credit
Transcribed from the 1841 Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans
edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Decorative title page, with Goodrich castle (followed by proper
title page)]
THE WYE
AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS
A PICTURESQUE RAMBLE.
* * * * *
BY LEITCH RITCHIE, ESQ.
AUTHOR OF "WANDERINGS BY THE LOIRE," "WANDERINGS BY THE SEINE,"
"THE MAGICIAN," ETC.
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
LONDON:
LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, AND
LONGMANS.
1841.
* * * * *
LONDON:
PRINTED BY J. HADDON, CASTLE STREET, FINSBURY.
ADVERTISEMENT,
A portion of the lower part of the Wye has been described by Gilpin,
Archdeacon Coxe, and some others; and the same portion has been touched
upon, with greater or less minuteness, by Prince Puckler Muscau, and
various Welsh tourists, as well as by Whateley in his Essay on Modern
Gardening. It seemed, however, to the writer of the present sketch, that
something more was due to the most celebrated river in England; and that
another book (not too large for the pocket, and yet aspiring to a place
in the library) which should point out the beauties of the Wye, and
connect them with their historical and romantic associations--beginning
at the source of the stream on Plinlimmon, and ending only at its
confluence with the Severn--might still be reckoned an acceptable service
by the lovers of the picturesque. Hence this little work, which may be
consulted at will either as a finger-post by the traveller, or as a
companion by the reading lounger at home.
_London_, _November_ 28_th_, 1840.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Page.
Philosophy of the picturesque--Peculiarities of English 1
scenery--Worcester--Immigration of peasant girls--The
Devils' Garden--The Rest on the
Stones--Plinlimmon--Inhabitants of the summit--The
Inn--Source of the Wye
CHAPTER II.
Descent of Plinlimmon--Singular 17
illusion--Llangerrig--Commencement of the
picturesque--The Fall of the Wye--Black Mountain--Course
of the river--Builth--Peculiarity of the
scenery--Approach to the English border--Castle of the
Hay--First series of the beauties of the Wye
CHAPTER III.
Clifford Castle--Lords-marchers--Fair Rosamond--Ruins of 31
the Castle--The silent cottage--Approach to
Hereford--Castle--Cathedral--Nell
Gwynn--Cider--Salmon--Wolves
CHAPTER IV.
Beauty and tameness--The travelling hill--Ross--The 45
silver tankard--The Man of Ross--The sympathetic
trees--Penyard Castle--Vicissitudes of the river--Wilton
Castle--A voyage to sea in a basket--Pencraig Hill
CHAPTER V.
Roman passes of the Wye--Goodrich 58
Castle--Keep--Fortifications--Apartments--Its
history--Goodrich Court--Forest of Dean--Laws of the
Miners--Military exploit--Wines of Gloucestershire
CHAPTER VI.
Iron furnaces of the Wye--Lidbroke--Nurse of Henry 74
V--Coldwell Rocks--Symond's Yat--New Weir--Monmouth
CHAPTER VII.
Monmouth--History of the Castle--Apartment of Henry of 87
Monmouth--Ecclesiastical remains--Benedictine
priory--Church of St. Mary--Church of St. Thomas--Monnow
Bridge--Modern town--Monmouth caps--The beneficent
parvenu
CHAPTER VIII.
Welsh pedigree of queen Victoria--A poet's 100
flattery--Castles of Monmouthshire--Geoffrey of
Monmouth--Henry of Monmouth--The Kymin--Subsidiary
tour--Sir David Gam--White Castle--Scenfrith--The Castle
spectres--Grosmont--Lanthony Abbey
CHAPTER IX.
Raglan Castle--Description of the ruins--History of the 121
Castle--The old lord of Raglan--Surrender of the
fortress--Charles I. and his host--Royal weakness--The
pigeons of Raglan--Death of the old lord--Origin of the
steam engine
CHAPTER X.
Troy House--Anecdote--Antique custom--Village churches of 140
Monmouthshire--White-washing--The bard--Strewing graves
with flowers--St. Briavels' Castle--Llandogo--Change in
the character of the river--The Druid of the
Wye--Wordsworth's "Lines composed above Tintern Abbey"
CHAPTER XI.
Vales of the Wye--Valley of Tintern--Tintern 156
Abbey--History--Church--Character of the
ruin--Site--Coxe's description--Monmouth--Insecurity of
sepulchral fame--Churchyarde on Tombs--Opinions on
Tintern--Battle of Tintern
CHAPTER XII.
The Wye below Tintern--Benagor 174
Crags--Lancaut--Piercefield Bay--Chepstow--Ancient and
modern bridge--Chepstow Castle--Roger de
Britolio--Romance of History--Chepstow in the civil
wars--Marten the regicide
CHAPTER XIII.
