an Englishman.”
“And how is it,” said he, “that you can read Welsh without being a
Welshman?”
“I learned to do so,” said I, “even as you learned to mow, without being
bred up to farming work.”
“Ah!” said he, “but it is easier to learn to mow than to read the _Bardd
Cwsg_.”
“I don’t know that,” said I; “I have taken up a scythe a hundred times,
but I cannot mow.”
“Will your honour take mine now, and try again?” said he.
“No,” said I, “for if I take your scythe in hand I must give you a
shilling, you know, by mowers’ law.”
He gave a broad grin, and I proceeded up the hill. When he rejoined his
companions he said something to them in Welsh, at which they all laughed.
I reached the top of the hill, the children still attending me.
The view over the vale is very beautiful; but on no side, except in the
direction of the west, is it very extensive, Dinas Bran being on all
other sides overtopped by other hills: in that direction, indeed, the
view is extensive enough, reaching on a fine day even to the Wyddfa or
peak of Snowdon, a distance of sixty miles, at least as some say, who
perhaps ought to add, to very good eyes, which mine are not. The day
that I made my first ascent of Dinas Bran was very clear, but I do not
think I saw the Wyddfa then from the top of Dinas Bran. It is true I
might see it without knowing it, being utterly unacquainted with it,
except by name; but I repeat I do not think I saw it, and I am quite sure
that I did not see it from the top of Dinas Bran on a subsequent ascent,
on a day equally clear, when if I had seen the Wyddfa I must have
recognized it, having been at its top. As I stood gazing around the
children danced about upon the grass, and sang a song. The song was
English. I descended the hill; they followed me to its foot, and then
left me. The children of the lower class of Llangollen are great pests
to visitors. The best way to get rid of them is to give them nothing: I
followed that plan, and was not long troubled with them.
Arrived at the foot of the hill, I walked along the bank of the canal to
the west. Presently I came to a barge lying by the bank; the boatman was
in it. I entered into conversation with him. He told me that the canal
and its branches extended over a great part of England. That the boats
carried slates—that he had frequently gone as far as Paddington by the
canal—that he was generally three weeks on the journey—that the boatmen
and their families lived in the little cabins aft—that the boatmen were
all Welsh—that they could read English, but little or no Welsh—that
English was a much more easy language to read than Welsh—that they passed
by many towns, among others Northampton, and that he liked no place so
much as Llangollen. I proceeded till I came to a place where some people
were putting huge slates into a canal boat. It was near a bridge which
crossed the Dee, which was on the left. I stopped and entered into
conversation with one, who appeared to be the principal man. He told me
amongst other things that he was a blacksmith from the neighbourhood of
Rhiwabon, and that the flags were intended for the flooring of his
premises. In the boat was an old bareheaded, bare-armed fellow, who
presently joined in the conversation in very broken English. He told me
that his name was Joseph Hughes, and that he was a real Welshman and was
proud of being so; he expressed a great dislike for the English, who he
said were in the habit of making fun of him and ridiculing his language;
he said that all the fools that he had known were Englishmen. I told him
that all Englishmen were not fools. “But the greater part are,” said he.
“Look how they work,” said I. “Yes,” said he, “some of them are good at
breaking stones for the road, but not more than one in a hundred.”
“There seems to be something of the old Celtic hatred to the Saxon in
this old fellow,” said I to myself, as I walked away.
I proceeded till I came to the head of the canal, where the navigation
first commences. It is close to a weir, over which the Dee falls. Here
there is a little floodgate, through which water rushes from an oblong
pond or reservoir, fed by water from a corner of the upper part of the
weir. On the left, or south-west side, is a mound of earth fenced with
stones which is the commencement of the bank of the canal. The pond or
reservoir above the floodgate is separated from the weir by a stone wall
on the left, or south-west side. This pond has two floodgates, the one
already mentioned, which opens into the canal, and another, on the other
side of the stone mound, opening to the lower part of the weir.
Whenever, as a man told me who was standing near, it is necessary to lay
the bed of the canal dry in the immediate neighbourhood for the purpose
of making repairs, the floodgate to the canal is closed, and the one to
the lower part of the weir is opened, and then the water from the pond
flows into the Dee, whilst a sluice, near the first lock, lets out the
water of the canal into the river. The head of the canal is situated in
a very beautiful spot. To the left or south is a lofty hill covered with
wood. To the right is a beautiful slope or lawn, on the top of which is
a pretty villa, to which you can get by a little wooden bridge over the
floodgate of the canal, and indeed forming part of it. Few things are so
beautiful in their origin as this canal, which, be it known, with its
locks and its aqueducts, the grandest of which last is the stupendous
erection near Stockport, which by the bye filled my mind when a boy with
wonder, constitutes the grand work of England, and yields to nothing in
the world of the kind, with the exception of the great canal of China.
Retracing my steps some way I got upon the river’s bank and then again
proceeded in the direction of the west. I soon came to a cottage nearly
opposite a bridge, which led over the river, not the bridge which I have
already mentioned, but one much smaller, and considerably higher up the
valley. The cottage had several dusky outbuildings attached to it, and a
paling before it. Leaning over the paling in his shirt-sleeves was a
dark-faced, short, thickset man, who saluted me in English. I returned
his salutation, stopped, and was soon in conversation with him. I
praised the beauty of the river and its banks: he said that both were
beautiful and delightful in summer, but not at all in winter, for then
the trees and bushes on the banks were stripped of their leaves, and the
river was a frightful torrent. He asked me if I had been to see the
place called the Robber’s Leap, as strangers generally went to see it. I
inquired where it was.
“Yonder,” said he, pointing to some distance down the river.
“Why is it called the Robber’s Leap?” said I.
“It is called the Robber’s Leap, or Llam y Lleidyr,” said he, “because a
thief pursued by justice once leaped across the river there and escaped.
It was an awful leap, and he well deserved to escape after taking it.” I
told him that I should go and look at it on some future opportunity, and
then asked if there were many fish in the river. He said there were
plenty of salmon and trout, and that owing to the river being tolerably
high, a good many had been caught during the last few days. I asked him
who enjoyed the right of fishing in the river. He said that in these
parts the fishing belonged to two or three proprietors, who either
preserved the fishing for themselves, as they best could by means of
keepers, or let it out to other people; and that many individuals came
not only from England, but from France and Germany and even Russia for
the purpose of fishing, and that the keepers of the proprietors from whom
they purchased permission to fish went with them, to show them the best
places, and to teach them how to fish. He added that there was a report
that the river would shortly be rhydd, or free, and open to any one. I
said that it would be a bad thing to fling the river open, as in that
event the fish would be killed at all times and seasons, and eventually
all destroyed. He replied that he questioned whether more fish would be
taken then than now, and that I must not imagine that the fish were much
protected by what was called preserving; that the people to whom the
lands in the neighbourhood belonged, and those who paid for fishing did
not catch a hundredth part of the fish which were caught in the river:
that the proprietors went with their keepers, and perhaps caught two or
three stone of fish, or that strangers went with the keepers, whom they
paid for teaching them how to fish, and perhaps caught half-a-dozen fish,
and that shortly after the keepers would return and catch on their own
account sixty stone of fish from the very spot where the proprietors or
strangers had great difficulty in catching two or three stone or the
half-dozen fish, or the poachers would go and catch a yet greater
quantity. He added that gentry did not understand how to catch fish, and
that to attempt to preserve was nonsense. I told him that if the river
was flung open everybody would fish; he said that I was much mistaken,
that hundreds who were now poachers would then keep at home, mind their
proper trades, and never use line or spear; that folks always longed to
do what they were forbidden, and that Shimei would never have crossed the
brook provided he had not been told he should be hanged if he did. That
he himself had permission to fish in the river whenever he pleased, but
never availed himself of it, though in his young time, when he had no
leave, he had been an arrant poacher.
The manners and way of speaking of this old personage put me very much in
mind of those of Morgan, described by Smollett in his immortal novel of
_Roderick Random_. I had more discourse with him: I asked him in what
line of business he was—he told me that he sold coals. From his
complexion, and the hue of his shirt, I had already concluded that he was
in some grimy trade. I then inquired of what religion he was, and
received for answer that he was a Baptist. I thought that both himself
and part of his apparel would look all the better for a good immersion.
We talked of the war then raging—he said it was between the false prophet
and the Dragon. I asked him who the Dragon was—he said the Turk. I told
him that the Pope was far worse than either the Turk or the Russian, that
his religion was the vilest idolatry, and that he would let no one alone.
That it was the Pope who drove his fellow religionists the Anabaptists
out of the Netherlands. He asked me how long ago that was. Between two
and three hundred years, I replied. He asked me the meaning of the word
Anabaptist; I told him; whereupon he expressed great admiration for my
understanding, and said that he hoped he should see me again.
I inquired of him to what place the bridge led; he told me that if I
passed over it, and ascended a high bank beyond, I should find myself on
the road from Llangollen to Corwen, and that if I wanted to go to
Llangollen I must turn to the left. I thanked him, and passing over the
bridge, and ascending the bank, found myself upon a broad road. I turned
to the left, and walking briskly, in about half-an-hour reached our
cottage in the northern suburb, where I found my family and dinner
awaiting me.
