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S. Wales Coast, S.E. Section 
 
 

 
THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 

 

The South f^ales 
 Coast 
 
 From Chepstow to ^Aberystwyth 
 
 By Srnest T{hys 
 
 Illustrated 
 
 Ne w York 
 
 Frederick A, Stokes Company 
 
 Publishers 
 
 ign 
 

 y 
 
 iff 
 
 ihts reserved. 
 
PREAMBLE 
 
 The long range of coast here described, from the 
 Wye half-way across Cardigan Bay, bordering 
 the land of a hundred castles, offers one of the 
 best holiday regions in all Britain. But the 
 country has far too much individuality to be 
 treated only in the light of another summer and 
 autumn resort — a wilder extent that is being 
 tamed to the lure of the golfer and the motorist. 
 So the following pages have been made trans- 
 parent wherever the chance came to the real 
 lineaments and Welsh differences of each par- 
 ticular bit of country, and nothing has been held 
 too trivial that serves to start its memory or 
 spirit of place. For the itinerant, recounting his 
 steps, often finds it was a sand-filled railway arch, 
 a tramp or cockle-picker, a broken wall or old 
 salt-house, quite as much as any castle of romance 
 or lion of the guide-books, that knitted up the 
 associations of a scene, and gave it the salient 
 touch. 
 
 On a last journey to Caerleon, where I was 
 bound thinking mainly of the Roman city of 
 Legions and Arthur's " Round Table," the decisive 
 incident proved to be the overtaking on the road 
 of an unlucky house-carpenter who had been 
 "fired" from Newport workhouse that morning, 
 and who drove King Arthur clean out of the 
 
6 PREAMBLE 
 
 picture. On the Welsh roads the realities are 
 for ever overtaking romance in this way, and 
 you have, if you are a sentimental traveller, to 
 be forewarned of them, and to be prepared for 
 the cloud of smoke that hangs in the mining 
 valleys, and for slums on a mountain-side where 
 you expected a castle. Even the great change 
 which is now passing over Gwent and Glamorgan, 
 and which has needlessly ruined by sheer neglect 
 (not of art but of science) the look and finer 
 human ordering of whole regions, has led to the 
 magnificence of the Titanic docks and their ocean- 
 ships, and the beginning of great Welsh seaport 
 and city architecture. You need not care only 
 for the past, or be an archseologue or romancer, 
 to enjoy this land of Merlin and the Tylwyth 
 Teg, and once you have come under its "cyfaredd," 
 as the poets say, you will get to like it better and 
 better every year you return to it. 
 
 Before he turns the leaf the writer ought to 
 acknowledge very gratefully the unselfish aid he 
 has had from various people, including his fellow- 
 travellers. In especial his thanks are due to 
 Mr. T. H. Thomas — artist, naturalist, and Welsh 
 " Herald " — for the loan of invaluable original 
 drawings for reproduction, and for the account 
 of the Isle of Birds, Grassholm (the " G wales 
 in Penvro " of the Mabinogion, never, I believe, 
 before described). Also to "G. R." for her con- 
 tributions to the chapters on Kenfig, Margam, 
 and St. Davids ; to Mr. John Ballinger of the 
 National Library of Wales, Mr. Walter Spurrell, 
 and Professor J. M. Lewis for the loan of 
 photographs ; while I owe to my uncle, Mr. 
 Percy Percival of Berrow Manor, the account in 
 the Milford chapter of the birds on Skomar 
 
PREAMBLE 7 
 
 Island. To name in full all the writers, live and 
 dead, whose works have been quoted, from Gerald 
 the Welshman to Sir John Rhys, would require 
 another page : but I must not forget the claims 
 of Archceologia Cambrensis, the bible and the 
 encyclopaedia of the Welsh antiquary, without 
 which the labours of most of us would be vain. 
 The ensuing chapters, it is well to add, are based 
 upon a very long acquaintance with the country, 
 and upon almost as many journeys as they 
 number ; and in the sentimental retrospect the 
 old landmarks and the new may at times seem 
 confused, or an English mile be turned into a 
 Welsh one. But the book is not a gazetteer, and 
 it purposely omits much that can be had in every 
 guide-book. The best check upon its record in 
 the matter of distances, coast-roads and the like, 
 is a good chart ; and overleaf will be found a list 
 of maps in the Ordnance Survey covering the five 
 Welsh shires whose sea-board figures in its pages. 
 
LIST OF SMALL-SCALE ORDNANCE 
 SURVEY MAPS 
 
 One mile to one inch, published in outline or 
 coloured (flat or folded) : Nos. 163, 177, 178, 192, 
 193, 194, 209, 210, 227, 228, 229, 244, 245, 246, 247, 
 248, 249, 250, 261, 262, 263. Prices Is., Is. 6d., and 2s. 
 
 A series of maps on the same scale, but covering 
 larger areas: Nos, 69, 78, 89, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 
 110, 111. Coloured edition only (flat or folded). 
 Prices Is. 6d., 2s., and 2s. 6d. Some are published 
 and some are in course of preparation. 
 
 Two miles to one inch : Nos. 15, 20, 21, 26, 27, 32. 
 Coloured edition (flat or folded). Prices Is. 6d., 
 2s., and 2s. 6d. Also published on the Layer 
 System by which different altitudes are more 
 clearly indicated by flat colouring of various 
 shades. 
 
 Four miles to one inch : Nos. 13, 14, 18. Coloured 
 edition (flat or folded). Prices Is. 6d., 2s., and 2s. 6d. 
 Also published in uncoloured flat sheets. Price Is. 6d. 
 
 Four miles to one inch : County Maps. Cardi- 
 ganshire, Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Gla- 
 morganshire, Monmouthshire (flat or folded). Price 
 Is. each. 
 
 Ten miles to one inch : No. 9. Coloured (flat or 
 folded). Prices Is., Is. 6d., and 2s. Uncoloured 
 (flat sheets only). Price Is. 
 
 Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, Adelphi Terrace, London, 
 W.C., is the sole wholesale agent for all the above- 
 mentioned maps, which can be obtained through 
 any bookseller. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. CHEPSTOW AND THE WYE . . .13 
 
 II. THE " OLD SEVERN CROSSING," PORTSKEWETT 
 
 AND WENTWOOD .... 24 
 
 III. NEWPORT . . . . . .33 
 
 IV. OAERLEON-ON-USK . . 45 
 
 V. FROM THE USE TO THE TAFF . . .54 
 
 VI. OLD AND NEW CARDIFF ... 63 
 
 VII. THE VALE OF GLAMORGAN . . .73 
 VIII. PENARTH, SULLY AND THE HOLMS . . 82 
 
 IX. BARRY ISLAND TO ABERTHAW . . .89 
 
 X. LLANTWIT MAJOR TO ST. DONAT's . . 100 
 
 XI. DUNRAVEN TO CANDLESTON . . . 115 
 
 XII. NEWTON NOTTAGE TO KENFIG . . 126 
 
 XIII. MARGAM ...... 140 
 
 XIV. NEATH AND THE VALE OF NEATH . . 147 
 
 XV. SWANSEA ...... 161 
 
 XVI. LUNDY ISLAND .... 175 
 
 XVII. THE EAST GOWER COAST . . . 183 
 
 XVIII. THE WEST AND NORTH GOWER COAST . 192 
 XIX. BURRY INLET AND CARMARTHEN BAY . . 206 
 
 g 
 
10 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XX. LLANELLT TO KIDWELLY . . . 214 
 
 XXI. LLANSTEPHAN AND FEEBYSIDE . . 219 
 
 XXII. CABMAETHEN ..... 228 
 
 XXIII. EHYD-Y-GOES, LAUGHAENE AND PENDINE . 241 
 
 XXIV. TENBY ...... 250 
 
 XXV. MANOBBIEE, GEEALD THE WELSHMAN'S 
 
 COUNTEY ..... 267 
 
 XXVI. PEMBEOKE CASTLE .... 276 
 
 XXVII. THE BOSHEESTON EOAD : ST. GOVAN'S TO THE 
 
 STACK EOCKS .... 287 
 
 XXVIII. MILFOED AND THE HAVEN . . . 297 
 
 XXIX. SOLVA AND ST. DAVID'S . . . 302 
 
 XXX. EAMSEY AND GEASSHOLM . . . 316 
 
 XXXI. THE NOETH PEMBEOKE COAST I FISHGUAED, 
 
 NEWPOET, ETC. .... 329 
 
 XXXII. CAEDIGAN ..... 342 
 
 XXXIII. THE CAEDIGAN COAST . . . 350 
 
 XXXIV. ABEEYSTWYTH ..... 363 
 XXXV. LLANBADABN TO BORTH . . . 373 
 
 INDEX ...... 383 
 
 iZ 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 old salt house : poet eynon . . Frontispiece 
 
 From a Water Colour by Mr. T. H. Thomas 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 TOWN GATE, CHEPSTOW .... 16 
 
 Drawing by Mr. T. H. Thomas 
 TINTEEN ABBEY . . . . . .22 
 
 Photo by Williams & Curnuck, Newport, Mon. 
 CALDECOT CASTLE ..... 29 
 
 Photo by Williams <k Curnuck 
 NEWPORT CASTLE (LOW TIDE) . . . .34 
 
 Photo by Williams d- Curnuck 
 
 ST. WOOLOS'S CHURCH . . . .44 
 
 Photo by Williams & Curnuck 
 
 AT CARDIFF DOCKS . . . . .68 
 
 Photo by Williams & Curnuck 
 
 "AN UNCONSCIOUS FOLK-LORIST " \ VALE OF GLAMORGAN 80 
 From a Drawing by Mr. T. H. Thomas 
 
 LLANTWIT MAJOR '. THE COLUMBARIUM . . 105 
 
 From a Drawing by Mr. T. H. Thomas 
 
 ST. donat's castle ..... 112 
 
 Drawing by Gastineau 
 NEATH : THE OLD CHURCH . . . 1 49 
 
 Photo by Williams & Curnuck 
 OLD SWANSEA \ THE CASTLE AND HARBOUR . . 163 
 
 From a Drawing by W. Turner 
 THE MUMBLES HEAD ..... 183 
 
 Photo by Williams & Curnuck 
 OYSTERMOUTH CASTLE ..... 188 
 
 Photo by Williams & Curnuck 
 THE MALEVOLENT DRAGON IN PENNARD CHURCH . 191 
 
 From a Sketch by E. B. 
 
 OLD OYSTERSHELL LAMP I GOWER COAST . . 205 
 
 11 
 
. 232 
 
 12 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 CAEROENNIN CASTLE, CARMARTHENSHIRE . . 210 
 
 Drawing by Gastineau 
 LLANSTEPHAN CASTLE I FROM THE SANDS 224 
 
 Drawing by Gastineau 
 OLD CARMARTHEN .... 
 
 Print by Buck (1740) 
 LAUGHARNE CASTLE ..... 248 
 
 Drawing by Gastineau 
 SKOMAR ISLAND ...... 298 
 
 From a Drawing by Mr. T. H. Thomas 
 
 SOLVA 302' 
 
 Photo by Mr. Walter Spurrell, JJP., Carmarthen 
 PORTH CLEIS ...... 308 
 
 Photo by Mr. Walter Spurrell, J.P. 
 OFF RAMSEY ISLAND ..... 318 
 
 From a Drawing by Mr. T. H. Thomas 
 SEABIRDS AT GRASSHOLM ISLAND . . . 325 
 
 From a Drawing by Mr. T. H. Thomas 
 
 PENTRE IVAN CROMLECH .... 331 
 
 Photo by Prof. J. Morgan Lewis 
 THE CASTLE, NEWPORT, PEMBROKESHIRE . . 335 
 
 Photo by Prof. J. Morgan Lewis 
 
 LLECH-Y-DRYBEDD CROMLECH . . . 335 
 
 Photo by Prof. J. Morgan Lewis 
 CORACLES ON THE TEIVY .... 345 
 
 Photo by Prof. J. Morgan Lewis 
 CARDIGAN BRIDGE ..... 345 
 
 From an old Painting 
 
 DANIEL ROWLANDS, LLANGEITHO . . . 352 
 
 Photo by W. B. Hall, Aberystwyth 
 
 SAND DUNES ON THE COAST .... 355 
 
 Photo by W. B. Hall 
 MONK'S CAVE, CARDIGAN COAST . 
 
 Photo by W. B. Hall 
 A STORM AT ABERYSTWITH : THE ESPLANADE . 364 
 
 Photo by W. B. Hall 
 THE DEVIL'S BRIDGE RAILWAY . . , 374 
 
 Photo by W. B. Hall 
 
 OLD SALTS AT BORTH .... 378 
 
 Photo by W. B. Hall 
 CANTREV-Y-GWAELOD I A DROWNED FOREST . . 379 
 
 Photo by W. B. Hall 
 
The South Wales Coast 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CHEPSTOW AND THE WYE 
 
 It was market-day when we got to Chepstow, and 
 droves of sheep and cattle from the country were 
 being driven through the town to the market-pens 
 by the railway station. Under the flanking arch 
 of the " Beaufort Arms " a lively Welsh ram made 
 a charge at us ending in a leap, shoulder high ; 
 and for the first time in my experience Chepstow 
 streets appeared wide awake. For within that 
 arch Beaufort Square and the town about it have 
 as a rule the appearance of living upon the recol- 
 lection of past market-days, an ancient siege or 
 so of the Castle, and the memory of Henry Marten 
 the Regicide. 
 
 But once you relate the town to the countryside 
 and the old forest tracts for whose timber it once 
 served as river-port, all becomes changed. Then 
 the west-country air blows down the Wye valley 
 loaded with the true Monmouthshire spice, and 
 mixes persuasively with the salt breath of the 
 tide under the Castle and the bridge. The Castle, 
 cold at first to the traveller's mind, as castles are 
 apt to be, begins to rekindle in the picture. It 
 assumes again the name it bore in Domesday 
 Book : " Castellum de Estrighoeil " — a name 
 
 is 
 
14 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 puzzling at first, which, as you think it over, 
 seems fairly to bristle with military threats, 
 and far more than the Saxon Chepstowe (Cheap 
 Stowe) holds the clue to the original site. Pos- 
 sibly it was Roman to begin with ? Strata Julia, 
 the Welsh of which is Ystrad Iwl — Ystrigoil ? 
 Possibly there was another British name before 
 the Roman ? But it is clear at any rate that under 
 the title of Chepstow you have a British camp and 
 a Roman station, a Norman castle and an English 
 town in a Welsh country which gradually grew 
 under cover of the Castle, and was approached by 
 what had been a Roman road, the old Vicinal Way. 
 You lost the old sense of the town and its 
 approaches in coming here by train, instead of 
 walking or riding the road from Gloucester — the 
 turnpike still called by the people the Street. 
 Tramping that stretch of road, you would expe- 
 rience what it is in an old country highway, and 
 for choice one going west and following a Roman 
 lead, that gets hold of mortal man, and tells him 
 he is walking with the dust of the feet of fifty 
 generations and more on his boots. However, 
 even as you hurry by rail down the Severn with 
 the river appearing and disappearing on your left 
 and the Street some two or three farms away on 
 your right, you may recover something of the 
 mediaeval traveller's mood, and carry from Lydney 
 mixed ideas of an old weather-god like Lud and 
 of a forester from the Forest of Dean like Madawc 
 the son of Twrgadarn. With the final drop into 
 the Wye Valley over Twt Hill, through which the 
 train tunnels, cutting you off from Gloucester, you 
 are in debatable land. For Monmouthshire, like 
 Alsace and Lorraine, is a mixed country. It is 
 not England ; it is not, at any rate in its eastern 
 
CHEPSTOW AND THE WYE 15 
 
 or Wye borders, Wales. In its wild aspect it is 
 absolute Welsh, however, of the unmistakable 
 kind found in the old tales, and in the western 
 valleys it still speaks the old tongue. It has its 
 deep wooded Wye Valley, its strong castles like 
 Estrighoeil, Goodrich, or St. Briavel's, built high 
 above the river ; its hermit's chapel, like St. 
 David's cell above the Chepstow ferry ; and its 
 churches, like Llancaut (Llancoed), hid in deep 
 riverside coppices. 
 
 Every old bridge, and every new bridge that 
 stands where an old one stood, has its traditions. 
 Chepstow Bridge has one memory which brings 
 home to you the notion of empty space crossed 
 by a single giddy plank ; the notion you find in the 
 ballad of Sir Owain : — 
 
 " The brigge was as heigh as a tour 
 And as scharpe as a rasour, 
 
 And narrow it was also : 
 And the water that there ran under 
 Brend o' lightning and of thonder, 
 
 That thocht him mickle wo." 
 
 This actual story of the traveller-by-night who 
 came late to Chepstow Bridge goes back to the 
 day when the Bridge was a wooden one, with 
 planks so sprung and tenoned that in case of 
 flood they lifted with the water. And it was at 
 times, says the local recorder, " very dangerous in 
 crossing, because the planks which formed the 
 flooring rose and fell with the tide, so that it 
 seemed like walking on stilts." Once, after a 
 very heavy flood, the bridge had to be put 
 under repair, and the flooring was removed, 
 only one or two planks being left for foot- 
 passengers. The place was well lighted, and a 
 
16 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 man stationed to warn passengers of their 
 danger: but on this particular night it proved 
 so stormy that the lights were blown out, and 
 the bridge-keeper, concluding that no one would 
 attempt to cross, retired to shelter. After mid- 
 night, however, a traveller on horseback was 
 heard knocking on the door of the inn, at the 
 bridge end, affirming that he had just crossed. 
 The innkeeper said it was impossible ; but, recog- 
 nising the man's voice, he opened the door. In 
 the morning the traveller repeated his story of 
 having crossed the bridge ; whereupon his host 
 took and showed him the plank he must have 
 passed over, " at the same time pointing to the 
 gulph below." The man was so moved thereupon 
 to his vitals by the danger he had unwittingly 
 run, that his nerve gave way, and it was some 
 time before he could retake his road. 
 
 The oldest Chepstow bridge of all was Roman 
 and above the Castle, and the road cutting in the 
 steep cliff that led down to it, and some broken 
 abutments and piers, could still be seen at low 
 water within living memory. This was the work 
 of Julius Frontinus, who is credited with giving 
 a name to Ystrad Iwl. The first Norman castle 
 was only the usual timbered structure on the 
 verge of the cliff, and the first builder on the 
 site was William FitzOsborn, Earl of Hereford, 
 " who cherished an enormous cause by his bold- 
 ness," and fortified the place to guard this corner 
 of his wide possessions. " He slew many, and 
 died by the sword." His son, Roger de Britolio, 
 turned rebel, lost Chepstow ; whereafter it fell to 
 the Clares and Richard Strongbow. Through 
 Richard's daughter, Isabel, it went by marriage 
 then to the Marshalls, of whom we shall hear 
 
TOWN GATE, CHEPSTOW. 
 From a drawing by Mr. T. H. Thomas. 
 
 To (ace p. 16. 
 
CHEPSTOW AND THE WYE 17 
 
 again. These Clares, Strongbows, Marshalls, and 
 the rest are hard to individualise ; but among 
 them are to be found the originals of the knights 
 who live again in the Morte U Arthur and the 
 Mabinogion. 
 
 An artist in antiquities once went to Chepstow 
 Castle to sketch its walls. But the afternoon was 
 sultry and the courts were hot and airless, and 
 he ended by sitting down on a wall in one of the 
 courts, overcome by the smell of hot ivy, and 
 dozing away some centuries. In that taking he 
 saw an immense man, dressed in armour, against 
 the sky, shining in the sun. The figure stood upon 
 the edge of the wall at the landward side of the 
 Castle, bright and stiff as a metal figure. 
 
 The sleeper thought, " That is Richard — Richard 
 Strongbow — and he is going to fall." 
 
 Thereupon Richard stiffly began to sway and 
 topple over, sure enough ; and yet he did not 
 quite fall. While the knight was still at that 
 uncomfortable angle, the dreamer woke up to 
 see a sturdy little parson escorting a tired lady 
 o/er the ruins, and telling her everything, without 
 pity. It was his voice repeating " Richard 
 Strongbow ! " that had evoked the dream. 
 
 To-day, Chepstow Castle, built at as many 
 different periods as there are courts contained 
 in it, gives you a quite excessive notion of the 
 original place. That was a plain keep only, first 
 of wood, then of stone, based on the rock, whose 
 remains you can discover in the third court, much 
 altered later, and now called the Chapel. The 
 structure was some ten paces broad and thirty 
 long ; and in fact the early Norman castles did not 
 give their occupants, if a garrison is allowed for, 
 very much room. 
 
 2 
 
18 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Most of the Castle, as it stands, was of the 
 second term ; for there was an Old Castle era 
 and a New Castle era to reckon within the castle- 
 building centuries ; and Chepstow grew greatly 
 as time went on. The earlier type of building, 
 built at any time between the Conquest and the 
 death of Rufus, was a plain strong-house or keep, 
 chiefly made of wood, intended like a larger suit 
 of armour to protect a few men ; and it was set 
 on a tump, or rock, or any convenient old Roman 
 or British site. The latter kind of castle was 
 made for comfort in living, as well as for defence : 
 the type that grew at last into a huge castellated 
 enclosure, like Caerphilly or Alnwick. 
 
 The round towers of the southern end of 
 Chepstow Castle, which give so much character 
 to the building, and resolve so graciously the 
 salient curves and water-worn lines of the Wye 
 under the Striguil rock, were built, I believe, by 
 Roger Bigod. And finally the true praise of this 
 Castle is the recognition of its natural fitness 
 there on its river-cliff. Its containing walls and 
 towers have a structural relation to the site ; and 
 the noble mason-work above, and the natural 
 strata below, and the details of the surrounding 
 scene are as much of a piece as if man's work 
 had grown out of Nature's. This is a test to 
 which all buildings, set in fine surroundings, 
 must conform, or fail, as so many modern build- 
 ings do fail. The tubular railway bridge at 
 Chepstow, hard, straight, abrupt, breaks with 
 every natural form about it ; and the Castle 
 quarrels with it at every juxtaposition. 
 
 The ghost of Henry Marten the Regicide, as I 
 said, rather bothers one in exploring Chepstow 
 Castle to-day. Within the first court, the tower 
 
CHEPSTOW AND THE WYE 19 
 
 which imprisoned him at once confronts you on 
 the left. The Castle's history is apt in local gossip 
 to begin and end with Marten, though he was 
 but one among many famous inmates, from Fitz- 
 Osborn, who was there first, and the de Clares, 
 the great castle-dealers of the south, to Jeremy 
 Taylor. But Chepstow Castle saw less fighting in 
 mediaeval days than might have been expected, 
 because it was so strong. The defences that guard 
 its four courts show how strong it was, and as one 
 mounts from the river-chamber to the towers and 
 gazes eastward upon the Gloucestershire landscape, 
 one realises that the place was all but impregnable 
 till cannon were invented. After that it had to 
 yield to both King and Parliament in turn. In the 
 Civil War Cromwell came once to see his guns 
 batter it ; but did not stay to see it fall. It was 
 in 1645 that, after a desperate siege, Cromwell's 
 men, under Colonel Ewer, took the Castle, then 
 held by Sir Nicholas Kemeys, with great slaughter. 
 The Roundheads revenged themselves for the 
 obstinacy of the defence by putting a fourth of 
 the garrison to the sword in cold blood, and 
 Kemeys among them. A wicked deed, to be re- 
 membered as you walk the courts. 
 
 Marten was lucky in his prison, and probably 
 lived longer in it than he would have done out 
 of it. His acrostic epitaph may be seen in the 
 church. It shows a certain vigour and a rough 
 wit, such as he was credited with : — 
 
 Here or elsewhere (all's one to you or me), 
 Earth, air, or water gripes my ghostless dust ; 
 iVone knows how soon to be by fire set free. 
 iJeader, if you an oft-tryed rule will trust, 
 Fou'll gladly do and suffer what you must." 
 
20 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 The last line in the Marten verse rings prover- 
 bially : — 
 
 "2Vbt how you end, but how you spend your dayes." 
 
 After the Castle has been explored, St. Mary's 
 Church can be reached via Bridge Street and 
 Church Street. The church has much individu- 
 ality; many restorations have not destroyed 
 its Norman lines. Its nave suggests that the 
 building was originally designed for a priory 
 church of some state. The canopied tomb in the 
 chancel is that of Henry, second Earl of Worcester, 
 who died in 1549. Chepstow Bridge lies at the 
 foot of Bridge Street, and brings river, town, and 
 Castle into a lazy guide-book perspective, like 
 something in an old print. 
 
 I had always thought that Hawker's Hill, one of 
 the narrow lower streets, had really been a street 
 given up to the hawkers who had used the town 
 as a convenient place of resort. But once a farmer, 
 walking with me in a field a mile above Tintern, 
 said, pointing over the river, "Just there lies 
 Hawker's Dyke." He meant Offa's, so I suppose 
 Hawker's Hill is Offa's too. G. pointed out a 
 window in Hawker's Hill which had evidently 
 once been ecclesiastical. Bridge Street, near the 
 church, used to be called St. Ann's Street, after 
 the chapel of that name, in time turned into a 
 bark-house. Oak-bark from the Forest of Dean 
 used to be one of the chief exports here. 
 
 The old Cambrian Travellers Guide speaks of 
 the Priory of St. Kynemark on "a pleasant emi- 
 nence to the west of the town" (not far from 
 Piercefield Lodge), which was, like so many re- 
 ligious houses, turned into farm walls— at St 
 
CHEPSTOW AND THE WYE 21 
 
 Kynemark's Farm. Again, " In the town are the 
 remains of several chapels. Near the Beaufort 
 Arms are two stone buildings, used for a barn and 
 coach-house ; one having a Norman and the other 
 a pointed-arched doorway. Opposite the Beaufort 
 Arms is a small vault, under Fydell's long room ; 
 the stone roof is vaulted and engroined. Another 
 old religious edifice adjoins Powis's Almhouse. A 
 priory for monks of the Benedictine Order was 
 founded here soon after the Conquest, called 
 Strigule, or Striguil, monastery. It constituted a 
 cell to the abbey of Corneille, in Normandy." But 
 where is " Fydell's long-room " now ? Lost in an 
 irrevocable Georgian antiquity. 
 
 Turning coastwards, on the search for remains, 
 you look first for St. Tecla's Chapel, which sailors 
 and others call Treacle Chapel, perched on a rock 
 
 I right at the entrance to the Wye. Tecla was the 
 daughter of a chief of Gwynedd, old North Wales : 
 
 i how she came so far south I do not know. She 
 seems to bear a close resemblance to the type of 
 hermitess found in the Sir Percival and Grail 
 stories ; indeed, is she not like Sir Percival's sister ? 
 Her end was tragic. Both Danish and Irish pirates 
 often sailed up the Severn Sea and entered the 
 Wye : and one band spied the cell of the unfor- 
 tunate Tecla. Let us hope they did not linger 
 out her death. 
 
 Before you leave the Wye, the track of the sea- 
 raiders who sailed up it and raided places as far 
 above Tintern as Symond's Yat ought to tempt 
 you to boat up the stream with the tide. The 
 Wynd Cliff and Tintern Abbey can be made part 
 of the voyage. Last time I saw the abbey, late in 
 April, the orchards around it were in full blossom, 
 and through every window in turn as one passed 
 
22 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 the crystal boughs stared in and gave an inde- 
 scribable radiance to the walls. It made one think 
 of the fabled Apple-Isle : — 
 
 "There blooms the gleaming deathless tree 
 Of which the birds with harmony 
 Of many a song intone the Hours 
 Amid the fragrant apple-flowers. 
 
 And on the silent, listening lawns 
 Are flowers of rarest radiance ; 
 And shining plains where song is loud 
 Lie southward like a silver cloud." 
 
 The companion scene to this belongs to the same 
 record. It was a misty morning, not very good 
 for such an expedition, and the sight of a house 
 — a corn-miller's — which had caught fire the night 
 before, whose walls still smouldered and sent 
 a thin wisp or two of smoke to join the mist, 
 seemed to threaten a bad day. But reaching the 
 foot of the Wyndcliff, after skirting some woods 
 full of wild-garlic mixed with lily-of-the-valley, 
 I decided to climb it from the ridiculous tourist's 
 or stage-carpenter's moss-cottage where you pay 
 sixpence for the privilege. 
 
 About three-quarters of the way up the mist 
 grew lighter, as if some one were puffing it away 
 from the trees. Another twenty feet up, and the 
 palest blue sky imaginable began to appear over- 
 head, with a sun pale-white as a pewter spoon. 
 Finally, having reached the summit and gained a 
 point where nothing came in the way, I saw the 
 mist rolling away below like thin muslin, and 
 leaving the lower valley clear. Then, after a 
 pause, came the miracle. A sort of second sky 
 appeared, uncertainly repeating the first, and in 
 
CHEPSTOW AND THE WYE 23 
 
 the perspective an aerial promontory and beyond 
 that a sailing-vessel were to Ibe discovered ap- 
 parently high in air. The lower sky was the 
 Sea of Severn, and the vision was that of the 
 meeting of the waters in the April sun. There 
 lay the Severn (whose great tide often flows 
 grey or milk-blue, to ebb tinged with rich mud, 
 yellow or brown) like a creature of the sky; and 
 the Wye was tricked out with the same light 
 bright colours. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE " OLD SEVERN CROSSING " — PORTSKEWETT — 
 THE SEVERN TUNNEL — WENTWOOD 
 
 Travelling west from Chepstow, you have a 
 choice of routes. The ten-mile level between the 
 mouth of the Wye and the mouth of the Usk is 
 not what most men find exciting and they usually 
 contrive to pass it by at high railway speed. But 
 it edges a countryside that has at every stage 
 some ruined chapel, some fine old house or other, 
 some castle like Caldecot on the flat, or Llanvair 
 on a hill, that gives history to a scene ; and it is 
 backed by one of the few aboriginal extents of 
 wild forest left in the country — the forest of Gwent 
 or Wentwood. 
 
 The railway for a space runs pretty close to the 
 water ; the main road is a couple of miles away 
 inland. But you ought to leave the highway after 
 passing Pwll Meyrick in order to go and see 
 Mathern and Moynes Court : or you can take a 
 shorter way across the fields. Mathern has a 
 church like an old noble dame, that tells of age 
 well borne, and it is so placed as to enlarge its 
 Norman details and tall tower. One of the 
 Welsh knights or chiefs who became saints, a 
 typical romance-figure — Tewdric, petty king of 
 Morganwg — lies here ; the founder of the church. 
 
 M 
 
THE "OLD SEVERN CROSSING" 25 
 
 His epitaph speaks of him as Theodoric " com- 
 monly called St. Thewdrick" — accounted a martyr 
 because he had taken to a holy life voluntarily, 
 giving up his crown to his son. But a Saxon 
 invasion called him again to the field. A battle 
 at Tintern followed, where he was mortally hurt. 
 He begged his son Maurice to carry him home ; 
 but the mortal pangs gat hold on him when they 
 reached Mathern. There he died, and his last 
 wish was that a church should be built on the 
 spot. A stone coffin was unearthed there in 1881. 
 
 The wooded rocks at St. Pierre near by start 
 up dramatically to tell you of the miles of the 
 forestland of Wentwood which Tewdrick hunted. 
 In mediaeval days they ran from the sea-borders 
 without a break west and north to the Usk 
 Valley. It was a perfect romance-forest, a forest 
 of the Mabinogion. As you explore it, you find 
 at every turn the very trees, or their direct 
 offspring, that gave reality to the tales of the 
 countryside. " And he did not choose the 
 pleasantest and most frequented road, but that 
 which was the wildest and most beset by thieves 
 and robbers and venomous beasts. And they 
 came to a high-road, which they followed till 
 they saw a vast forest, and they went towards 
 it, and they saw four armed horsemen come 
 forth from the forest." This is from a page of 
 the Mabinogion — a tale saturated with Gwentian 
 local colour and perfume ; and the four armed 
 horsemen are its inevitable creatures. They will 
 overtake you, if you should follow a road like 
 that leading from Caer Went ; they will start out 
 again and again from the wood, as you pursue 
 your way north-west. 
 
 The right point from which to approach 
 
26 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Wentwood is from Portskewett, about two 
 miles south-west of Mathern, but over three 
 by the road round by St. Pierre. You may not, 
 remembering the days before the Severn Tunnel 
 was made, think of it as a forest landmark ; but 
 its name is corrupted from Porth-is-Coed, the port 
 under the wood. It is hard now to rescue its 
 washed-away waterside purlieus; but they once 
 stretched far into the side-channel. Indeed, 
 Portskewett figures in the Triads as one of the 
 three chief harbours of Wales. You ought to 
 take the chance of a very low ebb (say, in a 
 dry September) to explore the lines of the lost 
 harbour at the aber of the Nedern or Troggy. 
 Colonel Morgan pointed out long ago the names 
 of spots in the channel, which were once dry 
 land. " Gruggy " is a queer name to fish out of 
 the salt water, for it comes either from "crugyn," 
 a mound or tump ; or Gryg, heather. Bedwin 
 means birch-grove ; and other such woody places 
 lie drowned off Portskewett. 
 
 Harold built there a house whose foundations 
 have left their traces close to the church, and in 
 the church itself is a Saxon tympanum, whose 
 like is nowhere else to be seen in the country. 
 Harold meant to entertain King Edward the 
 Confessor in state at the new house, and tradition 
 declares they met there. If you turn to Florence 
 of Worcester you find the rest of the story, in 
 which Tostig, Harold's brother, raided his palace 
 and camp, in revenge, it is said, for the preference 
 shown to Harold by the King. Harold's Welsh 
 raids would make a good fighting saga. They 
 are mixed with the deadly feuds of two Gruffydds 
 — Gruifydd ab Llewelyn and Gruffydd ab Rhyd- 
 derch, of whom the first was a man of temper 
 
THE "OLD SEVERN CROSSING" 27 
 
 and resource, fit to range with Harold's own 
 powers. He deserved better than the cruel death 
 he suffered from his own countrymen— the out- 
 come of one of the endless Welsh vendettas 
 which went on under the tribal order and dis- 
 order. 
 
 My recollection of Portskewett dates back to 
 the time when there was no Severn Tunnel, and 
 travelling from Bristol to Carmarthen, we alighted 
 on the Somerset side, to cross by broad-decked 
 paddle-boats : a sort of miniature Holyhead-to- 
 Kingstown experience. 
 
 Out of all these crossings one made at Easter 
 comes back clearly to mind. It was blowing and 
 raining hard. The Severn was rough and dirty 
 enough for any open sea, tumbling and rolling 
 with choppy muddy yellow billows before a west 
 wind. It was more daunting than Holyhead 
 itself in the teeth of a gale — the flooded Severn, 
 about an hour after high water, looked so 
 malevolent. The wind, too, in the station at 
 Portskewett — crying, buffeting, howling, and 
 whistling — was such as only Dickens with his 
 uncanny faculty of describing the elements at 
 odds with roof and walls, could describe. I have 
 often thought of that crossing when being sucked 
 through the Severn Tunnel in an air-tight, sul- 
 phureous cylinder of a railway compartment in 
 about a tenth part of the time : a great saving, 
 no doubt, but a traveller's experience not at all 
 to be compared with the other. 
 
 More than a generation later, a September even- 
 ing took me again to Portskewett. The old water- 
 side hotel was an hotel no longer ; but it let me 
 have pleasant quarters for the night; and after 
 supper I walked under the stars to the waterside, 
 
28 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 and heard the lazy flap of the tide against the 
 causeway, while in the distance sounded what 
 seemed to be a noise of forge-hamers, or heavy 
 clamping, possibly from the works at Sudbrook. 
 
 An early start next morning brought Crick into 
 view betimes, and beyond it the open road to 
 Caerwent. There was in the air the sweet, clean 
 smell of corn in the field, ready to be led ; and 
 flocks of buntings, finches, and hedge-sparrows, 
 swoln with new wheat, were to be spied flying up 
 as some harvest cart or stray harvester disturbed 
 them. But the high-road was almost empty. 
 The only being I met during the first half-mile 
 was a black man, in what might be a seaman's 
 Sunday clothes. What was he doing on the road 
 from Caerwent ? When he had gone by, far ahead 
 of me, a string of what looked rather like a troop 
 of women, continually changing their order and 
 crossing to and fro, appeared on the dusty highway. 
 Presently, one of them fell down, and then they 
 resolved themselves into a troop of school children. 
 Just below the rise to Caerwent village, where 
 one tries to figure the last entrance to the old 
 Roman town, I overtook them. The child that had 
 fallen was a small boy, fair-haired, burstingly 
 plump and well cared for ; he was still sobbing in a 
 perfunctory way ; while two little girls held his fat 
 hand and several others formed a body-guard in 
 white pinafores, behaving as if he was a hero being 
 led in triumph to the camp. A penny dried his tears. 
 In the last glimpse I had, the youngsters were clus- 
 tered like white butterflies round a small village 
 shop, with lollypops in the window ; no doubt very 
 like those on which the small boys and girls of the 
 camp formerly spent their Roman halfpence. 
 
 Everywhere at Caerwent the Roman illusion 
 
THE "OLD SEVERN CROSSING" 29 
 
 keeps cropping out in the Monmouth village. The 
 excavation-field had just revealed, when I saw it, a 
 gateway in a ten-foot cutting, out of which climbed 
 a labourer. The resurrection of a live Roman 
 soldier in helmet and tunic, or a slave with his 
 rations, a solid wheaten cake, in his hand, would 
 not have been much more startling. The wheaten 
 cake was suggested by a twopenny loaf which I 
 saw a Roman baker handing in at a door. 
 
 But Caerwent, though they do say, mixing no 
 doubt the traditions of two Caers in Gwent, that 
 the sea once came up to its walls, is too far from our 
 main route to be further exploited here. Every 
 year the archaelogical men are laying bare more of 
 the old lines of the Roman city ; and its map will 
 be made and its record written, plain as that of 
 Pompeii, some five or six years hence. 
 
 If you return to Portskewett from Caerwent, you 
 can take another road back, via Caldecot, after ex- 
 ploring the old wall and round buttress behind and 
 below the church. Caerwent Church itself, by the 
 way, is half Roman, its walls being largely built out 
 of the old buildings of the Caer. In about a mile 
 and a half this road brings you to Caldecot village, 
 and so to the Castle ; one of the few purposely built 
 in this country on a wet site, with the marsh used 
 for defence. 
 
 It was a hot, sleepy afternoon when I reached 
 Caldecot on my way back from Caerleon. No 
 wayfarers at all were on the road, and in the 
 scattered village doors were shut and houses 
 seemed asleep. Outside an inn a hawker's cart was 
 standing ; the people in the churchyard were not 
 quieter than those in the houses. It was hard to 
 find any one to serve as a key-bearer to the Castle, 
 which is not open every day to the public. It was 
 
30 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 equally hard, having reached it, to imagine it had 
 ever been meant for war by the De Bohuns, so 
 deep was the afternoon quiet about its sunburnt 
 mounds and round towers. 
 
 Caldecot Castle was built in three pieces at three 
 different times. The four or five carved Maloresque 
 heads on the west side of the machicolated gateway 
 tempt one to think the whole building later than it 
 is. The oldest part is the keep, on its made mound, 
 with its queer excrescent smaller tower, which 
 leaves one conjecturing if a live cock or a larger 
 biped was walled up in it. There is some mystery 
 about it. This was built about 1150-1175. After 
 that the De Bohuns went on building from time to 
 time, and occasionally pulled down an old piece to 
 make a new. The whole area covered is enough 
 for a whole village. The ruins came at length into 
 the hands of a most conscientious restorer in Mr. 
 Cobb, its present owner, who gives us a wonderful 
 idea of the place in its fighting prime. In his car- 
 toon the main structure fairly bristles with timber, 
 rather like an ironclad with its torpedo spars out. 
 Caldecot's towers and walls have great corbels and 
 big holes (going through the parapet), which must 
 have been intended to hold timber struts for active 
 defence. In this extraneous timbering one has a 
 relic possibly of the earlier kind of Norman castle, 
 which was mainly a wooden erection with stone 
 ballast, earthen dyke, and bristling palisade. 
 
 Caldecot is another of the places that get their 
 name from the neighbouring forest — Wentwood. 
 In Welsh, it is Cil-y-Coed — edge of the wood. The 
 De Bohuns, its lords and chief builders, were earls 
 of Hereford ; and their family history and some 
 of its scrolls will be found worth deciphering. The 
 De Bohun shield, with its golden lioncels rampant 
 
THE "OLD SEVERN CROSSING" 31 
 
 (Humphrey, the fourth earl, figured six of them 
 in an azure field, with a bend argent cotised or), 
 seems designed for the ornate knights of the later 
 Mabinogion, or one to be borne by Sir Gilbert in the 
 Morte D Arthur. There was a Sir Gilbert de Bohun 
 whose shield had the lioncels too, but distinguished 
 by having his bend or with three escallops gules 
 charged upon it. 
 
 "In that tyme was the manner so, 
 Whan yonge knightis shuld sheldis show." 
 
 One would like to know how much of the founda- 
 tions of Caldecot, which had to be well and surely 
 found in that marshy site, came from Caerwent. 
 
 From Caldecot it is about a mile to Sudbrook 
 Camp. The camp is on the very edge of the Severn, 
 which has been eating away the site slowly all 
 these years. There you realise again the old Severn 
 Sea of the primitive invaders and the three invasions 
 of this coast. The camp was one of many which 
 seem to have been made with some general idea of 
 connected use along the Severn estuary. On the 
 Bristol side there was Oldbury, and nearly opposite 
 it, on the Chepstow side, Sedbury ; Beachley and 
 St. Tecla's could be seized and held at need. The 
 Danes who made — or in some cases adopted — these 
 camps, returned yearly to the Severn and the Wye. 
 The evidence of the fight at Symond's Yat, and 
 the tales of the Welsh Saints, lend weight to an 
 earlier custom of this kind. But the later security 
 of this coast is shown at Sudbrook by the site of 
 the chapel. It stood within the very dyke of the 
 Danes' Camp, a ruin to be named with other dis- 
 mantled chapels on the Welsh coast. 
 
 Sudbrook Chapel has not been used for church 
 
32 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 service now for two centuries and more. The last 
 certain notice of its use dates back to 1755, and to 
 the burial of a sea-captain, by name Blethyn Smith. 
 The old place appealed to him, as did Mathern to 
 more than one bishop. He asked in his will to be 
 buried " in the eastern end of the chancel of the 
 decayed church of Sudbrook, as near the wall as 
 may be, attended by six seafaring men as bearers 
 — my coffin covered with the ensigns of colours of 
 a ship instead of a pall." A brass plate was put 
 on the wall over his grave, but it has long since 
 disappeared. At Sudbrook you can still picture 
 the ship-master's funeral — especially if there should 
 be a Bristol barque going down channel to help 
 you to recall the old days before steam came in. 
 Then the ship's boat and the six sailors give way 
 to a Viking's war-vessel, such as that they dug out 
 of the mud in making Newport Docks, and the 
 chapel vanishes and you see the Danish pirates 
 run into the neighbouring pill and prepare to 
 use the camp as a base for their next raid inland. 
 Much history lies embedded in the mud bank at 
 Sudbrook. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 NEWPORT, OR NEWCASTLE-UPON-USK — ST. WOOLOS'S 
 AND STOW HILL — REBECCA'S DAUGHTERS AND 
 THE SEVERN PIRATES — A WELSH MINNESINGER. 
 
 You may go to Newport to-day and spy there 
 only a great commercial city and a seaport in 
 the making. For as you cross the Usk by rail 
 you may chance to miss a passing glimpse of the 
 Castle above the water or the tidal mud. Outside 
 the station yard, too, everything that first appears 
 is aggressively new and crude — the trams, the big, 
 motley buildings, the busy vista right and left. 
 But amid the hubbub you can, with a little 
 patience, find the lines of the old town that lay 
 between " Castell-ar- Wysg " and the noble old 
 church of St. Gwynllyw up Stow Hill. 
 
 Its place on the coast at the mouth of the Usk 
 brought it custom formerly, just as its docks and 
 railways do now. To-day the " new-castle," newest 
 of the town, is the railway station. Many years 
 ago, when trains used to be parliamentary and 
 slow as reform, a small party of travellers got 
 to Newport one wet evening, after some twelve 
 hours' weary travel. They had come all the 
 way from the other Newcastle (upon-Tyne), but 
 alighted here to change trains for Carmarthen, 
 much too hungry to think of any connection 
 
 3 33 
 
34 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 the two towns might happen to have. In half 
 an hour more the Milford night mail would pass : 
 and (for I was one of the party) we had time for 
 tea in the refreshment-room : wonderful, strong, 
 well-stewed tea, and delicious thin bread and 
 butter of home-made Welsh bread such as you 
 never see in refreshment- rooms nowadays. Again, 
 many years later, when the National Eisteddfod 
 was held in the town, it fell to me to watch some 
 forty trains arrive one afternoon and disgorge 
 their crowds. Welsh hill-folk, country people, 
 miners from the mining valleys, singing men and 
 girls, small, bright-eyed women, and strings of 
 children went by in that crowd. It gave one the 
 sense of a people en fete, a nation in movement. 
 My anxiety about one atom in that multitude, 
 the one expected face that did not arrive, lent a 
 painful interest to all those phantasmagoric faces. 
 It occurred to me then that we have the same 
 anxiety on a railway platform to-day that our 
 forbears had in the embrasure of a castle, or in 
 a wattled booth of the Gwentian hills five, six, 
 seven centuries ago. Our surroundings change ; 
 our emotions never. 
 
 For a picture of Tudor Newport, turn to Leland. 
 He speaks of the great stone gate by the bridge ; 
 a second in " the High strete to passe thorough, 
 and the 3(rd) at the west end of the toune." He 
 adds that " the fairest of the toun " is all in one 
 street, and that the town is in ruin. He describes 
 it another time as " a pretty strong town " ; but 
 "I marked not whyther yt were waulled or no." 
 However, the walls, as well as the three gates, 
 were standing and in good order then ; and the 
 office of the Murenger was still kept up. 
 
 The Castle dates back to 1140, or earlier, when 
 
m 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 e^" ! ji 
 
 
 ■ 
 
NEWPORT 35 
 
 it was begun by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, who 
 had married Mabel, daughter of Fitzhamon. The 
 year is one to be double-scored in the Gwent tra- 
 dition. Robert was a great castle-builder; a shrewd 
 intervener, too, between the two peoples from 
 whose marriage he sprang ; and his nephew was 
 Giraldus Cambrensis, a pioneer of the new literary 
 life of the country. As parcel of the lordship of 
 Morganwg, Newport often figures in the traffic 
 betwixt the Welsh and Normans. When Henry 
 II., on his return from Ireland, recalling his 
 long dispute with Iorwerth ap Owain of Caer- 
 leon, paused at Newport in 1171-1172, he sent a 
 safe-conduct to Iorwerth and his two sons, that 
 they might come and do homage and settle their 
 grievances on either side. But some soldiers of 
 Newport intercepted and slew, near Usk, Iorwerth's 
 eldest son when he was on the way to join his 
 father, and Iorwerth, seeing in it very naturally 
 Henry's treachery, went home vowing revenge. 
 Calling the Welsh around him, he marched through 
 Gwent into Gloucester, doing great havoc. New- 
 port Castle, after the death of Earl Robert and 
 Mabel his wife, passed through the hands of many 
 famous owners, including the De Clares and De 
 Spencers. In the year 1615 we hear of it as in ruins. 
 Newport was a walled town formerly, with three 
 town gates, the last of which left standing was 
 in the High Street. The house of the Murenger, 
 whose office was to act as wall-keeper and toll- 
 collector, was still to be seen a hundred years 
 ago, near the High Street gateway. 
 
 We must leave the lower town now and go up 
 Stow Hill to St. Woollos's, and look from the 
 church on the crowded landscape — streets upon 
 streets, houses and chimneys, docks and railways 
 
36 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 — where once was the green prospect that Gwynl- 
 lyw called after the ox with the black spot — 
 Dutelich. Gwynllyw's Church, as you must know, 
 got corrupted by degrees into St. Woollos's — one 
 of many changes that came about in the anglicising 
 of the Welsh place-names. 
 
 Now, St. Woollos's is a church wherein you see 
 what it is always interesting to see — the different 
 stages and layers of its growth. It has a fair 
 tower, a still fairer Norman door ; but its peculiar 
 feature is the aboriginal building, some fifteen 
 paces long, between the tower and the later 
 church. This is known as St. Mary's Chapel ; and 
 Mr. Baring-Gould, who has a keen eye for eccentric 
 antiquity, points out the resemblance between this 
 early building and the low western ante-chapel at 
 the abbey-church of St. Fronto, Perigueux. Both 
 represent the original early Christian church, he 
 says, built on these sites. If this be so, then 
 Gwynllyw probably lies here, under the floor of 
 St. Mary's Chapel. 
 
 As you look over the Sea of Severn and the 
 great seaport from Stow Hill, you have several 
 sea tales to call to mind which belong to the 
 scene — one of them to the very church itself. In 
 early days the Severn Sea was a notorious pirates' 
 run. The Danish raiders often brought their boats 
 into the Usk, and you have heard how they mur- 
 dered St. Tecla in her islet at the mouth of the 
 Wye. An old Danish ship was found here in 1878, 
 when the Alexandra Dock was being enlarged. 
 It lies in the town Museum now. It was some 
 seventy feet long and, at its full beam, twenty feet 
 wide. What became of the crew ? To answer this 
 you must turn to the saga of the Orcadians, the 
 sacrilegious Welsh King of the North, and the 
 
NEWPORT 37 
 
 Holy Gwynllyw, who became the Terrible Rider 
 of the Elements. 
 
 Griffith, King of the North, driven by war from 
 his own land, and fearing his enemies (whom 
 William, the old King of the English, subdued), 
 sailed to the Orcades. There, bent on revenge 
 and piracy, he got the Orcadians to join him 
 and descend on the coasts of Britain. Twenty- 
 four large warships made their fleet, with which 
 they sailed through the Irish Sea, and at length 
 made their way into the Sea of Severn. There 
 they landed at the mouth of the Usk, and, armed 
 with lances and axes, ravaged and spoiled the 
 country. These wicked raiders spied as they went 
 the church of St. Woollos, which had been locked 
 for protection against their thieving hands. But 
 they broke it open, and stole the precious vessels 
 that were there and carried them off to their ships, 
 and so to the Isle of Barry. There, however, 
 grievous trouble and great sorrow began to gather 
 over them, and they were driven to embark and 
 hoist sail for the Orcades. 
 
 But terror of judgment! no sooner were they 
 at sea than they saw a tremendous figure, a terrible 
 horseman riding in the sky, riding after them 
 night and day, pursuing them wherever they 
 turned without cease. That giant Horseman of 
 the Elements, who could he be ? He was the holy 
 Gwynllyw, who was sent from heaven to overtake 
 and punish them in their sins. Their vessels' sails 
 were torn by the raging violence of the winds ; 
 nor by their oars could they make headway, while 
 their compass was broken, and the sailors cried, 
 " Evil is our shipmate, we fight Powers immortal 
 and beyond us ; the fighting of mortal man is 
 vain ! " 
 
38 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 With that the vessels were driven on the rocks, 
 and all save two were wrecked and broken in 
 pieces ; and even the men that might have been 
 saved in a frenzy rushed against and destroyed 
 one another. Only two ships were saved ; and 
 these were King Griffith's, who would not partake 
 of the robbery or enter the church ; and he it was 
 who, when he had made peace with King William, 
 told him how the Holy Gwynllyw had come from 
 heaven to avenge the desecration of his church by 
 the fierce pirates of the Orcades. 
 
 The more one thinks of this legend the stranger 
 it grows ; but the part in it of King Griffith is 
 rather sinister. He lured on the Orcadians to 
 their doom, but he escaped. He was their Ate. 
 
 One more story of St. Woollos's, and we are 
 done. It is important, because it shows the real 
 cause of the defeat of Harold at the battle of 
 Hastings. It appears that in Earl Harold's time 
 ship's toll was paid by ships lying in the mouth 
 of the Usk. But one day a Saxon trading-vessel 
 came to port, and refused to pay ; and Rogut (a 
 grandson of King Griffith) thereupon cut its 
 anchor-cable, and carried off the anchor to St. 
 Woollos's Church. But the sailors complained to 
 Earl Harold, and he, moved with great anger, 
 began to lay waste all the country of Wentloog. 
 The Gwentians carried their goods and country 
 produce — corn and meat and cheese — to the church ; 
 but the greedy wolves broke in there and, without 
 seeing the lost anchor, began to steal all they 
 could lay hands on. Then to satisfy their hunger 
 they cut into the cheeses brought by the country- 
 folk ; but behold, the cheeses were all red and 
 bloody inside ! Harold's men, horrified at this 
 sight, began hastily to restore all they had stolen ; 
 
NEWPORT 39 
 
 and Earl Harold himself, pricked with compunc- 
 tion, made an offering on the altar, and promised 
 he would never more violate that blessed sanctu- 
 ary. But all in vain ; for it befell that in the 
 following month Harold was slain at the battle 
 of Hastings by William of Normandy for this and 
 his other sins and wickednesses. 
 
 While you are on Stow Hill you may recall the 
 strange hubbub that used to be heard there at 
 Stow Fair, up to the year 1870. Hogarth alone 
 could do justice to the scenes that used to startle 
 the Fair-field and surround the Bull Inn and the 
 old Six Bells Inn and even the churchyard of St. 
 Woollos's, in the palmy days when thousands of 
 miners and ironworkers came in from the mining 
 valleys. Almost every whitewashed cottage on 
 Stow Hill had its two or three barrels of beer at 
 its door to supply the extraordinary thirst of the 
 droughty ironworkers and other folk on this gaudy 
 day ; and next morning, it is said, the fields were 
 sown with strange and unhappy objects — the men 
 who had been sleeping off their debauch. Yes, only 
 Hogarth or the author of " The Sleeping Bard " 
 could describe the drinking carnival of Stow Hill 
 as it used to be seen. 
 
 A Welsh Hogarth, too, could best draft for us 
 another riotous spectacle of the period : the 
 Chartist march on the town on the 4th of Novem- 
 ber, 1839. It seems as if the old tradition that 
 made the Castle below and St. Woollos's above 
 fighting landmarks were being maintained. The 
 mayor faced the rioters and read the Riot Act 
 from the windows of the Westgate Hotel, in whose 
 wainscot bullet-marks may still be seen. The 
 rioters were themselves led by a quondam magis- 
 trate, John Frost, who had himself been four times 
 
40 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 mayor of Newport. He was a man of eccentric 
 and combative temper, who had been struck off 
 the justices' roll by Lord John Russell because of 
 his noisy opinions and irrepressible Radicalism. 
 He was not unlike some of the early chiefs of 
 Gwent, who were always at war ; for he was tire- 
 less in opposition. But while they sometimes, like 
 Gwynllyw, grew pious and became hermits and 
 saints, when the energies of youth gave out, Jack 
 Frost never suffered his mind to thaw. Possibly 
 he did not manage his riot very well : he did little, 
 it is certain, to save his men from panic when 
 the word was given and the soldiers fired from 
 the windows of the Westgate Hotel. He and 
 two other leaders were sentenced to death, and 
 then reprieved and transported, for their part in 
 the affair. Fifteen years later they were pardoned, 
 and Frost returned home a septuagenarian, and 
 lived twenty-three years more, his zeal for reform 
 as keen as ever, to die in 1877. There is all the 
 material of grotesque romance in his long and 
 chequered tale, from the days when he was a draper 
 with a taste for battle and a town mayor to his 
 march on Newport, his death-sentence and trans- 
 portation, and his return safe home to an unabated 
 old age. He had every wish to be a popular hero, 
 and, most significant fact, he lived to see every one 
 of the popular reforms he had fought for carried 
 out. 
 
 There are still a few notable shy spots near 
 Newport worth discovering, though the guide- 
 books avoid them. The other-self of a country is 
 often to be surprised in these overgrown haunts, 
 one of which asks for a page or more here at 
 the end of the chapter. It is one that calls up 
 the figure of Dafydd ab Gwilym, the Poet of the 
 
NEWPORT 41 
 
 Leaves, a fourteenth-century Welsh Minnesinger 
 who was, all told, the most exquisite rhymer and 
 the most imaginative Wales has had. The whole 
 country was his ; he roamed its leagues of forest, 
 a blessed vagabond, and knew it from end to end. 
 But in this country the base of his journeys was 
 always the house at Gwern-y-Cleppa, near Maes- 
 Aleg, now called Bassaleg — the house of Ivor Hael 
 or Ivor the Generous. 
 
 It was one very sultry August afternoon when 
 I set off to find the place in the wood where stood 
 the ancient mansion of Ivor Hael. Beyond Bassa- 
 leg Station the dirt and smoke and grimy disorder 
 of the colliery village made the heat thrice intoler- 
 able ; but once the bridge over the river Ebwy was 
 crossed I began to recover with an effort the lines 
 of the fair green countryside that Dafydd knew. 
 A by-road led me past a small farm, Fynnon Oer 
 (Cold Well) to a field-path that skirted a wooded 
 hill. With that hill for a shield from the outer 
 world it was possible to believe in Ivor Hael. 
 Across a broad dip and long meadow lay a wood, 
 Gwern-y-Cleppa. There used to stand Ivor's 
 vanished mansion, above which the air should 
 still be stained with bands of firelight and more 
 iridescent gleams than commonly fall through the 
 trees of a wood. 
 
 One unlucky detour on the way led to an opening 
 where a dead bullock had been dumped for the 
 hounds or young pheasants of Ivor's successor. 
 This made me hastily invoke the fine spirit of 
 invective that Dafydd had always at hand where- 
 with to relieve himself in his predicaments. 
 Happily the exact site, which I had overshot, was a 
 breathing distance away. Standing on one of the 
 foundation- walls, which Ivor's descendant, Lord 
 
42 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Tredegar, had recently unearthed, and, looking 
 around, I found it possible to imagine away the 
 later undergrowth and detect the actual lines of 
 the close, the long, low house with its end-gables 
 and blunt-thatched roof, and the green pleasaunce 
 about it. To adapt some lines of Dafydd's, de- 
 scribing another house in another wood, far from 
 here, where he and his love Morfudd used to meet : — 
 
 And I the man or woodman who 
 Must walk the wood, and watch, and through 
 The small-leav'd trees look as I pace 
 To spy the roof there break the space, — 
 A palace pack'd within a croft, 
 With green leaves for an organ loft : 
 Song's House, whose eaves no painter could 
 Ever have painted, none but God." 
 
 In Ivor's house, said Dafydd, he was always sure 
 of a welcome. The grace-cup was waiting to 
 receive him at the door ; his glove was filled with 
 gold as he went away. 
 
 He was once rallied by a follower of Sir Peter le 
 Sore, who said the bottom of one of Sir Peter's 
 cups was worth all the cups in Ivor's house. To 
 which Dafydd answered, " That the bottom of a 
 cup might be valued in Sir Peter's house, but not 
 in Ivor's, since the bottom of a cup was never 
 seen there" for the exhaustless wine within it. 
 Indeed, in more than one of his lyric odes Dafydd 
 harps upon the " medd a gwin " — mead and wine — 
 at Maesaleg, and he talks of Ivor as Father-of-all- 
 Cheer. There is a song of parting, written when 
 he was going on his Trouveur's journey to the 
 north — one of those bardic circuits which the Welsh 
 called " Clera " — whose rhymes are Ivor's joyous 
 apotheosis. They are partly conceived in the tradi- 
 
NEWPORT 43 
 
 tional " high-falutin " mode of the Welsh family 
 bard who sings the eulogy of his Maecenas ; but we 
 discern at once in them, too, the note, breaking con- 
 vention, of the original poet who used tradition 
 or dropped it at will, and saw with his own eyes, 
 and made his harp-strings out of his own Welsh 
 sinews. 
 
 At Gwern-y-Cleppa, says Dafydd, he was like one 
 of the three free fortunate guests at the court of 
 King Arthur (" Tri thryddedog ac anfoddog Llys 
 Arthur"). During the third quarter of the four- 
 teenth century Ivor was in his flourish, and held 
 his court here in the great old Welsh fashion. 
 He and his wife Nest died of the plague about 
 13G8, and the fatal news reached Dafydd as he 
 travelled from the north to Llanbadarn in Cardi- 
 ganshire, where his own house was. 
 
 A passage or so from his odes, written in the 
 fluid four-footed couplets he preferred — a form 
 that, Welsh as it is, relates him to the whole poetic 
 mode of Europe at that time — must serve here as a 
 taste of his art. He is very fond of writing colour- 
 odes, ranged in one colour, as, for instance, among 
 his white poems, a Swan-ode, a Snow-ode, a Haw- 
 thorn-ode ; or, among his yellow, a Broom-song, or 
 a song of his golden-haired beloved Morfudd. Take 
 this foretaste as a Study in Gold, some lines of 
 which he used twice over in separate poems with- 
 out any hesitation. He is describing Morfudd's 
 hair, whose " wine-bright laughing mouth " and 
 whose cheeks, red as the Rose or the Rosy Cross, 
 were his delight : — 
 
 "Ami o eurlliw, mal iarlles, 
 Gerllaw y tal, gorlliw tes ; 
 Ac uwch ei deurudd rhyddawr 
 Dwybleth fal y dabl o aur." 
 
44 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Largesse of gold he wants to impress on you in 
 this lyric picture : " Gold-colour, repeated over and 
 over, like a countess's, about the forehead, with 
 the high colour of sunshine ; and above the two 
 cheeks, red-gold — two broad plaits like the Golden 
 Tables' : For the unbraiding of them, long it might 
 take ; — such gold braids I have seen her let fall, 
 like the wings of a yellow Archangel drooping 
 upon white snow. Shoots, say of one stem ; coils 
 of one colour ; a grove of yellow broom above the 
 face ; ay, gold-jewels like them in the shops of 
 Chepe." 
 
 You get in this a suggestion of the true 
 poetic ecstasy of the creature. The shops of Cheap- 
 side, too, had touched his errant fancy ; he often 
 returns to them, indeed, in his odes, and makes one 
 think of the " Golden Cheapside " that Herrick 
 knew centuries later. Probably the Welsh poet, 
 too, had made one visit to London in Ivor's train, 
 or in that of some Autolycus of the shires and 
 " hundreds." 
 
 As you pass again through Newport streets you 
 can stop before a jeweller's window in the High 
 Street if you will, realising that a far greater town 
 than the London of Dafydd's time has sprung up 
 within a league of Ivor's house at Maesaleg. 
 

 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CAERLEON-ON-USK— THE OLD CITY OF LEGIONS — 
 ECHOES OF THE " MORTE D'ARTHUR " — ROMAN 
 LADIES AND BRITISH PRINCES. 
 
 "Both Athens, Theabes, and Carthage too, 
 We hold of great renown, 
 What then, I pray you, shall we do 
 To poor Caerleon towne." 
 
 Chubchyard. 
 
 You may not think of Caerleon at once as a 
 shipping-place ; but it was once, in the day of 
 small ships, a well-known Severn Sea port. It 
 was the old port of Usk, as its neighbour three 
 miles nearer the mouth of the river was the New- 
 port. One reason for having a shipping-quay 
 farther from the river-mouth may have been be- 
 cause it was safer from Severn pirates. And, after 
 all, it is not so far inland as are many famous 
 ports to-day — the other Newcastle, for instance. 
 We reached and crossed the bridge late one 
 September evening, having, on the road out of 
 Newport, passed St. Julian's in the dark without 
 realising it. A light drizzle was falling, and the 
 town was like a deserted place, whose darkness 
 was but made more apparent by the few street- 
 lamps and a dimly lit shop-window. It might 
 
46 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 have been a benighted town of the Middle Ages ; 
 and I think we were not altogether sorry for the 
 illusion. 
 
 Having found quarters at our appointed hostelry, 
 we sallied out, while a simple mediaeval supper of 
 ham-collops and eggs was preparing, for further 
 exploration. Across the street a very dim paraffin- 
 lamp burned in a shop- window. Out of curiosity 
 we gazed in, and saw faded jam-tarts there of an 
 unnatural pallor and antiquity, and some slate- 
 pencils. In such a shop, precisely, gazed the Roman 
 boys long ago, save that there were no dulled 
 panes of glass between. We resumed our wander- 
 ings, and saw another light, far away, which 
 proved to be a wooden lamp-post — old, and even 
 immensely old ; older than Lucius, older than 
 Severus and his two sons, older than Merlin and 
 Arthur. 
 
 We dimly made out at the south-east side of the 
 town what we took for the mound of the Castle, 
 where the Norman keep had stood, and it recalled 
 how the boy-king Arthur came out of his tower, 
 and " under his gown a jesseraunt of double mail" ; 
 when King Lot had laughed at him and called 
 Merlin a witch ; and how a battle was fought 
 between Arthur and the kings of Garloth and 
 Gower. 
 
 " What will ye do ? " said Merlin to them. " Ye 
 were better for to stint. Ye shall not here prevail, 
 though ye were ten so many." 
 
 "Be we well advised to be afraid of a dream- 
 reader ? " said King Lot. 
 
 With that Merlin vanished away. You may 
 continue the tale in the Morte D 'Arthur. 
 
 It was in Caerleon, too, that Arthur held his 
 Whitsuntide feast, " in the most royalest wise that 
 
CAERLEON-ON-USK 47 
 
 might be, like as he did yearly," when, according 
 to the famous old king's custom, he refused to eat 
 till some portent or strange adventure came to 
 light; and the predestined mysterious damsel of 
 romance entered, and after her Gawain and 
 Launcelot and Beaumains. And it was to Caer- 
 leon that disturbing letters came, addressed to 
 Arthur and Gwenevere and Launcelot — all from 
 King Mark ; and King Arthur " mused of many 
 things " ; and Sir Launcelot was so wroth that 
 I he laid him down on his bed to sleep," the letter 
 in his hand ; and Dinadan " stole the letter out of 
 his hand, and read it word by word," and as a 
 consequence made his lay of King Mark, and 
 taught it to one harper, who taught it in turn 
 to many harpers, who went singing it through 
 Wales and Cornwall, " which was the worst lay 
 that ever harper sang with harp or with any other 
 instruments." 
 
 Next morning we rose from bed, I remember, 
 with a sense of being unequal to our antique 
 opportunity. Looking out of window, I saw a 
 milk-cart driving by ; it was built in the precise 
 model of an old British chariot. The rain, too, 
 was falling in a traditional British way. Luckily 
 we had the Museum as a resource. 
 
 A little more and Caerleon Museum, which looks 
 externally like the toy model of a classic temple, 
 might have been a perfect village monument. As 
 it is, one does not find it easy on a wet morning 
 to rekindle any Roman warmth in its cold stones, 
 or set free the rustling garments of a Csesaria, or 
 picture the wife of Cornelius Castus, with her old 
 silver brooch clasping the kerchief about her neck 
 and silver bracelets on her folded arms. But the 
 thought of that poor child, Julia Iverna, who died 
 
48 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 at sixteen and was buried at Bulmore, and whose 
 mother must have loved her very dearly, presently 
 opens this house of the dead. The ornaments of 
 both of them are there ; and some of the inscrip- 
 tions that recall them, and some of the flakes and 
 remnants whose shining may have helped to dazzle 
 the eyes of the early Welsh romancists, a Geoffrey 
 or a Gerald, are there too. What is very attractive 
 to our eyes is the way in which flakes and bits 
 of mediaeval glass and small metal ornaments of 
 Gerald's time — the twelfth century — are mixed with 
 those of the day when Tacitus wrote. This is the 
 great secret which Caerleon keeps close. It has 
 mixed its memories, like its relics ; and when for 
 the twentieth time you are trying to separate the 
 Roman soldiers from Arthur's men, and the Roman 
 lines from the later walls and castellated defences 
 added by a Llewelyn whose gryphon (on a bit of 
 glass) is still to be seen, you suddenly realise that 
 Arthurian tradition was partly grown on a Roman 
 wall, and has kept the faint aroma of a thousand 
 classical associations. 
 
 It was the second Legion that lay at Caerleon ; 
 and here, in the time of Claudius under Vespasian, 
 its headquarters were maintained while its men 
 fought and built, went off to the north in detach- 
 ments, to help in the road-building and raising of 
 the walls and forts of the North Tyne and Border 
 country. Not only that ; but they were the chief 
 builders of the great sea-walls raised to protect 
 the Level of Caldecot and the Level of Gwynllwg 
 (Wentloog) from the Severn Sea. The busts or 
 statues of a line of famous generals, and one or 
 two emperors, would have to be set round the 
 walls of Caerleon Museum, like those in the cor- 
 ridor of emperors at the British Museum, if we 
 
CAERLEON-ON-USK 49 
 
 were to rally to our aid all the contributors to the 
 fame of the City of Legions. Yes, Agricola, and 
 Severus, and Caracalla, and Geta, and Suetonius, 
 and Constantine — who left Britain not so long 
 before the supposed advent of Arthur. 
 
 When you recall Geoffrey of Monmouth's 
 blazoned triumph of King Arthur in the City of 
 Legions, you see clearly how Roman were its 
 features : Roman, viewed at the end of an early 
 mediaeval vista, like a marble colonnade seen 
 through stained glass. Geoffrey tells us how 
 Arthur, after a series of Roman triumphs — not 
 unlike Caesar's own — after campaigns in Norway, 
 Dacia, Aquitania, Gaul, after holding court at 
 Paris, decides to hold a solemn thanksgiving, 
 and pitches upon the City of Legions for that 
 purpose. 
 
 " Upon the approach of the feast of Pentecost, 
 Arthur," says Geoffrey, " resolved to hold a mag- 
 nificent court, to place the crown upon his head, 
 and to invite all the kings and dukes subject to 
 him to that solemnity. And he pitched upon the 
 City of Legions as a fit place wherein to hold it ; 
 for besides its wealth, great beyond that of other 
 cities, its site upon the river Usk, near the Severn 
 Sea, was most pleasant and fit for so high a 
 solemnity. On one side it was washed by that 
 noble river, so that those kings and princes who 
 came from beyond the seas might readily sail up 
 to the city. On the other side, the beauty of the 
 groves and meadows, and the magnificence of the 
 royal palaces with high gilded roofs adorning it, 
 made it rival even the grandeur of Rome." 
 
 And it had, continues Geoffrey, two churches, 
 one dedicated to the martyr Julius, and adorned 
 by a choir of virgins, while the other, dedicated to 
 
 4 
 
50 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 St. Aaron, was the third church metropolitan of 
 Britain. Besides, there was a college of two 
 hundred wise men and astronomers, who could 
 tell Arthur by the stars what events were to 
 happen at that time. 
 
 To Caerleon came, among the kings, Sater, King 
 of Dyved, Cador, King of Cornwall, Cadwaladon, 
 King of North Wales, Augusel (Angus ?), King of 
 Scotland, Urien, King of "Mureif." The three 
 Archbishops of York, and London, and Caerleon 
 (observe the equation of the last with the two 
 first metropolitan sees) attended, too, in state. 
 The last of the three arch-prelates was Dubricius, 
 otherwise Dyvrig the Golden Tongued. 
 
 The present parish church of Caerleon is dedi- 
 cated to Cadoc, for Llangattock is the parish in 
 which the City of Legions stands. Its eccle- 
 siastical tradition waxed and grew with its 
 Arthurian myths. If it was a king's capital — 
 why not an archbishop's seat ? Dyvrig, and 
 Cadoc, and David lend it their associations, and 
 they build up its House of Fame, and bring tradi- 
 tion to the point where the Church was able to 
 perpetuate it, and delicately idealise it, and join a 
 Constantine legend to an Arthur legend, and put 
 a halo about a Roman helmet ; and magnify a 
 simple hermit in his cave to the seventh dimen- 
 sion, till he towers, a prince, a primate of his 
 Church. 
 
 Wonderful Caerleon, that can lift heroes, like 
 pieces of ivory, from its dust ! Arthur and Seve- 
 rus, Gwenevere and Coesaria and Julia Iverna, 
 Cadoc and David : they are the personages of 
 its story. 
 
 To recall the Roman Isca Silurum, you ought to 
 climb Christchurch Hill and look back from the 
 
CAERLEON-ON-USK 51 
 
 road as it nears the village. Then, imagine an 
 extent of marsh-lands and tidal " rhines " (as they 
 are called on either side of the Severn Sea) all 
 about the City of Legions, and the city itself, 
 square, very definite, very compact, raised on higher 
 ground ; with four straight roads approaching its 
 four gates, south, east, west, and north. At the south 
 gate the approach is by a twenty-two feet wide 
 trestle-built bridge. The same bridge to all intents 
 and purposes, patched from time to time, lasted 
 on to modern times ; lasted long enough for the 
 Normans to build new defences at either end in 
 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and for some 
 of the Chartists to cross it on their way to New- 
 port in 1839, and for Tennyson to walk over 
 it in 1856. It was finally demolished about fifty 
 years ago. 
 
 You can better picture the splendour of the 
 place when you remember that it was one of the 
 three great Roman centres in Britain. You can 
 see the streets, the people, the officers' wives, 
 the soldiers ; here, in the heart of the town, are 
 the houses, most of them either one-storied or 
 having a lower storey of stone and an upper of 
 timber, with timbered and shingled roofs. In 
 the Forum, or market-building, there are steps 
 and a colonnade ; and on the steps are beggars, 
 British market-women, and a Roman lady chaffer- 
 ing with one of them for a basket of apples or a 
 jar of honey, a couple of barley-cakes or a brace 
 of wild duck. One amphitheatre we trace by the 
 oval called King Arthur's table; and of other 
 extra-mural adjuncts we know there was one 
 burial-place at Bulmore and another two miles 
 further away. And within the walls are baths, 
 cool porticoes, a couple of temples ; and perhaps a 
 
52 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 corner of the city where, as time went on, a couple 
 of marble and stone arches and a column arose 
 to mark some of the Roman triumphs in Britain. 
 Every fragment you have in Caerleon Museum 
 represents a whole. A single Roman brick, and 
 Caerleon is rebuilt. You can still see Roman 
 figures and Welsh knights pass in the town as 
 you look back from Christchurch Hill — forms that 
 seem to appear for a moment at the end of the 
 street and then to disappear like a mirage. The 
 recent excavations by the Roman surveyors have 
 made the actual details of the place clear as 
 Pompeii's. 
 
 According to Donovan in his tour of 1801, 
 there was a Caerleon tradition that Arthur 
 and his knights disappeared into the old amphi- 
 theatre. 
 
 "And here," says Donovan, "we were assured 
 with the utmost gravity that in some evil hour 
 of enchantment Arthur and two thousand of his 
 valiant knights sunk into the abyss of the earth, 
 in the midst of their jovial feasting " ; that is, at 
 the celebration of some gala day of the Round 
 Table. It is added that Arthur himself was spirited 
 away to Faerie ; and so we have another of the 
 many local legends of " Arthur's Sleep," asso- 
 ciated also with Craig-y-Dinas, in the Vale of 
 Neath, with a spot in the Black Mountains, near 
 Gwynfe, with a mountain in the Bala region of 
 North Wales, with a well at Cadbury (Camelot) 
 in Somerset, and many other places. 
 
 " He is a king crowned in Faerie," says Lydgate, 
 and shall yet resort — 
 
 "... our Lord and sovereigne, 
 Out of Faerie and reigne in Brittaine." 
 
CAERLEON-ON-USK 53 
 
 Any one who cares can go on pilgrimage to the 
 city and evoke its ghostly king. " The Usk mur- 
 murs by the windows, and I sit like King Arthur 
 in Caerleon," says Tennyson, writing from the 
 queer old riverside inn, " The Hanbury Arms," 
 in September, 1850. There have been some 
 changes in what the natives call " Kerleen " 
 since then, but its Arthurian tradition has not 
 grown less. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 FROM THE USK TO THE TAFF — THE WENTLOOG 
 LEVEL — RHYMNEY — FREEMAN THE HISTORIAN 
 — AN OLD ROMANCE ROAD AND A PAGE FROM 
 THE " MABINOGION " 
 
 The Severn Sea Flats between Newport and 
 Cardiff make a no-inan's land, a neglected 
 district, commonly travelled only by plain folk, 
 hawkers, bakers, and the like, who have busi- 
 ness to do. At points it will remind you, if you 
 know the east coast, of Canvey Island or parts of 
 Mersea. The way to take it is to expect a melan- 
 choly region; and then the "rhines" and reedy 
 fields and long, monotonous roads will offer enter- 
 tainment. A farmstead once a priory, a neglected 
 old house with a history, a whitewashed cottage 
 between the last field and the sea, which was once 
 drowned out in the great flood, or a flood-mark on 
 a church wall, stir the conjectural wits of the 
 traveller. The sea-walls, maintained at much 
 cost to the farmers, show the risk of the Severn 
 Sea's yet recapturing Wentloog. This was why 
 castles were few along this extent of coast. 
 
 The old lordship of Wentloog stretched from the 
 Usk to the Rhymney, and from the Severn to a 
 boundary-line drawn from Llantarnam to Risca 
 and Michaelston-y-Fedw. No less than seventeen 
 manors were parcelled out of it. 
 
 54 
 
 
FROM THE USK TO THE TAFF 55 
 
 Cox mentions in the last of these — that is, in the 
 level of Mendalgyf — one of the several Green 
 Castles that exist in South Wales : Castell Glas, 
 on the left bank of the Ebwy, near the confluence 
 with the Usk. This is the same " seat " that 
 Churchyard describes : — 
 
 " A goodly seate, a tower, a princely pyle 
 Built as a watch or saftie for the soil 
 By river stands, from Neawport not three myle." 
 
 Now the huge enginery of the docks, far higher 
 than any old castle, starts up formidably in the 
 scene. Some two miles west of Green Castle 
 lies St. Bride Wentloog, and the road thence 
 runs a flat two miles further to Peterstone, 
 whose Welsh name is Llanbad, short for 
 Llanbedr, the church of Pedr or Peter. 
 
