BANGOR AND CARNARVON
Foundation of Bangor--Madog the Fox--The cathedral--Owen
Gwynedd--Visit of Archbishop Baldwin--“Lazy-tongs”--Llanidan--Shrine
of S. Nidan--Curious phenomenon of the filling stoup--Bust
of Edwen--Llanfair--Owen Tudor--The fable of the Welsh
pot-girl--Carnarvon--Elen the Road-maker--Maximus--Edward
of Carnarvon--Hugh the Fat and Hugh the Wolf--Plas
Newydd--Cromlechs--Destruction of prehistoric monuments--The cult of
the dead--Llanddwyn--Story of Dwynwen--The holy well--Curious offering
in the porch--Penrhyn quarries--Names of slates--Albert Davies--The
Hirlas Horn--Lakes--Marchlyn.
BANGOR, pleasantly situated in a green valley, near the sea, sheltered
from every rough blast, communicating with Beaumaris by a steamer,
or with a ferry across the Menai Straits at Garth, backed by the
glorious heathery mountains of Carnedd Dafydd, Elidyr Fawr, and Carnedd
Llewelyn, with easy access by the London and North Western line on the
one side with the thronged watering-places on the north coast, and with
the Snowdon district on the other, serves as a convenient and cheerful
centre for excursions, and is preferable on the whole to Carnarvon.
Bangor was founded by S. Deiniol in the sixth century. Deiniol was
grandson of Pabo Post Prydain, whose monument is at Llanbabo, in
Anglesey. His father was Dunawd, prince in North Britain, who, to his
lasting disgrace, instead of uniting with his fellow-Britons against
the Picts, attacked the sons of Urien, king of Rheged or Moray, and
met with his deserts, for the Picts drove him from his principality,
and he and his sons fled helter-skelter to Wales, where he entered
the ecclesiastical estate, as the secular life was closed to him, and
became Abbot of Bangor on the Dee, in Flintshire.
Then came the massacre of the monks there by Ethelfrid in 607, and
that Bangor came to an end for ever. Those who had escaped took refuge
with Deiniol, who had already settled in Arfon on lands granted him by
Caswallon Long-hand. Maelgwn made this new Bangor the seat of a bishop,
and Deiniol was the first of the series.
Bangor had a bishop in the eleventh century who was a great scoundrel.
This was Madog Min, or the Fox. He was grandson of the king of
Tegeingyl. He entered into a conspiracy with the sons of Edwyn ab
Einion, and by his treachery obtained the assassination, in 1021, of
Llewelyn ab Seisyll, king of Powys and Deheubarth and Gwynedd, a noble
and just prince, under whose good government Wales flourished. Then
Madog betrayed Gruffydd, son of Llewelyn, for three hundred head of
cattle promised him for his treachery by Harold, king of the Saxons.
After the deed was done, however, Harold refused to pay the price of
blood, upon which Madog, execrated by his people, fled to Ireland, but
the ship in which he was foundered, and of all who were in it he alone
was drowned.
The cathedral lies in a hollow, and though small, is dignified. It
has been repeatedly destroyed, first by the Saxons in 1071 and then
again laid in ashes by Owen Glyndwr in 1402. It remained in ruins for
nearly a century. Then it was patched up, and all the new work was in
the Perpendicular style. It has been restored, and a good deal has
been added to bring out the earlier work, which was Early English. The
Welsh seem never to have developed an independent architectural school
or style of their own as have the Bretons. The builders of their great
churches were imported from England, and were not usually first-class
designers. The western tower, which was added in 1532, is as poor and
insipid as may be, the work not even of a second-class architect. All
that remains of the pre-Norman cathedral is a stone with plait-work,
now lying on the floor at the west end of the north aisle, which has
been used as a sharpener for weapons, and most of the sculptured work
has been by this means worn away.
Of the Norman cathedral also little remains. It was a cross church with
an apse to the choir, but the foundations are buried beneath the floor
of the later chancel. A Norman buttress and rude round-headed windows
in the south wall of the chancel are all above ground that recall the
church destroyed in 1071.
At the instigation of King John the city was burnt in 1212, and Bishop
Robert was taken prisoner before the high altar, but ransomed for two
hundred marks.
The structure underwent extensive alterations in the latter half of the
thirteenth century under Bishop Anian, who christened the infant son
of Edward I. When Sir Gilbert Scott undertook the restoration of the
cathedral, he preserved and used up in the work much of the earlier
sculptured stone that he found. He says: “This exhuming and restoring
to their places the fragments of the beautiful work of the thirteenth
century, reduced to ruin by Owen Glyndwr, used as mere rough material
by Henry VII., and rediscovered by us four and a half centuries after
their reduction to ruins, is one of the most interesting facts I have
met with in the course of my experience.”