CHAPTER IX
The Dinner—English Foibles—Pengwern—The
Yew-Tree—Carn-Lleidyr—Applications of a Term.
For dinner we had salmon and leg of mutton; the salmon from the Dee, the
leg from the neighbouring Berwyn. The salmon was good enough, but I had
eaten better; and here it will not be amiss to say, that the best salmon
in the world is caught in the Suir, a river that flows past the beautiful
town of Clonmel in Ireland. As for the leg of mutton, it was truly
wonderful; nothing so good had I ever tasted in the shape of a leg of
mutton. The leg of mutton of Wales beats the leg of mutton of any other
country, and I had never tasted a Welsh leg of mutton before. Certainly
I shall never forget the first Welsh leg of mutton which I tasted, rich
but delicate, replete with juices derived from the aromatic herbs of the
noble Berwyn, cooked to a turn, and weighing just four pounds.
“O its savoury smell was great,
Such as might well tempt, I trow,
One that’s dead to lift his brow.”
Let any one who wishes to eat leg of mutton in perfection go to Wales,
but mind you to eat leg of mutton only. Welsh leg of mutton is
superlative; but with the exception of the leg, the mutton of Wales is
decidedly inferior to that of many other parts of Britain.
Here, perhaps, as I have told the reader what we ate for dinner, it will
be as well to tell him what we drank at dinner. Let him know, then, that
with our salmon we drank water, and with our mutton ale, even ale of
Llangollen; but not the best ale of Llangollen; it was very fair; but I
subsequently drank far better Llangollen ale than that which I drank at
our first dinner in our cottage at Llangollen.
In the evening I went across the bridge and strolled along in a
south-east direction. Just as I had cleared the suburb a man joined me
from a cottage, on the top of a high bank, whom I recognized as the mower
with whom I had held discourse in the morning. He saluted me and asked
me if I were taking a walk. I told him I was, whereupon he said that if
I were not too proud to wish to be seen walking with a poor man like
himself, he should wish to join me. I told him I should be glad of his
company, and that I was not ashamed to be seen walking with any person,
however poor, who conducted himself with propriety. He replied that I
must be very different from my countrymen in general, who were ashamed to
be seen walking with any people who were not, at least, as well-dressed
as themselves. I said that my country-folk in general had a great many
admirable qualities, but at the same time a great many foibles, foremost
amongst which last was a crazy admiration for what they called gentility,
which made them sycophantic to their superiors in station, and extremely
insolent to those whom they considered below them. He said that I had
spoken his very thoughts, and then asked me whether I wished to be taken
the most agreeable walk near Llangollen.
On my replying by all means, he led me along the road to the south-east.
A pleasant road it proved: on our right at some distance was the mighty
Berwyn; close on our left the hill called Pen y Coed. I asked him what
was beyond the Berwyn?
“A very wild country, indeed,” he replied, “consisting of wood, rock, and
river; in fact, an anialwch.”
He then asked if I knew the meaning of anialwch.
“A wilderness,” I replied, “you will find the word in the Welsh Bible.”
“Very true, sir,” said he, “it was there I met it, but I did not know the
meaning of it, till it was explained to me by one of our teachers.”
On my inquiring of what religion he was, he told me he was a Calvinistic
Methodist.
We passed an ancient building which stood on our right. I turned round
to look at it. Its back was to the road: at its eastern end was a fine
arched window like the oriel window of a church.
“That building,” said my companion, “is called Pengwern Hall. It was
once a convent of nuns; a little time ago a farm-house, but is now used
as a barn, and a place of stowage. Till lately it belonged to the Mostyn
family, but they disposed of it, with the farm on which it stood,
together with several other farms, to certain people from Liverpool, who
now live yonder,” pointing to a house a little way farther on. I still
looked at the edifice.
“You seem to admire the old building,” said my companion.
“I was not admiring it,” said I; “I was thinking of the difference
between its present and former state. Formerly it was a place devoted to
gorgeous idolatry and obscene lust; now it is a quiet old barn in which
hay and straw are placed, and broken tumbrils stowed away: surely the
hand of God is visible here?”
“It is so, sir,” said the man in a respectful tone, “and so it is in
another place in this neighbourhood. About three miles from here, in the
north-west part of the valley, is an old edifice. It is now a
farm-house, but was once a splendid abbey, and was called—”
“The abbey of the vale of the cross,” said I; “I have read a deal about
it. Iolo Goch, the bard of your celebrated hero, Owen Glendower, was
buried somewhere in its precincts.”
We went on: my companion took me over a stile behind the house which he
had pointed out, and along a path through hazel coppices. After a little
time I inquired whether there were any Papists in Llangollen.
“No,” said he, “there is not one of that family at Llangollen, but I
believe there are some in Flintshire, at a place called Holywell, where
there is a pool or fountain, the waters of which it is said they
worship.”
“And so they do,” said I, “true to the old Indian superstition, of which
their religion is nothing but a modification. The Indians and sepoys
worship stocks and stones, and the river Ganges, and our Papists worship
stocks and stones, holy wells and fountains.”
He put some questions to me about the origin of nuns and friars. I told
him they originated in India, and made him laugh heartily by showing him
the original identity of nuns and nautch-girls, begging priests and
begging Brahmins. We passed by a small house with an enormous yew-tree
before it; I asked him who lived there.
“No one,” he replied, “it is to let. It was originally a cottage, but
the proprietors have furbished it up a little, and call it yew-tree
villa.”
“I suppose they would let it cheap,” said I.
“By no means,” he replied, “they ask eighty pounds a year for it.”
“What could have induced them to set such a rent upon it?” I demanded.
“The yew-tree, sir, which is said to be the largest in Wales. They hope
that some of the grand gentry will take the house for the romance of the
yew-tree, but somehow or other nobody has taken it, though it has been to
let for three seasons.”
We soon came to a road leading east and west.
“This way,” said he, pointing in the direction of the west, “leads back
to Llangollen, the other to Offa’s Dyke and England.”
We turned to the west. He inquired if I had ever heard before of Offa’s
Dyke.
“O yes,” said I, “it was built by an old Saxon king called Offa, against
the incursions of the Welsh.”
“There was a time,” said my companion, “when it was customary for the
English to cut off the ears of every Welshman who was found to the east
of the dyke, and for the Welsh to hang every Englishman whom they found
to the west of it. Let us be thankful that we are now more humane to
each other. We are now on the north side of Pen y Coed. Do you know the
meaning of Pen y Coed, sir?”
“Pen y Coed,” said I, “means the head of the wood. I suppose that in the
old time the mountain looked over some extensive forest, even as the
nunnery of Pengwern looked originally over an alder-swamp, for Pengwern
means the head of the alder-swamp.”
“So it does, sir; I shouldn’t wonder if you could tell me the real
meaning of a word, about which I have thought a good deal, and about
which I was puzzling my head last night as I lay in bed.”
“What may it be?” said I.
“Carn-lleidyr,” he replied: “now, sir, do you know the meaning of that
word?”
“I think I do,” said I.
“What may it be, sir?”
“First let me hear what you conceive its meaning to be,” said I.
“Why, sir, I should say that Carn-lleidyr is an out-and-out thief—one
worse than a thief of the common sort. Now, if I steal a matrass I am a
lleidyr, that is a thief of the common sort; but if I carry it to a
person, and he buys it, knowing it to be stolen, I conceive he is a far
worse thief than I; in fact, a carn-lleidyr.”
“The word is a double word,” said I, “compounded of carn and lleidyr.
The original meaning of carn is a heap of stones, and carn-lleidyr means
properly a thief without house or home, and with no place on which to
rest his head, save the carn or heap of stones on the bleak top of the
mountain. For a long time the word was only applied to a thief of that
description, who, being without house and home, was more desperate than
other thieves, and as savage and brutish as the wolves and foxes with
whom he occasionally shared his pillow, the carn. In course of time,
however, the original meaning was lost or disregarded, and the term
carn-lleidyr was applied to any particular dishonest person. At present
there can be no impropriety in calling a person who receives a matrass,
knowing it to be stolen, a carn-lleidyr, seeing that he is worse than the
thief who stole it, or in calling a knavish attorney a carn-lleidyr,
seeing that he does far more harm than a common pick-pocket; or in
calling the Pope so, seeing that he gets huge sums of money out of people
by pretending to be able to admit their souls to heaven, or to hurl them
to the other place, knowing all the time that he has no such power;
perhaps, indeed, at the present day the term carn-lleidyr is more
applicable to the Pope than to any one else, for he is certainly the
arch-thief of the world. So much for Carn-lleidyr. But I must here tell
you that the term carn may be applied to any one who is particularly bad
or disagreeable in any respect, and now I remember, has been applied for
centuries both in prose and poetry. One Lewis Glyn Cothi, a poet, who
lived more than three hundred years ago, uses the word carn in the sense
of arrant or exceedingly bad, for in his abusive ode to the town of
Chester, he says that the women of London itself were never more carn
strumpets than those of Chester, by which he means that there were never
more arrant harlots in the world than those of the cheese capital. And
the last of your great poets, Gronwy Owen, who flourished about the
middle of the last century, complains in a letter to a friend, whilst
living in a village of Lancashire, that he was amongst Carn Saeson. He
found all English disagreeable enough, but those of Lancashire
particularly so—savage, brutish louts, out-and-out John Bulls, and
therefore he called them Carn Saeson.”
