Chapter IV: Part 4

Mr. Baring-Gould tells us how these two bards were constantly in a state of feud and bitter rivalry, till an ingenious friend put an end to their quarrels by simply telling each of them that the other was dead, and was to be buried at Strata Florida on such-and-such a day--mentioning the same day in both cases. Each of the poets, in the glow of generosity consequent on the death of a hated rival, composed a beautiful ode in praise of his enemy, and proceeded to the churchyard to read it beside the grave. There, of course, they met; and each, determined to read his ode at any cost, forthwith read it to the hero of it, and buried his enmity instead of his enemy.

It was somewhere within that “meanely waullid” cemetery that this quaint scene took place; and it was somewhere within these precincts that a thousand frightened children crowded together long ago, waiting to be carried away from their parents and homes in Cardiganshire to the exile in England to which Henry IV. had doomed them. That is an ill-omened name in Ystradfflur--the name of Henry Bolingbroke--for in his fury at the rebellion of Glyndwr he fell upon this sacred place and ruined it, and drove out its monks, and stabled his horses at its High Altar.

To reach Machynlleth, which is our object, we must return to Aberystwith--but we may do this by a slightly different road, diverging at Trawscoed. The surface is better than that of the other, and the road is wider, but there is one bad hill, with a nominal gradient of 1 in 7. As we approach Aberystwith we see, beyond the river, a little place called Llanbadarn Fawr. Here, in very early times, long before the great days of Ystradfflur, there was a famous monastery, founded by St. Padarn, a contemporary of St. David. Like St. David’s own monastery, it was laid waste by the Danes.

Passing through Aberystwith we climb out of it on the further side by a long hill. Except the wide view from this hill there is nothing of special attraction in any way till we have passed Tal-y-bont. Then suddenly there comes into sight the headland beyond the Dyfi (Dovey). Far away on the left is the sea, and between us and it lies a wide and absolutely level plain, with Borth showing darkly on the shore. Soon we pass Tre-Taliesin, named from the great bard of Arthur’s day, whose grave is said by some to lie on this hillside to the right, and by others to be beside the waters of Geirionydd. Beyond this village we climb through lovely woods of birch and larch, and then we run down, leaving the trees behind us, into the beautiful estuary of the Dyfi. A wide sea of gorse is at out feet; the river winds through the shallows beyond; and, bounding the valley and the view, rises the mighty wall of North Wales.

This is on the left--a wide and splendid landscape; and meanwhile on the right are wild hills rising from the road, cleft here and there by narrow wooded gorges or tumbling mountain streams. At Ysgubor-y-coed the water dashes down between sharp rocks, and makes a lovely picture with the great mill-wheel and mossy-tiled building that stand beside it; and just beyond Glan Dovey station we catch a momentary glimpse of the steep sides of the beautiful Llyfnant Valley. Thence four level miles bring us to Machynlleth.

There is a charm about Machynlleth. Its wide central street is planted with trees. In most Welsh towns, History, though she has lived in them so long, has rather an uneasy air: tales of valour, or of treachery on a large scale, blend rather incongruously with prim grey houses and slate roofs. But in Machynlleth we are quite prepared to learn that these quaint and quiet streets--and some of the houses, even--are bound up very closely with the picturesque life of the last of the Welsh princes: so closely indeed, that Owen Glyndwr’s royal seal figures in the arms of the town. In those low, whitewashed cottages he held his first parliament; and in that little corner-house in the next street he rested the uneasy head that wore a crown for such a brief and troublous time. It is the oldest house in Wales, they say, but much renovation and a new chimney have destroyed any picturesqueness it ever had; and it is now neither as venerable nor as interesting in appearance as the Old Mayor’s House, a timber-and-plaster building at one end of the main street, with gables leaning in all directions. Neither do the whitewashed Houses of Parliament show any signs of their distinguished past--yet here Glyndwr accepted his crown and very nearly lost his life. For among the members of this his first parliament was one who was his enemy, and the sworn man of the House of Lancaster. Davy Gam, “the Crooked,” a little red-haired, squinting man who, whatever he was, was no coward, came to this house with the intention of killing Glyndwr, but being betrayed, was thrown into prison for ten years, while his house near Brecon was burnt to ashes. Owen, with unusual forbearance, spared his life, perhaps in acknowledgment of the man’s courage in coming among his enemies single-handed. He showed his courage more honourably at Agincourt. “There are enough to kill,” he said of the French just before the battle, “enough to be taken prisoners, and enough to run away.” He died on that field, and was knighted by Henry V. as he lay dying. “He lived like a wolf and died like a lion,” it has been said of him.

Now, on leaving Machynlleth, supposing it to be our intention to go on to Dolgelley and so to Bala, we have a choice of roads. All the ways are so beautiful, however, that we can hardly go wrong; but those who fix upon the shortest way, by Corris, should know that they will find it well worth while to run down the estuary to Aberdovey and back again. For this estuary of the Dyfi is second only to that of the Mawddach in beauty.