In the south wall of the south transept is a tomb with a niche beside
it that is supposed to be that of Owen Gwynedd, who died in 1169,
but from the style it might be later by a century. Owen had died
excommunicated for marrying his cousin Christiana. Thomas à Becket,
from Canterbury, had fulminated a sentence of excommunication against
him, but Owen refused to put away his wife, and preferred dying under
the ban. He was, however, buried before the high altar.
In 1188 Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, made a tour through Wales,
preaching the crusade, and used this as an excuse for gaining access
to the churches of Wales and asserting therein his ecclesiastical
supremacy. When he arrived at Bangor he was in a very bad temper.
He had found everywhere that the Welsh princes and ecclesiastics
were unmoved by his appeals, and the few who took the cross had the
intention of slipping out of their obligation as soon as his back was
turned. Having crossed the Menai Straits he was met by Rhodri, son
of Owen Gwynedd and the fair Christiana, and the archbishop harangued
the prince and people on the shore. Some of the congregation accepted
the cross, but the youths of Rhodri’s family sat through the discourse
on a rock, swinging their legs, wholly unmoved by his eloquence; and
although Rhodri, out of courtesy to the archbishop, advised them to
take the pledge, they shrugged their shoulders and refused.
On entering Bangor, Archbishop Baldwin was a disappointed and offended
man, and seeing the tomb of Owen, Rhodri’s father, before the altar,
immediately gave orders that the body of the late king should be
removed from its resting-place and put in unconsecrated ground. Bishop
Guy of Bangor was forced to promise compliance. Perhaps he did as
bidden, perhaps not; but certain it is that the tomb, if it be that of
the excommunicated king, was not erected till later.
Another opinion is that this is the tomb of Bishop Anian, as there is
no sword cut beside the incised cross upon it. But if it had been that
of the prelate, we might have expected his pastoral staff to be figured
along with the cross.
In the cathedral is preserved a pair of “lazy-tongs,” used for catching
intrusive dogs by the neck and marching them forth without danger to
the sexton. At Clynnog there are also dog-tongs, with the date 1815 on
them. Indeed, dogs seem to have been a nuisance in churches for a long
time. One main reason for Archbishop Laud’s ordering the erection of
communion rails was to keep these animals away from the altar and from
defiling it.
The churchwardens’ accounts of Llanfair Talhaiarn, in Denbighshire,
show that the dog annoyance had grown to such a pass that in 1747 the
parishioners, in vestry assembled, passed a resolution to inflict a
fine of one shilling on the person who brought his dog to church during
divine service. It does not seem that this order remedied the nuisance,
for other resolutions were passed in 1749 on the same matter, and the
sexton was granted a quarterly payment “for keeping the Church clear of
’em”; and the vestry provided a stool for the convenience of the sexton
by the church door, that he might be ready to pounce on any dog that
put its nose in, and drive it out.
The plague of dogs in church was not confined to Wales. It would seem
that in 1644 they found their way into Canterbury Cathedral, for
Richard Culmer, in his _Cathedral Newes from Canterbury_, relates how
“one of the great canons or prebends there, in the very act of his
low congying (congé-ing) towards the Altar, as he went up to it in
prayer-time, was not long since assaulted by a huge mastiffe dog, which
leapt upright on him once and againe, and pawed him in his ducking,
saluting progresse and posture to the Altar, so that he was fain to
call out aloud, ‘Take away the dog! Take away the dog!’”
A pleasant excursion may be made from Bangor to Llanidan, in Anglesey,
by taking the ferry-boat across at Dinorwic.
Llanidan old church is for the most part in ruins, a new church having
been erected in a more convenient situation. The church consisted of a
nave and south aisle separated by an arcade. All but the two western
bays and the porches are roofless. In the portion still covered is
preserved the sandstone shrine of S. Nidan, who was confessor to the
monks of Penmon. It still contains what are believed to be his skull
and some of his bones. At the Reformation it was not destroyed, as it
was in the possession of a hereditary keeper of the relics, and it was
retained at a farmhouse in the parish by the family till recently, when
it was surrendered to the church, and now the fleshless bones of the
founder are in the dismantled church he founded.
The Celtic mode of dedicating a church was this, as described at
length by Bede. The founder, having selected the spot, remained on it
in constant prayer and fast for forty days and nights, eating only a
little after set of sun, and on the Sundays, when he consumed a small
piece of bread, one egg, and a little milk and water. At the end of
that period the place became his, and was called thenceforth after his
name. It is a touching thought, looking on the bones of old Nidan, to
think that there he rests who fourteen hundred years ago, by prayer and
fasting on this very spot, dedicated it to the service of God.