“Thank you, sir,” said my companion; “I now thoroughly understand the
meaning of carn. Whenever I go to Chester, and a dressed-up madam
jostles against me, I shall call her carn-butein. The Pope of Rome I
shall in future term carn-lleidyr y byd, or the arch-thief of the world.
And whenever I see a stupid, brutal Englishman swaggering about
Llangollen, and looking down upon us poor Welsh, I shall say to myself,
Get home, you carn Sais! Well, sir, we are now near Llangollen; I must
turn to the left. You go straight forward. I never had such an
agreeable walk in my life. May I ask your name?”
I told him my name, and asked him for his.
“Edward Jones,” he replied.
CHAPTER X
The Berwyn—Mountain Cottage—The Barber’s Pole.
On the following morning I strolled up the Berwyn on the south-west of
the town, by a broad winding path, which was at first very steep, but by
degrees became less so. When I had accomplished about three parts of the
ascent I came to a place where the road, or path, divided into two. I
took the one to the left, which seemingly led to the top of the mountain,
and presently came to a cottage from which a dog rushed barking towards
me; an old woman, however, coming to the door, called him back. I said a
few words to her in Welsh, whereupon in broken English she asked me to
enter the cottage and take a glass of milk. I went in and sat down on a
chair which a sickly-looking young woman handed to me. I asked her in
English who she was, but she made no answer, whereupon the old woman told
me that she was her daughter and had no English. I then asked her in
Welsh what was the matter with her; she replied that she had the cryd or
ague. The old woman now brought me a glass of milk, and said in the
Welsh language that she hoped that I should like it. What further
conversation we had was in the Cambrian tongue. I asked the name of the
dog, who was now fondling upon me, and was told that his name was
Pharaoh. I inquired if they had any books, and was shown two, one a
common Bible printed by the Bible Society, and the other a volume in
which the Book of Prayer of the Church of England was bound up with the
Bible, both printed at Oxford, about the middle of the last century. I
found that both mother and daughter were Calvinistic Methodists. After a
little further discourse I got up and gave the old woman twopence for the
milk; she accepted it, but with great reluctance. I inquired whether by
following the road I could get to the Pen y bryn or the top of the hill.
They shook their heads and the young woman said that I could not, as the
road presently took a turn and went down. I asked her how I could get to
the top of the hill. “Which part of the top?” said she. “I’r
gor-uchaf,” I replied. “That must be where the barber’s pole stands,”
said she. “Why does the barber’s pole stand there?” said I. “A barber
was hanged there a long time ago,” said she, “and the pole was placed to
show the spot.” “Why was he hanged?” said I. “For murdering his wife,”
said she. I asked her some questions about the murder, but the only
information she could give me was, that it was a very bad murder and
occurred a long time ago. I had observed the pole from our garden at
Llangollen, but had concluded that it was a common flagstaff. I inquired
the way to it. It was not visible from the cottage, but they gave me
directions how to reach it. I bade them farewell, and in about a quarter
of an hour reached the pole on the top of the hill. I imagined that I
should have a glorious view of the vale of Llangollen from the spot where
it stood; the view, however, did not answer my expectations. I returned
to Llangollen by nearly the same way by which I had come.
The remainder of the day I spent entirely with my family, whom at their
particular request I took in the evening to see Plas Newydd, once the
villa of the two ladies of Llangollen. It lies on the farther side of
the bridge, at a little distance from the back part of the church. There
is a thoroughfare through the grounds, which are not extensive. Plas
Newydd, or the New Place, is a small, gloomy mansion, with a curious
dairy on the right-hand side, as you go up to it, and a remarkable stone
pump. An old man whom we met in the grounds, and with whom I entered
into conversation, said that he remembered the building of the house, and
that the place where it now stands was called before its erection Pen y
maes, or the head of the field.
CHAPTER XI
Welsh Farm-house—A Poet’s Grandson—Hospitality—Mountain Village—Madoc—The
Native Valley—Corpse Candles—The Midnight Call.
My curiosity having been rather excited with respect to the country
beyond the Berwyn, by what my friend, the intelligent flannel-worker, had
told me about it, I determined to go and see it. Accordingly on Friday
morning I set out. Having passed by Pengwern Hall I turned up a lane in
the direction of the south, with a brook on the right running amongst
hazels. I presently arrived at a small farm-house standing on the left
with a little yard before it. Seeing a woman at the door I asked her in
English if the road in which I was would take me across the mountain.
She said it would, and forthwith cried to a man working in a field, who
left his work and came towards us. “That is my husband,” said she; “he
has more English than I.”
The man came up and addressed me in very good English: he had a brisk,
intelligent look, and was about sixty. I repeated the question which I
had put to his wife, and he also said that by following the road I could
get across the mountain. We soon got into conversation. He told me that
the little farm in which he lived belonged to the person who had bought
Pengwern Hall. He said that he was a good kind of gentleman, but did not
like the Welsh. I asked him if the gentleman in question did not like
the Welsh why he came to live among them. He smiled, and I then said
that I liked the Welsh very much, and was particularly fond of their
language. He asked me whether I could read Welsh, and on my telling him
I could, he said that if I would walk in he would show me a Welsh book.
I went with him and his wife into a neat kind of kitchen, flagged with
stone, where were several young people, their children. I spoke some
Welsh to them which appeared to give them great satisfaction. The man
went to a shelf and taking down a book put it into my hand. It was a
Welsh book, and the title of it in English was _Evening Work of the
Welsh_. It contained the lives of illustrious Welshmen, commencing with
that of Cadwalader. I read a page of it aloud, while the family stood
round and wondered to hear a Saxon read their language. I entered into
discourse with the man about Welsh poetry, and repeated the famous
prophecy of Taliesin about the Coiling Serpent. I asked him if the Welsh
had any poets at the present day. “Plenty,” said he, “and good
ones—Wales can never be without a poet.” Then after a pause he said that
he was the grandson of a great poet.
“Do you bear his name?” said I.
“I do,” he replied.
“What may it be?”
“Hughes,” he answered.
“Two of the name of Hughes have been poets,” said I—“one was Huw Hughes,
generally termed the Bardd Coch, or red bard; he was an Anglesea man, and
the friend of Lewis Morris and Gronwy Owen—the other was Jonathan Hughes,
where he lived I know not.”
“He lived here, in this very house,” said the man; “Jonathan Hughes was
my grandfather!” and as he spoke his eyes flashed fire.
“Dear me!” said I; “I read some of his pieces thirty-two years ago when I
was a lad in England. I think I can repeat some of the lines.” I then
repeated a quartet which I chanced to remember.
“Ah!” said the man, “I see you know his poetry. Come into the next room
and I will show you his chair.” He led me into a sleeping-room on the
right hand, where in a corner he showed me an antique three-cornered
arm-chair. “That chair,” said he, “my grandsire won at Llangollen, at an
Eisteddfod of Bards. Various bards recited their poetry, but my
grandfather won the prize. Ah, he was a good poet. He also won a prize
of fifteen guineas at a meeting of bards in London.”
We returned to the kitchen, where I found the good woman of the house
waiting with a plate of bread-and-butter in one hand, and a glass of
buttermilk in the other—she pressed me to partake of both—I drank some of
the buttermilk, which was excellent, and after a little more discourse
shook the kind people by the hand and thanked them for their hospitality.
As I was about to depart the man said that I should find the lane farther
up very wet, and that I had better mount through a field at the back of
the house. He took me to a gate, which he opened, and then pointed out
the way which I must pursue. As I went away he said that both he and his
family should be always happy to see me at Ty yn y Pistyll, which words,
interpreted, are the house by the spout of water.
I went up the field with the lane on my right, down which ran a runnel of
water, from which doubtless the house derived its name. I soon came to
an unenclosed part of the mountain covered with gorse and whin, and still
proceeding upward reached a road, which I subsequently learned was the
main road from Llangollen over the hill. I was not long in gaining the
top, which was nearly level. Here I stood for some time looking about
me, having the vale of Llangollen to the north of me, and a deep valley
abounding with woods and rocks to the south.
Following the road to the south, which gradually descended, I soon came
to a place where a road diverged from the straight one to the left. As
the left-hand road appeared to lead down a romantic valley I followed it.
