Huw Morris—Immortal Elegy—The Valley of Ceiriog—Tangled
Wilderness—Perplexity—Chair of Huw Morris—The Walking-stick—Huw’s
Descendant—Pont y Meibion.
Two days after the last adventure I set off, over the Berwyn, to visit
the birth-place of Huw Morris under the guidance of John Jones, who was
well acquainted with the spot.
Huw Morus or Morris, was born in the year 1622 on the banks of the
Ceiriog. His life was a long one, for he died at the age of eighty-four,
after living in six reigns. He was the second son of a farmer, and was
apprenticed to a tanner, with whom, however, he did not stay till the
expiration of the term of his apprenticeship, for not liking the tanning
art, he speedily returned to the house of his father, whom he assisted in
husbandry till death called the old man away. He then assisted his elder
brother, and on his elder brother’s death, lived with his son. He did
not distinguish himself as a husbandman, and appears never to have been
fond of manual labour. At an early period, however, he applied himself
most assiduously to poetry, and before he had attained the age of thirty
was celebrated, throughout Wales, as the best poet of his time. When the
war broke out between Charles and his parliament, Huw espoused the part
of the king, not as a soldier, for he appears to have liked fighting
little better than tanning or husbandry, but as a poet, and probably did
the king more service in that capacity, than he would if he had raised
him a troop of horse, or a regiment of foot, for he wrote songs breathing
loyalty to Charles, and fraught with pungent satire against his foes,
which ran like wild fire through Wales, and had a great influence on the
minds of the people. Even when the royal cause was lost in the field, he
still carried on a poetical war against the successful party, but not so
openly as before, dealing chiefly in allegories, which, however, were
easy to be understood. Strange to say the Independents, when they had
the upper hand, never interfered with him, though they persecuted certain
Royalist poets of far inferior note. On the accession of Charles the
Second he celebrated the event by a most singular piece called the
Lamentation of Oliver’s men, in which he assails the Roundheads with the
most bitter irony. He was loyal to James the Second, till that monarch
attempted to overthrow the Church of England, when Huw, much to his
credit, turned against him, and wrote songs in the interest of the
glorious Prince of Orange. He died in the reign of good Queen Anne. In
his youth his conduct was rather dissolute, but irreproachable and almost
holy in his latter days—a kind of halo surrounded his old brow. It was
the custom in those days in North Wales for the congregation to leave the
church in a row with the clergyman at their head, but so great was the
estimation in which old Huw was universally held, for the purity of his
life and his poetical gift, that the clergyman of the parish abandoning
his claim to precedence, always insisted on the good and inspired old
man’s leading the file, himself following immediately in his rear. Huw
wrote on various subjects, mostly in common and easily understood
measures. He was great in satire, great in humour, but when he pleased
could be greater in pathos than in either; for his best piece is an elegy
on Barbara Middleton, the sweetest song of the kind ever written. From
his being born on the banks of the brook Ceiriog, and from the flowing
melody of his awen or muse, his countrymen were in the habit of calling
him Eos Ceiriog, or the Ceiriog Nightingale.
So John Jones and myself set off across the Berwyn to visit the
birth-place of the great poet Huw Morris. We ascended the mountain by
Allt Paddy. The morning was lowering, and before we had half got to the
top it began to rain. John Jones was in his usual good spirits.
Suddenly taking me by the arm he told me to look to the right across the
gorge to a white house, which he pointed out.
“What is there in that house?” said I.
“An aunt of mine lives there,” said he.
Having frequently heard him call old women his aunts, I said, “Every poor
old woman in the neighbourhood seems to be your aunt.”
“This is no poor old woman,” said he, “she is cyfoethawg iawn, and only
last week she sent me and my family a pound of bacon, which would have
cost me sixpence-halfpenny, and about a month ago a measure of wheat.”