The south porch is curious. It is overgrown with moss and fern, and
contains a stoup that is ever full of water. If sponged out, it
rapidly fills again. It has been conjectured that there is a spring
underground, and that the stones of the porch suck up the water by
capillary attraction, and so supply the stoup. But the church and
graveyard are quite dry.
A similar phenomenon existed at Llangelynin, in the old church, between
Barmouth and Towyn, but when the roof fell in the stoup became dry. The
explanation is that the drip of the roof fell on the porch, saturated
it, and thus the water drained into the stoup. And this may be the true
explanation of the phenomenon at Llanidan.
In the church by the shrine is preserved a bust, not ill carved, of a
female wearing a crown. It is possible that this may have been intended
as the head of S. Edwen, patroness of the daughter parish. She is said
to have been a daughter or niece of Edwin, king of Northumbria, who, as
has been already related, spent his youth in Anglesey.
From Bangor the train may be taken to Llanfair, and thence it is a walk
to Penmynydd, where is the Plas, the cradle of the House of Tudor.
The handsome Owen Tudor caught the fancy of Catherine, widow of Henry
V.; but before she would marry this Welsh knight she sent a deputation
to his ancestral home to inquire into the respectability of his family,
its antiquity, and its dignity.
The commissioners arrived at the little mansion and found Owen’s mother
shelling peas, and surrounded by goats, to which she cast the pods,
and pigeons that pounced on the peas that escaped her fingers. As to
the pedigree, that was soon disposed of; the old lady could recite
the _Aps_ back to Anna, the cousin of the Virgin Mary, an Egyptian
princess. The deputation returned with its report, pulling long faces.
The Tudors were petty Anglesey squires and nothing more, not largely
estated, nor with a great retinue. But Queen Catherine was very much in
love and very eager to lay aside her widow’s weeds. “Make the most of
the pedigree,” she said, “but cook the rest of the report; write down
the goats as serving-men and the pigeons as ladies-in-waiting.”
They did so. The King’s Council was satisfied, and Catherine married
Owen, and became, by him, the mother of Edmund “of Hadham,” who was
created Earl of Richmond by Henry VI. in 1453.
His son, Edmund Tudor, married Margaret, daughter of John Beaufort,
Duke of Somerset, and great-granddaughter of “old John of Gaunt,
time-honoured Lancaster,” and so became the father of Henry VII.
Queen Catherine died in 1437, leaving, beside Edmund, a son Jasper, and
another Owen, who embraced a monastic life and died early.
As soon as the queen was dead bad times ensued for Owen. The marriage
had been winked at, but not relished, and he was seized and committed
to Newgate, and the three sons were given into the custody of the
Abbess of Barking.
Aided by his chaplain and a servant, Owen effected his escape, but
he was retaken and delivered to the Earl of Suffolk to be kept in
Wallingford Castle; but he was transferred to Newgate. He made his
escape a second time.
In the year 1453 his sons were both made earls--Edmund was created Earl
of Richmond and Jasper Earl of Pembroke. Owen had an illegitimate son,
named David, who was knighted by his nephew, Henry VII.
Owen remained unnoticed till 1459, when his own son Jasper graciously
conferred knighthood on him. Henry VI. granted him some lands and a
revenue, but a law was passed that henceforth no commoner, under severe
penalties, should presume to marry a queen dowager of England without
special licence from the king.
In 1461 he fought under the banner of his son Jasper at the battle of
Mortimer’s Cross, and would not quit the field, but was taken with
several other Welsh gentlemen, and was beheaded soon after at Hereford.
Jones, in his _Relicks of the Welsh Bards_, 1794, gives a duet which
purports to be translated from the Welsh, and which is based on the
wooing of Owen Tudor and Catherine. He does not give the original
Welsh. The air as well as the words has a very modern smack.
The duet begins:--
“_Owen._ I salute thee, sweet Princess, with title of grace,
For Cupid commands me in heart to embrace
Thy honours, thy virtues, thy favour, thy beauty,
With all my true service, my love, and my duty.
_Catherine._ Courteous, kind gentleman, let me request,
How comes it that Cupid hath wounded thy breast?
And chanc’d thy heart’s liking my servant to prove,
That am but a stranger to this, thy kind love?”
And it all winds up with their saying together:--
“Then mark how the notes of our merry town bells,
Our ding-dong of pleasure most cheerfully tells.