Its best time, certainly, is in the summer, for the hills are thickly wooded; but at all seasons there is a lovely view at every turn of the road. One of those that haunt the memory is from the point where the road to Aberdovey, after passing through Pennal, comes again within sight of the river. In the foreground is a wide expanse of rich colouring, of red and brown, green and gold and russet; beyond it shines a thin line of silver; and beyond that again rise the hills of South Wales--not so imposing by any means as that massive bulwark of mountains that we saw from the other side and are now close under, but yet very beautiful in colour and bold in outline. As the estuary widens a succession of headlands stretch out before us, one beyond another, and round these the road curves, sometimes very sharply. At the extreme mouth of the estuary lies Aberdovey, in the shelter of the hills.

The same eighteenth-century lady whom I quoted before describes a visit to “Aberdove Seaport,” as she calls it. “Down we set at the window,” she says, “... to see the Sea hempty it self in to a Beautifull serpentine river, at the beginning of which lay ten ships at harbour.” One cannot marvel that any one should sit down at a window to watch so strange a phenomenon as the sea emptying itself into a river. Unfortunately this interesting sight cannot now be promised to visitors at Aberdovey; but the “beginning” of the river still owes much of its picturesque effect to the little quays that jut out into the stream, and the ships of considerable size that lie “at harbour.” The best hotel, and it is an extremely nice one, is a short distance beyond the little town, and is perched on the hillside above the golf-links, facing the sea.

It was somewhere in this estuary, probably on the shore of the Traeth Maelgwyn, that a strange scene took place between thirteen and fourteen hundred years ago. Maelgwyn, that King of Gwynedd whose name recurs so often in the history of North Wales, that gigantic man of fitful valour and still more fitful piety, determined to unite all the strength of the west under one ruler, the better to oppose the conquering Saxons. It was agreed that all the princes and knights who had any pretensions should meet together in the estuary of the Dyfi, the dividing-line between North and South Wales; that they should there seat themselves on chairs upon the shore, and he who contrived to keep his seat the longest should be the king. Then Maelgwyn, having settled these preliminaries, had a wonderful chair made for himself of the wings of birds, waxed. As the tide rose the seats of the other princes were overturned, but Maelgwyn’s chair floated on the surface of the sea. So Maelgwyn became chief of all the princes of the west.

From Aberdovey, as I said before, we may, if we choose, drive straight on round the coast by Towyn and Fairbourne, and up the southern side of the Barmouth estuary to Dolgelley. Or we may turn eastward at Towyn, and reach Dolgelley by way of Tal-y-llyn. Or, thirdly, we may return to Machynlleth and drive thence to Dolgelley by Corris.

No motorist should really rest satisfied till he has driven on all these roads, so beautiful are the three. Towyn, I believe, has charms for many, but on the surface it is singularly unattractive. It has a very ancient church, however, built in the twelfth century by Gruffyd ap Cynan, of whom it was said that he built so many that his country “glittered with whitewashed churches as the heavens are bright with stars.” Near it are some extremely interesting old memorial stones; but here, to all appearance, the interest of Towyn begins and ends. Beyond it there are some fine views of the hills as the road turns inland; and again when it turns to the coast and, high on the side of the cliff, curves round into the Barmouth estuary, the effect is really fine. It must have been of this part of the road that a traveller once wrote: “We ascended a precipice, frightful beyond description, on one side of us was the highest ragget Rock I have seen, the stones to appearance lose, and look as if just droping on your heads, some of which have fell a few years ago. The Precipice down to the Mean (Main) Ocean not less than thirty yards, and us travlers not a yard from the side of it, where the waves dash and tide rores, till it made me tremble.” Grand as these “ragget” cliffs are, however, the most beautiful part of this drive is in the Barmouth estuary, under the shadow of Cader Idris. But to many travellers in Wales this valley of the Mawddach is thoroughly familiar, and to them I heartily recommend the road by Corris.

From Aberdovey one drives back to a point in the Dyfi Valley almost opposite to Machynlleth. The river Dulas, near the point where it joins the Dyfi, is spanned by a fine old bridge, whose arches have resounded to the tramp of Henry Tudor’s followers, as he and they marched eastwards to fight for the crown; and to the tramp of Cromwell’s men as they marched westwards to fight, if not for the crown, for everything that goes with it. It is at this point that we turn sharply to the left and follow the course of the Dulas. This opening of the valley of Corris is very lovely, for the river, which has all the impetuosity of a mountain stream, is overhung by splendid trees, and through their stems in the spring we may see the further bank, steep and mossy, and thickly jewelled with primroses. The whole of this narrow and wild valley, indeed, is full of beauty. The road rises gradually to a considerable height; then beyond Upper Corris, where the landscape is defaced, as so often in Wales, by enormous banks of slate, it drops down by some very steep gradients, amid fine mountain scenery, to the level of Tal-y-llyn.

It is only the eastern extremity of the lake that we see, and this we leave behind us, turning at this point sharply to the right into a defile of extreme barrenness. This narrow gorge, with its towering sides reft and lacerated by landslips, its huge boulders poised as though about to fall, its grey slopes softened only here and there by patches of short grass, is the most utterly, the most desolately savage spot I have seen in Wales. As we leave it and emerge into more open country, we realise that those wild slopes were the foot of Cader Idris, for looking back we see the heavy grey shoulder of the mountain. Soon we reach Cross Foxes, and thence run down through beautiful woods on a delightful gradient to Dolgelley, with the purple hills of the Mawddach estuary showing in a long line above and behind the vivid green of the trees.