We passed over the top of the mountain, and descending the other side,
reached Llansanfraid, and stopped at the public-house where we had been
before, and called for two glasses of ale. Whilst drinking our ale Jones
asked some questions about Huw Morris of the woman who served us; she
said that he was a famous poet, and that people of his blood were yet
living upon the lands which had belonged to him at Pont y Meibion. Jones
told her that his companion, the gwr boneddig, meaning myself, had come
in order to see the birthplace of Huw Morris, and that I was well
acquainted with his works, having gotten them by heart in Lloegr, when a
boy. The woman said that nothing would give her greater pleasure than to
hear a Sais recite poetry of Huw Morris, whereupon I recited a number of
his lines addressed to the Gôf Du, or blacksmith. The woman held up her
hands, and a carter who was in the kitchen, somewhat the worse for
liquor, shouted applause. After asking a few questions as to the road we
were to take, we left the house, and in a little time entered the valley
of Ceiriog. The valley is very narrow, huge hills overhanging it on both
sides, those on the east side lumpy and bare, those on the west
precipitous, and partially clad with wood; the torrent Ceiriog runs down
it, clinging to the east side; the road is tolerably good, and is to the
west of the stream. Shortly after we had entered the gorge, we passed by
a small farm-house on our right hand, with a hawthorn hedge before it,
upon which seems to stand a peacock, curiously cut out of thorn. Passing
on we came to a place called Pandy uchaf, or the higher Fulling mill.
The place so called is a collection of ruinous houses, which put me in
mind of the Fulling mills mentioned in Don Quixote. It is called the
Pandy because there was formerly a fulling mill here, said to have been
the first established in Wales; which is still to be seen, but which is
no longer worked. Just above the old mill there is a meeting of streams:
the Tarw from the west rolls down a dark valley into the Ceiriog.
At the entrance of this valley and just before you reach the Pandy, which
it nearly overhangs, is an enormous crag. After I had looked at the
place for some time with considerable interest we proceeded towards the
south, and in about twenty minutes reached a neat kind of house, on our
right hand, which John Jones told me stood on the ground of Huw Morris.
Telling me to wait, he went to the house, and asked some questions.
After a little time I followed him and found him discoursing at the door
with a stout dame about fifty-five years of age, and a stout buxom damsel
of about seventeen, very short of stature.
“This is the gentleman,” said he, “who wishes to see anything there may
be here connected with Huw Morris.”
The old dame made me a curtsey and said in very distinct Welsh, “We have
some things in the house which belonged to him, and we will show them to
the gentleman willingly.”
“We first of all wish to see his chair,” said John Jones.
“The chair is in a wall in what is called the hen ffordd (old road),”
said the old gentlewoman; “it is cut out of the stone wall; you will have
maybe some difficulty in getting to it, but the girl shall show it to
you.” The girl now motioned to us to follow her, and conducted us across
the road to some stone steps, over a wall to a place which looked like a
plantation.
“This was the old road,” said Jones; “but the place has been enclosed.
The new road is above us on our right hand beyond the wall.”
We were in a maze of tangled shrubs, the boughs of which, very wet from
the rain which was still falling, struck our faces, as we attempted to
make our way between them; the girl led the way, bare-headed and
bare-armed, and soon brought us to the wall, the boundary of the new
road. Along this she went with considerable difficulty, owing to the
tangled shrubs, and the nature of the ground, which was very precipitous,
shelving down to the other side of the enclosure. In a little time we
were wet to the skin, and covered with the dirt of birds, which they had
left whilst roosting in the trees; on went the girl, sometimes creeping,
and trying to keep herself from falling by holding against the young
trees; once or twice she fell and we after her, for there was no path,
and the ground, as I have said before, very shelvy; still as she went her
eyes were directed towards the wall, which was not always very easy to be
seen, for thorns, tall nettles, and shrubs were growing up against it.
Here and there she stopped, and said something, which I could not always
make out, for her Welsh was anything but clear; at length I heard her say
that she was afraid we had passed the chair, and indeed presently we came
to a place where the enclosure terminated in a sharp corner.
“Let us go back,” said I; “we must have passed it.”
I now went first, breaking down with my weight the shrubs nearest to the
wall.
“Is not this the place?” said I, pointing to a kind of hollow in the
wall, which looked something like the shape of a chair.
“Hardly,” said the girl, “for there should be a slab, on the back, with
letters, but there’s neither slab nor letters here.”