Then ding-dong, fair ladies, and ladies all true,
This ding-dong of pleasure may satisfy you.”
Actually it would seem that the spooning was on the side of the Queen
and not of Owen.
The house of Penmynydd dates from 1370, and is consequently the same as
that visited by the commission. The kitchen is intact, and the Tudor
arms are carved about the building, and there still is the courtyard in
which the ancestress of King Edward VII. sat shelling peas into a bowl
when the deputation arrived.
Wales is supposed to have provided a grandmother to queens Mary and
Anne, a pot-girl, who married the brewer whose tubs she scoured, so
soon as his wife died. But the story is as apocryphal as that of the
smuggling into the palace of James II. of a surreptitious Prince of
Wales in a warming-pan.
The Protestant party got up this latter scandalous fable, and Mary of
Modena and the Roman Catholic faction retaliated with the tale of the
Welsh pot-girl.
The story was this. It was confidently asserted that the wife of the
celebrated Lord Clarendon was a bare-footed Welsh lass who had gone to
London for service and found employment as a “tub-woman” to a brewer
and publican there, who subsequently married her, and on his death
bequeathed to her a large fortune. As the succession was disputed by
his relations, she sought the professional assistance of the lawyer
Edward Hyde, who introduced her to his family, and his son Edward
married her. She became the mother of Anne, whom James Duke of York
married. Her granddaughters Mary and Anne wore the crown.
But the story is contradicted by facts. Edward Hyde, who became Earl
of Clarendon and High Chancellor of England, married Anne, daughter
of Sir George Ayliffe, knight. Six months afterwards she died of
small-pox, and childless. Then he married Frances, daughter of Sir
Thomas Aylesbury, knight, and by her became the father of Mary and Anne.
Burke, in his _Romance of the Aristocracy_, tells the story somewhat
differently. He makes the pot-girl marry Sir Thomas Aylesbury, by whom
she had a daughter Frances, who married Edward Hyde.
But this story also breaks down. For it is certain that the wife of Sir
Thomas Aylesbury was the daughter of Francis Denman, rector of West
Retford, and widow of William Darell.
As far as can be ascertained there is not even a substratum of truth in
the story.
Carnarvon lies at a little distance from the old Roman town of
Segontium, or Caersaint, as the British called it. The river that flows
into the sea beneath the castle walls is the Seiont, or Saint. It was
here that resided Elen the Road-maker, daughter of Eudaf, chieftain
of Erging and Ewyas, who married the usurper Maximus, called by the
Welsh Maxen Wledig. This Roman general was raised to the purple by the
legions in Britain in 383. He was by birth a Spaniard, and had acquired
a reputation under the elder Theodosius in a campaign against the Picts
and Scots in 368.
[Illustration: CARNARVON CASTLE]
According to Welsh tradition he was a humane ruler, who showed favour
to the native British. Unfortunately for himself and for Britain,
Maximus did not content himself with recognition as king in Britain,
but aspired to be emperor in Rome. He assembled a large army of native
levies, prepared a fleet, crossed the Channel. His wife’s brother or
cousin, Cynan Meiriadog, a ruler whose home was near S. Asaph, threw in
his lot with him, and led to his assistance the flower of the youth of
Britain.
Maximus established himself at Trèves, and his wife, who was a pious
woman, gave up the imperial palace there to be made into a church. At
Trèves she has been confounded with Helena, mother of Constantine, who
never was there at all. This misconception has been made to serve as
a basis for the myth of the “Holy Coat,” the seamless robe of Christ,
which she is supposed to have brought from Jerusalem and to have given
to the church of Trèves, where it is preserved as an inestimable relic
and exposed at long intervals. Maximus was finally defeated and killed
at Aquileia in 388. His followers dispersed, and Cynan Meiriadog
and his young bucks never saw again their native land. “Britain,”
says Gildas, “was thus robbed of her armed soldiery, of her military
supplies, of her rulers, of her vigorous youth who had followed the
footsteps of the above-mentioned military tyrant, and who never
returned.”
What became of Elen after the death of Maximus can only be inferred.
Probably she escaped from Trèves and came back to her native Wales. She
has been credited by the Welsh with the great paved roads that traverse
the Principality in all directions, and they bear her name as Sarnau
Helen.
The noble castle of Carnarvon was begun by Edward I., and is
picturesque, but not equal to Conway. In it Edward “of Carnarvon,”
who succeeded to the throne, was born. He was invested with the
Principality of Wales after the extinction of the race of Cunedda in
blood.