In Dolgelley, as we saw before, all the historical interest is concentrated on a lamp-shop. There is nothing to keep us there, unless we wish for a meal, or perchance a bed, at the “Golden Lion,” or unless we mean to use the place, as many do, as a centre for expeditions. But at present our concern is to turn towards the English frontier, and to reach it through Bala and Llanrhaiadr.

For ten miles after we leave Dolgelley the road ascends, persistently but never steeply. The backward views of mountain, wood, and stream are unfailingly lovely on this road, as on all others that converge at Dolgelley; and no less attractive in its own way is the wilder scenery at the top of this hill, which is practically a pass. From the summit we descend to the shores of Bala Lake, and after driving for three miles close beside its waters we reach the little town.

It is not an especially attractive place. The neighbourhood of the lake is of course pleasant, but the hotel--which, by the way, like many Welsh inns, contains some lovely old furniture--looks out over the street. The scenery of the lake is pretty rather than grand.

Bala must have been more interesting, I think, in Pennant’s day. It must certainly have presented an appearance all its own; for he assures us that the entire population--men, women, and children--spent all their time in knitting stockings. They knitted in their doorways, they knitted as they walked about the streets, and on fine days they sat together on the tumulus at the end of the town, and knitted there. On Saturdays the fruit of all this industry was sold, to the value of four or five hundred pounds, in a special stocking-market. This must have been a sight worth seeing.

We may still see the Tomen-y-Bala, the tumulus where the knitters used to sit and sun themselves, and where, very long ago, a little castle stood. The mound has been made very neat, with gravel paths and rhododendrons; and by paying a small sum we may climb to its modest summit and give a thought to the Romans who made the tumulus, and the Britons who made the castle, and the past generations who made stockings.

Leaving Bala, we may follow the Dee to Corwen, and there join the great London and Holyhead road; and this is by far the simplest route we can choose.

The route we should certainly _not_ choose is the so-called road from Bala to Lake Vyrnwy, the reservoir of Liverpool. The scenery round this lake is very beautiful, it is true, and an excellent hotel stands high on the hillside above the water; and since there is no railway among these wild hills, this is one of the places that show the uses of the motor-car most strikingly. But Vyrnwy should be approached from Shropshire, by way of Llanfyllin. The road that connects it with Bala is a narrow, precipitous pass, cut on the side of a slope that is at some points almost a precipice, unprotected by any kind of fence, sloping downwards on the outer side, and crossed at short intervals by natural water-channels. It is a discouraging picture, and the reality is, to put it mildly, uncomfortable.

As an alternative to the Corwen road we may cross the Holy Dee at the very spot where the “wizard stream,” as Milton calls it--that stream that had the gift of prophesying good or evil fortune to the cause of Wales--flows from the parent waters of Llyn Tegid or Bala Lake, and following a mountain road of many “dangerous” hills, visit the waterfall at Llanrhaiadr before we pass into Shropshire.

The fall is at a lonely spot about four miles beyond the village of Llanrhaiadr, which is itself a pretty place with a nice inn. The road that leads to Pistyll-y-Rhaiadr is little more than a lane, but one may drive up almost to the very foot of the fall. “Prodigious high,” says the letter-writer I have so often quoted: “and seemingly the hend of the world.” There is really some excuse for this dramatic statement. An abrupt mass of rock rises before us impassably. On each side of it are pine-woods, climbing the craggy slopes. There is an air of finality about the place: it is “seemingly the hend of the world.”

A TOUR IN SOUTH WALES

For those whose affections are at all equally divided between natural beauty and historical interest the map of South Wales presents a dilemma. The imperative thing is to avoid the once beautiful hills and valleys that are now scarred, and rent, and blackened with coal-dust; and this may be done by taking either the moorland road above the mining country, or the level road below it near the sea. Now I, who know both these roads, assure you that in adopting either of these courses you will miss much. For if you choose the lower road, tempted by its excellence, you will miss some of the finest scenery in South Wales, which, though not to be compared with the North, is yet beautiful; and if you choose the upper one you will miss the romance of Beaupré, and the very ancient memories of Llantwit Major, and you will, moreover, miss a good many miles of as fine a road as ever made an engine purr. There is only one way out of this dilemma, namely, to follow a zigzag course, from the sea to the hills, from the hills to the sea, and so enjoy the best of both roads.