 The famous flood-mark at St. Bride's makes 
 you realise how amphibious life used to be in 
 these marshy levels. Their most tragic tale is 
 the "Great Sea Flood" of 1606, chronicled in 
 the Harleian Miscellany. It befell on Tuesday, 
 the 20th of January, and most idiomatically the 
 miscellanist describes it : — 
 
 "For, about nine of the clock in the morning, the same 
 being most fayrely and brightly spred, many of the in- 
 habitants of those countreys prepared themselves to their 
 affayres, then they might see and perceive afar off as it 
 were in the element huge and mighty hilles of water 
 tombling one over another in such sort as if the greatest 
 mountains in the world had overwhelmed the low villages 
 and marshy grounds. Sometimes it dazzled many of the 
 spectators that they imagined it had bin some fogge or 
 miste coming with great swiftness towards them and with 
 such a smoke as if mountains were all on fire, and to 
 the view of some it seemed as if myllions of thousands of 
 arrows had been shot forthe all at one time. 
 
56 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 "So violent and swifte were the outrageous waves, that 
 in less than five hours space most part of those Countreys 
 (especially the places that laye lowe) were all overflown, 
 and many hundreds of people, both men and women and 
 children, were there quite devoured by those outrageous 
 waters ; nay, more, the farmers and husbandmen and 
 shepheardes might behold their goodly flockes swimming 
 upon the waters dead." 
 
 Many kinds of marsh and water-birds, large 
 and small, are seen in the Wentloog Level, in- 
 cluding herons, grebe, and red divers. In hard 
 winters (like that of 1890-1891) the bittern and 
 goosander reappear. But the wild swans and 
 wild geese that haunted the marshes in large flocks 
 ere they were drained are pretty well all gone. 
 
 Originally the Rhymney River was called 
 Elarch after these swans, according to Coxe ; 
 and he speaks of a tradition that the songs of 
 these swans could be heard even in London. It 
 is another legend of the solitude crying to the 
 town. You may realise it even to-day by 
 spending an evening at ebb-tide on the coast 
 anywhere near Peterston, and hearing the 
 waders and waterchicks whistle plaintively 
 across the tidal flats. By association it is a 
 mournful sound, suggesting the birds bewitched 
 that were once children of men, that still have 
 human voices : the birds of Rhianon, the child- 
 ren of Ler. The Celtic swan legends reach their 
 superlative with the going of Ler to Lake Darva, 
 where he is told that his children have been 
 drowned. 
 
 There he saw four swans near the lake-side, 
 and heard them talking like children together. 
 When they saw him, they came out of the 
 water, and looked sorrowfully at him with their 
 
FROM THE USK TO THE TAFF 57 
 
 black eyes and snake-like heads. They told him 
 they were bewitched by their step-mother Seife, 
 and begged him to break the spell. But it 
 was not till the third stage of their existence, 
 hundreds of years afterwards, when they were 
 in the island of Glora, that the spell was 
 broken. They had a friend there, the Lonely 
 Crane of Inniskea ; and there St. Caernhoc 
 came with the new faith and they were baptized. 
 Before we go on to Cardiff, we ought to stop 
 at St. Mellon's, if only because the historian 
 E. A. Freeman for some years resided in the 
 parish, at Lanrhymney Hall, using it as a 
 working-centre from which to explore and map 
 out locally the history and mediaeval antiquity 
 of South Wales. Many delightfully drawn small 
 sketches of churches and towers and other old 
 buildings from his sketch-books may be seen 
 in the volumes of the Cambrian Archaeological 
 Society, for which he laboured tirelessly. Of his 
 house, Lanrumney or Llanrhymney, he tells us 
 that it was once attached to Keynsham Abbey 
 in Somersetshire. 
 
 "Parts of the walls are of a thickness which may be of 
 any age, but the earliest architectural features — for which 
 however the inquirer must do me the honour of a visit 
 inside — are of the time of Elizabeth. We have, however, 
 little to boast of beyond a respectable ceiling in the 
 ground-floor, — and a fine chimney piece upstairs. The 
 latter bears date 1587, and is adorned with an elaborate 
 shield of arms, in which, being no great herald, I thought 
 I recognised all the kingdoms of the earth, at any rate 
 France, Castile, and Scotland ; but I have since heard 
 that they all represent different bearings of the family 
 of Morgan, a branch of whom held the property as late 
 as the eighteenth century, since which it has passed 
 through various hands." 
 
58 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 He rejoiced unfeignedly in the Church of St. 
 Mellon's, and gave it among all the churches he 
 had seen in the south-western corner of Mon- 
 mouthshire, forming the Deanery of Newport, 
 the first place : — 
 
 "I mean of course," he adds, "after St. Woolos. There 
 are some others in its own neighbourhood which contain 
 finer work, but it certainly surpasses all in general 
 dignity. It is perhaps less strictly designed than some 
 others after a special Monmouthshire type, but it exhibits 
 the general South Welsh type on a considerable scale, 
 and with extreme variety and picturesqueness of outline. 
 In fact, like Llandeilo Bertholey in a distant part of 
 the country, its outline would rather have suggested 
 Pembrokeshire as its locality than any other part of 
 Wales or of Britain. The church is large for a Welsh 
 parish church, being about a hundred feet long. Indeed 
 most of the churches immediately round it are of con- 
 siderable size. Several would, I imagine, exceed St. 
 Mellon's in mere length, though I fancy the latter 
 covers altogether the greatest amount of ground. St. 
 Mellon's consists of a long and broad nave, to which is 
 attached a disproportionately short and narrow chancel. 
 This chancel too has a totally different radius from that 
 of the nave, the south walls of the two coinciding, from 
 which it follows that their north walls are very far from 
 doing so. Again attached to the chancel, is a sort of 
 transeptal chapel running north. The result is that the 
 chancel and this chapel are entered from the nave by two 
 arches, side by side, divided by a pillar ; the southern 
 arch, which leads into the real chancel, is, of course, very 
 much the larger of the two. The arrangement is, as far 
 as I am aware, unique ; and the effect is singular — far 
 more singular, I may add, than beautiful. The peculiarity 
 lies in the lopsided appearance of the chancel thus set on 
 one side the nave, and in the two unequal arches, side by 
 side. A nave so broad as to take in both the choir and 
 its aisles, and to open into them by a large central arch 
 and a smaller one on each side, is a perfectly intelligible 
 
FROM THE USK TO THE TAFF 59 
 
 arrangement, and one which would be far from unique in 
 the South of France. At Orthez, for instance, in the Low 
 Pyrenees, it occurs on a large scale. There are also, I 
 believe, some similar English examples. But I have not 
 seen or heard of any example, British or Continental, 
 rivalling the special eccentricity of St. Mellon's. The first 
 feeling suggested is that a north arcade has been de- 
 stroyed, which certainly has not been the case since the 
 erection of the present church. The ground-plan has 
 clearly not been altered since the fourteenth century." 
 
 Freeman had Welsh servants at Lanrhymney, 
 and, unlike some Welsh parents, was pleased 
 that his children should pick up some words of 
 the old tongue. Long before you cross the western 
 boundary-line of Monmouthshire you are pretty 
 sure, if you keep your ears open, of hearing it 
 spoken. The particular dialect of Gwent is 
 called after it — "y Wenhwyseg," and it is dif- 
 ferent enough in many of its idioms and 
 pronunciations from the Welsh of the north 
 and west. You may suppose that this is because 
 Welsh in Monmouthshire is dying out. Not at 
 all. Up in the valleys, like the poet Islwyn's, 
 at Sirhowy (where I remember his sister, a 
 farmer's wife, speaking it with a most attrac- 
 tive and pure accent) and in all the western 
 stretches it holds its own ; and though Caerleon 
 has no Welsh, Newport town prides itself upon 
 it, and has a patriotic society and a devoted 
 publisher of Welsh books in Mr. Southall, an 
 Englishman who has learnt the tongue. The 
 small colloquial changes are many and easily 
 detected. Take the Welsh for 'I am,' — 
 ' Ydwyf ' in the book, ' Otw ' in Gwentian 
 speech, which points to a tendency all through 
 to turn 'd' into *t.' Thus a fox, 'cadno' 
 
60 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 becomes 'catno,' which led a bold hunting- 
 man once to declare that Welsh rustics called 
 foxes wild cats. Another change comes of 
 softening the ' a ' : a Welsh boy in Gwent 
 speaks of a father, ' Tad,' as ' tead.' Then the 
 ' h ' is often shaky, and it seems only in Gwent 
 the English vulgarism of ' awfully ' is accepted 
 slang as in the phrase — 'da afnatw!' ('awfully 
 good ! '). In his capital little word-book for the 
 district the Rev. John Griffith gives many other 
 local differences, as the innocent expletive, ' neno 
 dyn ' for ' yn yr enw dyn ' — ' in the name of man. 
 However, it is by no means here only that the 
 initial ' y ' is dropped for convenience in ordinary 
 talk. 
 
 I have forgotten in the account of this trans- 
 formed countryside the claims of Cefn Mabley, 
 so called after Mable, daughter of Fitzhamon. 
 This is indeed a superb old house to make a man 
 covetous who loves the past as Freeman did. 
 There are perhaps twenty seats in this south 
 country that one could willingly hold for one's 
 own, and be able to have early associations 
 with ; and Cefn Mabley not least among them. 
 Here lived in the time of the Civil War Sir 
 Nicholas Kemeys, a soldier made of indomitable 
 stuff, who held Chepstow Castle for the King 
 and died rather than surrender it. A descendant 
 of his, Colonel Kemeys-Tynte, has published some 
 tales of the old house, which help to conjure 
 it up, as such mirrors may do, with its soldiers' 
 gallery, ball-room and great table long as the 
 oak-tree that went to make it. 
 
 Well above Cefn Mabley stands Ruperra, 
 another old seat connected with the Morgan 
 family. The wooded lawns around it were, in 
 
FROM THE USK TO THE TAFF 
 
 61 
 
 July, 1GJ5, stirred by the arrival of King Charles 
 the First as the guest of Sir Philip Morgan. 
 Ruperra is, with some show of tradition at least, 
 claimed for an Inigo Jones house. It was 
 designed on large lines, with a commanding 
 relation to its spacious site. An entry in Richard 
 Symonds' Diary of the King's stay in Wales after 
 Naseby runs : — 
 
 "Sunday, July 27, 1645. — His Mca tIe lay at Ruperrie, a 
 faire seate of Mr. Morgan." 
 
 A WEST MONMOUTHSHIBE COTTAGE. 
 
 This was the time of the King's disheartening 
 negotiations with the " Peaceable Army." Next 
 day he went on to Cardiff, but returned to Sir 
 Philip Morgan's roof and made it his headquarters 
 for a day or two longer. While there ill-news 
 continued to arrive, and he heard of the burning 
 of Abergavenny Castle— or the habitable part of 
 it. Intrigues were gathering head against him 
 
62 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 on every side in South "Wales, and the squires 
 were becoming more and more disaffected. The 
 Rhymney River makes a true Glamorgan curve 
 as it circles to the north of Ruperra. It flows 
 on then, serving as the boundary for the two 
 shires for over twenty miles of its course to its 
 namesake village, and reaches the sea at one end 
 of the sea-flat whose other end is now shaped 
 and transformed into the Bute Docks — the marsh 
 made into a huge geometrically planned har- 
 bour. 
 
 Approaching Cardiff from the east — and if by 
 one of the higher roads all the better ! — you are 
 bound to be set thinking of Geraint and the way 
 he took thither from Caerleon. The description 
 of the road and his arrival in the town is one of 
 the best contrived things, full as it is of the sense 
 of greater adventure to come, which is to be had 
 in all wayfaring literature. You realise the Car- 
 diff of the Mabinogion the better for reading 
 it again in that princely old story-book. Let us 
 relate the end of the journey to the page for the 
 sake of the sheer gust of romance it brings with 
 it : it ends for that night, you remember, in the 
 upper chamber of the ruined hall of the dis- 
 possessed, hoary-headed lord, Enid's father, where 
 Geraint first spies the destined maid, Enid. There 
 sits the ancient, worn-out dame in tattered, worn- 
 out satin, the wreck of beauty ; and beside her 
 Enid, in her much-worn vest — "beginning to be 
 worn out." It is a piece of real history that 
 follows, showing what went on in many a castle 
 in the new Normandy of South Wales. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 OLD AND NEW CARDIFF — THE SEAPORT, THE CITY 
 AND THE CASTLE — A RARE CASTLE-BREAKER — 
 THE " CUSTOMERS " AND THE SMUGGLERS 
 
 One autumn morning, bound for Cardiff, we sailed 
 out from Uphill Bay on the Somerset side, with 
 Brean Down on our left, and looked westward 
 through the morning haze that lay along the 
 Welsh coast opposite. A glimpse of Barry Island 
 ought to have been caught presently, almost on a 
 line with the lighthouse on Flatholme, as our boat's 
 head swerved ; but we were not sure of it. How- 
 ever, we knew that within the curved bay behind 
 Coldknap Point the tide washed over the vanished 
 Castle of Porthkerry ; and the thought of St. Ceri 
 and of Penarth, to which our course was set, were 
 quite enough to start the spirit of the old sea- 
 tales which Somerset and South Wales shared. 
 There are one or two vestiges of these in Malory, 
 which show how Cardiff counted in the wild 
 geography of those tales. Most notable is the 
 embarking of Launcelot : — 
 
 "And wholly an hundred knights departed with Sir 
 Launcelot at once, and made their avows they would never 
 leave him for weal nor for woe. And so they shipped at 
 Cardiff, and sailed unto Ben wick ; some men call it Bayonne, 
 and some men call it Beaume, where the wine of Beaume i^." 
 
 63 
 
64 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Following hot upon Launcelot's heels came the 
 King himself, who made ready a great host to 
 pass over the sea ; and he too shipped at Cardiff. 
 Not only that. It was there he took the fatal 
 step of making Mordred " chief ruler " during his 
 war in France, and put Queen Gwenever under 
 the traitor's charge, thus hastening on the doom 
 of the realm. 
 
 How inevitably it recalls the Welsh legend of 
 the Norman settlement in Glamorgan, as told in 
 the country and in the famous old history-book 
 by Rice Merrick which is its testament. When 
 you have allowed for the shuffling of names and 
 places and the telling and retelling of this par- 
 ticular episode, you begin to see how it was King 
 Arthur went through so many transmogrifications 
 — as from a British chief into a Roman Emperor, 
 or from a Roman into a Welsh prince. The next 
 thing was to Normanise him, and relate him to 
 Cardiff, the Normal citadel. Unlike most Welsh 
 castles, Cardiff has the sprucer military air of one 
 that is used, and lived in, and kept up in state. 
 In the midst of modern Cardiff it looks modern, 
 and seems to forget the old town which clustered 
 around its walls, and took name and fame from 
 the citadel on the Taff River. The Caer in the 
 name of Cardiff comes from the Castle, and the 
 meaning of the " diff " or " dydd " is hardly 
 doubtful. The best of local guides gives four- 
 teen variations in the spelling of the name, 
 including Kardi, Cardivia, Caer Dyf, Kerdiff and 
 Cairtaphe. The last mentioned is Leland's read- 
 ing of Cardiff, and it may encourage you to arrive 
 at the decisive variant — Caerdaff, the Castle of 
 Taff, just as Llandaff was the Church of Taff. 
 
 But, standing by Cardiff Castle, do not be 
 
OLD AND NEW CARDIFF 65 
 
 beguiled by its newer aspect into forgetting the 
 secrets that have dropped into its dust. Before 
 there was a Norman castle there was a Welsh one, 
 and before the Welsh castle there was a Roman, 
 and little doubt but that before the Roman there 
 was a British caer. Aulus Didius was the first 
 Roman to plant the eagle securely at the mouth of 
 the Taff ; but he was not by any means the true 
 conqueror of the Silures. Ostorius, tired, doffed 
 his conqueror's shoes ; and Didius succeeding 
 him, only put them on. So some generals win 
 with the victories of others. However that may 
 be, a segment of the Roman wall has been 
 unearthed in its massive entirety on the banks 
 of the Taff, and it is to be seen if you walk 
 straight across the Castle grounds from the 
 entrance. Then, if it is summer, and the trees 
 are in leaf, you have left the modern world 
 and the ambitious city behind, and are in the 
 time and place of Duke Robert, or you are a 
 contemporary, if you please, of Aulus and his 
 sentinels. There are not many such examples of 
 Roman masonry to be had anywhere. The wall 
 at this point is some thirteen feet high and seven 
 feet thick at half its height ; many of the stones 
 are larger than those usually found in Roman 
 mason-work, whose size was strictly adapted to the 
 capacity of the British shoulders that had to bear 
 them. 
 
 One turns here, in a moment, from the Roman 
 to the Norman caer. It is the unique effect of 
 this Castle to mark the seven ages of Wales in 
 its stones. 
 
 Cardiff Castle was the fighting base of the 
 Norman conquerors of South Wales. As we said 
 before, the story of Fitzhamon and his twelve 
 
 5 
 
66 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 knights has both stolen things from and lent 
 them to romance ; and the traffic their names 
 recall between Wales and Normandy explains 
 something of the traffic in the Arthurian tales 
 that went on betwixt the countries across the 
 Channel. The figure of Robert Curthose, Duke 
 of Normandy, who spent some twenty-five years 
 in Robert's Tower, and died in 1134, starts up, a 
 burly shadow, out of the shades. He was a lover 
 of minstrelsy while he lived, and took a wise 
 interest in the poetry of his enforced country, and 
 learned enough of the Welsh tongue to write in 
 it. Yes, he wrote a Welsh poem, addressed, as 
 Penarth might have reminded us, to a distant 
 oak that he saw from his prison window on the 
 Head there. Somewhat thus it runs : — 
 
 "Oak that grows on the battle-rood; 
 After battle, after blood ; — 
 Alas, for the wine that fed the feud ! 
 
 Oak that grows upon the green, 
 Where the red blood-drip has been ! 
 Alas, for him that hate has seen ! 
 
 Oak that watches from the bluff 
 
 The Severn Sea, — blow fair, blow rough 1 
 
 Alas, for the old, not old enough ! " 
 
 There are more verses, and unluckily for Count 
 Robert's fame as a Welsh poet, they are very like 
 some older ones addressed to a still older tree. 
 But there is the genuine echo of his predicament 
 in them, and they help to establish his place as 
 a sympathetic merchant dealing in Cardiff's medi- 
 aeval literary market, which received legends and 
 other Welsh produce — not being at all averse to 
 stolen goods — and stamped them with a French 
 
OLD AND NEW CARDIFF 67 
 
 name for the French market. It reminds me that 
 some twenty-five years ago I once drove from 
 
 Court Henri to a farm on the B uplands, where 
 
 they made a most deliciously flavoured creamy 
 cheese. When I asked the farmer what he did 
 with such a valuable commodity he told me it was 
 sent to London, stamped with a Swiss mark, and 
 •retailed in Soho and the French mart at a high 
 price. 
 
 ■ One is liable to get confused between Duke 
 Robert of Normandy and Earl Robert of Glou- 
 cester, in whose charge he was. The Earl, known 
 also as Robert of Caen, was himself a lover of 
 poetry and learning, and had his Welsh sympa- 
 thies ; and in the Castle here, or another gallery, 
 hangs a picture of him, with Geoffrey of Mon- 
 mouth, Caradoc of Llancarvan, and Walter Map 
 gathered about him. Duke Robert's Tower, as it 
 is now, has been much altered and added to. The 
 late Lord Bute tells us that when Pope Calixtus 
 II. met Henry I. at Givors, he remonstrated with 
 the King upon his treatment of his brother. 
 " Henry replied that ' as for his brother, he had not 
 caused him to be bound in fetters like a captive 
 enemy, but, treating him like a noble pilgrim worn 
 out with long sufferings, had placed him in a Royal 
 Castle, and supplied his table and wardrobe with 
 all kinds of luxuries and delicacies in great abund- 
 ance. In 1134 Robert died at Cardiff, and is 
 stated to have been carried to Gloucester, and 
 buried with great honours in the pavement of the 
 church before the altar." 
 
 The Castle is still haunted by the figure of Duke 
 Robert, even while other ghosts are forgotten. 
 He may be sketched as he was when he had grown 
 stout from want of exercise. " Stout and indolent, 
 
68 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 pedantic, and self-important," one writer calls him. 
 Indolent and weak-willed, he probably was. The 
 popular account of his end is like a moving passage 
 adapted from an old play : — 
 
 "During his imprisonment, it happened that Henry his 
 brother, and then kinge, had brought him, upon a feast daye, 
 in the morninge, a scarlet garment to putt on, with a cape for 
 the head, as the manor then was, which, as he essayed, he 
 found it too straighte in the cape, insonmche that he brake a 
 stitche or twoe in the seame, and, castinge it aside, he bad 
 his gentleman give it to his brother Robert, for his head 
 (quoth he) is less than myne. The garment was brought him, 
 and when he sawe it a little torne, he demanded how it hap- 
 pened that it was not sewed ; the gentleman told the trouthe, 
 which, as he understode, he fell into a great melancholy, 
 sayinge, ' And dothe my brother make me his bedeman, in 
 that he sendethe me his cast clothes ? Then have I lyved too 
 longe I ' and, refusing all sustenance, he died." 
 
 It is the Banqueting Hall, a stately apartment 
 wainscoted in walnut, which is frescoed with the 
 story of the royal prisoner, Duke Robert. The 
 Entrance Hall is connected with the Banqueting 
 Hall by the grand staircase, and an octagonal 
 staircase connects the latter chamber with the 
 Library and the Chapel. The Chapel is, I suppose, 
 the most gorgeous religious interior to be seen 
 in Wales. Painted marble walls and ceilings, 
 enamelled shields, glowing pictures, and an altar 
 representing the tomb of the Saviour, give the 
 building an excess of splendour. 
 
 The castellan, or as he is called in Malory's 
 Morte D Arthur, the Captain of Cardiff, was 
 only a casual apparition in Arthurian romance ; 
 but the shadow of the Castle and its history and 
 traditions slants, and extends its length and exag- 
 
OLD AND NEW CARDIFF 69 
 
 gerated proportions through many an Arthurian 
 page. 
 
 Cardiff Castle, as you now see it, is the master- 
 piece of the late Marquess of Bute, who died in 
 1900. Mr. B urges, a great designer, was the archi- 
 tect to whom the alterations and restorations were 
 entrusted ; and to him we owe ~fche ornate Clock 
 Tower, the restored curtain wall, and other changes, 
 including the clearing away in advance of the old 
 walls and houses which blocked the view. The 
 panels on either side of the clock-face are adorned 
 by statues of Mars and Sol and Jupiter, with the 
 signs of the Zodiac under their feet ; the lead roof 
 is garnished with strange stars. The Clock Tower 
 would make in itself a desirable mansion for a 
 Welsh poet of degrees, or an historiographer. 
 The summer smoking-room comes at the top of 
 all, with a gallery and dome whose panels again 
 display starry decorations, while the secrets of 
 the Zodiac appear in the painted tiles between the 
 windows, and a dado of red marble completes a 
 scheme of colour that is half fantastic. The lower, 
 or winter, smoking-room is even more gorgeous ; 
 and its painted and vaulted ceiling, its painted 
 walls, its painted windows, might rather appear 
 fitted to indulge the dreams of an opium-smoker 
 than humour the plain tobacco-pipe. Sun and 
 stars, Thor and Woden, the days of the week, and 
 the four seasons of the year are figured there in 
 splendour ; and the wood-carving is the work of a 
 fine artist, the late Thomas John, father of Mr. 
 Goscombe John, A.R.A., the Welsh sculptor. 
 
 Every Welsh Norman castle had its castle- 
 breaker. As one walks the green close or the high 
 battlements of Cardiff one is haunted by the form 
 of Ivor Bach, Ivor the Little, who, little as he was, 
 
70 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 outdid all other feats of the kind. Only a Dumas 
 could do justice to this great-little creature. A 
 sort of Dumas we had, a fighting cleric and an 
 intermittent romancer, in Gerald de Barri, who did 
 write an account of Ivor's capping adventure. 
 But he wrote it in earnest, for his own people held 
 castles, and he felt the two currents, Welsh and 
 Norman, at strife in his own blood, and realised 
 that castle-breaking was a very serious business. 
 
 Reading this Ivor episode, you breathe that finer 
 element which often gives Welsh history an air 
 not quite real, an air of the unconditioned ; for 
 here was an all but incredible adventure carried 
 through by a real knight for whom restraints did 
 not count, who treated castle walls and their 
 garrisons and castellans as lightly as Kai treated 
 the Castle of Gwrnach the giant in the story 
 of Olwen. 
 
 It happened, Gerald de Barri tells us, that 
 William, Earl of Gloucester, who besides Cardiff 
 Castle held all Morganwg — that is, the old land of 
 Glamorgan — quarrelled with this Ivor — " a man of 
 small stature but great courage." Ivor owned, 
 " Welsh fashion, a large tract of the wooded and 
 the wild hill-country ; and this the Earl was minded 
 to take from him. Now at that time the Castle of 
 Caerdyff was walled by high walls, kept by 120 
 men-at-arms, a fine body of archers, and a strong 
 watch. Yet, defying them all, Ivor scaled the 
 walls at dead of night, seized the Earl and Coun- 
 tess and their only son, carried them off, and did 
 not let them go again till he got back every- 
 thing that had been taken from him — ay, and a 
 pretty large slice of land beside." 
 
 Ivor's strong-house was in a notch of the hill, 
 probably on a site a little above Lord Bute's reno- 
 
OLD AND NEW CARDIFF 71 
 
 vated Castell Coch, which again suggests the Red 
 Castle of many tales. But the capitol of all these 
 castles, Gerald's " Caerdyff " or " Kaerdiva," had its 
 revenge on Ivor's stock. In that old budget of 
 gossip's history, Rice Merrick's Booke of Glamo7 , ~ 
 ganshires Antiquities, already quoted in this 
 chapter, you may read that the unfortunate grand- 
 children of Griffith ab Ivor, who married a Clare, 
 had their eyes put out and were starved to death 
 here by Sir Richard de Clare, their kinsman. Only 
 one escaped, who was then a babe in his nurse's arms. 
 11 Of whom God," says Rice Merrick, " multiplied a 
 great people." A remarkable old Welsh family, 
 indeed, sprang from Howel's loins. 
 
 When Cardiff's mediaeval romance-episodes were 
 over, a hearty era of buccaneering romance set in. 
 Then the Knight who was no knight at all in the 
 Arthurian sense — that John Knight who dubbed 
 himself King of Lundy, and who was tyrant of 
 Barry Isle — blackmailed the vessels bound for Car- 
 diff and Bristowe, and Porlock and Bridgewater, 
 and hid French wines and foreign tobacco in the 
 Barry sandhills, and terrorised the Cardiff Custom 
 House with an armed brig. 
 
 You must turn to the second volume of the 
 Cardiff Records and look up the Custom House 
 memoranda for the years 1784 and 1787, if you 
 would read of the doings of Knight and his smug- 
 glers, said to be at times sixty or seventy strong. 
 \On November 18, 1784, the local "Customers" 
 report to the London Custom House : " It's with 
 great Truth we assure you that the People here 
 are in such dread of Knight and his Gang, that we 
 found a difficulty in finding People to Work for 
 us." In 1787 we hear of the Preventives having 
 driven " that notorious Smugler Knight from the 
 
72 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Island of Barry." It seems that he had transferred 
 the base of his operations from Barry to Lundy. 
 Thereupon, no doubt, the price of tobacco went up 
 in the Cardiff district ; small shops were not so 
 mysteriously replenished and fewer pipes exhaled. 
 You get but a passing glimpse of Steepholme, 
 where one of the early hermits, a contemporary of 
 Arthur, had his cell, as you cross the Severn Sea to 
 Cardiff. But you can spy it from Penarth, and a 
 white sail dipping from a small craft to the south- 
 west of it may recall to you that Arthur had a ship 
 of his own, called Prydwen — " White-Shape." We 
 may cross the track of this vessel again if we 
 follow the great boar-hunt of the " Twrch 
 Trwyth." But we must leave the sea-track of the 
 old legends now, and with it this new great seaport 
 which the water outlet and the coal-field together 
 have conspired to make a wonder of the world. 
 The immensity of the new life of the Welsh capital 
 drives the old time out of one's mind alto- 
 gether. The city is only half complete as yet ; 
 streets and buildings splendid and mean jostle each 
 other in its midst ; but everywhere it impresses 
 you as alive, ambitious and potential. It will 
 be one of the great battle-fields between Capital 
 and Labour in the coming struggle of the twen- 
 tieth century. It has a superb castle with a great 
 tradition and a pedigree older than Norman. It is 
 building its University and its civic halls ; and will 
 yet, I believe, build its Parliament House. In the 
 Cathays Park is the natural site of great buildings ; 
 but it is, because of the loose river-gravel, a very 
 difficult one to engineer. Still the old Castle was 
 built on the brink of the Taff too, and though the 
 rock bottom there gave a better foundation, it 
 must have needed some care to plan the site. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 "BRO MOEGANWG," OR "THE VALE OF GLA- 
 MORGAN" — THE CASTLE COUNTRY — DINAS 
 POWYS AND THE TALE OF THE TWELVE 
 KNIGHTS 
 
 1 ' My men, in helm and jesseraunt, 
 
 That hurled the ladder from the wall 
 And watched it fall ; 
 My towers that heard the trumpet taunt — 
 "What dust has closed your long account ? " 
 
 Before we follow the coast-line west of Cardiff 
 we ought to make a detour to visit some of the 
 castles that carried the great military chain across 
 the sea-levels and low country of Glamorgan. 
 
 The tale of the Twelve Knights with many 
 mingled associations of Arthur and Charlemagne, 
 and its confused picture of many towers and battle- 
 ments of castles impossibly crowded together as in 
 the red, blue, and gold design of some old illuminated 
 script, rise in the scene as one turns west to the 
 rich district of " Bro Morganwg." They revive 
 in the delightful old Booke of Glamorganshire s 
 Antiquities, written by Rice Merrick in 1578, in 
 which we view the coming of the Normans 
 and the Twelve Knights of Fitzhamon through a 
 pleasant haze of real history. From him, too, we 
 
 73 
 
74 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 get the best idea that is to be had anywhere of the 
 natural advantages the Vale of Glamorgan offered 
 the castle-builder. Rice Merrick lived at Cottrell, 
 and owned part of the manor of St. Nicholas, and 
 he was Clerk of the Peace for the county. In 
 writing his book he drew upon a Welsh MS. called 
 Cutta Kyvarmoydd, dated about 1445, and his 
 history has the singular merit that it has the air 
 of matter-of-fact and is yet steeped in romance. 
 
 The " Conquest of Glamorgan," as Merrick 
 relates its story, is indeed what may be called 
 " Folk-tale History." We learn from it first how 
 comfortably seated was the Welsh prince who was 
 to be thrown out — a detail that adds point to the 
 tale of dispossession. This prince, Iestin, had 
 " two principall houses or habitacons — Cardiff and 
 Dynaspowys," the last so called in honour of his 
 first wife, Denys, who came from Powys-land. 
 Then Merrick defines the "Yale of Glamorgan" 
 and the hill-country above it in his expressive way. 
 Speaking of " Bro Morganwg," usually Englished 
 as the Vale of Glamorgan, " Bro," he writes, 
 " which is as much to say as the lowe country," or 
 " the country in the Vale, extendeth from East to 
 West about 24 miles ; and in bredth from the 
 Severn Sea on the south side to the foot of the 
 Hills, 7 miles less or more." Now here was the 
 stormy cradle of the Welsh-Norman tradition. 
 Again, " This Bro — being the body of Glamorgan, 
 was divided into two by the Thaw, and then, by 
 the highway — termed the Portway — from Cardiff 
 to the western townes." 
 
 Such a region is nothing without its forest. " In 
 the west part was a great fforrest called the fforrest 
 of Morgan" — the eastern confines, let us inter- 
 polate, of Morgan le Fay's country. Then Merrick 
 
"BRO MORGANWG" 75 
 
 turns to the up-country, or " Blainey." " Blayne," 
 he says, "in English we call Montaines — 3 times 
 double as much and more as the low country," 
 and divided by almost a continual ridge of hills. 
 And more particularly it is the " Blaineu," or upland 
 district, that breeds heroes. For " as this soyle," 
 compared with " the lowe country," is but barren, 
 yet in nourishing and bringing upp tall, mighty 
 and active men, it always excelled the other." 
 And those who by long experience have governed 
 both regions, he says, "prescribed this principle 
 that the Glamorgan lowlander required a different 
 treatment to the highland. " This to be wonne by 
 gentlenes, the other [the highlanderj kept under 
 with feare." 
 
 One mightily significant thing in the Glamorgan 
 romance of the coming of the Normans, as Rice 
 ap Merrick tells it, is that the quarrel between 
 " Iestin vap Gurgan and Rhys ap Tewdwr " is due 
 first of all to the Bayrdd ( " Beirdd " ), or bards. 
 Rhys's " beirdd," after a visit to Iestin, tell Rhys 
 that Deheubarth and Morganwg want only one 
 completing detail — a meet match and mate for 
 him. Now this might have been " had he only had 
 Iestin's wife, whereby," says Rice Merrick, " Rhys 
 was soon kindled with Venus' dart." Here is a 
 perfect romance opening. In his ardour, Rhys 
 arranges a high feast at Neath, " with a great 
 trayne of Gentlemen and women." It is but 
 natural that war should follow. And then it is 
 that Iestin appeals for aid outside the Welsh 
 borders, and procures Fitzhamon, who brings an 
 army ranged under twelve knights — "valiant 
 men well practiced in the feates of Chevallry." 
 In the issue, Rhys is overthrown and slain ; and 
 it is not long ere the Normans take occasion to 
 
76 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 kill Iestin, who has not kept faith " on Inon's 
 recall." 
 
 But the " Bro " is still the charm that acts upon 
 those superb land-thieves, the Normans. In 
 passing through Glamorgan, says Merrick — 
 
 "the plesant (nature) of the soyle, which abounded with 
 wyde ffeildes — pastures, deep Moores, sweete Meadowes, 
 goodly Rivers, wholsonie Springe, great shadowing woodes — 
 soe pleased and delighted the eyes of Sir Robert Fittshamon 
 and his 'complices, that they coveted the plant themselves 
 and to make Seates for them and their posterity therein, 
 according to the Poet, 
 
 " 'ffor now that Soyle contents mee more 
 Than all my Country vayn.' " 
 
 He tells, too, how on their fatal recall, when 
 they were leaving this land of promise, " Einon 
 overtook them at Pwll Myryg about a mile distant 
 by West Chepstowe." But prior to this the 
 promised reward, or " Sallary," was paid at "Golden 
 Mile," which is between Cowbridge and Ewenny. 
 
 This is the list of the twelve knights, whose 
 names are redolent of romance 
 
 1. Sir Wm. de Londres (Ogmore). 
 
 2. Sir Rich, de Granvilla (Neath). 
 
 3. Sir Pagan, alias Payn Turbervile (Coyty). 
 
 4. Sir Robt. of Sainct Quintin (Llanblethyan). 
 
 5. Sir Rich. Seward (Talavan — Seward's Land). 
 
 6. Sir Gilbert Humfreyvyle (Penmarck). 
 
 7. Sir Raynould de Sully (Sully). 
 
 8. Sir Roger Berkrols (East Orchard). 
 
 9. Sir Peter le Soore (St. Ffagan's and Peterson). 
 
 10. Sir John Flemynge (Wenvoe, Lamays, Flemingston). 
 
 11. Sir Olliver St. John (Foonmoonn). 
 
 12. Sir Wm. le Esterlinge (St. Donette's). 
 
 Of the castles whose names we may recognise in 
 
"BRO MORGANWG" 77 
 
 those that are bracketed after the twelve knights' 
 names, several lie within easy hail of Cardiff. St. 
 Fagan's, now Lord Windsor's seat, is only three 
 miles to the north-west ; Fonmon is about ten 
 miles south-west : Wenvoe, six miles south-west ; 
 and Sully on the coast about two leagues south, 
 near Sully Island (where was an older Danish 
 sea-castle or fort). 
 
 But, before any, in order of time and of the 
 great Glamorgan legend, as Rice Merrick paints it, 
 we ought to turn to Dinas Powys — the seat of 
 Iestin and Denys, his wife. 
 
 Dinas Powys lies in that region of pretty 
 country which, being within easy distance of Cardiff 
 and Penarth, is being gradually overbuilt and 
 spoilt. Dinas Powys, approached from the 
 Cadoxton road, and seen above its green cwm, 
 makes an effect that one does not soon forget. 
 The interior of the Castle is used now as a garden 
 by its owner, and castle-hunters are not encouraged 
 to invade it ; but the approach from the highway 
 below is alluring. A strategic view can be had of 
 its walls from the slope of the dingle, near Dinas 
 Farm, and then the ancient stones and strength of 
 the place are plainly seen. Posted there, on its 
 limestone base, it perfectly commands the cwm 
 (through which, no doubt, ran one of the Welsh 
 green roads that threaded the district). Thus it 
 served as a key to a dangerous door. The next 
 castle to Dinas Powys, on the west, is Wenvoe ; 
 and Wenvoe was within easy call of the fighting 
 monks of Llancarvan. Beili Castle, on the north 
 of Dinas Powys, and Sully and Barry on the south, 
 tell us, for the twentieth time, how ringed about 
 with fortresses and strong-houses was the whole 
 castlery of Cardiff. 
 
78 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Dinas Powys tradition, further complicating Rice 
 Merrick's and other mixed tales about Iestyn ap 
 Gwrgant, tells how (as a wedding present for his 
 young wife, Denys, a Powys princess) he built this 
 Castle before the Normans came by his disastrous 
 invitation ; and how, in spite of their coming, his 
 surviving five sons, born and bred in this Castle, 
 founded five great old families, all bearing the same 
 arms. Now, the arms of Iestyn are " gules, three 
 chevronels in pale, argent." If you are anything 
 of a pedigree man, you will see the importance of 
 this reminder. As for Iestyn, you will remember 
 how, by the common tradition, he died no farther 
 away than " Mynydd Bychan," or the Heath, as it 
 is now called. So says one story. Another swears 
 he died at Llangennys Monastery, having, like 
 Llywarch Hen, survived all his sons. But one 
 thing has still to be said about Iestyn's wife, 
 Denys : the chroniclers declare she gave her name, 
 as would be very natural, to the Castle, which 
 would become Denys Powys. Mr. Thomas Morgan, 
 a good local authority, in his Glamorganshire 
 Place Names, appears to accept this notion. But 
 one cannot help suspecting that Dinas Powys was 
 a British camp before Iestyn touched the site, and 
 that there was a " dinas," or old British habitation, 
 here for centuries before Denys came from Powys. 
 
 It would be hard to find a countryside richer than 
 the Vale of Glamorgan in the half-buried debris 
 of real history, tradition, and superstition, dreadful 
 and beautiful. Earliest of all, there lives an echo 
 of Druid terror about the standing stones. What 
 but a maenhir would go down and dip in the sea 
 on Christmas night? There are Druid stones at 
 Duffryn, near St. Nicholas ; the field where they 
 stand is supposed to be under a curse. Nothing 
 
"BRO MORGANWG" 79 
 
 will grow there. Once a year the stones rise up, 
 on Midsummer Eve, and whirl round three times. 
 Any one who sleeps in the great cromlech in the 
 Duffryn Woods on one of the three spirit nights 
 will go raving mad. Only once a year does the sun 
 dance ; if you will only get up early enough on 
 Easter Monday morning you will see it. 
 
 More perishable than the British superstition, 
 the Roman seems to have faded out completely, 
 unless, as is possible, some of the treasure-stories 
 date from Roman days. There is often a tale of a 
 grey lady, or a white lady, or even of a black lady, 
 connected with the finding of a buried hoard. 
 Sometimes they are manifestly the ghost of some 
 memory of deadly terror, slow to die out, 
 connected for hundreds of years with the same 
 spot. 
 
 Phantom funerals still pass along the roads of 
 the valley. A man riding home from market may 
 even be so unfortunate as to see his own funeral 
 moving in ghostly procession, and then go home to 
 die. In Miss Marie Trevelyan's Llantwit collection 
 of Welsh folk-lore a story is given of a phantom 
 horse, the property of an old house in Glamorgan. 
 
 A few years ago an English wanderer in 
 Glamorgan asked to be allowed to see the interior 
 of the house. After spending an idle hour in the 
 house, he. left, and while going down the drive 
 saw a white horse cantering towards him. It was a 
 beautiful animal with a splendid white mane and 
 long, flowing tail. The stranger stood aside and 
 the horse passed, going straight up to the great 
 entrance of the hall. The visitor thought no more 
 of the horse until he sat at supper in a small 
 country inn in the neighbourhood. There he hap- 
 pened to say to the innkeeper what a fine white 
 
80 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 horse he had seen in the manor-drive — a horse that 
 he was fairly sure was an Arab. He explained that 
 the Arab was riderless. The landlord asked if any 
 groom or man was with it, and the stranger said it 
 was alone. For a moment or two the other looked 
 troubled, and then in a whisper said, " If you 
 please, sir, do not mention this in the village, because 
 it is a token of death in the manor-house family." 
 The visitor remained, it is added, in the neighbour- 
 hood long enough to hear that one of the sons of 
 the manor-house had just died in India. 
 
 If you have a gift that way, you may chance to 
 see not only a death-horse in the Vale of Glamor- 
 gan, but water-horses, too. There is one that rolls 
 and plunges in the edges of the sea-waves when a 
 storm is coming on. There is another that comes 
 up, all dripping, out of the streams and frightens 
 the lonely shepherd boy or girl. 
 
 There are other queer creatures you had better 
 not meet : snakes that have underground treasures 
 to guard, corpse-lights moving where no light should 
 be, funeral-dogs, and cunning old reprobate grizzled 
 foxes that have lived far too long and seen far too 
 much. Worst of all, there are wicked, grey-headed 
 hares that it is not at all safe to meddle with. 
 
 There are wise-men and wise-women still that it 
 is not safe to meddle with either ; a tradition of 
 the old half- magical practice of medicine still sur- 
 vives. We are wise enough now to admit the exist- 
 ence of certain powerful individualities, natural 
 healers gifted with magnetic force, and to believe 
 in the sympathetic power of the will, and to recog- 
 nise that those healers at times got hold of some- 
 thing that our hospitals cannot teach. Personally, 
 I have known remarkable instances of cures, 
 especially of hydrophobia, by very extraordinary 
 
s 
 
 . 
 
 "AX UNCONSCIOUS FOLK-LOKIST": VALE OF GLAMORGAN. 
 Drawing by Mr. T. H. Thomas. 
 
 To face p. 80. 
 
"BRO MORGANWG" 81 
 
 practitioners indeed. An old country doctor said 
 to a friend, " If ever I were bitten by a mad dog I 
 should not dream of going to Pasteur. I should go 
 
 straight to " (mentioning a local wizard). " He 
 
 cured thirty of the worst cases I have seen in this 
 district." 
 
 A famous local habitation of these half-magical 
 practices is the rag-well. There is one near 
 Bridgend and another at Marcross, near Nash Point. 
 There is nearly always the same favouring scene : 
 the shut-in landscape, the small well, the conscious 
 thorn-bush fluttering with rags. The ancient prac- 
 tice of these rag- wells has become obscured. Origi- 
 nally the suffering pilgrim stood within the water 
 of the well, bathed the eyes or other affected part 
 (Marcross is a powerful eye-well), hung the bandage 
 used upon the thorn and dropped a small coin (in 
 later days a pin) into the well as an offering to the 
 presiding spirit of the place. The rag placed on the 
 thorn was regarded as a vehicle of disease, not as 
 an offering ; the visitor to the well hoped to leave 
 his or her ailment hanging on the thorn. The 
 modern man, looking at the ancient bush with its 
 fluttering or lazily hanging burden, does not know 
 whether to be more impressed by the thorn as a 
 nursery for microbes or as a symbol of the faith 
 that moves mountains, operative through thousands 
 of years. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PENARTH HEAD — THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE 
 COAST — DOCKS AND A PICTURE-GALLERY — SULLY 
 ISLAND AND THE TWO HOLMS 
 
 Westward of the Taff the coast changes, and 
 begins to show signs of a bolder sea-front befitting 
 the wider sea that now opens before it. Penarth 
 Head marks the difference well with its Rhaetic 
 cliff, 100 feet high, capped by Lias and based on 
 Keuper Marl, which, by the way, is one of the finest 
 fossil-beds in the country. A remarkable piece of 
 rock architecture, this parti-coloured cliff with its 
 fossil fish-scales, teeth, bones and lignite, stands up 
 a plain witness of the changes that have passed 
 over the coast-line of Morganwg. The Rhsetic 
 strata here are known as the " Penarth Beds," 
 the name Murchison gave them. At the Cardiff 
 Museum lies a good store of the fossils obtained from 
 them by the late John Storrie, a born naturalist, 
 formerly curator there. You see there bones and 
 backbones of the great saurians, with perfect teeth 
 of Ceratodus, teeth of Sargodon, along with tell- 
 tale water-worn fragments of lignite, left by the 
 old forests that grew here before the first stone- 
 men had sharpened their stone-axes to cut down 
 a tree. 
 
 Turn from these details of the slow building of 
 
 82 
 
PENARTH HEAD 83 
 
 the coast by earth and sea to the newly architec- 
 tured basins of the great docks. The cliff of 
 Penarth, the Bear's Head, forms the protecting 
 shoulder of the great dock there ensconced ; and 
 presently at Barry you will see how (as Mr. T. H. 
 Thomas puts it) " the erosion of the softer Lias by 
 the sea, and a small stream on either side of a mass 
 of mountain limestone supporting Trias beds, have 
 formed a waterway which has been trimmed into 
 a dock larger in area than any other in England." 
 
 Penarth Head makes the approach to the water- 
 ing-place below a trifle eccentric in its ups and 
 downs. But the hilly streets, once Penarth proper 
 is reached, give variety to the place, and increase the 
 sensation of the bicyclist when, having laboriously 
 surmounted the long ascent of the Windsor Road, 
 he lets himself go on the corresponding decline 
 seawards and arrives incontinently on the Espla- 
 nade. These are risks no Fitzhamon ever ran. 
 For the rest, the pier, the superb seascape from the 
 Head, the Windsor Gardens and their toy trees 
 and other pleasures, need not be rediscovered here. 
 Penarth Dock is another matter; it captures the 
 imagination by its bold bid at sea economy, its 
 water-gates that swallow the tides. The " Head " 
 provides the Dock, as we see, a shelter by its great 
 wind-breaking natural rampart, much as Barry 
 Island serves Barry Docks. Nature can be a rare 
 carpenter ; and the rocky structure of the Head and 
 the coast beyond it prove her a master-mason too. 
 
 On a clear day the view from Penarth Head, 
 which is 207 feet above the sea, swallows up half 
 the Bristol Channel and its coast-line. From the 
 smoke of Bristol, seen beyond Clevedon ; from 
 Portishead to Weston, whose lights as they begin 
 to gleam look like watch-stars at twilight from this 
 
84 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 point, with the lighthouse on Flatholm shining a 
 little to the south ; from Brean Down over Bridge- 
 water Bay the range is wide, but it is cut off west- 
 ward from the view of the Quantocks possessed by 
 Lavernock Point. 
 
 The new Church of St. Augustine, built in 1895, 
 stands well on the landward slope within a stone's 
 throw of the Head, and near by is a schoolhouse, 
 with a coloured fresco of boys and girls at play 
 exhibited on its front. 
 
 Penarth Dock needs an engineer to appreciate all 
 the science expended on its construction and its 
 adaptation to the tides of the Severn Sea. Penarth 
 Head, as we said, serves the Dock here very much 
 as Barry Island serves Barry Docks. Allowing for 
 the outflow of the river Ely at Penarth, the lot of 
 the two places is very similar. Over half a mile 
 long, the Dock and its great basin have a water 
 area, of twenty-six acres. The width of the sea- 
 gates is thirty yards, and the depth of water at the 
 common spring tides six fathoms. Many of the 
 largest vessels afloat, laden to their utmost capacity, 
 have arrived at and sailed from Penarth Dock with- 
 out delay and with perfect safety. The Dock gates 
 and bridges are opened and closed by hydraulic 
 power, and eight powerful capstans are provided at 
 the outer and inner gates for the vessels passing in 
 and out. The whole is leased to the Taff Vale Rail- 
 way Company for a term of 999 years. What will 
 be the state of the congeries of ports and boroughs 
 that form the Cardiff district ten centuries hence ? 
 
 The place is fortunate in having, besides its 
 docks and the usual seaside distractions, an un- 
 expected, delightfully appointed little picture- 
 gallery at Turner House. It was given to Penarth 
 by the late Mr. Pyke Thompson, who had formed 
 
PENARTH HEAD 85 
 
 the collection originally for his own pleasure. His 
 idea was to form a gallery mainly of British 
 painters, which should be small, choice and com- 
 plete in itself, and so finely arranged that every 
 picture should be given wall-space and light 
 sufficient to individualise it. The gallery is 
 interesting to amateurs and hunters of the pic- 
 turesque in South Wales because of the Welsh 
 scenes on the walls. Among these may be noted 
 the view of Penarth Point in the lobby, and the 
 picture of Swansea Bay by Penry Williams. In 
 the main gallery upstairs there are pictures of 
 Ludlow Castle, Harlech Castle and Dryslwyn Castle 
 by David Cox. There are two exquisite little 
 Boningtons too in the upstairs-room, which carry 
 us to English places : and a few well-chosen Meryon 
 etchings to recall French art, including some in 
 fine state of the Notre-Dame series. The gallery, 
 small as it is, and partly because it is small, 
 makes an unusually complete impression on the 
 sense of the man who, tired of the villas and 
 seaside frippery of the place, retreats within its 
 shelter ; and Penarth may well be proud of Turner 
 House and grateful to its giver, who, wise man, 
 stipulated as a condition of the bequest that it 
 should be open on Sundays. 
 
 Returning to the coast, we ought to note that 
 the Penarth Beds, including the Upper and White 
 Lias and the Lower, or Black, Lias, provide good 
 sport in the way of pectens and other remains. 
 And it is not only the Lias that is well placed for 
 fossil-hunting between Penarth and Lavernock. 
 Along the same range of cliffs may be seen 
 beneath the Lias at two places, nearing Laver- 
 nock, the New Red and so-called " Tea-green " 
 Marls, whose name helps to describe them. The 
 
86 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Marls, red and green, may be examined, too, on 
 Sully and Barry Islands, where the rock serves. 
 The best hunting of all is to be had, as a local 
 collector has told us, at Lavernock Point itself. 
 There is a particular " patchy bed much worn 
 and torn by water," made up of jasper and quartz 
 and pebbles and nodules and other stony things, 
 from which you may dig out bones of two kinds 
 of Plesiosaurus, and relics of that extravagant 
 monster Ichthyosaurus, and spines of Hybodus. 
 These may tell you what saurians, sea-gods, and 
 little fishes once knew Lavernock and all this 
 corner of the Welsh coast. 
 
 As you walk round the coast from Lavernock 
 you pass the island of Sully. Unluckily the coast 
 walk is here and there interrupted by private 
 grounds ; and low tide does not much better the 
 adventure, as the beach can only be followed with 
 difficulty, the way being rough and rather un- 
 pleasant. At Sully a keen naturalist and observer, 
 the late Dean Conybeare (Dean of Llandaff, where 
 he lies buried), was for a long time rector. Barry 
 Island is, we should add, still ecclesiastically a 
 part of the parish of Sully, whose church, much 
 restored, has an old piscina to show and three 
 tombs on the right of the chancel to the Thomases 
 of Llwyn Madoc. A scant fragment of the Castle 
 of Sully is all that is now left. Sully Sound 
 reached, the rocks must be crossed at low water 
 if the island is to be explored. There is a pool 
 at the westerly end ; and near the last point are 
 the remains of a Danish fort, with a burial mound 
 to the right of it. From Swanbridge the cliffs 
 westward can be followed toward Barry. 
 
 The Welsh name for Sully — that is, the village — 
 is Abersili, because Nant Sili flows out to the sea 
 
PENARTH HEAD 87 
 
 here. Sully, so declares local gossip, is an English 
 version of " Sili," a Welsh term for trickling, or, 
 rather, spurting and hissing, water ; and there is 
 also a Norse explanation (natural enough, seeing 
 that there is the Danish camp to suggest it) which 
 declares that Sully means " the ploughed island." 
 But Sully was the name, too, of the Norman 
 knight who settled here on Fitzhamon's allotment 
 of Glamorganshire ; so you can take your choice 
 of the three. Swanbridge, like Swansea, may have 
 been called after Sweyn, the great Danish sea- 
 rover, who perished in 877. 
 
 You may think that the building of the huge 
 docks at this corner of the Glamorgan seafront 
 and the deepening of the sea-approaches were 
 bound more or less to alter the old conditions 
 of navigation. But if you talk to a seaman who 
 intimately knows the Bristol Channel and its 
 shoals and tides, you will find it has not quite 
 lost its old tricks. He can tell you about the 
 islands and covered rocks ; not so much about 
 Sully and Barry Islands perhaps, but Flatholm, 
 Steepholm and Lundy too. Walking the fore- 
 shore, he still looks at everything from the 
 mariner's point of view. He remembers well 
 a coarse night on the Welsh Grounds, " thirty 
 years ago, last March," when his vessel was all 
 but bumped to pieces. The Welsh Grounds, it 
 should be said, stretch roughly from about Sud- 
 brooke Chapel to the mouth of the Usk. They 
 are nearly all uncovered at low water after a 
 spring tide. The south-west spit of these sands 
 is a particularly nasty one, for the flood-tide 
 sweeps over it into Newport deep at a great 
 pace. At high water smaller vessels sail over the 
 Grounds, but woe to the ship of any deeper 
 
88 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 draught that gets on to them on a dirty night 
 The Cardiff Grounds, again, make a long narrow 
 shoal, which is changing all the while. When 
 you spy Lavernock Point from the sea, you see 
 it as a sort of elbow in the shore-line, and a 
 white church or chapel and a farmhouse just 
 over the brink of the bold cliff. Steepholm Island 
 makes a break in the Channel out of proportion 
 to its size on the chart, because of its high, steep 
 shore east and west. The island rises at one pitch 
 237 feet above sea-level. It has a sly, two-and-a- 
 half fathom shelf running out to four cables too, 
 which has to be avoided. Flatholm lies about a 
 league nearer the Welsh coast ; it too has a light- 
 house with red and white occulting lights. The 
 " Wolves," which lie eight cables north-west of 
 Flatholm, are to Cardiff vessels more dangerous 
 than either of the Holms : they are three rocky 
 heads, the most wolvish of which sticks a five-v 
 foot-long snout out of the water at low tide. 
 Two buoys, black and white and red and white, 
 mark them. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 BARRY ISLAND — PORTHKERRY AND KERl'S DAUGH- 
 TER — FONTYGARRY AND ABERTHAW 
 
 To Sully succeeds Barry Island, which you can 
 easily reach by the Barry Railway without wan- 
 dering thither via the coast-line and the cliffs 
 of Lavernock and the sea-waste beyond. Barry 
 would be very much like a second Penarth, because 
 of its mixture of titanic docks and suburban villas, 
 were it not for the island, once a sandy solitude 
 and pirates' run, now in process of being tamed by 
 the house-builder and his brick-terraces. The miles 
 of streets and houses, scattered apparently at ran- 
 dom on the road from Cardiff, have pushed their 
 way now upon the island itself: Cadoxton merges 
 itself in Barry Dock, and Barry Dock in Barry 
 town, while the island serves all three places as a 
 kind of sea-suburb. Once this was all a wild 
 warren, with here and there a farm or a few 
 cottages, and with more rabbits than men for 
 tenantry. The rabbits one mostly sees now are 
 those hung up by the heels at the poulterers' 
 in Barry streets. As for the harbour, it is claimed 
 by its engineers that it is the finest of all the big 
 Severn Sea series. It lies under the land, well 
 sheltered from all westerly and south-westerly 
 winds. The breakwaters completely cover the only 
 
90 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 points of exposure, say to the southward, with a 
 sea range of fourteen miles, and to the south-east 
 with a sea range of sixteen miles. The Docks thus 
 have their entrance in a well-guarded position ; a 
 ship leaving them is in a few minutes in what sailors 
 call " blue water," and is not exposed to the trouble- 
 some navigation which at Cardiff and Penarth is 
 conducted for from two to three miles through 
 an artificial channel (cut through the mud flats), 
 which channel is nearly dry at low water. There 
 is good anchorage ground extending from Barry 
 Island to Sully Island, three miles to the eastward. 
 
 One of the Docks looks almost a mile long with a 
 width proportionate — a titanic thing. It is ap- 
 proached by a passage closed by a caisson, and at 
 its east end are two huge Timber Ponds with a 
 railway alongside, so that timber can be loaded 
 direct from the ponds into the railway wagons. 
 
 The waterway between the breakwater heads 
 is over a hundred yards wide, and the Channel is 
 lighted after dark by a flashing white light of the 
 fifth order, in a trim lighthouse ; the space inside 
 the breakwaters affords shelter for pilot-boats, 
 tugs, and small craft attendant upon the Docks. 
 Barry is the only port in the British Channel 
 which vessels can use freely, coming and going 
 at any state of the tide. The great wrought-iron 
 water-gates at the outer, and Dock, passages are 
 moved by great hydraulic rams, strong enough to 
 hold the gates rigid while opening and closing. 
 
 Barry Island was formerly a notorious haunt of 
 " runners " and smugglers ; and many tales could be 
 told of the days, well over a hundred years ago, 
 when the island was described as " the Fortress of 
 Knight, the Notorious Smugler." Some idea of it, 
 and of Knight and his doings, may be had from 
 
BARRY ISLAND 91 
 
 the Cardiff Custom House papers, which Mr. 
 Hobson Mathews ransacked for his second volume 
 of the Cardiff Records. There we read how " the 
 desperate Ruffins at Barry Island " had a vessel 
 with the name John of Combe painted on her 
 stern. And in 1784, on April 3rd, we hear of Thomas 
 Knight's running successfully a cargo of wine, by 
 persuading the tide-waiters and excisemen that it 
 was to remain on the island, and then spiriting 
 it away — no doubt to supply Cardiff and its cus- 
 tomers. However, the Custom House officers made 
 Barry Island too hot for Knight ; for in 1785 he 
 had retired to Lundy, after having been driven 
 from Barry. His " armed brig," it is added, being 
 no longer at hand to support the smugglers, their 
 ill-trade has much declined. " When his armed 
 vessel was there, he was in such Force that it was 
 impossible to approach the Island." In 1798, we 
 are told of a large take of brandy and port wine 
 again on Barry Island. The smugglers found the 
 island very well arranged for their favourite game 
 of hide-and-seek with the excisemen. " At Barry, 
 'tis the same case ; if they find the officer on the 
 Island, they'll land the other side of the Harbour,' 
 or vice versa, in which case " the officers can't get 
 over till the tide is out, which may be 5 or 6 
 hours ; and there is so much cover on the Iseland, 
 and such conveniencys for hiding of goods, that an 
 officer has but a poor chance to meet with 'em after 
 they are landed." 
 
 But Barry was an Isle of the Saints, long before 
 it was adopted by the Severn sea-rovers of a later 
 day. If on reaching the island you turn up the 
 new thoroughfare of Newell Street, leaving a few 
 shops in a terrace and a new chapel, on the right, 
 you soon reach, on the left, the railway and the old 
 
92 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 walls that mark the site of St. Baruch's Chapel, now 
 carefully preserved. All that is to be seen of it, as 
 it lies rather below the level of the road, can be 
 seen very well through the fence. 
 
 In Rees's Lives of the Cambro-British Saints 
 we read that St. Cadoc lived in two islands, Barreu 
 and Echni — the latter being no doubt Flat Holme ; 
 and there is a strange story of his crossing by boat 
 between the two, with two of his disciples — one of 
 whom was Baruc. But these two, unluckily, forgot 
 to bring Cadoc's Enchiridion with them from 
 Echni, and he sent them back, and on the second 
 crossing they were drowned — Cadoc seeing the 
 disaster from the high ground on Barry Isle. The 
 body of Baruc, being recovered, was buried on the 
 island : it may have been one of the innumerable 
 dead interred near his chapel. The miraculous 
 element in the tale is supplied by the catching of a 
 salmon, to appease Cadoc's hunger after long 
 fasting, and the finding of the lost Enchiridion in 
 the fish's belly. 
 
 Gerald de Barri tells us the island was called 
 after St. Baruch, and he was buried in " a chapel 
 covered with ivy." The De Barris, he adds, took 
 their name from the island — a manifest old family 
 fiction. St. Baruch has been placed in various 
 centuries: he belonged to the sixth. Before him 
 we have Peiro, who was a pietist, but hardly pious : 
 and then Samson, of Llantwit Major fame : both as 
 residents in the religious settlement. Trenches cut 
 in exploring St. Baruch's Chapel showed that the 
 burials under and around it had been on an extra- 
 ordinary scale. Like Bardsey, it seems to have 
 been a holy island ; and the bodies of the elect were 
 exhumed and brought here from afar. 
 The one guide to Barry Island, who knew every 
 
BARRY ISLAND 93 
 
 nook and corner of it, unearthed its fragments of 
 antiquity and thoroughly explored its rocks and 
 plants, was the late John Storrie, the naturalist. 
 He loved the wild place and its wild flowers, and 
 collected over three hundred kinds in all, and he 
 put them all, and much more, into his knowledge- 
 able small book about the island. Many flowers 
 remain in spite of the Docks and the building over 
 of the nooks where once grew the milk-vetch, 
 the true marshmallow, the henbane, and their 
 congeners. 
 
 There is a gently-sloping, smooth-sanded bathing 
 beach at Barry Island, in the curve of Whitmore 
 (or Wick More) Bay. Round the rocks of Friars 
 Point — the point which forms the right-hand or 
 western horn of the Bay — is the famous Pebble 
 Beach which lined the eastern shore of Barry 
 Harbour, as it used to be : a harbour which did not 
 collect much shipping beyond a stray ketch or so. 
 The " harbour" is now a blind one, ending in the 
 embankment across which the western road to the 
 island runs. The opposite head, to the west, across 
 the harbour mouth, is Coldknap Point. Looking 
 west from the Point, you have one of the drowned 
 places of the Welsh coast within reach. For there 
 stood once the strong tower and water-gate of 
 Porthkerry Castle, some of whose foundation walls 
 could still be traced at low tide a generation ago. 
 At Coldknap Point you can see, whether the tide is 
 in or out, the still older walls which form this part 
 of the coast, and which are here formed of protru- 
 ding buttresses, built of carboniferous limestone, 
 above the ramparts of the Lias. 
 
 One of the most inviting sylvan roads in all 
 Glamorganshire is that leading down to Porthkerry 
 Park. When you have escaped on the brow of the 
 
94 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 hill the last Barry villas, you soon pass the old 
 farmstead of Castle Farm, with the adjacent 
 remains of the gateway to show the fine outlook 
 seaward of the ancient Castle of Barry. There- 
 away the road bends northward, and, reaching the 
 brink of Cwm Barry, descends the wooded slopes 
 of Coed yr Odyn, amid a scene that might be miles 
 from any street or town, and leagues away from 
 the sea. The change from the suburban terraces 
 of Barry to this unspoilt wooded cwm is sudden and 
 delightful. And there is nothing to break the illu- 
 sion on the way to Porthkerry, through the Park, 
 until one comes to the tall viaduct of the railway 
 under which one must pass on the way. The lower 
 park-lands, set with fine timber in a green amphi- 
 theatre, make (or still made when I last saw them) 
 one of the fairest woodland scenes imaginable. 
 Leaving the Park, the road, or lane (for it is no 
 more), climbs again the western side of the cwm, 
 and meets another road at an old thatched home- 
 stead, with beehives in the garden and an orchard 
 flanking the house. The road to Porthkerry Church 
 and the sea lies then on the left ; but you must not 
 expect a seaport now at Porthkerry ; for its few 
 houses are scattered and you are apt to find your- 
 self at last on the way to Rhoose, while still looking 
 for an imaginary Porthkerry street and its shops. 
 
 Porthkerry was one of the old legendary 
 harbours of South Wales and a momentous spot 
 in the records of the Coming of the Normans. 
 Here Fitzhamon and his men apparently landed 
 in 1093. The curious account given of it by 
 Rice Merrick in his Booke of Antiquities has 
 been quoted in an earlier page. We might do 
 worse than spend an afternoon here, fresh from 
 Barry Dock, trying to reconstruct the rude sea- 
 
BARRY ISLAND 95 
 
 fortress and old Caer of Portbkerry before the 
 Normans' time, for one would give much to see a 
 real Welsh port of the tenth or eleventh century. 
 You cannot but notice at once that the wooded 
 confines of Porthkerry and Coed yr Odyn offered 
 a campus and mustering-place in which to form 
 the newly landed Normans, and arrange plans 
 for the surprise of the forces of Rhys. Porth- 
 kerry takes its name from Ceri, or St. Curig, 
 around whose history, first as a soldier, then as 
 a saint, some wild legends have been woven. 
 Curig Lwyd, sometimes called Curig the Knight, 
 figures in many Welsh traditions. Capel Curig 
 in Snowdon and Llangurig are his best-known 
 church-dedications in Wales, and he had several 
 in Brittany. As for Porthkerry, the Iolo MSS. 
 (not always the best authority) say, " St. Cirig 
 founded Porthcirig for the benefit of the souls 
 of sailors and as a port for them." Another 
 document makes Ceri ab Caid its real founder. 
 A ballad-writer has laid the scene here, and in 
 the neighbouring Glamorgan hill and valley lands, 
 of the nightly rides of Ceri ab Caid's daughter, 
 who was mysterious in her flight like " Mallt y 
 Nos," first cousin of the moth. The ballad, what- 
 ever its foundation in folk-lore, gains in reality 
 by being read at Porthkerry and related to the 
 hills of Morganwg. 
 
 KERFS DAUGHTER. 
 
 i. 
 
 Alone I go a-hunting, when all their hunting's done, 
 To follow Keri's daughter in the footsteps of the sun. 
 She drowses all the day thro', she wakens with the moth ; 
 And shakes out her black tresses from their crimson bind- 
 ing cloth. 
 
96 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Their beauty that she braided falls loose now to her knees, 
 As she goes to her window, and wonders at the trees. 
 Her eyes shine in the shadow, grown opal-like, and change 
 Like pools that fill with starlight when other lights grow 
 
 strange. 
 Now on the stair, bare-footed, she stays to gird her gown, 
 That it may let the briers be ; — and lightly she goes down. 
 What fate's on Keri's daughter, to wake when all is done, 
 And follow where the sun went but never see the sun ? 
 What fate's on me to follow along the fields of night, 
 The feet of Keri's daughter, yet never cross her sight ? 
 
 ii. 
 
 The wind is her white brachet, to course the wood with her. 
 Where the oak trees are tall, and the lone stars lean near. 
 The oak leaves cannot keep her, her white hound draws 
 
 her on : 
 The livelong night, they range the night, until the night 
 
 is done. 
 I ride into the mid-wood, and wait. What fragrance 
 
 clings 
 Upon the dreaming fernleaf, and the muffled, drowsy things. 
 Is that an owl upon the hill, or is it her white hound, 
 To tell me I must leave the wood, and follow at the 
 
 sound ? 
 But when we reach the hilltop, we hear them in the wood ; 
 And when we turn, we turn too late, the moorland is her 
 
 mood.* 
 
 The Barry Railway has a station at Rhoose, 
 which, after the fashion of places newly visited 
 by a railway, shows signs of growing out of a 
 sleepy hamlet and building houses and hotels 
 to attract the crowd. The nearest sands are at 
 Fontygarry, and the station lies between. As one 
 passes through the village, one catches sight of 
 an apparent old market cross on a stone-stepped 
 
 * For the continuing stanzas, see Lays of the Bound 
 Table, 1905. 
 
BARRY ISLAND 97 
 
 base ; but it proves, on a nearer approach, to 
 be the village pump. The name of Rhoose is 
 simply the Welsh Rhos — a marsh meadow, 
 which figures so often in Welsh place-names. 
 The wreckers of Rhoose were notorious in the 
 eighteenth century, and watched the coast like 
 hawks from Barry to Dunraven, using false lights 
 to lure on any unlucky craft that happened to 
 be out of its bearings. They kept up a brisk 
 smuggling trade, too, with the coast of France. 
 In George the Second's reign detachments of 
 soldiers were sent secretly and landed at Barry 
 and Aberthaw, at the request of the then Master 
 of Fonmon, to try and take the ringleaders of 
 the smuggling and wrecking gang. 
 
 From Rhoose it is but a short mile to Fonty- 
 garry. The farmhouse of Fontygarry, greenly 
 embowered, is reached in a dip of the road on the 
 right ; a house where John Wesley once made 
 a stay on his Welsh journeys. 
 
 From Fontygarry to Aberthaw is another mile 
 and a half. Aberthaw, once a well-known little 
 seaport, still keeps much of the good old style 
 of the genuine Glamorgan village about it, with 
 thatched roofs and thick-walled cottages. The 
 river has become sanded up to an impracticable 
 extent for shipping now, and only a few stray 
 ketches and small vessels put into the port. 
 Formerly it was a favourite landing-place for 
 " run " goods. 
 
 In 1734 the Cardiff Custom House officers 
 reported to London that " when any boats goes 
 out to 'em" [i.e., the smugglers] "the owners of 'em 
 have always a spye on the officer ; and when they 
 find him of one side of the river at Aberthaw, 
 they'll land what they have of the other ; and 
 
 7 
 
98 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 by reason there's no Boat in the Service, nor any 
 boat on those accos t8 to be had for love or money, 
 and the officer obliged to go to a bridge about two 
 Miles round, they have time enough to secure 
 the goods before he can get there. Nay, there is 
 instances that they have run'd goods in the day 
 time before the officers' face in this Manner." 
 How horrible to contemplate ! 
 
 Not far from Aberthaw is the village of St. 
 Athan and the site of West Orchard Castle, once 
 the scene of an extraordinary tragedy, still 
 haunted by a sad remembering spirit. In the 
 early summer mornings, before the dew is off the 
 grass, a lady in white silken robes is seen to pass 
 slowly round and round a particular spot. The 
 reason of her appearance was a strange and tragic 
 one. 
 
 " Many centuries ago, Sir Jasper Birkrolles 
 married a daughter of the powerful house of 
 De Clair, who were Lords of Glamorgan. When 
 Sir Jasper came back from the Second Crusade 
 enemies whispered in his ear that his wife had 
 been unfaithful to him during his absence. Lady 
 Birkrolles vainly protested her innocence, her 
 husband passed a savage sentence upon her. 
 
 "In a field not far from the Castle he had a 
 deep hole dug. There his beautiful wife was to 
 be buried up to her neck and suffer death from 
 slow starvation. She was not to have a crumb 
 of bread nor a drop of water, in that hole she 
 was to linger till she died. 
 
 " Lady Birkrolles happened to have a sister, and 
 this daughter of De Clair's begged that she might 
 visit her sister once a day at least. The cruel 
 husband consented, provided that she carried 
 neither food nor drink with her. At dawn every 
 
BARRY ISLAND 99 
 
 day the girl visited her miserable sister. Up and 
 down the grass she trailed her long silk dress, 
 that the miserable prisoner might suck moisture 
 from the wet folds. For ten days Lady Birkrolles 
 lived on this slender refreshment. On the tenth 
 she died. A short while after her innocence was 
 proved, and the wretched Sir Jasper died raving 
 mad." 
 
 It is said that as late as 1863 women who went 
 milking in the early morning said they often saw 
 a beautiful lady dressed in white going round and 
 round a particular spot in the field, they could 
 not tell why. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 LLANTWIT MAJOR— ST. ILLTYD : A KNIGHT OF THE 
 GRAIL— ST. DONAT'S 
 
 Thinking of Illtyd the Breton Knight, you reach 
 Llantwit to-day to feel bewildered by its mixed 
 airs of change and unchange. Modern shops stare 
 down the streets at some mediaeval inn, like the 
 " Old White Swan " ; and the latest generation is 
 seen mounting the steps of a time-honoured build- 
 ing, once the old Town Hall, that became the 
 National School. But those who go to Llantwit 
 must not expect majestic ruins or a towering 
 antiquity like Tintern Abbey. Its wonders are 
 half secret, and ask more of the pilgrim than an 
 hour's idle curiosity. Otherwise, he may go away 
 disappointed, even when all is seen — the church, 
 the sloping churchyard with its graves, and 
 the adjacent half-obliterated traces of all that 
 monastic settlement, with its corn mill, barn, 
 dove-cot, guest-house, and prior's lodging, which 
 once stood in the shallow vale of Odnant. 
 
 The old Town Hall was still in use as a school on 
 my last visit. If the outer steps are ascended to 
 the upper part of the building, the door will 
 usually be found on the latch ; but there is little 
 to be seen within, unless it is in school hours, 
 
 when the spectacle of the school children at their 
 
 100 
 
LLANTWIT MAJOR 101 
 
 tasks, and the hum of their voices, may call to 
 mind that older school of divinity which once 
 made Llantwit famous. Leaving the Town Hall 
 on your left, you soon reach the church, well sunk 
 in its hollow so as to be out of sight of the 
 marauding Black Pagans. The brook Ogney 
 afforded in its tiny valley just so much shelter as 
 invited the early monks to make their abode here. 
 As at St. David's, where the brook in the Vale of 
 Roses offered another such hollow, the course of 
 the small stream shows the line along which the 
 monastic settlement and rude enclosures and 
 wattle-huts were placed ; to give way in course 
 of time to solid stone. Church and churchyard at 
 Llantwit are full of these reminders. The church 
 stands deep below the road, and steps and a 
 slant path lead to the east-end of what is called 
 the New Church, which is now in use. As you 
 approach it, the old crosses and ancient monu- 
 ments on the slope, no longer tell of the ages 
 of its history ; they now stand within the 
 walls. St. Illtyd's Stone, one of a series of three 
 erected, or caused to be erected, by Samson, 
 counts first because it is after St. Illtyd that 
 Llantwit is called ; " Llan Illtyd " having gradu- 
 ally been corrupted into its present form. 
 Illtyd's church of wattle and clay stood, perhaps, 
 where what is now known as the Old Church 
 stands, west of the building in use. His monu- 
 ment was carved by Samuel, the stonecarver, 
 who has a claim thus to be the Father of Welsh 
 sculptors. Samson's two other memorial stones 
 used to stand by the porch of the western church. 
 The Celtic tracery on the finer of the two is most 
 beautiful. The eastern building, despite its name 
 of the New Church, may look older than the un- 
 
102 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 cared-f or Old Church ; but there is little doubt 
 that the latter name really perpetuates the site of 
 the first church of all. Freeman's idea was that 
 the so-called Old Church was the parish church, 
 and the so-called New Church was attached to the 
 monastery. The church now in use is a thirteenth- 
 century building, with some alterations ; and it 
 has a Norman font. The frescoes in the chancel 
 represent Mary Magdalene and the Saviour, and 
 the Fall of Man. The " Old Church," a late four- 
 teenth-century recast, has become a kind of 
 mysterious sculptor's gallery. Its sermons are 
 carved stones, among them the Cross of Howell, 
 whose inscription appears to run : " In the name 
 of God the Father and the Son and Holy Ghost, 
 Howell raised this cross for the soul of his father 
 Rhys." Howell was a Prince of Morgan wg, a 
 couple of hundred years before the Normans 
 invaded it. 
 
 Beyond the Old Church is the ruined Lady, or 
 Galilee, Chapel, a fifteenth-century building, and 
 beyond that again, and on the south-west corner 
 of the churchyard, we see the remains of a fine old 
 fourteenth-century house, used in its latter days as 
 a mill, it is said : and to judge by its position above 
 the brook Ogney, built to grind corn for the 
 monastery here, whose buildings must at one time 
 have almost completely hemmed in the church and 
 churchyard. Across the brook, and on the rising 
 ground above, there is a poor fragment of a gate- 
 house, but the great tithe-barn is gone, which fed 
 the mill. It had a particularly good oak roof, well 
 preserved, and was, sixty years ago, as fine an old 
 church barn as could be seen. The Dean and 
 Chapter of Gloucester sold the oak roof for a mere 
 song ; and the building that might have served 
 
LLANTWIT MAJOR 103 
 
 the community for long as an interesting old land- 
 mark went to rack and ruin. So I was told by an 
 old standard of the place. 
 
 Save for the stones of Illtyd and Samson and 
 other noble fragments not too easy to identify, 
 nearly all we see at Llantwit was, it is needless to 
 say, built long after the early days of the Celtic 
 church. The ecclesiastical buildings grew all 
 through the Middle Ages, when Llantwit counted 
 as one of the chief religious centres in South 
 Wales. Thus it continued right into Tudor times, 
 when the town waxed in turn, as you are 
 driven to conclude in exploring the township 
 and adjacencies. 
 
 The village-town lies about a mile from the sea ; 
 and the last part of the way thither lies through 
 a cwm, shut in between wild coverts and grassy 
 banks, like a cwm far inland. You go slowly 
 meandering through it, like a man in a dream ; 
 and if it is a calm day, you forget the sea, until, 
 getting to its lower end, you see salt scurf and bits 
 of seaweed on the grass. A rough rampart of 
 earth and stone shuts off the seaward view : when 
 you clamber over this, you find the pebbles of the 
 beach banked high against it. If the tide is low 
 you can get round the cliffs, which are from 70 to 
 90 or 100 feet high, and on to the great slabs of 
 smooth limestone, stretched flat at your feet. 
 Over these roll rounded stones, like rejected 
 cannon-balls ; while deep fissures and melancholy 
 caves have eaten here and there into the lime- 
 stone. There is something at once alluring and 
 forbidding in the coast at this point. It is best to 
 be seen with a flowing tide and a strong sou'- 
 westcrly wind ; when the cannon-balls roll clank- 
 ing about, mixed with wrack from lost ships. 
 