Visitors are shown a room in the Eagle Tower as that in which Edward
first saw the light; but this tower was not erected till later, though
the castle itself was begun in 1284. It was not completed till 1322.
There had, however, been a fortress here before, erected by Hugh the
Wolf, or the Fat, Earl of Chester. This Hugh and his namesake, the
Earl of Shrewsbury, were unsparing in their cruelties to the Welsh. If
Hugh of Chester was a wolf in his ferocity, he was a fox in guile. He
inveigled the king of Gwynedd into a conference, then treacherously
imprisoned him, and the king languished in a dungeon for twelve years,
to 1098. Hugh was sister’s son to William the Conqueror, who delivered
over Wales to him to rifle at an annual rental of £40.
Gruffydd, king of Gwynedd, escaped in 1098, and at once threw himself
into Anglesey. The two Hughs marched against him from Carnarvon as
their base, and entered Mona. What had happened before, and was to
happen again and yet again, occurred now. At the supreme moment
Gruffydd flew to Ireland, and Anglesey was at the mercy of the two
Hughs. They set to work to destroy the crops, burn the houses, and
slaughter the inhabitants in cold blood, after all resistance had come
to an end. When weary of killing, they tore out the tongues, scooped
out the eyes, and hacked off the feet and hands of the peasantry, out
of mere lust of torture.
It so chanced that at this juncture a Viking fleet appeared off the
coast, under Magnus Barefeet of Norway, and Hugh the Fat of Chester
and Hugh the Proud of Shrewsbury advanced to the coast to oppose the
landing of the Northmen. On board the king’s ship was Magnus of Orkney,
a pious, feeble youth. The Norse king bade him arm for the fight.
“No,” replied the young man, “I will not hurt those who have not hurt
me.”
“Then go down, coward, into the hold,” said Magnus Barefeet wrathfully.
The young prig took his psalter and obeyed. And as the battle raged
above him, his voice could be heard above the din of arms repeating the
psalms.
The two earls were on the coast near Beaumaris, where it shelves into
the sea, riding up and down urging on their men.
“Then,” says the Icelandic Saga writer, “King Magnus shot with his bow,
but Hugh was clad in armour, and nothing was bare about him save one
eye. King Magnus let fly an arrow at him, as did also a Halogolander at
his side. They both shot at once, one arrow struck the nose-screen of
the helm and glanced aside, but the other entered the earl’s eye and
penetrated his head, and that was afterwards recognised as the king’s
arrow.”
When the shaft struck him, Earl Hugh leaped into the air. “Ah, ha!”
shouted King Magnus, “let him skip.”
The Hugh who fell was Hugh of Shrewsbury.
The Norsemen came ashore, but finding Anglesey already ravaged,
re-entered their boats and spread sail.
The Magnus who would not fight, but sat in the hold singing psalms, is
he to whom the cathedral of Kirkwall, in Orkney, is dedicated.
From Bangor, Plas Newydd, the seat of the Marquess of Anglesey, may be
visited. The grounds are fine, and there is good timber in the park,
but the house is naught. More interesting is Plas Côch, a fine example
of an Elizabethan house, built by Hugh Hughes, Attorney-General in the
sixteenth century.
In the grounds of Plas Newydd are two cromlechs, or rather what the
French would call _allées couvertes_. They are prehistoric tribal
mausoleums, and are perhaps the finest in the Principality. The cap
stone of one is 14 feet long by 13 feet broad, and from 3 to 4 feet
thick. There are vast numbers of cromlechs in Anglesey, but year by
year sees the number decrease. By the Highway Act of William IV.
(1835) the road surveyor may enter on any waste or common and dig and
search for stone and remove the same. He may also take stones from
any river. He may go into another parish and do as above, provided he
leaves sufficient stone for the said parish. He may enter enclosed
land, with the consent of the owner, and remove stone, paying nothing
for the same, but paying for any damage caused by transportation of
the stone. If the owner refuses consent, the surveyor may apply to the
nearest justice, who may authorise him to enter the enclosed land and
remove any stone he requires. Farmers are only too delighted to have
cromlechs and other prehistoric stone monuments blown up with dynamite
and cleared off. Then visitors will not trespass to see them, and all
obstruction to cultivation will be removed. Recently a number have been
destroyed in Anglesey and elsewhere. They are being used up for roads.
The cromlech, kistvaen, and _allée couverte_ were tombs. Usually a
stone was left to be removed, or a plug was inserted in a holed stone,
that could be taken out at pleasure, to enable the living to enter
the tomb and thrust back the skeletons that were old to make room for
new interments. Perhaps also food for the dead was passed in to them
through these holes.