To avoid the mines we must aim very low; at Cardiff or Caerphilly. And if we are approaching the Border from Monmouth or Hereford, or the Midlands, we shall probably, just before we reach the spreading outskirts of Newport, pass through a village with a great name. A dull, sleepy-looking village it is, standing in a commonplace landscape beside a very dirty stream, a place entirely without superficial attractions. But it is a name to conjure with. Caerleon-upon-Usk, the City of Legions! Once it “abounded in wealth above all other cities, ... and passing fair was the magnificence of the kingly palaces thereof.” The gilded roofs of the Romans glittered here beside the Usk, and the great amphitheatre that may still be traced once echoed to the shouts of the second legion: towers and temples, baths and aqueducts and splendid buildings stood where now a few poor houses keep alive the name of Caerleon. Round its shining palaces grew up a world of legend. We know all about the fine doings at Arthur’s coronation here: how he and Guinevere were crowned in different churches, and how the music in both was “so transporting” that the congregations ran to and fro between one church and the other all day; and how a banquet of great splendour followed, with Caius, the server, dressed in ermine, and Bedver, the butler, waiting with all kinds of cups, and hosts of noblemen handing the dishes; and how, after the feast, the soldiers got up a sham fight to amuse the ladies, who sat on the town walls and “darted amorous glances in a sportive manner.” And in the “Mabinogion” we are given a more domestic picture of King Arthur at Caerleon-upon-Usk: a picture of him in his palace dozing upon a seat of green rushes covered with flame-coloured satin, with a red satin cushion under his elbow, while Guinevere and her handmaidens sit at their needlework by the window, and a group of knights are drinking mead from a golden goblet. And at Caerleon, too, it was that Maxen Wledig, the truant Emperor of Rome, built one of three great castles for Helen, his wife. He had seen her first in a dream, and sought her by land and sea, and having found her he forgot his Empire and lived in Britain seven years. So they made them a new Emperor in Rome.

“And this one wrote a letter of threat to Maxen. There was nought in the letter but only this, ‘If thou comest, and if thou ever comest to Rome.’ And even unto Caerleon came this letter to Maxen, and these tidings. Then sent he a letter to the man who styled himself Emperor in Rome. There was nought in that letter also but only this, ‘If I come to Rome, and if I come.’”

So, through the Middle Ages, the memory of the great days of Caerleon was preserved in legend.

Long before we have finished dreaming of King Arthur and his red satin cushion the tram-lines of Newport force themselves upon our attention. Newport was so called, I believe, because it superseded Caerleon, the old port, of which Leland says: “Very great shyppes might wel cum now to the town, as they did in the Romaynes tyme, but that Newport Bridge is a lette.”

Before leaving Newport any one who is likely to be hungry soon will do well to secure a meal, for though Cardiff is not far away the ruins of Caerphilly take some time to see, and the little town cannot be depended upon for food. And we must on no account miss seeing Caerphilly; for this vast ruin covers more ground than any other in this island, and, moreover, has the special distinction of being a characteristically Edwardian castle of a date earlier than Edward’s. It was chiefly the work of Gilbert de Clare, the Red Earl of Gloucester, whose architect, unlike that great artist, Henry de Elfreton, thought little of beauty when he designed these mighty walls, but altogether of strength. “Waules of a wonderful thickness,” says Leland; and of a wonderful thickness they are, and of a wonderful tenacity too, seeing that one of the great bastions that were mined with gunpowder in the Civil War was only half ruined, and the other half has been leaning at a most surprising angle ever since. The history of the ruins is not at all in proportion to their size; and, indeed, it is possible that their size and strength may have acted as a deterrent to the makers of history. There is a story that Edward II. took refuge here with the Despensers; but even these unyielding walls failed to give any real sense of security to that poor spirit and at the first word of his enemies’ approach he hurried away, preferring to trust to disguise. He chose the inappropriate _rôle_ of a farm labourer--this indolent, boudoir-King, who had never done a day’s work in his life--and he failed signally to please his master, who was as anxious to be rid of him as his subjects were. It was soon after this that he was captured and led away to the horrors of Berkeley Castle.

On the direct route from Caerphilly to Cardiff there rises such a precipitous hill that the longer way by Nantgarw is really the best; and unless Cardiff has some special attraction for us there is no need to thread our way through its modern streets and its maze of tram-lines. For the Cardiff of the Romans, and of the Welsh princes of Morganwg, and of the Norman barons, is altogether overpowered by the Cardiff of commerce; and though there is a fragment left of the castle that has sheltered so many crowned heads at various times, the castle in which poor blind Robert of Normandy was a prisoner for twenty-eight years, yet even this is modernised and closed to the public.

But in Llandaff, which is now practically a suburb of Cardiff, there are still signs of age: a picturesque green and restored cross, some pretty old houses, and the cathedral of the most ancient see in the island. For even when St. Teilo of the sixth century laid the foundation of the first cathedral the bishopric of Llandaff had been in existence for more than five hundred years. By the eleventh century Teilo’s cathedral was past repair; and when the “business of the Cross was publicly proclaimed” here it was in a new building that the Archbishop celebrated mass--the same building, more or less, that stands down there in that curious hollow to-day. More or less: for the restorations of this greatly chastened cathedral have been many, and it has narrowly escaped suffering even more terrible things at the hands of its well-wishers. Jasper Tudor’s beautiful and uncommon west tower, for instance, was once threatened by an eighteenth-century bishop, a versatile soul who wrote a successful “Treatise on the Modes.” He was evidently more capable of dealing with the modes than with ecclesiastical architecture, for we hear that he was seized with a longing to remove Jasper’s tower and replace it with a rustic porch.[10] For once the poverty of the see was a fortunate circumstance, and saved the tower. But no doubt that same poverty injured the building greatly on many occasions; for at one time the see was so cruelly robbed by the Crown that its brave and humorous bishop had himself presented to Henry VIII. as the Bishop of Aff. “I was the Bishop of Llandaff,” he explained, “but lately the _land_ has been removed.”[11]

The tombs of Llandaff Cathedral are of great interest; and it is with real pleasure that one sees the new, for once, not unworthy to be beside the old. The recumbent figure of marble on the grave of Dean Vaughan is really beautiful.