104 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 One day, we were caught by the tide, and 
 penned in a cove which had luckily a steep zigzag 
 track to the cliff-top. But the tide brought up, 
 rolling them along with it, a broken keg, some 
 battered hampers, and two sealed tins. With the 
 blade of a pocket-knife we pierced one of the tins, 
 and were alarmed by a spirt of vile gas which 
 escaped hissing. We expected it to explode ; but 
 it only contained some kind of salt fish, much de- 
 composed. The other tin was full of rank butter. 
 
 With a strong sou'-wester and a high tide, the 
 waves dash high up the cliffs, and the spray 
 reaches the sea-pinks and blue corn-cockles on 
 their tops. The cliffs are not kind to unwary 
 lovers who venture on them at dark. Only last 
 spring a pair went walking toward St. Donat's. 
 At a point where the track is close to the edge 
 the youth slipped his foot, and falling, clutched 
 at his companion's dress to save himself. Both 
 went over. He was fatally hurt, and died where 
 he fell. The girl escaped with broken bones and, 
 the tide sparing her, she was rescued next morn- 
 ing after a terrible night, during the first part of 
 which she had his groans to add to her own 
 torment. 
 
 There are sea-places, stretches, and pitches of a 
 rocky coast, especially those where the sea is eat- 
 ing away the land, which affect one by a kind of 
 indeterminate cruelty, almost malignity of aspect, 
 seen partly in the colour, partly in the forms of 
 the rocks. Here the stone is a cold grey, and often 
 cruelly edged ; and it breaks treacherously under 
 the feet and hands of the climber climbing up 
 to escape the tide, which flows up with eagerly 
 returning waves at the September high tides when 
 a whipping wind is behind it. 
 
LLANTWIT MAJOR 105 
 
 A little way up the brook, if you follow its 
 course by the rough footpath, skirting its banks, 
 and cross a stile or two, you come to the road 
 under the so-called Castle, which appears to be in 
 effect an old mansion, not older than the reign of 
 Henry VII. If you look back from the southern 
 walls towards the village and the Odnant cwm, 
 you get a sudden sense of the immense antiquity 
 that is buried there. The house you are standing 
 near may be 400 years old, the church 700 years old, 
 the crosses in the churchyard 1,400 years old. 
 
 By following the winding cwm of the Odnant 
 you can reach the sea in half an hour ; but there 
 is a quicker way. If the bank is ascended opposite 
 the church, and across the brook, some small 
 cottages face the rough lane that leads to the sea ; 
 and there is a stile leading into the fields within 
 fifty yards, from which a footpath, not very clearly 
 defined, will take you over three fields to join the 
 cwm. Descending it, you cross the stream by stones 
 (if the weather is dry enough) or by the footbridge, 
 lower down. 
 
 The cwm from the junction of the Ogney and 
 the Odnant is called Cwm Col Hugh ; and the 
 lower part of it, within the dike, has a strange 
 aspect from the salt scum left at high tides on the 
 grass. The meadows of Col Hugh are, in summer, 
 the playground of crowds of holiday-seekers, who 
 know nothing of the ancientry of Llantwit. If 
 one climbs the steep eastern bank of the cwm, 
 near its sea-outlet, one has Castle Ditches immedi- 
 ately on one's left. The so-called Ditches, three in 
 number, and unusually well marked, are the triple 
 earth-works defending a very strong coast-fort or 
 encampment, thrown up by the Danes in the 
 eighth or ninth century, when Sweyn was active 
 
106 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 on this coast. From Col Hugh Point, if the tides 
 serves (and the tide here has great " play "), a 
 way can be found along the rocks, edged and 
 harsh to the feet, past the Dimhole cwm and the 
 sea-caves and broken cliffs, to Tresilian Bay and 
 its cave. 
 
 Tresilian has many and strange tales connected 
 with it. The name " Tre-sulien," the town, or 
 place, of Sulien, is taken from that St. Sulien 
 whom the Black Pagans killed. Tresilian Court, 
 now occupied as a country house, was once a farm- 
 house-inn of the old Welsh kind. It was a great 
 smugglers' and wreckers' resort in the " good old 
 time " ; a Stevensonian romance might easily be 
 written round it. Then, still earlier, here was the 
 scene of the merry rites, or riots, of the " Gwyliau 
 Mabsant " of this neighbourhood ; when all the 
 country round came in carts and on horse or afoot, 
 and feasted not wisely but too well. And then 
 the fair Dwynwen of Tresilian Cave beguiled the 
 youths and maidens who came to have their 
 fortunes told by the method you may still adopt. 
 
 The cave has, at a distance of seven or eight 
 feet below its roof, a stone-rib, forming an arch. 
 Lovers who wish to question Dwynwen, half 
 sea-witch, half sea-goddess, must find a round 
 pebble, and pitch it over this arch so that it falls 
 clear on the other side without touching the 
 rock, rib or ceiling. The exact formula, said to 
 be muttered during the ceremony, I cannot trace. 
 "Possibly," says one writer, "it was only ' Un, 
 dau, tvi,' according to the number of attempts 
 made ; each counting as another year to be passed 
 before marriage ! " More probably a clear stone- 
 cast meant good furtherance in the course of 
 true love. 
 
LLANTWIT MAJOR 107 
 
 At high tide good swimmers have been known 
 to swim over the arch, and return, diving under 
 it. A boat, too, has been piloted through the 
 opening ; but you need to know the cave to 
 risk it. From the back of the cave a small 
 passage proceeds into the cliff, with many 
 crevices ; and local tradition has it the passage 
 is connected with St. Donat's Castle. This is no 
 doubt the underground-passage myth common in 
 all rural neighbourhoods. Formerly runaway mar- 
 riages took place in the cave — according to the 
 gossips ; and there is no doubt of one regular 
 marriage at least which was celebrated in it — 
 that of General Picton's parents. The cave used 
 at that time to be called familiarly " St. Sulien's," 
 as if it was a church, duly acknowledged ; or some 
 say " Reynard's Church," perhaps alluding to the 
 fox as a fitting priest for a clandestine marriage. 
 It has been suggested, too, that a church stood a 
 mile away southwards, where the sea now washes, 
 but this, too, is a natural tradition for this sea- 
 bitten coast. 
 
 We can continue the sea-coast walk from 
 Tresilian, with one interruption, to St. Donat's — 
 St. Donat's, whose old gateway opens upon 
 romance. What a history, and what a family ! 
 For seven hundred years the Stradlings ruled 
 there, beginning with the first Le Esterling who 
 received St. Donat's at the hands of the con- 
 queror Robert Fitzhamon. Knights, adventurers, 
 smugglers, and wreckers, their motto, " Duw a 
 ddigon" (God and enough), seems to have been 
 cynically conceived. Yet just as you have 
 decided that here was the dwelling of a lawless 
 race — pious, learned, and cultured Stradlings come 
 into view. There was Sir John Stradling, who 
 
108 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 died in 1637, a poet and a mighty scholar. Even 
 by the time he graduated at Oxford he was 
 " accounted a miracle for his forwardness in 
 learning and pregnancy of parts." He passed 
 as a typical cavalier, and wrote a poem to 
 James L, and poems to Charles I., besides epi- 
 grams to his friends. There were other Strad- 
 lings — Sir Edwards and Sir Thomases — travellers 
 and men of affairs, who built sea-walls at home 
 and encouraged Welsh learning abroad. You 
 realise here what a fine, fortunate stock it was 
 that inherited St. Donat's, and paced its gardens 
 devising great works, entertaining rare guests. 
 Among the latter may be certainly counted 
 Archbishop Usher, who fled here in 1646-1647 
 from Cardiff, with his daughters and others, and 
 was roughly used on the way. His hiding- 
 chamber was behind the picture-gallery. Another 
 refugee, in an earlier day, was Nicolas Break- 
 spear, who became Pope Adrian IV., the only 
 English Pope. 
 
 The story of the last of the Stradlings, were 
 it all unravelled, would fill a long mortal docu- 
 ment. Born in 1712, Sir Thomas was at Oxford 
 a fellow-student with a young man of the name 
 of Tyrwhit. After the completion of their college 
 career these two young men resolved to make 
 the grand tour together. Before starting (as was 
 afterwards shown in evidence) they each wrote a 
 letter to the effect that if either of them should 
 die whilst abroad, the survivor should inherit the 
 deceased's property. After being absent some time 
 from England, news came to St. Donat's that 
 Stradling was dead, having been run through the 
 body in a duel (it was said with his own friend, 
 Tyrwhit) at Montpellier, in France, on the 27th of 
 
LLANTWIT MAJOR 109 
 
 September, 1738. His body was brought to St. 
 Donat's to be buried on the 19th of March follow- 
 ing. Several rumours were then afloat that he 
 had come to his end unfairly, and it was much 
 doubted that it was his body that was sent over. 
 So his old nurse, who sat up with the coffin when 
 it was lying in state, secretly opened it, and 
 thrust her hand in, to feel whether all the fingers 
 were on the left hand, as she knew that Sir 
 Thomas had, when a child, lost one of his fingers, 
 it having been bitten off by a donkey. She 
 declared that the two hands of the body sent over 
 were perfect, and, therefore, that the body was 
 not the body of Sir Thomas Stradling. Hence for 
 many years there was an expectation of his 
 making his appearance. After more than half 
 a century spent in litigation, during which time 
 Tyrwhit himself died, the estates were settled by 
 Act of Parliament, the largest portion being sold 
 to pay the lawyers ; and the only part which was 
 allotted to the heirs of Tyrwhit, the inordinate 
 claimant, was the Castle and about £1,200 a year, 
 out of an estate which, at that time, was the 
 Chatsworth of the period. Various claimants got 
 small portions, but the baronetage became vested 
 in the issue of Jane, daughter of Sir Edward 
 Stradling, and wife of Thomas Carne of Nash ; 
 and the property in course of time was re-acquired 
 by her descendants, the Stradling-Carnes. More 
 recently it has passed into the hands of another 
 old Welsh family. 
 
 The Castle itself is still a live castle ; and 
 although a little over-restored, it is as gracious 
 an abode for a man of estate as he could wish. 
 It has Roman Emperors (who look rather out of 
 place), and a fountain, in its court. It has a hall 
 
110 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 with a great hearth, and a music-gallery above ; 
 and it has countless staircases, of stone or old 
 oak, with passages and unexpected corridors ; and 
 casements with a command now of the little green 
 ravine, now of the gardens and seaward lawns ; 
 altogether a covetable great house for the roman- 
 tical soul to covet. 
 
 One distinguished modern writer, "Vernon Lee," 
 has been so far attracted by its implicit wildness 
 as to give us a small, highly-coloured romance 
 written round St. Donat's under the thin disguise 
 of the Brandlings of St. Salvat's. In this tale the 
 Castle and its surroundings are weirdly, yet 
 exactly, painted. We read of "inland mountain 
 lines, like cliffs, dim in the rain ; and at last, over 
 the pale green fields, the sea — quite pale, almost 
 white." . . . Then appeared " the top of a tower 
 and a piece of battlemented wall, emerging from 
 the misty woods, and a minute after we were at a 
 tall gate tower, with a broken escutcheon and a 
 drawbridge. . . . We stopped in a great castle 
 yard, with paved paths across a kind of bowling- 
 green, and at the steps of the house, built un- 
 evenly all round, battlemented and turreted, with 
 huge projecting windows made of little panes." 
 Here is the theatre where is played out the un- 
 equal duel between the high-bred and accom- 
 plished young heir, who is accompanied by his 
 bride, and the rough and dangerous crowd of 
 smuggling, wrecking kinsmen who virtually hold 
 them as prisoners. " What chiefly delights my 
 romantic temper," writes the heroine, "are the 
 woods in which the castle is hidden and its sin- 
 gular position, on an utterly isolated little bay of 
 this wild and dangerous coast." Below the wide 
 descending Castle terraces is a little dingle, as 
 
 - 
 
LL ANT WIT MAJOR 111 
 
 green and lovely and innocent-looking as can be 
 imagined. 
 
 The Watch Tower, unique of its kind, stands on 
 the park slope beyond the dingle, watching the 
 coast for many miles. Its original use was to 
 spy for ships, and to exhibit a wreckers' light ; 
 so the old story has it. The tower is quadran- 
 gular, thirty feet in height, and its stair leads 
 to a projecting platformed turret. It is a fif- 
 teenth-century erection. The church is under the 
 Castle. As one enters the churchyard, the superb 
 cross on the north of the church lends a grace 
 to the tree-kept enclosure and its graves, and the 
 venerable tower. This cross dates from the twelfth 
 century, and it is amazing to think how it has 
 outlasted time and mischance, though the carving 
 on its head has been blunted and weathered. The 
 Church is more striking as a living interior, meant 
 for service as well as memory, than Llantwit. 
 The Stradling Chapel, added in the sixteenth 
 century to the original church, is a notable 
 monument to that rare old family. If these 
 tombs could but speak ! 
 
 The last of the Stradlings, the young and ill- 
 fated Sir Thomas, whose tale we have already 
 told, went to his grave lit by a wild sort of torch- 
 light, for on that occasion a fire broke out in the 
 Castle, and did sad havoc, especially in the picture- 
 gallery — a singular accident to happen on a day 
 of mourning. 
 
 St. Donat's, too, has its ghostly visitant. Once 
 a year, Mallt-y-nos, poor Matilda of the Night, 
 comes in a dark gown — some say dark blue, some 
 dark red— to St. Donat's Castle to hunt for the 
 soul of Colyn Dolphyn, the Breton pirate. Colyn 
 Dolphyn was once a name of fate at St. Donat's ; 
 
112 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 he it was who captured Sir Harry Stradling, who 
 built the famous old watch-tower. Colyn Dolphyn 
 (whose effigy used to be burnt once a year on the 
 sands near Llantwit, so great a scourge was he) 
 put Sir Harry to ransom at 2,000 marks. To pay 
 this great sum five manors were sold by the 
 Stradling family. This happened about 1480. By 
 that time poor Matilda had been hunting the 
 heavens with her ghostly hounds for three hun- 
 dred years. She was a Norman who came to 
 Glamorgan with Fitzhamon. She was so pas- 
 sionately fond of hunting that when spoken to 
 by a holy man concerning the future life and her 
 conduct here below, she answered, " If I cannot 
 hunt in heaven, I would rather not go there"; 
 a sentiment which rather reminds one of the 
 "En Paradis qu' ai-je a faire?" of Aucassin. For 
 this speech Matilda was sent hunting for ever 
 with the ghostly Cwn Annwn, or Hounds of Hades, 
 who hunt the air on stormy nights with bayings 
 and cries. Did poor Matilda on one of her ghostly 
 huntings happen to meet with Sir Harry Strad- 
 ling that, even so late as 1850, she should still be 
 hunting his tormentor, Colyn Dolphyn ? Sir Harry 
 never returned to St. Donat's, but went on pil- 
 grimage to Jerusalem, as did many of the Strad- 
 lings, and died on the way home at Famagusta. 
 
 Wandering in South Wales, one is apt to look 
 upon castles as giant milestones, and measure 
 one's course by the landmarks they so temptingly 
 exhibit. After St. Donat's one naturally thinks 
 next of Dunraven — a matter of four miles away 
 as the crow flies ; but the coast is a difficult 
 one. We are still on the dangerous rocks of the 
 Upper Lias formation, and Nash Point is a for- 
 midable place enough. What says the old sailor 
 

LLANTWIT MAJOR 113 
 
 as he runs down Bristol Channel past Nash Point ? 
 " If the Great Gutter or Nash Passage roars louder 
 than Breaksea Point " (which he passed awhile 
 ago), " the trip will be an unlucky one." 
 
 Moreover, beware of Nash Sands. Why ? 
 " Because there is a winch in them." Now a 
 " winch " is a very curious thing : a sort of 
 bottomless whirlpool into which, if your body 
 fall, it will never be seen again. So swimmers 
 are warned against the " winch " in Nash Passage, 
 which is known down there as the Great Gutter. 
 Very often a lovely lady sits and lures people into 
 the winch. One cannot help thinking there was 
 a winch in the Rhine, retained in the immediate 
 service of the Lorelei. 
 
 In the graveyard at Monknash a stone, with an 
 anchor for emblem, may be seen, erected by volun- 
 tary subscription — 
 
 1 ' To the Memory of the shipwrecked crew of the Malleny : 
 Lost on the Tusker rock, 15 Octr. 1886." 
 
 The first two occupants of this sailors' grave are 
 simply notified as — 
 
 "1. Unrecognized. 
 2. Unrecognized." 
 
 Then follow two younger sailors, duly named. 
 One is the more struck by this gravestone, because 
 of old it was the custom on this coast — notorious 
 for its wreckers — to show small pity or charity 
 to the drowning or the drowned ; and here we 
 have the simple confession of much kindness, and 
 the atonement of one generation for another, 
 written on a stone. The waves that break around 
 
 8 
 
114 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 the dreaded Nash Point are called "the Merry 
 Dancers," and the souls of the drowned were once 
 thought to be holding revels among them. 
 
 Let us get on to firm ground and betake our- 
 selves to Dunraven. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 DUNRAVEN — SOUTHERNDOWN — COWBRIDGE — ST. 
 QUINTIN'S — PENLLINE — EWENNY — BRIDGEND — 
 COITY— OGMORE — CANDLESTON. 
 
 Dunraven lies over the bold shoulder of the Great 
 Southern Down, above Ogwr estuary, which gives 
 its name to Southerndown, the watering-place. 
 Dunraven Castle itself is a modern one, a building 
 with nothing really castle-like about it, and indeed 
 the most disappointing in the district. The Welsh 
 original form of the name was Dun-drivan, Dinas- 
 tri-fan, the " Dun " of three courts. The spacious 
 stableyard and the garden terraces on the north 
 are sheltered in the wooded cwm behind the huge 
 rocky rampart on which the house stands. The 
 formidable sea-front of this rock recalls the ill re- 
 putation that the Castle had formerly as a deadly 
 lure for the vessels passing up and down the 
 coast ; and the name of the point, " Trwyn-y- 
 Witch " (Witch's Snout), is quite in keeping with 
 the place. Two centuries ago, when the Castle 
 was owned by the Vaughans, Sir Richard, follow- 
 ing the custom, used to exhibit false lights to lure 
 vessels on to the Taskar Rock opposite, so that 
 they might be wrecked on his foreshore and 
 become his property ; but the Taskar proved in 
 the end an ill friend to him. One summer's day 
 two of his sons rowed out to the rock, at the 
 
 115 
 
116 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 tide's ebb, and disembarking there forgot to secure 
 the boat, which floated away as the tide returned, 
 and the two were drowned in full sight of their 
 parents, no other boat being obtainable. During 
 the confusion a younger child fell into a vessel of 
 whey, and was drowned on shore. So the parents 
 were left desolate, and gave up the place, when 
 it passed to the Wyndham family, now repre- 
 sented by the Earl of Dunraven. 
 
 It was an earlier Vaughan, " Mat of the Iron 
 Hand," who was most notorious of all as a 
 wrecker. Between pirates like Colyn Dolphyn 
 afloat and wreckers like Mat lying in wait ashore, 
 the old Bristol-bound East Indiamen and other 
 ships had often a hard passage up Channel. 
 
 The double cave at Dunraven is on a larger 
 scale than any on this part of the coast. When 
 the gates are open there should be no difficulty in 
 making a way round by the walks east of the 
 Castle to the descent on the south-east of the 
 Head. But the cave is only to be explored at low 
 water. The sea has worked here upon the lime- 
 stone, eating out its softer parts, and excavating a 
 cavern, with a nobly architectured portal. You 
 must follow the sea-links westward from Dun- 
 raven above Southerndown Sands for " Pwll-y- 
 Gwynt," the " wind-hole." It is said not to have 
 so effective an upward blast as it used to have ; 
 but the rush of air and the noise, harsh or 
 rumbling, of the waves have a curious and 
 uncanny effect as the tide returns. The Fairy 
 Cave lies still a couple of hundred paces further 
 on in the same direction — so called because of 
 its fairy-like limestone mouldings, not because 
 it is especially the haunt of the "Tylwyth Teg," 
 or Fair Family. 
 
DUNRAVEN 117 
 
 The Welsh traditions that are, or have been, 
 grafted on the rock of Dundrivan are too many 
 and too obstinate to be neglected. By the first 
 and stubbornest of them, the old British caer here 
 was the stronghold first of Bran, son of Llyr, then 
 of his son Ceredig or Caractacus. After Fitz- 
 hamon had got hold on Morganwg William de 
 Londres seized on Dunraven and Ogmore, and 
 planted the usual makeshift site-appropriating 
 castles. While he was away at Kidwelly, the 
 Welsh under Pain Turberville — for already there 
 were Norman quarrels afoot — attacked the new 
 seats and domains, and were driven off by Arnold 
 Butler, castellan and deputy of De Londres, whose 
 reward in the end was Dunraven. It remained 
 in the Butler family for centuries, and then by an 
 heiress's marriage it went to the Vaughans — an 
 interesting case of Welsh reversion. Another two 
 centuries, and Sir Richard Vaughan, after the 
 drowning of his three sons, sold the ill-omened 
 place to Humphry Wyndham, who also had Celtic 
 blood in him, being of Irish stock. That was in 
 1612, and one wonders whether the O'Neil mas- 
 sacre of the previous year had anything to do 
 with Wyndham's desire for a Welsh estate? He 
 married a Welsh wife, Jane Carne of Ewenny ; 
 and of that marriage come the present Earls of 
 Dunraven, who seem to maintain a certain love 
 of the sea. One wishes they would build a proper 
 castle worthy of the site, as well as racing-yachts. 
 
 One morning, after exploring the headland and 
 the Witch's Snout, I and David were tempted by 
 a vain desire to link Dunraven with the other 
 inland castles. He surmised that Sir Arnold, 
 alias Arnold Butler, was figured in one of the 
 Arthurian tales — the Welsh Decameron; and that 
 
118 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 another knight of the same levy came from 
 Penlline, near Cowbridge. So thither we rode 
 by devious ways — on bicycles. 
 
 Looking from Penlline Hill, one can easily recall 
 the Cowbridge that was first circled with walls 
 and then with castles. For, beyond Llanblethian 
 and its castle and fine church, you have Beaupre 
 on the south-east and Nash on the south-west, 
 and, a little further on, Flemingston, with Fonmon 
 and Penmark within an hour's ride ; and about 
 the same distance from the coast, working west, 
 East Orchard Castle and West Orchard Castle, 
 and then, to wind up, the sea-front fortified at 
 every strategic point and every part, from Barry 
 to St. Donat's and Dundrivan (Dunraven). 
 
 Like the Vale of Glamorgan, in whose very 
 heart it lies, Cowbridge town is cut in two by 
 the river Thaw ; and its interminable street rises 
 slowly from its half-way bridge in either direction 
 to the East village and the West village. A side- 
 street leads to the Grammar School and the 
 church, and reveals some remains of the older 
 Cowbridge that the founders of the Grammar 
 School, with Sir Leoline Jenkins at their head, 
 knew. This shy street leads out eventually 
 through an old archway, passing the limits, 
 plainly visible there, of the old town-walls ; and 
 so arrives in a green region of hill and meadow, 
 with the Castle of Llanblethian, or St. Quintin, 
 within a mile or less. Thither lies a most delight- 
 ful summer's afternoon walk ; for although little 
 of the Castle is left, it lends the place its flavour 
 of memorial things. All that is to be seen of it 
 may be inspected from the road. It consists 
 chiefly of the arched gateway, with part of a 
 tower and remains of the shell of the outer court. 
 
DUNRAVEN 119 
 
 Down below, the massive abutments of the 
 church tower, and the other external effects of 
 Cowbridge Church, make it look like a fortified 
 thing too. The church interior is puzzling ; for 
 since originally it was merely a chapel-of-ease to 
 Llanblethian, it was designed on a smaller scale. 
 Then, as Cowbridge town grew, and more seats 
 were required, first one aisle was added to the 
 nave and then another to the Chancel. 
 
 "Penlline Castle was the first bold landmark to 
 be descried, looking westward from Cowbridge. 
 It was placed on a fine natural site so as to 
 command the Vale of Glamorgan, in a way that 
 must have been very formidable to conjecturing 
 besiegers. Formerly, when St. Quentin's Castle 
 was fully manned and armed on the hill of 
 Llanblethian over Cowbridge town, and the walls 
 and gateways of the town below were complete, 
 this must have formed almost a perfect example 
 of a Norman fortified valley, armed at all points 
 because it went in continual terror of the Welsh 
 hill-lords and highlanders." So David. 
 
 If you return to the western high-road, bound 
 for Ewenny, after leaving Penlline, you reach, at 
 two miles from Cowbridge, the spot known in 
 Welsh as " Milltir Aur," or Golden Mile, where, 
 the legend declares, Einon and Iestyn paid their 
 Norman allies in gold for their services in de- 
 feating Rhys ; and then quarrelled over Iestyn's 
 daughter. 
 
 "This lady I gat by my prowess in arms, and 
 the prowess of my Frankish allies ! " Einon said 
 no doubt, much after the fashion of Sir Hontzlac 
 of Gwent. 
 
 But Iestyn, thinking the Frankish host well 
 disposed of, was not ready to fulfil his promise 
 
120 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 and give up his daughter. The end of this we 
 know. Einon recalled his Frankish friends, and 
 the end was the battle where Iestyn fell, at 
 Mynydd Bychan (Little Mountain), now known 
 as the Heath, Cardiff. But meanwhile one's 
 heart bleeds for Iestyn's daughter, and grieves 
 like Gwiffert over Enid, to see " one of her noble 
 mien so deeply afflicted ! " 
 
 The Golden Mile points the way now to Ewenny 
 Priory. It is impossible to-day to approach 
 Ewenny in any spirit of mediaeval piety, any 
 taking of romance, without hearing the monks 
 chant within, as one catches sight of its noble 
 abbatine tower among the trees. 
 
 The old Abbey Church, with its massive fortified 
 true Norman tower, bulking large in its green 
 surroundings, recalls too Freeman's praise. It 
 gives you the best idea you can gain anywhere of 
 an ecclesiastical strong-house, " union of castle 
 and monastery in the same structure ! " Only part 
 of the exterior can be seen, for the northern side, 
 the transept walls, that is, abut on the private 
 grounds. Within, the impression is of a sombre, 
 august building, such as our modern eyes can rarely 
 see. The burly pillars, rude Norman arches and 
 round-topped windows, are all in keeping. The 
 whole building is not left to us ; but the nave and 
 north aisle, and the southern flank of the transept 
 and the Priory Chapel, are enough to show the 
 whole strong design. The tomb of the founder, 
 Maurice de Londres, is in the Priory Chapel ; and 
 other tombs of other old Norman and Norman- 
 Welsh houses, the Turbervilles among them, and 
 the ubiquitous Carnes. It is hard to realise now 
 the strength and size of the whole monastic settle- 
 ment. Signs of the great battlemented wall are 
 
DUNRAVEN 121 
 
 plainly to be discerned ; but one must be permitted 
 to explore carefully the surroundings of the 
 present house and the garden-close to replace 
 all the range of buildings. The present mansion 
 was built in George III.'s reign. 
 
 Ewenny was founded as early as 1146, as a 
 Benedictine monastery ; that is, while the Norman 
 tenure of this region was still a hazardous one. 
 It must have taken many years a-building. When 
 it passed into the hands of the Turbervilles, whose 
 descendants still hold it, we cannot say. The 
 Turbervilles were originally allotted Coity in the 
 Fitzhamon parcelling out of the district. Among 
 the tombs will be found some curious epitaphs, and 
 particularly this, which is impressively turned, in 
 honour of one of the Carnes : — 
 
 "Here lys Ewenny's hope, Ewenny's pride, 
 In him both flourish'd, and in him both dyd. 
 Death having seis'd him, linger'd loath to be 
 The mine of this worthy family." 
 
 After such a crow's circuit round these ancient 
 houses and lands, one is seized upon by a curious 
 sense of the actuality of the scenes and episodes 
 that have become romance; they are in fact now 
 a part of our collective memory. You lift the 
 lid of an old tomb at Ewenny, and the creature of 
 actuality looks out at you, half " a fiendly dragon " 
 like an heraldic beast, half the plain human 
 visage of a Carne or a Turberville. 
 
 In Welsh, Pen-y-Bont-yr-Ogwr (End of the 
 Bridge of Ogwr), Bridgend formerly owed its 
 name and character to its command of the Ogwr, 
 once a fine old salmon stream. The town, like 
 many other quiet country places, is not amusing 
 
122 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 to the casual wayfarer, save when fair-days and 
 market-days bring country people and life from 
 without into its long streets. Bridgend has nothing 
 to show of its vanished " Old Castle," which still 
 gives a name to the southern quarter of the town, 
 placed on the east bank of the river. Its " New 
 Castle," as its higher and better site deserves, 
 still stands siege with a gateway and ruined court, 
 and still gives a name to the northern suburb of 
 the town, on the west bank of the stream. In 
 crossing the old bridge for the church and the 
 New Castle, casual acquaintance may be made 
 with the Ogwr. You will not see a salmon, but 
 you will see a salmon-water which thousands and 
 thousands of that noble fish have coursed. Sixty 
 years ago and more this bridge was the rendez- 
 vous for the salmon poachers of the town, who, 
 leaning over its parapets, pipe in mouth, used, as 
 gossips tell, to calculate the state of the water 
 and the chances of the night's sport. 
 
 Writing eighty years ago, Hansard gave a notable 
 account of these night-poachers and their ways : — 
 
 " From the commencement of the spawning season, at the 
 latter end of September, until January, parties are engaged 
 every moonless night in spearing salmon by torchlight, whilst 
 roaming upon the shallow gravelly streams in search of a 
 suitable spot for depositing their ova. On such situations 
 they congregate to the number of twenty or thirty in a 
 shoal, rooting up the bed of the river like hogs. The 
 poachers, aware of their favourite haunts, assemble about 
 midnight, and having kindled a small bundle of straw, by 
 means of a tinder-box, one of the party holds the light over 
 the water, being closely followed by the spearrnan, armed with 
 a heavy trident, and behind walks a third person, carrying 
 on his back a large supply of fuel, as, in windy nights 
 especially, the straw is rapidly consumed. The instant that 
 the surface of the stream becomes illumined by the torch, 
 
DUNRAVEN 123 
 
 which renders eveiw object, even the smallest portion of 
 gravel, distinctly visible, the whole shoal of salmon dart to- 
 wards the light, and the spearman, instantly selecting the 
 largest fish, hurls his weapon with unerring aim, and, if an 
 old hand, never fails of transfixing his scaly prey. He then 
 immediately throws the fish upon the bank, and, quickly 
 disengaging the spear with his foot, stands ready to repeat 
 the blow. It frequently happens that, if he strike a large 
 fish, the poacher is compelled to leap into the stream; for 
 the salmon proves exceedingly strong in his element. These 
 depredators proceed, in a similar manner, from station to 
 station, until the approach of day warns them to depart." 
 
 We read that " on the 13th of August, 1838, 112 
 sewen were caught, at one haul, in this stream." 
 
 Leaving the old bridge, if we go up the Castle 
 Hill, we come to the Square, where we have 
 St. Illtyd's Church on our left, and closely neigh- 
 bouring it, perched higher on the riverside cliff, 
 the remains of the Castle itself. A tower, a 
 broken curtain wall, a part of another tower, 
 are all that is left of the stronghold whose 
 strength once made it possible for the town to 
 wax fat and prosperous under the hand of its cas- 
 tellans. Sir Simon de Turberville was the original 
 founder. To find the traces of Bridgend Old 
 Castle, at the other side of the town, is more 
 difficult, and all we can do is to point out its site 
 and a possible remnant of its stones in some of 
 the older houses near the river. It was situated 
 in a low, badly chosen site, behind the present 
 Church Street, on the opposite bend of the river, 
 whose waters were doubtless used to surround it, 
 and isolate it, if necessary, in time of attack. 
 
 A footpath may be taken to Coity Castle, once 
 a very important stronghold— one of the five 
 strongest in all Glamorgan. It stands on an earth- 
 
124 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 work, which may have been there long before the 
 Castle ; for if there is anything certain in a dis- 
 puted land of hilly circumstance, it is that the 
 same sites are likely to be seized upon over and 
 over during the succession of occupiers, British, 
 Roman, Welsh, Norman. The most striking part 
 of the ruin is not the oldest, and probably dates 
 no further back than Henry V.'s reign. 
 
 The late G. T. Clark says of the Castle (in his 
 Land of Morgan) : " Pagan de Turberville had 
 Coity, much celebrated in bardic story as the 
 seat of a royal lineage. He, or his son, strength- 
 ened their position by marrying the dispossessed 
 Welsh heiress. The family always showed Welsh 
 sympathies, and continued to hold high rank in 
 the county till the fifteenth century, when the 
 main line failed." Morgan, whose daughter thus 
 made the first Welsh-Norman marriage on record, 
 was a great man in his day. He challenged Pagan 
 (or Payn) de Turberville to single combat, if he 
 preferred that to marrying the maid. The maid's 
 eyes settled the matter, for the Norman handed 
 his sword to Morgan as a sign of friendly agree- 
 ment. From the Turbervilles, Coity passed to the 
 Berkrolles and Sydneys. 
 
 From Bridgend or from Ewenny you easily reach 
 Ogmore Castle. Not much is left of it but the keep, 
 the broken containing-wall of the close, and the 
 now scarce discernible ground-plan of the chapel. 
 The powerful De Londres, who built and held it, 
 would find it hard to recognise his kingdom in 
 this gapp'd and crack'd decay. But while men and 
 castles dwindle, the Ogmore limestone spring, at the 
 edge of the down, about three hundred yards east 
 of the Castle, is as strong and lively as ever, and 
 is now used to supply Bridgend with water. The 
 
DUNRAVEN 125 
 
 supply never gives out in the driest season ; and 
 this and the strangeness of its sudden apparition 
 account for the folk-tale which accords it an 
 underground passage to St. Bride's Major. The 
 limestone all through South Wales is something 
 of a natural magician. One curious property of 
 the spring is that it is of dual character, one of its 
 currents being of much harder water than the 
 other, and impregnated with magnesia. 
 
 From Ogmore Castle, it is but a step on to 
 Candleston (or Cantilupeston) Castle, which can 
 be reached in a twenty minutes' walk. First 
 cross St. Teilo's stepping stones, as the Saint may 
 have done long ago (when he had a wattled cell 
 near the spring), then cross the swampy ground 
 between the Ewenny and the Ogmore and the 
 bridge over the latter. Candleston Castle lies on 
 the left, through the lane and along the fir plan- 
 tation, on the brink of Merthyr Mawr warren. 
 The Castle, one of those built by De Londres, 
 picture of desolation as it is, its last tower con- 
 fronting the sands, shows no sign now of the sup- 
 posed Flemish work about it and its scanty 
 remains. At the end of the eighteenth century 
 a mansion was built near by, but that too is gone 
 to ruin. The trees have a grey and wizened air, 
 as if they sympathised with the old walls. Candle- 
 ston, with rabbits for sole tenantry, with its 
 sandy ravine and ghostly woods, has lost touch 
 with history ; but it might, if it could, tell of the 
 day when the men of De Londres rode across the 
 sands from Newton Nottage, carrying an un- 
 happy prisoner with them — a luckless Welsh 
 raider whom they could presently bind fast to a 
 post and then leave him to the tender mercies of 
 the incoming tide. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 NEWTON NOTTAGE — PORTHCAWL — KENFIG — " THE 
 CLERK OF KENFIG " 
 
 It is a wild stretch of coast that runs westward 
 now from the estuary of Ogmore River. The 
 battle between sea and land is fought there with 
 endless change of fortune : the sea hurls up 
 billows of sand to choke the fields and bury the 
 houses ; the land sends out deadly ridges of low 
 rock to the murder of ships that pass in the 
 Severn Sea. 
 
 Newton Nottage here stands back from the 
 sea, with a broad belt of half-clothed dunes be- 
 tween. The village is a survival of other days, 
 worth making acquaintance with, whose people 
 are people of character and humour, and of a 
 canny quality too, unless one proverb belies them. 
 The church, again, is original in its antiquity; 
 and its tower is not like other towers, but has 
 an " air," not easy to realise as it stares across at 
 the Merthyr Mawr warren like some amazed and 
 amazing creature spawned by a primitive world. 
 Its interior is remarkable for its carven pulpit, 
 depicting the Roman soldiers beating with thongs 
 the person of the Saviour ; and the approach to 
 the pulpit is unusual and ingenious enough to 
 please a child. 
 
 126 
 
NEWTON NOTTAGE 127 
 
 Here is St. John's Well, whose sweet water 
 rises and falls with the sea-tide. Not far from it 
 to the south-west are the remains of a small cir- 
 cular enclosure. In the year 1820 the Rev. Hey 
 Knight was told by the old people of Newton 
 " that there had been a custom of kindling a 
 fire in it annually on midsummer day, throwing 
 a small cheese or cake across it, and then jumping 
 over the embers." 
 
 The same writer gives detailed particulars of 
 the shore, which, he said, " westward from the 
 Black rocks consists of drift sand and rolled 
 pebbles. This flat beach is divided at Newton 
 Point and Middle Point by skers or projecting 
 ridges of low rock." Each of these spits, as well 
 as the higher point at Porthcawl (so named from 
 two fishing weirs formerly placed there), is prob- 
 ably continued into the Channel to the south 
 and east under the names of the Patches and 
 the Tusker. The latter rock has a beacon on it, 
 and is especially dangerous from the deadly 
 skers which open out at its western end ; upon 
 them the tide sets with a heavy break in rough 
 weather. 
 
 Knight does not mention the local super- 
 stition, still current to-day, that on nights fore- 
 boding storm, a warning phantom light is seen 
 hovering over the Tusker Rocks and the Sker 
 Rock. Another of the flood traditions lingers in 
 Newton ; there is an old prophecy that " the sea 
 shall return and ships be moored to a sycamore- 
 tree growing on the top of Newton Clovis." If we 
 like to take it so, we may find an extraordinary 
 confirmation of this saying in the fact that when 
 the foundations of an old house in this neighbour- 
 hood were re-dug, a drift of sand like a raised 
 
128 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 beach was found below them. The sea had been 
 there before ; just as certainly the sea is gaining 
 upon this coast again. 
 
 Dutch vessels northward of their true course, 
 and deceived by the similarity of soundings, 
 sometimes came up the Bristol instead of the 
 English Channel — an error often fatal before light- 
 house days. A flat stone in Newton Churchyard 
 commemorates the loss of a young family, three 
 sons of J. S. Jackerd, sent from Surinam in the 
 planter's own ship westward bound to Amster- 
 dam, wrecked on the night of the 3rd of June, 
 1770. Many soldiers lost in one of the transports 
 for Bristol in the Irish Rebellion, 1798, were buried 
 in Cae Newydd, Porthcawl, and the plough for 
 long spared the turf above them. 
 
 This is the region which Blackmore has pictured 
 in his Maid of Sker, on the whole the best novel 
 of South Wales and its sea-coast ever written by 
 any writer. Sker House lies direct south, and 
 the sands of Sker lie rather to the west of Kenfig. 
 But Newton Nottage, as readers of the novel in 
 question may like to know, is the village of the 
 story; and at Nottage House the late Mr. Black- 
 more stayed for a time, and there gathered the 
 local lore and material that he turned to account 
 afterwards. 
 
 Newton Nottage lies at the base of a little 
 promontory that juts well out into the Severn 
 Sea, catching the freshest and raciest Atlantic 
 breezes. Here is Porthcawl, a delightful little 
 place for those who happen to like it. The town 
 is no more than a couple of streets or so, one 
 ending in a paved, wind-swept esplanade. Add to 
 these a small dock, and just as much shipping of 
 coal and limestone as may lend an air of business 
 
NEWTON NOTTAGE 129 
 
 to a summer day, and beguile the visitor into 
 whiling away a lazy afternoon and thinking he 
 has done something, since a vessel has stowed 
 her ounkers and put to sea : and that is Porth- 
 cawl. 
 
 On a rough day the waves make great play 
 about the miniature pier that defends the dock, 
 and a walk along the salt rampart may end in a 
 cold shower-bath on the head of the unwary. But 
 there are calm days at Porthcawl when it is excel- 
 lent to sit and dream among the tansies on the 
 low cliffs with an eye on the clean half-circle 
 of sand and the blue curve of the tide as it 
 advances or retreats. As for the wildish sur- 
 roundings of Porthcawl, no summer haunt could 
 be more delightful than its miles of dunes. 
 "There are," writes G. R., "extraordinary numbers 
 of wild flowers, many in their miniature state, 
 to be gathered here. Nowhere have I seen 
 Viper's Bugloss grow as it does on these dunes 
 in wizard rank and file. It is a queer plant, with 
 its grey-green bristly foliage and curved flower- 
 spikes that change from bright rose-colour to 
 brilliant hue. It was a friend to the Greeks, who 
 gave it its strange name of Cow-tongue Viper- 
 bite Healer; cow-tongued because the curious curve 
 of the flower-spike is exactly that described by 
 the tongue of the cow who fetches clothes off a 
 hedge or tufts of grass from the sod. It may 
 have been some Greek herd-girl, who, while she 
 sat on the ground to watch her cows feed, noted 
 the curious prehensile twist of the tongue, and 
 first gave this name to the flower." 
 
 In the sandy desolation east of Porthcawl lies all 
 that is left of Kenfig town to-day : a scattered ham- 
 let with the last fragment of a castle tower thrust 
 
 9 
 
 
130 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 up like the hand of a buried man through the 
 sand. Entering Kenfig to-day by its loneliest 
 road from the east, one hardly believes in its 
 existence as a live place, so dispersed and silent 
 among its sands. Even its church tower is not 
 at once visible, and the few houses are hidden 
 in the perspective, one behind another. But this 
 loneliness and unusualness makes the place more 
 interesting in the day of towns. Passing by the 
 first old inn, you cross the sandy turf, find a sort 
 of sandy lane or street, and make the circuit then 
 of the churchyard, and enter by the stile on its 
 west side. The church is nothing architecturally, 
 but it is in tune with the place. 
 
 The old Town Hall is now the Prince of Wales 
 Inn, and there may be seen the old town charters, 
 and other documents, bearing witness to the 
 Kenfig that was. To-day it is a place apart, like 
 no other that I know ; an amazing place with an 
 heroic record : the struggle of the community 
 during hundreds of years with an irresistible 
 army of sand, whose tents and entrenchments 
 you see all round it. " The sand came up like 
 snow and buried the houses," the old people will 
 tell you. To-day the drift still goes on ; while six 
 hundred years ago it was coming steadily inland, 
 each storm bringing the sand higher. The first 
 mention of these inroads is preserved in the record 
 of reduced rent for a warren called " the Rabbits' 
 Pasture," " because the great party is drowned by 
 the sea." This was in the year 1316. More than 
 two hundred years later the good traveller John 
 Leland writes : " There is a village on the Est 
 side of Kenfik and a Castel, booth in Ruines and 
 almost shokid and devowrid with the Sandes that 
 the Severn Se ther castith up." 
 
NEWTON NOTTAGE 131 
 
 No wonder that the place wears the look of wild 
 desolation to-day, which was already a ruin and 
 desolation, choked and devoured, nearly four 
 centuries ago. 
 
 Yet it was (for that day) a large and important 
 town that waged this losing battle, as we learn 
 from the Kenfig ordinances drawn up in the 
 fourth year of Edward III., which any curious 
 persons can read in Mr. Thomas Gray's admi- 
 rable book on Kenfig. It was a walled town 
 with paved ways ; it had from seven to eight 
 hundred inhabitants. It had a river up which 
 came merchandise and timber in " ship lettes." 
 It had a stout paternal government of portreeve 
 and burgesses. Most of the houses were of wood, 
 and the town was not only drowned in sand, but 
 burned again and again ; for the nest of fighting- 
 men up at the Castle were for ever waging war, 
 and each battle that came up against it first 
 burned the town by way of recreation. It was 
 for ever being rebuilt, and later on more soundly : 
 the ordinances certainly disclose a most respect- 
 able state of things. 
 
 In these days of licensed shoddy and exploita- 
 tion of the poor by rich manufacturers, it is a 
 wholesome lesson upon national backsliding to 
 read these Kenfig ordinances. The very first is 
 that " Good and sufficient bread " of " true size " 
 shall be sold to the inhabitants " on pain of a 
 grievous amerciment at the portreeve's pleasure." 
 Then comes provision for good and wholesome 
 ale and fresh meat; also cheese, butter, eggs, 
 capons, and other " good and wholesome and 
 sufficient victuals unblown." The leather must 
 be good. " Every tanner using the mystery of 
 tanning shall sell their leather well and suffi- 
 
132 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 ciently tanned accordingly, upon pain of forfeiture 
 of his said leather or a fine." 
 
 They were very particular to keep the town 
 tidy ; no tradesman or housewife must throw 
 anything whatsoever into the street ; each tenant 
 cleans his own piece of street ; " and where the 
 streets be unpav'd, every man to pave the same, 
 upon pain of amerciament, before his door." No 
 milking was to be done in the town ; " nor none 
 shall suffer their beasts to abide in the High 
 Street nor in noe other street by night nor by 
 day, but only going and coming to and from their 
 pastures." " Noe manner of person shall have 
 any swine going within the town walls." 
 
 On the point of good behaviour these burgesses 
 were quite as strict as on that of cleanliness. 
 "Noe stranger shall walk by night after nine of 
 the clock." " Noe manner of person shall play at 
 dice, cards, bowles, nor no other unlawful games 
 within the said town." All " licentious naughti- 
 packs " were fined ten shillings. " Brawlers and 
 fighters that draweth blood the one upon the 
 other shall pay three and fourpence for the 
 bloodshed." 
 
 Women brawlers were differently dealt with. 
 " Item it is ordained that if any woman be found 
 guilty [by six men] of scolding or railing any 
 burgess or their wives or any other of their 
 neighbours, then she to be brought at the first 
 fault to the cucking-stool there to sit one hour, 
 and the second fault two hours and third fault 
 to lett slippe" — that is, to let the poor scold slip 
 into the water. 
 
 Alas ! all this righteousness could not save the 
 town from the onslaught of the sand. A hint of 
 this ever-present danger can be discovered in 
 
NEWTON NOTTAGE 133 
 
 the wording of the last ordinance. " Noe manner 
 of person or persons whatsoever shall reap any 
 sedges neither draw nor pull any rootes nor cutt 
 any furzes in any place whatsoever, nor do any 
 other thing that may be to the ruin, destruction 
 and overthrow of the said burrough." 
 
 More than two hundred years after the expi- 
 ring town utters a sad complaint, which is ap- 
 pended to these ordinances in the reign of 
 Elizabeth. The poor burgesses " doe yearly fall 
 in arrearages and losses ... by reason of the 
 overthrow, blowing and choaking up of sand in 
 drowning of our town and church " (this church 
 is completely disappeared), " with a number of 
 acres of free lands, besides all the burgages of 
 ground within the said lybertys except three for 
 the which burgages so lost by the said overthrow 
 yett nevertheless the rent thereof is and hath 
 allways been paid to the lords receivers to the 
 portreeve's great loss and hinderance." Poor 
 Portreeve. 
 
 It is strange that Kenfig should not only have 
 been engulfed in sand, but that there should be 
 a legend, of a much earlier period, retailed by 
 Iolo Morganwg, to the effect that another town 
 was swallowed up beneath the waters of Kenfig 
 Pool. The Pool is not visible from the village, 
 but it lies within half a mile of it. You have but 
 to follow westward the sandy track on the north 
 side of the church, and skirt the hedge that 
 divides the cultivated fields, then, from the sandy 
 heath, and as the last enclosed fields ends, make 
 for a small group of trees a little ahead. These 
 trees do not stand on the edge of the water, as 
 they might appear to do, but the Pool is plain 
 to see when they are reached. In spite, or because 
 
134 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 of, its desolate surroundings, the Pool is a place 
 that exerts a positive fascination, quite enough 
 to revive the feeling that the Welsh attached to 
 their lakes and llyns and legends of lost towns. 
 The teal and wild duck, as they take wing or skim 
 the water, lead their own life, undisturbed by the 
 ghosts of the past. An old boathouse, two or 
 three paces from the northern shore, stands in 
 the water, as sole sign of human visitation on its 
 banks. 
 
 There it lies, sweet-watered, among the choking 
 sand-hills that are slowly reducing its sixty-eight 
 acres ; so near to the sea, girt round with sea-sand, 
 below the sea-level, and yet always fresh. The 
 waters of the sea can be seen when the sunlight 
 favours, shining and hovering apparently far above 
 its head, an uncertain ridge of sand-hills between. 
 As you look into the pool, you do not wonder 
 that tradition attached a tale to so mysterious a 
 spot, that had seen Roman, Norman, and Welshman 
 alike disappear. 
 
 The legend of Kenfig Pool is very like that told 
 of Llangorse Lake, or Llyn Safaddan, in Brecon- 
 shire. But the Kenfig story is still more signifi- 
 cant : one to be recalled with a strange context 
 in this countryside of mixed Welsh and Norman 
 romance, for it has a Welsh hero, in love with a 
 Norman heroine, a daughter of the Clares. As 
 he is too poor to marry so rich a lady, he murders 
 a Norman steward on the road from Gloucester, 
 to get enough money to provide for the match. 
 On the wedding night a fateful cry, " Dial a 
 ddaw " (" Vengeance shall come "), is repeated 
 thrice. They ask when vengeance will come, and 
 the mysterious voice of the avenger says, " In the 
 ninth generation." 
 
NEWTON NOTTAGE 135 
 
 With this deferred fate the newly-married pair 
 console themselves. What does it matter, when 
 they will be dead long before the day of vengeance 
 comes ? But Fate knows how to be equal with 
 Time. They live on, far past the human term, 
 and see one generation succeed another, until the 
 ninth comes. Then a descendant of the murdered 
 steward of nine generations before remembers the 
 prediction, and, remembering, returns from Caen 
 to Kenfig. That very night he notices that not 
 a house or a holding in Kenfig but is held by the 
 descendants of the ill-fated pair, who still survive. 
 Next morning, at cockcrow, the same voice of 
 Fate is heard saying " Vengeance is come ! " The 
 Norman predestined to see fate accomplished, 
 who has found quarters overnight in the Castle, 
 goes to look for the city ; but can see only 
 a great lake where it stood, and three chimneys 
 near the surface of the pool giving forth a 
 foul smoke that settles in a scum on the water. 
 And as he watches, a pair of gloves comes 
 floating to his feet, and he sees they bear the 
 name and arms of the murdered man of nine 
 generations before, while in heaven he hears the 
 sound of many voices rejoicing, no doubt in the 
 Norman tongue ! The realistic touches of the 
 close — the fetid smoke, the floating gloves, com- 
 plete the story as nothing else could. 
 
 Thus Kenfig saw in its midst not only destroy- 
 ing flames and the overwhelming fury of the 
 sand, but also the overwhelming waters which 
 legend adds to its strange domicile. 
 
 The sand is now extensively worked, and trans- 
 ported by rail for building and other purposes ; 
 and many a drift has been driven into the vicinity 
 of the old town. But every autumn and spring 
 
136 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 the winds more than make good the exported 
 sand. To prevent its further encroachment, the 
 tenants of the surrounding farms have to agree, 
 as one of the conditions of their lease, to plant a 
 certain amount of the burrows with the sand rush, 
 Arundo armaria. The burrows are now used as 
 a rabbit-warren, and gamekeepers are apt to 
 think the amiable antiquary, in the quest of relics, 
 a new kind of poacher bent on interfering with 
 the " small deer." It is as well, therefore, to keep 
 to the slender tracks which cross the burrows in 
 all directions, lest one set one's foot in a snare. 
 
 The last echo that history carries to us from a 
 defeated and submerged Kenfig is a sinister one 
 enough. Donovan, travelling through South Wales 
 at the end of the eighteenth century, writes that 
 " the distant tower of Kenfig church serves as 
 the best guide, there being only a cart-track 
 besides to depend upon. Kenfig once harboured 
 a desperate banditti of lurking fellows who ob- 
 tained a profitable livelihood by smuggling, the 
 plunder of wrecks, &c, whom it was necessary to 
 visit with caution." 
 
 I saw no trace of smugglers, but after dark 
 I heard a cheerful sound from an inn near the 
 church ; like the last of the Welsh ballad-mongers 
 using his art. There, by a great fire, sat two 
 sand-boys, who worked in filling the sand-carts 
 and wagons by day. My entering silenced them 
 for a time, but after supper, when I returned 
 from the parlour to the long, low chamber with 
 the cavern of a hearth at its end within which 
 they sat, one of them, after much pressing, began 
 to sing, or rather to hum behind his pipe, a mile- 
 long ballad in Welsh, which I had much difficulty 
 in following. Next morning the rain was oceanic ; 
 
NEWTON NOTTAGE 137 
 
 and I amused myself with a rude translation of 
 what my confused memory had left of the wicked 
 " Clerk of Kenfig":— 
 
 THE CLERK OF KENFIG. 
 
 The Clerk of Kenfig is drinking hard, — 
 
 Drinking night and day ; 
 He cannot bear the driving sand, 
 Salt with the sea, wild with the wind, 
 
 That blows from Kenfig bay. 
 
 This night, I think, the sou'west wind 
 
 Is worse than ever it was : 
 The Clerk, — he had better pray than drink, 
 For the sand might be blown from Pharaoh's land 
 
 By a blast of the Samoon's jaws. 
 
 It is in the church and over the graves : 
 
 It is in at the Clerk's own door : 
 He has swept it up, but what is this 
 Doth spin and twine in spirals fine 
 
 Its thin thread on the floor? 
 
 The Clerk is afraid to go to his bed ; 
 
 He has piled the hearth up higher ; 
 But the sand comes down the chimney -louvre ; 
 The grit is in his drinking-cup, 
 
 The silt puts out the fire. 
 
 And still he sat and still he drank 
 
 Until the night grew old : 
 And then there came a triple knock 
 Upon the door, upon his heart ; 
 
 It made his heart turn cold. 
 
 And "Come, good Clerk," and "Come with me 1 " 
 
 A voice said at the door : 
 "This night, thou know'st, is All Saints' night: 
 "The church is full, the dead-folk wait: 
 "They have waited this hour and more." 
 
138 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Thereat he gat him up ; but when 
 
 The Clerk undid the door, 
 The sand fell in like a heavy man, 
 And like a man-tall drift of snow 
 
 Lay huddled on the floor. 
 
 It lay there like a drunken man, 
 
 That could not rise again : 
 But what might be an angry hand 
 Was at the priest, to have him out 
 Into the rigid rain. 
 ***** 
 
 "Stand up, good Clerk, in Kenfig church: 
 
 "Unsay the word you said, — 
 "The dead who lay beneath the sand 
 ' ' Should never rise at the Lord's right hand 
 "At the rising of the dead! ..." 
 
 "And Christ thee keep, thou cruel Clerk; 
 
 And Mary in her might ; 
 1 ' Around thee kneel the blessed dead : 
 "And thou shalt say the Creed, and pray, 
 "And preach Christ risen this night!" 
 
 He saw them kneel, as he fear'd to see, — 
 
 The folk of Kenfig there, — 
 Yes, Roger Dunn, and Mary John, 
 And the Spanish captain that was stabb'd 
 
 By the old squire of Sker. 
 
 He feared to see them stare on him, — 
 
 A death's-head every one : 
 But their faces gleam as they gaze on him, 
 And their eyes beseech like marigolds 
 
 That do beseech the sun. 
 
 They stare on him, not stained with death, 
 
 But cloth'd in white and clean ; 
 Yes, white as sea-mews by the sea, 
 He sees them kneel there blessedly, — 
 And not a death's-head seen. 
 
NEWTON NOTTAGE 139 
 
 Stand up, good Clerk ; stand up and preach 
 
 "The Resurrection !" 
 But the sand hath parched his nether lip, 
 He cannot say a word nor pray : 
 
 His grace hath from him gone. 
 
 Yet now the Holy Rood hath found 
 
 A voice to call them home : 
 It speaks them kindly, one by one, 
 And one by one, the dead are gone, 
 
 Like sea-mews from the foam. 
 
 The rood was bright with candle-light 
 
 Until the last was flown ; 
 The darker then the mortal dark 
 That settled on the soulless Clerk 
 
 Like the night of Babylon. 
 
 Christ keep thy feet in Kenfig street, 
 
 And save them in the sand, 
 Where the cruel Clerk of Kenfig lies 
 That did deny the dead to rise 
 
 And sit at Christ's right hand. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 MARGAM AND MARGAM PARK — THE ABBEY AND 
 THE ORANGERY — MONASTIC THRIFT — OETH AND 
 ANOETH — PEN DAR "THE OAK SUMMIT" 
 
 It is but an hour's walk from Kenfig-in-the-Sands 
 to Margam-in-the-Trees, but the two places might 
 be leagues apart ; they are in different worlds. 
 House and church at Margam are tree-sheltered, 
 situate with every green favouring circumstance 
 about them. The well-stocked deer-park, the lake 
 that is passed on the way from the church to the 
 house, and the old camp on the mound two hundred 
 yards north-east of the mansion, the oak-clad moun- 
 tain above, and the wooded mountain cwm, give the 
 scene a wealth of verdure which at Kenfig you 
 could not believe to be possible. 
 
 The actual Abbey, however (including the old 
 west front), converted into a spacious parish 
 church, struck me as rather bare and much more 
 impressive within than without. Externally the 
 effect, as the restored portions have not had time 
 to gain any softening of age, is cold. The tombs 
 of the Talbot family, and in their far finer degree 
 the little collection of old Celtic crosses, lend 
 statuesque effect to the north and south aisles. 
 There are the rich monuments too of the Mansel 
 family; notably one with figured panels of 
 alabaster, quaintly ornate in design. On the 
 
 140 
 
MARGAM AND MARGAM PARK 141 
 
 opposite side of the church, in the north aisle, is 
 the tomb and marble effigy of one of the Talbots, 
 who died young in 1883. The round-arched 
 western doorway shows how fine the original 
 Norman building must have been. 
 
 John Pritchard, the Llandaff architect, says of the 
 Abbey : " Like most Cistercian churches, the place 
 consisted of a nave with north and south aisles, 
 a central tower flanked by north and south tran- 
 septs with their eastern aisles ; behind these came 
 a magnificent choir with its north and south aisles, 
 and in close contiguity to the south transept there 
 is a superb chapter-house, in front of which was 
 the large cloistered court, surrounded by the usual 
 various buildings, which in general arrangement 
 are said to bear a strong resemblance to those of 
 Westminster Abbey. At the east end is a Norman 
 central doorway, and over it three Norman 
 windows. Inside, the arcades are Norman, con- 
 sisting of six bays, and they occupy a space of 115 
 feet, which is the limit of the existing church. 
 Beyond this was the thirteenth-century church, 
 with central tower and a magnificent choir, 82 feet 
 long, with north and south aisles, unfortunately 
 all destroyed. At right angles to the church were the 
 dormitories over a length of vaulted cellarage, the 
 northern end of which had a handsome vestibule 
 with a fine central doorway leading from the 
 cloisters to the chapter-house. Its internal 
 diameter is 50 feet and circular in plan, with an 
 elegant central clustered shaft, from which springs 
 an elaborately groined ceiling divided into twelve 
 bays." 
 
 The chapter-house roof fell in 1799, since which 
 the decay of the place has given way to continual 
 restoration. 
 
142 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 The Orangery, on the south-west of the house, 
 was built in 1770 by the father of the " Father of 
 the House of Commons." It stands on the site of 
 the old residence of the Rice Mansels, which had its 
 orangery, too, filled with trees, and with other rare 
 plants wrecked off the coast, on their way from 
 Spain to the Thames. Out of doors many trees 
 that love the south — bays and maples — flourish at 
 Margam, owing to its protected site, in an extra- 
 ordinary way. In the woods above the oak is 
 king, clothing the slopes of the stream and the 
 steeper hillsides. 
 
 The name of Margam— said by some topographers 
 to come from Madoc Gam, or Mawrgam, son of 
 Caradoc ab Iestyn, and one of the traditional 
 founders of the Abbey in 1147 — is probably 
 " Morgan " only in disguise. Gerald the Welshman 
 visited Margam with Archbishop Baldwin in the 
 same century. A little later came King John, who 
 held the place in great favour; and no doubt he 
 was royally entertained. But here is Gerald's 
 account of its miraculous hospitality : — 
 
 " This monastery, under the direction of Conan, 
 a learned and prudent abbot, was at this time more 
 celebrated for its charitable deeds than any other 
 of that order in Wales. On this account it is an 
 undoubted fact that, as a reward for that abundant 
 charity which the monastery had always in time of 
 need exercised towards strangers and poor persons, 
 in a season of approaching famine, their corn and 
 provision were perceptibly by Divine assistance 
 increased, like the widow's cruse of oil by the 
 means of the prophet Elijah." 
 
 There are indeed corroborating records preserved 
 among the Margam Abbey charters of grants of 
 seed-corn and other relief dispensed to poor neigh- 
 
MARGAM AND MARGAM PARK 143 
 
 bours in time of scarcity ; but by far the larger 
 number of documents relate to the ceaseless 
 industry of the monks in collecting the land itself 
 in return for grants of ploughs and corn. The 
 monks will undertake to feed and clothe a poor 
 man who has a few acres and is in " urgent need," 
 and they will have his land of him in return. It is 
 astonishing how much land they swept up in this 
 way, and how enormously rich and powerful they 
 became. Widows, it seems, were a fruitful source 
 of profit : they parted with land and houses for 
 small sums of ready money and the powerful 
 countenance of the monastery. Poor people often 
 mortgaged their land too, and there are frequent 
 instances of this mortgaged land passing entirely 
 over to the monks. 
 
 It is well to keep in mind this side of monastical 
 tactics without forgetting the other; the monks 
 were able, learned, and prudent men ; they were 
 industrious and hard-working, first-rate agricul- 
 turists, the only gardeners of the time. The monks 
 of Margam were, after the Romans, the only 
 mineralogists ; it was they who first sought for 
 and found the minerals of South Wales. Besides 
 this, the monastery was the hospital and work- 
 house of the district, and they comforted (an 
 important point) as well as relieved the suffering 
 and wayfarer. 
 
 Gerald himself supplies us with two most naively 
 told little stories, which perfectly illustrate both 
 these monastic functions. 
 
 "About the time of its foundation," says he, "a young 
 man of these parts, by birth a Welshman, having claimed 
 and endeavoured to apply to his own use certain lands which 
 had been given to the monastery, by the instigation of the 
 devil set on fire the best barn belonging to the monks, which 
 
144 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 was filled with corn : but immediately becoming mad, he ran 
 about the country in a distracted state . . . and in a few 
 days expired, uttering the most miserable complaints." 
 
 Here is the other and handsomer side of the 
 picture : — 
 
 "In our time too, in a period of scarcity, while great 
 multitudes of poor were daily crowding before the gates 
 for relief, by the unanimous consent of the brethren, a ship 
 was sent to Bristol to purchase corn for charitable purposes. 
 The vessel, delayed by contrary winds, and not returning 
 (but rather affording an opportunity for the miracle), on the 
 very day when there would have been a total deficiency of 
 corn both for the poor and the convent, a field near the 
 monastery was found suddenly to ripen more than a month 
 before the usual time of harvest ; thus, divine Providence 
 supplied the brotherhood and the numerous poor with 
 sufficient nourishment until autumn." 
 
 Older memories still than those of the monks 
 cling to Margam ; the ghost of a grisly old tale, 
 alive since Roman times, haunts the hillside and 
 the plain-land of Margam. For here, according to 
 ancient history, a great battle was fought between 
 Caradoc and the Romans ; and when the dogs and 
 the wolves and the ravens were done with the bones, 
 they lay like a white sheet over the land. Then 
 Manawyddan, the son of Llyr, caused these bones 
 to be gathered up (the bones of the Csesarians, he 
 called them), and likewise all the Roman bones 
 anywhere to be found, and he had them made into 
 a great mound. For a while he reflected, gazing 
 upon them (Manawyddan was a powerful wizard 
 chieftain) ; then the idea came to him to have the 
 bones mixed with lime and built up into a prison 
 for captives taken in war, and he called it the 
 Prison of Oeth and Annoeth (Power and Weak- 
 
MARGAM AND MARGAM PARK H5 
 
 ness). In process of time the bones rotted, and the 
 walls were pulled down and spread over the valley, 
 and a great crop of wheat and barley grew up the 
 next year. We can believe as much of this story 
 as we like ; but one thing is certain, here is a 
 theatre of wild events ; here runs the Roman road 
 over hill and valley to Kenfig; and we may be con- 
 fident that where Roman and Celt, Celt and Saxon, 
 Celt and Norman met, there were sanguine doings. 
 The Roman roads and the great Norman castle 
 chain were never built to subdue an ignoble enemy. 
 The climbing oaks on the mountain-side above 
 Margam Park, in which the wind sometimes makes 
 a noise curiously like that of hidden waterfalls, 
 affirm the age of the place. The Welsh called the 
 old plas in which the immemorial Morgan or 
 Morcant lived after the Oak Hill, Pen Dar — that is, 
 Head or Summit of the Oaks. " Derw," or " Derwen," 
 the Oak Tree (" Dar," plural), is a word of force in 
 Welsh tradition. You must roll the " r " well in 
 speaking it, as if you really heard the wind 
 roughen in the Margam oaks on the day when 
 the equinoctial gale blows away the last shred 
 of summer. The Welsh term for a Druid, 
 "Derwydd," puts an oak-tree at once over his 
 head ; he becomes a folk-lore creature like the 
 Old Green Man of Gloster or Wild Man of 
 the Woods. " Tir gwydd " is rough forest-land, 
 land that has never been ploughed or tilled. There 
 is a strange couplet in a poem of Meilir, which 
 suggests that you had better know your oakwood 
 before you break faith with your friends : — 
 
 1 ' Yni f wyf gennefin a derwin wydd, 
 Ni thoraf a'ni car fy ngharennydd." 
 ("Till I am used to the oakwood, I will not break 
 friendship with my friend.") 
 
 10 
 
146 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 " Yr Wyddfa," you will remember, is the wildest 
 and highest crest of Snowdon. 
 
 Two things you read in the Margam records are 
 calculated to make you look back to the Kenfig 
 sands, and then strain your eyes seaward for a vain 
 glimpse of Lundy Island, as you climb Margam 
 Hill. One is that the first serious invasion of the 
 Glamorgan coast by blown sand was as early as 
 the year 1384. The other was that the Abbot of 
 Margam got into trouble for abusing the right of 
 sanctuary. He had, in fact, given harbour to that 
 desperate pirate and outlaw, William de Marisco, 
 when he was ousted from his sea-eyrie in Lundy 
 Island ; of whom we shall hear more when we sail 
 across thither. The putting out of William de 
 Marisco, with something in his pocket, from the 
 Abbey gate by the too-hospitable great cleric was a 
 scene to be put into drama. But you must look 
 for that gateway of the Abbey in a meadow across 
 the road, far from the present entrances. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE TOWN, CASTLE, ABBEY AND VALE OF NEATH — 
 AN OLD TOWN — A CASTLE OF THE GR ANTILLES — 
 A CISTERCIAN HOUSE — AND A VALLEY OF WATER- 
 FALLS 
 
 " From the sea they made their way towards Wales, to the 
 Castle of Noeth, wandering hither and thither like convicts, 
 fugitives, and daft persons." — Henry of Knighton. 
 
 Henry of Knighton's " Castle of Noeth," or the 
 Castle of Neath, was all but another lost castle 
 when the modern town that seemed ready to 
 swallow it up turned its protector and converted 
 its ruins and last-threatened gateway into an 
 urban pleasance with a charming view up the 
 Vale. A good market town, Neath is still seen 
 in its plenitude on a fair-day, when country 
 stalls eke out the shops, and the country people, 
 making an indescribable hum and gossip, crowd 
 the streets ; for then the scene best recalls the 
 mediaeval market held under the strong arm and 
 the haughty castle-walls of the Granvilles. The 
 parish church hardly lives up to the ecclesiastical 
 gold and purple of Neath and Neath Abbey ; but 
 it was, so far as much restoration permits one to 
 say, a noble as it is still an ample building. The 
 Castle, as you gaze on its towered gateway, will 
 
 147 
 
148 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 strike you as very like that you saw at Llan- 
 blethian ; here the surrounding houses have eaten 
 up most of the walls, and seem none the better for 
 it. Tramways run through the Neath streets and 
 out into the black country beyond ; and one can- 
 not do better, when going to Neath Abbey, than 
 take the tram. But let the story of this old town 
 briefly rehearse itself first. 
 
 Neath—" Castell Nedd " in Welsh "—is the Latin 
 " Nidum " of the Antoninean Itineraries, and 
 formed an important station in the "via Julia 
 Maritima." Then, when Fitzhamon parted the 
 lands of this district, he gave the town to Richard 
 de Granville, who built about the Castle and the 
 Abbey, probably employing Lales as builder. The 
 Castle saw some fighting at various times. In 
 Stephen's reign the sons of Caradoc ab Iestyn 
 attacked the town and its Norman castle, men and 
 castellan, and defeated them, according to Welsh 
 tradition, with frightful slaughter, three thousand 
 falling in the battle. One wonders if they chose a 
 market-day for the attack — a favourite time for 
 castle surprises. The next overtaking was when 
 Morgan Gam and Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, retalia- 
 ting for Norman wrongs elsewhere, burnt the 
 Castle and sacked the town, marching west from 
 Kenfig. Neath obtained, through the interest of 
 the De Spencers, a new charter from Edward II., 
 who, as Henry of Knighton and others have 
 already told us, passed through the town on his 
 last unhappy Welsh journey, to be taken at Llan- 
 trisant. The copper, tin, iron, and chemical works 
 that give the town its modern industrial effect — 
 and its smoke, alas ! — date back to the eighteenth 
 century. The Corporation Seal shows a castle 
 with two meaner buildings on either side, pro- 
 
Photo by] 
 
 [Williams & Curnuck, Newport, Mon. 
 NEATH : THE OLD CHLRCH. 
 
 To face p. 149- 
 
THE VALE OF NEATH 149 
 
 phetic, as one supposes, of its factories and foundry- 
 sheds. 
 
 The river Neath (" afon Nedd ") is tidal beyond 
 the town, and navigable for the smaller kind of 
 craft. At low water there were several fords in 
 use before the river was bridged ; and very unsafe 
 the lower ones were, if we can judge by Gerald de 
 Barri's most exact account of how he and the 
 Archbishop crossed this water in their role of 
 spiritual knights-errant. They were on their way 
 from Margam, and had a Welsh prince, Morgan ap 
 Caradog, for guide ; and made the passage at the 
 river-mouth, where, because of the quicksands, 
 says Gerald, this is the most dangerous water to 
 cross in all the South country. One of his pack- 
 horses sank in the sand, and was hardly saved, 
 and then only at the cost of some damage to this 
 intrepid book-man's precious books. As for Gerald 
 and the Archbishop, they gave up the ford after 
 all, and crossed by boat. But very keenly one 
 smells the salt-sand, and realises the wet shore at 
 the Aber of Nedd as one reads Gerald's page. 
 
 The water-meadows between the town and 
 Castle of Neath and the Abbey were once pro- 
 verbial for their greenness. Now they are a 
 grimy desert. The easier way, as we said, to the 
 Abbey is by tram from Howard Square ; the con- 
 ductor will put you down at the old Copper- works 
 crossing, where you can turn down the line to the 
 gate of the Abbey. The ruin, in its extraordinary 
 gloomy predicament of smoke-soiled, weather-worn 
 and hopeless decay, is like nothing else in the 
 countryside. Its architecture, too, is confusing at 
 first, because the Hoby family converted the place 
 into a Tudor seat in the year 1650. Tudor windows 
 and gables are seen here and there incongruously 
 
150 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 wedded by the ivy to the old Norraan arches and 
 parapets. The Hoby house is at the right-hand 
 corner as you enter. The nave and choir of the 
 church are easily recognisable ; and so are some 
 of the living apartments — the abbot's lodging and 
 the broken inner wall of the refectory. After the 
 first melancholy of the ruins has passed from the 
 explorer's mind, and a working acquaintance with 
 the place and its details has been set up by an 
 hour or two's investigation, he begins to restore 
 the faded colours and ancient splendour of the 
 magnificent picture of the Abbey by Lewis 
 Morgan wg : — 
 
 ' ' Like the sky of the Vale of Ebron is its covering ; 
 weighty is the lead that roofs this abode — the dark-blue 
 canopy of the dwellings of the godly. Every colour is seen 
 in the crystal windows ; every fair and high-wrought form 
 beams through them like rays of the sun-portals of radiant 
 guardians. Here are seen the gold-adorned choir, the nave, 
 the gilded tabernacle work, the pinnacles ; on the glass, 
 imperial arms ; on the ceiling, kingly bearings ; and on the 
 surrounding border the shields of princes, the arms of Neath 
 of a hundred ages ; the arms of the best men under the 
 crown of Harry. The vast and lofty roof is like the spark- 
 ling heavens on high ; above are seen archangels' forms ; the 
 floor beneath is for the people of the earth, all the tribe of 
 Babel — for them it is wrought of variegated stone. The 
 bells, the benedictions, and the peaceful songs of praise, 
 proclaim the peaceful thanksgivings of the White Monks." 
 
 The White Monks were Cistercians. At the dis- 
 solution of the monasteries the revenues were 
 valued at £150 per annum. When the Hoby 
 family gave up residence here, it fell presently 
 into the state of a kind of Cadgers' Hall, and was 
 allowed to run into utter neglect. At present, it 
 is well cared for by the Dynevor familv, whose 
 
THE VALE OF NEATH 151 
 
 property it eventually became. But all the sur- 
 roundings, the wild marsh, the smoky desolation 
 made by man, seem to call out for decay. 
 
 Richard de Granville, who founded the Abbey 
 about 1120, is said to have been tormented by 
 remorse for his sins — we can hardly suppose by 
 qualms for his sins against the Welsh, because 
 those did not count for much in the Norman esti- 
 mate — and his remorse, taking urgency in a mortal 
 dream, led him to think of bribing the Church and 
 Heaven by the truly munificent bribe of Neath 
 Abbey. The Welsh name for the place, "Abbaty 
 Glyn Nedd," the Abbot's House in the Vale of 
 Neath, suggests that its surroundings were once 
 fair enough to be ranked with the wilder natural 
 beauties of a vale still famous for them. The 
 effigy of Abbot Adam of Carmarthen, that used to 
 lie in a field near the Abbey, is now removed to a 
 safer spot in the grounds of Court Herbert. 
 
 But the water of Nedd that goes seaward past 
 the old "Abbaty" is one of the most incalculable 
 of the wanton rivers of this river-shot country. 
 Above the town, the stream brings one into a 
 country of watery sensations and rocky surprises — 
 a country of the water-fall and the water-kelpie, 
 and of countless legends. Every turn of the Vale 
 starts a half -forgotten folk-tale and a lurking tra- 
 dition of the kind that fed the mediaeval tales with 
 Welsh furmety. 
 
 Pont Neath Vaughan is the base from which to 
 explore the upper Vale of Neath and its waterfalls. 
 As the name declares, it bridges the Neath (or 
 Nedd), and it stands very near the confluence of 
 that stream and its wild tributary, the Mellte. 
 The road from Glyn Neath Station, 2± miles away, 
 runs alongside the railway line on leaving that 
 
152 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 station for a space of two hundred yards, and then 
 dodges under a railway-arch, and so makes for the 
 river, which it crosses. Then, turning presently 
 north, it follows the old Neath and Merthyr Canal, 
 skirting Aberpergwm Park, with its pleasant hall 
 standing ba«k towards the wooded hill, capped 
 by Craig Llwyd. In this hillside are one or two 
 shy streamlets, with rarely visited cascades, quite 
 worth exploration. They may be reached by a 
 rough lane, turning left at the lower end of Glyn 
 Neath village, and ascending the hill. A daughter 
 of Aberpergwm it was — Jane Williams — who did 
 good service to Welsh music by collecting many of 
 the airs in her volume of songs, and became the 
 pioneer of the " Welsh Folk Song Society " that is 
 now doing the same lyric service. 
 
 Passing Aberpergwm, the road crosses the canal, 
 and arrives at the Lamb and Flag Inn, an old 
 coaching inn. Another turn right, and then 
 another half-mile straight ahead will bring you 
 to the straggling village of Glyn Neath, and so 
 to Pont Neath Vaughan. Thence again the road 
 zigzags through a twisted street and splits, send- 
 ing one branch down to the Mellte glen and on to 
 Craig-y-Dinas, while another climbs the bank on 
 the main road to Ystradfellte. On the water-side 
 one must not be discouraged by a brick- works nor 
 the gate of a powder-works, for a footbridge leads 
 thence across the stream, and turns to skirt Craig- 
 y-Dinas, rock of many legends, which indeed still 
 looks ominous. 
 
 As the face of Craig-y-Dinas shows you at a 
 glance, the stone has been quarried heavily in the 
 last fifty years. Pictures of it as it was a century 
 ago, allowing for a little artistic exaggeration, 
 show a more giantesque front ; but it still looks a 
 
 
THE VALE OF NEATH 153 
 
 strange legend-provoking monster with its lime- 
 stone shoulder starting up clean-cut in the Vale. 
 From above, and standing on its brink, one 
 imagines a fall over it to be a dead-sure thing ; 
 but a few years ago a drunken man incontinently 
 fell from it, and, extraordinary to relate, recovered 
 from his wounds and broken bones. 
 
 Beneath the rock, Craig-y-Dinas, lie sleeping 
 and awaiting the day of Welsh deliverance — so 
 runs one of the most mysterious of all the " Sleep- 
 ing Warriors " folk-tales — in a deep dreamless 
 sleep, the soldiers of Owain Lawgoch. Another 
 version makes the hero King Arthur himself. A 
 shepherd boy (so the story goes) cut a hazel-stick 
 from a tree that grew upon Craig-y-Dinas, and 
 went one market-day to the town of Neath. 
 There a stranger, an old wandering beggar-man 
 with a staff and a long grey beard, paused as the 
 boy passed by the lines of cattle, and fastening his 
 eyes on the hazel-stick asked its owner where he 
 got it. 
 