On a day in the year, we know not what day it was, but probably at
Samhain, the Feast of the Underground Spirits, corresponding to
our All Souls’ Day, a great banquet was held in commemoration of
dead ancestors, and then the bones of the resurrected parents and
grandparents were brought out, fondled, scraped, and cleaned up, and
then reconsigned to the family tomb. The family or tribal mausoleum was
the centre round which the family or tribe revolved. All the religion
of these Neolithic and Bronze Age people centred in their dead and in
the world of spirits. We find among the Welsh, that all their tribal
rights depended on the preservation of their pedigrees. It was the same
idea in another form.
We, in our matter-of-fact and of to-day world, think nothing of our
forbears. I believe it was Swedenborg who said that Europe had still
a great lesson to learn--he did not specify it--and that this lesson
would be taught it by the Turanian race. Perhaps the Chinaman will play
his part in the future, and he will bring to us Westerns the doctrine
of the reverence due to the old people from whose lives we derive our
physical and spiritual and mental powers.
Monier-Williams, in his _Brahminism and Hinduism_ (1887), says:--
“The neglect of our ancestors, which seems to spring not so much from
any want of sympathy with the departed as from an utter disbelief in
any interconnexion between the world and the world of spirits, is by
some regarded as a defect in our religious character and practice.”
We have lost a great tie to those who have gone before in the neglect
of commemoration of the dead and realisation of the Article of the
Faith, the Communion of Saints. Our modern civilisation, our culture,
our manliness, our refinement, we owe to the straining after an ideal,
not always attained, but seen and sought by those who have predeceased
us. We do not make ourselves, we have been made and moulded into what
we are by the good old folk who are to us only names in our pedigree.
If the sins of fathers are visited on their children, and of this there
can be no doubt, so also do their virtues descend, and we owe them
something, some recognition, some kindly thought, some remembrance in
our commune with God, on that account.
So these cromlechs and kistvaens may teach us something. Anglesey and
Carnarvonshire abound in these monuments, and Mr. J. E. Griffith, of
Bangor, has published a splendid work on them, with photographic plates
representing such as remain.
[Illustration: NANT BRIDGE, CARNARVON]
From Carnarvon Llanddwyn may best be visited. To the south-east of
Anglesey is a tract of blown sand from Newborough--in Welsh Rhosyr. A
spit of land runs out into the sea, and bears a lighthouse that sheds
its warning ray over the southern entrance to the Menai Straits. It
encloses a bay, and the sands extend thence to the Straits.
On this tongue of land stand the ruins of a church founded by S. Dwyn
or Dwynwen, daughter of Brychan, the Irish king of Brecknock. The place
is not easily reached from Newborough without a guide, as the sands are
over ankle, and in places half-way up the calf, deep, and the labour
of reaching it is great to anyone who does not know the track. Yet the
place was at one time greatly resorted to. Dwynwen was the Venus of
Wales. She and one Maelor Dafodril fell desperately in love with each
other, but when he paid her his addresses, in a spirit of caprice or
levity she flouted him, and he retired deeply offended. She constantly
expected him to return, but he did not; instead, he published libels
about her. She was miserable, partly because of these slanders, partly
because she loved him still. Then in her distress she prayed to be
relieved of her passion, and an angel appeared and administered to her
some drops of a heavenly liquid, and at once her heart was cured of
love-sickness.
Next the angel administered the same medicine to Maelor, and he was
congealed to ice. God now gave to Dwynwen three requests which He
undertook to fulfil. So she asked to have Maelor thawed, and he was
so; then she asked that all lovers who invoked her aid might obtain
the object of their desires, or become indifferent; then, lastly, she
asked that she might never again hanker after the married estate.
At Llanddwyn was a holy well that is now choked by sand, but till
it was smothered up was in much resort for its oracular answers to
questions put to it. The following is an account of the ceremony from
the pen of William Williams, of Llandegai, written about 1800:--
“There was a spring of clear water, now choked up by the sand, at
which an old woman from Newborough always attended and prognosticated
the lover’s success from the movements of some small eels, which waved
out of the sides of the well on spreading the lover’s handkerchief on
the surface of the water. I remember an old woman saying that when she
was a girl she consulted the woman at the well about her destiny with
respect to a husband. On spreading her handkerchief, out popped an eel
from the north side of the well, and soon after another crawled from
the south side, and they both met on the bottom of the well. Then the
woman told her that her husband would be a stranger from the south
part of Carnarvonshire. Soon after, it happened that three brothers
came from that part and settled in the neighbourhood where this young
woman was, one of whom made his addresses to her, and in a little time
married her. So much of the prophecy I remember. This couple was my
father and mother.”
