THE VALE OF TEIFY
Welshmen call the county of Cardigan the Shire Aber Teivi, or the
shire of the River Teify. The valley of this river forms the boundary
between the shire and those of Pembroke and Carmarthen, and then turns
north-east to the famous monastery of Strata Florida, which is well
worth a visit to those who love to remember that Wales was the home of
the Christian faith in days when England lay in heathen darkness.
We saw in the last chapter that Cardigan is a lonely county, cut off
from its neighbours by mountains and hills all the way from Plynlimmon
to Lampeter, and by steep slopes, forming the Valley of the Teify, on
the Carmarthen side. Hence its position has made it in bygone days “the
last refuge of the beaten and the first landing-place of returning
exiles.”
Its people, because of this fact, are not quite like the rest of their
countrymen, but form something like a separate tribe, known to their
neighbours as “Cardys.” The men are generally very dark as to eyes,
hair, and complexion, with “round heads, thick necks, and sturdy
frames.”
You remember that Borrow took his guide for an Irishman at first, and
in many ways the “Cardy” does resemble his Celtic cousin across the
Channel of St. George. But he differs in the fact that he is very
industrious and independent, and always on the lookout to better
himself. So that, though nearly all the population is composed of
small farmers and their labourers, the county is said to produce more
teachers, parsons, and preachers than any other in Wales.
We have heard something already of the tremendous battles that took
place in this region--battles which we can easily account for, since
the loneliness of the district made it a favourite refuge for all lost
causes. The story of one of these battles, the joy of the Welsh bards
in the twelfth century, tell us how North and South Wales joined in
1135 in an attack upon the town of Cardigan, at the mouth of the Teify,
then held by ruthless English barons, who advanced beyond the walls
upon them. The advantage falling to the Welsh, the English retreated to
their castle, but the Welshmen cut the supports of the bridge over the
Teify as they crossed it, so that three thousand perished in the river.
“The green sea-brine of Teife thickened. The blood of warriors and the
waves of ocean swelled its tide. The red-stained sea-mew screamed with
joy as it floated on a sea of gore.”[4]
[Footnote 4: The quotation is taken from Bradley’s “Highways and Byways
of South Wales.”]
From Cardigan the River Teify winds through a hilly country to Cenarth,
whose castle is the scene of a story all too common in the days when
Henry I. was King of England.
[Illustration: CARDIGAN BAY]
Nest, the daughter of Rhys ap Tudor, the last Prince of Wales who was
actually quite independent of English rule, was the fairest maiden in
all the land.
When her father died, he left her in the charge of Henry I., and the
King gave her in marriage to the Norman Gerald, Lord of Pembroke, who
had just built this castle at Cenarth as a protection against the
hostile Welsh on both sides of the river. There he lived happily with
his beautiful wife and children for some years, until Cadogan, Prince
of Cardigan, took it into his head to give a great banquet at Cardigan
Castle.
Now, at this feast the one topic of conversation and song was the
beauty of Nest, the wife of the Norman baron, and at length the wild
son of Cadogan, Owen by name, arose and declared that he would carry
her off and bring her back to her own people.
So one dark night, Owen and his band of followers forced their way into
Pembroke Castle, where the Earl and his wife were then living, and into
the room where Gerald and Nest lay asleep.
The baron barely saved his life by escaping down a drain, while his
wife and children were carried off and the castle fired. The unhappy
Nest was hidden, they say, in a romantic old house near Llangollen, and
meantime all Wales was in an uproar about the ears of the daring robber.
The wrath of Henry of England fell hot upon Cadogan, who had tried in
vain to persuade his son to restore his prisoner. Most of his land was
taken from him by jealous neighbours as well as by the English barons
of the border, and at length the turbulent Owen was forced to flee to
Ireland, and Nest returned to her husband.