As we climb the long hill a mile or two beyond Llandaff, we see Cardiff stretched out below us, a forest of masts and tall chimneys--an impressive symbol in its way. Then, when we reach the level ground, we forget everything for a time but the sheer delight of moving on a perfect road--forget even the heights of Exmoor showing faintly across the water on the left, and on the right the wild hills of Glamorganshire rolling away into the distance.

Now, at Cowbridge, it is necessary to come to a decision. If it should be too much for the resolution of an ardent motorist to leave this road, he may pursue his way to Neath without “lette,” as Leland would say; but for all antiquarians, artists, and other lovers of romance and beauty, the finger-post points very resolutely to a detour by Beaupré, Llantwit, St. Donat’s, and Ewenny.

About two miles south of Cowbridge is Old Beaupré (Bewper). Do not climb the stile and walk across the fields, but drive on a hundred yards or so to the gate; for this grass-grown, deserted avenue is the fitting approach to the spellbound house of the Bassetts, that strange mixture of splendour and squalor, with its delicate carvings and dainty Corinthian pillars and its air of utter desolation. We know very well as we look at it that fair faces once looked down through those Tudor windows, and gay satins swept between the classic columns of the doorway, and the walls echoed to music and singing and laughter, until the fatal day that an enchantment was laid upon the beautiful white doorway of the love-lorn Welshman who learnt his art in Italy, and upon the avenue that once led the Bassetts out to war and home to love, and upon every stone of the old castle, so that it became a farmhouse. And now the fluted pillars and carved friezes are green with moss and fringed with ferns, and the walls echo to nothing but the clucking of innumerable hens.

Beaupré is not greatly visited. There is, indeed, nothing to see but that strange, incongruous doorway and the ghosts that flutter round it; but it is one of those eloquent, unforgettable places through which, for a moment, one seems to be actually in touch with the life that they have seen.

At Llantwit Major the interest is of a very different kind. Here there is not very much to attract the artist, but to the antiquary and historian “the dwelling-place and home of the Blessed Illtyd” must surely be of the first importance. For it was here that the Breton saint, St. Iltutus, or Illtyd, founded a monastery and university that made a very deep mark upon the life of the sixth century; for its professors educated not only all the princes of the west, but also every illustrious Welshman--bishop, saint, or scholar--of the day. It is not surprising that an institution of its size and brilliancy--for its 2,400 students filled four hundred houses--should have seized the imagination of early writers, and given rise to so much picturesque legend that it is hard to know the truth. Some say that St. David himself was taught by St. Illtyd, and that Gildas the historian, called the Wise, and Taliesin, the bard of the Radiant Brow, were also brought up here. Of Illtyd himself the tale is told that he was originally a soldier, but hearing the call, he forsook his profession and his wife for the life of a hermit; and when his poor wife came to him, one day as he was working in the fields, he silently turned away from her, and stood so, with his back to her, till she left him in despair. This is a pathetic foundation for all the scholarship and saintliness of the sixth century in Wales, and one can only hope, for the sake of Illtyd’s conscience when he was a comfortable professor, that it is untrue. Of all the four hundred houses and seven halls of his university not a stone is now left; but in the church, which is itself very full of interest, there are some wonderful monuments, one of them being a memorial raised to St. Illtyd by one of his pupils, Samson, a saint himself. The head of the cross is gone, but on the shaft the beautiful Celtic designs are still clear and the words still legible to those who can read them--“Samson placed this cross for his soul.”

Just beyond Llantwit and nearer to the Bristol Channel is St. Donat’s, which, as Leland says, “stondith on a meane hille a quarter of a mile from the Severn Se.” This castle, partly Norman and partly Tudor, has been inhabited ever since the Norman conquest of Glamorgan; and so, as “the parkes booth and the castell long to ... a gentilman of very fair landes in that countery,” we can see no more than a glimpse of towers above the trees. But we pass close to the churchyard, and there we may see the very beautiful and uninjured Celtic cross.

From St. Donat’s we may rejoin the main road at Bridgend; but in this country, where good accommodation is not always to be found, it is well to know that there is a very nice modern hotel at Southerndown, with the Channel and the Exmoor coast in front of it and the trees and Castle of Dunraven near at hand. The actual building of Dunraven is new, but a castle has stood on the same spot for many generations, through many tragedies. In Henry VIII.’s reign the lord of Dunraven, Boteler, or Butler, lost all his children but one on the same day. He saw them die, perhaps, for the windows of his castle looked out across the waters that drowned them. Only one girl was left, and through her Dunraven passed to the Vaughans, who do not always seem to have made a good use of its position. For in Tenby Church lies the dust of a certain Walter of that house, who figures darkly in one of those moral tales--one might almost call them tracts--of which one occasionally hears in actual life. In Walter’s day, which was also the day of Queen Mary, these shores of Dunraven twinkled with treacherous lights, which lured unwary ships to the shore, causing their complete destruction and the great enrichment of the lord of the manor. At last, after years of this villainy, he was waiting one night for the fruits of his labours, waiting while the doomed ship was shaken to pieces and the bodies of her crew were one by one washed ashore. The last body that came was that of his own sailor-son.