Piercefield--Points of view--Curious appearance--Scenic 192
character of the place--View from Wyndcliff--Account of
Valentine Morris--Anecdotes--The Wye below Chepstow--Aust
Ferry--Black Rock Ferry--St. Theodoric--Conclusion
ENGRAVINGS.
Page.
GOODRICH CASTLE VIGNETTE TITLE.
LLANGERRIG 19
RHAIADYR 21
NEAR RHAIADYR 22
CLIFFORD CASTLE 35
HEREFORD 44
ROSS 48
THE NEW WEIR 81
TINTERN 158
TINTERN ABBEY 160
CHEPSTOW 177
VIEW FROM WYNDCLIFF 198
CHAPTER I.
Philosophy of the picturesque--Peculiarities of English
scenery--Worcester--Immigration of peasant girls--The Devils' Garden--The
Rest on the Stones--Plinlimmon--Inhabitants of the summit--The
Inn--Source of the Wye.
Foreigners have often expressed their surprise that the English should
travel so far in search of picturesque scenery, when they have abundance
at home: but the remark is conceived in an unphilosophical spirit. We do
not travel for the mere scenery. We do not leave the Wye unexplored, and
go abroad in search of some other river of its own identical character.
What we gaze at in strange lands is not wood, and water, and rock, but
all these seen through a new medium--accompanied by adjuncts which array
universal nature herself in a foreign costume. A tree peculiar to the
country--a peasant in an un-English garb--a cottage of unaccustomed
form--the slightest peculiarity in national manners--even the traces of a
different system of agriculture--all contribute to the impression of
novelty in which consists the excitement of foreign travel.
The proof of this is our keener perception of the beauties of English
scenery after returning from abroad. We are then capable of instituting
a comparison; and our national manners are no longer the sole medium, but
one of various media through which nature is viewed. An untravelled
Englishman is ignorant of his own country. He must cross the seas before
he can become acquainted with home. He must admire the romance of the
Rhine--the sublimity of the (mountain) Rhone--the beauty of the Seine and
the Loire--before he can tell what is the rank of the Wye, in picturesque
character, among the rivers of Europe.
The journey from London to Worcester, which is the direct route to the
Upper part of the Wye, discloses many of the peculiarities of English
scenery and character--peculiarities which to the natives are of so every
day a kind, that it is only by reflection and comparison they learn to
appreciate them. The country seats of the great land proprietors, with
their accompaniments of lawn and plantation, extending as far as the eye
can reach, form a part of the picture; and so do the cottages of the
village peasantry, with their little gardens before the door, admitting a
peep into the interior of the humble abode. In the aristocratical
dwellings, half hidden in that paradise of groves and glades, we find
every refinement that gold can purchase, or taste produce: in the huts,
comfort, and its inseparable adjunct cleanliness, are the most striking
characteristics.
The former speak of wealth, and the happiness that depends on wealth; the
latter of comparative poverty, and the home pleasures that are compatible
with poverty. On the continent, there is always something out of keeping
in the picture. In the great chateaux and their grounds, there is always
some meanness, some make-shift observable; while in the great country
seats of England, on the contrary, all is uniform. In the cottages
abroad, even those of a higher order, there are always dirt and
slovenliness--inattention to the minute comforts of humble life--meals
snatched anyhow and anywhere--sleep taken without an idea of the luxuries
of sleep. In England, on the other hand, notwithstanding the
irregularities of fortune, we find an absolute identity in the various
classes of the population. The labourer--returned, perhaps, from mending
the highway, sits down in state to dinner, with a clean white
table-cloth, and the coarse ware nicely arranged before him. The floor
is swept, perhaps washed, to do honour to the occasion; and his wife, who
is at once the mistress and the servant of the feast, prides herself on
making her husband (whom she calls her "master")--_comfortable_.
We need not be told that this is not a universal picture. We need not be
reminded of the want and misery which exist in numerous parts of the
country, for with these we are well acquainted. The _foreigner_,
however, to whom such scenes are new, will meet with them frequently
enough, and especially on the road we are now travelling, to induce him
to set them down as one of the grand characteristics of England.
The road presents, also, at various turnings, that truly English scene, a
well-known specimen of which is viewed from Richmond Hill. A level
country lies a few hundred feet below us, and extends in front, and on
either side, till it is lost in the distance, or bound in by low and
filmy hills which just mark the horizon with their waving line of shadow.
This expanse is studded with towns, and villages, and seats, and
cottages, and square towers, and tapering spires, rising amidst woods and
groves, and surrounded by green fields and meadows. A great part of the
peculiar character of the landscape is due to the enclosures of various
kinds of foliage which separate one field from another. In most parts of
the continent--and more especially in France--these are of very rare
occurrence; and thus the beauty of the picture, when it has any beauty at
all, depends upon the colours of the different kinds of grain or other
productions, which make the vast expanse of vegetation resemble an
immense and richly variegated carpet. In spring, therefore, before these
colours have been fairly brought out, it may easily be conceived that
France is one of the least interesting countries in Europe. With us, on
the other hand, the face of the earth resembles a garden, and more
especially in one of those flat landscapes we have alluded to. The
changes of the seasons diversify without diminishing the beauty; and even
winter presents, instead of a uniform and dreary waste, a varied picture
executed in hoar frost and snow.