 " On Craig-y-Dinas ! " answered the boy. The 
 old beggar-man was seized with a trembling. 
 " Take me there ! " he said, " and you shall have 
 all the gold you can carry for your trouble ! So 
 the boy led the old man up the vale to Craig-y- 
 Dinas, and up its sides, till he came to the place 
 where he had cut the hazel-wand. Close beside 
 was a cleft in the limestone, and this afforded a 
 narrow entrance to the top of a rude stairway, 
 descending into the rock. The old man pointed 
 the way, and the boy entered, and so descending 
 they found their way into a dimly lit, lofty cavern, 
 ten times larger than Porth-yr-Ogov. Here the 
 dim light disclosed a confused array of sleeping 
 soldiers with their spears and shields and breast- 
 
154 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 plates stacked about them. One of these stacks 
 the boy in the half-darkness overturned, and the 
 noise disturbed the sleepers. In their midst slept 
 the chieftain, Owain of the Red Hand, and rising 
 amid them he stood up, asking, " Is the day 
 
 _ O » 
 
 come r 
 
 Whereupon the boy, who had been prompted 
 by the Grey Beggarman, answered, " No ! — Nagyw, 
 cysgwch eto ! " Cold with terror, the boy stood 
 watching as the warriors, with a sigh, sank again 
 into their deep slumbers. Then, remembering the 
 old man's words, he seized upon a leathern bag that 
 was full of golden coins and carried it off to his 
 guide, who bade him quickly return for more. But 
 when he would have entered the cave his hands 
 struck against the damp stones. He returned then 
 to ask the Beggarman what he should do. But 
 night had fallen by this, and the old fellow had 
 disappeared, and the boy found himself wandering 
 like one bewitched on the edges of Craig-y-Dinas. 
 After that night he was never able to find the 
 cave again ; and so the soldiers of Owain Lawgoch 
 still sleep there enchanted, waiting till the day of 
 deliverance shall come, when they shall start up, 
 full armed, to deliver the Cymric realm. 
 
 One of the things which suggest that Craig-y- 
 Dinas is really a bewitched place, is the fashion in 
 which the two streams, Mellte and Sychnant, have 
 cut their way on each side of it, with their two 
 distinct glens or cwms, steep and deep, within a 
 stone's throw of one another and yet divided by 
 this strange buttress of limestone. Moreover, the 
 Sychnant, as its name of Dry-brook tells, dispenses 
 with water at the latter part of its career under 
 the south-east side of Craig-y-Dinas, or commonly 
 so buries it out of sight that it does not count. 
 
THE VALE OF NEATH 155 
 
 A Cyclopean barrier of rocks, about three hundred 
 yards from the lower end, shuts off the cwm from 
 convenient exploration. The wildness of the Mellte 
 is rather spoilt by the powder-mills, but indeed 
 the picturesqueness of the place is mixed with 
 something evil and fantastic to a degree. What 
 we find at Craig-y-Dinas we find all through this 
 land of unaccountable glens and innumerable 
 waterfalls. 
 
 One more Craig-y-Dinas tradition, and we are 
 done with it. This story tells that the mysterious 
 Welsh faery-damsel, Blodeu-wedd (or Flower- 
 Aspect), who was made out of flowers and was 
 converted into an owl, according to one of the 
 Mabinogion, was really entombed under Craig-y- 
 Dinas : that is, if Meirchion's daughter was the 
 same as Blodeu-wedd, who had a fashioner, but 
 no human father in the ordinary sense. 
 
 A modern rhymer of old Welsh romances has 
 put the wild forest legend of Flower-Aspect, or 
 Blodeu-wedd, into a mysterious lyric : — 
 
 THE FLOWER MAIDEN. 
 
 "They could not find a mortal wife, 
 And made him one of flowers : 
 Her eyes were made of violets, 
 
 Wet with their morning showers. 
 
 They took the blossom of the Oak, 
 
 The blossom of the broom, 
 The blossom of the meadow-sweet, 
 
 To be her body's bloom. 
 
 But they forgot from Mother Earth 
 
 To beg the kindling coal : 
 They made for him a wife of flowers 
 But they forgot the soul," 
 
156 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 The sound of falling waters is heard, resounding 
 in many pitches and rough tones, from Craig-y- 
 Dinas ; for there are certain small falls on the 
 Sychnant within easy hail. The Sychnant swiftly 
 descends from very high ground ; and a track may 
 be found from the upper end of Craig-y-Dinas, 
 which passes a hut and then rapidly ascends the 
 hill of a thousand feet off that looks towards 
 Hirwain, some five miles away, and the mineral 
 highlands that lie about it. 
 
 The Sychnant exhausted, you can, by passing 
 to the left side of the tool-cabin, at the upper side 
 of Craig-y-Dinas, follow a path along and well 
 above the east bank of the Mellte, until you 
 reach, after half an hour's going, the Hepste 
 stream, which flows from the Hirwain highlands 
 into the Mellte. On the Hepste, at some five 
 hundred or six hundred yards above the juncture 
 of the streams, are two falls — the Lower and 
 Upper Cilhepste Falls. The path you are following 
 will bring you to the bank of the Hepste, in the 
 midst of the Lower Falls, which descend in three 
 cascades. This, as we come nearer, is, after a 
 heavy rain, a very definite Niagaraean roar, 
 angry and profound. The fall is one of the 
 finest of this series. It is peculiarly set, so as 
 to afford usually a safe and dry passage right 
 beneath the water. The sheer fall of the stream 
 is over what would be a very respectable house- 
 side — to be accurate, fifty-three feet. The foot- 
 ing under its water is, except at one point, 
 owing to some dislodged stone, quite safe, so 
 that even timorous people need not be afraid. 
 Having crossed beneath the Cilhepste Fall, you 
 need not return, but can follow the path that 
 bears off towards the Mellte, skirting the under- 
 
THE VALE OF NEATH 157 
 
 woods, above the Hepste, with a view to the 
 Clun-Gwyn Falls, passing again the Lower Hepste 
 cascades on the way ; and when one of them is 
 below and one above, striking off up the Mellte, 
 and then down through the trees of the glen. 
 
 The lowest, and finest, of the Clun - Gwyn 
 Falls is reached in some five minutes from this 
 point, and not far above the glen pool. This 
 waterfall, although so differently placed from the 
 Cilhepste, and not so abrupt and not nearly so 
 high, is by connoisseurs thought incomparably 
 finer. The pool below is haunted by a fabulous 
 and monstrous fish, that cannot be caught, and 
 that has the uncanny peculiarity of appropriating 
 all the hooks he swallows. Keeping up stream, 
 and humouring the left bank, you are brought in 
 a few hundred yards to the second of the Clun- 
 Gwyn Falls (it is easy, by the way, to confuse 
 what appear to be short cuts across from the 
 Hepste). This second, or middle, of the Falls is 
 more dispersed ; but its rocks are strikingly water- 
 cut and strangely fringed with trees and shrubs. 
 In late autumn the colours of the trees become 
 softened here to very unusual hues ; and the 
 autumn rains easily convert the Mellte into a 
 really imposing stream, and make these falls even 
 look majestic. 
 
 The upper Clun-Gwyn Fall is only to be ap- 
 proached by some lively skirmishing, now on the 
 east bank, now on the west, taking advantage of 
 the latter bank, and the track skirting the fringe 
 of trees above it, as far as the mouth of the upper 
 of two brooks that enter the Mellte by the east 
 bank. A footbridge crosses the Mellte at the 
 turn above, and then the path is easy to Hendre 
 Farm whence a road runs to Cwm Porth Farm. 
 
158 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 There a guide may be had to take you to 
 the famous river cavern, Porth-yr-Ogof (Gate of 
 the Cave). From Cwm Porth it is quite worth 
 while to proceed on to the hamlet of Ystrad 
 Fellte, after exploring the cave, which is certainly 
 one of the nine wonders of Breconshire.* A couple 
 of candles or a good lantern and a box of blue 
 and red flares ought to form part of your equip- 
 ment in exploring the cave. Otherwise not half 
 its mysteries and secret recesses can be discovered, 
 and the Mellte, coming out of the darkness with 
 much rushing and grumbling, is no safe guide. 
 The best way down into the mouth is by a track 
 from the upper side. The appearance of the dry 
 river-bed is uncanny, and the mouth of the cave, 
 with a huge lintel that seems intended for a vast 
 entrance whose lower half has been filled up, 
 the issuing stream, and the general strangeness 
 of the surroundings, all speak of a kind of geolo- 
 gical necromancy. It is many years ago now 
 since the last legend was added. A strange man 
 made his way to the cave, with a gun — led by 
 what sense of the sombre spirit of the place one 
 can only conjecture grimly — and there shot him- 
 self. His body was found eventually by a passing 
 shepherd's collie-dog, and now lies in an unknown 
 grave, I believe, in Ystrad Fellte churchyard. 
 
 Once the strange portal is entered, although 
 there is such ample space, the uneven pitch of 
 the rocks and the irregularities natural to the 
 mining of such an indefatigable mole of a river, 
 make the exploration difficult. Now one is on a 
 
 * The boundary-line of the two counties, Brecon and 
 Glamorgan, was passed at Pont Neath Vaughan, and is 
 denned westward by the course of the Nedd and Perddyn, 
 and eastward by the course of the Sychnant. 
 
THE VALE OF NEATH 159 
 
 rock, and the head of the Afanc appears, and 
 now, unless one is careful, one is in danger of 
 slipping over a wet stone into Peredur's pool. The 
 roof is hung with linie pendants and other stalac- 
 titic fantasies. On one side of the cave a side- 
 passage runs off, and straitens itself in the stone. 
 The whole effect of the interior is uncanny and 
 unreal ; and, unless one has been accustomed to the 
 interior of lead- and iron-mines, utterly bewildering. 
 The further subterranean channel of the river be- 
 tween the cave, where it makes its disappearance, 
 and its reappearing point below, is 250 yards in all. 
 It is hard to credit Iolo's story of the ten-year-old 
 boy who once scrambled right through the under- 
 ground tunnel. But possibly the channel at its 
 exit is more choked now than used to be the case 
 in Iolo's day. 
 
 From Ystrad Fellte the turnpike leads across the 
 uplands, to Pont-Felin-Fach on the Nedd River, here 
 known in English as the Little Neath, and the 
 Upper and Lower Nedd Falls. There you are 
 within easy range of the Perddyn ; and the Perddyn 
 has two falls, which are among the best in the 
 district, including the Scwd Gwladys, or Lady's 
 Fall. Its aspect is a little like that of the Cilhepste 
 Falls, with a jutting ledge, and a space behind the 
 water, sufficient only in very dry seasons, however, 
 to carry you to the other side, which there is no 
 object in reaching. It is a considerable pull up 
 from this fall to Scwd Einion Gam, which is the 
 loftiest of all the Vale of Neath falls, and quite one 
 of the finest ; its setting in the rocks and trees 
 is most wildly effective. 
 
 This may seem a long diversion of the coast 
 itinerary But to know a coast, you must know 
 the streams too that form its abers and that have 
 
160 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 joined forces with the sea to carve it out. You 
 watch with a sense of quickened acquaintance the 
 river Nedd flow out and meet the tide, when you 
 return from the two days' adventure of the valley 
 of waterfalls. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 SWANSEA AND SWANSEA BAY — ANN KEMBLE — THE 
 AUTHOR OF "TWM SHON CATTI " — LANDOR 
 
 Swansea Bay, the bay of Walter Savage Landor's 
 delight, is still one of the fairest harbours you 
 can wish to see. It describes a divine curve, whose 
 beauty not all the copper-smoke on its shores can 
 destroy. More than half a lifetime ago the pre- 
 sent chronicler spent an autumn and winter at 
 Swansea ; and the place still carries traces of a 
 child's fanciful town about it with exaggerated 
 streets and houses. There is something, too, in 
 its air, in which copper-smoke, salt-water and tar 
 seem blended with the usual smells of commerce — 
 a smack of antiquity that threatens to betray a 
 secret at every turn. Swansea, indeed, is indi- 
 vidual, as great towns go — bless its ugly face and 
 dirty splendour ! It has thrust its castle into a 
 backyard — a man may walk through the town 
 to-day without seeing the tower above the Post 
 Office. It has not found itself architecturally. 
 The only really modern sign of man's handiwork is 
 to be seen at the great docks, at which the last 
 buttresses of the Castle stare down in wonder. Its 
 churches, railway stations, public buildings, houses 
 and shops, are quite unworthy of its immense 
 wealth. Yet it was on the programme a century 
 
 11 161 
 
162 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 ago that Swansea would be the civic queen, the 
 London, of South Wales. As it is, she is content, 
 it seems, to be the Cinderella : rather glorying than 
 otherwise in her cinders. 
 
 Swansea is in Welsh " Abertawe," which is more 
 patent than the English name, since it places the 
 town at the mouth or aber of the Tawe River. The 
 name Swansea may come from Sweyn, sea-pirate 
 and " Black Pagan," a Danish invader of the early 
 centuries, who went down in a sea-fight off Sully. 
 The other derivation from swans, or sea-swine 
 (porpoises) we cannot away with. The Tawe stream 
 flows down from that wildly desolate, lonely lake 
 on the east side of the Van mountain, Llyn-y-fan- 
 fawr, and takes a south-westerly course through 
 the lower slopes until it pours itself out into 
 Swansea Bay, and makes a port of Swansea town. 
 
 If you enter the town via Landore, you accom- 
 pany the river for the last and most dismal part of 
 its course. Emerging then from the Great Western 
 station, you can turn down High Street, following 
 the trams ; at its foot Castle Street continues 
 the thoroughfare, suddenly contracted at this 
 point. At the lower end of the next narrow 
 stretch of street you reach the old centre of the 
 town, whose heart and head were its Castle and 
 Castellan. Two different sets of Post Office build- 
 ings have eaten up part of the Castle site, but 
 some of the old walls may be seen behind it. A 
 small second-hand book-shop (where you can pick 
 up rare Welsh books), near the gates of a wheel- 
 wright's yard, may help to direct you to the north 
 side of the ruin. Thence the Castle extended for 
 a space of seventy yards originally, northward 
 behind what is now Worcester Place, and south- 
 ward along Castle Square, commanding, because of 
 
SWANSEA AND SWANSEA BAY 163 
 
 its position above the riverside, the whole waterway 
 and network of the great North Dock. 
 
 One afternoon David and I turned in at the 
 lower entrance of the Castle yard, and were gazing 
 at the walls and wondering how to get into the 
 Tower, when an ancient dame appeared on the 
 scene. We followed her up an outer flight of 
 steps, but she did not offer much encouragement 
 to explorers. 
 
 " The stairs," she explained to us, " were thick to 
 your ankles with dirt and dust, and some of the 
 steps were gone so bad you couldn't go up to the 
 top. The Duke of Bewfort [Beaufort] couldn't 
 bear having the old place touched — ' don't ye so 
 much as lay a finger on it,' he said." 
 
 A most unseemly sort of midden lay below, full 
 of ashes and refuse. David asked her if the Duke 
 would not have that touched either? 
 
 " No," she said, with a confidential change of 
 tone ; " he will not have the old place touched, 
 His man once went to lime that wall, and the Duke 
 was very vexed at his doing it : ' Never you do such 
 a thing again ! ' No, he will not have a finger lifted 
 in the old place. Some say he wants to come and 
 live in it himself ! " 
 
 I did not like to observe that there was a mean 
 between whitewashing the old walls and keeping 
 the dirt out ; for we wished to conciliate her, and 
 prove we did not mind the dust on the Tower stair. 
 Finally, grumbling some last objections, she went 
 for a key, and let us into a match-boarded room 
 hung from end to end with bits, bridles, saddles, 
 and other trappings of the 1st Glamorgan Terri- 
 torials. This helped to bring back something of 
 the military illusion of the fortress. A small door, 
 and a dark winding stair within it, led on from this 
 
164 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 chamber ; and our guide supplied a long wax 
 taper to light us up — a very necessary weapon, as 
 it proved. She adjured us to be sure and look 
 through a hole at a stage half-way up, when we 
 heard a noise like a jackdaw, to see the mighty 
 works of the old town clock. Evidently for her 
 this was the wonder of the Castle. We heard the 
 clock, just as she had said, and we gazed eagerly 
 through the crevice into the small chamber whence 
 the noise came, but saw no such spectre or double 
 of a long-imprisoned clock-maker as the noise 
 seemed to promise. Some further stumbling rounds 
 of the dark staircase, and we passed a door and 
 parapet ; and a last dark flight and ladder led out 
 into a kind of crow's nest with a dismantled rusty 
 crown-piece filling nearly the whole of it. From 
 this perch the sudden spectacle of the wealthy and 
 dirty capital of Glamorganshire was to be seen in 
 one confusing orbit in the afternoon sun. 
 
 The far-spread enginery and long lines of the 
 docks and great ships came first ; then part of a 
 street, a bit of timber-yard, the roof of a new 
 hotel, a pretentious draper's palace, a bleak hill 
 with a row of poor houses half-way up it, a corner 
 of a slum, and many belching chimneys, all pitched 
 together in an extraordinarily affecting disorder, 
 so that one wished for a Meryon's genius and 
 etching-needle to record it. Beyond all lay the 
 curved bay, of a bright azure in the sun : like an 
 angel in a blue robe asleep on the brink of a cinder- 
 heap. All the materials for a great city were here, 
 but in what a state of neglect and chaos ! 
 ***** 
 
 Swansea Castle, since the days of Beauchamp de 
 Newburgh, when it was built, has kept but a 
 meagre account of its sieges and sallies. The 
 
SWANSEA AND SWANSEA BAY 165 
 
 need for such a fortress arose when the Normans 
 decided to hold Gower, and saw that a few links 
 more must be added in the district to the lengthen- 
 ing chain of castles. Swansea Castle was on the 
 whole lucky in the Welsh sieges that followed. 
 In 1113 Griffith ap Rhys, and in 1192 Rhys ap 
 Griffith, invested it : in both sieges Welsh quarrels 
 saved it. Gower was raided from end to end, 
 during more than one of the assaults on Swansea 
 Castle ; Swansea town was ransacked and burnt 
 more than once when the Castle escaped. 
 
 One of the first things to strike the invader of 
 the Castle to-day is the likeness of the little 
 parapet arches to those of the Bishop's Palace 
 ruins at St. David's. They were built, in fact, by the 
 same builder, Bishop Gower, about the year 1342. 
 Previously to that the Castle had had some hard 
 knocks ; and its most famous captain, William de 
 Braos, contriving to offend the King, was obliged 
 to leave it and fly to France, where, tradition says, 
 he died. When his kinsman, Giles, Bishop of Here- 
 ford, held it, that is in 1215, Llewelyn the Great 
 assailed it in force, and appears to have over- 
 thrown it with many of its dependent castles in 
 the Gower castelry. " In Swansea," sang Llywarch 
 ab Llewelyn — 
 
 "In Swansea, that peaceless place, 
 The castle- walls are rent ; 
 A peace, like death, prevails. 
 
 In Swansea, that strong-walled fort, 
 The Key of England, the Saxon is slain ; 
 All the women are widows ! " 
 
 The Castle changed owners many times, the 
 De Braos family often appearing as its lords. But 
 
166 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 in 1324-1325 it passed into the De Spencers' hands ; 
 and then for a last tinie, and for only a short time, 
 to the heirs of the De Braos' house, the De Mow- 
 brays. Owain Glyndwr was the only Welshman 
 who assailed it with any success after its rebuilding 
 by Bishop Gower ; but he did not seriously damage 
 the actual structure. In 1470 we find a charter 
 allotting the Castle (with Oystermouth and Kilve) 
 to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke ; and an 
 heiress of that stock carried it then over to the 
 Beaufort family, its present owners. During the 
 Civil War it saw some fighting again, and for the 
 last time. A local historian can tell us the tale : — 
 
 "There is a libellous tradition that it was taken and 
 retaken three times within the same day, and no blow struck 1 
 but this is only a malicious invention. At some time in its 
 history there must have been hard fighting and slaughter 
 here, for when the foundations of the Post Office were dug 
 in the Castle precincts, no less than fifteen skeletons were 
 found in a very small area. Walter Thomas was the Governor 
 in the King's interest, and Colonel Philip Jones succeeded to 
 the command of the garrison on behalf of the Parliament, 
 when Oliver Cromwell was 'Lorde of this towne.' On the 
 3rd March, 1647, it was ordered by Parliament 'thatSwanzey 
 Castle be dis-garrisoned, and the works slighted.' Later on, 
 the fortress, probably then much dismantled, suffered the 
 indignity of being let to Matthew Davis, a local Roundhead, 
 for 99 years, at £2 per annum." 
 
 There the record may end. 
 
 Leaving the Castle, and continuing your way 
 then to the lower town, you can go down Wind 
 Street to gain the older shipping purlieus. There, 
 at the point where the railway bridge and its 
 iron girders cross the street, groups of sailors 
 standing about remind you how large a part 
 the seafaring life plays at Swansea. 
 
SWANSEA AND SWANSEA BAY 167 
 
 One morning, when we had missed a train at 
 the London and North-Western station, David 
 beguiled me into a tour of the older docks. There 
 he contrived to strike up acquaintance first with 
 a ship-painter who was painting the footbridge 
 over the dock-gates, and then with a friendly " hen 
 wraig," clad in the true Glamorgan style — double 
 gown and petticoat, and thick flat-straw hat with 
 frilled border, who sold black lavar-bread and 
 cockles on the quayside. He boarded next a 
 French barque, the Demoiselle of Bordeaux, and 
 discoursed queer French to the captain. 
 
 To all which the captain smiled and responded 
 in easy-going English, " Take a look over her, 
 my boy, and welcome, but excuse me, as 1 have 
 to run up town ! " 
 
 In that circuit of a single pool, the smaller of 
 the Swansea docks, we saw, as if they had been 
 got for a museum, nearly every kind of vessel 
 that has sailed water from the day of Nelson 
 onward. Coasting vessels like the Pierre of Bor- 
 deaux, the Jean of Roscoff, the Polly and the Lucy 
 Smith, and great steam-vessels like the Duke of 
 Wellington. Around us the warehouses and 
 wharves gave out mixed odours of spice and 
 grain, and the water provided others, not easy 
 to analyse, not over sweet, yet remarkably smack- 
 ing of the salt sea. 
 
 It surprises one to turn suddenly amid these 
 shipping places and to spy the Royal Institution, 
 whose colonnade, seen in this unexpected seafarer's 
 place, gives a classic air to the street that leads 
 on to the South Dock. 
 
 Entering the place, we found on the staircase 
 some interesting old pictures, a portrait of Sir 
 Hans Sloane (of Sloane Museum fame), one or 
 
168 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 two portraits of gentlemen in armour or in scarlet, 
 a Dutch classic piece by Jordans, and many prints 
 and documents tinged with Swansea antiquity. 
 Among these was to be discovered the veritable 
 marriage deed or contract of affiance between 
 Edward II., then Prince of Wales, and Isabel, 
 daughter of Philip IV. of France, dated May 20, 
 1303. We know how the story of these two ill- 
 mated people ended, and the disaster that the 
 weakness of the one, and the over-weening 
 strength and ambition of the other, " the she- 
 wolf of France," helped to invoke. It was, in fact, 
 due to its tragic ending that this document in 
 the case came to be left at Swansea. Edward, 
 flying to Wales from his fate, waited at Swansea, 
 hoping, as one story tells, to get a vessel and cross 
 to France. But either no vessel was forthcoming, 
 or Swansea grew too hot for safety, and Edward 
 turned back in haste to Neath, leaving behind 
 him all the impedimenta he could not safely 
 carry away. Long afterwards a small oak chest 
 containing this and other documents was handed 
 over to a Swansea doctor by some poor people 
 who could not pay his doctor's fees. Probably 
 it had been lying in the garret or cellar of one 
 of the queer tenements that filled the Swansea 
 slums at the time this transaction took place. 
 
 In the cases upstairs will be found stones and 
 fossils that were privy to the making of the 
 coal measures and of the rocks that give the 
 Glamorganshire scenery its individuality. Here, 
 too, are the broken relics of the Bone Cave, Bacon 
 Hole, Paviland, and others in Gower, which ought 
 to be well scrutinised before you go thither. 
 Among the cave-creatures whose bones are to 
 be seen are the rhinoceros, elephant, bear, wolf, 
 
SWANSEA AND SWANSEA BAY 169 
 
 hyena, badger, polecat, red deer, and buffalo. 
 The "Red Lady of Paviland" may have seen 
 these creatures in the flesh ; but she keeps her 
 own counsel. In another room some of the 
 strange fish that have swum into Swansea Bay 
 may be found surviving their day — whale, sea- 
 devil, sun-fish, shark ! And in another room are 
 coins, traders' tokens, old seals, found in the 
 district. Here, dryly observes the best of familiar 
 historians, " here also are mummies, the key of 
 Oystermouth Castle, and a cast of the head of 
 Ann of Swansea." 
 
 Poor Ann of Swansea ! She still haunts the 
 fancy of the sentimental tourist as he wanders 
 through Swansea to-day and catches sight of 
 the bay, remembering her lament : — 
 
 "The restless waves that lave the shore, 
 Joining the tide's tumultuous roar, 
 In hollow murmurs seem to say : 
 'Peace is not found in Swansea Bay.'" 
 
 Ann deserves her niche in the gallery because 
 she was one of the few modern romance-writers 
 who have lived and died in Wales. Her stories 
 are forgotten, all save that of her own strange 
 life. " Ann of Swansea " was one of the Kembles, 
 sister to John Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. After 
 an unfortunate marriage to a scamp (who deceived 
 her, being married already) she was only rescued 
 from the extreme of poverty by her richer rela- 
 tions. Then, in 1792, she married a Mr. Hatton, 
 and went with him to New York. Returning to 
 England, after an absence of eight years, they 
 settled in Swansea, and kept for five years the 
 " Bathing House," an hotel and house of assembly. 
 
170 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 This did not succeed. On the death of Mr. Hatton, 
 in 1806, his wife went to Kidwelly, and, notwith- 
 standing her lameness, kept a school for dancing 
 and deportment. In 1809 she writes again from 
 Swansea, where she continued to reside, at No., 15, 
 Park Street, on an income of £90 a year, allowed 
 by her relatives until her death in 1838. She lies 
 buried in the St. Mary's New Cemetery, behind St. 
 John's Church, but no one knows the precise spot. 
 She wrote three volumes of poems and some 
 fifteen or sixteen novels, one of which, The 
 Chronicles of an Illustrious House, created a 
 ferment in Swansea because of its local allusions. 
 A photograph from a picture of Ann of Swansea 
 is in the Deffett-Francis Collection in the Art 
 Gallery. 
 
 Another more original tale-teller than Ann 
 of Swansea was that eccentric creature, I. J. 
 Llewelyn Prichard, the author of Twin Shon 
 Catti, who wrote, too, in his Heroines of Welsh 
 History a brief biography of Maud de Haia, 
 Moll Walbe, of Hay Castle and Swansea Castle. 
 Prichard spent the latter part of his life at 
 Swansea, not very happily, I fear. Local gossip 
 has it that he was derided by little boys and the 
 vulgar " on account of his artificial nose, which 
 was kept in its place by his spectacles. He fell 
 asleep one day over his books in his poor lodging 
 at Thomas Street, and his death was accelerated 
 by the burns he got from his clothes and papers 
 taking fire." Besides Twin Shon Catti he 
 wrote much on Welsh subjects, and everything 
 he wrote was written with a certain queer force 
 and whimsicality, shown alike in his way of 
 seeing things and in his way of putting them. 
 
 Twm Shon Catti he described as "the first 
 
SWANSEA AND SWANSEA BAY 171 
 
 attempted thing that could bear the title of a 
 Welsh novel." He was led to attempt it by the 
 success of an absurd play in London, played at 
 the Coburg Theatre, called — 
 
 TWM JOHN CATTI ; 
 Ob, "The Welch Rob Roy." 
 
 "This second title," he says, "which confounded 
 the poor Cambrians, was a grand expedient of the 
 dramatist to excite the attention of the Londoners, 
 who naturally associated it with the hero of the 
 celebrated Scotch novel ; the bait was immediately 
 swallowed. Great was the surprise of the sons 
 of the Cymry to find their practical joker, Twm 
 Shon Catti, elevated to the degree of a high- 
 hearted injured chieftain, uttering heroic speeches 
 and ultimately dying for his Ellen a hero's death." 
 
 The play was based directly on a tale in a queer, 
 half-humorous volume called The Inn-Keeper s 
 Album, and published in 1823. " Twm John 
 Catty : the Welch Rob Roy " is much the longest 
 and absurdest story in the book, written in mock- 
 heroic prose and in defiance of time and history. 
 The characters are of all ages : " Owen Glendower " 
 appears by the side of " Twm John." Twm himself, 
 invincible by men, has to be got rid of by light- 
 ning. Prichard's Welsh wit was revolted by this 
 stage-travesty of Twm, converted into a paste- 
 board hero. Fielding, teased by the sentimental 
 art of Richardson's Pamela, turned to Joseph 
 Andrews, and this anti-romancer wrote his 
 humorous novel of Twm Shon Catti in protest 
 against a high-falutin play. 
 
 Prichard wrote a book of poems, too, which was 
 published by Leigh Hunt and his brother John in 
 
172 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 1824. It is nothing like so original as his tale- 
 writing ; but the longest poem, " The Land Beneath 
 the Sea," has a fine subject, the drowning of the 
 " Cantref-y-Gwaelod " or Bottom Hundred, and 
 some fine passages. One of these bears quoting 
 in the account of the drowning of the " Cantref " ; 
 but the absurd two lines that stick in the ear 
 persistently, out of Prichard's Welsh Minstrelsy, 
 are printed on the title-page : — 
 
 "Oh, list to the minstrel who sweeps the Welsh telyn, 
 Hear, hear ye the harpings of Jeffery Llewelyn ! " 
 
 Prichard seems to have at one time gone touring 
 in South Wales with some theatrical " fit-up " com- 
 panies ; and one cannot help wondering if he in his 
 function of stage-manager also produced a version 
 of " Twm Shon Catti." His own history, could one 
 but recover it, would be as entertaining as any- 
 thing he invented. The date of his death is given 
 by Asaph in the Dictionary of Eminent Welshmen 
 as 1874 ; but the third edition of Twm Shon 
 Catti, 1871, mentions his death at about a year's 
 remove. 
 
 Walter Savage Landor spent three of the most 
 precious years of his life between Swansea and 
 Tenby. His first book of poems had been published 
 in London by T. Cadell and W. Davies in 1795, and 
 not long afterwards he seems to have left London 
 for South Wales on an allowance of a hundred and 
 fifty pounds a year. He led for the most part a 
 very solitary life : 4 I lived chiefly among woods 
 which are now killed with copper works and took 
 my walks over sandy sea-coast deserts then covered 
 with low roses and thousands of nameless flowers 
 and plants trodden by the naked feet of the Welsh 
 
SWANSEA AND SWANSEA BAY 173 
 
 peasantry and trackless." If this is true of his 
 lonely days, it is certain that he found the friends 
 a young poet looks for. His earliest Welsh love 
 he called lone, which was his poetic rendering of 
 Jones : — 
 
 "lone was the first; her name is heard 
 Among the hills of Cambria, north and south, — 
 But there of shorter stature, like herself ; 
 I placed a comely vowel at its close 
 And drove an ugly sibilant away." 
 
 He found other loves in Wales, one Irish, whom 
 he called Ianthe, and one English, Rose Aylmer — 
 whom he met at Tenby. It was Ianthe who lent 
 him the book, a history of romance by Clara 
 Reeve, in which he found the Arabian tale that 
 struck him by its sombre antique splendour. Gebir 
 is the same root as Gibraltar, and the story is 
 Spanish and Moorish ; but the colour in it, we may 
 be inclined to decide, is partly Welsh. He began 
 to write it in Latin as Geberus ; but returned to 
 English. Then, wandering in North Wales over 
 the grouse-moors near Bala : — 
 
 "Above the lakes, along the lea 
 
 Where gleams the darkly yellow Dee ; 
 Through crags, o'er cliffs," 
 
 he bore his precious verses with him and there 
 contrived to lose them. Some months later they 
 found their author again at Swansea : — 
 
 "When over Tawey's sands they came 
 Brighter flew up my winter flame, 
 And each old cricket sang alert 
 With joy that they had come unhurt." 
 
174 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 He was under the influence of Pindar and 
 Milton, two powerful demons (as Blake would say), 
 when he wrote Gebir, and the style is often Mil- 
 tonic, and sometimes great. No doubt it has 
 Landor's noble defects ; it is writ in marble, and 
 the rhythm is stiff and wants variety. But it was 
 a great poem for a boy of twenty to write. It can 
 be best read, not continuously but in episodes, as 
 one walks the shore of Swansea Bay, where many 
 of its close-compacted pages were written. 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 PIRATES' ISLAND — LUNDY— MARISCO'S CASTLE — 
 BENSON'S CAVE— THE DEVIL'S LIMEKILN — 
 AMYAS LEIGH 
 
 One of the finest sea-sensations on or off the 
 British coast is to be had at Lundy, which lies 
 within a couple of hours' steam of Swansea. I 
 first saw the island in June, when daybreak begins 
 before 3 a.m., and we did not take the shortest 
 passage, but set sail early from the Mumbles Pier 
 on the Welsh side of the Channel. A fair westerly 
 breeze cleared off the last of the rain as we started, 
 and the colours of the Glamorgan hills grew vivid 
 all around the superb curve of Swansea Bay — the 
 bay of Landor's delight. We did not sight Lundy 
 till just upon noon, for we had a long tack to make 
 in order to call at Ilfracombe. We were followed 
 all the way, I remember, by a single gull that 
 seemed to keep itself poised exactly above the 
 jackstaff at the stern. Its only mate was a canary 
 whose cage hung in the foc'sle. That bird never 
 saw the sea, but the gull must have heard the 
 creature's incessant indoor shrilling. 
 
 As we neared Lundy, a darker sky and a threa- 
 tening squall made the line of cliffs look angry and 
 sepian. Before we got into closer quarters the sun 
 was out again, and what had seemed all granite 
 
 175 
 
176 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 changed into grassy steeps and fern slopes, ending 
 in a sheer drop at one-third of their height. But 
 round the anchorage, beneath the jutting Lametor 
 — a peninsula of precipices — where now the new 
 lighthouse stands, and the opposite cliffs, all was so 
 shut in and so steep that one was puzzled to know 
 how one could get up to the roof of the island. 
 We put off in a boat to the beach, for there is no 
 proper ship-landing, and there we were met by a 
 whiff of warm, perfumed air, smelling of sun- 
 heated bracken — an air that hardly belonged to 
 this pirate-cove, where everything ought to reek 
 of tar and sea-salt. From this cove it is a sultry 
 climb in the June sun, and one is glad to leave the 
 wearisome road at the first chance and zigzag off 
 by a hanging by-path, which makes a short cut to 
 Marisco's Castle. The present lord of Lundy, the 
 Rev. Mr. Heaven, has a much more sheltered 
 stronghold in a cwm lying at the first angle inland 
 above the Lametor Cove. 
 
 As for Marisco, there is no space here to tell half 
 his story — with a suspected murder of his in a 
 London street to begin it. It is enough that, 
 flying from justice or injustice, he took refuge in 
 Lundy. We have already heard of him at Margam, 
 whose abbot got into trouble for sheltering him 
 and giving him sanctuary there. Matthew Paris 
 gives us the best picture of him, and relates how he 
 took up his eyrie here in a place inexpugnable, and 
 being exlex and King's traitor, proceeded to live 
 more pyratico. William de Marisco had, indeed, 
 seen a good deal of castle-building in Ireland 
 (where his father, Geoffrey, built the castles of 
 Killaloe and Ballyleague), and the plain square 
 keep of the Castle — all that is left of it — which he 
 built to be his stronghold on Lundy, still shows 
 
PIRATES' ISLAND 177 
 
 how good a builder he could be. To-day you open 
 a door in the thick wall of the keep, to feel 
 bewildered at what it discovers. For the interior 
 is filled with three or four small whitewashed 
 cottages, which make it into a snug alley, just such 
 as you may see in the heart of some crowded city. 
 Step outside the door again, and sea and sky, and 
 the lonely island hung between them, are all your 
 world. Marisco was the right, rare spirit to har- 
 bour here, and live by the strong hand. He raided 
 the ships that sailed up the Sea of Severn, and all 
 the neighbouring coasts from Bideford on the one 
 side to Porthkerry and Aberthaw on the other. 
 His name grew to smell of fire and blood ; he was 
 so strong in his island that none dared attack him. 
 But then, the King pressing for his capture, some 
 of the men of Devon and Glamorgan seem to have 
 combined, and by a ruse effected what they could 
 not do by open assault. Paris tells us of the 
 strategy ; but does not say what it was. Anyhow, 
 he was taken, carried to London, and there died, 
 says Paris, not one but many horrible deaths — 
 a statement which sufficiently hints at the hideous 
 ignominies his dead body was made to suffer. 
 
 At his trial not only his piracy on the British 
 coasts and the high seas (which he admitted), and 
 the murder of the Irish messenger in the London 
 streets (which he stoutly denied), were charged 
 against him ; but he was accused of high treason of 
 a more heinous kind. Two or three years before 
 this a certain fantastic esquire had found his way, 
 it seems, to Woodstock, when the Court was there, 
 and, feigning madness, entered the King's bed- 
 chamber by the window, carrying "a naked knife." 
 Luckily one of the Queen's maids, Margaret Biseth 
 by name, was a devote, and was singing psalms by 
 
 12 
 
178 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 the light of a candle, and she spied this unhal- 
 lowed fly-by-night, and gave the alarm. He was 
 taken, said he was a paid assassin, and William 
 Marisco his master I There seems to have been 
 nothing to prove his story true ; but any stick is 
 good enough to hit a pirate. So the unhappy lord 
 and king of Lundy was sentenced to death, and 
 many of his desperate heroes along with him. He 
 was hung, says Paris sententiously, on that penal 
 machine called vulgarly a gibbet, and his body dis- 
 honoured, disembowelled, and quartered. Last sign 
 of his ill-fame, the four quarters were sent to four 
 chief cities of the realm as a warning. And so 
 Marisco the Pirate became a reproach in York and 
 a ballad-singer's theme as far away as the Borders. 
 He died — his chronicler wrote — not in grace, but 
 after a manner which sounds like an imaginative 
 rendering of a doom after death, wrought by many 
 tortures. 
 
 One of the caves used for hiding loot — "Benson's 
 Cave" it is called — lies close below the Castle. 
 Benson was a much later islander than Marisco 
 — a humorous villain who, pretending to ship 
 convicts oversea, landed them here, stored his 
 ship's cargo in this cave, scuttled his ship, and 
 by this and kindred methods was rapidly amass- 
 ing a huge fortune, when the authorities harshly 
 interfered. He escaped abroad then, and died, 
 no doubt, a happy death. But Bideford, where 
 he was born, makes little of his memory. 
 
 There are other caves in Marisco's Isle, just as 
 satisfying to one's appetite for pirates and 
 buccaneers. There is the Devil's Kitchen, in 
 which the arch-enemy is sometimes seen in the 
 shape of a bull-seal, who can, when he leaves its 
 shelter, throw stones like any Christian boy. 
 
PIRATES' ISLAND 179 
 
 Best or worst of all, there is that uneasy chasm 
 — the Devil's Limekiln — over against the jags 
 and crags at the south-west corner of the island. 
 On a dry day in a dry season you had needs 
 take care how you clamber down to its verge. 
 It is as ill a place as you could wish to stare 
 into, and the Shutter Rock is its ominous 
 offspring. It would, if you could replace it in 
 the Limekiln cavity (whence, they say, the Evil 
 One first took it), exactly fit it. You need a 
 good boatman if you would explore the Limekiln 
 cliffs and the sea-caves from the sea. But for 
 a perfect cave adventure you must boat at low 
 tide to the north end of the island. There lies a 
 superb seal-cave with three entrances, into which 
 your boat can carry you. It is a magic cave, 
 too ; for its dimensions vary according to every 
 explorer and I prefer not to give any. 
 
 If, however, being a day excursionist from 
 Ilfracombe, you explore this end of the island 
 and boat round the " Hen and Chickens," and 
 penetrate this triple cave, you will assuredly lose 
 your return steamer home, and so be left at the 
 mercy of the uncanny, sudden fogs, and the 
 tricky, shifting winds that often help to cut off 
 the island from the mainland. It is a simpler 
 matter to know the inhabited human end of 
 Lundy, where its squire and his small tenantry 
 are quartered. A country house in a cwm, with 
 a garden below ; a new church on the high 
 ground, clean-walled, erect, alert, like a light- 
 house or an architect's drawing ; three or four 
 cottages, and a manor farm, where you can stay ; 
 these are almost all the human furniture. Bleak 
 as is the island, small herbs abound there, and 
 blossom long before those of the mainland. 
 
180 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Purple ling is in bloom early in June, far ahead 
 of its season, but the universal carpet of the sea- 
 links is lady's slipper — an innocent herb for a 
 pirate's foot to tread. Seapink, blue scabious, 
 and many flowering lichens abound, too ; and 
 above them, like snippets of sky, the blue 
 fritillaries are busy, flying over the slopes, and 
 reminding us that though Lundy is nearer 
 Devonshire than Glamorganshire, its wild flowers 
 and its other creatures all take after those on 
 the Welsh side of the Channel. Add to this 
 that Lundy has the peregrine falcon, the great 
 cormorant and sea-pie among its birds, and that 
 on the Lametor and Rat Island adjoining is one 
 of the last refuges of the true black rat — the 
 brown rat having appropriated the main island. 
 Another race of creatures, more elusive than 
 the black rat, may be believed in or not, as you 
 like, in Lundy. The Welsh name for the place 
 was once " Ynys Wair," Isle of Gwair, and in a 
 poem in the Book of Taliesin we read of the 
 prison of Gwair in Caer Sidi. The combination 
 of names has led Sir John Rhys to the conjecture 
 that it was, or may have been, in Lundy itself 
 that Caer Sidi and " Carchar Gwair " were situate. 
 Two mysterious accounts of the Caer of the 
 Sidi, or faery fort, are to be found in the same 
 book, in the xivth and in the xxxth poem. The 
 former says of it: — 
 
 1 ' Seemly is my seat in Caer Sidi : 
 Neither age nor plague for him that liveth there ; 
 As Manawyddan and Pryderi know, 
 Three organs play before the fire there : 
 And around its corners the ocean currents go." 
 
 This brings up the idea again of the Isle of 
 
PIRATES' ISLAND 181 
 
 Youth, the Emain or Avalon, that haunted the 
 Celtic imagination late and early. Had the 
 unlucky Edward II., when he thought of flying 
 there in his last hurried escape along the Welsh 
 coast, heard in Gwent something of its old 
 repute as a refuge for unhappy souls and out- 
 laws — " the impregnable isle " as Walsingham 
 calls it ? 
 
 He never reached its haven, it is certain, 
 drifting instead to his fate, to be captured near 
 Llantrisant. I saw none of the Sidh or fairy 
 folk, at Lundy, nor did I spy a seal. But I am 
 sorry to say I did see a seal-gun on its rack in 
 the island inn; for surely it is a grand mistake 
 to shoot seals at all, now that they are growing 
 scarcer year by year on the British coasts. To 
 see a seal dive in a sea gully on the west coast 
 of Pirate's Isle must be a sight to remember. 
 There the boulders, that are dun or grey out of 
 the water, look when seen within its clear depth 
 of a true mermaid colour; they look now like 
 mermaids, now uncannily like so many naked, 
 drowned men. It is not hard to understand, if 
 one sits (as Kingsley made Amyas Leigh sit in 
 his blindness) against the Gull Rock, and sees 
 thence the rocks and the weeds "beneath the 
 merry blue sea," how he came by that episode. 
 Indeed, for romance and lost galleons and buried 
 hoards of " pieces-of -eight," no Indian isle can 
 beat Lundy — that rib of granite which lies snug 
 but deadly in the Sea of Severn ; a harbour of 
 refuge or a shipbreaker, according to which side 
 you take of it. 
 
 We reached Lundy, as I have told, in a hot 
 sun ; we left its pirate cove in a cold rain, to 
 the first mutterings of a nasty wind in the 
 
182 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Lametor crags. We had not sailed above three 
 or four furlongs before Marisco's Isle had dis- 
 appeared ; and we got back home that evening 
 and saw the gas-lamps lit in the street, with a 
 sense of having been in a place just a little over 
 the world's rim. 
 

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CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE EAST GOWER COAST — THE MUMBLES, OSTRE- 
 MUERE AND PENNARD — MORGAN, QUEEN OF THE 
 LAND OF GORE — " DRAB A AIZOIDES " 
 
 ' ' I am the Queen Morgan le Fay, 
 queen of the land of Gore." 
 
 "Morte D'Arthur." 
 
 Leaving the last of the Swansea suburbs at 
 Sketty, and then striking across Clyne Moor for 
 Bishopston, or taking the more usual route by 
 the lazy Mumbles railway, you will find a change 
 of entertainment in the land of Gore. There is 
 a choice of castles, to say nothing of the Bone 
 Caves and smugglers' " runs," the endless creeks or 
 "slades," and the cliff architecture above them. 
 
 Oystermouth Castle, better than the fragments 
 of Swansea, recalls the hold of the castle-builders 
 in the country. Apparently the first of the 
 string of Gower fortresses tied to Swansea Castle, 
 " Ostremuere " afterwards became more important 
 than Abertawe. As you see it now, you see it 
 much altered from its original state. The first 
 castle was burnt in the eighteenth century, when 
 the present one was built in its place. Hence, 
 the ornamental character of some of the win- 
 dows, which in one instance, that in the chapel, 
 show fine tracery, of a convolute pattern (restored 
 
 183 
 
184 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 some thirty years ago). The Castle is apparently 
 eccentric in design, but well adapted to its site 
 and polygonal in form, with no show of sentinel- 
 towers beyond the gate-tower and the keep. The 
 keep is the only part of the original castle now 
 remaining. As you enter the gate, and regarrison 
 the place in your record, one castellan stands out 
 clearly, and it is the figure again of William 
 de Braos, " Breuse sance Pite." Having already 
 twenty castles and more at his back, he made 
 " Ostremuere " his dungeons-in-chief, where he 
 cast those contumacious Welsh and other trouble- 
 some neighbours who did not subscribe to his 
 plans, or help to feed his house and estate. At 
 the opening of the fourteenth century he was a 
 multiple Lord Marcher and castle-owner, whose 
 powers were so superlative that at last they 
 intoxicated him. He held in all some fifty-nine 
 lordships, and King John in the early years of 
 his reign gave to him the whole of Gower, on 
 terms of only one knight's service. His wife, 
 Maude de Haia, was a fit mate for him. While 
 he passed as a symbol of cruelty, murder, and 
 rapine into the later Arthurian tales, she became 
 in Welsh folk-lore a gorgeous witch, a Morgan 
 le Fay, a giant- woman of giant strength. She 
 was overwhelmingly haughty in her bearing ; 
 without any woman's weakness ; physically with- 
 out fear. Their children were of the same build 
 with themselves, and had the same Norman grip, 
 in accordance with the couplet — 
 
 Les Normains ont les mains crochus ; 
 C'est le mieux ramasser tout." 
 
 (The Normans have the hands crook'd so, 
 The better to clutch all, you know.) 
 
THE EAST GOWER COAST 185 
 
 But enough has been said of the De Braoses 
 already. Another witch-woman, her fellow- 
 enchantress, who still enchants and tantalises 
 one here on the threshold of Gower, is the old 
 Queen of Gore. There are more regions of 
 Morgan le Fay than one, but it is as certain as 
 anything in romance that Gower is their Welsh 
 original. The "land of Gore" suggests a land of 
 witches, approached as it is through a valley of 
 desolation, the dreadful valley of Landore (which 
 Morgan le Fay might easily have devised and 
 set there by black-magic as a barrier to her 
 dominions). It is strange that King Mark in 
 his rage against Tristan and his cousin Alisander 
 should have sent to Morgan le Fay and another 
 queen, "praying that they two sorceresses 
 would set all the country in fire with ladies 
 that were enchantresses " and dangerous knights 
 like Malgrin and Breuse sance Pite, for the reek 
 of that fire still hangs dreadfully over Landore. 
 
 But at the Mumbles you have left the copper- 
 smoke far behind. The time to climb the Mumbles 
 Hill is late on a summer evening, when the tide 
 is full and the sun westering. But by broad 
 moonlight on a clear night the bay looks just 
 as fair : if the sea-surroundings are not so distinct, 
 the furnace-glow on the left is mysterious to see. 
 Seen by day, the view ranges along the Glamorgan 
 coast, beginning with the superb curve of Swansea 
 Bay, and traversing the mouths of the rivers 
 Tawe and Neath, and scanning the smoke-cloud 
 of Swansea town and the dolorous valley of 
 Landore. Past Port Talbot, the view just skirts 
 the sands of Kenfig, with Porthcawl and Nash 
 Point all but lost to view in the coast perspec- 
 tive ; over the Channel the heights of Exmoor 
 
186 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 and, further east, the Quantocks are visible. 
 Nearer home, on the other hand, some familiar 
 points of the Gower coast are quite hidden, 
 while others stand out and look as if they were 
 within a stone's throw. This is, to adopt a triad, 
 one of the Three great vistas of this southern 
 coast. 
 
 One uncertain April morning I started with 
 Mercury from Oystermouth to Pennard Castle. A 
 pelting shower on the first steep hill drove us under 
 the ivy of a high wall for shelter; the rest was 
 all bright windy weather, with blue and white 
 skies, and dry, white roads such as you get in 
 limestone country. 
 
 Outside Norton, we overtook a big herd-lad 
 driving the proverbial three cows. They were 
 three sisters ; the first eight, the second seven, the 
 third six years old : sleek, brown and dun animals, 
 Alderney and Shorthorn crossed. The lad was 
 fond of the creatures, and proud of their cross- 
 bred qualities. " They were good milkers, or 
 fairly good," he said, much better than your pure 
 Alderneys. " An Alderney is not worth her salt " 
 was a common saying among the Gower farmers. 
 
 Next we dropt into the deep valley of Bishopston, 
 and went to see the church. The churchyard 
 looked still enough as we went in ; still as graves can 
 be. But suddenly, from near the wall and behind 
 a gravestone, out sprang a boy ; then another and 
 another, till quite a troop of them went whooping 
 by in some boyish panic. It was like a sudden 
 resurrection of imps from the graves. 
 
 The church was rather rude, but of true country 
 character : a nave with chancel several feet higher 
 giving a certain charm of the unexpected to it, as 
 different pitches do. It was full of exquisitely 
 
THE EAST GOWER COAST 187 
 
 arranged growing plants, small palms, and tropical 
 flowers with white, purple, and pale red blooms — 
 the whole kept with extreme care. Evidently a 
 good spirit was in attendance. The church would 
 have tempted the most restless wanderer in, to give 
 himself up to human hopes and holy fears for a 
 breathing space. 
 
 This experience was so good that it tempted 
 another halt at the next church — Pennard. A 
 still simpler building, it had chosen a hermit's site 
 under a fir-wood, in a curiously isolated place. I 
 left Mercury at the gate, my coat and wallet and 
 gloves strapp'd on the carrier. Inside I found a 
 carved pulpit, and stayed to sketch a dragon thrice 
 repeated on the upper panels, rudely but well 
 designed — a sort of dragon trailant. The beast, I 
 am sorry to say, proved actively malevolent. 
 When I went out again Mercury was there, but 
 wallet and gloves were clean gone. The roads, the 
 landscape, the trees, gave no sign. It was clearly 
 the dragon's doing. Much exercised at this black- 
 magic, I went on my way smiling Malvolio-like 
 smiles and gently objurgating. 
 
 No village of Pennard appeared. No doubt the 
 dragon had used his arts upon it too. I took 
 lunch — home-made bread, Gower cheese, and good 
 ale — at a small inn in Park Mill. Pennard Castle 
 lies a mile away down a curious sand-valley. 
 Having climbed up from the cwm and filled one's 
 shoes with loose sand in doing so, one was inclined 
 to make much of the extreme solitariness of the 
 Castle and the desolation of the sunned courts with 
 the sand silted deep on the floors. However, in 
 emerging from the Castle, I saw the white stubs of 
 a golf course. Near by, two small children were 
 rolling down a sandhill and shrieking with impish 
 
188 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 delight, while, regardless of the noise and all outer 
 things, a lady lay couched against a green knoll 
 writing — no doubt a romance of the Castle — 
 writing as if for dear life. 
 
 This unexpected apparition had to serve in place 
 of the ancient ghost of Pennard Castle, whom the 
 golf players have no doubt driven away now for 
 good. The " Gwrach y Rhibyn " it was who used 
 to haunt the walls, and she even resented any 
 impertinent visitor, especially after dark. One 
 such there was who went there by night in her 
 despite, and failed to reach home. Next day they 
 found him bruised, scratched, and bleeding, his hair 
 matted with sand and blood. He said the G'rach 
 had pounced on him like an eagle, and pecked him 
 with her beak, and scratched him with her long 
 bird-like talons. One detail, that she smelt like a 
 " bucket o' tar," sounds bad. Since then she has 
 had the Castle of a night to herself. 
 
 Pennard has a better and more authentic folk- 
 tale than this, however. Once, on the night of 
 the wedding feast of its Welsh chief and castellan, 
 who had carried back a rich bride from the North 
 after fighting there for her father, the watchman 
 heard an unusual humming and soft shrilling 
 within the walls. He grew uneasy as he listened, 
 and then called the porter out from behind the 
 great door. He, too, heard the uncanny sound. 
 Together they went into the yard, and saw there 
 in the moon-dazzle a troop of the Tylwyth Teg, or 
 Fair Family, dancing and singing. Full of amaze, 
 they ran back to tell the bridegroom of the sight. 
 But he fell into a rage, and swore he would have no 
 "coblynau" (goblins) in his castle, and finally rushed 
 out into the moonlight and attacked the moon- 
 beams as Cuchulain fought the waves — in default 
 
THE EAST GOWER COAST 189 
 
 of the small folk, who had all disappeared. But 
 they took their fairy revenge all the same. A voice 
 like the wind rising cried, " y dyn heb groesaw. 
 Bydd heb gastell, heb giniaw " — that is, " The 
 man without welcome. He shall be without castle 
 or wedding feast ! " Even as the voice died away 
 the wind rose and blew the sand up in such clouds 
 that it smothered the Castle, covered the wedding 
 feast like snow, and drove the people out home- 
 less. 
 
 Pennard Castle, however, is one of the few 
 castles that are traditionally of faery origin ; 
 which in Wales generally means that the site was 
 that of a British Caer before it came into the hands 
 of the later castle-builders. The tradition, which 
 seems contrary to the above story, is that it was, 
 like Hay Castle, built in a single night ; some say 
 by the Tylwyth Teg, some by a Welsh Fferyll 
 (Virgil, i.e., a wizard), who did it to save his life. 
 The Normans had taken him prisoner after a 
 Welsh raid, and gave him the choice either of 
 building up the Castle in a night or dying in the 
 morning. In the morning it was built. It was 
 apparently as a faery fort — a haunted " rath," to 
 use the Irish word — that Pennard first got its 
 uncanny name. 
 
 For botanists, it is haunted by a rare creature, 
 too — the shade of Draba aizoides. Some of the 
 guide-books confidently say this rare plant grows 
 on the walls. If ever it did, it does so no longer. 
 It does grow in Gower, but it needs a cliff climber 
 to get it. 
 
 On the return journey from Pennard we were 
 rapidly descending a lane north of Bishopston 
 valley, when we overtook two young men with tin 
 botany cases strapped on their shoulders. Within 
 
190 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 those tin tubes I saw, as plainly as if the covering 
 had been of glass, the covetable small leaves of 
 Draba aizoides. We pulled up abreast of the two 
 wayfarers, and asked boldly and all short if they 
 had been in quest of her. They smiled ingenuously 
 in Scotch, and said Yes. The elder and taller of the 
 two showed me fresh scratches and skin-wounds on 
 his hands, and then opened his case. Most gener- 
 ously he bestowed a sprig of the delicate Gower 
 Draba on me. A later drawing of the leaves is 
 too rough to be given here. 
 
 Draba aizoides is the yellow Alpine whitlow-grass, 
 and though it was now only mid-April the yellow 
 flowers were just past their prime, and some had 
 already faded to brown. The leaves (to quote the 
 Rev. C. A. Johns) are "narrow, pointed, rigid, 
 glossy, keeled and fringed." Its cousin, Draba 
 verna, the vernal whitlow-grass, is more common, 
 and flowers as early as the lesser celandine. They 
 belong to the Cruciferae. Another " Draba," the 
 Rock whitlow-grass, grows on the highest of the 
 Highland mountain-rocks. I think one of the two 
 botanists said he had gathered this, too, on Ben 
 Nevis. They had only a week's holiday, and had 
 come all the way from Edinburgh to look for such 
 treasure-trove in Devonshire and South Wales ; 
 and they spoke with infectious enthusiasm of their 
 adventure. 
 
 At Park Mill may be found — where precisely it 
 would not be right to disclose — the Hairy Cress, 
 Arabis hirsuta, another of the cruciform herbs. 
 On the sands in the neighbourhood, too, may be 
 seen the Sea Stork's Bill — Erodium maritimum — 
 and other sand-loving plants. The Sea Stork's Bill 
 has spiral seed-caps which untwist in the rain, and 
 can jump like a frog. Ilordeum maritimum is some- 
 
THE EAST GOWER COAST 191 
 
 thing seen too, but more and more rarely. The 
 Osmunda regalis was to be seen a few summers ago, 
 growing wild in the marshes of Western Gower. 
 The Meadow Clary, one of the sages, is another un- 
 common plant found in the peninsula, which is not 
 usually thought a native of Wales. 
 
 THE MALEVOLENT DRAGON : PENNARD CHURCH (p. 187). 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE GOWER CAVES — THE " RED LADY OF PAVILAND " 
 — GOODWICK AND PENRICE — ARTHUR'S STONE — 
 WORM'S HEAD — WEOBLEY CASTLE AND THE 
 LASS OF PENCLAWDD 
 
 Within reach on foot from Oystermouth, and 
 stretching along the whole south coast of Gower, 
 beginning at Bacon Hole — suggestive name — you 
 hare two series of caves to explore, some of which 
 represent the earliest kind of cliff-castle known 
 in Britain. But for the sake of the adventure, 
 you ought to follow the coast round Pwll Du, and 
 see the camp above. 
 
 If you have come from Caswell Bay, you have 
 already passed Brandy Cove, and crossed the end 
 of the Bishopston valley, up which the smugglers 
 used to " run " their brandy- wine and other goods 
 and now a famous objective, because of its extreme 
 picturesqueness, for Gower picnickers and holi- 
 day-makers. The way up the valley, from the 
 Beaufort Arms, and this side of High Pennard, 
 after crossing the stream, lies under Pwll Du 
 Wood. So along the stream, when there is any 
 stream ; and when it is lost to sight, along its 
 dry overflow flood course, which serves as a 
 rough road. I have already spoken of Bishopston 
 Church, but might have added that its old Welsh 
 
 192 
 
THE GOWER COAST 193 
 
 name is Llandeilo-Verwalt, and that the Rev. 
 Edward Davies, author of Celtic Researches 
 and the Mystery of the Ancient Britons, was 
 rector of the parish, and lies buried in the 
 churchyard. As the Welsh name shows, the 
 church is another of the series in South Wales 
 dedicated to St. Teilo. 
 
 The next point westward after the cove or cwm 
 at the opening of the valley is High Pennard, whose 
 name and that of its fellow Pennard further on 
 may remind you of two other Pennards, East and 
 West, across the Channel in the heart of Somerset 
 and the Vale of Avalon. A very different sea-shore 
 is this to that at the foot of the vale where the 
 Somerset Pennards lie. Here you have Pwll Du 
 Head, where you ought to explore the old camp 
 on its west side, to end the blind peninsula ; and 
 going west you reach the farm in the dip at 
 Dipslade, close to which lies the great bone cave of 
 Bacon Hole, to which a farm-track and foot- 
 path lead. The cave, now that it has given up 
 its bones, need hardly tempt the antiquarian to 
 descend the cliff to its mouth. The cave is pitched 
 in a natural " fault," causing a fissure in the lime- 
 stone. The first question that arises about the 
 bones is how and why they were brought there ? 
 Were some of them the remains of the feasts of 
 the carnivorous, and possibly cannibal, prehistoric 
 cave-men who lived on these shores, long before 
 the first Celt left his home in the east? 
 Cannibal, it ought only to be said under protest. 
 Some later discoveries, as in the Croatian Bone 
 Cave, near Agram, whose situation on the sand- 
 stone cliff sixty feet above the Krapina River is very 
 like this, hint at a more terrible kind of ogre in 
 the old days, with powerful jaws, who ate some- 
 
 13 
 
194 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 times rhinoceros steaks, sometimes his fellow-beings. 
 There are hearths in the Krapina Cave to show 
 on how gruesome and vast a scale his cookery was. 
 Who can tell us what scenes went on in Bacon and 
 Minchin Holes? Only aborigines like the "Red 
 Lady of Paviland." 
 
 In the time of the Press-Gangs the more secure 
 of these caves were used by the men of the 
 neighbourhood as hiding-places, the women-folk 
 bringing provisions when they could. Between 
 High Pennard and Pennard Burrows, just below 
 the Castle visited yesterday, lie three more caves, 
 of which Minchin Hole and Fox Hole are worth 
 a visit. Minchin Hole is a palatial hole, compara- 
 tively : high and wide, nearly opposite the rocks 
 of Sir Christopher's Knowl; and Bosco's Den and 
 Bowen's Parlour, or the Devil's Hole, have smug- 
 glers' tales to tell, as well as their prehistoric dead 
 to give up. A comparatively recent romancer has 
 refurnished these Parlours, and called their hero 
 back to life under the name of Rounce the 
 Smuggler. * 
 
 Another four miles' tramping past Penmaen, along 
 the Gower backbone, Cefn y Bryn, and one reaches, 
 on the northern side of the " cefn," first a Holy 
 Well, of which Morgan le Fay might have been the 
 guardian, and then the big cromlech — Arthur's 
 Stone, where the Gower pilgrimage often ends. 
 
 It is easy to miss it on that stone-strewn reach of 
 high moorland, on which you can trace, as at Stone- 
 henge, the alignment of a great open-air temple 
 whose sun-determined lines and spaces are witness 
 of its architecture. Indeed, as you stand there and 
 look around you, you begin to realise that the 
 place was one where the earth's relation to the 
 
 * See The Man at Odds : A Romance of the Severn Sea. 
 
THE GOWER COAST 195 
 
 stars and to the elements was destined to appeal 
 at once, as at Carnac and Salisbury Plain, to those 
 astronomical builders and starry masons. 
 
 As for the cromlech or dolmen, St. David, tradi- 
 tion says, split this stone with a sword to 
 show " it was not sacred, as the Druids held." 
 Llanddewi — the Llan or church-close of David — 
 about two miles south-west, gives just a tinge of 
 local reality to this tale. Camden, more matter-of- 
 fact, says that pieces were broken off to make 
 into millstones ; and this may serve to remind one 
 that the stone is really of pudding-stone, or red 
 sandstone conglomerate. Others will say, perhaps, 
 that since this is a burial-place, it might be another 
 of the High King's seven fabled sleeping-places ; 
 that here Morgan le Fay, or the Queen of Gore, 
 brought him by art-magic after the "last dread 
 battle " ; and that here he lies, waiting for his 
 waking day. Before it was known as Arthur's 
 Stone, however, the cromlech was called, after St. 
 Ketti, " Maen Ceti," which is recalled by the 
 proverb, " mal llwyth maen Ceti " — like the load of 
 Ketty's Stone, spoken of any particularly heavy 
 burden. 
 
 One last uncanny peculiarity of the huge cap- 
 stone must be told. Once a year, on Christmas 
 Eve, it leaves its place in the dolmen and goes 
 down to the sea to drink, and woe to the wight 
 that sees it at that office. 
 
 The view from Cefn Bryn, near and above the 
 stone, is entrancing and one to further every idea 
 of the ancient sacredness of the place. It only 
 remains to go on to Worm's Head, and there sit an 
 hour, if it is not too windy a day, perched on its 
 extraordinary sea-perch looking westward, to 
 understand why the land of Gower required a 
 
196 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 water-witch for queen, and why it became an 
 enchanted province in Arthuria. 
 
 One February day — it must be twenty years ago 
 — I and a friend, a Welsh namesake of the poet 
 Dryden, went to Worm's Head when a furious 
 westerly gale was blowing. We had fairly to creep 
 on hands and knees along the neck leading to it, 
 such was the force of the wind, and we expected 
 to find the Head itself quite untenable. To our 
 surprise, the air proved instead to be comparatively 
 still on the furthest and highest brink. There we 
 sat in great peace and comfort while the wind 
 raged below us and vexed the waves and buffeted 
 the sea-birds, including one black-backed gull 
 who seemed intent on getting into the bottom 
 ledges. 
 
 From Worm's Head it is roughly a league back 
 along the coast to Yellow Top and the Paviland 
 Caves, where Dr. Buckland came upon the pre- 
 historic " Red Lady of Paviland " — red because of 
 the red-iron stain on her poor bones. We might, 
 adopting the old manner of the Triads, say that the 
 three famous ladies of the land of Gore were Maud 
 de Haia, Morgan le Fay, and the "Red Lady of 
 Paviland." 
 
 Three old British (?) camps are to be easily 
 traced out on the cliffs between Worm's Head 
 and Port Eynon. At Port Eynon, once a notorious 
 smugglers' centre, now a sandy watering-place 
 where a folk-lore collector has lately found some 
 good material, you are close to Oxwich Castle and 
 Oxwich Bay. You might have crossed from Pennard 
 Castle here on your way west, for at low tide you 
 can get round to Oxwich Castle from the Park 
 Mill outlet by the sands, saving a long circuit. 
 
 Oxwich has a desperate old feud of the Mansels 
 
THE GOWER COAST 197 
 
 and Herberts wrapped up in its chronicle. The 
 dispute rose over a French vessel wrecked on the 
 coast on St. Stephen's Day, December 26, 1557, 
 which was laden with wool, figs, and raisins. 
 The Mansel wreckers had evidently been prompt in 
 rifling the ship, and had carried off much of the 
 booty to houses in " Oxwick." Getting wind of it, 
 Sir George Herbert of Swansea, who claimed the 
 wreck as his, arrived hotfoot at the village with 
 his retainers. They went to several houses and 
 dragged out the booty that had been stored there 
 and carried it to the church. Then they went in 
 force to the Castle, and at the gate were met by 
 Sir Rice's son, Edward, who had been away, possibly 
 to get help. A fight followed, in which Edward 
 was hurt in the arm. With the defending party 
 was an old lady, a woman of great spirit, Mistress 
 Anne Mansel of Landewy, Edward's aunt, who had 
 returned with him to the Castle on horseback. She 
 appears in white ruff and brown redingote, as the 
 Welsh gentlewoman of that day. She had already 
 encountered Sir George on the highway, and bade 
 him not go " to the said mansion house against the 
 said Edward, or contend with him for such pylfery 
 goods ! " 
 
 " It is not for that," Sir George replied. " Your 
 nephew has abused my servants, as good gentle- 
 men as Edward himself, whom I will teach to know 
 the worst servant in my house." 
 
 Thereupon they rode on to the gate, where they 
 were met in force. Old Mistress Mansel there 
 dismounted, and went on into the gateway. Her 
 horse, after a first brush between the two parties, 
 was put athwart the gate, as a temporary barrier, 
 while she herself stood two or three yards behind 
 the supporters of young Mansel. He, says one 
 
198 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 witness, " stapped one stepe f urth of the gate, 
 when he saw the others advance, and struck at 
 William Herbert." " One of Edward Hansel's 
 men had a gleyve staff, and the others swerdes." 
 Mistress Mansel seemed to try to persuade her 
 nephew to be placable, and " wold have pushed 
 him in at the gate." 
 
 " I pray you, good Cosin, get you in ! " she 
 said. 
 
 But his blood was up and his sword out, and the 
 old lady of Llandewy had to stand aside. She had 
 paused behind him, only two or three yards away, 
 when one of the siegers, Watkin John ap Watkin, 
 transferring his sword to his left hand, picked up 
 a big stone in his right, and threw it. Evidently 
 intended for those his sword could not reach, it 
 struck the old gentlewoman full on the forehead, 
 and she fell to the ground. 
 
 " Upon the strykinge downe of the said Anne 
 Manxell, they within the gate cryed owte ' Murd- 
 der, murdder.' Upon whyche throwe and crye, the 
 said S r- G. H. called his men away." 
 
 Another witness deposed that Sir George 
 Herbert " before the fraye, brag'd that he wold 
 bynd the said Ed. Maunsel like a boye and send 
 him to his father like a cocke." 
 
 Star Chamber proceedings followed, and Sir 
 George Herbert had to pay heavy fines and damages 
 both to the Crown and to the Mansels. The deed 
 of inquest held on the body of the old lady says 
 the mortal wound was of the breadth of two 
 thumbs and the depth — "even to the brain," 
 though the stone was of " no great bigness." 
 
 Oxwich Castle was occupied by Mansels till 
 1658. Then it was let to Mr. Francis Be van, whose 
 descendants still farm the land. The Mansels get 
 
THE GOWER COAST 199 
 
 their name from Mans, as you discover in the 
 " Roman de Rou " : — 
 
 "E par consence des Mansels 
 Helies e Mans s'embati 
 
 E cil del Mans l'uut recoilli." 
 
 The most famous of the family was Sir John 
 Mansel, Lord Chancellor, Lord Chief Justice of 
 England, Keeper of the Great Seal, Prior of 
 Beverley, Treasurer of York, and the friend (" in 
 this world and in the world to come") of 
 Henry III. 
 
 The sea has won a long tide's reach on the land 
 almost within living memory. A print to be seen 
 at Swansea Library shows one evidence of it in 
 the vanished old parsonage house, Oxwich, washed 
 away by the sea, about 1805. It stood between 
 the church and the tide-line, which has now crept 
 up to the churchyard. 
 
 Penrice Castle only lies a mile nor'-west of 
 Oxwich ; and after Ostremuere it was the " maist 
 strongest " hold in Gower. Penrice is Pen Rhys, 
 and hither drew to a hold Rhys, the unlucky grand- 
 son of Iestyn ab Gwrgant. He was soon over- 
 taken by the Norman flood, with Henry de 
 Beaumont in the van ; and Rhys was beheaded. 
 The present Castle was built and added to at 
 various times, and became one of the wonders of 
 Gower. The place now impresses one as overlaid 
 with immemorial layers of antiquity. Another 
 newer house has grown up under the shelter of 
 the old, just as new trees have sprung from the 
 old, still standing side by side in the old park and 
 by its sleepy wild-duck pond. With one fellow- 
 traveller I passed it one gusty winter afternoon 
 
200 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 in 1889 ; with another, M. A. R., in broad, rich 
 summer, twenty years later. In both seasons, it 
 breathed the rich, double-distilled antique aroma 
 of the house upon house, the patrimony upon 
 patrimony, that have warmed generations of com- 
 fortable heirs and well-endowed dames. On the 
 last occasion we were not surprised, I remember, 
 to find at the King Arthur Inn at Reynoldston 
 a welcome waiting us, with tea above a walled 
 garden and rose-petals falling into our teacups. 
 
 West of Cefn Bryn, the cairns on Rhosilly 
 Downs and Llanmadoc Hill are the best vantage- 
 grounds from which to survey the coast-line. 
 There are three standing stones in a field, a mile 
 west of Reynoldston, which you can visit on the 
 way to Llangennydd and Llanmadoc. And south 
 of Reynoldston lies " Stout Hall," whose owner, 
 Colonel Wood, unearthed one of the great bone- 
 caves. 
 
 The history of Llangennydd and Llanmadoc 
 parishes have been written with affectionate full- 
 ness by a quondam rector, the Rev. J. D. Davies. 
 His death alone prevented his completing his work 
 as local chronicler in detail of all Gower. He tells 
 in its pages the strange story of the wreck, without 
 any gale or storm to engender it, in January, 1868, 
 of sixteen vessels in Broughton Bay. Eighteen or 
 nineteen sail were outward bound, vessels from 
 80-400 tons burden. There was a tricky ground- 
 sea, not noticed particularly till they reached 
 Whitford Lighthouse. Here one or two anchored ; 
 the others having been let go by the pilot-tug 
 hoped to clear Burry Holms with the help of the 
 ebb tides, and make a good ofiing. Only one or 
 two did so. The noodtide set in; the wind died 
 away ; and some sixteen of them drifted back, 
 
THE GOWER COAST 201 
 
 some dashing against the rocks, some against each 
 other. A few sank in mid-river, having their 
 bottoms knocked out by thumping on the sand; 
 for the swell was so heavy that at one moment a 
 boat would be atop a wave, and then be swept 
 down, thud, on the bottom. A pilot ship, the 
 Hulk, was in the Bay, and a few men escaped to 
 her by boat ; and stayed there till day. Next 
 morning there was great grief. The disaster 
 happened between nine and ten at night, and no 
 one in the village knew of it, but at daylight 
 the shore was seen to be covered from Whitford 
 Sker to Burry Holms with seamen's clothes, 
 broken spars, hulls of vessels, ropes, and large 
 strewage of coal.' The drowned sailors were 
 buried, as they came ashore, in various church- 
 yards of this coast. 
 
 On that ill-starred night the choir was at 
 practice in Llanmadoc Church when suddenly an 
 indescribable cry of terror was heard in the church- 
 yard, as of some one in mortal fear. " I ran out," 
 said Mr. Da vies, the rector, " to see what it was, 
 and saw a young lad standing there, his face dis- 
 torted with fright. He said he had seen a man 
 without his hat come and look in through the 
 window. The boy, being taken into the church, 
 was some time in coming to himself. It was be- 
 lieved that what he saw was the ghost of one of 
 the drowned men, as this was the very hour of the 
 wrecks." 
 
 Working back along the North-Gower coast, you 
 have leagues of sandy wastes on your left hand as 
 you approach Weobley Castle. The guide-books 
 will tell you what a dull, melancholy region it is. 
 For myself, I can only say that on a hazy spring 
 day the effect of the yellow sand merging in the 
 
202 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 pale milky white water of the Burry Inlet had a 
 charm of its own. The long sand-spit of White- 
 ford Barrows looked neither like earth nor sea in 
 the shimmering April grisaille ; it suggested an 
 isle of apparitions, an unconditioned peninsula, 
 where " the waters wap " and the waves are wan. 
 
 Weobley Castle has a dead kernel within its 
 shell : a farm-house which seems to have crept 
 into it for shelter, and there died for want of 
 light, overwhelmed by the Castle spirit. The 
 farmer was the last of a great line of lords and 
 castellans. Harry Beaumont, says the " Brut," 
 was the first Norman to seize on the place. He 
 built a rude castle of sorts here, having thrown 
 out the sons of Caradoc ap Iestyn, at the time of 
 his building of Swansea, Llychwr, and Penrhys 
 (where Rhys of Caradoc lost his head). But fifty 
 years later, in 1150, another Rhys came and his 
 brother Meredydd with him, and took the Castle 
 and burnt it. And in 1215, yet another, Rhys 
 Ieuanc, young Rhys, after taking Kidwelly and 
 Carnwillian, took all the Gower castles one after 
 another. Leland speaks of the de la Meres at 
 Weobley, but he is confusing them with the house 
 of Sir John de la Bere. 
 
 Llanrhidian, finely posted on the rise above the 
 marsh, impresses you as you enter it from below 
 with an air of untold antiquity, supported by the 
 two Druidic-looking stones, one of them a Maen 
 Hir, near the approach to the church. 
 
 I asked a farm lad, who was leading a frisky 
 yearling to water, what the stones were for. 
 
 " Well, I've heard tell the Romans used to whip 
 their slaves at one of them," he said, "and you 
 could see where the stapple was." 
 
 Clearly enough, the stones had been coupled as 
 
THE GOWER COAST 203 
 
 they now stand within recent times ; but there is 
 always a fragment of real history behind these 
 village fables ; and Llanrhidian is steeped in the 
 quadruple dye, British, Roman, Welsh, and 
 Norman, of popular tradition. 
 
 In the churchyard also lie two separate stones, 
 which since the church was once dedicated to St. 
 Illtyd serve to urge the old question about the 
 number of Illtyd churches that pass under other 
 names. On the high ground above is an old 
 camp, " Cil Ivor," where Ivor ab Cadivor en- 
 trenched himself in the year 1110. 
 
 At high tides the road across Llanrhidian marsh 
 to Llanmorlais is covered. It looked to me, when 
 I crossed it, as if it were never thoroughly dry. 
 Old cockleshell mounds and tidal posts afford the 
 only break in the long salt-flats. The sheep that 
 feed there seem unusually motionless from sym- 
 pathy with the scene. Except for an occasional 
 bleat, a railway whistle across at Llwchwr, or 
 the whistle of snipe, the silence is melancholily 
 complete. 
 
 A famous City of Cockles lies two miles north 
 of Llanrhidian-Penclawdd. One day, how long 
 ago it need not be told, I reached its rambling 
 street, that looked as if it would wander off into 
 the sea- waste, with Davy for guide ; and we learnt 
 from an old standard smoking by the low sea- 
 wall that the "works" were idle and the place 
 was out of luck. 
 