The girl now again went forward, and we retraced our way, doing the best
we could to discover the chair, but all to no purpose; no chair was to be
found. We had now been, as I imagined, half-an-hour in the enclosure,
and had nearly got back to the place from which we had set out, when we
suddenly heard the voice of the old lady exclaiming, “What are ye doing
there?—the chair is on the other side of the field; wait a bit, and I
will come and show it you.” Getting over the stone stile, which led into
the wilderness, she came to us, and we now went along the wall at the
lower end; we had quite as much difficulty here, as on the other side,
and in some places more, for the nettles were higher, the shrubs more
tangled, and the thorns more terrible. The ground, however, was rather
more level. I pitied the poor girl who led the way and whose fat naked
arms were both stung and torn. She at last stopped amidst a huge grove
of nettles, doing the best she could to shelter her arms from the
stinging leaves.
“I never was in such a wilderness in my life,” said I to John Jones, “is
it possible that the chair of the mighty Huw is in a place like this;
which seems never to have been trodden by human foot. Well does the
Scripture say ‘Dim prophwyd yw yn cael barch yn ei dir ei hunan.’”
This last sentence tickled the fancy of my worthy friend, the Calvinistic
Methodist; he laughed aloud and repeated it over and over again to the
females with amplifications.
“Is the chair really here,” said I, “or has it been destroyed? if such a
thing has been done it is a disgrace to Wales.”
“The chair is really here,” said the old lady, “and though Huw Morus was
no prophet, we love and reverence everything belonging to him. Get on,
Llances, the chair can’t be far off;” the girl moved on, and presently
the old lady exclaimed “There’s the chair, Diolch i Duw!”
I was the last of the file, but I now rushed past John Jones, who was
before me, and next to the old lady, and sure enough there was the chair,
in the wall, of him who was called in his day, and still is called by the
mountaineers of Wales, though his body has been below the earth in the
quiet church-yard, one hundred and forty years, Eos Ceiriog, the
Nightingale of Ceiriog, the sweet caroller Huw Morus, the enthusiastic
partizan of Charles, and the Church of England, and the never-tiring
lampooner of Oliver and the Independents, there it was, a kind of hollow
in the stone wall, in the hen ffordd, fronting to the west, just above
the gorge at the bottom of which murmurs the brook Ceiriog, there it was,
something like a half-barrel chair in a garden, a mouldering stone slab
forming the seat, and a large slate stone, the back, on which were cut
these letters—
H. M. B.
signifying Huw Morus Bard.
“Sit down in the chair, Gwr Boneddig,” said John Jones, “you have taken
trouble enough to get to it.”
“Do, gentleman,” said the old lady; “but first let me wipe it with my
apron, for it is very wet and dirty.”
“Let it be,” said I; then taking off my hat I stood uncovered before the
chair, and said in the best Welsh I could command, “Shade of Huw Morus,
supposing your shade haunts the place which you loved so well when
alive—a Saxon, one of the seed of the Coiling Serpent, has come to this
place to pay that respect to true genius, the Dawn Duw, which he is ever
ready to pay. He read the songs of the Nightingale of Ceiriog in the
most distant part of Lloegr, when he was a brown-haired boy, and now that
he is a grey-haired man he is come to say in this place that they
frequently made his eyes overflow with tears of rapture.”
I then sat down in the chair, and commenced repeating verses of Huw
Morris. All which I did in the presence of the stout old lady, the
short, buxom, and bare-armed damsel, and of John Jones, the Calvinistic
weaver of Llangollen, all of whom listened patiently and approvingly
though the rain was pouring down upon them, and the branches of the trees
and the tops of the tall nettles, agitated by the gusts from the mountain
hollows, were beating in their faces, for enthusiasm is never scoffed at
by the noble, simple-minded, genuine Welsh, whatever treatment it may
receive from the coarse-hearted, sensual, selfish Saxon.