A maxim attributed to the saint is, “There is no amiability like
cheerfulness”; _i.e._ Nothing is so attractive as a cheerful spirit. S.
Dwynwen was also regarded as patroness of the cattle in Anglesey. The
same writer adds:--
“I remember hearing an instance which happened, I believe, about one
hundred and fifty years ago. The ploughing oxen at Bodeon, on April
25th, took fright when at work, and ran over a steep rock and perished
in the sea. This being S. Mark the Evangelist’s Day, it was considered
that having done work on it was a transgression of a divine ordinance,
and to prevent such accident for the future the proprietor of the
farm ordered that this festival of S. Mark should be for the future
invariably kept a holy day, and that two wax candles should annually
on that day be kept burning in the church porch of Llanddwyn, which
was the only part of the building that was covered in, as an offering
and memorial of this transgression and accident, and as a token
that S. Dwynwen’s aid and protection was solicited to prevent such
catastrophe any more. This was only discontinued about eighty years
ago, _i.e._ 1720.”
The Penrhyn slate quarries are reached by a branch line from Bangor
to Bethesda. The quarrying is carried on upon a vast scale, and the
place is interesting to the geologist on account of the presence, in
the midst of a great dyke of greenstone, of an eruptive rock which has
traversed the beds, and which has been left untouched.
The slates are cut to various sizes. Duchesses are the largest; then
come Countesses and Ladies. About the beginning of last century a slate
merchant of the name of Docer, going through the quarry with Lord
Penrhyn, advised him that the slates should be made of such-and-such
a size, and this is the origin of the name of “Docer.” By this time
the skill of the quarryman and of the slater found some new plan
continually. One wanted to do this, and another that. His lordship
failed to please everybody. His lady, seeing him in this plight, and in
continual trouble, advised him to call the slates after the names of
the degrees in the aristocracy. He took up the suggestion, and called
the 24 by 12 slate a Duchess, the 20 by 10 a Countess, and the 16 by 8
a Lady.
This has given occasion to some witty verses by an old Welsh judge,
Mr. Leycester, and I venture to quote a few of them, though they have
already been enshrined in that most delightful of all handbooks, _The
Gossiping Guide_.
“It has truly been said, as we all must deplore,
That Grenville and Pitt have made peers by the score;
But now, ’tis asserted, unless I have blundered,
There’s a man who makes peeresses here by the hundred.
By the stroke of a hammer, without the King’s aid,
A Lady, or Countess, or Duchess is made.
And where’er they are seen, in a palace or shop,
Their rank they preserve, they are still at the top.
This Countess or Lady, though crowds may be present,
Submits to be dressed by the hands of a peasant,
And you’ll see, when Her Grace is but once in his clutches,
With how little respect he will handle a Duchess.”
An interesting example has been observed in the quarries of the
direction in which a seismic wave passes. The slates are arranged in a
long series. When a shock of earthquake comes it has been noticed that
the slates click, click, click in succession, showing the course taken
by the vibration of the earth, from east to west or from north to south.
The quarry presents a busy scene. A horn gives the signal for the
blasting. When it sounds, at once the workmen disappear under sheds,
till the explosion is over with its consequent rush and rattle of
débris.
[Illustration: BETHESDA]
At Penrhyn died quite recently an old workman, Albert Davies, whose
life’s story may be told, as it illustrates the intellectual and
especially the theological bent of the Welsh mind. This mind is
speculative and disputative, and it exercises itself by choice in
political and theologic fields.
Albert Davies in his early years was a collier in South Wales, a member
of a Calvinistic Methodist family, and could speak no other tongue
but Welsh. From boyhood his great craving was for books, and, above
all, for books that treated of sacred matters. In the dinner-hour it
is very general for miners, quarrymen, and labourers to argue points
of divinity, and Davies became a strong controversialist against the
Unitarian and Socinian notions which were gaining ground among his
associates. By degrees an idea germinated in his brain that as Calvin,
Wesley, Luther, and other great founders had created organisations
to maintain and propagate their opinions, so, in all probability,
the great Founder of Christianity had formed a corporate body to
carry on His teaching unto the end of time. He had never been brought
into direct contact with the Church of England, and had an inherited
prejudice against it, as purely English, and as representing Saxon
domination over Wales, and he could think of no Body that would answer
his requirements but the Roman Church. He accordingly took up the study
of its teaching and claims, and became convinced that if Christ did
found a community, it must be the Catholic Church, which the Roman Body
asserted itself to be; and Davies was received into that communion.