Whether we approach Bridgend from Llantwit or from Southerndown, we shall see on our right the embattled tower of Ewenny among the trees. The restored conventual buildings of this very ancient Benedictine Priory are now a private house, but by leaving the high-road we may pass the fortified gateway that once stood between the monks and their enemies. There is no finer example, I believe, of a monastery that is also a castle, and no doubt it is partly owing to the strength of its defences that the Priory of Ewenny still stands in its original Norman austerity, not as a picturesque ruin, but as a parish church. With the exception of one or two Tudor windows, it is pure Norman throughout, very simple, very dignified; and it is still divided, according to ancient custom, into two separate churches that were used respectively by the monastery and the parish at large. The founder, whose beautiful tomb is wonderfully well preserved, was Maurice de Londres, whose name we shall meet again in a less amiable connection at Kidwelly. A great deal has been done in the way of restoring and preserving Ewenny by its owners, the ancient lords of Coity, whose great castle lies in ruins a few miles away. The Norman marchers of their house, it is said, set out to win the lands of Coity by force of arms, but seeing the fair daughter of the Welshman who owned them, he was himself won, and never a blow was struck, for Coity became his by marriage. How much of this story is true I do not know, but it is certainly true that his descendants have lived within a few miles of the spot from that day to this.

At Bridgend we rejoin the road that we left so reluctantly at Cowbridge, and soon, on the right, we pass the hills of Margam, at whose foot are the fragments of a famous Cistercian abbey, more celebrated, we are told, for its charitable deeds than any of that Order in Wales; while on the left there stretch between us and the sea the dreary sands that long ago buried--“shokid and devourid”--the castle and lands of Kenfig. The hills, cleft here and there with deep wooded valleys, are every moment drawing nearer; a strip of glittering sea appears beyond the sands, and beyond that again are the Mumbles. For a little time the masts of Aberavon rise picturesquely on the skyline, but they are too soon replaced by the chimneys of Briton Ferry.

It was here that the travellers of old days used to ford the river Neath. It was a dangerous ford, famous for its quicksands. Wherefore a certain twelfth-century bishop of St. David’s, being of a prudent temperament and desirous to cross, selected one of his minor clergy to ford the river before him, a “chaplain of those parts,” who had lately incurred the bishop’s displeasure, and had been suspended. The chaplain meekly consented; took the bishop’s best horse for the purpose; crossed in safety, and forthwith rode away. And it was only when the bishop restored the cure that the chaplain restored the horse.

This pleasant little story, recalled by the name of the ugly smoky town of Briton Ferry, will help us through the dismal streets that lead to Neath.

Neath itself is not an attractive town. Its abbey to Leland “semid the fairest abbay in al Wales.” To-day it is perhaps the most pathetic. During its last and most splendid days a Welsh bard sang of it and of the monks who lived in it; sang of its towers and cloisters, and coloured windows and princely shields; of its columns of blue marble and of the painted archangels on its roof. It was just at this time that it seemed to Leland so fair, that is to say just before Leland’s employer, Henry VIII., silenced the “peaceful songs of praise” of its white monks for ever. Even now we can guess at its past splendour, for though the blue marble and the archangels are gone, the crypt still has its vaulted roof, and through the heavy ivy there are fragments visible of the gleaming white stone with which it was once faced. It stands, unspeakably desolate, on the low, squalid outskirts of the town, amid a waste of scrap-iron and nettles and rubbish; but when Edward II. came to beg for a night’s lodging under its roof, when Neath was little more than a village and a castle, and there were no shunting, shrieking trains between the abbey and the hills, this must indeed have seemed a beautiful refuge for a tired, hunted king.

For close behind the abbey the hills begin to rise, and through them the river Neath cleaves its way to the sea in a valley that will lead us, if we follow it, to extremely desirable things. Ultimately the road will lead us to Brecon, by no means to be despised in itself, but it is rather for the sake of the miles of moorland that lie between that we must here strike up into the hills in a way that may seem eccentric till we know what they are like.

The Vale of Neath itself is famous for its lovely scenery, its woods and mountains and river. The road is practically level as far as Glyn-Neath, where, if the day is young, and the mood enterprising, we may, instead of keeping to our rightful road, diverge for a mile or so to Pont Neath Fechan. Thence the active-minded and able-bodied may visit a series of very pretty waterfalls on the river Mellte. This entails a considerable walk of a rough kind, but it also gives one an excuse for exploring a little more of this lovely moorland country: for the best way to approach the falls is to drive up for two miles into the hills and so reach the river from above.