Many years later, says the tale, Owen returned, an outlaw, to his
native land, and before very long found himself fighting in a quarrel
on the same side as the injured Gerald. No sooner did the latter
discover this than, mindful of the ancient feud, he sought out his
rival and challenged him to single conflict, putting him at last to
death. And still they show below that old manor-house at Eglyseg, the
hiding-place and prison of poor Nest, the path that climbs the steep
glen, and claim it to have been the way by which Owen set out upon his
wild quest and returned with his terrified captives.
But we must hasten along the deep and rocky valley of our river, past
the little town of Lampeter, noted for its training college for those
who are going to be clergymen, and through a fair country of meadows
and hills till we turn aside to a very ancient village, with a still
more ancient church. This is Llan-Dewi-Brefi, or the Church of St.
David on the Brefi. We have heard of it in a former chapter, for it
was the scene of St. David’s triumph over the heretics in the sixth
century, and the church stands on the site of that which was built in
memory of that triumph on the hill which rose under him as he stood to
give his message to the assembly.
The word “Brefi” means a “bellowing,” and legend accounts for the name
of the little stream which flows by the hill in this fashion.
Two mighty oxen were dragging stones from the river-bed wherewith
to build the church, when they came to a very steep hill, up which
they found it most difficult to pull the huge stone. At last, in
his struggle to do so, one of the animals fell down dead. When this
happened, its mate stood and bellowed nine times with force so terrific
that the valley shook, and the hill fell down flat, so that the stone
could be drawn easily to the site of the church. Once on a time the
traveller would be shown an immense horn, said to have fallen from the
head of one of these oxen, which gave its name of the “Bellowing One”
to the stream below.
To the left of the Teify Valley, some miles farther up its course, lies
the great Bog of Tregaron, six miles long and one broad, and far more
like an Irish bog than any other quagmire in this country.
Picture to yourself a vast flat, brownish expanse, with pools of
gleaming black water here and there, dotted by hillocks formed by
stacks of black turf cut from its surface. It is loneliness itself, in
spite of a brown-smocked turf-cutter here and there at work; and over
it the only sound that echoes is the cry of the wild-duck, the peewit,
or grouse.
Farther up still we find the Teify among the mountains, flowing in a
valley, at the head of which stand the ruins of Strata Florida. Most
solitary is this, perhaps, of all the lonely spots which those old
Cistercian monks chose out in the wilderness, and “made to blossom like
the rose.”
The monastery was probably founded by Rhys ap Griffith in 1164--“My
Lord Rhys, the head, and shield, and strength of the south and of all
Wales,” as the chronicler calls him. It became the darling of the
Welsh chieftains, who showered lands and money upon the monks, until
they found themselves the owners of the mountain-range above, and of
most of the wide valley in which stand the ruins, and the most noted
sheep-farmers in Wales.
In one of these cells was preserved the parchment, still in existence,
upon which was kept, every day for one hundred and thirty years, a
“chronicle” of the Welsh history of the time, which only ends with the
death of Llewelyn.
Here, too, lies buried beneath the great yew-trees of the graveyard a
famous Welsh poet of the fourteenth century, named Dafydd ap Gwilym
(David, son of William).
Welsh literature is full of the love-poems addressed by this poet to
Morfydd, his loved one, “Maid of the glowing form and lily brow beneath
a roof of golden tresses.”
She was above him in birth, and was sent to a convent in Anglesey to
be out of his way. Ap Gwilym, disguised as a monk, followed her to a
monastery close by, but only to hear that she had been married to a
husband much older than herself. In desperation the bard tried to carry
her off, but was seized and thrown into a Glamorgan prison until he
could pay a large fine. But his fellow-poets would not let the “chief
bard of Glamorgan” languish in a dungeon; they paid his fine, and set
the prisoner free to sing again of Nature and of love.
Ap Gwilym died in the year of Glendower’s revolt, still grieving for
his lost Morfydd, and, with her name on his lips, passed away, and was
buried under the walls of the great abbey that had sheltered his last
years.