The scenery was beautiful—steep hills on each side. On the right was a
deep ravine, down which ran a brook; the hill beyond it was covered
towards the top with a wood, apparently of oak, between which and the
ravine were small green fields. Both sides of the ravine were fringed
with trees, chiefly ash. I descended the road which was zig-zag and
steep, and at last arrived at the bottom of the valley, where there was a
small hamlet. On the farther side of the valley to the east was a steep
hill on which were a few houses—at the foot of the hill was a brook
crossed by an antique bridge of a single arch. I directed my course to
the bridge, and after looking over the parapet, for a minute or two, upon
the water below, which was shallow and noisy, ascended a road which led
up the hill: a few scattered houses were on each side. I soon reached
the top of the hill, where were some more houses, those which I had seen
from the valley below. I was in a Welsh mountain village, which put me
much in mind of the villages which I had strolled through of old in
Castile and La Mancha; there were the same silence and desolation here as
yonder away—the houses were built of the same material, namely stone. I
should perhaps have fancied myself for a moment in a Castilian or
Manchegan mountain pueblicito, but for the abundance of trees which met
my eyes on every side.
In walking up this mountain village I saw no one, and heard no sound but
the echo of my steps amongst the houses. As I returned, however, I saw a
man standing at a door—he was a short figure, about fifty. He had an old
hat on his head, a stick in his hand, and was dressed in a duffel great
coat.
“Good day, friend,” said I; “what may be the name of this place?”
“Pont Fadog, sir, is its name, for want of a better.”
“That’s a fine name,” said I; “it signifies in English the bridge of
Madoc.”
“Just so, sir; I see you know Welsh.”
“And I see you know English,” said I.
“Very little, sir; I can read English much better than I can speak it.”
“So can I Welsh,” said I. “I suppose the village is named after the
bridge.”
“No doubt it is, sir.”
“And why was the bridge called the bridge of Madoc?” said I.
“Because one Madoc built it, sir.”
“Was he the son of Owain Gwynedd?” said I.
“Ah, I see you know all about Wales, sir. Yes, sir; he built it, or I
dare say he built it, Madawg ap Owain Gwynedd. I have read much about
him—he was a great sailor, sir, and was the first to discover Tir y
Gorllewin, or America. Not many years ago his tomb was discovered there
with an inscription in old Welsh—saying who he was, and how he loved the
sea. I have seen the lines which were found on the tomb.”
“So have I,” said I; “or at least those which were said to be found on a
tomb: they run thus in English:—
“‘Here, after sailing far, I, Madoc, lie,
Of Owain Gwynedd lawful progeny:
The verdant land had little charms for me;
From earliest youth I loved the dark-blue sea.’”
“Ah, sir,” said the man, “I see you know all about the son of Owain
Gwynedd. Well, sir, those lines, or something like them, were found upon
the tomb of Madoc in America.”
“That I doubt,” said I.
“Do you doubt, sir, that Madoc discovered America?”
“Not in the least,” said I; “but I doubt very much that his tomb was ever
discovered with the inscription which you allude to upon it.”
“But it was, sir, I do assure you, and the descendants of Madoc and his
people are still to be found in a part of America speaking the pure iaith
Cymraeg better Welsh than we of Wales do.”
“That I doubt,” said I. “However, the idea is a pretty one; therefore
cherish it. This is a beautiful country.”
“A very beautiful country, sir; there is none more beautiful in all
Wales.”
“What is the name of the river, which runs beneath the bridge?”
“The Ceiriog, sir.”
“The Ceiriog,” said I; “the Ceiriog!”
“Did you ever hear the name before, sir?”
“I have heard of the Eos Ceiriog,” said I; “the Nightingale of Ceiriog.”
“That was Huw Morris, sir; he was called the Nightingale of Ceiriog.”
“Did he live hereabout?”
“O no, sir; he lived far away up towards the head of the valley, at a
place called Pont y Meibion.”
“Are you acquainted with his works?” said I.
“O yes, sir, at least with some of them. I have read the Marwnad on
Barbara Middleton; and likewise the piece on Oliver and his men. Ah, it
is a funny piece that—he did not like Oliver nor his men.”
“Of what profession are you?” said I; “are you a schoolmaster or
apothecary?”
“Neither, sir, neither; I am merely a poor shoemaker.”
“You know a great deal for a shoemaker,” said I.
“Ah, sir; there are many shoemakers in Wales who know much more than I.”
“But not in England,” said I. “Well, farewell.”
“Farewell, sir. When you have any boots to mend, or shoes, sir—I shall
be happy to serve you.”
“I do not live in these parts,” said I.
“No, sir; but you are coming to live here.”
“How do you know that?” said I.
“I know it very well, sir; you left these parts very young, and went far
away—to the East Indies, sir, where you made a large fortune in the
medical line, sir; you are now coming back to your own valley, where you
will buy a property, and settle down, and try to recover your language,
sir, and your health, sir; for you are not the person you pretend to be,
sir; I know you very well, and shall be happy to work for you.”
“Well,” said I, “if I ever settle down here, I shall be happy to employ
you. Farewell.”
I went back the way I had come, till I reached the little hamlet. Seeing
a small public-house, I entered it—a good-looking woman, who met me in
the passage, ushered me into a neat sanded kitchen, handed me a chair and
inquired my commands; I sat down, and told her to bring me some ale; she
brought it, and then seated herself by a bench close by the door.
“Rather a quiet place this,” said I. “I have seen but two faces since I
came over the hill, and yours is one.”
“Rather too quiet, sir,” said the good woman; “one would wish to have
more visitors.”
“I suppose,” said I, “people from Llangollen occasionally come to visit
you.”
“Sometimes, sir, for curiosity’s sake; but very rarely—the way is very
steep.”
“Do the Tylwyth Teg ever pay you visits?”
“The Tylwyth Teg, sir?”
“Yes; the fairies. Do they never come to have a dance on the green sward
in this neighbourhood?”
“Very rarely, sir; indeed, I do not know how long it is since they have
been seen.”
“You have never seen them?”
“I have not, sir; but I believe there are people living who have.”
“Are corpse candles ever seen on the bank of that river?”
“I have never heard of more than one being seen, sir, and that was at a
place where a tinker was drowned a few nights after—there came down a
flood, and the tinker in trying to cross by the usual ford was drowned.”
“And did the candle prognosticate, I mean foreshow his death?”
“It did, sir. When a person is to die, his candle is seen a few nights
before the time of his death.”
“Have you ever seen a corpse candle?”
“I have, sir; and as you seem to be a respectable gentleman, I will tell
you all about it. When I was a girl, I lived with my parents, a little
way from here. I had a cousin, a very good young man, who lived with his
parents in the neighbourhood of our house. He was an exemplary young
man, sir, and having a considerable gift of prayer, was intended for the
ministry; but he fell sick, and shortly became very ill indeed. One
evening when he was lying in this state, as I was returning home from
milking, I saw a candle proceeding from my cousin’s house. I stood still
and looked at it. It moved slowly forward for a little way, and then
mounted high in the air above the wood, which stood not far in front of
the house, and disappeared. Just three nights after that my cousin
died.”
“And you think that what you saw was his corpse candle?”
“I do, sir! what else should it be?”
“Are deaths prognosticated by any other means than corpse candles?”
“They are, sir; by the knockers, and by a supernatural voice heard at
night.”
“Have you ever heard the knockers, or the supernatural voice?”
“I have not, sir; but my father and mother, who are now dead, heard once
a supernatural voice, and knocking. My mother had a sister who was
married like herself, and expected to be confined. Day after day,
however, passed away, without her confinement taking place. My mother
expected every moment to be summoned to her assistance, and was so
anxious about her that she could not rest at night. One night, as she
lay in bed, by the side of her husband, between sleeping and waking, she
heard of a sudden, a horse coming stump, stump, up to the door. Then
there was a pause—she expected every moment to hear some one cry out, and
tell her to come to her sister, but she heard no farther sound, neither
voice nor stump of horse. She thought she had been deceived, so, without
awakening her husband, she tried to go to sleep, but sleep she could not.
The next night, at about the same time, she again heard a horse’s feet
coming stump, stump, up to the door. She now waked her husband and told
him to listen. He did so, and both heard the stumping. Presently, the
stumping ceased, and then there was a loud “Hey!” as if somebody wished
to wake them. “Hey!” said my father, and they both lay for a minute,
expecting to hear something more, but they heard nothing. My father then
sprang out of bed, and looked out of the window; it was bright moonlight,
but he saw nothing. The next night, as they lay in bed both asleep, they
were suddenly aroused by a loud and terrible knocking. Out sprang my
father from the bed, flung open the window, and looked out, but there was
no one at the door. The next morning, however, a messenger arrived with
the intelligence that my aunt had had a dreadful confinement with twins
in the night, and that both she and the babes were dead.”
“Thank you,” said I; and paying for my ale. I returned to Llangollen.
CHAPTER XII
A Calvinistic Methodist—Turn for Saxon—Our Congregation—Pont y
Cyssylltau—Catherine Lingo.
I had inquired of the good woman of the house in which we lived whether
she could not procure a person to accompany me occasionally in my walks,
who was well acquainted with the strange nooks and corners of the
country, and who could speak no language but Welsh; as I wished to
increase my knowledge of colloquial Welsh by having a companion, who
would be obliged, in all he had to say to me, to address me in Welsh, and
to whom I should perforce have to reply in that tongue. The good lady
had told me that there was a tenant of hers who lived in one of the
cottages, which looked into the perllan, who, she believed, would be glad
to go with me, and was just the kind of man I was in quest of. The day
after I had met with the adventures which I have related in the preceding
chapter, she informed me that the person in question was awaiting my
orders in the kitchen. I told her to let me see him. He presently made
his appearance. He was about forty-five years of age, of middle stature,
and had a good-natured open countenance. His dress was poor, but clean.