 "There would be no living," he said, "at Pen- 
 clawdd save for the Cocos ! " He pointed to a 
 cottage. " That house there ; eight, i'e wir, it has 
 eight in it, and John he hasn't done a stroke these 
 months ! " 
 
 A little later, and we saw the straggling troop 
 
204 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 of cockle-women, seven or eight of them, the tired 
 wage-earners, returning bare-legged with their 
 cockles over the sandy causeway. The eldest of 
 them was a woman of about sixty, with an 
 anxious, much-weathered, whimsical brown visage 
 under her cap. The youngest was one of the 
 comeliest, merriest-faced young girls ever seen. 
 Her bare wet feet, flecked with seaweed, gleamed 
 in the sun like soft ivory as she halted there. 
 She dropped her load for a moment on the sandy 
 wall, with a curious gesture as of part relief from 
 the weight, part pride in the " take " of cockles. 
 
 That afternoon was spent in exploring the North 
 Gower stretches and hunting with Davy for " old 
 sto-ans ! " But in the evening we returned to 
 take train at Llanmorlais. The next station was 
 Penclawdd, and looking out of the window, he 
 directed me to a small group on the platform. It 
 was the younger part of the very troop of cockle- 
 pickers we had seen in the morning by the strand. 
 They were mightily changed now, tricked out in 
 their best, and one or two in high colours ; and 
 the contrast they made with the brown bags of 
 cockles, over which they mounted guard on a 
 porter's truck, was queer enough. But one of 
 them, whose back was turned to us, wore a plain 
 grey gown and dark jacket. It was not until the 
 cockle-packs in bags were being hoisted into the 
 van that we saw her face. The other girls care- 
 lessly stood by, and let the porters do the work. 
 But she, seeing that time pressed, seized her own 
 bag with a look of indescribable pride in the 
 grotesque oozy thing, as much as to say, "You 
 are mine and of my getting, and you are worth 
 silver, Cocos fach ! " 
 
 As the train moved out she stood gazing after 
 
THE GOWER COAST 
 
 205 
 
 it like a lover after her beloved, and her smile, 
 lighting up her eyes in the station gloom, seemed 
 to make her face luminous against the shadows. 
 Then we realised we had had in this vanishing 
 apparition of the lass of Penclawdd a glimpse of 
 one of those faces that, once seen, whether against 
 a railway hoarding or a salt-marsh, are because of 
 their gleaming lines — conductors of some inner 
 radiance — stamped on the eye of a mortal man 
 for ever. 
 
 •j«?5 
 
 OLD OYSTER-SHELL LAMP, GOWEK COAST. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 BURRY INLET AND CARMARTHEN BAY — CASTELL 
 LLYCHWR — CWRT-Y-CARNAU — THE GREAT 
 BOAR HUNT IN AMMAN VALE 
 
 Amongst the minor lazy sensations of the Welsh 
 coast that help a man to realise without effort 
 the enormous pushing and dilating force of its 
 spring-tides, must be counted that of standing on 
 Loughor or Llychwr Bridge, and watching the 
 salt water pour in from the Burry Inlet. It comes 
 in there at a swimming pace, deep ochre or light 
 brown in colour, covered with patches of seething 
 froth ; and the timbers and piers are so built as 
 to give the eye due pleasure in matching the 
 resistant baulks and timber structure against the 
 brimming element. 
 
 The river Llychwr, that swallows the salt tide 
 there, is not a long one, and its tidal reach is brief, 
 but it is a stream worth exploring to its source, 
 where it flows clean out of the rock at Llygad 
 Llychwr, the " Eye of Loughor." 
 
 Some of the intervening reaches are spoilt now 
 by the wilful ugliness of the industrial communi- 
 ties — mean streets, buildings without decency, and 
 poverty, or the next thing to it, made prim in a 
 kind of dreadful workhouse uniform of fire-brick 
 facings and mortar. But leave these, the common 
 
 206 
 
BURRY INLET AND CARMARTHEN BAY 207 
 
 affliction of many of the fairest Welsh valleys, 
 and you escape again into the verdure and pas- 
 toral extents that make the upper Llwchwr lands 
 pleasant in the gaze of Heaven. 
 
 The village or town of Llychwr, for the place 
 had borough rights and a portreeve and burgesses 
 with coats to their backs, has a curious name in 
 Welsh tradition — Tre Avanc — Beaver's Town. 
 Hence, say the up-town gossips, the place used to 
 be called by way of derision " Trewanc." It 
 figures in the Roman map as " Leucrum or 
 Leucarum," the last big halt in the road before 
 Maridunum, or Carmarthen. The Castle is another 
 of those reared on a three or four-times occupied 
 site. The Britons used the castle-tump originally ; 
 when the Normans came, Henry Beaumont, the 
 first great Gower advener, is said to have built 
 the first Norman castle. In or about 1115 the 
 two sons of Griffith ab Rhys attacked, stormed, 
 and destroyed the Castle above the old Beaver 
 town, Tre Avanc or Trewanc. 
 
 In the north country the Conwy was the chief 
 river-haunt of the " Avanc " ; but the Llychwr 
 river-beast was possibly less fabulous. The sea 
 has won great vantage on the land here, and if 
 we look for the original Beaver town it must be 
 below bridge. 
 
 Another monster, the Twrch Trwyth, is to be 
 tracked here. He has left his spoor in the upper 
 Llychwr and the Amman valley. Sir John Rhys, 
 in his Celtic Folklore, traces this Questing 
 Beast at Clyn Ystyn, a farm between Carmarthen 
 and the waters-meet of the Amman and Llychwr, 
 and thence across into the Llychwr valley. 
 Remembering the Gower bone-caves, one cannot 
 help speculating about these two creatures, and 
 
208 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 wondering if the Twrch Trwyth and the " Avanc " 
 are not in Celtic folk-lore a race-memory of the 
 huge brutes that perished centuries before any 
 Celtic word was spoken in Britain ? As time 
 went, the tradition may have been tacked on to 
 better-known animals ; and the wild boar and 
 the beaver served as the nearest types of their 
 mammoth forefathers. Those who have known 
 a small child make a tiger out of a gib-cat will be 
 at no loss to understand the process. 
 
 One need not insist on these remote events. 
 But there are places in South Wales — sea-caves, 
 waste places in the sands, and uncleared forest 
 brakes — that inevitably bring the primitive fauna 
 to mind, and the vale of Llychwr and the sand- 
 dunes below are of them. One unpropitious 
 wintry afternoon I alighted at Llychwr in a rain- 
 storm that immediately drove me into cover at 
 an old inn. The landlord, who was polishing his 
 brass taps, was unluckily a new-comer to the 
 place and knew little about it. However, he called 
 in a serving-maid, a native of that country-side, 
 who showed the painful desire to be exact which 
 one so often finds, in contradiction of the English 
 idea of the Welsh peasant, among the simpler 
 country-folk who are not tourist- corrupted. Mari 
 Jones stood in the doorway, two or three steps 
 above the level of the common-room of the ale- 
 house ; and the fire-shine in the kitchen behind 
 tinged her brown hair and cordially framed her 
 in a glimmering ruddy umber light. The figure 
 made an inviting contrast to the cheerless and 
 fireless chamber where I stood doubtfully in my 
 damp clothes. She had been as far as Llygad 
 Llychwr and firmly believed the river flowed 
 thither underground from the smaller Llyn-y-Van. 
 
BURRY INLET AND CARMARTHEN BAY 209 
 
 Yes, she knew Cwrt-y-Caruau too : it was beyond 
 Black Hill and the common — close to the water ; 
 there used to be a church there and a place for 
 the monks. "Tir Brenin " was hard by. She had 
 nothing to tell me of the "Sanctuary" at Loughor: 
 but folk said there was a passage underground 
 from Castell Llychwr to the old church at Cwrt-y- 
 Carnau. Some strange tale seems to be attached 
 to this house, but when I asked her about it 
 she slightly shook her head (having at the critical 
 moment heard a noise within the kitchen) and so 
 disappeared through the door. 
 
 A night or two later, at a very different inn- 
 keeper's hearth, not far from Ostremuere Castle, 
 I asked him if he knew Llychwr? "Yes, yes!" 
 said he, " but you should go and see Cwrt-y-Carnau ! 
 That's an old place there — a great place with 
 great histories ! " He offered to escort me there, 
 but fate was against it, and Cwrt-y-Carnau keeps 
 its secret for me. 
 
 The same gossip told me a tale about the 
 " knockers " and the mysterious Red Dog in the 
 under-sea workings of the Morva Colliery, near 
 Port Talbot. Some of the colliers saw the Red 
 Dog and heard the knockers one night and took 
 it for a warning. They would have refused to 
 descend the pit next morning, but that others 
 who had heard the same noises and stayed at 
 home, had been fined for it some weeks before. So, 
 after a midnight discussion, they voted for going 
 to work; but the Red Dog was justified, for many 
 died in the terrible explosion next day. 
 
 To return for a moment to the Llychwr and its 
 abrupt source. It is not for a coast-book to delay 
 over such tempting inland places as Cwrt Bryn-y- 
 Beirdd, now a farm-house, and Capel Dewi, and 
 
 14 
 
210 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 the Druid graves — Beddau Derwyddon. With 
 three delightful companions, two of them children 
 prepared for wonders, I last went in dry summer 
 weather to the ' Eye of Llychwr, and even then 
 the water flowing out of the rock, although not 
 enough to float a boat, as commonly said of it, 
 would have floated a coracle. The Eye had lost 
 some of its old miraculous effect, by being new- 
 enclosed in a smooth dam of Portland cement ; 
 but the scene on that wildish moorland, often as 
 I have visited it, always looks mysterious — a spot 
 to keep old, and beget new, legends. The Castle 
 at Carreg Cennen, the sternest, loneliest, rockiest 
 fastness in all that country, rears up its abutments 
 and sheer towers like an Oriental stronghold or 
 castle bewitched on its grey and red rock, not 
 two miles away ; the Black Mountains, filling up 
 the northern confines, keep a gloom which even 
 in sunlight is never lifted. At the foot of the 
 Castle Rock runs another stream, the Cennen, 
 which seems plainly destined to join the Llychwr ; 
 but it goes off on an errand of its own, past 
 Pont Trapp and Derwydd, to join the Towy 
 instead. Four miles south the Amman joins the 
 Llychwr stream, and "by here," as David says, 
 came the Twrch Trwyth and his little pigs on 
 the famousest boar hunt in all the sagas. You 
 can take up the scent there at its hottest in the 
 Mabinogion : — 
 
 " And the huntsmen went to hunt the Twrch 
 Trwyth as far as Dyffryn Lychwr. And two of 
 the pigs, Gold-haired Heather-Hog and the Grizzly 
 Quester, turned on the hunters and killed all but 
 one. Then Arthur and his host came to the place 
 where Heather-Hog and Grizzly were, and he let 
 loose all his hounds on them ; and what with the 
 

BURRY INLET AND CARMARTHEN BAY 211 
 
 hubbub and the shouting and barking, Twrch 
 Trwyth heard them, and came to the succour of 
 his hard-pressed pigs. Until that time, the Twrch 
 Trwyth had never showed himself to them, not 
 since he crossed the Irish Sea. But now, with the 
 men and the hounds set upon him, he started off 
 and made for Amman Hill (Mynydd Amanw). And 
 there a young boar of his was killed. It was life 
 for life then, and first one young boar was killed, 
 then another : until in full flight the Questing Beast 
 went on to Amman Valley, where he lost two 
 more of his train. Of all his pigs, there went with 
 him alive from that place none save Golden-bristled 
 Heather Hog and Grizzly Quester." 
 
 The hunt goes on fast and mortal then, and 
 Grizzly Quester, after killing many at Ystrad Yw» 
 including Arthur's uncles, Red Eyed Emys and 
 Gwr-Bothu, is himself hard pressed. The Twrch 
 Trwyth himself has at length to yield up the 
 fabulous jewelled Razor and Scissors in the Severn 
 Flood and the Golden Comb in Cornwall, whence 
 he is driven into the deep sea. And thenceforth 
 it was never known where he went. This great 
 hunting saga — of the Boar, the Razor, Comb, and 
 Scissors — that might have been told by a mediaeval 
 barber-surgeon of genius in his cups, who had 
 drunk deep of the black wine of Kilhwch, takes 
 a new tinge of local colour when you relate the 
 Great Boar to the twin valleys of Llychwr and 
 Amman. 
 
 On a placid airless summer day you might think 
 the flat, sandy shore between the mouth of the 
 Llychwr and the Nose of Pembrey, with the wave- 
 less ripple of the ebb tide lapping it, one of the 
 most innocent coasts to be had by any water. 
 But when sailing-ships were plentiful the bay 
 
212 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 and estuary often made havoc of those that went 
 astray in the Burry Inlet. The corner at " Cefn 
 Sidan," the Silken Ridge, was the most deadly 
 spot. In 1828 it sent some notable French victims 
 to their deaths. That November a West Indiaman 
 that had come safe all the way from Martinique 
 was wrecked on Cefn Sidan, and most of the crew 
 and passengers perished. Among the latter were 
 Colonel Coquelin and his daughter Adeline, niece 
 of Josephine, former Empress of France. Father 
 and daughter were buried at Pembrey in one 
 grave ; and fourteen maidens in deep mourning, 
 as Pembrey folk still tell you, attended the funeral 
 as pall-bearers to the drowned girl. In the church- 
 yard the stone may be seen which Welsh pity 
 raised in memory of the French colonel and his 
 child. 
 
 The Castle at Llychwr suffered by being near 
 the uplands, and it was often attacked and thrice 
 surprised. Harry Beaumont's first ruder struc- 
 ture was taken by Meredith and Rhys, of whom 
 you heard at Weobley. It was rebuilt then, as 
 custom was, on a more habitable scale ; but only 
 to be again besieged, taken, and burnt to the 
 ground. 
 
 Curiously enough, when fifty years later Gerald 
 de Barri passed this way with Archbishop Baldwin, 
 he made no note of any castle, though he speaks 
 of crossing the river. It was, no doubt, in ruins 
 then. The present structure is part early thirteenth 
 and part fourteenth century, according to W. G. 
 Clark, the greatest castle-hunter who invaded this 
 district. Before we left the earlier sieges we might 
 have quoted the " Brut of the Princes," which 
 tells how Rhys Ieaunc, or Young Rhys, collected 
 in 1215 an army of huge size — " lu dirvawry veint" 
 
BURRY INLET AND CARMARTHEN BAY 213 
 
 — and brought the Castle low. "And from thence 
 he drew toward Gower, and first reduced Castell 
 Llychwr." This suggests that it was the northern 
 outpost of the Gower circuit — the key to the 
 door. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 LLANELLY— ST. ELLI — THE OLD TOWN — THE 
 SANDS OF PEMBREY — KIDWELLY AND ITS 
 CASTLE 
 
 Llanelly, black-a-vised, smoky, and unlovely, one 
 of those towns that at first appear only destined 
 to make wealth for the rich and poverty for the 
 poor, does not attract the flying tourist. However, 
 the town, despite its grime and its grime-producers, 
 has its associations. Unexpectedly, it is one of 
 the few places in Wales that can claim to have 
 entertained George Meredith. The house where 
 he stayed was afterwards occupied by the Welsh 
 lyric poet "Elved"; and there, one winter night, 
 during a visit some years ago, the present 
 chronicler made acquaintance with another Car- 
 marthen poet, the late Watcyn Wyn, an Eistedd- 
 fodwr without guile and an incorrigible wit. At 
 the Cardiff Eisteddfod of 1896, when the sun was 
 pouring down like a furnace, Watcyn was en- 
 countered as he emerged from the crowded 
 Pavilion. 
 
 " Sut mae, Watcyn? 'Tis very hot — mae hi yn 
 boeth iawn ! Is the muse melting ? " 
 
 " Melting ? Dyn anw'l ! There's enough of 
 Watcyn lost to make a third-rate bard." 
 
 Many of Watcyn's songs and ballads deal with 
 
 214 
 
LLANELLY 215 
 
 the country round his own centre of Ammanford. 
 His prose was as idiomatic as his verse. 
 
 Castle-hunters differ about the lost Castle of 
 Llanelly. Probably it was only a British fort on 
 the mound known as Pen Castell, now eaten up 
 by the town. G. and I made an attempt to place 
 the site, acting on the directions given us by a 
 native. He bade us look in the empty markets, 
 it not being market-day. We discovered, or 
 thought we did, in which vacant alley of the 
 market the gateway stood. But an uneasy idea 
 afterwards occurred to us that the Honourable 
 Cymmrodor who had pictured it for us had done 
 so in a pleasant spirit of "Hud a Lledrith."* 
 However, if the Castle is lost, there is still the 
 old Stepney mansion, " Great House " (now called 
 Llanelly House), to fall back upon. It was in a 
 bad way when at the end of the eighteenth 
 century it was taken in hand and saved to the 
 town ; and its restorer, William Chambers of 
 Bicknor, also built, I believe, the market-house. 
 The original church at Llanelly was St. Elli's 
 (hence the name of the town). The present build- 
 ing was, because of its additional mid bell-tower, 
 which has been spirited away by vandals, of un- 
 usual design. Mr. Arthur Mee has written its 
 history (it is dedicated to St. Paul, not St. Elli) 
 with that affection which gives warmth to the 
 parish record. There is another book on the old 
 town by a native, Mr. Innes, which is crammed 
 with the little disappearing local details and the 
 local colour needed to individualise a place. He 
 has, among the records, an account of Llanelly 
 Bridge ; and, as we know, bridges and rivers and 
 abers become things of moment to the Welsh 
 
 * Illusion and Art Magic. 
 
216 TPIE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 wayfarer. Over it the town-seer makes you see, 
 as in an allegory of life, the pageant of old 
 Llanelly — the coach with dusty horses, presently 
 to be unharnessed and sent to swim in the bridge- 
 pools ; the soldiers marching against "Rebecca"; 
 and the funeral bier of Sir John Stepney, the coffin 
 covered with a scarlet pall. 
 
 South of the town, beyond the docks, on a sandy 
 peninsula, lies a solitary farm-house with a long 
 memory. Its name, Mach Ynys, is doubtfully 
 said to be corrupted from Mynach Ynys, or 
 Mynachdy-yn-Ynys(?). Here some have figured 
 an early monastery on the strand, that was 
 founded by St. Peiro, who was followed by that 
 same Sampson whose pillar we saw at Llantwit. 
 
 Over St. Elli, too, there is an old dispute — to wit, 
 whether the mysterious child of a barren Queen 
 in the unknown Isles of Grimbul, that Cadoc 
 brought from oversea, was boy or girl ? However, 
 Elli appears to have decided, when the day came, 
 to be a boy. His sanctity, after his death, grew 
 greater and greater. The Holy Wells of St. Elli 
 — " Ffynnonau Elli " — were better known than any 
 at Llandrindod, Builth, and otherwhere ; and one 
 man told Fenton he had seen " seven parishes 
 meet at the Mab Sant," or wake of St. Elli, on 
 January 17th. 
 
 Long afterwards the greater tradition of the 
 Welsh pulpit was well carried on here by the 
 eloquence of David Rees of " Capel Als." People tra- 
 velled from a long way at times, as I have gathered 
 from the Tales of a Grandfather (who lived at 
 Carmarthen), to hear David Rees. One of the 
 most remarkable traces of the old church-plays 
 on record anywhere is to be found in the accounts 
 of his early preaching. David used to carry with 
 
LLANELLY 217 
 
 him into the pulpit little biblical puppets — that is, 
 wooden figures dressed to represent some of the 
 Old Testament characters — and he made them go 
 through a brief interlude during his sermon. By 
 lending them dramatic life, and vividly impersona- 
 ting and differentiating them in his play of voice 
 and gesture, he so enlivened his Mystery that the 
 illusion he created and threw over his congregation 
 was absolute. But after a time it came to be 
 thought indecorous to use such aids to doctrine, 
 and it was given up. The old habit of the Welsh 
 pulpit, however, could not be killed out in a year 
 of respectable Sundays. Only now is it giving 
 way in other characteristics under the Anglicising, 
 depolarising effect of the colleges and newspapers. 
 But now, to travel on to Kidwelly, via Pembrey 
 and Burry Port. The railway after leaving 
 Llanelly skirts the sandy estuary of Cefn Patrick 
 in a half amphibious engaging fashion. At spring- 
 tides the sea laps against the railway embankment, 
 until you seem to be running through deep water. 
 Whether Patrick once sailed in a curragh or 
 coracle over these sandy shallows, I do not know ; 
 but the Saints had a mariner's trust in the water. 
 It was their via media between the Celtic shores, 
 Irish, Cornish, Breton, and Welsh. 
 
 One veteran apostle I do remember by the Burry 
 water-side, a London physician, the late Dr. 
 George Bird, friend of Leigh Hunt, Swinburne, 
 and Sir Richard Burton, the traveller, rechristened 
 by one of his friends " the Apostle of Health." It 
 was on a summer's evening, and riding sharp 
 round a sandy spur on a bicycle, I came full tilt 
 upon a little group of people, " beautiful women 
 and radiant men," and this noble old man sitting 
 in their midst. If St. Patrick ever sat by that 
 
218 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 water with an equal lustre and personal radiance, 
 it is no wonder if legends multiplied about kirn. 
 
 The constantly growing and multiplying sands 
 of this estuary make a Sahara of the coast-line 
 between Pembrey and Llanelly. It continues 
 about six miles beyond the " Nose," over Pembrey 
 Burrows and Towyn Burrows to Towyn Point. 
 Beyond the end of it, at low tide, lie Cefn Sidan 
 sands, two or three miles more. Hero they say 
 once stood a fair city. Traces of foundations of 
 walls and stubborn roots of trees are still to be 
 seen, at unwonted low tides, especially after a 
 heavy freshet in the Towy. How far the lost city 
 may be traced to notions of the washed-away 
 village of Hawton, which is shown in Saxton's and 
 Speed's maps of the county, it would be hard to 
 tell. Hawton lay, however, on the other side of 
 the Gwendraeth, under St. Ishmael's. 
 
 Coasting vessels long had a very warrantable 
 dread of the treacherous sand-bay into which flow 
 the Gwendraeth, Towy, and Taf Rivers. It is hard 
 to get even a small yacht through the sands up to 
 Kidwelly ; for you have a snaky track to negotiate 
 that is only seen for what it really is at low water. 
 The navigable way is bare half a cable in width, 
 and on either side, at flood, there is about three 
 feet of water over the sand. " Nothing bigger 
 than a coal barge," says the Complete Sailor, 
 " should try to make Kidwelly ! " 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE TOWY AND FERRYSIDE — LLANSTEPHAN CASTLE 
 — ST. ISHMAEL'S AND THE LOST TOWN OP 
 HAWTON 
 
 Four rivers have their aher in the inlet of Car- 
 marthen Bay, watched by St. Ishmael's Church on 
 one side and Llanstephan Castle on the other — the 
 two Gwendraeths, the Towy and the Taf. Of these 
 the Towy is a great stream ; indeed, there is none 
 in Wales, wild or sober, fairer in variety, richer in 
 memory. The other rivers are tributary to it. To 
 quote Leland, " Tave semith to cumme at full sea 
 to the mouth of Towe River, but at low water 
 marke a man may perceive how it ha(steth) to the 
 se on the sandis hard by Towe." 
 
 In fact, this triple inlet, shaped rudely like a 
 starfish with three curved limbs pretty visible, the 
 fourth and fifth being lost in sand and water 
 between Cefn Sidan and Laugharne sands, con- 
 tracts and dilates in a surprising way with the ebb 
 and flow. Looking from Ferry side or from St. 
 Ishmael's at low water, you gaze upon miles on 
 miles of sand. Then at times with a strong south- 
 west wind behind, the tide comes up at a gallop 
 and fairly races along the railway embankment. 
 At spring-tides you meet it unexpectedly in the 
 shape of frothy waves under the sandy railway 
 
220 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 arch, where the sand has been dry and the bits of 
 seaweed have been brittle for weeks before ; and 
 I have seen it flow on and turn the high-road 
 within and below the railway bank into a river. 
 If you have been tempted out at low-water a mile 
 or two on the beach where the cockle-pickers go, 
 you may have to use strategy and skirt shoal- 
 water to get safe home. In good aspects of the 
 sun these tidal sand-deserts have a quite beautiful 
 light bright colouring, with a dancing kind of 
 radiance that suggests a mirage and some lost 
 town like Hawton quivering in middle-air with 
 more roofs and pinnacles than ever it had of old. 
 
 To the inbound mariner these sands, beloved of 
 small boys, cockles, and flatfish are a bother and a 
 danger. If his schooner escape Cefn Sidan it may 
 get sand-bogged at Warley Point. Hear the Com- 
 plete Sailor's warning : " No vessel should try to 
 make Laugharne or Carmarthen without a pilot." 
 And again, speaking particularly of the Towy : 
 " To take a vessel four or five miles through an 
 invisible channel not more than three cables wide, 
 with a tide running four or five knots, and break- 
 ing sea on either side, can only be done by an old 
 hand." 
 
 One afternoon, with a blue-and-white sky, the 
 wind nor'-westerly, and the tide swimming in 
 broad and strong, we hired a sailing-boat, and 
 tacked out into the bay, seeing Llanstephan Castle 
 and the dark waterside wood and Lord's Park 
 slide away from us like a dream. As we sailed on, 
 we saw an infinite number of jellyfish — pale blue, 
 purple, orange, white — like globes of submerged 
 light, deep in the water. Our bare-legged boat- 
 man had humorous blue eyes and a face brown as 
 an Arab's. He told us, in reply to such idle ques- 
 
 . 
 
THE TOWY AND FERRYSIDE 221 
 
 tions as landsmen ask, how three whales once 
 came into Carmarthen Bay, and a tale his father 
 had of a foreign ship, the Stadveldt, wrecked on 
 Carmarthen Bar, and five hands drowned. He 
 much preferred, however, to talk of the cockle- 
 women of a certain Cockletown, and their habits. 
 He laughed slily as he told us they were very 
 angry if their men did a stroke of work beyond 
 cooking the dinner ; and on Sunday they went to 
 chapel like ladies, in silk and satin, with big gold 
 brooches and great jewelled earrings to deck them 
 out. He said " Tref-y-Cocos " had laws of its own ; 
 and the people were so clannish, they never married 
 out of their tribe. Some other hearsay reports he 
 gave us of their marriage customs, which sounded 
 like a bit of Herodotus. Evidently " Tref-y-Cocos," 
 which you will not find on the map, is a place 
 apart, where the cockle-shell middens entrench a 
 set of inhabitants who are not Welsh, Flemish, or 
 English, but simply " Pobl-y-Cocos " — cockle-folk, 
 primitives. 
 
 Although the open country about Ferryside is a 
 little bare and monotonous, it is broken near the 
 sea by typical Carmarthenshire cwms and small 
 valleys. Of these you have a good instance in 
 Melin Cwm, beyond Ystrad Bridge on the Carmar- 
 then road. The road up the cwm diverges on the 
 left from the main road, and leads past a mill and 
 an old-style wayside inn, and so to Iscoed Park. 
 A Maen-llwyd stands in the park above. This road 
 goes on to Llandefeilog, one of the true old-style 
 Welsh agricultural villages. Several of the 
 Llandefeilog farm-houses, e.g., Nant y Llan, which 
 formed part of the monastery, are very well worth 
 examining. An old fishing-weir was formerly held 
 by the lord of the manor, and the villagers were 
 
222 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 allowed its use. The church, dedicated to St. 
 Maelog, is ten centuries old, and even the 
 Methodists have a chapel (formerly belonging to 
 the Established Church) which dates from the 
 fourteenth century. About a mile from the village 
 is an old eye- well, on a tenement called Pistyll, in 
 the lordship of Cloigin. 
 
 Ferryside has no popular antiquities : even its 
 church — a chapel-of-ease to St. Ishmael, built in 
 1828, rebuilt in 1875 — is new. Yet it has its tradi- 
 tions. It used for a time to be known as St. 
 Thomas's, because the church is so dedicated ; but 
 its real past is bound up with St. Ishmael's, where 
 you still hear stories of the wreckers who watched 
 Cefn Sidan sands like wolves, or of the old village 
 of Hawton, and its foundation-walls seen at low 
 tide. Hawton, it is said, was originally defended 
 from the sea and the sea-sand by a range of 
 burrows which gradually gave way before wind 
 and water, till at last, at some desperate inunda- 
 tion, the village was devastated. 
 
 Dangerous as it may appear to strangers, the 
 cockle-pickers of Ferryside and Llansaint at the 
 ebb tide treat the farthest stretches of the wet 
 sands, a mile or more out, like honest terra firma. 
 They and their carts may be seen for long hours at 
 their cockle-picking. Indeed, one recalls the stoop- 
 ing forms of the cockle-women, minutely outlined 
 on the pale, shimmering, sandy levels where the 
 kittiwakes run and whistle, as a constant part of 
 the picture. These cockle-women are a stout, 
 hard-working, and exclusive folk, who hold dear 
 their privileges and the old customs of the cockle- 
 grounds. Their mouths are full of Welsh proverbs 
 and scraps of folk-lore ; and Llansaint is their 
 metropolis, a pure village of cockle-pickers. St. 
 
THE TOWY AND FERRYSIDE 223 
 
 Ishmael's in the old days was their cathedral ; it is 
 a rude, impressive structure, curiously expressing 
 the place where it stands. The interior is like 
 some profound ecclesiastical crypt or cavern, 
 sombre and austere to a degree ; on a hot summer's 
 day its coolness is delicious. The parish register 
 goes back to 1561, and contains some incidental 
 entries as to great storms and loss of shipping on 
 the 26th and 27th of November, 1703, and the 
 corn-famine in 1597, which are of extra-parochial 
 interest. 
 
 A railway-crossing will be found leading to the 
 sands a little below St. Ishmael's Church ; and one 
 can return by the sands when the tide is out 
 instead of keeping to the high-road. You pass 
 on the way a piece of aboriginal architecture in 
 the Cockle Rock— so called, we were told by a 
 smiling lassie, " because cockles cannot climb it ! " 
 
 If you are stationed at Ferryside, Llanstephan 
 Castle becomes your one inevitable landmark and 
 neighbourly sentinel across the water. You never 
 tire of the rude coronal it makes on that shapely 
 hill. It draws you imperceptibly back into the 
 Middle Ages, when every castle held its castlery 
 at its peril, when the "Fair Family," the 
 " Tylwyth Teg," still lived in the woods about 
 Laques, and when Merlin himself was still rein- 
 carnating himself in the spirits of the Welsh 
 poets, who wished to prophesy the return of 
 Arthur or Owain Lawgoch, or the fall of London. 
 
 Approaching the Vale as the Normans originally 
 did, we perceive how well Llanstephan Castle was 
 posted (three hundred feet above sea-level, or 
 two hundred feet higher than Kidwelly Castle) to 
 command the mouth of the Towy and the sur- 
 rounding lands. Not much of the real interior, 
 
224 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 despite its commanding proportions as seen from 
 below, remains but the outer walls or curtains 
 between the towers, the gate-tower, the keep, 
 and some of the vaulted chambers in its base- 
 ment. Compare it with Kidwelly, and you 
 realise how much has perished through the wear 
 and tear of time and no doubt the free quarry- 
 ing of its stone for building farm walls and folds. 
 The view is an enchanting one from the top of 
 the keep — whose staircase, though broken, is still 
 available — or from the western walls, which do 
 not rise insurmountably above the ground-level 
 of the Castle-close. Ferryside and St. Ishmael's 
 and the high grounds above define the old region 
 of Llangyndeyrn, across which the Welshmen 
 once swept in force to harry the deer of 
 Kidwelly and besiege the Castle. 
 
 According to Welsh tradition, the first stone 
 castle on this site was founded by Uchtred, a 
 Welsh lord in the early Norman days ; but the 
 hill was probably stockaded centuries before the 
 Normans fought and built their way into -the 
 country. Having got to Kidwelly, they must 
 have seen at once the strategic value of Llan- 
 stephan. The first Norman castle may have been 
 only a palisaded tower, strengthening the main 
 point of an earlier earth-fort. It was not until 
 the time of the Barons de Londres that it gained 
 its completer form, as shown by the present ruins. 
 In 1143, the three bold sons of the lord of Towy, 
 Griffith ap Rhys, Cadell, Meredydd and Rhys, who 
 had grown practised in upsetting the Norman 
 chess-board, made a determined attack on the 
 Towy strongholds. Carmarthen Castle taken, 
 they marched south, leaving Rhys-y-Gors alone 
 for some reason, and beset Llanstephan by night. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 ■i _: 
 
 
THE TOWY AND FERRYSIDE 225 
 
 The Normans could easily convey a signal to the 
 garrison at Kidwelly. At any rate, a strong force 
 advanced from the east, and crossing the Towy 
 attacked the besiegers. But the three sons of 
 Griffith ap Rhys beat off this counter-attack, and 
 then took the Castle. 
 
 St. Anthony's Well may be reached in the dip 
 on the south-west side of the Castle by the path 
 that skirts the foot of the Castle Hill, hugging 
 the steep brink above the beach. The Well has 
 preserved, for a wonder, the old stone-work and 
 the niche where the Saint's figure stood. The 
 water used to be thought of sure and miraculous 
 effect, and is still used by the country-folk for 
 eye-complaint. A pin, or some equivalent, had 
 to be dropped in the water by the sick visitor. 
 A pin is nothing to us ; but think of the far-come 
 pilgrim kneeling there and praying in the time 
 when a pin was an old country woman's precious 
 thing. 
 
 From St. Anthony's Well the path carries one 
 onward to the slopes of Parc-yr-Arglwydd, the 
 next hill, southward and seaward to that on which 
 the Castle is posted. This affords a finer sea- 
 outlook than the Castle Hill. But the best high 
 pitch in the neighbourhood is on the road 
 to Llanybri, a village situate two miles inland 
 and north-west of Llanstephan, nearly five-hun- 
 dred feet above sea-level, which has a small 
 modern church, erected by the family of Laques. 
 The old house, called " Laques " (pron. " Lax "), 
 mentioned by Drysdale, was a seat of the same 
 Lloyds that lived at the Plas for so many cen- 
 turies. They gave up the Plas when Sir William 
 Hamilton became owner there. The old " Plas " 
 was on another site, a little lower than the 
 
 15 
 
226 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 present house. As you look at the fair sur- 
 roundings of the Plas at Llanstephan you can 
 recall the figure of Nelson, who was a guest there 
 of the Hamiltons. On one occasion he and Lady 
 Hamilton drove into Carmarthen to see Edmund 
 Kean play at the small theatre in the town. 
 The physician, Sir John Williams, who lived until 
 lately there, collected at the Plas a noble library 
 destined by him for the nation, which has gone 
 to the National Library at Aberystwyth. 
 
 Llanstephan is noted for its sweet chime. 
 Thirty or forty years ago an amiable visitor, 
 Mary Curtis, described the church : " In the 
 north transept is an aperture closed in ; from 
 its looking directly to the altar, it must be a 
 hagioscope. Through this, in Romish times, those 
 who sat in the transept could see the priest at 
 the altar and the holy things. Squenches is a 
 name sometimes given to these apertures, but it 
 is not the proper word. Where the vestry is now 
 was a large door before the restoration of the 
 church, though which the coffin was conveyed 
 to the place of burial. On the north side of the 
 altar are the ancient tombs of the Lloyds, of 
 Laques, and of the Meares family, in a sort of 
 aisle, which was once distinct from the church." 
 
 The same writer tells us, too, of the "very ancient 
 house called ' Plas Brych,' Bryd or Brodyr, said 
 to have been the residence of monks." 
 
 When we were youngsters, the eight-mile jaunt 
 by road from Carmarthen to Llanstephan was a 
 recognised holiday adventure. The village inns 
 then, I remember, would be surrounded by a 
 motley collection of vehicles ; while inside tea 
 and cockles and other mightier viands supplied 
 continual relays of feasters, who set off home 
 
THE TOWY AND FERRYSIDE 227 
 
 in the evening part singing along the darker 
 roads, or listening to a treble-voice — 
 
 "Dos di ati, dywed wrthi, 
 Mod i'n wylo'r dwr yn heli." 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE TOWN OF CARMARTHEN — A CLARE CASTLE — 
 MERLIN'S TREE — DICK STEELE 
 
 As you can sail up the Towy lazily to Carmarthen 
 quay in a coasting-vessel, wind and tide favouring, 
 you may add the town fairly to your Welsh coast 
 route. It lies about eight miles from the mouth 
 of the Towy, on whose north bank it is grouped 
 above the meadows like a demurer garden city, 
 with more white and brown and grey about it 
 than the very red red-brick now favoured by the 
 urban builder. If only the Castle had not been 
 so amerced by time, the town, standing over the 
 river, as it does, would still have some signs of a 
 tower-crowned mediaeval front to present to the 
 wayfarer approaching by the old bridge. You 
 may judge of the effect it had when Dick Steele 
 retired here to end his days from the queer print 
 by Bucke reproduced (see p. 230). 
 
 In Carmarthen it fell to the present writer 
 to spend several of his early years, beside many 
 intermitted months afterwards, when the town 
 was the base for holiday expeditions. During 
 part of the time we lived in a spacious old house 
 in Nott Square, which had been a bishop's palace. 
 The house had an individuality which had sur- 
 vived the modernising of its street-front. Under- 
 
THE TOWN OF CARMARTHEN 229 
 
 neath it was the undoubted crypt of a chapel 
 of Edward IV. 's time, and in a deeper niche was 
 a well which was served with a chain as I 
 remember it, and which we believed to be bottom- 
 less. It was positively a house to favour the 
 romantic faculty, and our maids dreamed 
 dreams and told tales. Acres of attics, opening 
 on a roof with a scrambling path on the leads, 
 helped to give effect to the legend of a bishop 
 told by one old servant, Hannah. According to 
 Hannah, one of the bishops who lived here was 
 a bad wicked man ; and he had a wife, although 
 it was forbidden priests to wed ; so he hid her 
 in the attics, where, poor lady, afraid both of 
 her husband and his enemies, she made away 
 with herself. The story, whether authentic or 
 not, left us afraid of dark cupboards and passages 
 as the day went. We half-feared to see the 
 bishop's white lady, as she had been described 
 to us, appear in her night-dress carrying the rope 
 with which she hanged herself. 
 
 The town was very poorly lit in those days, 
 with dim and infrequent street-lamps. But their 
 flame, such as it was, had a deep orange colour 
 which accorded well with the evening greys and 
 umbers. One lamp stood nearly at our door, 
 and looking up, it cast the dappled, wavering 
 pattern of the tall drawing-room windows upon 
 the ceiling and gold cornice with an effect that 
 was both disturbing and enchanting to our fancies. 
 Through that pale reflected other-window we 
 looked into we knew not what — some other 
 town with other people, paler and fainter than 
 the real men and women. Another lamp guarded 
 the corner of the square where a narrow street 
 led to the inbuilt entrance and hidden gateway 
 
230 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 
 of the Castle, blocked by mean roofs, houses, and 
 market-inns. This narrow street, as it twisted 
 its way down to the quay, clung close to the 
 Castle walls. At the quay usually lay two or three 
 of the coasting-vessels that brought coal and 
 timber to the town, moored below the bridge. 
 The Castle, I grieve to say, had long before my 
 time (in 1789-1792) been turned into the county 
 gaol ; and its river frontage was hid by a huge 
 blank disfiguring gaol-yard wall without a single 
 tower or other determining feature to break and 
 relieve it. In the day when the country wakes 
 to the pleasure of its own history and its memorial 
 buildings, it will restore to the town the approach 
 to that fine gateway, an end to a street vista of 
 which any place that cared two pins for its archi- 
 tecture would be proud. 
 
 The Castle, mainly a Clare Castle, dates from 
 about 1140 ; but in a more primitive way it kept 
 guard before that, the site being one of those 
 naturally pointed out for use by its command of 
 the river approaches. The Britons used it in their 
 own way ; the Romans used it in theirs ; the 
 Welsh and the Normans used it turnabout long 
 after the last Romans had gone. 
 
 You best realise the Castle in its extent by look- 
 ing at the plan in Speed's map of the town, 1610. 
 The courtyard was a large one, with three flank- 
 ing towers, a fine keep and unusually spacious 
 apartments and living-rooms at the north-west 
 corner. There was no gate, I believe, on the 
 north side where the ominously shut gaol-gates 
 are now, looking towards Spilman Street. The 
 chapel attached to the Castle, St. Edward's, must 
 have been a very fine one, to judge by the crypt 
 in the cellars of the Sheaf Inn. 
 
THE TOWN OF CARMARTHEN 231 
 
 Before the Clare Castle one was built out of a 
 yet older fort to seal the first Norman advance 
 about 1083. This held its place, and stood siege, 
 for some thirty-three years. Still earlier, in 1079, 
 the Welsh chroniclers say that Gwilim Vastard — 
 William the Bastard, William the Conqueror — 
 had been on pilgrimage to St. David's. If so, no 
 doubt he paused at Carmarthen on the way ; and 
 if we accept that record, we are driven to connect 
 the Castle of 1083 with his journey. For when 
 William I. went on a pilgrimage he kept a keen 
 eye to other sites than those of the churches he 
 passed. The Castle held its own until the day 
 when Owain, son of Caradoc, was deputy castellan 
 for its Norman owner. It was then that Gruffydd, 
 son of Rhys ab Tewdwr, who had lately returned 
 from Irish exile, appeared on the scene. Another 
 prince, the son of Cynan, had been giving him 
 harbourage in the north, but had promised 
 Henry, who feared the Tudor intrigue, either to 
 give him up or to have him quietly put away. 
 Luckily a servant carried secret news of this 
 treachery, and he escaped just in time, flying to 
 Aberdaron where the Church gave him sanctuary, 
 and so making his way south. Then the mesh was 
 drawn round him in the south. Henry, hearing 
 that he had escaped and made a stand in Strath 
 Towy, sent Owain, son of Cadwgan, and another 
 chief in pursuit. The Vale or Strath of Towy 
 seems only a scone for a pastoral, but its cross 
 glens, leading off into wild country, often sent 
 armed bands swooping down upon the town-gate 
 and citadel of Carmarthen. One of these bands 
 under the young prince, who had escaped Henry's 
 snares, surprised the Castle at the end of this 
 episode, and Owain, Caradoc's hopeful son, was 
 
232 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 killed on the ramparts as he stood. Owain was 
 deputy castellan for the Norman lord. 
 
 Failing your chance of going to gaol in the 
 Castle and so scaling its walls, the tower of St. 
 Peter's Church is your best point of vantage 
 whence to see Carmarthen to-day. There with 
 the aid of Speed's map and a little local fantasy 
 you can discern not only the old parish bounds 
 and the old town within the parish of St. Peter, 
 but you can see the old inhabitants of the town 
 parading in contempt of history, Merlin and Dick 
 Steele among them. 
 
 Carmarthen, as its Welsh name with its play 
 upon "Merlin" or "Myrddin" (Caer-Fyrddiri) 
 shows, is probably a Welsh echo of a British 
 place-name. The Latin names Muridinum and 
 Maridunum hint at the derivation. Ptolemy gives 
 us the first, Antoninus the second. Roman roads 
 run east, north-east, and west to and from Car- 
 marthen, whose traces are pointed out below, as 
 the names Sarnau (causeways), Pensarn (head of 
 the causeway), &c, declare. When the Romans 
 went, the Welsh no doubt resumed the place, 
 fighting amongst each other as Welsh custom was. 
 We conjure up Merlin here to fill the historical 
 gap ; and leap some centuries to reach the year 
 when Gruffydd of the Tudors attacked and took it. 
 Having taken the Castle, he sacked the town, but 
 made no effort to keep either, and drew to a 
 hold at Dinevor. After this, Carmarthen Castle 
 saw more fighting than fell to the lot of any other 
 castle in this district, owing to its position in a 
 region perfectly formed for Welsh warfare. In 
 1137 it was taken by Owain Gwynedd ; in 1143 by 
 his sons, including Howel the Tall, the poet, a rare 
 castle-breaker. In 1159 it was besieged by Rhys 
 

 
THE TOWN OF CARMARTHEN 233 
 
 ab Gruffydd, Prince of Dyfed, but the siege was 
 raised by a formidable combined force, Norman 
 and Welsh. 
 
 Nott Square, at the south end of King Street, 
 was formerly High Street, and here stood the 
 town-stocks and a cross, within a few feet of the 
 site now occupied by General Nott's monument. 
 At this cross it was that Bishop Ferrar suffered 
 martyrdom on March 30, 1555. Foxe, in his Book 
 of Martyrs, says it was in the market-place he 
 was burnt, on the " south side of the Market- 
 cross," which some local writers have placed near 
 the Priory. But as the old street-market was held 
 chiefly in the High Street, not far from the gate 
 of the Castle, and there was a cross where we 
 have indicated, little doubt is left about it. 
 
 The writer's grandfather described to him the 
 aspect of the town as it was when the market- 
 stalls were spread on a Saturday or a fair-day, with 
 one stall for hats including the " het befr," or 
 tall Welsh hat, and others for Welsh homespun, 
 and yet others for the good brown pots and pans 
 from the local potteries. You could buy eggs 
 then for twopence or threepence a dozen, and a 
 nice Nantgaredig fowl for tenpence, and a fat 
 duck for a shilling. Taylor, the " Water Poet," 
 visited Carmarthen on his last journey, and 
 waxed eloquent over its good fare and low 
 prices : — 
 
 "Butter, as good as the world affords, 2id. or 3d. the 
 pound ; a salmon two foot and halfe long, twelve pence. 
 Biefe, l^d. a pound ; oysters Id. the 100 : egs 12 for a 
 penny. A little money will buy much, for there is nothing 
 scarce dear or hard to come by but tobacco pipes." 
 
 The two back streets that continue the line of 
 
234 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 King Street and Nott Square down through what 
 is (still called Bridge Street to the quay and the 
 bridge show the old characteristically narrow 
 chief approach to the town from the bridge. On 
 the extreme left, next to the " White Lion," and 
 abutting on its yard, we come upon an unexpected 
 bit of the old Castle. Near the Castle gates 
 the market used to be held in the space of Upper 
 Market Street, now Nott Square, and this was 
 the heart of the old town. 
 
 Descending Lower Market Street to Guildhall 
 Square, you pass the site of old St. Mary's Church 
 at the Guildhall, and what was St. Mary's Street, 
 now the Guildhall Square, to the Dock Gate, the 
 old north-western gateway of the town. And 
 turning to the right out of the extreme corner of 
 the square, and bearing to the left through Red 
 Street, you come to the present market ; on 
 Saturday forenoon a bustling scene with its rows 
 of market-women and its hearty show of country 
 produce and Welsh flannel and Carmarthen cloths. 
 
 At the north-east side of the town, standing 
 well among its trees at the meeting of many 
 streets, St. Peter's Church is the best memorial 
 left of old Carmarthen town. The spacious four- 
 teenth-century building that we discern now 
 includes large portions of an earlier one ; instead 
 of aisles it has two naves, one of which is much 
 older than the other. The tower is tall and 
 massive. The interior is unusually full of monu- 
 ments and mural tablets. The most remarkable, 
 the tomb of Sir Rhys ap Thomas and his wife, 
 was conveyed here from the old Priory Church, 
 when the ruins of that vanished landmark were 
 desecrated in the early eighteenth century. 
 
 There is no inscription now on his tomb, but it 
 
THE TOWN OF CARMARTHEN 235 
 
 might run : " Here lies Sir Rhys ap Thomas, Ruler 
 and Governor (under favour of Henrys VII. and 
 VIII.) of all Wales ; Chamberlain of Carmarthen 
 and Cardigan ; Seneschal of Builth, Haverford- 
 west and Rhoose. He fought in five battles, held 
 the most famous tourney ever seen in Wales — at 
 Carew — left innumerable children, and died in 
 1527 full of years and honours ; escaping by a 
 timely death the mortification of seeing the dire 
 change already impending in the fortunes of his 
 family." 
 
 Another tomb, less defaced by age and time, 
 shows us the effigy of a praying lady, the Lady 
 Vaughan, with an impressive, curious epitaph 
 which begins — 
 
 ' ' Kinde Reader Vnderneath this tomb doth lye 
 Choice Elixar of rnortalitie." 
 
 If one leaves St. Peter's by Priory Street, one 
 passes the old Priory site hidden behind the houses 
 on one's right, and then reaches presently, in the 
 dip of the street where the Oernant brook flows 
 out, "Merlin's Tree" — a last remnant of the oak, 
 propt now and set on a base of mason-work — 
 with a new tree growing up beside it. And there 
 one may drink in, if one can, that very breath of 
 mystery which the Silurist's brother drank in 
 elsewhere. According to old tradition : — 
 
 "When Merlin's tree shall tumble down, 
 Tumble then shall Mei-lin's town." 
 
 There is a reference to the Tree in a much later 
 rhyme : — 
 
 " Three sailors pass, by the Water-Gate, 
 And sing of Merlin, as it grows late. 
 
236 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Last night they sailed the Irish Sea, 
 
 The bitter sea, in a wild twilight 
 
 Where its tide swims north to Enlli's strait ; 
 
 From the Water-Gate to Merlin's Tree 
 
 They sing to-night 
 
 Of Merlin's death and Annwn's might." 
 
 Sir Richard Steele's connection with Carmarthen 
 was through his second wife, Mary Scurlock, only 
 daughter of Jonathan Scurlock of Llangunnor, 
 and it was only the last four or five years of his 
 life he spent here. One cannot but speculate on 
 the effect of the sequestered life of a small 
 country squire at Ty Gwyn under Llangunnor Hill, 
 upon the soldier, essayist, poet and wit. He had 
 lived through the follies and excitements that 
 a campaign in the Low Countries, much lively 
 commerce with the London stage, a give-and-take 
 partnership with Addison, and many quarrels 
 and bitter jealousies, and encounters with men 
 like Swift, had formerly provided. It was Swift 
 who said of him (in the "Satire on Dr. Delaney"): — 
 
 "Thus Steele, who own'd what others writ, 
 And flourish'd by imputed Wit, 
 From perils of a hundred Jayls 
 Withdrew to starve and dye in Wales." 
 
 But Bishop Hoadly of Hereford, where Steele 
 lodged for awhile before retiring to Carmarthen, 
 said of his friend that he retired to retrench in 
 his living and save money so as to "do justice 
 to his creditors." At any rate to Carmarthen 
 he came, apparently with a view to settling down 
 for good, in 1725 or 1726 ; and though he paid 
 visits to Hereford, he returned to London no 
 more. A stroke of paralysis made him feeble in 
 
THE TOWN OF CARMARTHEN 237 
 
 both mind and body in the last three years of his 
 life ; but a pretty picture is given of the sick man 
 by Victor, who writes : " I was told he retained his 
 cheerful sweetness of temper to the last, and 
 would often be carried out in a Summer's evening, 
 where the country lads and lasses were assembled 
 at their rural sports; and with his pencil give an 
 order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown 
 for the best dancer." Steele died in 1729, Sep- 
 tember 1st, at a house standing, some say, on the 
 spot where the Post Office now stands, and which 
 was converted, after his death, into an inn, the 
 " Ivy Bush " — not to be confused, of course, with 
 the present " Ivy Bush " in Spilman Street. 
 
 What should be said of Steele's Carmarthen 
 wife — his " Dear Prue," his pretty, peevish Prue — 
 spoilt child, wilful and shrewd, contrary and 
 charming woman? We must be kind to her 
 memory, for his sake and because she was a 
 Carmarthen girl, and must have known its streets 
 as a little maid, quite as well as she knew St. 
 James's or Hampton Court afterwards. Her 
 " little disputes " with her husband notwithstand- 
 ing, she must have found life entertaining in his 
 company, for he went on being an ardent, whim- 
 sical lover long after he had become her husband : 
 indeed, to the end. " I love you better," he wrote, 
 "than the light of my eyes, or the life-blood of 
 my heart." He wooed her to good temper with 
 walnuts and coach-rides. " Dear Prue," he wrote 
 once, " I send you seven pen'north of walnuts at 
 five a penny. Which is the greatest proof I can 
 give you at present of my being with my whole 
 Heart yrs. Rich d * Steele." But the thirty-five 
 walnuts had diminished by the time the letter 
 was sent off, for he wrote outside it, " there are 
 
238 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 but twenty-nine walnuts." Next day he sent her 
 fifty more, and sent his " service " to Binns, who 
 was Prue's companion and confidante, and there- 
 fore to be carefully propitiated. That was in 1708. 
 Lady Steele does not seem to have made any long 
 visit to Carmarthen after her marriage until 1716, 
 when she returned there to look after her pro- 
 perty, leaving her husband and children behind. 
 She was said to be not an excessively fond 
 mother, but he wrote gay, impulsive letters about 
 the children during her absence ; now to tell her, 
 "your son is mighty well employed in tumbling 
 on the floor of the room and sweeping the sand 
 with a feather." Now, again, Betty and Molly, 
 the two girls, have been with him in Paradise 
 Row, eating strawberries and cream, in apprecia- 
 ting which he showed them (he is careful to tell 
 us) a father's good example. Meanwhile she 
 continued her coyness, even at a distance, and 
 often sent him cold letters. When she does relax 
 for a moment, and call him " good Dick," it makes 
 him almost ready to forget his gout, and walk 
 all the way down to Carmarthen. She was not 
 happier without him than with him. She quar- 
 relled with her servants and her Welsh relations. 
 Her nerves gave out; hereditary gout declared 
 itself. She left Carmarthen and returned to Lon- 
 don at the close of 1717 ; and before another year 
 was ended she had ended her strange tale. By 
 the contrariety of fate the Carmarthen wife was 
 buried at Westminster Abbey, and her husband, 
 the London wit, play- writer, Tatler, at Carmarthen. 
 Let the following lines of her writing, which are 
 to be seen, scribbled on a scrap of paper, among 
 the MSS. at the British Museum, serve to con- 
 vince us that there was more under her moods 
 
 
THE TOWN OF CARMARTHEN 239 
 
 and fancies than most of Steele's biographers 
 have allowed : — 
 
 " Ah, Dick Steele, that I were sure 
 Your love, like mine, would still endure ; 
 That time, nor absence, which destroys 
 The cares of lovers, and their joys, 
 May never rob me of that part 
 Which you have given of your heart : 
 Others unenvy'd may possess 
 Whatever they think happiness. 
 Grant this, O God, my great request : 
 In his dear arms may I for ever rest." 
 
 Betty, or Elizabeth, the only child of the mar- 
 riage that survived, who is said to have joined her 
 mother's beauty to her father's wit, married a 
 Welsh judge, John Trevor, who became Lord 
 Trevor of Bromham. Prior to this she was the 
 cause of a duel between two less fortunate suitors. 
 
 Sir Richard Steele was buried in the old family 
 vault of the Scurlocks, which is near one of the 
 doors of St. Peter's Church. To realise what the 
 Carmarthen of Steele and his wife was like, we 
 may take Bucke's well-known view of the town, 
 and picture houses with gabled roofs and narrower 
 streets, and the still up-standing towers of the 
 Castle above the bridge. Then, starting from the 
 middle of King Street, we can take our way over 
 the bridge to Llangunnor, where he lived in 
 Ty Gwyn, now a farm-house. I remember as a 
 youngster staring in on a hot day through the 
 lattice of the dairy windows at the cool white 
 pans of milk and cream. 
 
 Another reminiscence is of the Fair Days in the 
 town, particularly of John Brown's Fair (I never 
 learnt who John Brown was), when the horses 
 
240 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 and cattle used to stand tethered to the railings 
 of St. Peter's, and when you would see a horse- 
 couper bringing a great horse at full trot down 
 King Street to show off his paces, and shouting 
 " Hi, hi, hi ! " to ware the crowd. " John Brown's 
 Fair" still flourishes, and is known as far away 
 as Norfolk and Stagshaw Bank in the county of 
 Durham. 
 
 John Taylor, the "Water Poet," whose list of 
 market prices has already been quoted, was very 
 nearly lost on his road to Carmarthen on his 
 Welsh travels. He was then an old man, and as 
 he takes pains to tell us, he was miserably horsed. 
 Missing his road as the day went, he had contrived 
 to flounder into a bog or quagmire. 
 
 " I had much adoe," he writes, " to draw myself 
 out of the dirt or my poore weary Dun out of the 
 mire. ... A horseman of Wales that could speak 
 English overtook me and brought me to Caermar- 
 den and good entert n at (the) house of one Mistris 
 Oakley. ... A good large town with a def encible 
 strong castle and reasonable haven for small barkes 
 and boats, which formerly was for the use of 
 good ships, now it is much impedimented with 
 shelvs, sands, and other annoyances ; it is said 
 Merlyn the prophet was born there." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 RHYD-Y-GORS — THE TALE OF THE THREE PILGRIMS 
 — ST. CLEAR'S AND THE ROMANCE OF THE 
 BEAUTIFUL MISS BURNES — LAUGHARNE AND 
 PENDINE — HOWEL THE GOOD, AND PWYLL 
 PRINCE OF DYVED 
 
 Going by train west from Carmarthen, you leave 
 the Towy behind as you cross the bridge between 
 Johnstown and Llanllwch, keeping fairly close 
 thereafter for some distance to the high-road, 
 which, again, dogs the old Roman road, the " Via 
 Julia." If you are quick enough you can just 
 surprise a glimpse on your left, immediately the 
 bridge is crossed, of a comfortable-looking house 
 (an outpost of the lunatic asylum) below the rail- 
 way level. The house stands on the disputed site 
 of a lost castle, famous in the record Rhyd-y-Gors 
 ("Ford of the Bog"). Not quite two miles south on 
 the river cliff, overhanging the zigzagging main 
 road to Llanstephan and its castle, is Castell Moel 
 ("Bald Castle"), better known as Green Castle, 
 where a farm-house is girt about by some of the 
 chambers of a Tudor mansion. On my visit there, 
 one Saturday afternoon many years ago, a farm- 
 boy and girl and one or two children were the 
 sole garrison, their elders having gone to market. 
 They showed me the house, but had only a con- 
 
 16 241 
 
242 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 fused tale to tell about the ruins, in which Roman 
 soldiers seemed to be contemporary with Rebecca's 
 Daughters. 
 
 But meanwhile the railway has left Towy side, 
 and begun to climb and make its way through 
 the green hills that divide the watershed of the 
 Towy and the Taf and some of its tributaries, the 
 Cywyn, the Dewi Fawr, and the Gynin. Reaching 
 the Cywyn, you find at the aber, whence it flows 
 into the Taf estuary, two churches, which it helps 
 to name, Llanfihangel- and Llandeilo-Abercoioyn, 
 the latter another of the places dedicated to 
 St. Teilo. In Llanfihangel Abercowyn churchyard 
 is a triple grave with a very strange legend 
 attached to it, which as you con it over makes 
 you wonder about the old Pilgrim's Way to 
 Menevia. 
 
 Three pilgrims journeying to St. David's fell sick 
 here of the plague, and, afraid of being left un- 
 buried, decided that the least sick of the three 
 should put an end to and bury his companions 
 in a grave into which he too was finally to creep. 
 But in the end the pains of death gat hold on him, 
 and he was unable to adjust the slab over the 
 grave. How much of the story is true ? Possibly 
 the grave was ransacked, and the story invented 
 to explain the displaced covering-stone. Not 
 many years ago a woman in Brittany committed 
 suicide by digging a grave and partly covering 
 herself with earth, and pulling down a slab over 
 all. As for this unhappy haven, it used to be said 
 that while the pilgrims' grave was well tended, 
 and kept clear of weeds, the little peninsula would 
 flourish and be fruitful. But church and church- 
 yard have for over half a century been helped on 
 their way to ruin. A new church, Victorian and 
 
RHYD-Y-GORS, LAUGHARNE, PENDINE 243 
 
 inglorious, but better placed, serves Llandeilo 
 Abercowyn now. 
 
 The village of St. Clear's, which you reach after 
 the seven-mile run from Carmarthen, is your best 
 point from which to invade Llanfihangel Aber- 
 cowyn. St. Clear's is one of those lazily-straggling, 
 long-drawn villages which often perplex the tired 
 vagabond in South Wales. Such a man accosted me 
 on an ancient plea opposite the " Mariner's Arms " 
 about half-way down the interminable street. He 
 was very dusty — and, I fear, very thirsty. He said 
 he had tramped all the way from Milford — "God- 
 strewt he had ! " 
 
 St. Clear's is so called " after Santa Clara, an early 
 sister of the Church, who founded a church here in 
 St. David's time " (?). Leland speaks of a castle at 
 St. Clear's, which is now only to be traced by the 
 mound called "Banc y Bailey," where perhaps the 
 keep stood. The present church is of all dates and 
 memories. A sister of James I., Lady Drummond, 
 lies buried in the chancel. A small Cluniac cell, 
 served by a prior and two monks, was founded 
 here in 1291. At the Dissolution its land went to 
 All Souls, Oxford, which still maintains a tithe- 
 claim on the parish. 
 
 An extraordinary tale, that might almost have 
 been adumbrated by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is told 
 of St. Clear's. It begins — a good opening ! — a year 
 or two after the Battle of Waterloo. A mysterious 
 party arrived one day at the " White Lion," and 
 after careful inspection took a house called " The 
 White Cottage." The party included a lady who 
 walked lame and used crutches, her daughter, a 
 beautiful girl who passed as Miss Burnes, and a 
 young man, a son, who looked delicate, and who 
 was rarely seen, being absorbed, it was said, in 
 
244 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 chemistry. Presently, when Miss Burnes had be- 
 come a great favourite in the neighbouring society, 
 uneasy rumours about bank-note forgeries on Car- 
 marthen banks gained vogue. A suspicious pocket- 
 book, dropped by Miss Burnes, stuffed with £5 and 
 £10 notes, gave a clue. But her party had suddenly 
 disappeared meanwhile. At Bath the young lady 
 was detected passing a forged note : her brother 
 was traced to Bristol, all three were thrown into 
 prison, and the ladies, being tried first, were sen- 
 tenced to death. However, the son's trial came on, 
 and he vowed they were absolutely innocent, and 
 he was the guilty person. In the end, he was 
 hanged, and they escaped with a year's imprison- 
 ment. Their heartlessness in regard to their 
 doomed confederate excited much comment. The 
 sequel is the strangest part of the story. Miss 
 Burnes became travelling companion to a lady of 
 rank — met at Florence the heir to an earldom, who 
 fell in love with her ; married him, and died— a 
 countess. While in Carmarthen prison this in- 
 teresting figurante is described as wearing a 
 wonderful grey silk frock cut in Spanish fashion, 
 and draped with a black lace shawl, while a small 
 velvet cap adorned one side of her pretty head. 
 
 Laugharne is reached via St. Clear's Station, from 
 which brakes run regularly to the town ; for a 
 town it claims to be, with the officers and para- 
 phernalia of a borough. It lies snug at the mouth 
 of the Taf, the inlet where that stream and the 
 Towy and the two Gwendraeths mix their waters 
 with the sea. Town-street, castle, church, and 
 quay— all have a demure air of past importance. 
 A hundred years ago Laugharne was as busy a 
 small seaport as you could wish to see ; and in the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth it was counted as " one of 
 
RHYD-Y-GORS, LAUGHARNE, PENDINE 245 
 
 the six chief towns in all Wales, being then larger 
 than Cardiff ! " In William IV.'s time, if we accept 
 the exaggerated estimate, Laugharne even passed 
 for fashionable ; a smaller Tenby, with something 
 of a busy county town added. Miss Curtis, in her 
 Antiquities, lamenting the change that had come 
 over the place in her day, says : — 
 
 "Nearly all the wealthy and ancient families are gone. 
 About forty to fifty years ago Laugharne presented a lively 
 scene : the carriages of the rich rolled by its houses ; in the 
 morning and afternoon the different families walked up and 
 down the street from the Mariners' Corner to the houses with 
 bay windows, just past the Vicarage on the opposite side. 
 Parties often concluded the day. Malkin, who was here in 
 1803, said it was the best built town in Carmarthenshire." 
 
 The same writer draws a picture of the town on 
 market-day with the farmers and their wives and 
 daughters, coming in from Llanboidy and other 
 parts, on horseback, " seated on a sort of cushion 
 called a pannel, with large bags of striped woollen 
 stuff, some full of corn, others of oats, swung on 
 each side of the horse. The boys made many pen- 
 nies by holding their horses. The corn and oats 
 were sold to the different storehouses, and were 
 then shipped to Bristol." Fortunately Laugharne 
 has not lost everything with its striped corn-bags, 
 sea-going trade, and retired gentility. Cover Cliff 
 and Warly Point still stretch their necks into the 
 sea, and the path along the side of St. John's Hill 
 still stares across at St. Ishmael's and Cefn Sidan 
 and Worm's Head. If the Devonshire coast and 
 Lundy Island are also seen rain may be expected 
 shortly, say the fishermen. 
 
 Laugharne Castle is now part of a private house, 
 and its inner works unluckily can only be seen by 
 
246 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 special favour. Wogan Street, which leads to it, 
 brings us to the site of one of the old gateways 
 which made the town formidable. The outer 
 bailey of the Castle was extended to the church 
 gates, and there the principal gateway of the 
 Castle stood ; and another gate stood at the 
 Mariners' corner. Wogan Street, stretching from 
 the Castle to the Island House, represents the old 
 street which here, as elsewhere, grew up within 
 the shadow and under the strong arm of the 
 Castle. 
 
 Laugharne Castle may be best seen, externally, 
 if you walk down the beach below when the tide is 
 out, or take boat at high water and row round the 
 harbour. Then it still has a stern military air. Its 
 effect, you will find, is much increased by its mix- 
 ture of square and round towers — work of different 
 periods. 
 
 An earlier castle than the present was founded 
 by Rhys ap Gruffydd on what is said to be a 
 Roman site. Rhys entertained Henry II. here on 
 his return from Ireland in 1172. King Street is so 
 called after that monarch. In 1215 the Castle was 
 in Norman hands ; for Llewelyn the Great sacked 
 and burnt the place. Then it was, probably, that 
 Guy de Brian began the building we now see, 
 having already had the castlery as a grant. From 
 the Brian family it passed to the Devereux family : 
 then to the Herberts, Earls of Pembroke, and so to 
 the Percys. It remained with the latter until the 
 attainder of the sixth Earl of Northumberland, in 
 Elizabeth's reign, when it passed to the Crown. 
 Then Sir John Perrot, that " bold and free-tongued 
 gentleman," who claimed to be a natural son of 
 Henry VIII. , was made castellan of Laugharne ; 
 and so remained until, in his other role of Irish 
 
RHYD-Y-GORS, LAUGHARNE, PENDINE 247 
 
 purgator and deputy, he was accused of uttering 
 disrespectful words against the Queen, and en- 
 couraging the rebellion of O'Rourke and other 
 Irish malcontents and Romish priests. He said 
 " he had from impatience, and not from a disloyal 
 heart, uttered words against the Queen." Popham, 
 the Attorney-General, found him guilty, though 
 unjustly. Leaving the tribunal, he said, " God's 
 death ! will the Queen suffer her brother to be 
 offered up a sacrifice to the envy of his frisking 
 adversaries ? " The Queen seemed inclined to 
 pardon him, but he expired in the Tower, Septem- 
 ber, 1592, six months after his condemnation. 
 
 The Castle stood intact until it was battered 
 in the Civil War. Laugharne folk declared Crom- 
 well (or the devil in his likeness) besieged the 
 Castle in person. His soldiers raised batteries on 
 Fern Hill, and in a field called New Park. Finally, 
 the water was cut off, and the Castle fell ; General 
 Laugharne (whose family took their name from 
 the place), pluckiest of turn-coats, fought on both 
 sides, and first took the Castle for the Commons, 
 and then held it for the King. This second siege 
 was that when Cromwell is said to have been 
 active. When the Castle fell it was dismantled 
 and partly burnt by the Roundheads, whose 
 cannon-balls have frequently been found. 
 
 Laugharne Church, St. Martin's,' was another of 
 castle-builder's design, with embattled tower. It 
 was rebuilt, in something like its later form, by the 
 De Brians. The interior is well worth sketching. 
 Originally the floor rose in three separate pitches 
 towards the altar ; but this feature, with many 
 others, has gone under the various repairs and 
 restorings. The painted ceiling of Laugharne 
 Church was one of " the sites of the place " when 
 
248 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 our grandfathers went to stay there. Notice the 
 monuments of Guy de Brian and Sir John Powel. 
 The effigy in the north transept is that of Lady 
 Palmer, who met with a strange death, " from a 
 reaping-hook concealed in a hay-field." This part 
 of the church is sometimes called " Palmer's aisle." 
 A figure of St. George has gone from one window ; 
 a portrait of Edward III. still appears in another. 
 An old yew-tree near the south entrance was called 
 the "fox-tree"; and here all kinds of vermin used 
 to be nailed. In the parish register is an account 
 of the prices paid for the heads of the vermin. 
 
 Pendine has, I believe, the longest sands in 
 Wales, and for two miles or more they are fine and 
 hard and ridable, horse or cycle. They have tall 
 cliffs and tidal caves to back them too, and many 
 green approaches, through sea cwms, as one 
 ranges west toward Marros. The village has no 
 great accommodation for visitors, but the inevitable 
 bungalow has made an entry now. 
 
 If you approach Pendine by the upper road 
 from St. Clear's, through Eglwys Cymmyn, you 
 have a formidable descent to make from the 
 high grounds on the eastern side of Marros 
 Mountain. To the wheelman this is likely to 
 prove a snare, if he is continuing his road west. 
 Thinking to avoid the huge ascent back to the 
 high-road, I tried to ride the sands round to the 
 next corner, but only to find the tide coming up 
 at a hand-gallop ; and finally I had to make an 
 ignominious return, hauling the machine over the 
 boulders and through salt water ; and the adven- 
 ture, amusing in the recollection, was a trying one. 
 The tides at Pendine make a considerable difference, 
 you will find, to your resources if you stay there, 
 as they cut off the approach to the cliffs and caves 
 
X .5 
 
 3 I 
 
 D 2 
 
 -1 3 
 
RHYD-Y-GORS, LAUGHARNE, PENDINE 249 
 
 by the beach round Dolwen Point. There is a 
 footpath over the cliff shoulder, however, which 
 you can take from the cliff road above the Spring 
 Well. 
 
 Pendine used to be a favourite spot for the 
 farmers to visit on their holiday-after-harvest fete, 
 and it was a common thing to see numbers of gigs, 
 carts, and dogcarts drawn up at the inns. The old 
 road to Laugharne, skirting the burrows, was a 
 very rough one. The " Laugharne Waggon," fifty 
 years ago, was drawn by three horses abreast, and 
 needed it, especially on market-days. 
 
 The Pendine Cliffs end at Gilmin Point; the 
 name is said to be due to the fact that formerly, 
 during the time of religious persecution, "people 
 used to assemble here for divine worship ; on one 
 occasion a preacher named Gilman stood at the 
 entrance of the cave, called the 'pulpit,' and 
 preached to a thousand people. 'Beacon's Hill,' 
 over Gilmin Point, is so called from lights having 
 formerly been placed there, for the heartless pur- 
 pose of wrecking ships. Old inhabitants 'remember 
 the men going on horseback, with a lantern tied 
 under the horses' heads for this object.' " 
 
 The sea-cwm at Morva Bychan can be surprised 
 from the beach if the tide permit ; and the 
 hazel-copses and underwoods that vary the Marros 
 Mountain wildness are like cool streams to the eye 
 on a hot summer day. If the cwm is followed about 
 half-way, and the road taken straight on when the 
 cwm twists to the left, it brings you to the Green 
 Bridge, below the new hostelry that stands on 
 the bank. The road passes over the " Bridge " — 
 a nine-days' wonder — but you must descend on the 
 upper side to the stream to see its waters disappear 
 within the magic cavity. Emerging fifty yards 
 
250 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 further down, the stream makes its way through 
 Morva Bychan valley to the sea. 
 
 The road for Llanddowror rises gradually as you 
 leave St. Clear's behind, then descends again from 
 Craig Wen. The name of a former Vicar of Lland- 
 dowror falls sooth on the ear. Griffith Jones 
 was of those devoted souls who work, no matter 
 what the discouragements, for the love of God and 
 man. There is no mistaking the church, lying low 
 on the left of the highway as you descend into the 
 village. 
 
 The church, dedicated to St. Cringat, is a simple 
 building, lately restored. The interior — plain nave 
 and chancel — does not look, superficially, like that 
 known to Griffith Jones, for its small space was in 
 his day yet smaller, being half eaten up by high- 
 backed pews. 
 
 When Griffith Jones came to Llanddowror in 
 1716, the ignorance of the country people gave a 
 shock to his perfervid mind. He conceived the 
 idea of bribing them — as there was great distress 
 in the land — with halfpenny loaves dispensed in 
 the church porch, to come to him and be taught 
 to read the Bible at least. Out of this hungry 
 beginning in 1730 grew the Welsh " Circulating 
 Schools," whose masters were itinerant for a time. 
 Then schools were stablished, village and parish, 
 and thousands of people taught ; 10,000, it is said, 
 was the number in the year of his death, 1761. A 
 good woman, Madam Bridget Beavan of Laugh- 
 arne, aided him in the work. She it was who 
 erected the tablet to him on the south wall of the 
 church ; and she was, at her wish, buried near his 
 grave. His tomb is in the chancel, and was moved 
 to make more space for the altar; but his remains 
 actually lie under the floor of the nave, below the 
 
RHYD-Y-GORS, LAUGHARNE, PENDINE 251 
 
 communion rail. Madam Beavan left £10,000 at 
 her death in 1779 for carrying on the schools, 
 which money after much litigation went eventually 
 to their maintenance. 
 
 If the wayfarer pauses under the wall of the 
 village school on a summer forenoon he may hear, 
 as I did, the youngsters' fresh voices chiming out 
 a sort of babe's litany. It seemed to me the best 
 11 In Memoriam " that Griffith Jones could have. 
 
 From Llanddowror over a league of climbing 
 road, now tracing a stream, now dividing green 
 copses, leads on to Red Roses. The place is on high 
 ground, five hundred feet above the sea, and a flying 
 glimpse of the place promptly declares that there are 
 no roses there. The name is akin to that of Marros 
 Mountain, and comes from " Rhos," a moorish fell, 
 and not from the red rose at all. Five roads cross 
 at Red Roses. That turning off to the left winds 
 and zigzags its way through Eglwys Cymmyn to 
 Pendine, while another forks to the right at the 
 upper Pendine Inn, leading to Marros village. 
 Eglwys Cymmyn means Bleak Church (?) it is said, 
 because of its exposed site. A monument to Sir 
 John Perrot is in the church ; and Peace Park and 
 Parc-y-Castell in the parish recall its fighting days. 
 
 You leave the sea if you go on to Whitland, the 
 Ty Gwyn or White House of Hywel Dda or Howel 
 the Good, greatest of Welsh lawgivers. It is 
 another instance of the way in which we still 
 follow old habits in Wales, that Whitland, which 
 Howel found a good meeting-place for the coun- 
 cillors called together out of the Welsh commots 
 and hundreds, should now be a junction of railway 
 lines. Whitland to-day makes little of the associa- 
 tions gathered about it, but it is not wonderful 
 that the old " Ty Gwyn " has left no trace, since 
 
252 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 it was a timber building which could be moved 
 almost as readily as an Eisteddfod pavilion to-day. 
 Imagine a hall, with oak and beech-trees for 
 columns, a forked branch at the top serving to 
 carry the long roof-tree, and side walls of stout 
 poles and wattle-work forming the aisles. In 
 winter a great fire burnt in the centre, its smoke 
 rising through a " simdde louvre," or sheer opening 
 in the thatched roof. Walls and roof were white- 
 washed, completing this White House ; and the 
 door at the end was wide and high enough for 
 a mounted horseman to ride in erect. Afterwards, 
 the Abbey perpetuated the name of " Ty Gwyn 
 ar Taf," although built on a different site from 
 Howel's house. It was a Cistercian house ; its 
 remains make part now of a country house and its 
 purlieus. 
 
 Having got to Whitland, you are again on the 
 verge of romance-country. Narberth, a plain, 
 demure country town at first sight, is a place 
 of renown. The long and broad descending High 
 Street brings you, if you persist, to the upstanding 
 mound of the Castle Hill, and reminds you that the 
 old Welsh name of the place was Castell-yn- 
 Arberth, afterwards reduced to Narberth. Older 
 people will still call it Arberth. Sir Andrew Perrot 
 built the present Castle, which consists of a gate- 
 way and two towers, and some dilapidated curtain 
 and partition walls. 
 
 But the original Castell was far older. We read 
 in the Mabinogion how Pwyll, Prince of Dyved, 
 lord of the seven cantrevs, " was at Narberth, his 
 chief palace, and he was minded to go and hunt, 
 and the part of his dominions in which it pleased 
 him to hunt was Glyn Cuch. So he set forth from 
 Narberth that night, and went as far as Llwyn 
 
RHYD-Y-GORS, LAUGHARNE, PENDINE 253 
 
 Diarwydd. And that night he tarried there, and 
 early on the morror he rose and came to Glyn 
 Cuch. . . ." Later in the tale we hear of a mound 
 above the palace called Gorsedd Arberth. This 
 mound, to be sure, was an enchanted one ; but 
 you should turn now to the Mabinogion and read 
 there of the " lady upon a white horse, in a 
 garment of shining gold," who could not be over- 
 taken, and of the wonders that she brought about. 
 You will picture her, Rhianon, as she throws back 
 her hood and reveals her lovely face to Pwyll, 
 when at length she halts for him to come up with 
 her. You will hear her then, in the time of her 
 mysterious penance for the great crime she had 
 not done — murdering and devouring her son ! — 
 hear her as she sits on the horse-block near the 
 gate of the palace in Arberth, telling with down- 
 cast eye and mournful voice her terrible tale. 
 