But probably the most usual course is, at Glyn-Neath, to turn towards Hirwain. It is after this point that the really distinctive features of this run become apparent, the features that make the road essentially one for motorists; for no railway crosses these hills, and if there be strong-limbed bicyclists who do, they cannot often be women, I think. For the road that seems to the engine of a car to be merely gently undulating, is really climbing steadily upwards for miles. Gradually the scene becomes wilder and wilder, more and more desolate, till at last we are spinning over a moor as wide as the eye can see, on a road that winds visibly before us far away into the distance. Range beyond range, the hills completely encircle us: stern, bare hills with rugged outlines, and never a tree to soften them; and in the foreground great sweeping curves covered with short grass and here and there a glowing patch of heather. Then, when the summit is reached, and Cardiff waterworks are passed, begins the descent of nine miles on a perfect surface, close under the shoulder of the Brecon Beacons. I think this gentle descent is one of the most perfect runs, from a motoring point of view, that I have ever enjoyed; and if, as is likely, there is a touch of evening softness over the great hills, few people will regret having forsaken their direct westward road for the sake of this drive. Close under the Beacons lies Brecon.

A prodigious amount of fighting has raged round this peaceful-looking little town. It was not without bloodshed that Brychan the Irishman, in the fifth century, made this country his own with complete thoroughness, supplying it not only with a new name but with a new population (for he is said to have had forty-nine children); and Brecon was one of the many places that were attacked and overcome by the army of Alfred’s warlike daughter Ethelfleda; and truly there was no lack of fighting in the days of the Normans, the Neuf-Marché, and the de Braose. It was Bernard de Neuf-Marché, or Newmarch, who built the castle, once “very large, strong, and wele mainteynid,” but now only a remnant, a bit of battlemented wall and a tower, which passed through many stormy experiences before it came to the strangest end to which, surely, a castle was ever brought. For it was the inhabitants of Brecon themselves who, feeling that they had figured sufficiently in the annals of their country, demolished their own castle. It was during the Civil War, and a siege seemed imminent. The simplest way of avoiding this was to remove the castle.

Brecon might well be tired of fighting. Newmarch had fortified it well, with walls and gates and the “keepe of the castel very large and faire,” but it required all its defences and more, for a border castle was never safe. From the family of Newmarch it passed to that of de Braose, and they lost it again, not by the sword but by the seditious spirit and shrewd tongue of a woman. Matilda de St. Valerie, the wife of William de Braose, “uttered reproachful language against King John,” which though perfectly just, was rash. She lost not only her castle, but her husband and finally her life, for Brecon became Crown property; de Braose, after slaughtering the King’s garrison, fled to Ireland; and Matilda was starved to death in prison.

If we spend a night in Brecon we may sit in the pretty garden of the hotel under the shadow of the last remaining wall of Newmarch’s castle. Opposite us, filling almost the whole landscape, are the solemn Beacons; just below us is the Usk and its picturesque bridge.

We must cross that bridge to reach Carmarthen; and following the course of the Usk, pass through Trecastle, where the scenery becomes strikingly beautiful as the road cleaves a narrow gorge and then runs gently down for miles between wooded hills. At Llandovery we enter the valley of the Towy.

There is nothing to detain us at Llandovery; but as the gay flowers of the Castle Inn catch our eye in passing we may remember that George Borrow once spent a night there; and the remains of the castle hard by may perhaps call to mind the great chieftain Griffith ap Nicholas, who was lord of Dynevor and Kilgerran as well as of Llandovery and many another castle. He was also a Justice of the Peace, and a harbourer of thieves; a _protégé_ of the House of Lancaster who yet died in fighting for the house of York at Mortimer’s Cross: not a very conventional person, in short.

We leave the fragments of his castle on our left, and, on a practically level road, follow the slow-flowing Towy through Llangadoch to Llandeilo. This pretty little place, where there is a really nice inn, was once dignified with the name of Llandeilo Vawr, or the Great; probably because of its close proximity to the great castle of Dynevor. If we pause for a moment on the bridge that here crosses the Towy we shall see reflected in the river a thickly wooded bluff. Among these trees are the ruins of Dynevor, perhaps the most important stronghold of the princes of South Wales. It was in the ninth century that Roderic the Great built the first castle here, and from that day forward till Roderic’s fortress had for many years been replaced by a Norman one, Dynevor passed from hand to hand, from Welsh to English and from English to Welsh, and from one turbulent chieftain to another. It seems to have been regarded more or less as the key to South Wales; for on one occasion Henry II. sent a special spy to inquire into the strength of Dynevor and the general character of the country. This artless knight asked his way of a Welsh dean, and was, as he might have expected, led by a route so wild, so rough, and so extremely circuitous that the castle seemed to be practically inaccessible. By way of heightening the effect this humorous divine paused at intervals to satisfy his hunger with handfuls of grass. It was the custom in that poor country, he said. The knight returned to Henry with the report that the country round Dynevor was “uninhabitable, vile, and inaccessible, only affording food to a beastly nation, living like brutes.”

Within a few miles of Dynevor there is another castle that looks as if it might well have been inaccessible--Cerrig Cennen. It is worth while to drive a few miles out of our way to see this circlet of towers on its pale grey crag, dominating the whole landscape of rounded hills. It is best to approach it by Derwydd Station, partly because the more direct route leads over a long and precipitous hill, and partly because from this side one’s first view of the old fortress is more striking. I think there is little to be gained by trying to drive close to the actual ruins: the impressive effect is in the distant outline of this strange and sudden crag, on which, it is said, a Knight of the Round Table built his fortress before the Norman of later days made it his stronghold.