“Well,” said I to him in Welsh, “are you the Cumro who can speak no
Saxon?”
“In truth, sir, I am.”
“Are you sure that you know no Saxon?”
“Sir! I may know a few words, but I cannot converse in Saxon, nor
understand a conversation in that tongue.”
“Can you read Cumraeg?”
“In truth, sir, I can.”
“What have you read in it?”
“I have read, sir, the Ysgrythyr-lan, till I have it nearly at the ends
of my fingers.”
“Have you read anything else besides the Holy Scripture?”
“I read the newspaper, sir, when kind friends lend it to me.”
“In Cumraeg?”
“Yes, sir, in Cumraeg. I can read Saxon a little, but not sufficient to
understand a Saxon newspaper.”
“What newspaper do you read?”
“I read, sir, _Yr Amserau_.”
“Is that a good newspaper?”
“Very good, sir; it is written by good men.”
“Who are they?”
“They are our ministers, sir.”
“Of what religion are you?”
“A Calvinistic Methodist, sir.”
“Why are you of the Methodist religion?”
“Because it is the true religion, sir.”
“You should not be bigoted. If I had more Cumraeg than I have, I would
prove to you that the only true religion is that of the Lloegrian
Church.”
“In truth, sir, you could not do that; had you all the Cumraeg in Cumru
you could not do that.”
“What are you by trade?”
“I am a gwehydd, sir.”
“What do you earn by weaving?”
“About five shillings a week, sir.”
“Have you a wife?”
“I have, sir.”
“Does she earn anything?”
“Very seldom, sir; she is a good wife, but is generally sick.”
“Have you children?”
“I have three, sir.”
“Do they earn anything?”
“My eldest son, sir, sometimes earns a few pence, the others are very
small.”
“Will you sometimes walk with me, if I pay you?”
“I shall be always glad to walk with you, sir, whether you pay me or
not.”
“Do you think it lawful to walk with one of the Lloegrian Church?”
“Perhaps, sir, I ought to ask the gentleman of the Lloegrian Church
whether he thinks it lawful to walk with the poor Methodist weaver.”
“Well, I think we may venture to walk with one another. What is your
name?”
“John Jones, sir.”
“Jones! Jones! I was walking with a man of that name the other night.”
“The man with whom you walked the other night is my brother, sir, and
what he said to me about you made me wish to walk with you also.”
“But he spoke very good English.”
“My brother had a turn for Saxon, sir; I had not. Some people have a
turn for the Saxon, others have not. I have no Saxon, sir, my wife has
digon iawn—my two youngest children speak good Saxon, sir, my eldest son
not a word.”
“Well, shall we set out?”
“If you please, sir.”
“To what place shall we go?”
“Shall we go to the Pont y Cyssylltau, sir?”
“What is that?”
“A mighty bridge, sir, which carries the Camlas over a valley on its
back.”
“Good! let us go and see the bridge of the junction, for that I think is
the meaning in Saxon of Pont y Cyssylltau.”
We set out; my guide conducted me along the bank of the Camlas in the
direction of Rhiwabon, that is towards the east. On the way we
discoursed on various subjects, and understood each other tolerably well.
I asked if he had ever been anything besides a weaver. He told me that
when a boy he kept sheep on the mountain. “Why did you not go on keeping
sheep?” said I; “I would rather keep sheep than weave.”
“My parents wanted me at home, sir,” said he; “and I was not sorry to go
home; I earned little, and lived badly.”
“A shepherd,” said I, “can earn more than five shillings a week.”
“I was never a regular shepherd, sir,” said he. “But, sir, I would
rather be a weaver with five shillings a week in Llangollen, than a
shepherd with fifteen on the mountain. The life of a shepherd, sir, is
perhaps not exactly what you and some other gentlefolks think. The
shepherd bears much cold and wet, sir, and he is very lonely; no society
save his sheep and dog. Then, sir, he has no privileges. I mean gospel
privileges. He does not look forward to Dydd Sul, as a day of llawenydd,
of joy and triumph, as the weaver does; that is if he is religiously
disposed. The shepherd has no chapel, sir, like the weaver. Oh, sir, I
say again that I would rather be a weaver in Llangollen with five
shillings a week, than a shepherd on the hill with fifteen.”
“Do you mean to say,” said I, “that you live with your family on five
shillings a week?”
“No, sir. I frequently do little commissions by which I earn something.
Then, sir, I have friends, very good friends. A good lady of our
congregation sent me this morning half-a-pound of butter. The people of
our congregation are very kind to each other, sir.”
“That is more,” thought I to myself, “than the people of my congregation
are; they are always cutting each other’s throats.” I next asked if he
had been much about Wales.
“Not much, sir. However, I have been to Pen Caer Gybi, which you call
Holy Head, and to Bethgelert, sir.”
“What took you to those places?”
“I was sent to those places on business, sir; as I told you before, sir,
I sometimes execute commissions. At Bethgelert I stayed some time. It
was there I married, sir; my wife comes from a place called Dol Gellyn
near Bethgelert.”
“What was her name?”
“Her name was Jones, sir.”
“What, before she married?”
“Yes, sir, before she married. You need not be surprised, sir; there are
plenty of the name of Jones in Wales. The name of my brother’s wife,
before she married, was also Jones.”
“Your brother is a clever man,” said I.
“Yes, sir, for a Cumro he is clebber enough.”
“For a Cumro?”
“Yes, sir, he is not a Saxon, you know.”
“Are Saxons then so very clever?”
“O yes, sir; who so clebber? The clebberest people in Llangollen are
Saxons; that is, at carnal things—for at spiritual things I do not think
them at all clebber. Look at Mr. A., sir.”
“Who is he?”
“Do you not know him, sir? I thought everybody knew Mr. A. He is a
Saxon, sir, and keeps the inn on the road a little way below where you
live. He is the clebberest man in Llangollen, sir. He can do
everything. He is a great cook, and can wash clothes better than any
woman. O, sir, for carnal things, who so clebber as your Countrymen!”
After walking about four miles by the side of the canal we left it, and
bearing to the right presently came to the aqueduct, which strode over a
deep and narrow valley, at the bottom of which ran the Dee. “This is the
Pont y Cysswllt, sir,” said my guide; “it’s the finest bridge in the
world, and no wonder, if what the common people say be true, namely that
every stone cost a golden sovereign.” We went along it; the height was
awful. My guide, though he had been a mountain shepherd, confessed that
he was somewhat afraid. “It gives me the pendro, sir,” said he, “to look
down.” I too felt somewhat dizzy, as I looked over the parapet into the
glen. The canal which this mighty bridge carries across the gulf is
about nine feet wide, and occupies about two-thirds of the width of the
bridge and the entire western side. The footway is towards the east.
From about the middle of the bridge there is a fine view of the forges on
the Cefn Bach and also of a huge hill near it called the Cefn Mawr. We
reached the termination, and presently crossing the canal by a little
wooden bridge we came to a village. My guide then said, “If you please,
sir, we will return by the old bridge, which leads across the Dee in the
bottom of the vale.” He then led me by a romantic road to a bridge on
the west of the aqueduct, and far below. It seemed very ancient. “This
is the old bridge, sir,” said my guide; “it was built a hundred years
before the Pont y Cysswllt was dreamt of.” We now walked to the west, in
the direction of Llangollen, along the bank of the river. Presently we
arrived where the river, after making a bend, formed a pool. It was
shaded by lofty trees, and to all appearance was exceedingly deep. I
stopped to look at it, for I was struck with its gloomy horror. “That
pool, sir,” said John Jones, “is called Llyn y Meddwyn, the drunkard’s
pool. It is called so, sir, because a drunken man once fell into it, and
was drowned. There is no deeper pool in the Dee, sir, save one, a little
below Llangollen, which is called the pool of Catherine Lingo. A girl of
that name fell into it, whilst gathering sticks on the high bank above
it. She was drowned, and the pool was named after her. I never look at
either without shuddering, thinking how certainly I should be drowned if
I fell in, for I cannot swim, sir.”
“You should have learnt to swim when you were young,” said I, “and to
dive too. I know one who has brought up stones from the bottom, I dare
say, of deeper pools than either, but he was a Saxon, and at carnal
things, you know, none so clebber as the Saxons.”
I found my guide a first-rate walker, and a good botanist, knowing the
names of all the plants and trees in Welsh. By the time we returned to
Llangollen I had formed a very high opinion of him, in which I was
subsequently confirmed by what I saw of him during the period of our
acquaintance, which was of some duration. He was very honest,
disinterested, and exceedingly good-humoured. It is true, he had his
little skits occasionally at the Church, and showed some marks of
hostility to the church cat, more especially when he saw it mounted on my
shoulders; for the creature soon began to take liberties, and in less
than a week after my arrival at the cottage, generally mounted on my
back, when it saw me reading or writing, for the sake of the warmth. But
setting aside those same skits at the Church and that dislike of the
church cat, venial trifles after all, and easily to be accounted for, on
the score of his religious education, I found nothing to blame and much
to admire in John Jones the Calvinistic Methodist of Llangollen.