After some years, however, his confidence gave way; he found, as he
thought, too much credulity, too great demands made on faith; and he
took to a study of the Fathers.
Then his faith gave way; he separated from the Roman Communion, and for
a while was adrift in his convictions. He left the colliery in which
hitherto he had worked, and wandered from place to place in bitterness
of spirit, taking up occasional work here and there, unsettled in every
way, spiritually as well as temporally.
After a while he settled as a quarryman at Penrhyn, and here for
the first time came in contact with Anglican clergy, and found that
the Church of England, while not pretending to be the whole Church,
considered herself to be part and parcel of the One Body, with the
sacred deposit of faith, orders, and sacraments. This gave him what he
wanted, and Albert Davies now found his feet on what he thought was
solid ground, and the old argumentative spirit reawoke in him, and the
dinner-hour was once more the time for theological dialectics.
So years passed, and old age and ill-health crept on. The quarry work
that he could do was ill-paid and precarious. He lived in chronic
hunger, and often was too poor to afford himself a fire in winter; for
every penny he could spare was spent in the purchase of books. He would
read none but such as dealt with theology.
At length he became so ill that he had to be taken into the workhouse.
He struggled against the necessity as long as he could, and then
submitted, saying, “It is God’s will, and I must accept what He
desires.”
In the workhouse he received better food, and comforts such as he had
not been accustomed to as a poor and failing quarryman. Any little
gratuity offered him he accepted to spend on his beloved books, and in
time his library was by no means inconsiderable. After his death, by
his express wish, they have been divided between Bangor and Beaumaris
libraries.
In the workhouse he died peacefully, and content with his solitary lot.
He was a man of rugged exterior, with a head and face singularly like
those attributed to Socrates.
Such is the story of one man of the people; it is characteristic of the
Welshman, with strong theologic bent, that leads one in this direction,
another in that; the mind is active, inquiring, especially in the
direction of abstruse studies.
In Penrhyn Castle is preserved the so-called Hirlas Horn. It was
discovered among the rubbish, during some alterations and rebuilding
of the castle, and had probably fallen from the top of one of the
towers from which it had been blown. It bears the arms of Sir Piers
Griffiths, Sheriff of Carnarvonshire in 1566, and was used for both
drinking and blowing. The name given to it is from the Hirlas horn
celebrated by Owen Cyfeiliog, prince of Powys in the twelfth century,
in a poem famous wherever the Welsh language is spoken. It was composed
immediately after a great victory gained over the English in Maelor.
“Up rose the ruddy dawn of day;
The armies met in dread array,
On Maelor Drefred’s field;
Loud the British clarions sound,
The Saxons gasping on the ground,
The bloody conflict yield.
“Fill, fill the Hirlas horn, my boy!
Nor let the tuneful lips be dry
That warble Owen’s praise,
Whose walls with warlike spoils are hung,
And open wide his gates are flung
In Cambria’s peaceful days.
“This hour we dedicate to joy;
Then fill the Hirlas horn, my boy,
That shineth like the sea!
Whose azure handles, tipt with gold,
Invite the grasp of Britons bold,
The Sons of Liberty.”
The scene is the night after the battle, and the prince passes the horn
round to each of his chiefs, and reckons up their gallant deeds. Then,
turning to the empty seats of those who have fallen, the princely bard,
who does not fail to blow his own trumpet, drinks to the memory of the
dead:--
“Pour out the horn, tho’ he desire it not,
And heave a sigh o’er Morgan’s early grave;
Doomed in his clay-cold tenement to rot,
While we revere the memory of the brave.”
From Bethesda a road leads across the mountains to Bettws-y-Coed (the
Bead-house in the Wood) by the pretty lake Ogwen. There are a number
of picturesque tarns in the neighbourhood--the wildly beautiful Llyn
Idwal, Llyn Bochlwyd, Marchlyn Mawr (the Great Lake of the Horse),
Ffynnon Llugwy, Llyn Cowlyd, Llyn Eigiau--and several days may well
be spent in exploring the beauties of this mountain region, but the
explorer must be prepared for vast solitudes and for steep scrambles,
and he must take refreshments with him.
A word of caution to anyone visiting Marchlyn. Should he see a horse,
however quiet and staid, browsing near, let him not venture to mount
it, although the beast seems to invite the weary traveller through
the heather to take a seat on its back. No sooner is he in his seat
than all its want of spirit is at an end. It flies away with its rider
towards the lake, plunges in, and will never be seen again. It is the
Ceffyl y Dwfr, the Water-horse, a spirit that lives in the depths, with
a special taste for human flesh, which it will munch below when it has
its victim at the bottom of the blue water.