From Llandeilo to Carmarthen we have a choice of roads. The upper one is perhaps slightly the faster of the two, but from the lower there is a better view of Dynevor, and Dryslwyn Castle, and Abergwili, the palace of the bishops of St. David’s. In Carmarthen itself there are few relics left of a history that begins in the days of the Romans and has been stormy to a most unusual degree; so stormy, indeed, that one marvels the place exists at all. The wicked Vortigern, King of Britain in the fifth century, is said to have built a castle here, to defend himself against a too persistent saint who was trying, quite in vain, to turn him from the many errors of his ways. He had first taken refuge at Rhayader, but, says Nennius the historian, “St. Germanus followed him with all the British clergy, and upon a rock prayed for his sins during 40 days and 40 nights.” So the worried King fled here to Carmarthen and built a castle in which to hide. But, says the story, “the saint as usual followed him there and with his clergy fasted and prayed ... and on the third night a fire fell suddenly from heaven and totally burnt the castle.” How many times since then Carmarthen has been burnt to the ground and besieged and plundered I do not know, but one or other of these incidents is casually recorded on nearly every page of the History of Wales. But Carmarthen, like hope, “springs eternal.” Among the many who burnt it is Owen Glyndwr, who at the very time that the foolish legend describes him as sitting in a tree watching the Battle of Shrewsbury was really occupied, not only in destroying this town, but also, as though influenced by the reputed birthplace of Merlin, in having his fortune told by a soothsayer brought from Gower for the purpose. But though this brave fortune-teller prophesied evil things they were not fulfilled. Owen had still many successes before him, and his dealings with this ill-fated town of Carmarthen made a great sensation. There is an agitated letter still existing which the Archdeacon of Hereford, the “lowly creature,” as he signed himself, of Henry IV., wrote in “haste, great haste,” to implore that King for help. “And note,” he adds in a postscript, “on Friday last Kemerdyn town is taken and burnt, and the castle yielded ... and slain of the town of Kemerdyn more than L persons. Written in right haste on Sunday; and I cry your mercy and put me in your high grace that I write so shortly; for by my troth that I owe to you, it is needful.” The exciting effect of Owen’s presence, we see, was of somewhat wide radius. Yet even Owen could not suppress Carmarthen for more than a short time. Leland tells us of two “reparations done on the castel,” and in his day, he says, it was “veri fair and doble waullid.” Even now there is some of it left, but unless we exceed the speed-limit and refuse to pay the fine we shall probably not see it, as it has been made into a prison.

But even the modern streets that have risen from so many ashes are not without their own memories of the great. They were once lined with shouting, excited crowds, gathered from all the country round to see Nelson drive through the town: and through them passed the strange funeral procession of Richard Steele, who was carried by night, attended by twenty-five torch-bearers, to his grave in St. Peter’s Church. Above it a modern brass has been placed of late years, but for long the grave was, at his own dying request, left nameless. “I shall be remembered by posterity,” he said. There are other monuments worth seeing in St. Peter’s Church: the tomb of Sir Rhys ap Thomas, to whose efforts Henry VII. owed much in his quest for the crown; and a mural tablet of the seventeenth century, to “virtuous Anne, the lady Vaughan,” who was, we learn, “the choice elixir of mortalitie.”

From Carmarthen we must certainly not neglect to visit Kidweli, ten miles away near the sea, for there we shall find much of that visible romance that has, by storm and stress, been battered out of the county town. Kidweli once had walls, and three gates, and a priory of Black Monks, as well as the castle that still stands above the river Gwendraeth in all its imposing simplicity. The round towers and the curtain-wall and the great gateway have a very distinctly Edwardian character, but Caradoc of Llancarvan says there was a castle built here quite at the end of the twelfth century by Rhys ap Griffith, that great prince of South Wales who is known in Welsh history as The Lord Rhys; and even in those destructive days a hundred years was a short time for a castle to last. Probably Rhys built it and Edward repaired it, giving it the special character of his own work, but not entirely wiping out the work of Rhys. In this way we may account for the name of Gwenllian’s Tower, for Rhys had a much-loved daughter Gwenllian, “a woman of such incomparable beauty, and exceeding in all feminine qualifications, that she was accounted the fairest and best accomplished lady in all the country.” She had fine traditions behind her, but they were not so much “feminine” as warlike; for her father Rhys was “the protection of his country, the splendour of arms, the arm of power,” and her great uncle was the valiant Owen Gwynedd, and her grandmother was that gallant lady after whom she was doubtless named, Gwenllian the wife of Griffith. It was quite near Kidweli that this other Gwenllian died. In her husband’s absence she led his men to battle against the Norman invader, Maurice de Londres, whose grave we saw in his priory-church of Ewenny. Her forces were defeated, and she herself, by order of de Londres, was beheaded there and then. Her brother Owen Gwynedd, however, was still alive, and he saw to it that the reckoning was heavy.