CHAPTER XIII
Divine Service—Llangollen Bells—Iolo Goch—The Abbey—Twm o’r Nant—Holy
Well—Thomas Edwards.
Sunday arrived—a Sunday of unclouded sunshine. We attended Divine
service at church in the morning. The congregation was very numerous,
but to all appearance consisted almost entirely of English visitors, like
ourselves. There were two officiating clergymen, father and son. They
both sat in a kind of oblong pulpit on the southern side of the church,
at a little distance below the altar. The service was in English, and
the elder gentleman preached; there was good singing and chanting.
After dinner I sat in an arbour in the perllan thinking of many things,
amongst others, spiritual. Whilst thus engaged the sound of the church
bells calling people to afternoon service, came upon my ears. I listened
and thought I had never heard bells with so sweet a sound. I had heard
them in the morning, but without paying much attention to them, but as I
now sat in the umbrageous arbour I was particularly struck with them. O,
how sweetly their voice mingled with the low rush of the river, at the
bottom of the perllan. I subsequently found that the bells of Llangollen
were celebrated for their sweetness. Their merit indeed has even been
admitted by an enemy; for a poet of the Calvinistic-Methodist persuasion,
one who calls himself Einion Du, in a very beautiful ode, commencing
with—
“Tangnefedd i Llangollen,”
says that in no part of the world do bells call people so sweetly to
church as those of Llangollen town.
In the evening, at about half-past six, I attended service again, but
without my family. This time the congregation was not numerous, and was
composed principally of poor people. The service and sermon were now in
Welsh, the sermon was preached by the younger gentleman, and was on the
building of the second temple, and, as far as I understood it, appeared
to me to be exceedingly good.
On the Monday evening myself and family took a walk to the abbey. My
wife and daughter, who are fond of architecture and ruins, were very
anxious to see the old place. I too was anxious enough to see it, less
from love of ruins and ancient architecture, than from knowing that a
certain illustrious bard was buried in its precincts, of whom perhaps a
short account will not be unacceptable to the reader.
This man, whose poetical appellation was Iolo Goch, but whose real name
was Llwyd, was of a distinguished family, and Lord of Llechryd. He was
born and generally resided at a place called Coed y Pantwn, in the upper
part of the Vale of Clwyd. He was a warm friend and partisan of Owen
Glendower, with whom he lived, at Sycharth, for some years before the
great Welsh insurrection, and whom he survived, dying at an extreme old
age beneath his own roof-tree at Coed y Pantwn. He composed pieces of
great excellence on various subjects; but the most remarkable of his
compositions are decidedly certain ones connected with Owen Glendower.
Amongst these is one in which he describes the Welsh chieftain’s mansion
at Sycharth, and his hospitable way of living at that his favourite
residence; and another in which he hails the advent of the comet, which
made its appearance in the month of March, fourteen hundred and two, as
of good augury to his darling hero.
It was from knowing that this distinguished man lay buried in the
precincts of the old edifice that I felt so anxious to see it. After
walking about two miles we perceived it on our right hand.
The abbey of the vale of the cross stands in a green meadow, in a corner
near the north-west end of the valley of Llangollen. The vale or glen,
in which the abbey stands, takes its name from a certain ancient pillar
or cross, called the pillar of Eliseg, and which is believed to have been
raised over the body of an ancient British chieftain of that name, who
perished in battle against the Saxons, about the middle of the tenth
century. In the Papist times the abbey was a place of great
pseudo-sanctity, wealth and consequence. The territory belonging to it
was very extensive, comprising, amongst other districts, the vale of
Llangollen and the mountain region to the north of it, called the
Eglwysig Rocks, which region derived its name Eglwysig, or
ecclesiastical, from the circumstance of its pertaining to the abbey of
the vale of the cross.
We first reached that part of the building which had once been the
church, having previously to pass through a farm-yard, in which was
abundance of dirt and mire.
The church fronts the west and contains the remains of a noble window,
beneath which is a gate, which we found locked. Passing on we came to
that part where the monks had lived, but which now served as a farmhouse;
an open door-way exhibited to us an ancient gloomy hall, where was some
curious old-fashioned furniture, particularly an ancient rack, in which
stood a goodly range of pewter trenchers. A respectable dame kindly
welcomed us and invited us to sit down. We entered into conversation
with her, and asked her name, which she said was Evans. I spoke some
Welsh to her, which pleased her. She said that Welsh people at the
present day were so full of fine airs that they were above speaking the
old language—but that such was not the case formerly, and that she had
known a Mrs. Price, who was housekeeper to the Countess of Mornington,
who lived in London upwards of forty years, and at the end of that time
prided herself upon speaking as good Welsh as she did when a girl. I
spoke to her about the abbey, and asked if she had ever heard of Iolo
Goch. She inquired who he was. I told her he was a great bard, and was
buried in the abbey. She said she had never heard of him, but that she
could show me the portrait of a great poet, and going away, presently
returned with a print in a frame.
“There,” said she, “is the portrait of Twm o’r Nant, generally called the
Welsh Shakespear.”
I looked at it. The Welsh Shakespear was represented sitting at a table
with a pen in his hand; a cottage-latticed window was behind him, on his
left hand; a shelf with plates and trenchers behind him, on his right.
His features were rude, but full of wild, strange expression; below the
picture was the following couplet:—
“Llun Gwr yw llawn gwir Awen;
Y Byd a lanwodd o’i Ben.”
“Did you ever hear of Twm o’r Nant?” said the old dame.
“I never heard of him by word of mouth,” said I; “but I know all about
him—I have read his life in Welsh, written by himself, and a curious life
it is. His name was Thomas Edwards, but he generally called himself Twm
o’r Nant, or Tom of the Dingle, because he was born in a dingle, at a
place called Pen Porchell in the vale of Clwyd—which, by the bye, was on
the estate which once belonged to Iolo Goch, the poet I was speaking to
you about just now. Tom was a carter by trade, but once kept a toll-bar
in South Wales, which, however, he was obliged to leave at the end of two
years, owing to the annoyance which he experienced from ghosts and
goblins, and unearthly things, particularly phantom hearses, which used
to pass through his gate at midnight without paying, when the gate was
shut.”
“Ah,” said the Dame, “you know more about Twm o’r Nant than I do; and was
he not a great poet?”
“I dare say he was,” said I, “for the pieces which he wrote, and which he
called Interludes, had a great run, and he got a great deal of money by
them, but I should say the lines beneath the portrait are more applicable
to the real Shakespear than to him.”
“What do the lines mean?” said the old lady; “they are Welsh, I know, but
they are far beyond my understanding.”
“They may be thus translated,” said I:
“God in his head the Muse instill’d,
And from his head the world he fill’d.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the old lady; “I never found any one before who
could translate them.” She then said she would show me some English
lines written on the daughter of a friend of hers who was lately dead,
and put some printed lines in a frame into my hand. They were an Elegy
to Mary, and were very beautiful. I read them aloud, and when I had
finished she thanked me and said she had no doubt that if I pleased I
could put them into Welsh. She then sighed and wiped her eyes.
On our inquiring whether we could see the interior of the abbey she said
we could, and that if we rang a bell at the gate a woman would come to
us, who was in the habit of showing the place. We then got up and bade
her farewell—but she begged that we would stay and taste the dwr santaidd
of the holy well.
“What holy well is that?” said I.
“A well,” said she, “by the road’s side, which in the time of the popes
was said to perform wonderful cures.”
“Let us taste it by all means,” said I; whereupon she went out, and
presently returned with a tray on which were a jug and tumbler, the jug
filled with the water of the holy well; we drank some of the dwr
santaidd, which tasted like any other water, and then after shaking her
by the hand, we went to the gate, and rang at the bell.
Presently a woman made her appearance at the gate; she was genteelly
drest, about the middle age, rather tall, and bearing in her countenance
the traces of beauty. When we told her the object of our coming she
admitted us, and after locking the gate conducted us into the church. It
was roofless, and had nothing remarkable about it, save the western
window, which we had seen from without. Our attendant pointed out to us
some tombs, and told us the names of certain great people whose dust they
contained. “Can you tell us where Iolo Goch lies interred?” said I.
“No,” said she; “indeed I never heard of such a person.”
“He was the bard of Owen Glendower,” said I, “and assisted his cause
wonderfully by the fiery odes, in which he incited the Welsh to rise
against the English.”
“Indeed!” said she; “well, I am sorry to say that I never heard of him.”
“Are you Welsh?” said I.
“I am,” she replied.
“Did you ever hear of Thomas Edwards?”
“O, yes,” said she; “I have frequently heard of him.”
“How odd,” said I, “that the name of a great poet should be unknown in
the very place where he is buried, whilst that of one certainly not his
superior, should be well known in that same place, though he is not
buried there.”
“Perhaps,” said she, “the reason is that the poet, whom you mentioned,
wrote in the old measures and language which few people now understand,
whilst Thomas Edwards wrote in common verse and in the language of the
present day.”