After some time our party returned to the house—which put me very much in
mind of the farm-houses of the substantial yeomen of Cornwall,
particularly that of my friends at Penquite; a comfortable fire blazed in
the kitchen grate, the floor was composed of large flags of slate. In
the kitchen the old lady pointed to me the ffon, or walking-stick, of Huw
Morris; it was supported against a beam by three hooks. I took it down
and walked about the kitchen with it; it was a thin polished black stick,
with a crome cut in the shape of an eagle’s head; at the end was a brass
fence. The kind creature then produced a sword without a scabbard; this
sword was found by Huw Morris on the mountain—it belonged to one of
Oliver’s officers who was killed there. I took the sword, which was a
thin two-edged one, and seemed to be made of very good steel. It put me
in mind of the blades which I had seen at Toledo—the guard was very
slight like those of all rapiers, and the hilt the common old-fashioned
English officer’s hilt; there was no rust on the blade, and it still
looked a dangerous sword. A man like Thistlewood would have whipped it
through his adversary in a twinkling. I asked the old lady if Huw Morris
was born in this house; she said no, but a little farther on at Pont y
Meibion; she said, however, that the ground had belonged to him, and that
they had some of his blood in their veins. I shook her by the hand, and
gave the chubby bare-armed damsel a shilling, pointing to the marks of
the nettle stings on her fat bacon-like arms; she laughed, made me a
curtsey and said, “Llawer iawn o diolch.”
John Jones and I then proceeded to the house at Pont y Meibion, where we
saw two men, one turning a grindstone, and the other holding an adze to
it. We asked if we were at the house of Huw Morris, and whether they
could tell us anything about him; they made us no answer but proceeded
with their occupation; John Jones then said that the Gwr Boneddig was
very fond of the verses of Huw Morris, and had come a great way to see
the place where he was born—the wheel now ceased turning, and the man
with the adze turned his face full upon me—he was a stern-looking, dark
man, with black hair, of about forty; after a moment or two he said, that
if I chose to walk into the house, I should be welcome. He then
conducted us into the house, a common-looking stone tenement, and bade us
be seated. I asked him if he was a descendant of Huw Morus; he said he
was; I asked him his name, which he said was Huw —. “Have you any of the
manuscripts of Huw Morus?” said I.
“None,” said he; “but I have one of the printed copies of his works.”
He then went to a drawer, and taking out a book, put it into my hand, and
seated himself in a blunt, careless manner. The book was the first
volume of the common Wrexham edition of Huw’s works; it was much
thumbed—I commenced reading aloud a piece which I had much admired in my
boyhood. I went on for some time, my mind quite occupied with my
reading; at last lifting up my eyes, I saw the man standing bolt upright
before me, like a soldier of the days of my childhood, during the time
that the adjutant read prayers; his hat was no longer upon his head, but
on the ground, and his eyes were reverently inclined to the book. After
all, what a beautiful thing it is, not to be, but to have been a genius.
Closing the book, I asked him whether Huw Morris was born in the house
where we were, and received for answer that he was born about where we
stood, but that the old house had been pulled down, and that of all the
premises only a small outhouse was coeval with Huw Morris. I asked him
the name of the house, and he said Pont y Meibion. “But where is the
bridge?” said I.
“The bridge,” he replied, “is close by, over the Ceiriog. If you wish to
see it, you must go down yon field; the house is called after the
bridge.”
Bidding him farewell, we crossed the road, and going down the field
speedily arrived at Pont y Meibion. The bridge is a small bridge of one
arch which crosses the brook Ceiriog; it is built of rough moor stone; it
is mossy, broken, and looks almost inconceivably old; there is a little
parapet to it about two feet high. On the right-hand side it is shaded
by an ash. The brook, when we viewed it, though at times a roaring
torrent, was stealing along gently. On both sides it is overgrown with
alders; noble hills rise above it to the east and west; John Jones told
me that it abounded with trout. I asked him why the bridge was called
Pont y Meibion, which signifies the bridge of the children. “It was
built originally by children,” said he, “for the purpose of crossing the
brook.”
“That bridge,” said I, “was never built by children.”
“The first bridge,” said he, “was of wood, and was built by the children
of the houses above.”
Not quite satisfied with his explanation, I asked him to what place the
road across the little bridge led, and was told that he believed it led
to an upland farm. After taking a long and wistful view of the bridge
and the scenery around it, I turned my head in the direction of
Llangollen. The adventures of the day were, however, not finished.