Chapter XXIV: Part II

OVER the hill of Pen-garreg road
Is seen that leads from Llandovery,
Maes-y-velin’s green hill is opposite,
The mansion below—oft on either height,
The lovers are making discovery.—

But envious eyes were on the watch,
And the genius of evil hover’d;
The brothers who wish’d their sister unmatch’d,
For any approach of a lover watch’d,
At length their flags discover’d.

They hatch’d a scheme to enmesh the youth,
And see him at length on the mountain;
His flag they answer—he runs down the hill—
Now forth rush the wretches resolved to kill,
And waste his youth heart’s warm fountain.

Like prey-beasts they hide on the Teivy’s banks,
In the covert of thick-leaved bushes;
The youth he dashes across the river,
And ardent to seek his fond receiver,
He seeks her form in the rushes—

He deems she plays him at hide and seek,
Her heart he knew was gayful—
“Oh come from thy covert, my Ellen dear?
Oh come forth and meet thy lover here!”
He cries in soft accents playful.

No Ellen appears—rustling steps he hears—
Perhaps some perfidious stranger;—
He quits the rushes, and steals to a copse,
But there not an instant for breathing stops,
Peril’s presentiment suddenly drops,
And he flies for his life from danger.

He knew not his foes, up the hill he goes,
With the speed of the hart that’s hunted:
The brothers pursue, till fatigued they grew
To Maes-y-velin his course they knew,
And eager revenge is blunted—

They saw him enter—“the foe is snared!”
Exclaimed the elder brother;
“To kill him surely be firmly prepared,
Accursed be the arm by which he is spared!
Let’s stab him, or drown, or smother.”

“Let’s do him dead, and no matter how,
And our sister’s fortune is ours;
No brats of her’s shall supplant our hope:
Prepare we a dagger, a sack, and rope,
For brief are the stripling’s hours.”

Now rush’d the youth through the mansion door,
And fell at the feet of Ellen;
Ere he could speak the brothers appear,
The maiden shrieks with terrific fear,
The heiress of Maes-y-velin.

She fell in a swoon, the brothers soon
Gag and proceed to bind him,
His hands they fasten’d behind his back,
And over his head they drew a sack,
They jump on his body—his rib bones crack,
Till a corpse on the ground they find him.

Oh God! ’twas a barbarous, bloody deed;
’Twas piteous to hear him groaning;
A demon’s heart might relent to hear
The sobs of death, and convulsions drear—
Oh Christ! is no merciful angel near,
Call’d down by this woeful moaning!—

Oh murderous fiends! the eye of God
Hath flamed on this tearless murder!
They grasp at his throat to check his breath—
With knees on his breast—oh merciful death!
Thou sav’st him from anguish further.

And dead in the sack his body they bore,
And sunk in a pool of the Teivy;
After many days when the corpse was found,
No tongue could tell whether smother’d or drown’d,
Or crush’d by men’s buffets heavy.

Thus fell in its bloom the blameless youth;
Insanity seized on Ellen,
The lovely maniac! with bosom bare,
And eyes of wildness, and streaming hair,
Roved frantic o’er Maes-y-velin.

She said he was thrown in the Teivy’s stream,
The flower of fair Llandovery;
She cross’d o’er the hills to his father’s town,
And he bless’d the maid like a child of his own;
But Ellen was past recovery.

Rhys Prichard wept long o’er his murder’d son
And buried the hapless Ellen;
He curs’d her brothers—the land of their birth—
He curs’d their mansion, its hall and hearth,
And the curse is on Maes-y-velin.

Strong was the curse on the savage race,
The murderers and their kindred;
Their bosoms possess’d by the furies of hell,
Oft vented the scream, the curse, and the yell;
All men stood aloof and wonder’d.

They quarrell’d and stood forth in mortal strife,
Each one oppos’d to the other:
They never, oh never! are doom’d to agree,
While sharing poor Ellen’s property,
To murder their elder brother.

And yet the murderers still are foes,
Furious and unrelenting;
Each coveting all his sister’s share;
At length one falls in the other’s snare,
Ere yet of his crimes repenting.

Now lived the survivor, a man forbid,
For murder his brow had branded—
Shunn’d by all men, none bade him God speed,
But solitude work’d wild remorse for his deed,
In madness he seiz’d on a poisonous weed,
And in a suicide’s grave he landed.

Maes-y-velin became a deserted spot,
The roof of the mansion tumbled;
The lawns and the gardens o’er-ran with weeds,
And reptiles, vile emblems of hellish deeds,
Bred there, and the strong walls crumbled.—

They crumbled to dust, and fell to the earth,
And strangers bought Maes-y-velin;
Vain, it is said, their attempts to rebuild,
Vain was their labour in garden or field.
Snakes, toads, baneful weeds alone they yield.
Not a stone to another adhering.

The possessors fled, and oft others came,
But all their aims unavailing;
The peasants protest that at midnight hour,
The spirit of Ellen is seen in her bower.
While on Pen-gorreg stands Llandovery’s Flower,
And shrieks burst from Maes-y-velin.

Twm had listened with the most earnest attention to the terrible account, and rivetted his eyes on Maes-y-velin, the two hills, the banks of the Teivy, and scenes now subordinate to the modern grandeur of the new college of Lampeter; and still remaining silent, seemed, by the force of his imagination, to bring before his eyes the whole action of this domestic tragedy. Rhys assured him that all the particulars of the murder, as narrated in the ballad, were well authenticated, both by the evidence of the unhappy young lady herself, and that of a countryman who beheld the murderers bearing the body by night, and who distinctly saw, as the moon shone upon them while in the act of casting their burden into the river, the shining spurs of the murdered youth, projecting from the end of the sack which contained his body. But in so disorderly a state was the country at the time, from the civil wars between the king and the parliament, that no cognizance was taken of the atrocious circumstance. {165} After these remarks, they got up from their grassy resting-place, and re-commenced their walk to Llandovery.