“I dare say it is so,” said I.
From the church she led us to other parts of the ruin—at first she had
spoken to us rather cross and loftily, but she now became kind and
communicative. She said that she resided near the ruins, which she was
permitted to show; that she lived alone, and wished to be alone—there was
something singular about her, and I believe that she had a history of her
own. After showing us the ruins she conducted us to a cottage in which
she lived; it stood behind the ruins by a fishpond, in a beautiful and
romantic place enough—she said that in the winter she went away, but to
what place she did not say. She asked us whether we came walking, and on
our telling her that we did, she said that she would point out to us a
near way home. She then pointed to a path up a hill, telling us we must
follow it. After making her a present we bade her farewell, and passing
through a meadow crossed a brook by a rustic bridge, formed of the stem
of a tree, and ascending the hill by a path which she had pointed out, we
went through a corn field or two on its top, and at last found ourselves
on the Llangollen road, after a most beautiful walk.
CHAPTER XIV
Expedition to Ruthyn—The Column—Slate Quarries—The Gwyddelod—Nocturnal
Adventure.
Nothing worthy of commemoration took place during the two following days,
save that myself and family took an evening walk on the Wednesday up the
side of the Berwyn, for the purpose of botanizing, in which we were
attended by John Jones. There, amongst other plants, we found a curious
moss which our good friend said was called in Welsh Corn Carw, or deer’s
horn, and which he said the deer were very fond of. On the Thursday he
and I started on an expedition on foot to Ruthyn, distant about fourteen
miles, proposing to return in the evening.
The town and castle of Ruthyn possessed great interest for me from being
connected with the affairs of Owen Glendower. It was at Ruthyn that the
first and not the least remarkable scene of the Welsh insurrection took
place by Owen making his appearance at the fair held there in fourteen
hundred, plundering the English who had come with their goods, slaying
many of them, sacking the town and concluding his day’s work by firing
it; and it was at the castle of Ruthyn that Lord Grey dwelt, a minion of
Henry the Fourth and Glendower’s deadliest enemy, and who was the
principal cause of the chieftain’s entering into rebellion, having in the
hope of obtaining his estates in the vale of Clwyd poisoned the mind of
Henry against him, who proclaimed him a traitor, before he had committed
any act of treason, and confiscated his estates, bestowing that part of
them upon his favourite, which the latter was desirous of obtaining.
We started on our expedition at about seven o’clock of a brilliant
morning. We passed by the abbey and presently came to a small fountain
with a little stone edifice, with a sharp top above it. “That is the
holy well,” said my guide: “Llawer iawn o barch yn yr amser yr Pabyddion
yr oedd i’r fynnon hwn—much respect in the times of the Papists there was
to this fountain.”
“I heard of it,” said I, “and tasted of its water the other evening at
the abbey.” Shortly after we saw a tall stone standing in a field on our
right hand at about a hundred yards distance from the road. “That is the
pillar of Eliseg, sir,” said my guide. “Let us go and see it,” said I.
We soon reached the stone. It is a fine upright column about seven feet
high, and stands on a quadrate base. “Sir,” said my guide, “a dead king
lies buried beneath this stone. He was a mighty man of valour and
founded the abbey. He was called Eliseg.” “Perhaps Ellis,” said I, “and
if his name was Ellis his stone was very properly called Colofn Eliseg,
in Saxon the Ellisian column.” The view from the column is very
beautiful, below on the south-east is the venerable abbey, slumbering in
its green meadow. Beyond it runs a stream, descending from the top of a
glen, at the bottom of which the old pile is situated; beyond the stream
is a lofty hill. The glen on the north is bounded by a noble mountain,
covered with wood. Struck with its beauty I inquired its name. “Moel
Eglwysig, sir,” said my guide. “The Moel of the Church,” said I. “That
is hardly a good name for it, for the hill is not bald (moel).” “True,
sir,” said John Jones. “At present its name is good for nothing, but
estalom (of old) before the hill was planted with trees its name was good
enough. Our fathers were not fools when they named their hills.” “I
dare say not,” said I, “nor in many other things which they did, for
which we laugh at them, because we do not know the reasons they had for
doing them.” We regained the road; the road tended to the north up a
steep ascent. I asked John Jones the name of a beautiful village, which
lay far away on our right, over the glen, and near its top. “Pentref y
dwr, sir” (the village of the water). It is called the village of the
water, because the river below comes down through part of it. I next
asked the name of the hill up which we were going, and he told me Allt
Bwlch; that is, the high place of the hollow road.
This bwlch, or hollow way, was a regular pass, which put me wonderfully
in mind of the passes of Spain. It took us a long time to get to the
top. After resting a minute on the summit we began to descend. My guide
pointed out to me some slate-works, at some distance on our left. “There
is a great deal of work going on there, sir,” said he: “all the slates
that you see descending the canal at Llangollen come from there.” The
next moment we heard a blast, and then a thundering sound: “Llais craig
yn syrthiaw; the voice of the rock in falling, sir,” said John Jones;
“blasting is dangerous and awful work.” We reached the bottom of the
descent, and proceeded for two or three miles up and down a rough and
narrow road; I then turned round and looked at the hills which we had
passed over. They looked bulky and huge.
We continued our way, and presently saw marks of a fire in some grass by
the side of the road. “Have the Gipsiaid been there?” said I to my
guide.
“Hardly, sir; I should rather think that the Gwyddeliad (Irish) have been
camping there lately.”
“The Gwyddeliad?”
“Yes, sir, the vagabond Gwyddeliad, who at present infest these parts
much, and do much more harm than the Gipsiaid ever did.”
“What do you mean by the Gipsiaid?”
“Dark, handsome people, sir, who occasionally used to come about in vans
and carts, the men buying and selling horses, and sometimes tinkering,
whilst the women told fortunes.”
“And they have ceased to come about?”
“Nearly so, sir; I believe they have been frightened away by the
Gwyddelod.”
“What kind of people are these Gwyddelod?”
“Savage, brutish people, sir; in general without shoes and stockings,
with coarse features and heads of hair like mops.”
“How do they live?”
“The men tinker a little, sir, but more frequently plunder. The women
tell fortunes, and steal whenever they can.”
“They live something like the Gipsiaid.”
“Something, sir; but the hen Gipsiaid were gentlefolks in comparison.”
“You think the Gipsiaid have been frightened away by the Gwyddelians?”
“I do, sir; the Gwyddelod made their appearance in these parts about
twenty years ago, and since then the Gipsiaid have been rarely seen.”
“Are these Gwyddelod poor?”
“By no means, sir; they make large sums by plundering and other means,
with which, ’tis said, they retire at last to their own country or
America, where they buy land and settle down.”
“What language do they speak?”
“English, sir; they pride themselves on speaking good English, that is to
the Welsh. Amongst themselves they discourse in their own Paddy
Gwyddel.”
“Have they no Welsh?”
“Only a few words, sir; I never heard of one of them speaking Welsh, save
a young girl—she fell sick by the roadside, as she was wandering by
herself—some people at a farm-house took her in, and tended her till she
was well. During her sickness she took a fancy to their quiet way of
life, and when she was recovered she begged to stay with them and serve
them. They consented; she became a very good servant, and hearing
nothing but Welsh spoken, soon picked up the tongue.”
“Do you know what became of her?”
“I do, sir; her own people found her out, and wished to take her away
with them, but she refused to let them, for by that time she was
perfectly reclaimed, had been to chapel, renounced her heathen crefydd,
and formed an acquaintance with a young Methodist who had a great gift of
prayer, whom she afterwards married—she and her husband live at present
not far from Mineira.”
“I almost wonder that her own people did not kill her.”
“They threatened to do so, sir, and would doubtless have put their threat
into execution, had they not been prevented by the Man on High.”
And here my guide pointed with his finger reverently upward.
“Is it a long time since you have seen any of these Gwyddeliaid?”
“About two months, sir, and then a terrible fright they caused me.”
“How was that?”
“I will tell you, sir; I had been across the Berwyn to carry home a piece
of weaving work to a person who employs me. It was night as I returned,
and when I was about half-way down the hill, at a place which is called
Allt Paddy, because the Gwyddelod are in the habit of taking up their
quarters there, I came upon a gang of them, who had come there and camped
and lighted their fire, whilst I was on the other side of the hill.
There were nearly twenty of them, men and women, and amongst the rest was
a man standing naked in a tub of water with two women stroking him down
with clouts. He was a large fierce-looking fellow, and his body, on
which the flame of the fire glittered, was nearly covered with red hair.
I never saw such a sight. As I passed they glared at me and talked
violently in their Paddy Gwyddel, but did not offer to molest me. I
hastened down the hill, and right glad I was when I found myself safe and
sound at my house in Llangollen, with my money in my pocket, for I had
several shillings there, which the man across the hill had paid me for
the work which I had done.”
CHAPTER XV
The Turf Tavern—Don’t Understand—The Best Welsh—The Maids of Merion—Old
and New—Ruthyn—The Ash Yggdrasill.