 Grove, near Narberth, was a house of Colonel 
 Poyer, who was shot after his brave defence of 
 Pembroke Castle, as you will hear when we get 
 there. The railway line, as it leaves Narberth, 
 crosses high ground and then begins to burrow 
 after the stream that issues at Amroth. When 
 you reach Begelly you have Amroth two miles 
 away on the left, and have passed by on the same 
 side Kilgetty and its deer-park. Approaching 
 Saundersfoot, you are running over the last patch 
 of the coal-measures in the country, whose work- 
 ing is seen in sundry small collieries hereabouts. 
 Saundersfoot village lies down in a sea-hollow, 
 quite hidden away from the upper main road to 
 Tenby, where you reach the limestone rock that 
 gives the town so much of its character and 
 waterside vantage. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 TENBY: THE OLD TOWN AND THE NEW — PROUD 
 GILTAR — LYDSTEP HAVEN AND CALDY ISLAND 
 
 A strong fortress and a walled town, a decent 
 borough for centuries, and an elect watering-place 
 since about the year 1785, Tenby has, after a 
 rather dull period during a part of last century, 
 taken out a new lease of fame. Its name comes 
 from the Welsh — " Dinbych y Pysgod " (small city 
 of fishes), which truly describes its amphibious 
 circumstance. Built on a rock, it has at high tide 
 the salt water flowing nearly all round it ; and the 
 freshest of salt-sweet air, mild, yet not relaxing, 
 tonic but not cold, fills its lungs. Sometimes, no 
 doubt, the wind is boisterous, but this only makes 
 the adventure of the Castle Hill and the High 
 Street more amusing. Sometimes too it is said to 
 rain (average rainfall about thirty-six inches) ; but 
 this only adds to the hydropathic advantages 
 expressed by the sea and the " Marine Baths " in 
 St. Julian Street. Finally its coast, from Saunders- 
 f oot round to St. Govan's and the Stack Rocks, and 
 on to Angle, is so notoriously picturesque ; its 
 rural neighbourhood is so verdurous and so be- 
 castled, that a dozen summers spent here need not 
 exhaust its charms. 
 
 254 
 
TENBY : THE OLD TOWN AND THE NEW 255 
 
 As you look on Tenby town from the Castle Hill, 
 you may try in vain now to recall what the old 
 walled town was like before the idle and fashion- 
 able Tenby came into being. But the old walls 
 and towers, as one encounters them in the circuit 
 of the old streets, still give a serious air of history 
 to the place. The old town, says a writer who 
 wrote before the railway came, was well fortified. 
 One of its gates " leading towards Carmarthen is 
 encircled with an embattled but open-roofed tower, 
 after the manner of Pembroke. The extent of the 
 wall on the land side, which encloses only a part of 
 the town, is 512 yards, and the height about 
 21 feet ; this was furnished with embrasures, and 
 flanked by two square and five semicircular 
 towers. The south wall rises high above the level 
 of the sea at high water ; and through one of the 
 semicircular bastions is an entrance into the town, 
 by a passage called Southgate, formerly defended 
 by an iron portcullis. Northgate having fallen 
 into decay, has been removed ; hence the Old 
 Town and Norton, or Northtown, form one con- 
 tinued street. Besides these gateways there are 
 two more on the sea side, one leading to the pier, 
 and the other to the south sand. 
 
 "The religious establishments of the town and 
 suburbs have been numerous. There was an 
 hospital, or free chapel, of St. John's, founded by 
 William de Valence and Joan, his wife. A lazar- 
 house in the suburb, dedicated to St. Mary 
 Magdalen, was endowed about the year 1230 by 
 Gilbert Marshal, with lands for the relief of the 
 lepers received therein. An almshouse was com- 
 menced by Anselm, successor in the earldom to 
 Gilbert, but not completed. A convent of 
 Carmelite friars was founded by John de Swyne- 
 
256 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 more in 1399, 22d Richard II., called St. Mary's 
 College." 
 
 The South Parade still gives one an idea of the 
 town wall, with the antique details oddly varied by 
 the back-doors of certain inns and hostelries, 
 which pierce it at intervals. The most curious- 
 looking feature of the wall to-day is the gateway, 
 called the " Five Arches." Three of these were 
 made, however, in much later days than those 
 when the gate was built. The original arch was 
 that facing the South Parade, with a rounded top 
 to it. The portcullis slot is still to be seen in the 
 stonework. The walls, as they stand, are of 
 various dates. One portion dates (as a wall-tablet 
 near the fire-station shows) from Queen Elizabeth, 
 and was built, it is suggested, by Sir John Perrot. 
 
 From Castle Hill on a clear day with a good spy- 
 glass you can see not only Caldy Island near by, 
 and Lundy Island far away, but you can make out 
 Amroth Castle, Llanstephan Castle, and Kidwelly 
 Castle, with many churches and other humbler 
 landmarks, and see the Burry River at flood turn 
 pale blue under the north-east corner of Gower. 
 
 The Castle ruins on Castle Hill are meagre : a 
 rude tower of primitive aspect, with a later tower 
 adjoining it, after a fashion to puzzle the antiquary, 
 and a few walls of uncertain date, are all. The 
 bare surroundings do not help to enhance the 
 effect of the ruins. 
 
 The " Brut y Tywysogion," Chronicle of the 
 Princes, mentions one attack at least on a still 
 earlier castle than the present : one in 1151, when 
 when two of the " fighting Rhyses " — Rhys and his 
 brother Meredydd, sons of Gruffydd ab Rhys — 
 surprised it, and put its castellan and his men to 
 the sword. In later times, as the town grew and 
 
TENBY : THE OLD TOWN AND THE NEW 257 
 
 strengthened its walls, the Castle was enlarged. 
 Its final fall came in the Civil War. Bombarded 
 by the Parliamentary ships-of-war in 1643, it was 
 strong enough to hold its own. This was no small 
 glory for the Pembroke men ; but in 1648 another 
 attack, more boldly and elaborately contrived, sent 
 it down. Town and Castle passed from the King 
 to the Commons ; and the Castle was put out of 
 the reckoning, so far as any further warfare went. 
 
 Now the Castle-keep helps to register by its 
 gauges and glasses those things which seaside folk 
 always find interesting — wind and weather, rain 
 and sun — things that affect, too, the decay of towns 
 and castle walls like Tenby's. 
 
 The monument on the left is a Welsh counter- 
 part to the familiar Albert Memorial at Hyde 
 Park. The arms of Llewelyn the Last, the Red 
 Dragon of Cadwaladr, with the legend "Anorch- 
 fygol Ddraig Cymru " (" Unconquerable Dragon 
 of Wales ") appear upon it. 
 
 New Tenby began to be about two hundred 
 years after the date last cited, and it owes that 
 beginning to a gentleman who was none other 
 than the proverbial, mythical, but in this case 
 quite authentic, "John Jones." A doctor and a 
 bachelor of medicine of Haverfordwest, he was the 
 man locally to discover the sea as " a benignant 
 hygienic and hydropathic monster." In November, 
 1781, the Corporation granted him a lease of St. 
 Julian's Chapel, which stood on the old pier. This 
 was a Sailors' and Fishermen's Chapel, intended as 
 a place for them to confess their sins and pray 
 before putting to sea. Now in the last half of the 
 eighteenth century, although the rector of St. 
 Mary's claimed toll on all fish landed, he did not 
 trouble himself to serve the chapel. The Tneby 
 
 17 
 
258 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 fishermen thereupon declared "No prayer, no fish ! " 
 and the chapel fell into neglect and was in a bad 
 way evidently in 1780 when John Jones bethought 
 him of the new function it might be made to 
 serve. At any rate, he turned it into a bathing- 
 house, and so it remained till in 1805 Sir William 
 Paxton built his sumptuous baths. These were 
 burnt down almost before they were occupied, but 
 others were built in their place. In 1812 Fenton 
 describes Tenby as a town half in ruins, and 
 various accounts show that in the rejuvenating 
 of the place, which went on vigorously after that, 
 the old walls and gateways were quarried to build 
 some of those solid Georgian terraces which still 
 remain. It is worth note that the Carmarthen 
 Gate, which stood where the Royal Gate House 
 Hotel and the Lion Hotel now stand, commanding 
 White Lion Street, was pulled down in the same 
 year in which John Jones got his lease of St. 
 Julian's Chapel — in 1781. 
 
 Tenby parish church commands you to halt in 
 High Street as you enter Tudor Square. Entering, 
 you are first attracted in the interior by the 
 imposing flight of ten steps which lead up to the 
 altar. The wooden roof of the chancel, richly gilt 
 originally, was a late addition, and indeed the 
 building is of various dates and periods, Norman 
 to Early English, Transition to Perpendicular. 
 The tombs provide a sort of history of the town 
 written in stone. Here is one to the famous old 
 burgess stock of the Whites, which is set in the 
 arch on the right of the altar steps. Its alabaster 
 panels are a miniature family portrait-gallery 
 worth study, and the two marble effigies above, 
 dressed in the costume of Henry VIII. 's time, 
 commemorating John and Thomas White, help to 
 
TENBY : THE OLD TOWN AND THE NEW 259 
 
 suggest the Tenby that strengthened its walls and 
 was a fat borough. Another curious family tomb 
 is that to the wife of Thomas ap Rees, of Scots- 
 borough, which shows that good knight on his 
 knees, his lady on her side, and a " praty " brood 
 of little Reeses below. Another tomb is that of a 
 Tenby red-gowned alderman, William Risam, who 
 lived out his life here while Shakespeare was living 
 his in London and Stratford. Local gossip declares 
 that Cromwell, thinking the effigy a living man, 
 shot at him, and that the dent of the bullet is in 
 the wall. But the most extraordinary tomb I 
 know is one near the entrance door in the north 
 aisle — the effigy of the one absolute predestined 
 ascetic in the unforgetable guise of death and 
 emaciation, a thing not to be forgotten till the 
 spectator is out on the south sands surrounded by 
 the babble and gaieties of the living. 
 
 As for the amphibious delights of Tenby, are 
 they not all duly set forth in the guide-books, 
 which tell you, too, how to reach the Museum door, 
 guarded by two notorious ship-heads from old 
 wrecks ? There you may see the results of the 
 labours of the local antiquaries and others. Tenby, 
 its frivolities notwithstanding, has always been a 
 conscious student of itself and its neighbourhood, 
 its bone-caves and sea-creatures ; and many a 
 rarity is lodged here as a result in this quiet 
 corner of the old Castle buildings. In the lower 
 room you will find strange remains of the men we 
 know so little about — the Stone Men — with many 
 arrow-heads, hammers, and stone lances, from the 
 collection of a former Rector of Gumfreston, the 
 Rev. Gilbert Smith. Notice, too, the relics dis- 
 gorged by Hoyle's Mouth and the quarries of 
 Caldy Island or dug out of Longbury Bank Cave 
 
260 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 by the author of Little England Beyond Wales, 
 Mr. Edward Laws, and Professor Rolleston. Mr. 
 Laws once actually picked up a bone of a mammoth 
 on the South Sands, and other surprising " finds " 
 have been made by Tenby men. 
 
 In the same room you have a selection of the 
 wild birds and queer sea-fowl of the Pembroke- 
 shire coast in the Mathias Collection, and a choice 
 array of the Tenby shells, due to the shell-hunting 
 of Captain Lyons, who has given his name to one 
 rare small shell, the Lyonsia. Upstairs there are 
 moths and butterflies, coins and tokens, and a set 
 of prints and old water-colours. The old town as 
 it was before the advent of Dr. John Jones and 
 Paxton and the Georgian builders is made con- 
 temporary in the water-colour drawings of Charles 
 Norris and other pictures. 
 
 Leaving the Museum, you will be glad of a windy 
 walk to the old pier, where there is generally some 
 small bustle of boats and yachts coming and going, 
 or to the Victoria Pier, where the Bristol and 
 Waterford steamers or the Ilfracombe boat may 
 happen to be due. Safe as Tenby Harbour and its 
 sea-roads seem now, it has seen portents in its 
 time. French privateers have been captured in 
 the very harbour ; pirates and smugglers have sold 
 rare wines and fine silks to the cellars and ward- 
 robes of Tenby. 
 
 The folk-lore and the local traditions, if they are 
 disappearing, are not yet forgotten. You may 
 even get a native to sing you "Says Milder to 
 Melder," the Song of the Hunting of the Wren : — 
 
 "'Oh, where are you going?' says Milder to Melder, 
 ' Oh, where are you going ? ' says the younger to the 
 elder ; 
 
TENBY : THE OLD TOWN AND THE NEW 261 
 
 'Oh, I cannot tell,' says Festel to Fose ; 
 
 'We're going to the woods,' said John the Red Nose. 
 
 'We're going to the woods,' said John the Red Nose. 
 
 ' Oh, what will you do there ? ' says Milder to Melder, 
 ' Oh, what will you do there ? ' says the younger to the 
 
 elder ; 
 'Oh, I do not know,' says Festel to Fose; 
 'To shoot the Cutty Wren,' says John the Red Nose. 
 'To shoot the Cutty Wren,' says John the Red Nose. 
 
 'Oh, what will you shoot her with?' says Milder to 
 
 Melder, 
 ' Oh, what will you shoot her with ? ' says the younger 
 
 to the elder ; 
 'Oh, I cannot tell,' says Festel to Fose; 
 'With bows and with arrows,' says John the Red 
 
 Nose. 
 'With bows and with arrows,' says John the Red 
 
 Nose." 
 
 Many wholesome seasonal customs flourished in 
 the town of Tenby, and not so long ago. On 
 Christmas Eve crowds used to assemble in the 
 streets, march in procession, blowing cow-horns. 
 Then long before " morning light " on Christmas 
 Day the young men met with lighted torches to 
 accompany the clergyman to the church, when 
 the service was held which is still kept up in one 
 or two Welsh villages and called " the Plygain." 
 And on New Year's morning the boys and girls 
 knocked at the house doors early with their " New 
 Year's Water," which they drew fresh from a 
 well and carried in a tin or mug. With it they 
 sprinkled the persons and even all the apartments 
 of a house in return for small coin, using little 
 branches of evergreen for the purpose. One of 
 the songs sung by the children who carry the 
 
262 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 "New Year's Water" is most imaginative, most 
 musical — 
 
 "Here we bring new water from the well so clear, 
 For to worship God with, this happy new year ; 
 Sing ' Levy dew, levy dew, the water and the wine ! ' 
 With seven bright gold wires and bugles that do shine ; 
 
 Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon the toe, 
 Open you the west door and turn the old year go ; 
 Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon her chin ; 
 Open you the east door and let the new year in. 
 
 Sing ' Levy dew, levy dew, the water and the wine ! ' 
 With seven bright gold wires and bugles that do shine." 
 
 The words levy dew are, some say, a corruption 
 of the Welsh lief i Dduiv — cry to God ! The 
 second verse appears to figure the sun setting and 
 sun rising, along with the going of the Old Year 
 and incoming of the New. 
 
 You meet more geologists than you do folk- 
 lorists at Tenby, and indeed fossil-hunters have a 
 good hunting-field in the neighbourhood. Water- 
 wynch Bay can be visited when the tide is at half- 
 ebb ; the cliffs there, although nothing so fine as 
 Lydstep, make a bold setting for the small bay ; 
 the Raven Cliff and the rocks at hand suggest 
 that the Saundersfoot coal-measures are approach- 
 ing. Fossil ferns are to be had in the "Fern 
 Rock." Beyond the Monkstone it is impossible 
 to pass save at the very lowest of low tides, and 
 the way back from Waterwynch to Tenby by the 
 beach is not to be followed save at ebb of the 
 high spring-tides. 
 
 Tenby has inland caves besides those on the 
 shore. Hoyle's Mouth has not the charm of a sea- 
 
TENBY: THE OLD TOWN AND THE NEW 263 
 
 washed cavern, but it is the largest and geologi- 
 cally one of the most extraordinary of all the 
 limestone caves that Pembrokeshire can boast. 
 If the little Ritec stream could be followed it 
 would bring us to the bank where lies Hoyle's 
 Mouth. A bicycle lamp will prove of service in 
 exploring the interior, which extends for fifty 
 yards in a series of chambers, the third and last 
 of the three usually visited being the largest and 
 finest. The view from the opening, which is wide 
 and spacious, is very striking. The interior, once 
 noted for its fine stalactites, has suffered in being 
 ransacked for the bones and cave implements and 
 the " finds " now lodged in Tenby Museum. 
 
 Local gossip declares the cave runs all the way 
 underground to Pembroke Castle. Science says 
 it was, like its neighbour, Longbury Bank, used of 
 old as a cave-dwelling. Longbury Bank lies under 
 an irregular copse-clad knoll at the top of a rough 
 grassy ascent. The cave is pretty near the top of 
 the bank, and a funnel opens and leads up to the 
 field-level from its roof. 
 
 Another half-mile and you are on the verge of 
 Lydstep Haven, whose sands lie in the crook of 
 Lydstep Point. The caves lie beyond the Point, 
 and you descend the cwm, passing the old lime- 
 kiln and the quarries, to reach them — two of 
 them right in the nose of the promontory. By 
 following the cwm down past the upper caves to 
 the beach, you have the " Droch " and Natural 
 Arch on your right, and the Smuggler's Cave and 
 two smaller tidal caverns on the left. Here the 
 extraordinary rock-shapes and precipices are 
 flanked by a sea-shore full of sea wonders, 
 minute crustacean creatures and microscopic 
 dragons. 
 
264 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Wandering this part of the coast, we are bound 
 to call up again the boyish figure of Walter 
 Savage Landor, whom we already intercepted on 
 the shore of Swansea Bay. At Tenby he met 
 Ianthe and Rose Aylmer — 
 
 "Rose Aylmer whom these wakeful eyes 
 May weep, but never see ; 
 A night of memories and sighs 
 I dedicate to thee." 
 
 From Ianthe he borrowed a book which gave him 
 the idea of his Gebir. Now knowing how and 
 where he wrote it, we are led while we read to 
 translate some of its Arabic back into Welsh 
 scenes : — 
 
 ' ' I since have watch'd her in each lone retreat, 
 Have heard her sigh and soften out the name ; 
 Then would one change it for Egyptian sounds 
 More sweet, and seem to taste them on her lips 
 Then loathe them: Gebir, Gebir!" 
 
 So, too, thinking of the poet himself, we read 
 how Gebir — 
 
 " . . . when his passion had subsided, went 
 Where from a cistern, green and ruin'd, ooz'd 
 A little rill, soon lost ; there gathered he 
 Violets and harebells of a sister bloom, 
 Twining complacently their tender stems 
 With plants of kindest pliability. 
 These for a garland woven, for a crown 
 He platted pithy rushes, and ere dusk 
 The grass was whiten'd with their roots nipt off." 
 
 If you are fanciful enough, you may discover 
 near Manorbier the very spot to which these 
 lines of Landor refer. 
 
TENBY : THE OLD TOWN AND THE NEW 265 
 
 Caldy Island, which Tenby considers her own, 
 has latterly become again the headquarters of a 
 religious order — the Benedictines of the English 
 Church. The Brothers have published an account 
 of their settlement, which, whether you accept their 
 eremitic religious doctrine or not, you will find 
 worth pondering. The book is called The Bene- 
 dictines of Caldy Island {Formerly of Painsthorpe, 
 York), and it is published at the Abbey there. 
 The aims of the Brotherhood may be shortly 
 resolved into three : " Quietism, Adoration, and 
 Prayer ! " They migrated thither in 1906 from 
 Painsthorpe, having the Old Priory and Church of 
 Caldy to give them temporary shelter. Since then 
 they have built a Guest House, and made a 
 beginning with their larger monastery. At the 
 pleasant Guest House religious guests who are 
 like-minded with the Benedictines, and wish for a 
 Retreat, may stay at no great cost. 
 
 The early history of Caldy so far bears out the 
 rude impressiveness of the Priory Church as to 
 make good the tradition of the island. The 
 Welsh called it Ynys Pyr, or at times Llan Illtud. 
 Illtyd we know. Pyr is believed by Sir John 
 Bhys to stand for Porius, the same who lies 
 buried under a tumulus at Trawsfynydd in 
 Merioneth. The local ties of the name are 
 strengthened by the Lives of the Saints. In the 
 life of Samson, Bishop of Dol, Pirus is said to 
 have founded a monastery not far from that of 
 St. Illtud. Allowing for the slight confusion 
 between Llantwit Major and Caldy, we have good 
 grounds for connecting Illtyd with the island. 
 His pupils there, says this Book of the Bene- 
 dictines, included St. Gildas ; and among the 
 companions of Gildas were St. Paul Aurelian of 
 
266 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Leon, St. Samson, St. David, St. Malo, and St. 
 Brieuc. St. David in another account becomes 
 Deiniol. The string of Breton and Welsh names 
 is seen to be close tied when we come to trace the 
 religious and seafaring commerce of the two lands, 
 and the resolving of chiefs and knights into sea- 
 hermits and of actual legends into Arthurian tales 
 with Welsh, Breton, and Cornish backgrounds. 
 The legend of Caldy is a very real expression of the 
 place : it is the tale of the monk cribbed within a 
 narrow isle, an isolated "llan," or old church-close. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 GERALD THE WELSHMAN AND "THE FAIREST SPOT 
 IN WALES" — MANORBIER — GERALD'S WALES — 
 CAREW CASTLE AND THE GREAT TOURNAMENT 
 OF SIR RHYS AP THOMAS — SLEBECH AND THE 
 KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM 
 
 Now to the sound of a militant horn and an 
 urgent church-bell enters the intrepid and amazing 
 figure of Gerald the Welshman — Giraldus Cam- 
 brensis. When you reach Manorbier in the course 
 of your travels and take the long road from the 
 station down to the green village and the sea-cwm 
 across which the Castle and its stern bride the 
 Church confront one another, you are on the verge 
 of a charmed domain. Long may the builder, the 
 tourist, and the expropriating twentieth century 
 keep their irreverent hands off its green places. 
 n Gerald was born there in or about the year 1147, 
 youngest son of Angharad and William de Barri, 
 and grandson of Nesta, the " Helen of Wales," as 
 she was called, and of Gerald de Windsor. He 
 came, as you see, of the pick of two races, Welsh 
 and Norman ; and he was gifted in mind, fair in 
 body, of heedless wit and consuming energy. His 
 affection for his birthplace he expressed in an 
 intensive figure — a narrowing down of the world, 
 and of Wales to one chosen spot, Manorbier. " As 
 
 267 
 
268 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Dimetia is the fairest of the Welsh lands, and Pem- 
 broke the fairest part of Dimetia, and this the 
 fairest of Pembroke, it follows that Manorbier is 
 the sweetest spot in Wales." 
 
 He was a very handsome creature, and he gloried 
 in it. "Is it possible so fair a youth can die?" 
 asked Bishop Baldwin when he first saw him. It 
 was with Baldwin, when he had become Archbishop, 
 that Gerald went on the Itinerary, preaching 
 the Crusade, which fills the best of his books. The 
 page about Manorbier with its wild and curious 
 Pyrric derivation of the name cannot be omitted 
 from the chronicle : — 
 
 " The castle called MaenorPyrr, that is the mansion of Pyr- 
 rus who also possessed the island of Chaldey, which the Welsh 
 call Inys Pyrr, or the island of Pyrrus, is distant about three 
 miles from Penbroch. It is excellently well defended by turrets 
 and bulwarks, and is situated on a summit of a hill extending 
 on the western side towards the sea-port, having on the 
 northern and southern sides a fine fish-pond under its walls, 
 as conspicuous for its grand appearance, as for the depth of 
 its waters, and a beautiful orchard on the same side, inclosed 
 on one part by a vineyard, and on the other by a wood, 
 remarkable for the projection of its rocks, and the height of 
 its hazel trees. On the right hand of the promontory, between 
 the castle and the church, near the site of a very large lake 
 and mill, a rivulet of never-failing water flows through a 
 valley, rendered sandy by the violence of the winds. Towards 
 the west, the Severn Sea, bending its course to Ireland, enters 
 a hollow bay at some distance from the castle ; and the 
 southern rocks, if extended a little further towards the north, 
 would render it a most excellent harbour for shipping. From 
 this point of sight, you will see almost all the ships from 
 Great Britain, which the east wind drives upon the Irish coast, 
 daringly brave the inconstant waves and raging sea. This 
 country is well supplied with corn, sea-fish, and imported 
 wines ; and what is preferable to every other advantage, from 
 its vicinity to Ireland, it is tempered by a salubrious air." 
 
GERALD THE WELSHMAN'S COUNTRY 269 
 
 - The Castle buildings you see now are not those 
 celebrated by Gerald, who was born in a much 
 simpler building, of far less apparent consequence 
 than that marked by the present jumble of ruins, 
 mediaeval and Tudor, set about the well-ordered 
 lawns of a modern country house. A tower, a 
 moated ward within a curtain wall, and possibly a 
 gatehouse, are all we can recover of Gerald's boyish 
 House of Paradise. The place was innocent alike 
 of the greater walls of the military fortress and 
 the much later domestic buildings at the south- 
 west end, with the apartments that Mr. Cobb has 
 restored below and the stone roof and curious 
 chimneys above. The roof can be ascended by the 
 stairs from the old dining-hall ; its curious strong 
 stonework would certainly have pleased Gerald, 
 had it existed in his time. But, of course, this part 
 of the Castle was not built till centuries later. 
 Sceptics even say Gerald was born in a rude wooden 
 castle built upon or near the old camp on Oldcastle 
 Point. 
 
 • If we take Mr. Cobb's account, the square south- 
 west tower was built by the same men that built the 
 church tower, and at a time when men were pro- 
 digal in building. Then, the curtain-wall was built 
 over the foundations of earlier walls, and the lower 
 chapel or crypt which dates from Gerald's time (?). 
 Parts of the hall are, or appear to be, Norman ; and 
 the vault leading to the water-gate replaced the 
 great beams of a wooden floor, which belonged to 
 the Norman ponderous style of early castle-building. 
 The square tower that flanks the gate-tower is 
 probably early too. The gate-tower itself is later, 
 built on the earlier bare walls, however, of an older 
 one. The strange thing is that so much of the 
 earlier Castle remains, while so much of the later 
 
270 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 apartments, with enriched details certainly not 
 Norman, has gone. What became of them ? Were 
 they carried off for farm buildings, or, most 
 mysterious of all, shipped away to build (as an 
 ingenious antiquary has suggested) a mansion on 
 the opposite coast ? * 
 
 Manorbier Church makes the perfect companion 
 to the Castle. Norman in its nave and tower, it has 
 Early English work to show in its aisles and tran- 
 septs. The chantry was built some time after the 
 tower. The tower was entered by the rood-loft or 
 by a ladder : those who withdrew into it for defence 
 drawing up the ladder after them. The chantry 
 was converted into a schoolroom about sixty years 
 ago. Which of the later kindred of Gerald is the 
 knight whose effigy, a figure in a surcote and mail, 
 we see in the aisle ? Probably he is late thirteenth 
 century. 
 
 Carew Castle lies over four miles slightly north- 
 west from Manorbier. Going from Pembroke, you 
 cross half-way the old coaching high-road to Hobb's 
 Point, where you can see Nash Church, which has a 
 Crusader's tomb to show you. A mile and a half 
 further on the way to Carew you pass at Milton 
 the head of another pill or creek of the Milford- 
 Cleddau estuary. The next turn to the left leads 
 to the Castle, which stands well posted above the 
 bridge at Carew Pill, into which the Carew stream 
 discharges. 
 
 Not many yards away from the entrance you 
 have the shapely Carew Cross, left quite unpro- 
 tected on the side of the road — at the mercy of 
 every stone-throwing urchin whose energy needs 
 an outlet. The Cross stands on a pedestal — the 
 
 * See Arch. Camb., October, 1880, "Manorbere," by 
 J. R. C, 
 
GERALD THE WELSHMAN'S COUNTRY 271 
 
 Celtic twisted-osier ornament on the shaft much 
 worn and rubbed. The wonder is it has not all 
 gone long ago. The inscription has been read 
 differently ; but it may be rendered, as by Sir 
 John Rhys, " Margitent Decett f.c," or fecit crucem. 
 Who then was Margitent ? Possibly an Irish 
 prince who lived about 950. 
 
 - Entering the Castle, you find there a palpable 
 confusion of time and architecture — old, older, 
 oldest. The old is Elizabethan ; and that is the 
 square-windowed Elizabethan hall and apartments 
 in the north of the quadrangle. This was subse- 
 quent to the days of Sir Rhys ap Thomas, and was 
 built by another knight, Sir John Perrot, who was 
 a great builder and in stature a great man. For 
 older you have the Henry VII. Hall, which you 
 reach at the top of the quadrangle, one of a series 
 of great desolated apartments once occupied in 
 state by Sir Rhys. Perrot's north wing, which 
 makes so imposing an effect seen from over the 
 water, was never properly finished. Then for 
 oldest we have the military defences, defined by 
 the walls at the west end and the corner towers, 
 which are of Edwardian type. The country 
 round about is said to have lost much of its beauty 
 owing to the destruction of the timber after 
 Perrot's death, and the surroundings of the Castle 
 now hardly favour the lingering tradition of the 
 fine deer in the deer-park of Sir Rhys ap Thomas. 
 A tennis-court serves now as a modern equivalent 
 for the stately gaieties at Carew when he gave 
 his famous tournament in honour of Henry VII., 
 whom he had attended to Bosworth Field, on his 
 journey from Milford three years earlier. 
 
 Sir Rhys was too old to go to London for the St. 
 
 George's Day celebrations there, and so he made a 
 
272 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 " princelie fete " of his own, with a chair or throne 
 set for the King. To it came many valorous gen- 
 tlemen, famous for " theire abilities in feates of 
 armes ; and many men of prime rank who were 
 lodged within the castle, with others of good 
 qualitie who were lodged in tentes and pavilions 
 pitched in the parke." The " time of jollitie " 
 continued hospitably for five days. The first was 
 spent in " taking a view of all the companie, 
 choosing out five hundred of the tallest and 
 ablest " ; the second, in " exercising them in all 
 pointes, as if they had beene suddenlie to goe on 
 some notable peece of service " ; the third, in visit- 
 ing the bishop at Lamphey, and " commemorating 
 the vertues and famouse atchievements of those 
 gentlemen's ancestors there present " ; the fourth, 
 in holding the tournament, Sir William Herbert 
 being the challenger, Sir Rhys "playing the judge's 
 part " ; the fifth, in hunting and hearing a sermon 
 on loyalty, love, and charity by the Bishop of St. 
 David's. The whole chronicle (as printed in Fenton's 
 quarto) makes a most perfect, high-flown, delight- 
 ful chapter of romance. We read how the " justes 
 and tournamentes," the " knockes valerouslie re- 
 ceived and manf ullie bestowed " ; the wrestling, 
 hurling of the bar, taking of the pike, and run- 
 ning at the quinteine, were ever and " anone 
 seasoned with a diversitie of musicke." And 
 although many prides and rivalries must have 
 lurked in this feast of Carew — " among a thousand 
 people there was not one quarrell, crosse worde, or 
 unkinde looke that happened between them." 
 
 Carew Castle and its estates were mortgaged by 
 Sir Edmond Carew to Sir Rhys ap Thomas. The 
 Carew family were Geraldines, descended from 
 Gerald of Windsor and the Princess Nest, whose 
 
GERALD THE WELSHMAN'S COUNTRY 273 
 
 marriage portion Carew was. Their son William 
 took the name Carew (Welsh, Caerau — forts). On 
 the disgraceful attainder of Rhys's grandson by- 
 Henry VIII., the estates were leased to Sir Andrew 
 Perrot, and then back to the Carew family, in 
 whose possession they long remained. 
 
 Carew Church, a fourteenth-century Decorated 
 church with an earlier tower, lies close to the road 
 that leads back from the Castle to Lamphey, in 
 that part of the parish called Carew Cheriton. 
 The church has many tombs of famous folk, 
 Crusading lords of Carew and others. The north 
 transept was used as a sort of family chapel for 
 the Castle at one time. Another chapel, now a 
 vestry and schoolroom, stands in the graveyard, 
 and the fine old rectory house over the road now 
 serves Cheriton Farm. 
 
 If you care to extend your journey up to Cleddau 
 you can go by Jeffreson, Yerbeston, and Martletwy 
 to Landshipping Quay, and there cross the ferry. 
 Over it lie Picton Castle and Slebech ; on gaining 
 the Ha'rfordwest high-road from Narberth you 
 turn east to the latter place, or west to the former, 
 as you may prefer. A rough short-cut leads up 
 from Slebech Park, past the fish-ponds, to Slebech 
 New Church on the hill above ; but who cares to 
 see a new church when old ones are to be had ? 
 The Eastern Cleddau, up from Slebech Bridge, is 
 richly wooded, a resort for some rarer birds that 
 have bred there for time immemorial. You need 
 a canoe, and a few lazy days, to explore the 
 Cleddau and get to know its waterside creatures. 
 
 A good inland voyage from Hobb's Point is that 
 to Carew Castle, some five miles away. Taking 
 boat at the Neyland ferry, you follow the Milford 
 Cleddau main channel, passing at the end of the 
 
 18 
 
274 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 first mile the old Pembroke ferry to Burton ; then 
 rounding Burton Mountain — a very small mountain 
 — and so as far as Lawrenny ferry, where you turn 
 right and pass the quay, turning away from Benton 
 Castle. It is almost worth landing at Lawrenny 
 to see the church, which has a true " Pembroke 
 tower." Benton Castle can be seen when boating 
 up to Ha'rfordwest ; but it is not held to be a 
 tourist's castle, although both the ruin and the 
 demesne about it are worth exploring. Lawrenny 
 does a good deal of trafficking from its quay still. 
 It had at one time a fat oyster-bed in the estuary. 
 The Castle at Lawrenny, as it is sometimes locally 
 termed, is the modern castellated mansion, built 
 on a site long associated with the Burton family, 
 which stands embowered in Lawrenny Park. 
 Upton Castle, due south of it, is passed on your 
 left as you paddle up Carew Pill. Upton was 
 once a fair castle, that served as the seat of the 
 famous old Pembroke family, the Maleufants. It 
 shows only the ruins of the gatehouse towers 
 to-day and the interesting chapel of Upton, a 
 chapelry of Nash Church. The chapel has some 
 curious tombs of the Maleufants and Bowens, and 
 a singular detail : a clenched fist taper-holder or 
 bracket in the north wall. If you are adventurous 
 enough to sail without a pilot up these creeks, you 
 must be careful to bear right and south-west, 
 avoiding the Cresswell creek after you pass Law- 
 renny, and left all the way when you reach the 
 narrowing strait above Upton, avoiding Ford Pill 
 on the right and Ratford Pill in the middle, and 
 keeping the left-hand channel of the three. Then, 
 unless you watch the tide, you will be likely to run 
 aground at points, and be stuck in the mud. 
 Should you decide to explore the Cresswell creek, 
 
GERALD THE WELSHMAN'S COUNTRY 275 
 
 you might find yourself investigating the top-slime 
 of the coal-measures, were you to linger too long 
 at Cresswell (Christ's-well). 
 
 After making the most of the waterways in this 
 holiday neighbourhood, you will or ought to find 
 that, of all its places, it is Slebech affects your 
 fantasy most, asks closer acquaintance and draws 
 you back to its approaches. Here at Slebech was 
 an old house and commandery of the Knights of 
 St. John of Jerusalem, who, from being simple 
 hospitallers in that sacred city, were fired to 
 become knights-errant with a charter wide as 
 " Christentie." There is no space here to dilate 
 on the power of their open and secret confrater- 
 nity: the reader who would like to know what 
 their effect must have been on the mediaeval life 
 of this region may turn to the very striking 
 articles by Mr. Rogers Rees in Archceologia 
 Cainbrensis, based upon original researches. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 * 
 
 PEMBROKE CASTLE — COLONEL POYER — MONKTON 
 PRIORY CHURCH — PEMBROKE DOCK — LAMPHEY 
 AND THE EARL OF ESSEX 
 
 'If you are a castle-lover you will tarry one long 
 day at least at Pembroke, to make acquaintance 
 there with its superb great fortress. The fair, 
 rural, peaceful neighbourhood near about it helps 
 to set it off. But it has, too, a change of wild and 
 waterside scenery, sea and river — Milford Haven, 
 Carew Castle, the Stack Rocks, Nangle, St. David's. 
 Those who make any longer stay may be pleased 
 even, though they are not antiquaries, at the idea 
 of playing lawn tennis within the walls of an old 
 castle, and crying " fifteen-love ! " where long ago 
 the young squires shot at the mark. The last, best 
 remembered fatal association of the walls, the 
 siege of 1648, the death of Colonel Poyer, lend 
 them only pensive memories now. 
 
 If you arrive by train, you have to traverse the 
 whole length of the town, and the apparently 
 endless High Street, before you see the Castle. 
 On the way you will take due note of the parish 
 church of St. Mary, curiously built-in by the neigh- 
 bouring houses at the corner of Dark Street and 
 opposite the Lion Hotel. Notice the Chapel of 
 St. Thomas on the west side of the building ; here 
 
 276 
 
PEMBROKE CASTLE 277 
 
 I believe, lies the body of a murdered knight who 
 figured in romance. If you still persist, you leave 
 two or three shops and a subterranean newspaper 
 office on your right, and then spy at once the 
 entrance to the Castle on the same side. 
 
 The Castle is set on a strong natural site, a lime- 
 stone rock, rising some fifty feet from the river, 
 which, with its fork to the west, Monkton Pill, 
 surrounds it with water at very high tides for 
 two- thirds of its circuit. Five towers and five 
 bastions surrounded and kept the outer court ; 
 and behind the chief tower, or keep, the inner 
 ward was placed at the corner, best protected by 
 the river and river-cliffs from attack. Before the 
 days of cannon and mortars the place must have 
 been almost impregnable — by open assault at any 
 rate. 
 
 -On entering to-day by the gatehouse at the 
 south-east corner, you have to keep directly oppo- 
 site across the great outer court, over one hundred 
 yards across. The gatehouse, defended by its two 
 strong towers, was arranged to be partly inde- 
 pendent of the keep and the cluster of domestic 
 buildings about the keep. The oldest parts of the 
 Castle abut on the keep, which is climbable. From 
 the top you have a bird's-eye view of the whole 
 surroundings, and if it be full tide you have a 
 notable long stretch of water before you, far 
 along the wide miles of Milford Haven, skirting 
 the Pwllcrochan Flats, as well as the town pill or 
 creek, and the Monkham pill close below. To the 
 north Precelly Mountain and, a little left of it, 
 Vrenny Vawr are to be seen when the air is clear. 
 Towards Tenby you have a sea-vista opening 
 between the high grounds and the two ridges 
 formed by the Ridgeway on the left and the 
 
278 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 
 Portclew hills on the right, and the range of 
 coast where the latter runs out, from Swanslake 
 to Caldy. Nearer at hand, behold across Monkton 
 Priory the trees of Orielton and the Castleton 
 ridge. 
 
 The nose only of the castle-peninsula was first 
 fortified, the gateway then being to the right of the 
 keep as you look across the large outer court to the 
 gatehouse. Now, having been as high as you can 
 get on the tower-top, you can go down below to the 
 Castle cavern, or Wogan — Welsh, " Ogov " (ogovan) 
 — a cave. This is to be reached through the North 
 Hall, whence a flight of steps and a dependent 
 rope on the far side conduct you to it. The fine 
 window in the wall was opened some years ago by 
 Mr. Cobb. The water-gate, or sally-port, as he 
 suggests, appears to have had no portcullis or other 
 defences such as the imaginary castle-builder of 
 to-day would expect to have found. To envisage 
 the water-gate from without you must follow the 
 path round the water-side. The "Wogan" measures 
 some thirty-six paces long by twenty-eight wide. 
 Possibly it was some kind of cave-dwelling first of 
 all : then Briton and Roman used a part of the 
 Castle rock for a fort ; the Welsh re-used it ; so 
 did the Normans. As you explore you gradually 
 unfold in Pembroke Castle the intermittent legend 
 in stone of its broken history. 
 
 We may note that the interior height of the 
 keep is 75 feet, and that its hugeous walls ranged 
 from 17 to 19 feet thick at its base, and from 
 14 feet 6 inches to 12 feet 6 inches at the first 
 and second floor levels. The top is domed. Its 
 arrangements are all plain and contemptuous of 
 all our ideas of comfort through its five stories. 
 Its builder, says Mr. Cobb, "must have had ideas 
 
PEMBROKE CASTLE 279 
 
 like those of the builders of the Great Pyramid." 
 There is some Egyptian mystery about it, too, to 
 the modern spectator. What did the people do 
 in it? How did they contrive to live in it? 
 Truly it is almost impossible to conceive that 
 this tower was the seat of almost regal state. 
 But there it stands — "the heart of Pembroke," 
 as one has called it ; " the keeper of the King's 
 haven," another ; and deserving certainly to 
 count among the nine wonders of South Wales. 
 You must not forget the Castle was but the 
 main knot and warder of the Pembroke fortifi- 
 cations. Leland wrote : " The towne is well 
 waulled and hath iii gates, by est, west, and 
 north, of the wich the est gate is fairest and 
 strongest, having a faire but a compasid tour not 
 rofed, in the entering whereof is a portcolys, ex 
 solido ferro." Of these erections there are now 
 but very imperfect remains ; the north gate alone 
 is still in tolerable repair. 
 
 " A slender fortress of stakes and turf " was the 
 beginning of Pembroke Castle, according to Gerald 
 the Welshman. This was erected by Arnulf de 
 Montgomery in Henry I.'s reign. But before that 
 Cadwgan of Bleddyn is said to have twice besieged 
 a castle of Pembroke, which he twice failed to take. 
 It seems, too, no very solid or convenient hold 
 stood here in the early twelfth century, because 
 Gerald de Windsor (grandfather of Gerald the 
 Welshman) is said to have built a new Castle of 
 Pembroke then, on a site called Congarth Vechan. 
 Is it possible this site of the new Castle was the 
 present site ? (" Congl-garth-fechan," what can 
 one make of that?) Wherever this Castle was, it 
 was the scene of one of the wildest exploits in 
 Welsh history — the abduction of Nest by Owain 
 
280 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 (ap Cadwgan ap Bleddyn). Nest was the daughter 
 of Rhys ap Tewdur, and considered the most 
 beautiful wonian of Wales in her time. When she 
 was still very young she had been married diplo- 
 matically to Gerald de Windsor ; and it can be 
 imagined what excitement this alliance between 
 two famous Welsh and Norman houses caused in 
 Wales. Nest's beauty was a theme for song, and 
 when her kinsman Cadwgan gave a great feast 
 at Cardigan, her fame was so extolled there that 
 his son Owaiu, filled with wonder and excite- 
 ment, decided upon a visit to Pembroke Castle 
 to see her. Her beauty proved more than he 
 could bear to see, and he formed then the wild 
 idea of returning suddenly with a strong force, 
 attacking the Castle, and carrying her off. 
 Wild as the scheme was, it succeeded perfectly. 
 Gerald, surprised, narrowly escaped with Nest's 
 aid, while she and her children, and " much 
 plunder," were carried off by Owain to his castle 
 in Powys-land. 
 
 But we must o'erstep the Middle Ages now, to the 
 great siege of Pembroke town and castle, in Crom- 
 well's time ; following his successful sieges of 
 Chepstow and Tenby, the latter on the 31st of 
 May, 1648. On the 6th of June following a letter 
 of that date says Cromwell has subdued all Wales 
 except Pembroke Castle, and that the townsfolk 
 have " their horses and cows on the thatch of their 
 houses." On the 14th Cromwell describes their 
 firing houses in the town — "the fire runs up the 
 hill and much frights them." Finally, after some 
 desperate sallies, when Cromwell's side lost heavily, 
 the water was cut off from the pipes (some of the 
 pipes are in Tenby Museum), secretly laid to the 
 Castle over the Mill Bridge, and provisions having 
 
PEMBROKE CASTLE 281 
 
 given out, town and Castle were surrendered on 
 July 11th. Poyer, the hero of this defence, who 
 had fought previously for Cromwell, was the last 
 to suffer for its stubborn maintenance. He and 
 Laugharne and Powell were doomed : then the 
 sentence was compromised, and only one was to 
 die. Lots were drawn by a youngster : the fatal 
 lot fell to Poyer, and he was shot in Covent Garden, 
 in the Piazza, April 21, 1619. One of the saddest 
 of family mottoes is that taken in consequence by 
 the Poyer family : " Sors est contra me " — " Fate's 
 against me." 
 
 Like Carnarvon, Pembroke Castle is not quite 
 sure in which of its towers a prince was born. 
 
 Leland says : "In the atter ward I saw the 
 chaumbre wher King Henry VII. was borne, in 
 knowledge whereof a chymmeney is new made, 
 with the arms and badges of Henry vii." 
 
 An apartment in the keep is now pointed out 
 usually as his, but it is conjectured that the 
 southern towers are more likely to have been the 
 King's quarters, as they show some signs of Tudor 
 alterations and adornments. Henry II. and John 
 were among the royal visitors here too. The 
 builder of the later Edwardian outer castle, the 
 North Hall, was probably Montchesny, who was 
 castellan about 1300. 
 
 On leaving the Castle you can go down Westgate 
 Hill, and instead of crossing Monkton Bridge, walk 
 right round the Castle under the walls, and emerg- 
 ing on the quay, cross Mill Bridge, where, when 
 the water is well up, the picture is luminous 
 and delightful in contrast — floating masonry and 
 painted water. If bound for Monkton Priory, you 
 cross the Monkton Bridge at the foot of Westgate, 
 and then turn to the right up the bank, when you 
 
282 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 see the Priory Church above you, whose great 
 length is imposing. 
 
 The unusual length of the church is balanced by 
 the fine tower. It was designed for two congrega- 
 tions, one of the Priory, the other of the parish. 
 For long the former part, the choir, was in ruins, 
 but is now restored. The tower-top is said to 
 command a superb view of the town and Castle 
 opposite and the country adjacent. The building 
 has marked Norman structural points, but the 
 windows and details are Early English. The 
 Priory farm has little of the old prior's lodging 
 left now. Sixty or seventy years ago, remains of 
 the cloisters were to be seen. The cloisters, it is 
 evident, must have added greatly to the architec- 
 tectural effect of the whole. 
 
 The Priory was originally attached to the House 
 of Jayes in Normandy. The Prior's Hall, as it has 
 sometimes been called, standing on the hill ap- 
 proaching, has a long, low, vaulted chamber on the 
 ground-floor, partly cut out of the solid rock — 
 now used as a schoolroom — and other chambers 
 above, one with a fine fireplace. A rough outer 
 staircase, leading to the upper chambers, existed 
 up to about thirty years ago. A little later the 
 whole was restored by Mr. Cobb, of Brecon. 
 There are traces of other old buildings in Monk- 
 ton, which point to a priory suburb worthy of 
 the castellated town over the water. 
 
 Pembroke had a very fine reputation for pirates, 
 or for its dealings with them, in Elizabethan days. 
 Among them, the name of Edward Herberde, who 
 was the great Sir John Perrot's man formerly, 
 opens the longest and strangest episode. Herberde 
 captured a ship with a salt cargo belonging to a 
 Dutchman — Peter Muncke, and put some of his 
 
PEMBROKE CASTLE 283 
 
 men aboard her. Next night a storm separated 
 the two vessels, and Herberde's rascals took the 
 prize into Milford Haven, and actually sent the 
 unhappy Dutch skipper with two of the crew into 
 the town to sell the salt. The town was Pembroke. 
 The mayor, however, thought the affair suspicious ; 
 Muncke's face spoke volumes ; and a word aside 
 with him explained. The mayor made some pretext 
 of offering the salt to Sir John Perrot at Carew, 
 and repaired thither with the Dutch skipper and 
 one of the Herberde gang. Sir John was delighted 
 at the chance of booty and a legal swoop, and he 
 and the Mayor and the Dutchman devised a night 
 raid. Two boats put off in the dark, the first 
 containing Muncke, a Captain Hinde in Sir John's 
 service, and one Rice Thomas. Sir John and ten 
 or twelve men followed in the second. Muncke 
 called out as his boat drew near to his own sailors 
 on board to seize the ship. A cry of "Sir John 
 Perrot ! " followed. Three or four of the rascals 
 escaped in a boat. The rest were captured and 
 taken prisoner to Harfat. When the booty came 
 to be divided Sir John got the lion's share, half the 
 salt — five tons of it going to the Mayor. The ship 
 and her tackle were divided between two Vaughans 
 — John " the customer," and Richard, deputy of Sir 
 William Morgan, Vice-Admiral of South Wales. 
 Muncke had half the salt for his solace, but he 
 disappeared before the trial of the pirates came on 
 at Haverfordwest Assizes, and Judge Fetyplace set 
 the rascals free. The end of Herberde was grim 
 enough. He had brought in a captured cargo of 
 Gascon wines, which Kift (fine name for a sea tale, 
 Kift !) the local Admiralty man had seized and sold 
 to Sir John at £7 a tun. Then Herberde was 
 deserted by his own men, who no doubt counted 
 
281 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 him an unlucky leader. He went to lodge not far 
 from Haroldston, where Sir John was residing at 
 the time, and the knight's threats and oaths 
 uttered against and about him so terrified him, that 
 he cut his throat in his lodging. This was no man 
 for a pirate's life, you may think ; but then Sir 
 John's oaths were tremendous even for Elizabethan 
 times. He owed it to his royal sire perhaps — but 
 this is no page for scandal. 
 
 Beyond old Pembroke lies the new Pembroke 
 of the dockyards. One thinks of Lewis Morris — 
 Lewis o Fon, and of his coast and harbour survey, 
 as one explores the place, or standing at the 
 ferry there, watches a marvellously nimble and 
 infernal-looking electric-boat dash up to the land- 
 ing, the water a-wash over her bows, drop an 
 officer ashore, and go off again at reckless speed. 
 One thinks of him because he, being a man of 
 imagination and of large constructive ideas, who 
 thought in lead-mines and sea-harbours, as well as 
 in ryric measures and prose idioms, saw the oppor- 
 tunities of the Welsh coast long before the official 
 folk in London did. In 1742 we find his brother 
 William speaking of him as the " hydrographer," 
 and five years later he himself writes about the 
 maps he is drawing. He was appointed Surveyor 
 by the Admiralty in 1737, and in 1718 published 
 his Plans of Harbours, Bars, Bays, and Roads in 
 St. Georges Channel. 
 
 \ One summer evening we were tempted to 
 Lamphey Palace (pron. Lanffey) on our road 
 Tenby-wards, being arrested by the aspect of 
 Lamphey village, graciously framed by the trees 
 of Lamphey Court. We found a back-way opposite 
 the church, which served as a short-cut. and inter- 
 cepted the wide sweep of the drive across the park. 
 
PEMBROKE CASTLE 285 
 
 Not being sure of our right of entry, we felt rather 
 like Welsh cattle-raiders as we skirted the old 
 wall beyond, bordering the orchards and kitchen 
 gardens, and then looked up to see the east 
 window of the chapel staring at us out of an ivied 
 visage across the green close. The Palace itself, 
 as Gower left it in 1335 or so, may have consisted 
 of the arcaded hall and an older chapel with 
 irregular outlying buildings. All is not to be 
 safely attributed to Bishop Gower, but certainly 
 the arched parapet is his and the detached out- 
 look tower. The chapel is due to another and 
 later hand (some say Bishop Vaughan). It is a 
 Perpendicular building ranged above a ruined 
 cloister. The Lamphey stream that runs by the 
 Palace becomes the Pembroke River. The original 
 Welsh name, to quote Fenton, was Llanfydd — 
 " the Welsh for Fanum Sanctce Fidei Virginia — 
 dedicated to St. Faith." " The first instrument I 
 have seen dated from this place is one of Bishop 
 Richard de Carew, a.d. 1259 ; and from that time 
 the occasional residence of almost all the bishops 
 there in succession may be traced, particularly of 
 Gower, Adam Hoton, and Vaughan." 
 
 One or two larger apartments, reached by steps 
 or a ladder from without, including the so-called 
 Red Chamber and the reception Hall, show that 
 the Palace was one of much state. 
 
 The parish church of Lamphey village we did 
 not visit. It has an old font and piscina worth 
 seeing, they say. Here lived in his susceptible 
 years — and it is a memory no place could forget — 
 the great Earl of Essex, under the protection of 
 his kinsman, Richard Devereux, in whose favour 
 Henry VIII. had alienated the manor. He came 
 of a gifted, comely, dangerous house. His story 
 
286 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 is in part that of Hamlet (for his mother's intrigue 
 with Leicester, and his father's death, believed by 
 many to be by poison, brought tragedy into his 
 very childhood). But his early temper was gay ; 
 his spirit valorous and ambitious ; and if he had 
 a dash of poetry, he was not moody, save by 
 moments. In his youth he had a rare and beauti- 
 ful spirit, according to those who knew him : it is 
 the finer image of young Robert Dudley that you 
 see stamped on the green arras of Lamphey. Like 
 Pryderi in the Welsh tale of this country-side, he 
 was brought up as carefully as was fit, so that he 
 became the fairest youth and the most comely, 
 and the best skilled in all good games of any in 
 the kingdom. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE BOSHERSTON ROAD — SIR GAWAIN AND ST. 
 govan's CHAPEL — HUNTSMAN'S LEAP AND THE 
 STACK ROCKS — ANGLE — A YOUNG SEAL 
 
 It was a changeable, untrustable morning, the 
 26th of September. The wind was veering east 
 to south-east, and rain fell at Whitland, fell 
 heavily. Then at Pembroke came a glimpse of 
 watery sunshine. No one could have told how the 
 afternoon would turn out when we left Pembroke 
 about one. 
 
 We dropped out of the town, crossing the line of 
 the rusty old town-walls at its back, to the river, 
 which reflected a sky watery as itself. Once over 
 the bridge, we fell to debating the two roads to 
 Bosherston : one shorter and rougher, one longer 
 and smoother ? At that moment I spied a man with 
 a drover's whip going in the same direction. He 
 replied with a husky, eagerly friendly voice — and 
 a new variety of the Pembrokeshire speech — to 
 David's salute. 
 
 Yes, he knew Bosherston well, and St. Govan's. 
 Indeed, he knew " every sheep-thrack in the 
 country, from Holyhead down to Chepstow ! " 
 
 His face was Celtic; he spoke Welsh, though 
 the most of the people in this shore did not ; 
 he knew the country-side like a native. But 
 
 287 
 
288 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 when David asked, " Beth yw'ch enw chi ynte ? " 
 he answered, Michael O'Brien. 
 
 He had led a roving life. First he served in the 
 army ; then came three heart-breaking years on 
 the sick-list, and he seemed done for altogether. 
 At last he chanced to take a drover's place, and 
 the open road and the fresh air gradually cured 
 his army ailments and ague ; and now he had led 
 the life long enough to have travelled all over 
 Wales and Ireland, and well up into Scotland too. 
 He wore a brick-red kerchief round his throat, 
 which gave a touch of colour to his figure, other- 
 wise all of a drover's dusty brown. He talked, 
 delighting in his own voice, with an expressive 
 rush of words, slightly aspirating his s's : — 
 
 " Kilkenny's the shnuggest small town in the 
 whole counthry. Stands well it does, and looks 
 well. Not a big place : five or six thousand, that's 
 about all. 'Tis a nice-lookin' little town, ah, 'tis 
 that. A man could'n' wish for a nisher." 
 
 He knew the difference between north and 
 south-country Welsh ; but here there was no 
 Welsh, and poor enough English. 
 
 " I'm working for a sheep-farmer now ; an' he's 
 a Welshman ; an' he can't speak a word of Welsh ; 
 but I CAN ! " he said this ending with a triumphant 
 crescendo. He told us what turns to take for the 
 quicker of two roads to Bosherston, and we parted 
 at the gate of a sheep-field. Two miles further on, 
 and down came the rain again, with the wind 
 going round in the south-west — rain that was spilt 
 from a bucket, wetting one through in a few 
 minutes. We sheltered from it under some ash- 
 trees — and very poor shelter ash-trees make. In 
 ten minutes it was over. 
 
 The best prelude to the treeless tract of coast 
 
THE BOSHERSTON ROAD 289 
 
 from St. Govan's to the Stack Rocks is to skirt the 
 plantations of Stackpool Court. We sped fast, by 
 the winding, skirting, slow-descending road, past a 
 mile of woodland and parkland that begged for 
 lazy days and a long acquaintance. The figure of 
 Sir Gawain, a ghost in rusty armour, ought to 
 start there : — 
 
 "... On the morne merrily he rides 
 Into a forest full deep, that was wondrous wild." 
 
 But the fear of more rain and the thought of 
 Gawain's or St. Govan's Chapel drew us on. At 
 Bosherston the wind was terrific, and gave one 
 a wildish idea of what was to come. However, 
 there was a lull as we reached the cliffs, and the 
 setting of the chapel, built across the sea-cwm so 
 as effectually to close it up, was like nothing else 
 we had seen on any coast and made us forget the 
 gale. 
 
 V The strangeness of the site, indeed, is such as to 
 make one remember that the tribal chiefs who 
 became hermits were given to fix their hibernating 
 cells in places of utter isolation. The story of Sir 
 Gawain needs humouring to be adapted to suit all 
 the necessities of the case. The later romances 
 say he was buried at Dover Castle, while William 
 of Malmesbury says he lies at Rhoose in this shire ; 
 and the geography of his life is equally puzzling. 
 But then romance figures are a kind of composite 
 portraits, and Gawain underwent more changes 
 than most of them. His names, Gwalchmai, 
 Walwayne, Gawain, Gowan, Govan, Galvanus, &c, 
 suggest it. His literary pedigree is longer than 
 Arthur's ; his character goes through wild trans- 
 migrations ; he is fearless, chivalrous, devoted ; 
 
 19 
 
290 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 cruel, treacherous, faithless. His decadence, it is 
 significant to note, begins with his attachment to 
 the story of the Sangraal. However, to connect 
 him with St. Govan and place him in the saints' 
 calendar, we have to recall that he touches St. 
 David. At St. David's Cathedral there is a miseri- 
 cord which shows a curious deep-bottomed ferry- 
 boat, one of whose passengers is overtaken by sea- 
 sickness. This hero, according to tradition, is St. 
 Govan. The clue is enough to relate him to his 
 chapel as a sea-hermit who went and suffered by 
 sea. That afterwards his roving and predatory 
 life and adventures were worked up in romance, 
 while his sanctity was forgotten, is nothing. The 
 making of the romantic lay-figure out of an old 
 tribal chief is often a most erratic process, subject 
 to the dullness of one redactor and the vagaries of 
 another. 
 
 A very impressive folk-tale, one which would 
 have appealed to Tolstoi, is told of St. Govan's. 
 
 Once a farmer was sowing barley in the down- 
 land above the chapel when he saw a stranger of 
 noble mien who stood by watching him. 
 
 " That seed you are sowing will decay," he said at 
 length. 
 
 11 Yes," said the farmer, " it will rot, sure 
 enough ; but it will spring again, and at harvest- 
 time I will come and gather the ripe grain with 
 my sickle." 
 
 " Do you believe that which is dead can come to 
 life and live again ? " 
 
 " I do." 
 
 " Then," said the stranger with an air of majesty, 
 " I am the Resurrection and the Life. Go then, 
 fetch thy sickle and cut thy corn." 
 
 The farmer went. On his return the stranger 
 
THE BOSHERSTON ROAD 291 
 
 had gone. But the barley which he had sown was 
 ripe and ready for cutting that same day. 
 
 The essential thing at St. Govan's is to believe 
 in the Saint's reality ; a man torn by passions, who 
 fasted and fought the flesh and the devil for a time 
 in this strait cleft by the sea. The other alterna- 
 tive is to turn vandal and tourist, and in contempt 
 throw a stone into the desecrated holy well, where 
 so many a poor creature came to kneel and pray 
 and, with clay on the blind eyes or the hurt limb, 
 hope for cure. 
 
 A wilder sou'-westerly gale we could not have 
 wished for, to lend expression to a wild coast, than 
 that we met on reaching the cliff -top again ; we 
 felt its full fury in crossing the head of each 
 successive chasm, up which it blew with 
 tremendous buffets that fairly made one stagger. 
 And the sea, running in with immense ocean- 
 waves at an angle, struck the rocky spurs with a 
 force that sent white sheets up to the top of the 
 cliffs and scattered foam like snow on our coat- 
 sleeves. It was a delicious experience to lie down 
 on the jutting brink of the cliff at some sharper 
 edge and watch this foam and taste the salt spray, 
 waiting for the terrific ninth wave that should 
 out-top nature. That is a sensation you can get, 
 no doubt, on other parts of this coast. But rifts 
 like the Huntsman's Leap are quite outside one's 
 ordinary experience. " They wait," says one 
 traveller, "for their victim with a stealthy 
 pretence of guileless grass and smooth turf. A 
 narrow ditch you think you can jump opens at 
 your feet : subterque cavis grave rupibus antrum, et 
 vacuum — it is sixty fathom deep, and he that slips 
 is lost." 
 
 The story of Huntsman's Leap is that the 
 
292 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 hunter following the hounds made a short-cut, as 
 he thought, in full career, and coining suddenly to 
 the cleft leapt it safely. But his nerves could not 
 stand that horrid glimpse of the earth's rent abyss 
 and watery entrails, and he died from the sheer 
 after-gust of the experience. The story is about 
 as old as St. Govan's Chapel ; but in our time a 
 young man deliberately attempted the leap, slipped 
 his foot, and " came off" as the climbers say, with 
 what result you may imagine. The dry, slippery 
 turf in hot weather is far more treacherous than 
 the actual stone edges that warn you away. 
 
 Though there were fresh wheel-marks on the 
 rough road westward from Huntsman's Leap, we 
 did not see a soul all the way to the Stack Rocks. 
 An old limekiln on the cliffs in one place, a 
 ruined cottage or two a little inland, and some 
 sheep in a seaward field — these were our only 
 company. 
 
 We were afraid we had passed the Stack Rocks, 
 when approaching a coast-guard's look-out cabin 
 we spied the gap where they stand. The sea- 
 birds we had been told to expect there in clouds 
 were not to be seen. Only one or two grey gulls 
 were flying wild a short pitch away. The sea 
 made up for all lack of bird-life. Had we not 
 been so hungry we could have watched it for 
 hours break and shatter itself on the rocks below, 
 for there was something hypnotising in the coil 
 and recoil of the breakers. 
 
 Another mile after passing the Stack Rocks, 
 you reach the tremendously built outpost of this 
 limestone peninsula at Linney Head. After that 
 the limestone gives out, and the Old Red Sand- 
 stone puts in at Freshwater Bay. 
 . We were too tired by our battle with the wind 
 
THE BOSHERSTON ROAD 293 
 
 to go and look for the old forts near this corner. 
 The last indignity it offered was to blow out 
 David's matches when he tried to light a pipe. 
 So, without waiting to see Brownslade or the 
 Brimstone Rock, we gave up the struggle and 
 turned our backs on it, with Castle Martin and a 
 hoped-for Castle Inn for goal. We rode fast, 
 the wind behind us, and presently beyond a wide 
 dip saw an imposing church tower and spire ; " no 
 doubt Castle Martin ! " It proved to be Warren : 
 a farm-house and a few cottages were the only 
 community, and there was no inn or shop to be 
 seen. Another mile took us to Castle Martin. 
 But again there was no inn ; and we were advised 
 in our state of ravening hunger to apply at a 
 cottage in a lane. Its mistress was taken by 
 surprise, but a good toasting-fire provided toast 
 and a teapot, while a village ancient sat by and 
 told us there were no inns on the Stackpool estate, 
 and the nearest was at Angle. 
 
 " There," said he, " you can have your tay if 
 ye like on the housetep : for 'tas a flat roof to it." 
 \It was almost twilight when we took the road 
 for Angle, and luckily the wind had dropped with 
 the day. The road crossed a wildish stretch of 
 high moorland, then dropped to the sea, where 
 our wheels ran through soft sand. A climb 
 brought us to high ground again for another 
 short mile from which the descent was steep 
 and tree-darkened, toward Angle and its bay. 
 The lights were twinkling there in the cottage 
 windows as we ran by three soldiers and reached 
 the village. The inn was dark. A rather dubious 
 lad came to the door, who did not hold out much 
 hope of accommodation. The only parlour down- 
 stairs was full of soldiers talking noisily about 
 
294 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 South Africa, so we made our way into a long, 
 high-raftered kitchen, with a very hot outstanding 
 stove in full blast. On the table were pots of 
 newly-made blackberry -jam ; a small, pretty child, 
 a girl of four, was playing with some toys ; a fine 
 yellow collie called Nell came in, and threw herself 
 down by the stove. 
 
 The heat soon drove us out into the common- 
 room, where a young fisherman sat drinking a 
 pint of ale. We fell into talk about the fishing, 
 the forts, the soldiers, and so forth. Presently, 
 for want of something better to say, I asked if 
 they ever came on seals in these waters ? 
 
 His reply surprised me : " Ye can see one now 
 at Mr. Boothes' ! " 
 
 It appeared that a young seal had been caught 
 and killed on the rocks near the bay that after- 
 noon by Tom Boothes. Later in the evening a 
 youngster volunteered to guide me to his house 
 at the upper end of the village. 
 
 The boy took me under the stars to a dark 
 door of an apparently darker house. A girl, as she 
 seemed, slight, black-haired, pretty, came to the 
 door, and asked us in. 
 
 The dead seal lay in a back-kitchen — a small 
 pool of red blood on the flags at his grey, kitten- 
 like head. He was very light grey in colour, with 
 pale buff bands or patches relieving the body- 
 colour, and he was surprisingly fat. The scene 
 with the young mistress of the house standing 
 there, naked candle in hand, and throwing the 
 light on the poor little beast, was not one for 
 a mere scribe to describe. We were still examin- 
 ing it, when its captor returned. He did not 
 know how to skin it, or whether to sell it, or 
 what to do with it. His wife was more practical. 
 
THE BOSHERSTON ROAD 295 
 
 She had often skinned birds and rabbits. " If 
 you could skin a rabbit, you could skin a seal," 
 she said. 
 
 There was another pause, for Boothes had throe 
 confederates who must be consulted. 
 
 The conference took place in the dark road 
 under the stars, and the result was the four men 
 undertook to skin the seal and bring the skin 
 to the inn that night. They discussed the opera- 
 tion with extraordinary gravity, as one that might 
 easily be rendered fatal. 
 
 " See here," said the smallest of the four, whose 
 face I could not discern, "you have to keep all 
 his fat on, else the skin 'ull speal ; and some 'ill 
 keep his fins, and some wint. 'Tis a ticklish 
 thing ; ye ought to allow for that, mister ! " 
 
 Finally, the price agreed, I went back to the 
 inn, and being tired out, waited a while and so 
 to bed. Towards midnight the seal-captors 
 arrived with the skin, and next morning we 
 dressed it inside with rough salt, and packed it 
 up. It weighed over thirteen pounds, fat and 
 all, and the Post Office refused it as overweight. 
 So Mercury and I had perforce to carry it all 
 the way to Pembroke in a cardboard box, which 
 caused many people to stare at us mildly en route. 
 
 Mr. Whiting, of Hampstead, to whom the skin 
 was sent to be cured, was not very hopeful about 
 it. September was the wrong season, and this 
 was the wrong kind of seal. However, his skill 
 saved it. But I do not encourage others to take 
 Welsh seals : they are too human in their spirit. 
 
 George Owen, in his Description of Pembroke- 
 shire, gives a curious account of seals and their 
 fur in his chapter on " the severall sorte of fishe 
 taken in this shire." 
 
296 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 The seal is "broad-pawed" he says, "like to the moale," 
 and it "cometh to land to rest and sleep and lie together 
 in herds like swine one upon another ; and at byrth time, as 
 Plynie saieth cometh a land and is delivered and giveth 
 sucke to the yonge, till he able to swymme w ch he saieth 
 wilbe in xij daies. . . . The fawne at the first is white, and 
 is more delicate meate than his Ancestor being strong and 
 fullsome to eate. Yet is yt accompted a dayntye and a 
 rare dishe of manie men. This fishe is verie fatte, as Bacon, 
 and the skynne serveth to manie uses being dressed, especi- 
 allie in tymes past for covering of tentes, because yt re- 
 ceiveth no hurt by lightninges as saieth Plynie, li, 2 cap. 55. 
 And saieth Rondele — this li. 46, cap. 6, the here of the 
 seale stareth at the south windes, and goeth smooth w th 
 the North ; but certaine yt is yt doeth so at the fflood and 
 ebbe, staring with the one and smoothing with the other." 
 
 To stare is to become stiff and stark. With 
 the seal George Owen ranks the " Porpisse " and 
 the " Thornepole," or the porpoise and grampus. 
 All three, he says, " being ravenouse by nature 
 followe the sculls [shoals] of heringes feeding 
 on them, and are often taken wrapped in the 
 herring-nets." 
 
 The only other seal I have come across in South 
 Wales was off Dinas Island, North Pembrokeshire. 
 But that episode belongs to another page. 
 
 The Welsh for a seal is " moelrhon " — bald-tail, 
 shortened into " molrho." Gwilym Dyved speaks 
 of the creature in one of his odes : — 
 
 "Bald-head, bald-tail, — see him rise! 
 Ware him : he hath woman's eyes ; 
 Ware him, where he lies asleep. 
 Years before he knew the deep, 
 Three salt tears his change began 
 When he changed from mortal man." 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 MILFORD AND MILFORD HAVEN — GEORGE OWEN OF 
 HENLLYS — DALE —BRUNT FARM — M ARLOES — 
 SKOMAR ISLAND 
 
 Counting on American liners or revived dock- 
 yards, Milford in its time has suffered many 
 disappointments. Finally, having seen its last 
 whaler go to Dundee or otherwhere, it has 
 settled down to a pretty secure trawling business, 
 and owns a fair fleet of steam trawlers, which 
 transfer their fish to the Great Western Railway 
 at its terminus here. So Milford mackerel, I 
 suppose, may yet become as much a proverb as 
 Yarmouth bloaters. The Haven's vast natural 
 advantages, and its chances of yet negotiating a 
 new great Transatlantic line, give the town, the 
 Haven, and whole neighbourhood a potential 
 air. 
 
 The town station is set back in the cwm or 
 valley of Priory Pill, rather inconveniently placed 
 for the town, which spreads its streets mathemati- 
 cally on the rising ground above. If you want 
 a bird's-eye view the small hill of Hubberston, 
 about a mile west, to be gained via Dock Street 
 and the Quay, commands at a glance the town, 
 the Haven, and its surroundings. 
 
 Milford Haven was for long the one proverbial 
 
 297 
 
298 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 great harbour of British tradition. Kings em- 
 barked there for Ireland ; Shakespeare often chose 
 it as the scene of the coming and going of his 
 characters, such as " Cymbeline." People can be 
 found, indeed, who believe Shakespeare himself 
 visited Milford. As for Nelson, there is no doubt 
 at all about his visit after the Battle of the Nile, 
 when he was hero of the seas. Milford the port 
 began its career through the direct agency of 
 Lady Hamilton's husband — Sir William — and his 
 nephew, Charles Greville, who succeeded to the 
 property. The new hotel built in Nelson's honour, 
 "The Lord Nelson," no longer looks new. Sir 
 William Hamilton lies buried in the church which 
 Greville built, — and it contains a red porphyry 
 vase inscribed to Nelson's memory. 
 
 The Haven can be best explored by boat from 
 Milford Quay. Seizing the tide, it is possible to 
 sail down to the mouth of the harbour, get a 
 glimpse of both the Block Houses, and return 
 in an afternoon. The water excursions beyond 
 Neyland and Pembroke in the Cleddau estuaries 
 and pills are endless. 
 
 George Owen, of Henllys, gives in his Pembrokeshire 
 records a most quotable account of Milford Haven in 1595. 
 " And for forme," he said, "the havon may well be likened 
 to the picture of some greate crooke and forked Tree having 
 many branches and bunches some greate some litle growe- 
 inge even up from the butt to the Toppe ; and the same 
 branches being lopped and cut off, some neere and some 
 farre from the bodye of the Tree (from the crookednes downe) 
 the picture of such tree might soe be drawne as the same 
 should well describe the true forme of this harborowe and 
 every branch and creeke thereof." Modern maps do not 
 show the "forked Tree" so well as the map George Owen 
 made of the Haven ; but if the map of Pembrokeshire is 
 turned so that the east forms the top of it, instead of the 
 

 a x 
 
 < f- 
 
 * c 
 
 O > 
 

MILFORD AND MILFORD HAVEN 299 
 
 north, the resemblance is clear enough. George Owen was 
 anxious to have the harbour fully fortified. The Block 
 Houses at Dale and Nangle were prompted by a similar fear 
 of invasion. Some of his names, such as Prix Pill, for Castle 
 Pill, and the Carne, for the Carrs, have been altered since 
 his day. The "Haking," which is the Milford Pill in especial, 
 is by him called the Priory Pill. He describes it as "a creeke 
 that turneth uppe on the Easte parte of Hubberston pointe 
 and reacheth up farre into the land untill the Priory house 
 being a myle in the land, yt it is all owse " (ooze, or mud), 
 "and therefore no good landing there. This pill is dry at 
 lowe water." 
 
 On the bluff point of St. Ann's Head, two miles 
 south of Dale village, are two lighthouses. 
 \ Brunt Farm, on the coast, just within the corner 
 of Mill Bay, preserves the tradition that there, 
 where a steep path descends to the foot of Brunt 
 cliff, Henry VII. landed, as Earl of Richmond, not 
 knowing what fate had in store for him. Finding 
 the climb up the craggy cliff a heavy one, " this," 
 said he, " is brunt ! " At the top of the cliff stood 
 a wise-woman of Dale, who, after a glance at 
 him, vowed that fortune and a kingdom would be 
 his. 
 
 From West Dale Bay, by Marloes Bay, crossing 
 thence the Woolpack mile-wide peninsula, and so to 
 Marloes, offers a coast adventure worth the trouble. 
 Quarters may be had at Marloes, if one is not too 
 exacting. The cliffs above Marloes sands are such 
 as to call out the new stone-men's raptures ; and 
 the beach is noted for its fine cowrie-shells. The 
 men of Marloes used to be nicknamed "Marloes 
 gulls " ; and they appear to have used this charac- 
 ter of theirs as a cloak for sharper qualities ; for 
 they were, in the old time, the most notorious 
 wreckers on this coast. 
 
300 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 From Marloes, or to be exact, from Martin's 
 Haven, it is a short but sometimes very nasty 
 crossing to Skomar Island. The following notes 
 of a naturalist (the writer's uncle, Mr. Percy 
 Percival, of Berrow Manor) well describe the wild 
 colony of birds there: — 
 
 "A vast number of sea-birds breed on Skornar Island, the 
 most peculiar of them all being the Manx Shearwater. These 
 queer creatures confine themselves to the rabbit-holes during 
 the day, and only come out in the dark, when they fly about 
 close overhead, making a noise about which there is some- 
 thing truly uncanny. The young are reared in those holes, 
 and they seem to be full of oil which is most offensive. I 
 had one in my pocket and unfortunately went to sleep and 
 crushed the poor downy little thing ; as a consequence the 
 coat was months before it was reasonably free from the oily 
 smell. 
 
 "The Stormy Petrels nest and bring up their young 
 in the stone walls which take the place of hedges on the 
 Island. It amused me to see the boys looking, or rather 
 smelling, for eggs, for as a matter of fact they find them by 
 scent — walking along close to the wall, sniffing at the holes — 
 then stopping and going back a few paces, twisting their 
 heads about to get the scent like an old hound — finally they 
 locate the hole, and pulling out a few stones soon get out the 
 eggs, which are white and have a strong unpleasant scent, 
 which they retain for a long time after being placed in the 
 egg cabinet. 
 
 "The common Guillemots are in thousands, while the 
 ringed variety are often met with. How these birds hatch 
 their eggs and raise their young on a narrow shelf of rock, 
 scarcely wide enough for foothold, is a mystery ; luckily they 
 are of a friendly disposition, for the least quarrelling between 
 the birds would send the eggs into the sea, hundreds of feet 
 below, so close are the eggs together ; no doubt the peculiar 
 shape of the eggs, i.e., very narrow at one end and broad at 
 the other, prevents them rolling off the shelf. 
 
 " Puffins, too, are very numerous, and look like long rows 
 of white-breasted, black-backed soldiers, as they range them- 
 
MILFORD AND MILFORD HAVEN 301 
 
 selves, quaint and motionless, along the edges of the cliff. 
 They breed in rabbits' holes, or scoop out holes for them- 
 selves if the soil is soft ; when bringing in food for their 
 young, small sprats or other like fish, they arrange the fish 
 so that the heads are in the bird's mouth and the bodies and 
 tails hang out on either side, and look as if they had a 
 brilliant silver beard ; when bringing in food they usually 
 stand for a short time beside their holes, then walk quaintly 
 in to give the meal. These birds are only too easily caught 
 in the breeding season, and many of them, sad to relate, are 
 used for bait in the lobster-pots. The Oyster-Catcher, or 
 Sea-Pie, breeds on the Island, and at least one pair of 
 Peregrine Falcons manages to raise a nest of young, though 
 the egg-collector too often manages to find them. Rabbits 
 are the most certain market-product of the Island. Stoats 
 and weasels are not seen, though they with the polecat are 
 met with on the nearest mainland. 
 
 "Getting to the Island is best managed from Martin's 
 Haven. It should only be attempted with experienced boat- 
 men, as Jack's Sound, with its swift current, runs 'twixt the 
 Island and Pembrokeshire — a pretty dangerous obstacle to 
 negotiate. 
 
 " There is a mouse, I may add, peculiar to Skomar, 
 differing in some slight manner from the ordinary English 
 mouse." 
 