Worcester is one of the most aristocratic looking towns in England, and
presents every token of being a wealthy and flourishing place. Its
cathedral, an edifice of the beginning of the thirteenth century, has
drawn hither many a pilgrim foot even from foreign countries. Our
present business, however, is with the works of nature, or with those of
art fallen into decay, and their fragments standing amidst the eternal
youth of the hills and rivers, like monuments of the insignificance of
man.
Worcester is famous for its manufactures of porcelain and gloves; but our
attention was more strongly attracted to exports of another kind, of
which it appeared to be at least the entrepot, if it was not the original
market. At a little distance from the town, several waggons had halted
near a public house, and their freight, a numerous party of peasant
girls, were breakfasting by the road side. They were eating and drinking
as joyously as if their laps had been filled with far more enticing food
than bread and ale. They were on their way to some greater mart--perhaps
to the all-devouring metropolis; and when breakfast was over, they
resumed their slow journey, some few who had mounted the waggons singing
in parts, and the rest, walking by the side, joining in the chorus. They
had no fears, poor girls, of the result of their adventure--or rather, no
forethought.
But it is not till after we pass the little town of Kington, on the
eastern borders of Herefordshire, that the picturesque commences, and we
must hasten on to our more immediate task. Between Kington and New
Radnor, are the Stanner Rocks, with the Devil's Garden on their summit,
luxuriously planted--of course by no human hand--with wild flowers.
Beyond New Radnor (formerly the county town, but now a paltry village,)
opens the Vale of Radnor on one side, and on the other, a rude mountain
scene, distinguished by a waterfall of some celebrity, called
Water-break-its-neck. The stream rushes down a precipitous descent of
seventy feet, into a hollow with craggy and unequal sides. The spot of
the cascade is marked by an insulated rock, eighteen or twenty feet high,
standing erect above it like a monument.
After passing the village of Penybont, the Llanbadarn Vawr, or great
church of Badarn, is to the left of the road, an edifice which dates from
the time of the Conqueror; and nothing else of interest is observable
till we reach Rhaiadyr, on the Banks of the Wye. As it will be more
convenient, however, to examine the river in descending with the stream,
we shall only say here, that the journey from Rhaiadyr to the summit of
Plinlimmon lies through woods, and hill passes, becoming ruder and wilder
at every step we advance. The character of the population seems to
change in conformity with their physical circumstances. The want of
tidiness which marks the British mountaineer is the more conspicuous from
the contrast it presents to the opposite quality we have admired in the
plains; and already the women have assumed the round hat of the ruder
sex, and destroyed with its masculine associations the charms peculiar to
their own. Against this absurdity we must protest, whether we meet with
it in the Welsh girl, or the fair equestrian of Hyde Park. It betrays
not only the most pitiful taste, but the most profound ignorance of
nature, on which is founded the theory of female beauty.
Stedva Gerrig, or "the Rest on the Stones" now commonly called by the
name of the mountain, is a hamlet of three or four houses situated on a
stream which separates the counties of Montgomeryshire and Cardiganshire,
in a nook of comparatively level land, into which abut several of the
lower ridges of Plinlimmon. The spot has little of the wildness of
mountain scenery, but its extreme solitude; for being here near the top
of the mountainous group, and surrounded by its remaining elevations, we
are insensible of our real altitude above the level of the country.
These elevations, besides, have none of the ruggedness of character we
usually find in such places. They are, in general, smoothly-swelling
eminences, which if rising from the plain would receive the name of
hills; they are wholly naked of trees, or even brushwood; and being
covered with green herbage, they at first sight give one the idea of an
extensive grass farm, rather than a sterile mountain. It is the altitude
of the spot, however, and the nipping blasts to which it is exposed, that
render it naked of the larger kinds of vegetation; and there is only a
nook here and there capable of bearing even a scanty crop of oats. This
region, therefore, excepting a few fields around Stedva Gerrig, supplies
subsistence only to sheep; and the greater number even of these we found
had been withdrawn to situations less exposed to the Welsh winds.