We now emerged from the rough and narrow way which we had followed for
some miles, upon one much wider, and more commodious, which my guide told
me was the coach road from Wrexham to Ruthyn, and going on a little
farther we came to an avenue of trees which shaded the road. It was
chiefly composed of ash, sycamore, and birch, and looked delightfully
cool and shady. I asked my guide if it belonged to any gentleman’s
house. He told me that it did not, but to a public-house, called Tafarn
Tywarch, which stood near the end, a little way off the road. “Why is it
called Tafarn Tywarch?” said I, struck by the name, which signifies “the
tavern of turf.”
“It was called so, sir,” said John, “because it was originally merely a
turf hovel, though at present it consists of good brick and mortar.”
“Can we breakfast there,” said I, “for I feel both hungry and thirsty?”
“O, yes, sir,” said John, “I have heard there is good cheese and cwrw
there.”
We turned off to the “tafarn,” which was a decent public-house of rather
an antiquated appearance. We entered a sanded kitchen, and sat down by a
large oaken table. “Please to bring us some bread, cheese and ale,” said
I in Welsh to an elderly woman, who was moving about.
“Sar?” said she.
“Bring us some bread, cheese and ale,” I repeated in Welsh.
“I do not understand you, sar,” said she in English.
“Are you Welsh?” said I in English.
“Yes, I am Welsh!”
“And can you speak Welsh?”
“O, yes, and the best.”
“Then why did you not bring what I asked for?”
“Because I did not understand you.”
“Tell her,” said I to John Jones, “to bring us some bread, cheese and
ale.”
“Come, aunt,” said John, “bring us bread and cheese and a quart of the
best ale.”
The woman looked as if she was going to reply in the tongue in which he
addressed her, then faltered, and at last said in English that she did
not understand.
“Now,” said I, “you are fairly caught: this man is a Welshman, and
moreover understands no language but Welsh.”
“Then how can he understand you?” said she.
“Because I speak Welsh,” said I.
“Then you are a Welshman?” said she.
“No I am not,” said I, “I am English.”
“So I thought,” said she, “and on that account I could not understand
you.”
“You mean that you would not,” said I. “Now do you choose to bring what
you are bidden?”
“Come, aunt,” said John, “don’t be silly and cenfigenus, but bring the
breakfast.”
The woman stood still for a moment or two, and then biting her lips went
away.
“What made the woman behave in this manner?” said I to my companion.
“O, she was cenfigenus, sir,” he replied; “she did not like that an
English gentleman should understand Welsh; she was envious; you will find
a dozen or two like her in Wales; but let us hope not more.”
Presently the woman returned with the bread, cheese and ale, which she
placed on the table.
“Oh,” said I, “you have brought what was bidden, though it was never
mentioned to you in English, which shows that your pretending not to
understand was all a sham. What made you behave so?”
“Why I thought,” said the woman, “that no Englishman could speak Welsh,
that his tongue was too short.”
“Your having thought so,” said I, “should not have made you tell a
falsehood, saying that you did not understand, when you knew that you
understood very well. See what a disgraceful figure you cut.”
“I cut no disgraced figure,” said the woman: “after all, what right have
the English to come here speaking Welsh, which belongs to the Welsh
alone, who in fact are the only people that understand it.”
“Are you sure that you understand Welsh?” said I.
“I should think so,” said the woman, “for I come from the vale of Clwyd,
where they speak the best Welsh in the world, the Welsh of the Bible.”
“What do they call a salmon in the vale of Clwyd?” said I.
“What do they call a salmon?” said the woman.
“Yes,” said I, “when they speak Welsh.”
“They call it—they call it—why a salmon.”
“Pretty Welsh!” said I. “I thought you did not understand Welsh.”
“Well, what do you call it?” said the woman.
“Eawg,” said I, “that is the word for a salmon in general—but there are
words also to show the sex—when you speak of a male salmon you should say
cemyw, when of a female hwyfell.”
“I never heard the words before,” said the woman, “nor do I believe them
to be Welsh.”
“You say so,” said I, “because you do not understand Welsh.”
“I not understand Welsh!” said she. “I’ll soon show you that I do.
Come, you have asked me the word for salmon in Welsh, I will now ask you
the word for salmon-trout. Now tell me that, and I will say you know
something of the matter.”
“A tinker of my country can tell you that,” said I. “The word for
salmon-trout is gleisiad.”
The countenance of the woman fell.
“I see you know something about the matter,” said she; “there are very
few hereabouts, though so near to the vale of Clwyd, who know the word
for salmon-trout in Welsh. I shouldn’t have known the word myself, but
for the song which says:
“‘Glân yw’r gleisiad yn y llyn.’”
“And who wrote that song?” said I.
“I don’t know,” said the woman.
“But I do,” said I; “one Lewis Morris wrote it.”
“Oh,” said she, “I have heard all about Huw Morris.”
“I was not talking of Huw Morris,” said I, “but Lewis Morris, who lived
long after Huw Morris. He was a native of Anglesea, but resided for some
time in Merionethshire, and whilst there composed a song about the
Morwynion bro Meirionydd, or the lasses of County Merion, of a great many
stanzas, in one of which the gleisiad is mentioned. Here it is in
English:
“‘Full fair the gleisiad in the flood,
Which sparkles ’neath the summer’s sun,
And fair the thrush in green abode
Spreading his wings in sportive fun,
But fairer look if truth be spoke,
The maids of County Merion.’”
The woman was about to reply, but I interrupted her.
“There,” said I, “pray leave us to our breakfast, and the next time you
feel inclined to talk nonsense about no Englishman’s understanding Welsh,
or knowing anything of Welsh matters, remember that it was an Englishman
who told you the Welsh word for salmon, and likewise the name of the
Welshman who wrote the song in which the gleisiad is mentioned.”
The ale was very good, and so were the bread and cheese. The ale indeed
was so good that I ordered a second jug. Observing a large antique
portrait over the mantel-piece I got up to examine it. It was that of a
gentleman in a long wig, and underneath it was painted in red letters
“Sir Watkin Wynn 1742.” It was doubtless the portrait of the Sir Watkin
who in 1745 was committed to the Tower under suspicion of being suspected
of holding Jacobite opinions, and favouring the Pretender. The portrait
was a very poor daub, but I looked at it long and attentively as a
memorial of Wales at a critical and long past time.
When we had dispatched the second jug of ale, and I had paid the
reckoning, we departed and soon came to where stood a turnpike house at a
junction of two roads, to each of which was a gate.
“Now, sir,” said John Jones, “the way straight forward is the ffordd
newydd and the one on our right hand, is the hen ffordd. Which shall we
follow, the new or the old?”
“There is a proverb in the Gerniweg,” said I, “which was the language of
my forefathers, saying, ‘ne’er leave the old way for the new,’ we will
therefore go by the hen ffordd.”
“Very good, sir,” said my guide, “that is the path I always go, for it is
the shortest.” So we turned to the right and followed the old road.
Perhaps, however, it would have been well had we gone by the new, for the
hen ffordd was a very dull and uninteresting road, whereas the ffordd
newydd, as I long subsequently found, is one of the grandest passes in
Wales. After we had walked a short distance my guide said, “Now, sir, if
you will turn a little way to the left hand I will show you a house built
in the old style, such a house, sir, as I dare say the original turf
tavern was.” Then leading me a little way from the road he showed me,
under a hollow bank, a small cottage covered with flags.
“That is a house, sir, built yn yr hen dull in the old fashion, of earth,
flags and wattles, and in one night. It was the custom of old when a
house was to be built, for the people to assemble, and to build it in one
night of common materials, close at hand. The custom is not quite dead.
I was at the building of this myself, and a merry building it was. The
cwrw da passed quickly about among the builders, I assure you.” We
returned to the road, and when we had ascended a hill my companion told
me that if I looked to the left I should see the vale of Clwyd.
I looked and perceived an extensive valley pleasantly dotted with trees
and farm-houses, and bounded on the west by a range of hills.
“It is a fine valley, sir,” said my guide, “four miles wide and twenty
long, and contains the richest land in all Wales. Cheese made in that
valley, sir, fetches a penny a pound more than cheese made in any other
valley.”
“And who owns it?” said I.
“Various are the people who own it, sir, but Sir Watkin owns the greater
part.”
We went on, passed by a village called Craig Vychan, where we saw a
number of women washing at a fountain, and by a gentle descent soon
reached the vale of Clwyd.
After walking about a mile we left the road and proceeded by a footpath
across some meadows. The meadows were green and delightful, and were
intersected by a beautiful stream. Trees in abundance were growing
about, some of which were oaks. We passed by a little white chapel with
a small graveyard before it, which my guide told me belonged to the
Baptists, and shortly afterwards reached Ruthyn.
We went to an inn called the Crossed Foxes, where we refreshed ourselves
with ale. We then sallied forth to look about, after I had ordered a
duck to be got ready for dinner, at three o’clock. Ruthyn stands on a
hill above the Clwyd, which in the summer is a mere brook, but in the
winter a considerable stream, being then fed with the watery tribute of a
hundred hills. About three miles to the north is a range of lofty
mountains, dividing the shire of Denbigh from that of Flint, amongst
which, a
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