 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 SOLVA — ST. DAVID'S — CITY AND CATHEDRAL — NON 
 AND HER CHAPEL — THE HEAD AND CARN LLIDI 
 — THE STORY OF BOIA 
 
 The old approach to St. David's was always via 
 Haverfordwest, whence you had the proverbial 
 heart-breaking road to traverse — " sixteen miles 
 and seventeen hills." Still there were alleviations 
 by the way. There was Roche Castle, six miles 
 out from " Harfat," as the country people call 
 what was once their chief country town. This 
 Castle since I last passed that road has been put 
 in repair. The present Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer was its tenant with his family for a brief 
 holiday one autumn, when he asked the present 
 vagrom Chronicler of the Principality, who was 
 fast-tied in town, to visit him there — one of those 
 lost opportunities that never return. Roche Castle, 
 I have little doubt, will be the scene in days to 
 come of a new George-and-Dragon myth, of 
 which Welsh folk-lore is rather in need as the 
 case stands. The Castle was built in the second 
 rally of the Normans in South Wales by Adam 
 de Rupe. 
 
 Half a league further on, and you drop down 
 upon the shore by a steep descent at Newgale 
 Bridge. This is the boundary between Little- 
 
 302 
 
SOLVA AND ST. DAVID'S 303 
 
 England- beyond- Wales and theLit tie- Wales beyond 
 that again. On one side of the bridge the Anglo- 
 Flemish stock prevails, and English is spoken ; 
 on the other, the country is Welsh in speech 
 and thought. The inn at Newgale Bridge has 
 always seenied to me one of those places ordained 
 for romance in the Stevensonian sense. It may be 
 compared by the Sentimental Traveller with that 
 at Leith Ferry or, if he have ever been to Seaton 
 Sluice on the Northumberland coast, with the " Blue 
 Anchor " there. " Once," writes that same Tra- 
 veller, " returning from Solva, I intended to take 
 the mail-gig back from Newgale Bridge, after 
 exploring the stretch of coast where St. Elvis 
 and Pointz Castle stand. On the way a tempting 
 sandy cove at the foot of a green cwm led me to 
 descend, and idly loitering there I noticed presently 
 that the tide was advancing and cutting off the 
 next rocky corner at a wild Pembrokeshire pace. 
 Thereupon I turned back to the other horn of 
 the bay, but before I could reach it the waves 
 were breaking over the ridges. The only way of 
 escape left was up the cliff, which did not look 
 too formidable. Unluckily at a third of the way 
 up a patch of loose shaly stone made the foot- 
 hold worse than undependable. A few feet higher, 
 were it not for the thick oak stick I carried and 
 used now at need, driving it two feet into 
 the crumbing shale, I should have come 
 off. At this moment the waves were dash- 
 ing with great spirit five fathoms below, so 
 that the climber, looking down, saw them dash up 
 and recoil and come on again, like wild beasts in 
 pursuit. That was their moment — their chance 
 to shake a mortal's faith in the cliff and in him- 
 self and his oak-peg. I am afraid the mortal 
 
304 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 part of him felt queer ; but there is at times 
 small providence in a precipice. A herb grew in 
 a niche of loose stone, right under his very nose, 
 as he hung there between sea and sky, and it 
 had a faint, sweet, aromatic smell like a well-kept 
 crab-apple. It was wonderful how that herb 
 revived his courage. . . . 
 
 "Half an hour, then, of grim, determined oak- 
 pegging and footstep-holing, and the top of the 
 cliff was reached ; and the climber threw himself 
 breathless on the nearest green slope. When at 
 last he rose up, and went to a knoll near by, 
 whence he could look down to Newgale Bridge, 
 it was to see the mail-gig already leaving the inn 
 for the opposite ascent. There was nothing for it 
 but to tramp the ten or eleven miles on to Har- 
 ford. The only serious wound sustained in the 
 battle with the cliff was an unexplainable huge 
 rent in the back of his coat, which made decent 
 folk regard him suspiciously in the gaslit street of 
 Ha'rford when he got there after dark." 
 
 From Newgale Bridge to Solva it is about five 
 miles, or perhaps rather less. The long creek or 
 harbour there makes an effect at once wild and 
 homely as you descend into the place. 
 v Nothing like Solva, says Gr. R., is to be seen 
 elsewhere. Like a snow-white village maiden she 
 perches on her cliffs. The Evil One must get little 
 to do in Solva ; the very chimneys, his favourite way 
 of descent, are barred to him : are not they and the 
 houseroofs painted as white as snow ? Even the gate- 
 posts, ay, and the gate-posts to the fields, are washed 
 with white, that nothing evil may go out or in. 
 On a clear blue day I have seen Solva dazzle in the 
 sun's face, as she cast back the moving blue lights 
 of the sea below. For the sea is unthinkably blue 
 
 . 
 
SOLVA AND ST. DAVID'S 305 
 
 at Solva on a clear day. The slate cliffs are blue 
 and purple and green, the water clean and deep, 
 like a fluid, many-coloured jewel ; the air has 
 something of a like quality, so clear and clean it is 
 and full of aromatic fragrances. A leaf follows 
 from an old traveller's MS. book, whose exact age 
 it would be hard to decide : — 
 
 4 ' Delighted with this strange wild place, we decided to 
 pass the night here rather than at St. David's. "We found 
 excellent entertainment, and in the morning one of lis 
 went visiting among the village folk of Upper and Lower 
 Solva. She told us afterwards she found a strange comming- 
 ling of types there — what wonder ? The harbour of Solva 
 saw the Romans pass ; and by the sea-way came rovers, 
 Danish, and Irish ; ay, many ships of many lands. I am 
 assured too that the saintly community that ruled on this 
 promontory left its spiritual progeny behind, notably in the 
 person of one woman in whose history our companion became 
 much interested. She was a tall, pale, gentle person, childless 
 and somewhat sad. Her husband's trade (that necessary one 
 that sacrifices our good friends the animals to our absurd 
 needs) was her cross. He himself was an excellent kind man; 
 she spoke of him with aifection ; but of his trade with shud- 
 dering ; and yet she helped him in it. Her house was clean 
 and plain, kept like a nun's cell, only better scrubbed. She 
 had something of the temper of a Buddhist philosopher and 
 talked of God, of the few books she possessed and treasured ; 
 of music, which she might scarcely ever hear ; looking the 
 while with a sort of patient wonder at the land-road and the 
 sea-road that led to the great world ; for out of Solva she 
 might never come. In bearing, manner and mind this woman 
 would have made a perfect Abbess of a convent : still she had 
 her uses in Solva, if only to teach that one may get to the 
 last peak of the world and find a saint established there. 
 
 Three and a half miles of unexciting road lead on 
 to St. David's. The sea-coast and its splendid cliffs 
 are out of sight ; the landscape is barren. But in 
 
 20 
 
306 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 its very austerity there hides a satisfaction, and in 
 these days when quiet shrines are few the remote- 
 ness lends a charm. 
 
 The traveller who goes to St. David's with 
 memories of Durham and Lincoln, and of towers 
 set high, may be disappointed on arriving there in 
 the quiet street to see no sign of a Cathedral. To 
 find it, it is necessary to dive into the quiet little 
 vale of Alun, where the Cathedral stands. There it 
 was built, hidden, like many other Welsh churches 
 and religious houses, from the world because of 
 the fierce eyes of sea-rovers and " pyrats." 
 
 The more usual approach to the Cathedral is 
 a hundred yards further on, by the lane known as 
 the " Popples," a cobble-paved way which runs 
 down to the Tower gateway, beyond which a broad 
 range of steps and again a leisurely slant pathway 
 leads to the door. 
 
 The steps descending into the Cathedral yard 
 are called by the St. David's folk who tread them 
 oftenest the " Thirty-nine Articles " — being of that 
 orthodox number. 
 
 The first effect of the Cathedral, as one draws 
 near to it, is apt to be for various reasons dis- 
 appointing. The softness of age and the charm of 
 old masonry are wanting, of course, to Sir Gilbert 
 Scott's machine-cut blue facing blocks, which do 
 not harmonise with the ancient parts of the 
 building and its hand-chiselled, time-worn stone. 
 One must pass round and on beyond the western 
 doors of the Cathedral, and look across the little 
 Alun stream, to the ruins of the Bishop's Palace, 
 and along the north side of the Cathedral, past the 
 ruined cloisters, and up the Vale of Roses, where 
 the trees of the old Treasury Garden suggest a 
 green pleasaunce for quiet walks, before one falls 
 
SOLVA AND ST. DAVID'S 307 
 
 under the spell of the place. Within, the church 
 vista seen from the west end has massive and noble 
 lines ; and the time-faded colours of the pillars and 
 the ceiling of Irish oak, and the form of the whole, 
 make a lovely and harmonious interior. 
 
 The nave and north and south aisles have just 
 enough of ornament ; and the gradual rise in the 
 floor up to the steps approaching to the choir 
 takes the eye like the rise to a beech-grove from a 
 forest lawn. At the top of the central steps, nearly 
 on a line with the fifth pair of pillars, we have two 
 tombs of clerics — probably Bishop Carew(1256-1280) 
 and Bishop Beck (1280-1293), and between them the 
 grave of some person unknown. Bishop Carew 
 built a shrine for the relics of St. David, which may 
 be that in the Presbytery. Bishop Beck had a mint 
 at St. David's, and coined pennies, so rare now that 
 a pretty penny would be asked for one of them. 
 Also, he founded colleges at Llangadock and 
 Llanddewi Brefi, and a hospital at Llawhaden. A 
 penny of Edward I., a bishop's gold ring, a chalice, 
 a paten, and a bishop's staff were found in his 
 grave — if, indeed, it be his. We have already 
 passed the much mutilated tomb of Bishop Morgan 
 (1196-1501), just below the pillar nearest to the 
 " Carew " tomb. The panel at the upper end repre- 
 sents the Resurrection, with soldiery, the work of 
 no common sculptor. A step or two to the right 
 from Carew's tomb, and we come to the tomb of 
 Bishop Gower — bishop here for twenty years 
 (1328-1347), the finest ecclesiastical builder Wales 
 ever had. His grave is placed within reach of 
 the rood screen, which he built; and in his day an 
 altar stood before the screen, to serve the nave and 
 the public worshippers there. The monks had 
 their separate service at the altar. And now, 
 
308 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 
 having reached the choir, we can afford a pause 
 to examine the stalls and seat carvings, which date 
 from the fifteenth century. They are boldly and 
 joyously irreverent in character, and make open 
 fun, it must seem, of the churchmen who were to 
 occupy them. One shows us a fox in a monk's 
 hood handing a wafer to a goose with the head of 
 a lay penitent. Another is a boatload of men 
 rowing St. Govan, who is evidently troubled by 
 sea-sickness. All these carvings are excellent and 
 highly secular. It is impossible to avoid admiring 
 the fine discrimination that adorned the part of the 
 Cathedral intended for the laity with pious works 
 of art, and lightened the strain of an incessant 
 piety for the poor monks by such cynic-comic 
 devices. 
 
 Nowhere can the charm of St. David's be felt 
 so fully as among the ruins of the Bishop's Palace, 
 the work of that great architect, Bishop Gower. 
 The old walls stand up, shaggy with ivy ; the open 
 arcading at the top runs its fine design boldly 
 along the sky. Its noble proportions speak to 
 the mind and recall an ample past. It is interest- 
 ing to remember that one bishop built the palace 
 and another bishop tried to pull it down. 
 
 Many royal princes have joined the stream that 
 has flowed to St. David's, whose shrine, by its 
 remoteness, the mystery of its sea-coast, and the 
 difficulties of the journey in a day when wheels 
 did not exist, gained all the enchantment that 
 distance could lend. William the Conqueror, 
 Henry II., Edward II., and Queen Eleanor are 
 among the famous travellers who journeyed 
 here. According to the old poets and chroniclers 
 two visits to St. David's counted as one to 
 Rome. 
 
 
SOLVA AND ST. DAVID'S 309 
 
 "Roma semel quantum." 
 Dat bis Menevia tan turn." 
 
 No place suffered more from the iconoclasts 
 than St. David's. The first great criminal was 
 William Barlow, who sat as bishop from 1536 
 to 1547. He must have been a good man of 
 business, for, in that space of time, he contrived 
 to pull the lead roofing off the Bishop's Palace, 
 which he sold for his own profit — more remark- 
 able still, he contrived to marry his five daughters 
 to five bishops ! 
 
 His successor, Bishop Ferrer, the unluckiest 
 bishop that could be imagined, was not altogether 
 guiltless of spoliation either ; but that he was 
 imprisoned from political motives can be easily 
 gathered from reading the charges against him, 
 which include "wearing a hat, christening his 
 child Samuel, whistling to the said child, whistling 
 to a seal in Milford Haven, and riding with a 
 bridle with white studs and snaffle, white Scottish 
 stirrups, white spurs, a Scottish pad, with a little 
 staff three quarters long." Ferrer, after being 
 set free from prison, was imprisoned again and 
 finally burnt in Carmarthen in 1555. 
 
 And what shall be said of the persecutors of 
 poor Elis ap Howel, the antiquarian sexton? 
 \ " Because he being Sextene in the Oath' 
 church of St. David's, of long time did conceal 
 certain ungodly popish books ; as masse books, 
 hympnalls, grailes, Antiphon's, and suche like, (as 
 it were loking for a day) Mr. Chantor deprived 
 hym of the sextenship and the fees belonging 
 thereunto, and caused the said ungodly books 
 to be canceld and torne in pieces in the vestrie 
 before his face." These " ungodly books " were 
 
310 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 probably most beautiful and valuable specimens 
 of the art of the time in illumination and gilding. 
 
 For St. David's sake, the first adventure outside 
 the city's boundaries ought to be to Non's Well 
 and Chapel, and the coast near by. This is within 
 an easy walk of the cross. A stretch of road 
 and a couple of field-side paths bring one into 
 the seaward field where stands the chapel, which 
 is little more than a rude pile of stones within 
 the four walls of the little building. The well 
 lies fifty yards to the left, in an enclosed space, 
 over whose wall one must make shift to climb 
 carefully, so as not to do any damage. The well- 
 water is clear and sweet, and the present pilgrim 
 can honestly vouch that he felt invigorated and 
 reanimated after drinking it. It was — indeed, still 
 is — in much repute as a pin-well and wish-well. 
 A penny deposited there, in the little niche in the 
 stone at the left side, is said to disappear mysteri- 
 ously : proof enough, if one were needed, that 
 there is something of enchantment about the spot. 
 
 The story of St. Non breathes an old-world air, 
 to which the rude remains of the chapel and the 
 lonely well lend a grey reality. Sandde, a chief 
 of Cardigan, was bold and Non was beautiful, 
 and he dispensed with the rites of the Church and 
 the bride's consent ; and so, as a result of a 
 marriage by capture, in a barbaric age and a 
 wild place — it is said during a storm and on the 
 cliff below the chapel — the babe, David, was born 
 in the year 558. One imagines that he was 
 sheltered then in a hut where the chapel now 
 stands. Certainly both he and his mother must 
 have often drunk from the well. 
 
 But it was not there he was baptized, but at 
 the old St. David's Well above the Cathedral. 
 
SOLVA AND ST. DAVID'S 311 
 
 On leaving the chapel field, you cross a style 
 and gain an overhanging cliff-path that follows 
 the windings of the cliffs. On the rocks below 
 the incoming tide returns upon itself in magni- 
 ficent ocean waves rolled on a great axis. The 
 nearest creek below the chapel has a rocky out- 
 post, called the Chanter's Seat, where you sit 
 at peril. Beyond this comes Porth y Ffynnon, 
 and then again Porth Clais, where the Alun has 
 its aber or outflow. Limekilns and an old landing- 
 place lend the primitive port a show of occupation. 
 From the crossing of the head of Porth Clais, 
 it cost us a good half -hour's ramble round the 
 cliff to Porth Lisky ; but these adventures can be 
 continued endlessly here, with many ups and 
 downs. A fair view of the Isle of Ramsey is to 
 be gained from above Porth Taflod. It is usual 
 to make the crossing to the island from Porth 
 Clais. 
 
 The noblest fastness of all this peninsula is St. 
 David's Head, which is a little over two miles 
 from the Cathedral. The by-road that crosses 
 the Alun and runs up the bank above the Bishop's 
 Palace is the most direct. But the main road 
 up the Vale may be taken to the next bold turn 
 to the left, and so to the ugly Vicarage posted 
 high above the bridge, which carries one round 
 by Pen Arthur Farm to join the wilder roadway 
 beyond. The latter bears the curious name of 
 "Fordd Chwech-Erw," or the Road of the Six 
 Acres. The road reaches the shore at the north- 
 ern end of Whitesand Bay, close to the old site 
 of St. Patrick's Chapel, which is some twenty 
 paces above the road. On the other side of the 
 road, where a ruined boathouse shows some old 
 walls, began the ancient enclosure of Menapia — 
 
312 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 
 the oldest settlement — obviously too near the sea 
 and too tempting to sea-pirates to remain long 
 in that situation. The Vale of Alun, the histori- 
 cal or legendary " Vale of Roses," would easily 
 recommend itself at such time, as the first site 
 proved disastrous. 
 
 We have to ascend a considerable bank now 
 on the way to the Head, skirting two more creeks 
 or porths — Porth Llenog and Porth Melgaw. All 
 along this open sea rampart we are on ground 
 that once and in the unpopulous days of the cave- 
 men and the cliff -men was one of the most popu- 
 lous parts of early prehistoric Britain. How did 
 they live? one asks as one gazes on the unfer- 
 tile promontory. Not on plants and herbs, but 
 on fish and the wild creatures to be caught in 
 the sea and on its confines. 
 
 N Mr. Edward Laws, author of Little England 
 Beyond Wales, and the Rev. S. Baring- Gould, 
 author of Pabo the Priest, &c, made considerable 
 excavations on and a little north of the Head, 
 which proved clearly that an extensive range 
 of earth cells and dwellings existed here. 
 
 Even on calm days the Atlantic pressure on 
 the rocks here is formidable. In a storm from the 
 south-west the breakers are terrible and magnifi- 
 cent. One breaker, on a fine August afternoon 
 in 1901, was the cause of the sad death of Reginald 
 Smith (son of Chancellor Smith, the Rector of 
 Swansea), who, stepping aside to avoid the spray, 
 fell into Porth Melgaw, and after swimming 
 vainly up the creek again and again, only to 
 be washed back by the recoiling waves, was 
 carried under. A stone now marks the spot 
 where he slipped. 
 
 From the " Head " it is well worth while to climb 
 
SOLVA AND ST. DAVID'S 313 
 
 Cam Llidi, 595 feet above the sea-level. It 
 suggests that a race of giants preceded the 
 pigmies, or hut-dwellers, below, and hurled these 
 mighty masses into " something like a cairn ! " 
 
 From the top one can look down on Clegyr 
 Foia, that hill whose name calls to mind the 
 kind of life men led here fourteen hundred years 
 ago. Clegyr Foia means Crag Boia ; and Boia 
 was an Irish plunderer and chieftain of the sixth 
 century who sojourned there. His story, as told 
 by Mr. Baring-Gould, recalls the old fierce ballads 
 of the North with the cruel step-mother as pro- 
 tagonist. 
 
 Boia had fixed his camp on the rock that bears 
 his name, 320 feet long by 100 broad as you step 
 it out to-day, and with him were his terrible wife 
 and his step-daughter, the little maiden Dunawd. 
 One morning he climbs to the top of his rock 
 and looks below ; the smoke of a strange fire is 
 going up from the slope of Cam Llidi, and he 
 hurries off at once to discover not a rival robber, 
 but a hermit cooking his meal beside his fire — 
 David himself. Boia found him a wise and peace- 
 ful soul who discoursed on the new doctrines ; 
 Boia's heart was softened and he allowed the 
 hermit to remain. Not so Boia's fierce wife : St. 
 David could make no impression on her pagan 
 spirit, and she resorted to every possible method 
 to drive him away. Finding all fail, she deter- 
 mined to invoke the aid of her gods, and to 
 propitiate them by offering a human sacrifice. 
 
 One warm day in early autumn she asked her 
 step-daughter Dunawd to come with her into the 
 hazel-wood to gather nuts, and then said she 
 would dress Dunawd's tangled curls. But when 
 the little maid laid down her head in her lap 
 
314 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 she first shore off her locks (an act by which 
 she adopted the child as her own), and then cut 
 her throat. Where the blood of Dunawd fell 
 a pure spring burst up from the ground, which 
 is called Ffynnon Dunawd (Dunawd's Fountain) 
 to this day. 
 
 But the vengeance of Heaven was waking 
 against the camp of Boia and its inhabitants. 
 We can imagine the dark headland sleeping 
 under the September moon, and judgment in the 
 shape of the " shiplette " of Paucant, the son of 
 Liski, slipping with the tide into the bay below. 
 (If you disbelieve the story you can go to-morrow 
 to Porth Liski (Liski's harbour) and see where 
 he landed and climb all the way he went to Boia's 
 Crag.) This son of Liski was an Irish rover, too, 
 and his men behind him carried slings and stones 
 in their hands as David did in Palestine one still 
 remoter day. One can imagine the shout with 
 which they sprang on the fifteen-feet wall that 
 surrounded the camp ; the hail of sling-stones 
 swept over the west wall and fell on the further 
 side — where you may pick up one or two still. 
 Boia and his men were massacred, one and all. 
 
 The wretched wife of Boia was slain or lost the 
 same night, and the crag knew them no more. 
 
 vBut David flourished and his doctrines spread, 
 and he built a monastery and dwelt on that wild 
 promontory till the time came for him too to 
 depart. The words of the chronicler describing 
 his death are much too moving not to be repeated 
 in full : — 
 
 \ " And on Tuesday night, about the time of 
 cockcrowing, lo a host of angels filled the city, 
 it was full of all kinds of songs and mirth ; and 
 when the morning came the sun was shining on 
 
SOLVA AND ST. DAVID'S 315 
 
 all the hosts. And on that Tuesday, the first of 
 March, the Lord Jesus took the soul of St. David, 
 with great victory and joy, and honour; after 
 hunger, and thirst, and cold, and labour, and 
 fasting, and granting charitable relief, and afflic- 
 tion, and trouble, and temptations, and anxiety. 
 The angels took his soul to the place where there 
 is light without end, and rest without labour, 
 and joy without sorrow, and plenty of all good 
 things, and victory, and brightness and beauty. 
 The place where there is health without pain, 
 and youth without old age, and peace without 
 disagreement, and music without affliction, and 
 rewards without end." 
 
 The snow-white farmhouse of Olegyr Foia 
 nestles under the rock at the south-east side. 
 Architecturally it is most interesting, as it gives 
 an example of the famous round chimney which 
 is peculiar to Celtic Pembrokeshire and which 
 is rapidly vanishing away. The house has a 
 stone porch with slabbed seats on either side ; 
 the chimney rises between the porch and the 
 pent-house roofed recess on the other side. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 RAMSEY ISLAND — GRASSHOLM AND THE GANNET 
 COMMUNITY — THE ISLAND OF BIRDS — GWALES 
 IN PENVRO — THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNO- 
 CENTS — AN UNRECORDED VICTORY OF THE 
 BRITISH NAVY 
 
 Ramsey Island lies next door to St. David's, but 
 the crossing is not to be made every day, and it 
 is often hard to get boats and boatmen, and you 
 may have to wait indefinitely if it be late autumn. 
 The crossing is usually made from Porth Clais, and 
 the excursion takes at least four to five hours, 
 while a quarter of an hour's extra delay on the 
 island itself may cause the losing of the tide for 
 the return journey. A couple of hours on the 
 island permits the climbing of Carn Llundain 
 and the visiting of Twyn Llundain (why these 
 two landmarks should be associated with London 
 is not clear : perhaps because they are so remote 
 from everything that is London's and London like). 
 The only house on the island is near the landing- 
 place, and half an hour's climb will carry you 
 thence to the highest Carn, four hundred and forty- 
 six feet. The top commands every point of 
 interest — on the seaward side the Bishop and his 
 Clerks, and the lighthouse on the South Bishop — 
 and on the next horn, southward of St. Bride's 
 Bay, Musslewick and Skomar Island and the 
 
 316 
 
RAMSEY AND GRASSHOLM ISLANDS 317 
 
 lighthouses at the mouth of Milford Haven. At 
 spring-tides an ample reach of the Haven itself 
 is visible just south of St. Bride's Hill across the 
 Marloes cliffs. The view of St. David's is so 
 elusive that a painter christened it " Hide and 
 Seek Town." We should remember, as we look 
 upon the formidable rocks christened the " Bishop 
 and his Clerks " and watch the water racing north- 
 ward past them, the old epigram which George 
 Owen of Henllys fondly iterates in his Descrip- 
 tion of Pembrokeshire. We had better give part 
 of the passage in which it occurs : — 
 
 \" Ramsey rangeth in order the Bishop and his Clearkes, 
 being VII en in Noniber, all wayes seene at lowe water who 
 are not without some small Quiristers, who shewe not them- 
 selves, but at spring tydes and calm seas. The chiefest of 
 theis ys called of the inhabitantes the Bishop rocke ; one 
 other, Carreg u Rossan ; the third Divighe, the fourth 
 Eniskir ; the rest as yet I have not learned their names. . . . 
 The Bisho}) and those his Clerkes preach deadly doctrine to 
 their winter audience, and are commendable for nothinge 
 but for their good residence.'''' 
 
 In another MS. said to be Owen's two more 
 names of the Clerks are given : to wit, Given 
 Cai^reg and Carreg Haivloe. George Owen tells 
 us too that these rocks " are accompted a great 
 danger to those that seek Milford coming from 
 the southwest seas." 
 
 When arranging the boat excursion for Ramsey, 
 it is well to allow time for coasting the west cliffs, 
 Ynys Bery and the whole circuit of the island. 
 This should only be attempted under the care of 
 a couple of boatmen. The tide in Ramsey Sound 
 runs like a millrace, and needs much humouring 
 with certain winds and uncertain currents. If 
 you are yachting, you can sail on from Ramsey 
 
318 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 to Grassholm — the Island of Birds, the farthest 
 west of the Welsh isles, and the actual spot called 
 Gwales in the story of the sons of Llyr.* It is a 
 spot where few people have set foot. Fortunately 
 a Welsh artist, a bird-lover and a great traveller, 
 Mr. T. H. Thomas, paid the island a visit and camped 
 there with some friends one Whitsuntide, and he 
 has very generously put his notes at my disposal. 
 
 \" It was nightfall," says Mr. Thomas, " when 
 with our multifarious belongings we scrambled 
 up the rocks above the tiny landing-place on the 
 island. We stumbled along among stones and 
 puffin-burrows to a spot which one of the sailors 
 had told us was the only camping-ground. We 
 passed a painful hour of struggle in the darkness 
 with our tent, but at last it was pitched well and 
 truly and we, wrapped like mummies upon the 
 ground, courted slumber. The island ' was full 
 of noises ' : cries of birds strange to us, the beat of 
 countless wings, the dash of billows, and a curious 
 soughing noise beneath us, afterwards discovered 
 to be the swirl of meeting waters in a cavern 
 piercing the isle beneath the spot where we 
 reposed. The cries of some of the sea-birds were 
 sadness itself, and listening to them in the dark- 
 ness the lament for Myrto by Andre Chenier 
 came to mind : — 
 
 ' ' ' Pleurez, doux alcyons : 6 vous, oiseaux sacres, 
 Oiseaux chers a Thetis, doux alcyons, pleurez ! 
 Elle a vecu, Myrto ! ' 
 
 
 * '■' And there they found a fair and regal spot overlooking 
 the ocean, and a spacious hall therein. And they went into 
 the hall, and two of its doors were open, but the third was 
 closed, that which looked toward Cornwall " {The Mabin- 
 ogion : "Bran wen, daughter of Llyr ")• 
 
RAMSEY AND GRASSHOLM ISLANDS 319 
 
 "The morning light peering yellow through 
 our canvas roof aroused us, and emerging from 
 our tent we found ourselves in a realm of strange 
 beauty. We were encamped upon a spot covered 
 with vivid vegetation in a tiny ravine ; on either 
 side were steep rocks of brightest orange colour, 
 being covered with brilliant lichen. At either 
 end the ravine was ' crowned by summer sea.' 
 Every point, ledge, and cleft of the rocks around 
 us was occupied by sea-birds, gulls, puffins, razor- 
 bills, guillemots which rose at our apparition, 
 with wild cries circled around, and then settled 
 again to watch the intruders. During the night 
 there had been inexplicable croakings in our tent ; 
 these were now explained by the appearance of 
 some puffins hopping in a bewildered manner 
 from the tent, which was pitched over their 
 burrows. 
 
 -"Breakfast was the next thing, and while pre- 
 paring we may think over the history of the 
 isle. Very little can be gathered from maps and 
 books ; Grassholm is an almost unconsidered islet. 
 Owing to its westerly position few maps of Wales 
 include it. It has always in historic periods been 
 uninhabited, but our after observations led us to 
 think there had been a prehistoric occupation. 
 The only early map in which it appears is Kip's, 
 which accompanies the 1637 edition of Camden's 
 Britannia. There an island occupies the position 
 of Grassholm, but is called Wallys (? Whales) 
 Island. There is notice in Drayton's Polyolbion 
 (1613), where ' Gresholme ' appears in the illustra- 
 tion and lines occur in the poem : — 
 
 " 'As Rat and Sheepy set to keep salrue Milford's mouth 
 Exposed to Neptune's power — so Gresholme farre doth 
 stand." 
 
320 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 "Although not directly describing Grassholm> 
 there are passages referring to the ornithology 
 of the West Coast and Island of Pembrokeshire 
 in Camden which are worth transcription both 
 for their quaintness and instructiveness. Speaking 
 of Ramsey Island (in the Additions) the following 
 account is given from a letter by the ' Revd. Mr. 
 Nicholas Roberts, A.M., Rector of Lhan Dhewi 
 Velpey,' of migratory sea-birds : — 
 
 " ' To this Island and some rocks adjoining . . . 
 the Bishop and his Clerks, do yearly resort, about 
 the beginning of April such a number of birds of 
 several sorts, that none but such as have been 
 eyewitnesses can be prevailed upon to believe it ; 
 all which after breeding here, leave us before 
 August. They come and also leave constantly in 
 the night-time, for in the evening the rocks shall 
 be covered with them, and next morning not a 
 bird to be seen, so in the evening not a bird shall 
 appear, and the next morning the rocks be full. 
 They also visit us commonly about Christmas, 
 and stay a week or more, and then take their 
 leave till breeding-time. Three sorts of these 
 migratory birds are called in Welsh Mora, 
 Poethwy, and Pal ; in English Eligug, Razorbill, 
 and Puffin ; to which we may also add the Harry- 
 bird.' Another interesting reference is made to 
 the Peregrine Falcon, line specimens of which are 
 still to be observed in the district. ' A noble kinde 
 of Falcons have their airies here and breed in the 
 rocks, which King Henry the Second, as Giraldus 
 writeth, was wont to preferre before all others of 
 that kind are those the skilful Faulconers cell 
 Peregrines : for they have 
 
 " 'Depressus capitis vertex oblougaque toto 
 Corpore pennarum series pallentia crura 
 Et graciles digiti ac sparsi, naresque rotuncUe. 
 
RAMSEY AND GRASSHOLM ISLANDS 321 
 
 " 'Head flat and low, the plume in rewes along 
 The body laid : legges pale and worn are found 
 With slender clawes and talons there among 
 And those wide-spread : the bill is hooked around.' 
 
 " Breakfast over, we mounted the island to the 
 west and soon found ourselves on the summit, 
 where we were in face of a spectacle which none 
 of us can ever forget. We were in a metropolis 
 of birds ; thousands of white wings and breasts 
 were before us, on the grey or orange rocks, all 
 ringed about with the azure white-flecked sea 
 and sky ; our ears were filled with a wild concert. 
 Every rocky ledge and terrace had its rows of 
 puffins, and among them guillemots and razor- 
 bills, the latter often with their eggs beside them ; 
 clinging under the ledges above the sea were the 
 pearly kittiwakes, and here and there among the 
 rocks a herring-gull could be seen sitting, and 
 on a few points the black-headed gulls were 
 perched regarding the scene with a view to the 
 discovery of good fishing-grounds. High in the 
 air a peregrine falcon soared. But on the western 
 slope of the island, facing the great ocean, were 
 the settlements of the gannets. Two of the 
 highest rocks had been selected by them, and 
 nests had been built upon every step of rock. 
 Counting the two villages, more than two hundred 
 solan geese were in view, each bird in beautiful 
 snow-white plumage sitting on its dark-coloured 
 nest of seaweed. With the morning sun lighting 
 them up, and seen against the grey and orange 
 rocks, they formed a beautiful sight which we 
 longed to view more closely. 
 
 " Not less amazing than the sight was the strange 
 hubbub to the ear. Continually were heard the 
 warning cry of each species, the subterranean 
 
 21 
 
322 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 ' Oh ! ' of the puffins, and the fluster with which they 
 dashed out of their burrows and sped, blundering 
 against obstacles, down the slopes till they found 
 a little vantage-point for flight. The razor-bills 
 said ' Grr ' to us, with disfavour, and the kitti- 
 wakes under the ledges, absorbed in eternal love- 
 making, said ' itty wa-a-ke ' and 'a-a-oh-a,' or 
 chirped ; the ' oyster-catchers ' whistled as they 
 sped along; the herring-gull's gravely sonorous 
 'Ah-ha-a!' sounded like a staccato warning against 
 our proceeding further ; and the peregrine falcon, 
 circling high in the air, continually kept up its 
 piercing shriek of 'Ka-ka-ka-ka,' unwittingly telling 
 us that her young were near. Under all this 
 charivari there was the deep bourdon note of the 
 sea as it boomed among the caverns below. 
 
 " The island may be described as roughly a five- 
 sided pyramid of perhaps four hundred feet high 
 upon a base half a mile long east to west and a 
 quarter broad ; each side is deeply grooved and 
 filled with peaty soil. The island is walled with 
 precipices of a hundred feet more or less. 
 
 " Making our way to the gannet settlements, we 
 had to cross the bare peat in which the puffins 
 burrowed ; the patting of their feet had worn it 
 bare of vegetation and the utmost care was 
 requisite to prevent our breaking in unexpectedly 
 upon their nests, so completely was the soil tun- 
 nelled with the burrows in which they deposit 
 their single dirty white egg. While some attended 
 to their domestic duties, others sunned themselves 
 in little mobs on the rocks, while at times a whole 
 troop would take wing and, circling round the 
 island, return to the spot they had left, or would 
 alight on the sea and fish in long-extended curves. 
 On land or on the wing the puffin is equally comic, 
 
 ey 
 
RAMSEY AND GRASSHOLM ISLANDS 323 
 
 his upright position, his dark back and white 
 breast, his hooked red beak, and his little vermilion 
 legs, or when flying his short wings and red webs 
 sticking out like a red tail and looking like a big 
 flying beetle, make him a perpetual diversion to 
 the beholder. 
 
 4* The settlement of the gannets, otherwise called 
 solan-geese, is upon the western end of the island, 
 at a point where the rocks rise most perpen- 
 dicularly from the sea. This bird can only be seen 
 breeding in two localities upon the English and 
 Welsh shores, Lundy and Grassholm. The bird 
 has great beauty ; the plumage is snowy white, 
 except for a delicately shaded orange-yellow at the 
 top of the head and back of the neck, and the 
 pinion feathers, which are jet black ; the body is 
 about the size of a domestic goose ; the beak, which 
 is large and strong, is of a pale blue tint, and a 
 somewhat similar hue lines the feet. The wings 
 are of exceptional length and strength, being 
 usually six feet from tip to tip — they are narrow, 
 similar in shape to those of the albatross, to which 
 the bird is probably little inferior in powers of 
 flight. 
 
 " As we came near the eyries many of the birds, 
 one after another, with many preliminary com- 
 plaints, rose from their nests, and advancing to 
 the cliff edge, spread their splendid wings, then 
 with magnificent action launched themselves into 
 the air and flew to sea with astonishing speed and 
 ease. We afterwards had opportunities for seeing 
 these birds swoop upon the fish. Flying at a con- 
 siderable distance above the water, they would 
 suddenly descend with a swiftness and force far 
 surpassing that of a hawk, which they can do 
 in safety over the yielding element. 
 
324 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 
 " At this first visit only did the birds rise at our 
 approach. We carefully avoided quick gestures and 
 cries, and they soon became accustomed to our 
 presence, and, the gannets especially, would allow 
 of our very near approach : there was something 
 particularly pleasant in this kind of anserine 
 fraternisation. 
 
 "The nest of the gannet is a small mound of 
 seaweed placed upon the bare rock in the most 
 exposed situations ; the half-decayed seaweed ad- 
 heres closely to the rock, and a few sticks may be 
 roughly placed upon the seaweed. Upon the nest 
 lies the single egg which the bird lays, at first 
 a kind of greenish white with a scurfy surface, 
 about the size of a large hen's egg but narrower 
 in shape. During the period of incubation, being 
 rolled over and over upon the dirty seaweed, it 
 becomes a dark brown. In addition to the de- 
 caying weed the presence of an ejected fish or two 
 makes the nest not a savoury object. The gannet 
 is one of the Pelicanidse, and retains in a pouch 
 small fish, which it disgorges at the nest before 
 again going fishing. We sat near them and 
 watched their ways ; they sat stolidly, nearly all 
 of them with their heads to the wind, and they 
 seem careless sitters, as in some cases the eggs 
 might be seen beside them. If one rose from her 
 nest, the others made a discontented outcry and 
 pecked at her as she waddled to the cliff's edge 
 and were not above dragging bits out of her nest 
 for their own use, and stealing her fish in her 
 absence. Here and there among them a guillemot 
 might be seen, beside it its beautiful turquoise egg 
 deposited upon the bare rock. 
 
 "In the side of the rock below the gannets 
 was a kind of arched alcove, which was occupied 
 
RAMSEY AND GRASSHOLM ISLANDS 325 
 
 by three pairs of kittiwakes, whose manners and 
 customs quite represented those of the species 
 generally at that particular time of the year. 
 They were simply absorbed in love-making ; the 
 beautiful little pearly creatures seemed to have 
 been schooled in every possible variety of flirtation, 
 and under every ledge of rock overhanging the 
 sea these flirtations appeared to be going on. 
 Their ways must be seen to be believed — and, in 
 fact, only Monsieur Daudet or Ohnet could possibly 
 describe satisfactorily the events of these alcoves. 
 
 " The young of the falcons are hatched in a 
 hollow under a rock, a simple depression in the 
 ground forming the nest. Though so young that 
 they could hardly stand, they seemed able to fight, 
 and wrestled together and bit each other like young 
 bears. They were covered with pure white down. 
 . " The nest of the black-backed gull showed us 
 quite a rising family. A flat, saucer-like nest of 
 dried grasses was a great centre of life, and all 
 the children were getting on nicely. The eldest 
 was a spotted, fawn-coloured puff of down, the 
 second was not yet dried and combed from the 
 egg, while the youngest was chipping his way out 
 of the egg with many chirps, the egg meanwhile 
 rolling over and over as the struggles of the chick 
 changed its centre of gravity. 
 
 " The whole of the island is a mass of intrusive 
 rock, the eastern portion of a dark colour, a basalt 
 or trap, becoming of a purplish tint upon the 
 higher portions and at the western part, where it 
 has to the eye the character of a porphyry. The 
 stone is a dark purplish red lava of great hardness. 
 At the eastern or landward end is a fault which 
 exhibits a very curious character, which the action 
 of the sea has accented. Great movement has 
 
326 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 taken place, and a gash exists right across the 
 islet. I could not determine whether this fissure 
 has ever been filled with solid rock and then 
 breached by chemical and sea action, but at 
 present it is entirely arched over by a breccia of 
 blocks of various rocks, most of them angular, 
 but a few more or less rounded boulders, some 
 of which are of great size. The southern end of 
 this chasm is at the small beach where we landed, 
 at which the conglomerate can be easily studied, 
 then masked by a deep mass of peaty soil it crosses 
 the island and assumes a highly picturesque aspect 
 at its northern end, where a large oval boulder is 
 supported right in the centre of the section of the 
 conglomerate arch, forming a sort of architrave to 
 a gloomy portal, below which at a depth of thirty 
 feet or so the waves heave and stream into the 
 resounding cavern corridor. This entrance is very 
 weird-looking ; the walls are high and dark, many 
 nests of sea-birds are about it, the denizens flying 
 in screaming squadrons to and fro, the waters 
 heave and fall in a ' darkness visible,' and the 
 cavern is resonant with the hissing of sea-spray 
 and the gloomy mutterings of the billows as they 
 meet with the waves from the other entry in the 
 bowels of the earth. 
 
 " Outside the cavern a seal was seen disporting 
 itself, which probably had its home in the cave. 
 We were afterwards given to understand that 
 seals breed there, and that a local person, whose 
 position is such that he should know better, goes 
 over occasionally to shoot them. 
 
 " A few rock specimens collected, Mr. Storrie 
 described as diabasic rock containing epidote, and 
 a softer purplish red rock was a consolidated 
 volcanic ash now decomposing. 
 
RAMSEY AND GRASSHOLM ISLANDS 327 
 
 " The probability of the island containing traces 
 of occupation in prehistoric ages has been sug- 
 gested in consequence of our observation of distinct 
 traces of erections or enclosures upon the higher 
 parts of the island, upon examining which closely 
 we collected flint chips, portions of sun-dried 
 pottery, and other objects. 
 
 " We had ordered the cutter to return for us 
 on Whit Monday, but we could not tear ourselves 
 away from the island, so only Mr. West, who was 
 tied by engagements, left, and the rest of us set 
 to our occupations, I going to renew my acquaint- 
 ance with the gannets. Among them I was, if not 
 welcomed, at least permitted, and I began some 
 sketching until I heard the fell ' crack' of a rifle 
 break in upon our millennium. Then commenced a 
 series of events upon which this is not the place 
 to enlarge, except in so far as was reported to a 
 Society, the name of which frequently came up 
 in regard to the proceedings which followed : — 
 N " ' An attack was made upon the settlement of 
 gannets by a company on board H.M.S. Sir Richard 
 Fletcher, followed by a landing and general battue 
 upon shore, terminating in the slaughter of many 
 birds, several gannets, and the destruction of the 
 whole of the eggs of the latter. We considered 
 that the facts should be reported, which we did 
 in a letter to the Daily Graphic. The press, local 
 and general, emphasised our complaint, and ques- 
 tions were asked in the House by Mr. Webster, 
 M.P. for St. Pancras, who had been informed by 
 the Bath Selborne Society, and by Sir Hussey 
 Vivian. The Government shielded the offenders, 
 who were military and volunteer officers, so it was 
 left to private enterprise to bring the matter home 
 to them. The case was taken up by the Royal 
 
328 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 
 and, with great difficulty, for here again the local 
 authorities were most reluctant to move, Mr. R. I. 
 Colam, the able and energetic secretary, obtained, 
 at Haverfordwest Sessions, a verdict against the 
 marauders. The Society considered the case one of 
 the most important they had fought, and spoke 
 of it " as the most wanton violation of the law for 
 the protection of birds " that had occurred since 
 the enactment of the Statute. From that Society, 
 from the Bath Branch of the Selborne Society, and 
 from the central Selborne Society in London, we 
 received votes of commendation for moving in 
 the matter. Full details of the whole case may 
 be found in the September number of the Animal 
 World, 1890.' 
 
 " A large case containing a gannet, puffins, 
 guillemots, &c, killed by the party from the 
 steamer, is now set up in the Cardiff Museum with 
 a background painted to represent the gannet 
 settlement." 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 THE NORTH PEMBROKE COAST — FISHGUARD AND 
 GOOD WICK — THE VICTORY OF JEMIMA — DIN AS 
 HEAD — SEALS AND WILD GOATS — NEWPORT — 
 PRECELLY TOP 
 
 Working north along the Pembroke coast from 
 St. David's, you have a stretch to explore which 
 had been rather neglected by the later Welsh 
 antiquaries, when that excellently reminiscent 
 newspaper, the Pembroke Guardian, appeared on 
 the scene under the lead of Mr. H. W. Williams, 
 of Solva. 
 
 Two roads run parallel to the coast-line for some 
 miles. The lower touches Llanrian and Trevine ; 
 the upper and better road so far as mere 
 travelling goes, runs by Croesgoch to Mathry. In 
 either case the traveller, if he be bent on antiquity, 
 will wish he had taken the other. For this part 
 of Dewisland is fairly studied with remains — 
 cromlechs on the moors, cliff-castles by the sea — 
 worth hunting for. Every village you pass has 
 some old stone or other built in a wall or doorway 
 to rouse your curiosity and make you wish 
 secretly to unbuild and examine it. As for the 
 cromlechs at Llanrian and at Mathry, they are 
 known things ; and Sir Norman Lockyer's theory 
 that a cromlech was a cell of the living and not 
 
 329 
 
330 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 merely of the dead lends them the interest of 
 fresh discovery. In the same way, Mr. Edward 
 Laws has helped to make his Pembroke neighbours 
 aware of a new human interest in the cliff-castles, 
 which were usually put down to the strategic 
 convenience of the Black Pagans — the Wickings. 
 But many of them were evidently not forts 
 intended to be a base for sea-pirates' raids inland, 
 but the abode of cliff-dwellers who lived on roots 
 and shell-fish. A month spent in exploring the 
 coast here, with a sketch-book to help the inves- 
 tigation, will go far to clear a way into the 
 primitive life of the Welsh coast centuries before 
 the Romans came. 
 
 Gerald the Welshman speaks of the country 
 near St. David's as stony, barren, unimprovable 
 territory, without any pleasant meadows, a place 
 of wind and storm. A tourist of a hundred years 
 ago adds that " the rocks on this shore are shaken 
 into every possible shape of horror," and says he 
 found not a glimpse of smiling nature to relieve 
 his aching sight. As there are no hedges, he adds, 
 even the sheep and the geese have to be tethered 
 together. One may add that nowhere in Wales 
 can one get such a sensation of sheer loneliness. 
 Yet 1 seem to remember blue and white skies 
 and radiant days, and a delicious short thymy 
 sea-turf on some of the barest outliers of this 
 coast, flanked too by a sea of such colour that it 
 stained one's eyes with Italian blue for hours 
 afterwards. 
 
 Fenton opened a tumulus near Castell Havod, 
 which has been called both Danish and Roman, 
 and is neither. At Trevaen — the Three Stones — 
 are the remains of what were called Bishop 
 Martin's Palace. 
 
THE NORTH PEMBROKE COAST 331 
 
 You pass three more cromlechs before you come 
 to your last mile at Goodwick. This promoted 
 village now forms one side of the harbour and 
 seaport, with Fishguard on the other, that stand 
 on the world's highway and provide a new through- 
 connection on the Great Western sea-route. The 
 south-west corner of Fishguard Bay, well sheltered 
 from the prevailing winds and the worst seas that 
 affect this coast, offers good space for quays and 
 a safe landing, and the Bay a good road for big 
 ships to lie at anchor. The railway has already 
 equipped a dock and built steamers, and converted 
 a country-house into a hotel — the "Wyncliff" — 
 which is everything that the ordinary railway 
 hotel is not, ensconced as it is in a green corner 
 of the cliff above the new harbour works, with a 
 wild headland beyond and remains of cromlechs 
 almost at its back-door. On reaching the terminus 
 and alighting, you have the village rising on your 
 left and stretching along the cliff, a mixture of 
 brand-new houses and nice old cottages, while to 
 the right you have the flat salt-marsh with the 
 road to Fishguard running behind the gravel bank 
 of the beach across it. 
 
 At the very high tides this half-mile or more 
 of beach is reduced to a narrow strip or to nothing, 
 and the sand is hardly of Tenby quality. The 
 rocks on either side of Fishguard Bay are basaltic, 
 and take at the neighbouring corner of " Pen- 
 anglas " and elsewhere most curious shapes. 
 Hence the queer name given them by the Fish- 
 guard children — " torthau ceiniogau " — i.e., penny 
 loaves. 
 
 The headland on which the village of Llanwnda 
 stands high can be reached by the Llanwnda road, 
 or by the slant path climbing the heathy slope 
 
332 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 behind the Wyncliff Hotel. Llanwnda is the only- 
 parish in Wales or Great Britain that can claim 
 to have been invaded by, and to have itself 
 defeated, a French array. To be sure, it seems in 
 the retrospect a comedy invasion ; but it roused 
 terror enough at the time. The place, says the 
 Cambrian Guide, was for ages obscure, till Tuesday, 
 the 20th of February, 1797, when three large 
 vessels were discovered standing in from the 
 channel, and nearing the rocky coast of Llanwnda. 
 These were supposed to be becalmed merchant- 
 men, coming to anchor in order to wait the 
 return of the tide, or a brisker gale ; but on 
 their nearer approach, a most serious alarm was 
 excited." After a pause indeed the English colours 
 were struck, and the French tricolour was boldly 
 displayed ; and at nightfall " boats were seen 
 putting off from their sides, full of men, followed 
 by others fully manned, and in such rapid suc- 
 cession as to leave no doubt of their being an 
 enemy. They disembarked at Aber-y-felin, rolling 
 their casks of ammunition up a precipitous steep ; 
 a task so herculean as almost to exceed credibility. 
 The night was dark, and in consequence the 
 number of the enemy could not be ascertained ; 
 the inhabitants in the vicinity deserted their 
 houses, and taking refuge among rocks and furze, 
 waited within sight of their dwellings, expecting 
 to see them ravaged and burnt. The townsmen 
 of Fishguard caught the general panic, and rapidly 
 removed their wives, children, and valuables. The 
 first impulse of the invading crew was to satisfy 
 hunger ; the fields were occupied in the business 
 of cookery, and the order of the night was 
 plunder ! Gluttony was succeeded by intoxica- 
 tion. A wreck of wine had occurred a few days 
 
THE NORTH PEMBROKE COAST 333 
 
 before, and every cottage was supplied with a 
 cask." 
 
 • At Trehowel Farm, the master of the house, 
 believing the vessels to be English, prepared a 
 great supper for their officers, and only escaped 
 at the last moment. In all, thirty to forty farms 
 and many cottages were raided, but the local 
 historian says, "wonderfully little mischief and 
 scarcely any violence was done." It was the more 
 surprising as the invaders were mainly French 
 convicts. " At a farm called Cotts, a poor woman 
 recently confined had been abandoned by her 
 cowardly husband. When the Frenchmen entered 
 the house, in her despair she held up her baby 
 in her arms " — and, respecting her condition, they 
 soothed her fears and left her in peace. In all, 
 two Welshmen (who had already attacked and 
 killed one Frenchman) were killed ; one young 
 woman was shot and ill-treated, but survived, and 
 a Solva sailor was wounded. Meanwhile, Lord 
 Cawdor at Stackpole and Lord Milford were able, 
 on receiving the alarm, to muster some seven 
 hundred and fifty militiamen and yeomanry ; and 
 these, with the aid of Captain William Davios, who 
 had seen some service, were disposed to look as 
 formidable as possible. But the Fishguard version 
 of the story of this gallant defence is the most 
 gratifying : and in this it was the great Jemima 
 in her het befr and her " red shawl " (shol Jemima) 
 who was both heroine and commander-in-chief of 
 the victorious Welsh battalion that figured in the 
 heights above Fishguard. 
 
 It was Wednesday when the invaders landed. 
 On Thursday, at noon, when they were posted 
 above the village of Llanwnda, the French frigates 
 surprised both friends and foes ashore by setting 
 
334 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 sail. That night an attack was planned by the 
 allied forces, led by Lord Cawdor and the gallant 
 Jemima ; but luckily was not carried out. Then 
 two French officers came over to Fishguard, under 
 a flag of truce : a council of war at the " Royal 
 Oak," Fishguard, followed ; and a game of bluff, 
 in which an English officer lied to admiration, 
 multiplied the English forces in his account by 
 ten, resulted in the preliminary compliments to 
 the surrender of the French forces on the fol- 
 lowing day, which took place duly at Goodwick. 
 Thence the whole force of prisoners was marched 
 off to Haverfordwest Castle. The French 
 soldiers, says Mr. Laws, were clad in old English 
 uniforms, re-dyed a rusty brown, and still furnished 
 with regimental buttons ; with these they wore 
 black belts and old cavalry helmets. So ended 
 this comedy of war, which, however, was meant 
 seriously enough. 
 
 Welsh shawls that will wear for ever are still 
 made at Fishguard, which has had for long a 
 reputation for homespun. The town enjoys the 
 privileges of an old borough. It was built, you 
 will observe, in two halves : known locally as the 
 " town " and the " lower town." The latter, which 
 is probably the older of the two, explains the 
 Welsh name " Abergwaen," since it lies at the 
 aber or outlet of the little Gwaen river, enclosed 
 in a sheltering sea-cwm. 
 
 Approaching Fishguard from Goodwick Station, 
 the road makes a sharp zigzag up the bank at 
 the end of the marshy level — scene of the old 
 battle-field where Trahearn ap Caradog defeated 
 Rhys ab Owain — sometimes known as Goodwick 
 Moor. The bank brings the bicyclist off his 
 machine, and makes the average Fishguard horse 
 
THE CASTLE, NEWPORT, PEMBROKESHIRE. 
 
 I'ln-U 
 
 Aberystwyth. 
 
 f.LECH-Y-DRYBEDD CROMLEC II. 
 
THE NORTH PEMBROKE COAST 335 
 
 drop his head and prepare for a pull. Avoiding 
 the road which runs off to the right of the village, 
 you are soon in the " Square." The town will not 
 delay you if you are a tourist ; but below its 
 apparent ugly surface it is full of character. 
 Besides its own particular creek and beach, Fish- 
 guard, too, has on the north a good stretch of 
 coast — rock and grassy cliffs and miniature moun- 
 tains — including Ceiliog Goch and Penrhyn 
 Ychain, and the sea-commanding outposts of 
 Cam Fran and Cam Gelli. 
 
 Nearly opposite a draper's shop in the main 
 street, as you leave the square on the way to 
 the lower town, you may see the memorial stone 
 to the redoubtable Jemima, after whom the red 
 shawl, known locally as "shol Jemima," took its 
 name. The monument may easily be deciphered 
 through the railings, and the inscription shows 
 plainly that it was the Amazon cohort in the 
 " shol goch," and not the magnificent lies of one 
 English officer, or the parade of the Pembroke 
 fencibles, who saved Great Britain from the 
 enemy and the invader. Jemima was, I believe, 
 like Meg Merrilies, "as tall as Amazon," and of 
 great muscular strength. She was a cobbler by 
 trade, and her craft should certainly enshrine her. 
 
 Above the "lower town," where Jemima lived 
 and cobbled, the Gwaen flows past the remains 
 of an old British town near the old quarry at 
 Caerau. The road from the square in the town 
 above which runs to Pontvaen, up the Gwaen 
 valley, brings one to Caerau by a track across 
 the meadows of Caerau Farm on the left ; and 
 on the other side of the river you have " Hen 
 Fynwent " — an old burial-ground, as its name 
 tells you. 
 
336 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 North of Fishguard lies Dinas Head with its 
 cliffs and vast cave, through which a boat may 
 pass at half ebb, as wild a piece of architecture 
 as sea ever carved. Llanllawer Court lies at the 
 western end of the hill in the Gwaen valley, in 
 a very covetable site. One of the fairest of 
 riverside roads traverses this wooded vale on to 
 Pontvaen and beyond. Emerging at length, the 
 wayfarer crosses the moorish, treeless uplands 
 of Carn Ingli Common and so reaches Newport. 
 Dinas Head is locally called the " Island," the 
 little Dinas' mill-brook serving to island it on 
 the east. The sea is making vigorous inroads 
 on the north side of the Head, at Cwm-yr-Eglwys, 
 the green cwm where the ruined church and 
 some dilapidated cottages bear testimony to its 
 advance. 
 
 Some years ago, accompanied by the hereditary 
 chieftain of this district who is also an incorri- 
 gible book-hunter, and the author of Ffordd y 
 Troseddwr and other novels (now alas ! a B.C.L. 
 and M.P.), I and G. R. took boat at Cwm-yr-Eglwys 
 beach, and explored the great cave. The boat, 
 it may be said, was manned by a famous crew 
 consisting entirely of retired sea-captains, some 
 six or seven. They rowed us right into the mouth 
 of the cavern, a great Gothic water-church, with 
 mysterious and awful recesses. Two of us landed, 
 if I rightly remember, on one ledge in the chancel, 
 and on the way back we just saw a seal's head, 
 like a big water-rat's, before he dived. 
 
 On the grassy cliffs of the island the last herd 
 of wild goats in "Wales still pastures ; and as the 
 boat carried us round the headland two of the 
 nimble beasts could be seen browsing on the verge 
 of the precipice. The whole island is held as one 
 
THE NORTH PEMBROKE COAST 337 
 
 farm, and by the same family (Raymond by name) 
 that has held it for centuries. 
 
 Going north-east from Dinas Cross, you reach 
 Newport about a league along the Cardigan road. 
 Like the other Newport, the town has a past. A 
 plague in the sixteenth century is but a thing 
 of yesterday, as you realise on surveying its 
 castle and asking how Parrog got its name. 
 Across the river, which can be forded when the 
 tide and flood-water permit, or crossed by the 
 new bridge from Parrog Terrace, lies a second 
 range of sands, the Berry sands, under Berry 
 Hill (so called from the old demesne of Bury). 
 A path runs along the cliffs toward Aberfforest ; 
 and there are no end of summer loitering-places 
 on one beach or the other. Near the Berry bridge 
 is a cromlech — one of the series that may yet 
 make the North Pembroke coast famous in the 
 history before history. Newport Castle, still used 
 as a dwelling-house (sometime occupied by Mr. 
 Brett, the sea-painter), has fine gateway towers ; 
 but the cromlechs were already old when it was 
 built. 
 
 Still further up the hill, a hundred yards to 
 the left of the same road, is the site of the Castle 
 of Llanhyvor, the " Castrum de Llanhover " men- 
 tioned by Gerald, which was built by Martin 
 de Tours ; and afterwards, it is said, relinquished 
 for the new castle he had built at Newport. Its 
 grass-grown vestiges show it was probably de- 
 serted early in the Castle period. 
 
 But the Nevern "lion" of antiquity is the fine 
 Pentre Evan cromlech, about half an hour's walk 
 from the church, across the river and beyond the 
 Cardigan high-road. Within the last four or five 
 years it has for protective purposes been sur- 
 
 22 
 
338 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 rounded by a wire fence. It stands on the moor 
 above the old house of Pentre Evan, now a farm 
 but once a mansion of some state. It is as well 
 to ask for directions at the Penaf Wern-ddu 
 Farm, beyond Pentre half a mile, as the cromlech 
 is difficult to find. The capstone of this cromlech 
 is nearly seventeen feet long, nearly nine feet 
 broad, and three deep ; it stands nearly nine feet 
 from the ground. The capstone weighs from ten 
 to twelve tons. 
 
 Straight from the cromlech from Nevern you 
 ought to find your way to Castell Mawr, 2£ miles 
 east of it : a wonderful camp, only less interesting 
 than Cam Goch. Descending from the camp to 
 the valley of the Nevern, you will find a valley- 
 scene wild as any north or south, at the Gelli 
 rocks, which look much more like a castle than 
 does Castell Mawr. The river-cliff architecture 
 there suggests the region of Don Quixote. Indeed, 
 the rocks near Melin-y-Gigfran (Raven's Mill) may 
 easily pass for enchanted, like those in the Cornish 
 tale of the Trolls wrestling, if you chance that 
 way at dusk.* One evening, driving over to Dinas 
 Cross in a crazy gig, we certainly saw strange 
 things there at nightfall. But then we had a 
 driver, a small boy, who was not sure of the 
 road, and we were light-headed from hunger 
 after a railway journey. 
 
 Cam Engli may be ascended from the lane 
 behind Newport Church, and from various points 
 above in the upper road, which makes a detour 
 to the Gwaen valley and Fishguard. The Gwaen 
 cuts off Cam Engli from the westward heights 
 of Precelly, to whose range it belongs : George 
 
 * Hunt's Romances and Drolls of the West of England, see 
 p. 241 : " The Hooting Cairn " (Cairn Kenidzhek). 
 
THE NORTH PEMBROKE COAST 339 
 
 Owen's picture of Cam Engli is as true now as 
 the day it was " painted " : — 
 
 "The high sharpe rocke over Newport, called Cam 
 Englyn, supposed by the vulgar to take its appellative from 
 a Cawr or giant of that name, is a very steepe and stony 
 mountaine, having the toppe thereof sharp, and all rockes 
 shewing from the E. and by N. like the upper part of the 
 capital Greek omega (Q). The pasture of this mountaine 
 was given in common by Nicholaus filius Martini, then 
 lord of Kernes, to the burgesses of his town of Newport, 
 which they enjoy to this day, with divers other freedomes 
 and liberties to them granted by divers charters yet extant 
 and faire, sealed with his seale of the armes of the saide 
 lordshipp of Kernes, but all of that antiquity that they are 
 sans date. This mountaine is several miles in circuit, and 
 surmounteth all other for good sheep pasture, both for 
 fatting and soundness, and especially commodious in this, 
 that noe snowe stayeth on it, by reason of the neernes 
 of the sea, and that it is watered with fine and cleare 
 springes. Frenny-faicr, the first and most easterly point 
 of the long Presselly line, and this the last and most w., 
 Cam Englyn, stand as captaine and lieutenant, the one 
 leading the vannegarde, the other following the rere-warde, 
 among whom Cwm Cericyn, being neere middway between 
 them, may well, for his high stature overlooking the rest, 
 clayme the place of standard-bearer." 
 
 To Owen's account we may add that Cam 
 Engli, like Moel Tri-garn, has many hut-circles 
 within a brief walk westward of the chief earn, 
 which is just a thousand feet above sea-level, and 
 commands a superb view of nearly all the Welsh 
 heights of consequence, from Precelly to Plyn- 
 limmon, from Cader Idris to the peaks which 
 determine the great curved rampart of mountains 
 around Cardigan Bay. 
 
 Precelly Mountain can be attacked from New- 
 port if you are making that place your centre. 
 
340 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 But if you work from Fishguard you can use 
 the railway that skirts the mountain, take train 
 ingloriously to Rosebush Station, whence the 
 climbing of Precelly top is easy. Rosebush, in 
 fact, is within an hour's easy climb of the 
 summit, and if the adventure ends there it need 
 not ask more than an afternoon holiday or the 
 time between two trains. 
 
 But it must be held in mind that Precelly is a 
 rather coy creature. She makes up for her 
 smaller stature by her cloudy elusions. You may 
 take train to her side on the clearest, bluest 
 summer morning to find a white shawl hiding 
 her pretty head. In fact, it is as well before 
 starting to take the advice of some native who 
 has used the " Top " as a sort of weather-glass 
 for forty or fifty years. Venture then at your 
 peril, even if he says decisively it is " goin' to be 
 f a'r ! " June and September are the months when 
 clear days most do occur. 
 
 Rosebush itself is no more than a row of 
 quarrymen's cottages with an adjacent hotel to 
 cater for visitors. On leaving the station, turn 
 to the left of the hotel and the cottages, and 
 take the path ascending above the quarry. The 
 track lies straight before, unmistakably making 
 for the top of the nearer ascent. The whole 
 climb need not occupy more than an hour, though 
 in wet weather there are one or two swampy 
 passages. From the first and highest of the 
 summits Moel Cwm Cerwyn, or the " Top," you 
 see southward all the mingled loveliness and 
 dreariness of Pembrokeshire : its woods and shel- 
 tered vales, its curled, interminable coast-line and 
 grey seaward levels. The woods about the Cleddau, 
 almost direct south, at Slebech and Picton, partly 
 
THE NORTH PEMBROKE COAST 341 
 
 hidden, fill in a darker green space in late summer. 
 To the left lie Carmarthen Bay and Worm's Head 
 and the western end of Gower ; to the right 
 George Owen's " tree " — that is Milf ord Haven — less 
 like a tree than a confused water-snake, some of 
 its brown or blue folds hidden, Pembroke Castle 
 set in its middle coil. Direct north, most im- 
 pressive of all, are the Eifl mountains and part 
 of Snowdon, seen across Cardigan Bay. Westward, 
 or slightly south-westward, we have the peninsula 
 and headland of St. David's — rather featureless 
 in effect as seen from this height. St. David's 
 Cathedral is hidden. But beyond the St. David's 
 promontory and island spurs, on a very clear day 
 with a north-westerly wind, the coast of Ireland 
 can be spied like a lower sky. 
 
 One of the separate arms of Precelly, Freni 
 Fawr ("Y Frenhin Fawr," or the Great King?) 
 1,287 feet above sea-level, becomes a very familiar 
 landmark on the right as one travels by train 
 along its skirts from Crymmych Arms to Cardigan ; 
 and from the former station it is only an hour's 
 climb to the summit. Or, having ascended Precelly 
 Top from Rosebush, the inveterate hill-walker who 
 is not content will have no trouble in exploring 
 the whole ridge eastwards to Moel Trigarn. Des- 
 cending at Crymmych Arms, he can spend the 
 night there. Moel or Foel Trigarn is so called 
 because of its three great cairns. Many stone 
 circles, or " cyttiau," are scattered on the slopes. 
 An ancient Roman way runs along the five miles 
 of mountain-top between Moel Trigarn and Moel 
 Cwm Cerwyn, which was used by Welsh and 
 Fleming too, to judge by the name "Via Flan- 
 drica," by which it went. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 CARDIGAN — CILGERRAN CASTLE — ST. DOGMELL'S — 
 THE STORY OF PERGRIN — GWBERT-ON-SEA 
 
 At the time when Welsh legends were exported to 
 France and Normandy, Cardigan was always a 
 name to charm with ; and something of that effect 
 the place and its sleepy streets and quays, castle 
 and bridge, contrive still to keep. It was " to a 
 Castle hight Cardigan " that Sir Percival and 
 Sir Agloval came riding once toward the end of 
 the Quest of the Grail. But at midnight Percival 
 stole away mysteriously. When you cross the 
 bridge into the town, and spy the Castle, you 
 wonder which road he took ? Was the Priory 
 into which he and Sir Ector wished to be carried 
 next day St. Dogmell's ? 
 
 In crossing Cardigan Bridge you leave Pem- 
 brokeshire — in which Cardigan railway station is 
 placed — for the neighbour-county. The bridge — 
 as old prints declare — made a better picture for- 
 merly, and a much better lounging-place, with 
 bays at every parapet. When it was built the 
 Castle commanded it, as Speed's map of the year 
 1610 shows. The Castle ruins have dwindled by 
 half in the last three centuries, if we may take 
 his view as at all accurate. Its curtain-wall, ivy 
 grown, and a part of two gateway towers are all 
 
 342 
 
CARDIGAN 343 
 
 that greet the eye now ; and as the interior forms 
 an adjunct to a private house, it is not open to 
 every visitor. The old parish church lies off to the 
 right of the Castle, but the stranger to Cardigan, if 
 he wishes to exploit the town, will follow the usual 
 route up the narrow ascent of Bridge Street. The 
 entrance to the Castle is on the right hand, as we 
 enter the High Street ; and just before it stood 
 the town " Cross," round which the open market 
 used to be held, with the old Shire Hall, turned 
 into a warehouse now, old Market Lane and St. 
 Mary Street to fill in other details. One of the 
 most puzzling of the street names in Speed's plan 
 is " Pole Hey "—i.e., " Y Pwllai." The Pwllai runs 
 out into the foot of St. Mary Street, making a 
 curve to the east of the old town wall, for Car- 
 digan was a walled town, needing its defences to 
 keep out freebooters like Maelgan. But the siege 
 of Cardigan by Cromwell's men in the Civil War 
 worked havoc in town walls and Castle alike. 
 
 Cardigan Church, as it stands amid its ecclesi- 
 astical elms and beeches, is an architectural 
 medley which age has tempered and made into a 
 whole of some dignity. The big battlemented 
 tower has a capital outlook from its platform, 
 worth the toil of the many stairs leading to it. 
 It is not of any age to speak of, dating from 1710 
 onwards — the old tower having collapsed a few 
 years before. The chancel is an extreme contrast 
 — a fine Decorated building, with airy pinnacles to 
 its machicolated roof. Close to the church the 
 Priory stands upon the site of a small Black 
 Friars' house, only one or two fragments of 
 whose walls remain. 
 
 The Priory is famous because here for some 
 years lived the "Matchless Orinda," Mrs. Catherine 
 
344 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Philipps, who came hither from London on her 
 marriage in 1647, a girl of sixteen, to a local squire 
 James Philipps, who was High Sheriff of the 
 county in 1649. The "Matchless Orinda" died in 
 1664; her poems, born of a delicately imaginative 
 mind, are still to be read with something of the 
 wonder that Henry Vaughan, a you g poet at 
 that time, felt when he spoke of them as a 
 miracle — 
 
 "Which Nature brought but once to pass, 
 A Muse such as Orinda was." 
 
 From the Priory gate you can step quickly to 
 the riverside, as I daresay Orinda often did ; and 
 there at the Cardigan Boating Club's house, a little 
 further up the strand, you can hire a boat and row 
 up to Kilgarren. Once with Mr. Walter Spurrell of 
 Carmarthen, I made this voyage, and we had to 
 haul the boat over two tough gravelly reaches; 
 but we had our solace in the deep, shut-in, over- 
 grown Teivy pools, where the sea-birds met with shy 
 river-fowl, wild duck, and red-throated divers, and 
 in our arrival at last under the broken banks of 
 the Castle at the mouth of the Cwm Plysgog. 
 
 Up above, a closer acquaintance with the walls 
 was not so inspiriting. The site there at the 
 meeting of the Teivy with Nant Plysgog amid the 
 steep slate-cliffs is fine enough for everything. 
 There is an adventurous tower, too, where the 
 ravines, big and little, meet, an outlook tower or 
 yucrite, which stirs the besieger's blood as he 
 prepares to rush the bank. But the boys of the 
 quarry-village near by had left the stairs, when 
 we stormed them, in a condition to repel any 
 invader. Howbeit it is a glorious structure, and 
 
Photo by] 
 
 Prof. >. Morgan Lewis, Aberystwyth. 
 CORACLES ON THK TEIVY. 
 
 CARDIGAN BRIDGE 
 
 From ;m old painting. 
 
 To face p. 345. 
 
CARDIGAN 345 
 
 the two strong citadel-towers, seen across the ward, 
 are worthy of the old threatening name Cilgerran 
 bore in the Castle time. 
 
 The first Norman castle here was begun by Hugo 
 de Montgomery. Then Gilbert Strongbow tried 
 his hand on it. Rhys ap Griffith took it from 
 the Normans, and held it at his pleasure. Then 
 came William Marshall, twenty-five years after 
 Rhys's death, and began a castle on a bigger scale 
 altogether. Previously Giraldus had seen the Castle 
 on his "Itinerary" of 1188, and spoken of the salmon 
 that swam and the beavers that built their dams 
 in the Teivy stream. Joan, whose grandfather 
 was William Marshall, had Cilgerran as part of 
 her dot when she married William de Valence : and 
 this led the Castle into many fighting combination-. 
 But it remained intact all through the gunless 
 mediaeval days, and had its great commotion only 
 in the Civil War, when Cromwell's guns made 
 the big breach in the south-western tower, and 
 prepared the place for the slow ruin which you 
 see at work. 
 
 Cilgerran Church, rebuilt in 1855, has a good 
 tower, recently retopped but older than the rest 
 of the building. In the churchyard, on the side 
 nearest the gate, is an Ogam stone, the monu- 
 ment of Trenegussus, son of Macutrenus — so far 
 as Sir John Rhys has deciphered the much-worn 
 ogams. In Cilgerran Church lies buried Dr. 
 Thomas Phaer, who translated Virgil's iBneid 
 into English, and who lived at the old mansion 
 called " Forest," amid the trees of Cefn Drum, 
 which we passed on our right on the way up the 
 river. He died in 1560. 
 
 Cilgerran is now a great quarrymen's village ; 
 and it was once a town with aldermen and every- 
 
346 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 thing proper about it. The Cefn Quarries, which 
 lie within a few minutes of Cilgerran railway- 
 station, and the upper village, which its inhabi- 
 tants call Cnwca — it is said from some old tumps 
 in the near neighbourhood. 
 
 If you go to Cilgerran by road your route can 
 be varied on the way back by a path which leads 
 from Cwm Plysgog and up the bank beyond it, 
 past Dr. Phaer's old house, through the lane under 
 the trees of Cefn Drum, and so across the railway 
 and Pentood Marsh to the town. 
 
 A mile or less from the town the Abbey of St. 
 Dogmell's — " Abbaty Llandydoch" — has little of 
 its fine church and attractive buildings left ; and 
 the present church is a poor enough apology for 
 it. In the village retired Welsh sea-captains and 
 Teivy salmon fishermen live on the long-extended 
 street and in the cottages beyond posted on the 
 green banks and foot-hills. You turn to the left 
 for St. Dogmell's on reaching the Bridge-end side 
 of Cardigan bridge ; and gaining the outskirts, 
 have the church on your left just beyond Cwm 
 Tegwel. The Abbey ruins lie chiefly within the 
 Vicarage grounds ; one of the transepts, some of 
 the main walls and cloister walls, and some of 
 the kitchen and domestic offices and a detached 
 guest-house, are about all that remains of them. 
 An Ogam stone, that was carried off, and then 
 by good hap recovered, stands against the refec- 
 tory wall ; the letters read : " Sagrani Fili Cuno- 
 tami " ; but who Sagranus or Cunotamus was I 
 leave you to conjecture. St. Dogmell's parish 
 church of to-day is some fifty years old or 
 more ; and is not interesting. 
 
 On a hot July afternoon St. Dogmell's seems 
 almost interminable ; but at length, if you keep 
 
CARDIGAN 347 
 
 the riverside road, turning off from the village* 
 you pass a coastguard station and then half a 
 mile further on reach an estuary-side strand, a 
 sort of mixture of village green and sands. This 
 strand is known as the " Poppit " ; and the local 
 guide-book hints that a watering-place has been 
 projected there by a company. The two or three 
 available lodging-houses near it are in great 
 demand in the summer and autumn. 
 
 Beyond the " Poppit " you come to Penrhyn 
 Castle Bay, with the river-bar between it and 
 Gwbert Bay opposite. Lifeboat and coastguard 
 station are within the west scoop of the bay ; 
 the hill above Penrhyn Farm commands a fine 
 view of the coast, up and down ; and farm roads 
 and lanes that hug the coast southward can be 
 followed on to Moylgrove, past Pen-yr-Afr and 
 Pwll Gronant — a rather desolate sea-walk on a 
 grey day. There is little to see at Moglgrove, 
 but a mile from the village is Ceibwr Bay — a 
 good spot for a stolen bathe. Here, and at the 
 Witch's Cauldron in the next sea-cwm, was a 
 famous old smugglers' haunt. The Cauldron is 
 a most mischievous cave and in its depths are 
 fabulous treasures if they could only be got at ? 
 
 Across the water lies Gwbert-on-Sea, whose 
 downs and sands, rocks and caves, are contrived 
 after a rather seductive fashion. It has a good 
 safe beach for timid bathers, and deep-water 
 inlets for divers and good swimmers. The road 
 thither from Cardigan was rough, with loose 
 sandy stretches interspersed, when I cycled over 
 it; but no doubt that is altered now. At one 
 point beyond the grassy dunes and sand burrows 
 of Towyn Warren I remember a wonderful out- 
 look over the Teivy estuary and its surroundings 
 
348 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 on both sides the river-mouth, including St. Dog- 
 mell's and the hills about Newport and Precelly, 
 and the sea bright beyond Gwbert. It called to 
 mind the spacious approach to Southerndown on 
 just such another bright-aired afternoon. 
 
 If you go out fishing off the mouth of the Teivy, 
 you should recall the story of Pergrin and the 
 Mermaid. Pergrin was a St. Dogmell's fisherman 
 who one day spied in a rocky cleft near Pen 
 Cemmes a sea-maid engaged at the immemorial 
 task of combing her beautiful hair. He contrived 
 to seize her and take her off to his boat, the while 
 she wept piteously, her hair all dishevelled about 
 her, begging him for mercy. But he would not 
 give way to her cries until in an agony she said, 
 " Pergrin, let me go, and I will give thee three 
 shouts in the hour of need ! " 
 
 So, what with wonder and fear, he let her go 
 to walk the street of the deep and visit her lovers. 
 Days and weeks went by without a sign of her. 
 But one sultry afternoon, when the sea was calm 
 enough, and the fishermen were plying their craft 
 with no thought of a storm, Pergrin suddenly 
 heard a voice in the water near his boat. It was 
 the Mor-forwyn, or sea-maiden, whose upturned 
 face and floating hair appeared like froth in the 
 salt water, as she cried — 
 
 " Pergrin I Pergrin ! Pergrin ! 
 Haul in! Haul in! Haul in!" 
 
 He and his mate at once obeyed, and hauled in 
 their nets and made for the bar. By the time 
 they got to Pwll Cam the most terrible storm 
 broke that the coast had known. Twice nine 
 other fishermen who had sailed out to the fishing- 
 
CARDIGAN 349 
 
 grounds were caught in the storm and drowned. 
 Only Pergrin and his mate stood safe on land, 
 thanks to the three timely shouts given them by 
 the sea-maid. 
 
 The same story, or one very like it, is told on 
 the coast of Lleyn, Carnarvonshire ; and it is 
 even hinted that this is only a secondary version 
 supplied by Gwynionydd.* But there are mer- 
 maid stories on every coast, and I fancy there is 
 much folk-lore and sea-lore yet waiting to be 
 recovered at St. Dogmell's. 
 
 * See Celtic Folklore, by (Sir) John Rhys, ch. ii., "The 
 Fairies' Revenge" (pp. 163, 164). 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 THE CARDIGAN COAST — ABERPORTH — LLANGRANOG 
 AND TRAETHSAITH — NEW QUAY — LLANDYSILIO — 
 GOGO — ABERAERON 
 
 Aberporth is some 1\ miles north of Cardigan 
 town and about six or seven miles round the coast 
 from Grwbert-on-Sea. Well situated on the porth 
 or small harbour that gives it its name, it has 
 two or three stretches of good sands, and it is 
 yet unspoilt by too many villas and improvements. 
 From Gwbert and northward, on past Aberporth 
 and Traethsaith to Penbryn and Llangranog, this 
 part of the coast is well built. 
 