Of the few inhabitants of the hamlet, the principal man of course is the
innkeeper; and the other fathers of families are shepherds. The latter
class of men have wages amounting to twelve pounds a year, and enjoy
their houses and little fields of corn and potatoes, with as much
pasturage as they have use for free of rent. The husband, assisted by
his sons, when young, tends the sheep on the mountain; the wife makes
flannel, and knits stockings; and the daughters go out to service at an
early age. Their little menage is comfortable. Their bread is barley
cakes; they sometimes salt a pig; they provide themselves with a quarter
of beef at one time, and, like their betters, "live at home, and kill
their own mutton." Nay, one of these flourishing shepherds is a rival of
_the_ innkeeper; his hut being duly licensed to sell ale, cyder, &c., and
the sign-board having the following intimation:--"The notorious hill of
Plinlimmon is on these premises, and it will be shown with pleasure to
any gentlemen travellers who wishes to see it." And this intimation
(letting grammar alone) is correct; for although the notorious article in
question, viz., the loftiest part of Plinlimmon is not entirely in the
garden, curtained off, like the balloon at the Yorkshire Stingo, from the
gaze of all who do not pay a shilling to see it, yet it is actually on
the premises, about three or four miles--only a sheep walk--distant.
The Plinlimmon inn, undoubtedly, is the place for our money. It is
now--although its character was very different only two years ago--neat,
clean, and comfortable. We do not say that it affords the accommodation
of a city on the top of a Welsh mountain, but yet to the traveller who
has seen more of the world than the plains of England, it will make a
very desirable resting-place. Such traveller, on dismounting from the
Aberystwith mail, will be right glad to sit down by a clean and bright
fire-side, and if the turf should not be lighted in the parlour, he will
be proud of the privilege of the kitchen. There, if he has our own good
fortune, he will find the landlady, a frank, cheerful, and kindly woman,
with the table drawn in quite to the hearth, and reading "Elegant
Extracts." Materials of another kind will speedily grace the board,
viz., bread, butter, cheese, eggs, and excellent home-brewed ale. Do you
sneer at this bill of fare? A fico for thy travellership! Then will
mine host enter in the midst, a bold, intelligent, yet modest fellow;
and, bustling through the various parts of the scene, will "come, like a
shadow, so depart" the substantial form of the serving maiden, her cheeks
round, and flushed, her eye beaming with innocent gaiety, and her full
and swelling chest seeming as if it were with difficulty withheld from
bursting the corsage. These three, by the way, are the only inhabitants
of the hamlet who speak English.
After supper, the traveller, if he be not of the heathen sect of
Tee-totallers, takes a glass of brandy and water, for the reason assigned
by St. Paul in his Epistle to Timothy, or any other orthodox reason; and
finally, he will enter into a clean and comfortable bed, and sleep, not
the less soundly it is to be presumed, that his meal had not involved the
murder of a chicken, or of any other of his fellow creatures of the
earth.
The next morning the landlord walked with us to the source of the Wye,
about three miles distant. We ascended and descended several of the
rounded summits already mentioned; and upon the whole, the little
excursion is somewhat trying to the lungs. A rill flowed between every
two eminences, destined soon or late to unite with the Wye, and at length
the latter stream appeared, bubbling down the side of a slope in a volume
which might be comprised in the circumference of a teacup. Higher up, a
few rushes seem to hide the fountain from which it springs; but following
for a brief space a line of damp, plashy earth above, we reach a tiny
pool, little more than a hand-breadth across, supplied by droppings
rather than gushes from a bank of black earth--and this is the source of
the Wye. Looking down its tortuous valley, the view is majestic from the
massive forms of the objects which surround it; but the solitude, the
dreariness, the utter desolation of the scene, form the distinctive
features of the picture.
Plinlimmon, or Pumlumon, is not, correctly speaking, a single mountain,
but several distinct mountains rising from one base. Each of these
distinct mountains, again, is subdivided into several others; but in the
aggregate, there is little of the variety which might be expected from so
extraordinary an assemblage. It is entirely destitute of wood. There
are none of the craggy peaks and precipices which usually form the
picturesque of mountain scenery. All is smooth but blackened turf,
frequently undulating over fathomless bogs, the mysteries of which the
traveller who ventures into this desolate region without a guide has a
fair chance of exploring. The summit, of which the highest point is two
thousand four hundred and sixty-three feet above the level of the sea,
forms a plateau of several miles; whence the hills of Cardiganshire are
seen to the south; Cardigan bay and Saint George's channel to the west;
to the north, the perpendicular brow of Cader Idris; to the north-west,
the three-peaked Breidden hills; and to the east, the fertile plains of
Herefordshire and Shropshire.
Besides the Wye, there are several other rivers which have their source
on Plinlimmon, the most distinguished of which is the Severn. About two
miles distant from where we now stand, this stream issues from a little
bog-hole, in a volume which might be stepped across by a child. The
whole mountain, in fact, seems a reservoir of water; and it is not
surprising that Owen Glendwr should have been able to maintain himself
here, as he did in 1401, even with so small a force as a hundred and
twenty men. The entrenchments made by the hero may still be traced; and
brazen spearheads, and other instruments of war, have been found within
them in our own day.