 Aberporth, however, is a civil resort ; that is to 
 say, it has a choice of houses — bungalows, villas 
 with gardens and tennis lawns, and at least three 
 kinds of jam in the village commissariat. Long 
 ago it was discovered by an artist looking for 
 a new neighbourhood, and he is said to have 
 made a fortune in Italian seascapes and land- 
 scapes painted here. There is just enough sea- 
 faring life in the harbour to serve artistic ends. 
 About once a week a steamer arrives from Cardi- 
 gan and Bristol. Sailing-boats, rowing-boats, 
 fishing-boats, and even a small yacht may be 
 hired for a sail round Pen Cribach and the Allt 
 Goch cliffs. For bathing there are the Dyffryn 
 
 360 
 
THE CARDIGAN COAST NORTHWARDS 351 
 
 sands and the beach at Cribach Bay, and one 
 or two little coves, when the tide is available. 
 
 The porth has on one side the narrow neck 
 which ends at Fath Gareg, and on the other the 
 bold headland rising from Cribach Bay and the 
 cliffs of Cribach and Allt Goch to a height of 
 five hundred feet or so. There are caves like Dol- 
 wen to be reached by boat or by scrambling, on 
 both sides of Aberporth, and fishing in the har- 
 bour produces whiting, rock-codling, plaice &c, 
 while further out when the mackerel come, there 
 is every chance of making a fair haul any 
 morning. The name Ogof (Welsh, a " cave " ) 
 seems to be used here sometimes for the sharp 
 indented creeks which abound on this coast, as 
 well as for a cave proper with roof and the rest 
 complete. 
 
 Traethsaith, another of the newer seaside places 
 of this Cardigan coast, stretches up a green cwm 
 from the opening and sheltered hollow at the 
 mouth of the Bern. The older cottages, hidden 
 in the cwm and within a brief walk of the sea, 
 form at one point such a rural hamlet as one 
 might expect to find deep in the country. The 
 sands below at the aber of the Bern are very 
 good, with a gradual descent and a beach for 
 bathing. Northwards the stretch of sands on 
 toward Penbryn is one of the finest this coast 
 can offer you anywhere. When the tide serves 
 the beach along the sands from Traethsaith and 
 past the next rocky corner affords a long ram- 
 bling-ground. It can be extended too at will by 
 taking to the cliffs beyond the Penbryn cwm, and 
 exploring Llangranog and, still further away, 
 Ynys Lochtyn. 
 
 Penbryn, a little more than a mile north of 
 
352 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Traethsaith, has a nice old church, St. Michael's, 
 perfectly suiting its position by the sea ; and a 
 pleasant sea-glen or cwm on the Hoffnant. In 
 connection with this cwm and the Llanborth 
 beach below lingering tales of the smugglers who 
 landed their run-goods here, and hid them in the 
 glen, are told. Llanborth, if this be the same as 
 Llongborth, is famous in Arthurian tradition ? 
 
 ' ' In Llongborth, I saw the battle 
 And biers beyond number, 
 And men blood-stained from Geraint's sword. 
 
 In Llongborth, I saw the spurs 
 
 Of horsemen who did not flinch from the spears ; 
 
 And the wine-drinking from the bright glass. 
 
 In Llongborth, I saw the weapons 
 Of men, and blood fast dropping." 
 
 In Llongborth, adds the poet, " I saw Arthur,' 
 and in Llongborth " was Geraint slain." 
 
 The glen or cwm of Nant Llanborth above is 
 worth diving into. The cliffs near Penbryn and 
 between that and Llangranog are traversed by a 
 footpath skirting their brinks with occasional 
 diversions. The sea links, as we discovered, pro- 
 duce (what is not common in seaside pastures) 
 plentiful mushrooms. Traces of an old camp are 
 to be seen about half a mile from Traeth, back on 
 the high ground of Cnwc y Rhaglyn ; and there is 
 an old stone (which Sir John Rhys has recorded) 
 about a mile south, the other side of the Penbryn 
 hollow, in a corner of a field above the road near 
 the descent to Dyffryn Bern. At Llanborth Mill, 
 where we once ate blackberry tart and crumpogs, 
 the traditions of the neighbourhood may be dis- 
 
Photo by-] 
 
 \W.R. Hall, Aberystwyth. 
 DANIEL Rowlands, LLANGEITHO. 
 
 To face p. 352. 
 
THE CARDIGAN COAST NORTHWARDS 353 
 
 cussed. Castell-Prudd and Castell-y-Dolig and the 
 Gaer may be invaded afterwards, on the road to 
 Blaenporth from Penbryn. 
 
 Llangranog is another village tucked away in a 
 cwm, with just enough space at its outlet for a 
 beach between the steep cliffs that enclose it. 
 Above, the houses lie snug and sheltered, so that 
 the bracing Cardigan air is not too trying for 
 delicate folk. The easiest way to the village is to 
 ride or drive from Newcastle Emlyn. If bicycling, 
 beware of the last hill and zigzag to the head of 
 the village from the high moorlands beyond New 
 Inn. A lodging for a night — or longer — can be 
 had down at the lower end of the village, where a 
 couple of inns and some ugly seaside houses are scat- 
 tered among the original cottages of the hamlet. 
 
 Readers of the Welsh novels and romances of 
 " Allen Raine " will find no great trouble in adjus- 
 ting some of the scenes of Torn Sails, A Welsh 
 Witch, etc., to the surroundings of Llangranog 
 and the coast ranging south to Traethsaith past 
 Penbryn Church. 
 
 Ascending past some old limekilns on the north 
 side of the beach, a steep cliff path leads to a tidal 
 gap and across the table rocks and seaweedy pools 
 which divide Ynys Lochtyn from the line of the 
 coast. The top of Ynys Lochtyn is grassy, a 
 tempting retreat ; but there is only an hour or two 
 at low water in which the island can be explored. 
 One or two fine caves on the east side have 
 changed, it is said, within the last twenty years, 
 owing to the falling of the rock ; but the rock 
 still makes stubborn fight against the sea and its 
 inroads. Lochtyn is not a place-name of Welsh 
 origin, but akin to the Irish lough and Scottish 
 loch. The " men of Lochtyn," says an old local 
 
 23 * 
 
354 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 gossip, " are the Norsemen ; Llochtyn with the II" 
 but is he not thinking of the "men of Lochlyn"? 
 
 Dinas Lochtyn, whose side we skirted on the way 
 to the island, is an old camp, possibly a fastness 
 used by pirates on this coast ? A climb to the top 
 of it will show how good a sea-rover's camp and 
 watch-out point it was. On the other southern 
 side of Llangranog, and near the field-path to 
 Llanborth, are some vanishing old walls on the 
 site, easily traced, known as Castell Bach ; and 
 nearer the sea a trenched and embanked camp, 
 so different in kind both to the Castell and the 
 camp Dinas Lochtyn that it suggests well the slow 
 succession of the strongholds of far different races 
 built on this coast in ages and periods widely 
 apart. 
 
 Every other resident at New Quay is said to be 
 a retired sea-captain ; hence the number of houses 
 appears to provide for a much larger crowd than 
 can find quarters. There is a sad story of an im- 
 provident old gentleman in a white top-hat who 
 had to sit on his portmanteau all night on the pier 
 — every available bed in the place being occupied. 
 The new Cardigan light railway, if it comes, will 
 make a great difference to the New Quay people. 
 The town stands well posted in the curve of New 
 Quay Bay, three successive white steps of terraces 
 rising between the pier and the " Head." Past their 
 lower end runs New Quay High Street on its way 
 to the pier and harbour. When the Bristol steamer 
 and other craft come in the scene there recalls the 
 good days of this miniature sea-port sixty years 
 ago. At the pier end a lighthouse gives the 
 passing vessels, and those that in storm try to 
 make New Quay harbour by night, a better chance 
 than in the days when the cottage candles were 
 
i 
 
THE CARDIGAN COAST NORTHWARDS 355 
 
 the only beacons. Standing on Tower Hill you get 
 a fair view of the curve from the Head on to Lla- 
 nina. The sands vary in places, and change after 
 heavy tides, exposing new patches of pebble or 
 shingle. Whiting, pollack, codlings, and other 
 sea-fish abound here. A good morning's fishing 
 will often bring in more than the hungriest family 
 can eat ; and if you are boating you can row out 
 past the Head and round Careg Walltog to the 
 Birds' Rock, which later summer visitors do not 
 see at its best. If you are storm-bound ashore, you 
 can go north to Llanllwchhaiarn Church, or south 
 to Llanina Church. An old raid of the " Black 
 Pagans " on this cove accounts possibly for the 
 dedication of the latter church to Ina, King of the 
 West Saxons. But some say the church was 
 originally Llan liar. The small building is not, 
 however, very interesting. But to wander from 
 Llanina up the Gido stream to Civm Gido and the 
 old house at Wern, half an hour's walk or more, 
 offers a welcome exchange for the glare of the 
 sands on a July day. Now a farmstead, Wern is 
 a house of character and tradition. In 1485 the 
 master of Wern was one Einon ap Daffydd Llwyd ; 
 and when Harry, Earl of Richmond, marched 
 through South Wales from Milford, he is said to 
 have slept at this house, and in the room which is 
 to be seen, with the very bed he slept in. 
 
 Some two miles and a half S.S.W. of New Quay 
 and you reach the scattered village of Llandysilio- 
 go-go — which is well worth a long afternoon. 
 The name comes from St. Tysilio and (possibly) 
 "gogofau "= caves, as suggested by "Non" (Miss 
 Gwladys Evans) in her prize-essay on the place- 
 names of the district. It is one of the few remain- 
 ing parishes in Wales, she says, " uncorrupted by 
 
356 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 English customs and speech " ; and she quotes the 
 late Stephen Evans, J.P., who said that if Welsh 
 should ever come to die, it would last be heard in 
 " one of the dingles of Llandysilio-go-go," when 
 some poor old woman would ejaculate with her 
 dying gasp — " Ach y fi!" Of the two or three 
 historical houses in the parish, the most famous 
 was that where Henry VII. was feasted on his 
 march northward to fight for the crown at Bos- 
 worth, and which gives a name to " Cwmtydur " — 
 Tydur's cwm or dingle — Tydur, after Tudor, it is 
 suggested. The remains of this house are not now 
 to be seen. It stood about half a mile from Traeth 
 Cwmtydur, up the cwm. The little stream that 
 passes through the dingle to the sea is " the Dewi," 
 which flows down from Ffynnon-ddewi (David's 
 spring), which is situate some five miles away, 
 near Wervilbrook, and to be found between the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth milestones on the right 
 side of the road from Cardigan to Aberaeron. The 
 story is that St. David was on his way from St. 
 David's or Ty-ddewi in Pembrokeshire to Hen- 
 fynyw near Aberaeron, and fell athirst at this 
 point, and there asking a blessing on the dry 
 crust he took from his wallet, was rewarded by 
 the springing forth of this spring at his feet. 
 \ Aberaeron still wears something of its old 
 sailor-like air when the boat comes in from 
 Bristol ; and when the coach arrives from Lam- 
 peter of an evening, the town is like one in the 
 other-world of Dickens. Then the scene on the 
 quay or in the street is heartening to witness 
 to those who feel sentimental about the old order 
 of the road. The town occupies what was once 
 the delta of the Aeron, when the river had two 
 outlets. The Vale of Aeron, whose charms have 
 
THE CARDIGAN COAST NORTHWARDS 357 
 
 been often sung, well and ill, brings in the 
 highway from the east at a breakneck descent. 
 x Once travelling across from Llanwrda, G. R. and 
 I bicycled to Lampeter, where we were brought up 
 by heavy rain. There we visited the College 
 Library (it was not term-time and the place 
 seemed deserted) and loitered over the rare 
 ballads and rarer tomes. Towards seven in 
 the evening we saw our rain-beaten inn-windows 
 suffused with a sudden pale lemon-coloured sunset 
 light, which filled the line of sky over the roofs 
 and chimneys opposite. The rain had gone. Tired 
 of being cooped up, we decided there and then 
 to take the road for it, and press on with all 
 speed to Aberaeron. A last flying shower caught 
 us on the bleak hill near Rhyd-y-Gof (Smith's 
 Ford), and as it passed it seemed to drag part of 
 the daylight away with it. At Llanfihangel the 
 evening had declared itself, and a cold gusty 
 wind began to blow against us from the sea. 
 We rode fast, however, down the Vale of Aeron 
 and did not need to light up till we reached 
 Llanerch. Unluckily, three miles further on, a 
 rougher gust of wind blew out one lamp, and on 
 opening the other at a convenient lull, a second 
 gust blew out that too. Riding on without lights, 
 thereupon we found ourselves presently benighted 
 at Hen Geraint in the darkest stretch of road, I 
 believe, that is in Cardiganshire. It was a com- 
 pletely strange road to us too, and as it seemed 
 to accelerate its gradient we did not dare to ride 
 and had to grope our way nervously at a snail's 
 pace, till at length we sighted a light — the first 
 lamps of Aberaeron. It was one of those adven- 
 tures that bring back the sensation of the un- 
 known road and the pitchy night that counted 
 
358 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 for much in the old road-faring tales. We tried 
 to remember Geraint's plight, but now to quicken 
 our apprehension there came the smell and the 
 sound of the sea, blown up through the darkness, 
 which conjured up Sir Bors instead. One night 
 Bors left his quarters in just such a sea- vale and 
 " at a broken wall rode out" and reached the sea 
 itself, and took ship. And " the ship departed 
 into the sea, and went so fast that him-seemed 
 the ship went flying ; and it was so dark that 
 he might know no man." But we did not really 
 discover the sea till next day. When at last we 
 came to a halt fairly in the midst of Aberaeron, 
 with a few lighted windows blinking at us, we 
 felt like people who had stepped into reality from 
 a dream. We found the place — inns and lodging- 
 houses — crowded with holiday visitors, and had 
 extreme trouble in getting quarters anywhere. 
 We had to be content then with a very small 
 bedroom, and for breakfast next morning we 
 had bacon so rusty that it seemed to infect the 
 whole neighbourhood. We were glad to change 
 quarters as the day wore on. 
 
 We were surprised next day to find so urban 
 a savour about Alban Square. For the town, 
 despite its old-fashioned air, can only claim about 
 a century's flourish. Its pier was built in 1807, 
 and its good days came soon after. From the 
 perch at the end of the pier you can see a wide 
 circuit of distant mountains northward — Plinlim- 
 mon, Cader Idris, a glimpse of Snowdon, and the 
 curve of Cardigan Bay. You can take boat there 
 for a brief voyage to New Quay Head and the 
 Bird Rock, or a change of transit can be had 
 by taking the "Aberaeron express," which has 
 the effect of a rescue by line and cradle from 
 
THE CARDIGAN COAST NORTHWARDS 359 
 
 a wreck without the terrors. The sensation is 
 more complete if it is full tide. Over the harbour 
 you find Trinity Church, a new one comparatively, 
 with a tall tower. The old parish church lies 
 half an hour's walk away at Hen Fynyw ; for 
 the town stands in two parishes. 
 
 Aberaeron has a racing-track (in Alban Square) 
 where wheelman race every August, and a chaly- 
 beate spring. The well is free to all comers ; and 
 runs no risk of being converted into a fashionable 
 spa. Dr. Burghardt, of Manchester, in an epistle 
 to the Aberaeronians, says of this water : — 
 
 " The Chalybeate Spring is certainly one of the 
 best in the kingdom, it is a carbonate of the 
 protoxide of iron, dissolved in a very pure icater. 
 The common chalybeate springs are sulphate of 
 the protoxide of iron dissolved in water much 
 charged with sulphates of calcium and magne- 
 sium and salt, hence the iron in the common 
 chalybeate springs is not nearly so easily assimi- 
 lated by the system as the iron in the carbonate 
 or true chalybeate waters. Chemically speaking 
 the iron in the sulphate springs is not so easily 
 torn away from the sulphuric acid with which 
 it is combined, consequently the action in the 
 human system is much slower, and less efficient. 
 With carbonate springs this is not the case, as 
 carbonate of iron is one of the most easily decom- 
 posed iron salts. Your Chalybeate is a mild one, 
 which I think makes it more pleasant for most 
 people." 
 
 Talsarn Mountain, the backbone of mid-Cardi- 
 gan, and its eastern outliers above Cwrtmawr and 
 Llangeitho do their best to keep the Aeron from 
 finding any outlet at all. For some miles they 
 seem to be succeeding, but at the point where 
 
360 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 the Gwenffrwd joins the Aeron, its course is 
 already south-west, and in five or six miles more 
 it has reached between Talsarn and Llanlea, its 
 southern limit, and turned northward, which 
 course it maintains with such deviation as hill- 
 streams have to the sea. 
 
 On leaving Aberaeron to explore the vale, you 
 follow the Lampeter road, over the upper bridge, 
 through Hengeraint Woods, diverge to pass 
 Llanerch-Aeron Church and Llanaeron, below 
 which a rapid stream joins the Aeron. Here is 
 one of the pleasantest loitering-places in the 
 vale. Tri-Crug- Aeron, or Trichrug, another triple- 
 cairned height, is the southern end of Talsarn 
 Mountain, that rises there to over a thousand 
 feet. Walking from the top of Trichrug east- 
 wards, and down to Talsarn, a Cardigan poet 
 once wrote a song some lines of which still bear 
 quoting : — 
 
 Sweet Aeron's vale, unknown in song, 
 
 Demands the warbling lyre : 
 Shall silver Aeron glide along, 
 
 And not a bard inspire ? 
 What bard that Aeron sees can fail 
 To sing the charms of Aeron vale ? 
 
 There golden treasures swell the plains, 
 And herds and flocks are there ; 
 
 And there the god of plenty reigns 
 Triumphant all the year ; 
 
 The nymphs are gay, the swains are hale : 
 
 Such blessings dwell in Aeron's vale." 
 
 The spectacle seen from Trichrug is well worth 
 a climb, and may easily be had by taking the 
 cross-road over the river at Newbridge, or Pont 
 Newydd up to Cilcennen. This road passes along 
 
Photo by] 
 
 MONK'S CAVE, CARDIGAN COAST. 
 
 To face p. 360. 
 
THE CARDIGAN COAST NORTHWARDS 361 
 
 the western side of the hill, after leaving Ty 
 Mawr, and half an hour's climb brings one to 
 the cairns and remains of old burial-grounds. 
 
 From Newbridge, about four miles from the 
 starting-point, you have another league to go to 
 Ystrad, where the church is worth a halt, if only 
 to see the square pillars that divide its single 
 aisle and the tombs to the Lisburnes and others. 
 Mr. J. M. Howell, an Aberaeron authority, reminds 
 us of the great family of Dyffryn Aeron, the 
 Lloyds or " Llwydiaid," memories of whose tenure 
 for hundreds of years are scattered all along the 
 vale. Two of the most famous mediaeval Davids 
 wrote poems to their descendants, man and maid. 
 Ieuan, one of the family, was himself a poet in 
 the time of Owain Glyndwr, whose praise he sang. 
 It was his father who built Pare Rhydderch in 
 the thirteenth century; and the house of Pare 
 Rhydderch, as it now exists, is, even in a country 
 of old houses, " marvellous antiquate." Thence 
 comes one of the oldest MSS. of the Mabinogion, 
 the " Llyf r Pare Rhydderch." A son of the famous 
 old Sir Rhys ap Thomas married a daughter of 
 the Lloyds, and the Prices of Gogerddan come 
 of the same stock. But ancient houses come to 
 an end ; and the last heiress of the race, Miss 
 Lloyd of Cilbwn (a seat not far from the older 
 seat of the family at Cilpwll, Pare Rhydderch), 
 was murdered by her serving-man in 1792 — mean 
 extinction of a noble tree ! However, as a matter 
 of fact, many offshoots still do exist in the vale. 
 
 Llangeitho lies about one mile north-east of 
 Cilpwll, which is at the lower end of the wooded 
 glen of Gwenffrwd, where traces of the mediaeval 
 forest-lands seem to linger. 
 
 The more direct road from Llanlear to Llan- 
 
362 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 geitho is that via Talsarn, when Cilpwll hamlet 
 and the house of Pare Rhydderch are both passed 
 in turn. Pare Rhydderch is one of those old 
 houses in which the soul of a neighbourhood is 
 laid away. With Llangeitho is associated one 
 of the most fervent lights the Welsh Church ever 
 lit — so fervent, indeed, that the authorities grew 
 afraid of it, and tried to put it out ! The light 
 was Daniel Rowlands, Curate of Llangeitho for 
 some years ; his bishop, deeming him a firebrand, 
 bade him desist, so Rowlands lost a parish and 
 gained a country. His statue stands by the 
 chapel ; his grave is in the churchyard, but 
 where no one seems to know. Another fifty 
 years, and the Church of Wales will make late 
 amends perhaps to her too inspired curate. 
 Neither the parish church nor the great chapel 
 of the village to-day are those in which Rowlands 
 officiated ; but both occupy the old sites. The 
 fine plate in Meyrick's Cardiganshire, showing 
 the curious carved oak-screen, leaves one with 
 some natural regret for the old church. Row- 
 lands' statue, though crudely designed and disap- 
 pointing, is said to be a good likeness. He died 
 in 1790. It is worth note that for some time 
 before his deprivation by the bishop, Rowlands 
 served Nant Cwnlle, Llangeitho, and Llanddewi 
 Brefi Churches — i.e., all three were in his charge 
 as sole incumbent — for a salary of £10 a year. 
 In spite of all, Rowlands continued his attachment 
 to the church, and if he had had his will would 
 never have separated from it. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 ABERYSTWYTH — THE THREE TOWNS — AN ATLAN- 
 TIC STORM — THE COLLEGE — THE NATIONAL 
 LIBRARY — IEUAN THE TALL — DEVIL'S BRIDGE 
 
 There are really three Aberystwyths, not one : the 
 old Cardiganshire borough and market town, the 
 thronged watering-place of July, August and 
 September, and the 'Varsity town of the other 
 months. To most people it is the second of the 
 three that counts ; recalling, when they think of 
 it, the sun-heated broad curve of esplanade, saved 
 by the most delicious sea-breeze ever cooled over 
 salt-water. And the sea outlook across Cardigan 
 Bay and the old site of the drowned " Hundred," 
 towards Snowdon, the Eifl peaks, or Cyrn Du, is 
 like a vision of Cymru Fynyddig, the true moun- 
 tainous Wales, while the air, sea-borne or mountain- 
 borne, is of a kindred savour. 
 
 One February, after an influenza, a wise doctor 
 ordered us to Aberystwyth. We were hardly able 
 to walk when we arrived, and my fellow-traveller's 
 face from illness, weariness, and train-e?ini« was 
 forlorn as Mariana's. What ill fate had sent us 
 from home, we wondered, to languish and contract 
 pneumonia in a seaside lodging, where the damp 
 walls would surely have salt-sand in the mortar? 
 
364 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 But bright sea-coal fires (to call them so because 
 the name has a savour) when we arrived, and 
 bright suns for three days, changed our tempera- 
 ture. On the third day we climbed a hill ; on the 
 fourth a telegram came asking for a promised 
 article on an old play, and it was written and 
 posted on the sixth. On the seventh we went (in a 
 snowstorm and bitter weather) to Strata Florida ; 
 and on the eighth returned home in obstreperous 
 health. If there seems an element of extravagance 
 in this, it is entirely due to the Aberystwyth air. 
 
 The winter pleasures of the town are those that 
 somehow or other come first to mind in the retro- 
 spect. The kind of salt-water you may have to 
 taste can be gathered from the accompanying 
 print of the Esplanade during the superb storm 
 of December, 1910 : the finest, by all accounts, and 
 the most destructive, known on this exposure of 
 the coast within living memory ; threatening 
 enough almost to recall the deluge that sent 
 Cantref-y-Gwaelod, the Bottom Hundred, under 
 the sea. The storm began with a stiff SSW. 
 breeze, which grew into a seventy-mile an hour 
 gale. With this, and a poor ebb before it, the tide 
 was at its usual height three hours before time. 
 A little later, and it had begun to handle the great 
 concrete blocks of the pavement and the coping of 
 the sea-wall like so much brickwork. These huge 
 missiles were thrown across the road and against 
 the railings of the houses, as in some oceanic 
 ecstasy and mad bombardment. Basement 
 windows were smashed, areas filled with gravel, 
 and doors battered in. The shingle lay in some 
 places two and three feet deep afterwards on the 
 Promenade. 
 
 " The Hostel and the houses adjoining bore the 
 
ABERYSTWYTH 365 
 
 brunt of the storm and suffered most damage. 
 Immense waves struck the sea-wall a little below 
 Victoria House School and ran along the face to a 
 point where the wall makes a bend slightly north- 
 ward, when the waves were thrown up to an 
 immense height and tons of water fell on to the 
 pavement on the sea side and rushed in rolling 
 waves to the houses opposite, battering down the 
 railings, smashing in doors and windows, and 
 entering the basements. Sometimes a long line of 
 water, hundreds of feet long, rose in the air after 
 impact with the sea-wall. At other times an 
 isolated mass of water rose and was broken up by 
 the wind in blinding spray which completely hid 
 the Hostel and adjoining houses from view. Be- 
 tween eight and nine o'clock, when the tide was at 
 its height, a tremendous sea struck the high electric 
 lamps and three were knocked out, leaving the end 
 of the Terrace in darkness. The lamp near the 
 Queen's Hotel was also extinguished ; but the one 
 opposite the ' Plynlymon ' weathered the storm and 
 gave a brilliant light until the current was turned 
 off at midnight." 
 
 One envies those inhabitants who were not 
 actually enswamped the chance of seeing this rare 
 spectacle. 
 
 The sea made a bold attempt to take a degree in 
 the College too, which is already a building with an 
 eventful history. It has had losses ; been burnt 
 with fire and gutted ; been made into a monster 
 hotel at huge cost ; then sold for a mere song to 
 become a beacon of the Welsh Renaissance. 
 
 " The Cambrian Tourist and Post-chaise Com- 
 panion" (5th ed., 1821) speaks of the original 
 structure as " a fantastic house in the Castellated 
 form " consisting of " three octagon towers with a 
 
366 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 balcony towards the sea." The writer adds that 
 the fragments of the Castle are from hence viewed 
 to great advantage : a statement which helps to 
 suggest that in the new transmutation of Wales 
 the citadel has been changed from a material to an 
 intellectual fortress. 
 
 Long ago Owen Glyndwr had among his recon- 
 structive schemes that of a university : companion 
 idea to that of a Welsh Parliament which we shall 
 yet, I daresay, see realised too ? What would he 
 have said if, when he was investing Aberystwyth 
 Castle, he had foreseen how as its walls crumbled 
 the other Castell Ddysg whose vision he had 
 nursed was to wax and become a thing accom- 
 plished and a Welsh landmark ? 
 
 It has fostered many men who have achieved — 
 Celtic scholars, lyric poets, and patriots like the 
 late T. E. Ellis, M.P. 
 
 The latest Castle of Aberystwyth is the National 
 Library, whose site stands fair on the hill above 
 the town. Years ago, I remember being sadly 
 troubled to get Elizabethan books at short notice 
 for an unexpected piece of work. If Professor 
 C. H. Herford had not happened to be living there, 
 and if he had not hospitably let me ransack his 
 shelves, I should have had to go back to London. 
 Now the bookman will have his citadel. For 
 its provenance one of the greatest bookhunters 
 Wales has had, Sir John Williams the physician, 
 has been collecting manuscripts, folios, rarities, 
 especially Celtic ones, and spending a fortune in 
 the search. And others have worked as tirelessly 
 in their own fields, men like Mr. J. H. Davies of 
 Cwrtmawr, born bookhunters, if such a thing is 
 conceivable. If Sir John and his fellow-con- 
 spirators have for half a century been collecting 
 
ABERYSTWYTH 367 
 
 and buying books and libraries, it is in order to 
 endow this National Library as it deserves. Before 
 the end Aberystwyth will have one of the richest 
 libraries of Cymric and Celtic books and MSS. in 
 the world. This year — 1911 — will see the foun- 
 dation-stone laid. Research in such a library 
 should, because of the ozone forced by the west 
 wind through the windows and between the 
 shelves, be accomplished with twice the ordinary 
 dispatch. 
 
 Among the treasures here are the Hengwrt and 
 Peniarth MSS. collected by Robert Vaughan, of 
 Hengwrt (who died in 1666), the friend of John 
 Selden and Archbishop Usher. Finally they passed 
 to Mr. W. R. M. Wynne, of Peniarth, who, being 
 without a direct heir, sold them to Sir John 
 Williams on condition that they should go in the 
 end to the National Library, if established at 
 Aberystwyth. Mr. Wynne died in January, 1909, 
 and so the MSS. have become its property. They 
 include the oldest manuscripts of the old Welsh 
 Laws, the oldest of the Mabinogion, the oldest 
 of the Holy Grail romance, and a vast number of 
 medieeval poems. "The Black Book of Carmar- 
 then," however, is the prime of this splendid 
 antiquity. Its vellum leaves contain the earliest 
 script we have of the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries ; and they open with the duologue be- 
 tween Merlin and Taliesin on the battle of 
 Arderydd. 
 
 Dr. Gwenogvryn Evans, who has tabled and 
 catalogued these priceless things, and who knows 
 more about Welsh MSS. than any man living, says 
 it is not merely the largest, but the finest, library 
 of the kind that exists or can exist, " thanks to the 
 prescience and skill " of Robert Vaughan " in 
 
368 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 bringing together the noblest monuments of 
 Kymric history and literature." Vaughan is only 
 one of many who have worked in silence to pre- 
 pare for the building up at length of this Celtic 
 library. 
 
 The librarian, Mr. John Ballinger, shows too in 
 his account what the contemporary vigilance of 
 such a library has to be, if it is to fulfil its office 
 of the perfect record of a nation and its people. 
 Newspapers, broadsides, Eisteddfod-ana, local pam- 
 phlets, religious documents, and all kinds of 
 ephemerides have to be gathered up and put into 
 organic shape and sequence. Everything that is a 
 record has to be kept. " Local ballads, for instance, 
 often deal with events of which there is no other 
 record. One such case occurred recently. A sheep- 
 dog on the Plynlymon range took to sheep- 
 killing, and wrought great havoc, but defied all 
 efforts to track and destroy it. Ultimately Sir 
 Edward Webley-Parry-Pryse, of Gogerddan, took 
 out his hounds and ran it down, and it was killed, 
 to the great relief of the farmers. A local poet 
 narrated the event in rhyme, which was printed on 
 a broadside. The circulation was entirely local. 
 Yet there is an element of romance in the story 
 sufficient to furnish forth a modern novel." All 
 these fugitive pieces have to be captured on the 
 wing and put into safe-keeping here. A collection 
 that ranges from one of the finest Chaucer MSS. 
 to the latest ballad is like to become a goal of 
 studious and librarious pilgrims from all the 
 world over as time goes on. 
 
 " One division in the National Library is called 
 the Department of Documents, a section in which 
 it is hoped to make a collection of things mainly 
 for future use. By way of illustration of what is 
 
ABERYSTWYTH 369 
 
 intended, the Thomason Collection of Civil War 
 Tracts may be cited. These ephemeral publi- 
 cations of a troubled time are individually of 
 restricted interest, but arranged chronologically 
 as they are in the valuable catalogue issued a 
 couple of years ago by the British Museum, they 
 form a record, as Carlyle said, * Worth all the 
 sheepskins.' If carefully collected over a long 
 series of years, and arranged under subjects, or 
 topographically, whichever may be best for each 
 item, the flotsam and jetsam of to-day will be the 
 gold-dust of the future." * 
 
 One thinks of the unlucky scholar-vagabond, 
 Ieuan Brydydd Hir — Evan the Long (or Tall) Poet — 
 in watching the rise of this great library endowed 
 with some of the very MSS. he spent his days in 
 getting. He was a Cardiganshire man ; author of 
 that early anthology, " Specimens of the Ancient 
 Welsh Poetry" (1764), which helped to give the 
 poet Gray ideas for his Welsh subjects. Born 
 under a troubled star, Evan the Long was fortu- 
 nate in going to school at Ystrad Meurig under a 
 master like Edward Richard, a true pastoral poet 
 by grace and nature. He showed on leaving school 
 what a disinterested soul was his by making over 
 his Cardigan patrimony to a younger brother, in 
 order to go to Oxford. There he found other lore 
 than there is in books, and learnt the easier grace 
 of wine. He left without a degree; and then he 
 became a vagrom curate, of doubtful habits, never 
 holding any charge long, and continually collecting 
 and continually losing books. We might have 
 surprised him any day on the road in Cardigan- 
 
 * "The National Library of Wales" (by Mr. John Bal- 
 linger), Journal of the Welsh Bibliographical Society, 
 February, 1911. 
 
 24 
 
370 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 shire carrying a bundle of them wrapt in a check 
 handkerchief. 
 
 He spent some time at Aberystwyth ; and even 
 when he was not there himself kept a room going 
 in which to house his precious books and MSS. 
 In a letter to a correspondent, unnamed, he 
 writes : — 
 
 " I have a large collection of books at Aber 
 Ystwyth, and a room for which I pay three pounds 
 a year. My collection of MSS. likewise is there, 
 and I am afraid must be in a great measure spoiled 
 by dampness and want of fire in the room." 
 
 He also speaks of having spent two guineas in 
 advertising for pupils in order to start a school in 
 the town, and makes it plain that his " present 
 distressful situation " of a curate without a cure 
 was in danger of growing chronic. 
 
 One verse of his might almost be written up in 
 the entrance hall of the National Library. In 
 Welsh it runs — 
 
 
 O bydd Hon hinon dydd ha', — neu wybren 
 Yn obrudd y gana', 
 Y cyfaill goreu, cofia, 
 A lleufer dyn, yw Uyfr da," 
 
 
 which might be reset in English after this manner, 
 roughly to preserve the " Englyn " : — 
 
 " O if the summer day be fair, — or the bleak 
 Wind of winter blind the air, — 
 Of all friends for a man, far or near, 
 A good book is the best, sans compare." 
 
 Poor, high-fortuned Ieuan ! As you walk up the 
 street to the market, when the last tourist has 
 
ABERYSTWYTH 371 
 
 gone from the town, you shall see him turn the 
 corner, three rusty quartos under his arm. 
 
 Another figure to be conjured up here is the 
 author of " Twm Shon Catti," who wrote also " The 
 Land beneath the Sea" — Cantref-y-Gwaelod — and 
 " The New Aberystwyth Guide " of 1824, published 
 by Lewis Jones in the town. The charm of this 
 " New Guide " lies in its power to conjure up the 
 old days before the railway came. J. Llewelyn 
 Prichard, the author, has had his account in the 
 Swansea chapter,* but in his role of guide he 
 reminds us of the Devil's Bridge and of the way 
 there, and of " The Grand and Tremendous Fall of 
 the Rheidol " (in Black Letter impressiveness) as 
 they were in the days of the open road. The Devil 
 still roars under the two bridges as of old, but he 
 is in a cage now, and you pay sixpence to look 
 at him. Instead of walking there, too, you can go 
 by the new Devil's Bridge line, which is as adven- 
 turous as any in South Wales. The present 
 itinerant had the pleasure of riding over it before 
 it was opened and while it was still in the rough ; 
 and the train seemed to climb hills and impend 
 over waterfalls and pull up in farmyards, with 
 delightful indifference to all the laws of gravity 
 and traction. A fine wild region is that it brings 
 you to, with Havod where Thomas Johnes set up 
 his mansion and his press and printed his Froissart 
 and other great books, and Ystrad Flur or Strata 
 Florida— where some say Dafydd ab Gwilym is 
 buried— and Pont Erwyd, Llyn Iwan, Llyn Rheidol 
 and Plynlymon — all within reach if you are a good 
 walker. Much nearer home, you pass Nanteos, 
 where lived Swinburne's friend, George E. J. 
 Powell, co-author with Arnason of the " Icelandic 
 * Pp. 161-175. 
 
372 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 Legends," 1864. One only wishes he had turned 
 his fancy to Welsh things too, for he had a rare 
 gift of narrative and more than a translator's share 
 of originality.* 
 
 * See article, "A Tribute to Swinburne," in the Nine- 
 teenth Century, June, 1909. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 LLANBADARN — CANTREF-Y-GWAELOD — THE SECOND 
 DELUGE — BORTH — THE END OF THE JOURNEY 
 
 In some of the older Cardiganshire records 
 Aberystwyth, the town as well as the Castle, 
 appears as Llanbadarn Fawr, in whose parish it 
 stands. Leland speaks of it in one page of his 
 Welsh Itinerary as " Abreostuthe." His entry reads 
 as if he had tried to transcribe in part the actual 
 words that some Cardigan farmer he had met had 
 used in speaking of it. The town, he notes, " hath 
 bene waullyd, and hathe great privilegis, and is 
 bettar market than Cardigan." 
 
 There, at Llanbadarn, stands a noble church, 
 heavy-wall'd, deep-arch'd, built to outlast time ; 
 a place where the shadow shot with light of the 
 greatest poet of Wales ought to be surprised if 
 anywhere ; where the memory of Dafydd ab 
 Gwilym certainly is held close beneath the sombre 
 arches. There is one of his odes, or " cywyddau," in 
 particular that starts his Llanbadarn memory. It 
 is the harp-ode in which he begs the tide not to 
 prevent his getting over the river Dovey (" na 
 luddia ei hynt tros Ddyfi i ymweled a Morf udd ") 
 to see Morvyth — hasting to go — 
 
 "I dew lwynbedw i Lanbadarn " 
 
 (In the thick birch-covert to Llanbadarn). 
 373 
 
374 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 In another he speaks of her pilgrimage across 
 many abers and rivers to receive absolution at 
 St. David's for having slain him by her cruelty : — 
 
 Deep the waves of Dovey are, 
 And mountain high, to hinder her : 
 Rheidol too, for Morvyth's feet, 
 Peace ! make strait the wat'ry street ; 
 And Ystwyth, leave thy spumy rage 
 And grant with heaving breasts a stage 
 To her that steps on pilgrimage." 
 
 ' ' A dwfn y w tonnau Dyfi 
 Dwfr rhyn yn ei herbyn hi ; 
 Rheidol, gad, er d'anrhydedd 
 Heol i fun hael o fedd ; 
 Ystwyth, ym mhwyth, gad im hon 
 Drais dew-ddyfr, dros dy ddwyfron." 
 
 The coast journey that Dafydd had then to 
 make, on his way from Anglesey and round to 
 Llanbadarn, and on to Glamorgan, was, because 
 of the rivers he had to cross, a pretty devious one. 
 He had plenty of time, as he waited for a ferry at 
 Aberdovey, or for the tide to ebb on the Rheidol, 
 to string some of those melodiously linked, fluid 
 couplets which are among the wonders of the art 
 of rhymed verse. 
 
 Before leaving Llanbadarn you can, if you have 
 the art, call up a far older church than that you see 
 there now, and with it the form of an older Genius 
 of Place than our other David of the Odes — St. 
 Padarn, or Paternus. Gerald just speaks of him 
 in the Baldwin Itinerary ; and helps us to use him 
 as another link that connects the old tribal clerics 
 with the Arthurian tales. Padarn went to Ireland, 
 and brought back possibly some Irish ideas with 
 him. His cousin Samson had Arthur's faculty of 
 
iE I 
 

 
LLANBADARN TO BORTH 375 
 
 making stones fly like thistledown, if the story told 
 of the Celtic Crosses in the churchyard is true. 
 Samson was threshing with them on Pen-y-Dinas, 
 when the head flew off one ; flew indeed so far 
 that it dropt right into the churchyard here. 
 Whereupon Samson, with a very explicit Arthurian 
 oath, threw the shaft after it. The stones are 
 there now : " they may be seen," which proves how 
 dependable tradition is. Moreover, one of them at 
 least bears the name of an Irish chief; and as 
 Padarn had been to Ireland in quest of his father, 
 the reality of the story is established. That fantasy 
 came after is but natural ; it does not destroy the 
 matter of fact. 
 
 Gerald's account of the Breton knight who went 
 to Llanbadarn, and of the cleric with the spear he 
 saw there, is too striking to be left out of the 
 reckoning. Even so, he ends with a naive admis- 
 sion that he knows more than he thinks it politic 
 to tell:— 
 
 "It happened that in the reign of King Stephen, who 
 succeeded Henry I., a knight, born in Armorica, having 
 travelled through many parts of the world to see different 
 cities and the manners of the inhabitants, came by chance 
 to Lhanpadarn. On a certain feast-day, whilst both the 
 clergy and people were waiting for the arrival of the abbot 
 to celebrate Mass, he perceived a body of young men, armed, 
 according to the custom of their country, approaching 
 towards the church ; and on inquiring which of them was 
 the abbot, they pointed out to him a man walking foremost, 
 with a long spear in his hand. 
 
 "Gazing on him with amazement, he asked, 'If the abbot 
 had not another habit, or a different staff, from that which 
 he now carried before him ? ' 
 
 1 ' On their answering ' No I ' he replied, ' I have seen 
 indeed and heard this day a wonderful novelty 1 ' and from 
 that hour he returned home, and finished his labours and 
 researches. 
 
376 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 "This wicked people boasts, that a certain bishop* of 
 their church (for it formerly was a cathedral) was murdered 
 by their predecessors ; and on this account, chiefly, they 
 ground their claims of right and possession. No public 
 complaint having been made against their conduct, we have 
 thought it more prudent to pass over, for the present, the 
 enormities of this wicked race with dissimulation, than 
 exasperate them by a further relation." 
 
 At Llanbadarn lies buried one of the most 
 original men Wales has produced — Lewis Morris 
 o Fon, poet, inimitable letter - writer, mining 
 engineer, botanist, philologist, marine surveyor, 
 and many things besides. The collection of the 
 Letters of Lewis Morris and his brothers, issued 
 in a subscribers' edition by Mr. J. H. Davies, is full 
 of colour, Welsh mother-wit, and shrewd and 
 caustic comment on the Wales of the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 Going northwards, there is still a long string of 
 explorable places to be added to the Aberystwyth 
 count. By taking train to Glandovey you are in 
 reach of the Llyfnant Valley, and Cwm Einion 
 (called by guide-books " the Artists' Valley," which 
 has more character than that fond name seems to 
 declare). We once took up quarters at Cwm Farm, 
 and learnt by heart another valley which shall be 
 nameless here — 
 
 "... Lest inquisitive tourist 
 Hunt it, and make it a lion, and get it at last into guide- 
 books." 
 
 From that centre we explored the Borth district, 
 
 * The name of this bishop is said to have been Idnerth 
 — the same personage whose death is commemorated in an 
 inscription at Llanddewi Brefl. 
 
LLANBADARN TO BORTH 377 
 
 went to Bedd Taliesin, and counted the blue space 
 about it, worth many a league's travel ; but found 
 nothing, high or low, more affecting than the 
 unconquered bog of Cors Fochno and the sand- 
 levels of Traeth Maelgwn. 
 
 The folk-lore and traditions of this district would 
 need a Jacob Grimm for their account. With 
 regard to Taliesin, you cannot do better than 
 look up his story as added (in a corrupted ver- 
 sion) to the Mabinogion proper. A note reminds 
 us that the Cistvaen at Bedd Taliesin was opened 
 in 1848 by the Cambrian Archaeologues, but nothing 
 was found in it save darker earth. As for Cors 
 Fochno, it has a Toad of untold age, by whose 
 side the Salmon of Llyn Llyw was a mere babe 
 in antiquity. On Traeth Maelgwn, tradition says, 
 the over-lordship of Wales used to be decided. 
 A sign was required to decide the supreme regality 
 of the lord-elect on Traeth Maelgwn, and the 
 test was the old one of the wave-controller. 
 Maelgwn succeeded in floating on a chair with 
 waxen wing's and keeping his place when the 
 tide flowed, while the other claimants to the title 
 of Superman gave way and fled. Those who have 
 watched the force of the tide, even as squandered 
 in that wide estuary of the Dovey when it flows 
 up, a mile wide, fast and irresistible, will know 
 what to think of Maelgwn's magic. There is a 
 story, not over well authenticated, of a dispute 
 between Taliesin and Maelgwn which ought to 
 be true, since it shows the poet and king at war 
 and the poef victorious. In this account Maelgwn 
 takes Taliesin's land from him, and he curses the 
 king. It is because of the curse that the " Vad 
 Velen," or Yellow Plague, overtakes Maelgwn at 
 last. He hides from it in the church in Rhos, 
 
378 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 but spies through the keyhole and sees the Evil 
 Thing in visible presence and in a form not unlike 
 that of a speckled Toad, and so dies. In those days 
 the curses of the bards were often mortal. 
 
 But Taliesin was daemonic in all his properties. 
 His mysterious advent on this coast is the epic 
 result of a cataclysm of nature, which is described 
 in the old story of the Drowning of the Bottom 
 Hundred — or Cantref-y-Gwaelod — monarch of all 
 tales of the all-conquering sea and the conquered 
 land. Gwyddno Garanhir was king of the drowned 
 region, and one feast-night Seithenen (called ever 
 afterwards) the Drunkard, his sea-ward, was in 
 his cups and did not watch the sea. The flood 
 broke in and drowned the Cantref and sixteen 
 great fortified cities, the finest in all Wales, 
 with it- 
 Cardigan Bay occupies the spot where the fertile 
 plains of the Cantref had been the habitation and 
 support of a flourishing population. Such as 
 escaped the inundation fled to Ardudwy, and the 
 country of Arvon, and the mountains of Eryri 
 (Snowdon), and other places not previously in- 
 habited. "By none was this misfortune more 
 severely felt than by Gwyddno Garanhir, to 
 whom the reverse of circumstances it occasioned 
 was so great that, from being an opulent monarch, 
 he was all at once reduced to the necessity of 
 maintaining himself and his only son, the un- 
 fortunate Elphin, by the produce of the fishing 
 weir mentioned in the text. 
 
 " This disastrous event is commemorated in a 
 proverb still repeated in the Principality : — 
 
 "'The sigh of Gwyddno Garanhir 
 
 When the wave rolled over his land.' 
 

LLANBADARN TO BORTH 379 
 
 " There is also preserved in the Myvyrian Archai- 
 ology (I. 165) a short poem upon the subject 
 attributed to Gwyddno Garanhir, in which there 
 are some exceedingly poetic and striking passages. 
 The bereft monarch calls upon the author of his 
 distress to view the calamitous effects of his in- 
 temperance, pronounces maledictions upon his 
 head, and describes the outcry of the perishing 
 inhabitants of that unhappy region." 
 
 . ' ' Stand forth Seithenin and behold the dwelling of heroes 
 — the plain of Gwyddno the ocean covers ! * 
 
 Accursed be the sea guard, who after his carousal let 
 loose the destroying fountain of the raging deep. 
 
 Accursed be the watcher, who after his drunken revelry, 
 loosed the fountain of the desolating sea. 
 
 A cry from the sea arises above the ramparts ; t even to 
 heaven does it ascend, — after the fierce excess comes the 
 long cessation ! 
 
 A cry from the sea ascends above the ramparts ; even to 
 heaven does the supplication come ! — after the excess there 
 ensues restraint ! 
 
 A cry from the sea awakens me this night I — 
 
 A cry from the sea arises above the winds! 
 
 A cry from the sea impels me from my place of rest this 
 night ! 
 
 After excess comes the far-extending death." 
 
 As a consequence of this great loss, Gwyddno is 
 
 * Seithenyn the Drunkard's mischance in letting the sea 
 overflow the Cantrev-y-Gwaelod is related in Triad xli. 
 
 t Traces of three ancient stone embankments are said to be 
 still visible in the district where this inundation took place. 
 They are called Sarn Cynvelyn, Sarn-y-Bwlch, and Sam 
 Padrig. "The latter is particularly conspicuous, being left 
 dry at low water to the extent of about nine miles, and the 
 sailors of the neighbouring ports describe its whole length to 
 be twenty-one miles, beginning near Harlech, and running in 
 a south-west direction" (Cambro-Bi-itun, i. 302). 
 
380 THE SOUTH WALES COAST 
 
 from a king reduced to a fisherman ; and it is in 
 his weir at Borth that the babe Taliesin is found 
 by Elphin. But you must turn for the full story to 
 the Mabinogion volume or to Peacock's imagina- 
 tive burlesque, " The Misfortunes of Elphin." 
 
 Once, crossing with our bicycles by ferry from 
 Aberdovey, G. and I found the tide far out, and 
 the sands between the river and Borth hard and 
 smooth for riding. There was a fair nor'-west 
 wind blowing, and the sensation as we rode south 
 before it was more like flying than anything we 
 had known. Borth itself, we thought, had a de- 
 cided effect of being a growth of the sand-dunes 
 and the sea. We had tea in an old sea-captain's 
 cottage with sand at its door and white stones 
 in its garden, protected by wooden bulwarks from 
 the too friendly sea ; and white ducks with sandy 
 bills came and quacked at the door. I wondered, 
 on hearing of the last great December storm, 
 how this half-amphibious abode of man stood the 
 watery siege? Its force may be gathered from 
 the account given of the same sea-fury at 
 Aberystwyth. 
 
 At the river Dovey the Welsh South Coast-line 
 ends. " Approaching the river Devi," says Gerald, 
 " that divides North and South Wales, the Bishop 
 of St. David's and Rhys son of Gruffydd, who with 
 a courtesy peculiarly gracious in so great a prince 
 had travelled with us all the way from Cardigan 
 Castle, returned home." One can still see that part- 
 ing on the long sands of Borth — another of the many 
 episodes that have occurred there on their shift- 
 ing beach. If Borth were ever in these pageant- 
 making days to re-enact its history on those sands, 
 the leave-taking of the young prince and the 
 bishop on one side, and the comely self-conscious 
 
LLANBADARN TO BORTH 381 
 
 Gerald and Archbishop Baldwin on the other, 
 would make a notable piece of spectacle. 
 
 These superb old wayfarers have faded, we may- 
 think, too completely from our possible range of 
 recollection to be held credibly actual to-day. But 
 do ever the eidola of the people who have lived 
 and fared, or fought and died on such sea-shores 
 or in the fields, quite perish out of mind? They 
 are dead to you if you have not the imagination 
 to overstep time. They are alive at this moment if 
 you choose so to quicken them. It is with some 
 faith in the power of the reader to see this ancient 
 tenantry of the sea-coast and its hamlets, farms 
 and old houses, as in a glass, that he has been 
 led this long dance from Gwent to the ferry over 
 the Dovey. If he do not, or do not care to, see 
 them, then the coast journey has failed of half 
 its purpose, which is to bring many far-distant 
 places and their folk into an erratic chronicle : 
 another contribution to the incomplete testament 
 of Wales — the Wales of the great itinerants, from 
 Gerald to Dafydd, from John Leland to George 
 Borrow, from Taylor the Water Poet to Twm o'r 
 Nant, last of the Interlude-writers. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abebaeron, 356-361 
 
 Abergavenny, 61 
 
 Aberpergwm, 152 
 
 Aberporth, 350 
 
 Abersili, 86 
 
 Abertawe, 162, 183 
 
 Aberthaw, 97 
 
 Aberystwyfcb, 363-372 
 
 Adam, Abbot, 151 
 
 Adrian IV., Pope, 108 
 
 Aeron, 356-361 
 
 Agricola, 49 
 
 " Allen Raine," 353 
 
 AUt Goch, 350, 351 
 
 Amman, 207, 210, 211 
 
 Amrotb, 253 
 
 Angle, 293 
 
 Aquitania, 49 
 
 Arberth, 252 
 
 Ardudwy, 378 
 
 Arnulf de Montgomery, 279 
 
 Arthur, King, 43, 46, 52, 53, 72, 153 
 
 Arthur's Stone, 194, 195 
 
 Artist's Valley, the (Cwm Einion), 
 
 376 
 Arvon, 378 
 Asaph, 172 
 Augusel (Angus), 50 
 Aulus Didius, 65 
 
 Bacon Hole, 192, 193 
 
 Bala, 52 
 
 Baldwin, Archbishop, 142, 268, 
 
 374, 375, 380, 381 
 Ballinger, Mr. J., 6, 368, 369 
 Bardsey, 92 
 
 Baring-Gould, Rev. S., 36, 312 
 Barlow, Bishop, 309 
 Barri, Gerald de, 70 
 Barry Dock, 89, 90 
 Barry Island, 89-93 
 Bassaleg, 41 
 
 383 
 
 Bayonne, 63 
 
 Beaufort, Duke of, 163 
 
 Beaumains, Sir, 47 
 
 Beaumont, Harry, 212 
 
 Beaupre, 118 
 
 Beavan, Madam Bridget, 250 
 
 Bedd Taliesin, 377 
 
 Begelly, 253 
 
 Beili, 77 
 
 Benson's Cave, 178 
 
 Benton Castle, 274 
 
 Benwick, 63 
 
 Bere, Sir John de la, 202 
 
 Berkrols, Sir Roger, 76 
 
 Bird, Dr. Geo., 217 
 
 Birkrolles, Sir Jasper, 98 
 
 Bishopston, 186, 192 
 
 Blackmore, R. D. (the novelist), 
 
 128 
 Blodeu-wedd, 155 
 Bohun, de, 30 
 Borth, 373, 380, 381 
 Borrow, George, 381 
 Bosco's Den, 195 
 Bosherton, 286 
 Bowen's Parlour, 195 
 Bran, 117 
 Brandy Cove, 192 
 Braos, William de, 165, 184 
 Breaksea Point, 113 
 Breakspear, Nicholas, 108 
 Brean Down, 63, 83 
 Bridgend, 81, 121, 124 
 Bridgewater Bay, 84 
 Bristol, 83 
 
 Britolio, Roger de, 16 
 Broughton Bay, 206 
 Bulmore, 48, 51 
 Burnes, Miss, 243, 244 
 Bute, Marquess of, 69 
 Butler, Sir Arnold, 117 
 Burry Holms, 200, 201 
 
384 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Burry Inlet, 202, 206, 207 
 Burry Port, 217 
 
 Cadburt, 52 
 
 Oadell, 224 
 
 Cadoc, 50 
 
 Cador, 50 
 
 Cadoxton, 89 
 
 Cadwgan of Bleddyn, 279 
 
 Caerleon, 29, 45 
 
 Caer Sidi, 180 
 
 Caerwent, 25, 28, 29 
 
 Caesar, 49, Caesaria, 47, 50 
 
 Caldecot, 24, 29, 30 
 
 Caldy Island, 265, 266, 278 
 
 Camelot, 52 
 
 Oandleston, 125 
 
 Cantref-y-Gwaelod, 364, 371, 377- 
 
 380 
 Canvey Island, 54 
 Capel Als, 216 
 Capel Dewi, 209 
 Garacalla, 49 
 Caractaous, 117 
 Caradoo ap Iestyn, 148, 202 
 Cardiff, 63-72 
 Cardiff Castle, 65-70 
 Cardigan, 341-349 
 Cardigan Bay, 363 
 Carew Castle, 270-274, 276 
 Carmarthen, 224, 226, 228-240 
 Carne, Jane, 117 
 Oarne, Thos., 109, 121 
 Cam Engli, 339 
 Cam Llidi, 313 
 Carreg Cennen, 210 
 Castell Coch, 71 
 Castell Glas, 55 
 Castell Prudd, 353 
 Castell-y-Dolig, 353 
 Castle Martin, 293 
 Caswell Bay, 192 
 Cefn Mabley, 60 
 Cefn Sidan, 212, 218, 220 
 Cefn-y-Bryn, 194, 200 
 Ceibwr Bay, 347 
 Ceredig, 117 
 Charles I., 00, 61 
 
 Chepstow, 13-21 
 
 Christchurch Hill, 62 
 
 Churchyard, 55 
 
 Cilbwn, 361 
 
 Cilcennen, 360 
 
 Cilgerran, 344-346 
 
 Cilhepste Falls, 156, 157 
 
 Cil Ivor, 203 
 
 Cilpwll, 361 
 
 Clares, The, 19, 134 
 
 Clare, Sir Richard de, 71 
 
 Cleddau, 273 
 
 Clegyr Poia, 313 
 
 Clyn Ystyn, 207 
 
 Cobb, Mr., 269, 278 
 
 Cockletown, 221 
 
 Coed yr Odyn, 94 
 
 Coity, 121 
 
 Coldknap Point, 53. 93 
 
 Col Hugh, 106 
 
 Colyn Dolphyn, 111, 112, 116 
 
 Conan, 142 
 
 Conybeare, Dean, 86 
 
 Cornelius Castus, 47 
 
 Cors Fochno, 377 
 
 Cowbridge, 76, 118-120 
 
 Cox, David, 85 
 
 Craig-y-Dinas, 52, 152 
 
 Cribach Bay, 351 
 
 Crick, 28 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 19, 247, 259 
 
 Crymmych Arms, 341 
 
 Cunotamus, 346 
 
 Cwm Einion, 376 
 
 Cwm Plysgog, 344 
 
 Cwm Porth, 157, 158 
 
 Cwrt Bryn y Beirdd, 209 
 
 Cwrt-y-Camau, 209 
 
 Cyrn Du, 363 
 
 Cywyn, River, 242 
 
 Daoia, 49 
 
 Dafydd ab Gwilym, 40-44, 371, 
 
 373, 374, 381 
 Darva, Lake, 56 
 Davies, Mr. J. H. Cwrtmawr, 366, 
 
 376 
 Davies, Rev. Edward, 193 
 
INDEX 
 
 385 
 
 Davies, Eev. J. D., 200, 201 
 
 Davis, Matthew, 166 
 
 Deffett-Francis, 170 
 
 Denys, 74, 78 
 
 Devil's Bridge, 371 
 
 Derw, Derwen, 145 
 
 Derw Pawr, 242 
 
 Dinadan, 47 
 
 Dinas Head, 336 
 
 Dinas Lochtyn, 353, 354 
 
 Dinas Powis, 74, 77 
 
 Dolwen Pt., 249 
 
 Donovan, 52, 136 
 
 Dovey, Eiver, 373, 381 
 
 Draba Aizoides, 189 
 
 Duffryn, 78 
 
 Dunraven, 97, 112, 114, 115-118 
 
 Dwynwen, 166 
 
 Dyvrig, 50 
 
 Dynevor (Family), 150 
 
 East Gower Coast, 183-191 
 
 East Orchard, 118 
 
 Ebwy, 55 
 
 Edward II., 148, 168 
 
 Eglwys Cymmin, 248 
 
 Eifl Peaks, 363 
 
 Einon, 119 
 
 Elarch, 56 
 
 "Elfed,"214 
 
 Eli, 84 
 
 Ellis, T. E., MP., 366 
 
 Elphin, 379, 380 
 
 Enid, 62, 120 
 
 Eryri, 378 
 
 Essex, Earl of, 285 
 
 Esterlinge, Sir William le, 76 
 
 Estrighoil, 15 
 
 Evans, Dr. Gwenogvryn, 367 
 
 Evans, Stephen, J.P., 356 
 
 Ewenny, 76, 121 
 
 Ewer, Col., 19 
 
 Penton, 216, 258 
 Ferrar, Bishop, 233, 309 
 Perryside, 219-237 
 Fferyll (Virgil), 189 
 Fishguard, 331-336 
 
 Fitzhamon, Robert, 65, 73, 94, 
 
 107, 148 
 Fitzosborn, William, 16 
 Flatholme, J., 63, 84, 87, 92 
 Plemingston, 118 
 Florence of Worcester, 26 
 Fonmon, 77, 118 
 Fontygarry, 96, 97 
 Freeman, E. A., 54, 57, 58, 60, 102 
 Frost, John, 39, 42 
 
 Gaul, 49 
 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 48, 49, 67 
 
 Geralnt, Sir, 61 
 
 Gerald the Welshman, 48, 142, 
 
 143, 149, 267, 268, 279, 337, 
 
 375, 376, 380, 381 
 Geta, 49 
 
 Glamorgan, 64-96 
 Glamorgan, Vale of, 73-81 
 Glandovey, 376 
 Glora, 57 
 
 Gloucester, William Earl of, 70 
 Glyn Neath Station, 151, 152 
 Gogerddan, 361, 368 
 Golden Mile, 119 
 Goodwick, 331 
 Goodrich, 15 
 
 Gower, Bishop, 165, 166, 285, 307 
 Gower Coast, 183-205 
 Granville, Richard de, 148 
 Granvilles, The, 147 
 Grassholm, 316, 319 
 Grey (the poet), 369 
 Gray, Thomas, 131 
 Great Gutter, 113 
 Green Bridge, 249 
 Green Castle, 55, 241 
 Griffith ab Ivor, 71 
 Griffith ap Rhys, 224, 225 
 Griffith, Knight of the North, 
 
 37, 38 
 Griffith, Rev. J., 60 
 Gruff ydd ab Llewelyn, 28 
 Gruffyd ab Rhytherch, 26 
 Gull Rock, 181 
 Gwbert, 347 
 Gwendraeth, 218, 219 
 
 25 
 
386 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Gwenevere, 50, 64 
 Gwenffrwd, 3GO 
 Gwent, 24, 59, 60 
 Gwern-y-Cleppa, 41 
 Gwyddno Garanhir, 378, 379 
 Gwynllewg Levol, 48 
 Gwynllyw, 37, 38 
 Gynin, River, 242 
 
 Hamilton, Lady, 226 
 Hamilton, Sir William, 298 
 Harlech, 879 
 Haverfordwest, 302 
 Hen Geraint Woods, 357 
 Henry II., 35, 246 
 Henry VII., 105 
 Henry of Knighton, 147 
 Hepste, 156, 157 
 Herberde, Edward, 282 
 Herbert, Sir George, 197 
 Herford, Prof. O.H., 366 
 Hirwain, 157, 166 
 Hoby, Family, 149 
 Hogarth, 39 
 Howell, J. M., 361 
 Hoyle's Mouth, 259, 263 
 Hubberston, 299 
 Huntsman's Leap, 291 
 
 Jenkins, Sir Leoline, 118 
 
 Jones, Dr. John, 257 
 
 Jones, Rev. Griffith, 250, 251 
 
 Jones, Col. Philip, 166 
 
 John, King, 184 
 
 Johnes, Thomas ; Havod, 371 
 
 Johnstown, 241 
 
 Julia Ivorna, 47 
 
 Julius Frontinus, 16 
 
 Julius the Martyr, 49 
 
 Kean, Edmund, 226 
 Kemeys, Sir Nich., 19, 60 
 Kemeys-Tynte, Col., 60 
 Kenfig, 129-139 
 Keynsham Abbey, 57 
 Kidwelly, 170, 217, 218. 224 
 Kilgetty, 253 
 Kingsley, Chas., 181 
 
 Knight, Rev. Hey, 127 
 Knight, John, 71, 90, 91 
 Knighton, Henry of, 147 
 
 Laleb, 148 
 
 Lampeter, 357 
 
 Lamphey Palace, 284 
 
 Landore, 162 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 161, 172, 
 
 173, 174, 264 
 Lanrhymney, 57, 59 
 Laques, 225 
 Laugharne, 244-248 
 Launcelot, Sir, 47, 64 
 Lavernook, 84, 85, 86, 89 
 Laws, Edward, 260, 312, 380 
 Lee, Vernon, 56 
 Leland, John, 34, 202, 219, 279, 
 
 281 
 Ler, 56 
 
 Lewis Morganwg, 150 
 Linney Head, 292 
 Llanaeron, 360 
 Llanbad, 55 
 Llanbadarn, 373-376 
 Llanblethian, 118 
 Llanboidy, 245 
 Llanborth, 354 
 Llanoaut, 15 
 Llancarvan, 77 
 Llanddewi, 195 
 Llanddewi Brefi, 362, 376 
 Llandefeilog, 221 
 Llandeilo Abercowyn, 242 
 Llandeilo Bertholey, 58 
 Llandeilo Verwalt, 193 
 Llandysilio-go-go, 355, 356 
 Llanolly, 214-217 
 Llanerch, 357 
 Llanfair, 24 
 
 Llanfihangel Abercowyn, 242 
 Llanfihangol (Card.), 357 
 Llangattock, 50 
 Llangeitho, 361, 362 
 Llangennydd, 200 
 Llangorse Lake, 134 
 Llangraunog, 351-354 
 Llangunnor, 236, 239 
 
INDEX 
 
 387 
 
 Llangyndeyrn, 224 
 
 Llanina, 354 
 
 Llanllwch, 241 
 
 Llanmadoc, 200, 201 
 
 Llanmorlais, 203 
 
 Llanrhidian, 203 
 
 Llanrian, 329 
 
 Llanstephan, 219-227 
 
 Llantarnam, 54 
 
 Llantwit Major, 92, 100 
 
 Llantrisant, 148, 181 
 
 Llanwnda, 331 
 
 Llanybri, 225 
 
 Llewelyn ab Iorweth, 148, 165 
 
 Lleyn, 349 
 
 Lloyd, Miss (of Cilbwn), 361 
 
 Lloyds, the (Laques),225,226 
 
 Lloyds, the (Pare Bhyddoroh), 361 
 
 Llychwr, 203, 206-213 
 
 Llyfnant Valloy, 376 
 
 Llyn I wan, 371 
 
 Llyn Rheidol, 371 
 
 Llyn Safaddan, 134 
 
 Llyn-y-Fan-Fach, 207 
 
 Llyn-y-Fan-Fawr, 162 
 
 Llywarch ab Llewelyn, 165 
 
 Lochtyn, 353 
 
 Lockyer, Sir Norman, 330 
 
 Londres, Maurico de, 120, 124 
 
 Londres, Wm. dc, 117 
 
 Longbury Bank Cave, 259, 263 
 
 Lot, King, 46 
 
 Lucius, 46 
 
 Lud, 14 
 
 Lydgate, 52 
 
 Lydney, 14 
 
 Lydstop, Point and Caves, 2 
 
 Mabel, Fitzhamon, 35, 50 
 Mach Ynys, 216 
 Madawc, 14 
 Maelgwn, 377 
 Maonhir, 202 
 Maesaleg, 41, 42 
 Mallt-y-Nos, 111 
 Malory, Sir Thomas, 63 
 Manawyddan, 144 
 Manorbier, 267, 270 
 
 Mansels, 140, 142, 196 
 Map, Walter, 67 
 Marcross, 81 
 Margam, 140, 146 
 Marisco, William do, 176-178 
 Mark, King, 47 
 Marloes, 299 
 
 Martin, Henry, 13, 18, 19 
 Mat, Iron Hand, 116 
 Matchless Orinda, tho, 344 
 Mathern, 24, 32 
 Mathews, Hobson, 91 
 Mathry, 829 
 Maud de Haia, 170 
 Mellte, 151 
 Merlin, 46, 232 
 Merrick, Rice, 64, 71, 73, 94 
 Mersea Island, 54 
 Merthyr Mawr, 125 
 Meryon, 85 
 Mondalgyf, 55 
 Meyriok, 362 
 Milford, 273, 276, 297 
 Milford Haven, 297 
 Michaelston, 54 
 Minchin Hole, 194 
 Moel Trigarn, 341 
 Monkham Pill, 277 
 Monknasb, 113 
 Monkton Priory, 281 
 Mordrod, 64 
 Morfudd, 42, 373 
 Morgan, 57, 60, 124, 145 
 Morgan ap Caradog, 149 
 Morgan le Fay, 74, 184, 195 
 Morgan Gam, 148 
 Morgan, Sir Philip, 61 
 Morganwg, 63-146 
 Morganwg, Iolo, 133 
 Morris, Lewis, 284, 376 
 Morva Bycban, 249 
 Mowbrays, De, 166 
 Moyne's Court, 24 
 Mumbles, the, 175, 185 
 
 N angle, 276 
 Nant Cwnllo, 362 
 Nanteos, 371 
 
388 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Narberth, 252 
 Nash, 109 
 Nash Point, 112 
 Neath, 147-160 
 Nedern, 26 
 Nesta, 267, 280 
 Nevern, 338 
 Newbridge, 360 
 Newcastle Emlyn, 353 
 Newgale Bridge, 302 
 Newport, 33-44, 58 
 Newport, 337 
 Newquay, 354 
 Newton Nottage, 125-129 
 Normandy, William of, 39 
 Nose, the ; Pembrey, 211 
 Nott, General, 232 
 
 Odnant, 105 
 
 Offa's Dyke, 20 
 
 Ogmore, 117, 124, 125 
 
 Ogney, 101, 102, 105 
 
 Ogwr, 121, 122 
 
 Oldbury, 31 
 
 Orthez, 59 
 
 Ostorius, 65 
 
 Owain Glyndwr, 361, 366 
 
 Owain Gwynedd, 232 
 
 Owain Lawgoch, 154 
 
 Owen, George, 295, 298, 317 
 
 Oxwich Castle, 196 
 
 Oystermouth, 183, 184 
 
 Paris, Matthew, 176 
 Park Mill, 188, 190 
 Paviland, 168 
 
 Peacock, Thomas Lovo, 379 
 Pembrey, 212 
 Pembroke, 276 
 Pembroke Oastle, 276-281 
 Pembroke Dook, 284 
 Pembroke, Earls of, 166, 246 
 Penarth, 63, 66, 82, 85 
 Ponbryn, 351 
 Penclawdd, 204 
 Pen Dar, 145 
 Pendino, 248, 249 
 Penlline, 118, 119 
 
 Penmaen, 194 
 
 Penmark, 118 
 
 Pennard, 186, 193 
 
 Penrhyn Castle Bay, 347 
 
 Penrice, 199 
 
 Pensarn, 232 
 
 Pen-y-Dinas, 375 
 
 Percival, Percy, 6, 300, 301 
 
 Perddyn, 159 
 
 Pergrin, 348 
 
 Perrot, Sir John, 246, 271, 283 
 
 Peterstone, 55, 56 
 
 Phaer, Dr., 345, 346 
 
 Picton Castle, 273 
 
 Picton, General, 107 
 
 Plinlimmon, 358, 368, 371 
 
 Pont Neath Vaughan, 150, 152 
 
 Pontvaen, 336 
 
 Popham, Attorney Gen., 247 
 
 Poppit, the, 347 
 
 Port Eynon, 196 
 
 Port Skewett, 26 
 
 Port Talbot, 185, 209 
 
 Porthcawl, 127, 128, 185 
 
 Porth Clais, 311, 316 
 
 Porthkerry, 63, 93, 94 
 
 Porth Lisky, 311 
 
 Porth Melgaw, 312 
 
 Porth-yr-Ogof, 158 
 
 Poyer, Col., 252,281 
 
 Precelly Mountain, 277, 339 
 
 Pritchard, John, 141 
 
 Pritchard, T. J. Llewelyn, 170 
 
 371 
 Pwllcrochan, 277 
 Pwll Meyrick, 24 
 
 Quantocks, the, 84 
 
 Ramsey Island, 311, 316 
 Rat Island, 180 
 Red Roses, 251 
 Rees, Rev. David, 216 
 Rees, Roger, 275 
 Reynoldstone, 200 
 Rheidol, 271 
 Rhianon, 56, 252 
 Rhoose, 94, 97 
 
INDEX 
 
 389 
 
 Rhos, 377 
 
 Ehosilly, 200 
 
 Rhyd-y-Gors, 241 
 
 Rhymney, 54, 56 
 
 Rhys, 119 
 
 Rhys ap Griffith, 165, 233, 345, 
 
 380 
 Rhys ap Tewdur, 280 
 Rhys ap Thomas, Sir, 235, 271 
 Rhys Ieuanc, 202, 212 
 Rhys, Sir John, 180, 265, 271, 345, 
 
 352 
 Risca, 54 
 Ritec, 263 
 
 Robert, Duke, 65, 66, 67 
 Robert, Earl of Gloucester, 67 
 Roche Castle, 302 
 Rogut, 38 
 
 Rowlands, Daniel, 362 
 Rupe, Adam de, 302 
 Ruperra, 60, 61 
 Russell, Lord John, 40 
 
 St. Aaron, 50 
 
 St. Augustine, 84 
 
 St. Baruch's, 92 
 
 St. Briavel, 15 
 
 St. Bride's, 55 
 
 St. Bride's Bay, 310 
 
 St. Bride's Major, 125 
 
 St. Caernhoc, 57 
 
 St. Clear's, 243 
 
 St. Cringat, 250 
 
 St. David's, 276-286 
 
 St. Donat's, 107, 111, 112, 118 
 
 St. Elli, 214, 216 
 
 St. Fagan's, 77 
 
 St. Fronto, 36 
 
 St. Gildas, 265 
 
 St. Govan's, 287, 308 
 
 St. Gwynllyw, 33 
 
 St. Illtyd, 123 
 
 St. Ishmael, 219, 223 
 
 St. Julian's, 45 
 
 St. Keri, 63, 95 
 
 St. Kynemark, 20 
 
 St. Maelog, 222 
 
 St. Mellon's, 57, 58 
 
 St. Padarn, 374 
 
 St. Pierre, 25 
 
 St. Quintin, 118 
 
 St. Tecla's, 21 
 
 St. Teilo, 193 
 
 St. Tysilio, 355 
 
 St. Woollos's, 35, 37, 38, 58 
 
 Sampson, 101, 103, 265, 374 
 
 Samuel, 101 
 
 Sarn Padrig, 374 
 
 Sater, 50 
 
 Saundersfoot, 253 
 
 Scwd Einion Gam, 159 
 
 Scwd Gwladys, 159 
 
 Sedbury, 31 
 
 Seife, 57 
 
 Seithenen, 379 
 
 Severn, Sea of, 23, 54 
 
 Severn Tunnel, 27 
 
 Severus, 46 
 
 Shutter Rock, 179 
 
 Sili, Nant, 87 
 
 Sirhowy, 59 
 
 Sker Rock, 127 
 
 Skomar Island, 300 
 
 Slebech, 273 
 
 Sloane, Sir Hans, 167 
 
 Smith, Blethyn, 32 
 
 Solva, 304-305 
 
 Somerset, 63 
 
 Sore, Sir Peter le, 42 
 
 Southall, Mr., 59 
 
 Southerndown, 115, 116 
 
 Spencer, de, 35 
 
 Spurrell, Mr. Walter, J.P., 6, 
 
 344 
 Stackpool, 293 
 Stack Rocks, 254, 276, 222 
 Steele, Betty, 232 
 Steele, Lady, 238 
 Steele, Sir Richard, 236 
 Steepholme, 72 
 Storrie, John, 93 
 Stow Hill, 35 
 Stradlings, the, 107 
 Stradling, Sir Harry, 112 
 Strata Florida, 364, 371 
 trath Towy, 231 
 
390 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Strongbow, Richard, 16 
 Strongbow, Gilbert, 345 
 Sudbrooke Camp, 31 
 Sully, 77 
 Swanbridge, 86 
 Swansea, 161-174 
 Swansea Bay, 161 
 Sweyn, 105, 162 
 Sychnant, 154 
 
 Tacitus, 48 
 
 Taf, 219, 244 
 
 Ta2, 54, 64, 65, 72 
 
 Talbots, 140 
 
 Taliesin, 377, 378 
 
 Talsarn Mountain, 359 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 19 
 
 Taylor, " Water Poet," 233, 240 
 
 Teivy, 344, 348 
 
 Tenby, 254-266 
 
 Tennyson, 51 
 
 Tewdrio, 5, 24 
 
 Thaw, 118 
 
 Thomas, T. H., 6, 83, 318, 347 
 
 Thompson, Pyke, 84 
 
 Tintern Abbey, 20-22 
 
 Tostig, 26. 
 
 Towy, 218, 225, 223, 244 
 
 Towyn Point, 218 
 
 Towyn Warren, 347 
 
 Traeth Maelgwn, 377 
 
 Traethsaith, 351 
 
 Tredegar, Lord, 42 
 
 Tresilian, 106 
 
 Trevaen, 330 
 
 Trevelyan, Marie, Miss, 79 
 
 Trichrug, 360 
 
 Tristan, 184 
 
 Troggy, 26 
 
 Trwyn-y-witoh, 115 
 
 Turbervilles, 120, 121 
 
 Turberville, Pain, 76, 117, 124 
 
 Turborville, Sir Simon de, 123 
 
 Tusker Rock, 113, 115, 127 
 
 Twm o'r Nant, 381 
 
 Twm Shon Catti, 170, 371 
 
 Twrch Trwyth, 207, 210 
 
 Twt Hill, 15 
 
 Tydur, 356 
 Tylwyth Teg, 188 
 Tyrwhit, 108 
 
 Uphill Bay, 63 
 
 Upton, 274 
 
 Urien, 50 
 
 Usher, Archbishop, 108 
 
 Usk, 24, 25, 33, 35, 37, 45, 54 
 
 Vale of Alun, 313 
 Vaughan, Henry, 344 
 Vaughan, Robert, 367 
 Vaughan, Sir Richard, 115 
 Vespasian, 48 
 
 Warley Point, 220 
 
 Warren, 293 
 
 Watoyn Wyn, 214 
 
 Waterwynch Bay, 262 
 
 Watkin, John, 198 
 
 Wentloog, 38, 48, 54, 56 
 
 Wentwood, 24, 25, 30 
 
 Wenvoe, 77 
 
 Weobley, 201 
 
 West Orchard, 118 
 
 Whitesand Bay, 311 
 
 Whiteford Barrows, 202 
 
 Whiteford Lighthouse, 200 
 
 Whitland, 251, 287 
 
 Whitmore Bay, 93 
 
 Williams, Penry, 85 
 
 Williams, Sir John, 326, 366 
 
 Windsor, Gerald de, 267, 272, 279, 
 
 280 
 Woolpack, 299 
 Worm's Head, 195 
 Wye, 13 
 
 Wyndham, Humphrey, 117 
 Wynne, Mr. W. R. M., 366 
 
 Yellow Top, 196 
 
 Ynys Lochtyn, 351, 353 
 
 Ynys Pyr, 265 
 
 Ystrad Iwl, 14 
 
 Ystradfellte, 152 
 
 Ystrad Meurig, 369 
 
 Ystrad Tywi (Strath Towy), 231 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRKSS, WOKING AND LONDON. 
 
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