SNOWDON
Beauty of shape of Snowdon--Vortigern retreated to it--Story of his
castle--Merlin--S. Germanus--The last Llewelyn--Dolbadarn--Owen
and David--Treachery--David Gam--Topography of the Snowdon
district--Glacial action--The great red sea--Llanberis--Church
rights a family matter--Married clergy--Beddgelert--The legend of
the hound--Whence it came and how it grew--Capel Curig--Curig visits
Brittany.
SNOWDON is a topic to be approached with hesitation and reluctance,
because it has been so much and so well written about that it is not
easy to describe the mountain without a sense of falling behind others
who have done the work superlatively well. It is therefore advisable to
touch only on such topics as have been passed over by other writers, or
not dealt with fully by them.
Snowdon compared with the Alps is of course inconsiderable, so far as
altitude goes; so is Pilatus, but Snowdon shares with this latter the
supreme beauty of shape, and it surpasses Pilatus in that it does not
stand near giants as those of the Oberland. And hugeness is not of the
essence of beauty. No one looking on Snowdon can deny that it is a
mountain in its majesty, and that in form it is absolutely perfect.
[Illustration: SNOWDEN, FROM BWLCH GLAS]
Snowdon, or Eryri as it is called by the Welsh, has served as a
fastness to which the hard-pressed princes of Gwynedd could retreat
before the overwhelming power of England. It was an impregnable
stronghold, and the Norman or English could not penetrate to it, and
could only hope to starve into surrender those who took refuge there.
It could not be approached through broad valleys. It is reached only
by ravines. It was possible at any time for those sheltering in its
recesses to collect unobserved and swoop down on a town or castle where
the defenders were few. To Snowdon Gwrtheyrn Gwrtheneu, or Vortigern,
retreated before the angry and resentful British, who laid upon him the
blame of calling in the aid of the Jutes and Saxons, although he had
only so done as the mouthpiece of their general council.
Nennius tells a strange story of the founding by him of a castle in
Snowdon.
The _History of the Britons_ that passes under the name of Nennius was
composed in Alclud, or Dumbarton, about the year 679. It was re-edited
by one Nennius in or about 796, and it underwent a second redaction by
Samuel in Buallt, or Builth, later again, about 810.
The story of Vortigern and his castle in Snowdon is compounded of two
distinct legends that have been clumsily put together. It is to this
effect. Vortigern desired to erect a residence for himself in Eryri,
but met with difficulties over the foundations. He consulted his
Druids, and they recommended him to bury under the wall a fatherless
child whose parentage was unknown. The laying of the foundations with
a human victim was a common form of pagan superstition. The reason
for selecting a child of unknown parentage was to avoid the risk of
a blood-feud, should one be taken from a tribe of which he was an
acknowledged member. After some seeking, a brat was discovered that
answered the requirements, and he was brought before Vortigern, where
he announced to the king that the real reason why his foundations gave
way was that they were laid in a swamp, and that in the swamp were two
reptiles engaged in incessant conflict. Then he proceeded to declare
that these creatures symbolised the Briton and the Saxon, that although
the latter seemed to prevail, in the end the Briton would obtain the
mastery and expel the other from the land.
The story goes on, with curious inconsequence, to relate that the
boy informed Vortigern that he was named Ambrose, and was the son of
a Roman consul; and then taking a high hand he ordered the king to
depart and leave the fortress and the better portion of his kingdom
to himself, and Vortigern meekly submitted. But the story gets still
further tangled up, for Ambrose is made to be one with Merlin the
prophet and enchanter.
Now, although the story as it reads is in a muddle, it is possible to
disentangle the threads, and, moreover, to restore a substratum of
truth that has been disturbed by the importation of foreign matter.
The incident of the reptiles and the prophecy must be eliminated as
belonging to a legend of Merlin. Vortigern, it would seem, after
popular feeling had turned against him, fell back on the pagan party,
which was still strong in country places, whereas the Romano-British
towns were wholly Christian. That he actually did have recourse to the
pagan practice of burying a child alive under the foundations of his
castle, or of sprinkling them with its blood, is probable enough under
the circumstances. The practice did not die out for some time. From
this fortress Vortigern was obliged to withdraw through the defection
of his followers, and it was seized by Ambrose, who was at the head
of the opposed faction. He had been raised to lead the revolt because
descended from one of the Roman emperors--in fact, from Maximus, who
had married Elen.
Ambrose was supported by S. Germanus, who excommunicated Vortigern and
called down the vengeance of Heaven on his head.
The palace of Vortigern is now called Dinas Emrys, or that of Ambrose,
and it rises above Llyn Dinas--some mounds indicate the site--on the
summit of an insulated hill surrounded by woods. It would be most
interesting to explore this spot with pick and spade--not in quest of
the child’s bones under the foundation-stone, nor of the reptiles, but
in the hopes of finding personal ornaments and weapons of the period of
Vortigern and Ambrose, for such are most scanty and rare in our museums.
Merlin, or, as the Welsh call him, Myrddin or Merddin, was the son
of Morfryn, and he was actually engaged in conflict against his own
brother-in-law Rhydderch Hael in the north of Britain; Rhydderch being
the leader of the Christian Britons, Merlin threw himself into the
opposed party, which was pagan, headed by Gwenddolew, and was defeated
in a great battle at Arderydd, now Arthuret, in 573.
To Snowdon twice retreated Llewelyn, the last Prince of Wales of the
House of Cunedda.
If it served the Welsh princes as a refuge, it was also of use to them
as a prison, in which they could hold their most dangerous adversaries,
and the tower of Dolbadarn at the foot of Llyn Peris was their gaol.
The most noted of those who were there confined was Owen the Red,
brother of Llewelyn ab Gruffydd. On the death of David, son of Llewelyn
the Great, in 1246, the Welsh of Gwynedd chose the brothers Owen
and Llewelyn as joint kings to rule over them and lead them against
the English. It was an injudicious choice, for in Wales in a royal
family a man’s worst foes were those of his own household, and the
electors might have foreseen that these brothers would ere long fly
at each other’s throat. The two princes had a brother David, who was
dissatisfied at being left out in the cold, and he hasted to the court
of King Henry III. to obtain his assistance against his successful
brothers. The King was delighted to have an excuse for fomenting
fratricidal war in Wales, and he flattered and encouraged David, who
began to intrigue with Owen against Llewelyn. Suddenly, in 1255, these
two brothers raised the standard of revolt, but Llewelyn was on his
guard, and he captured both of them and slew many of their followers.
Owen, as the more dangerous, was sent to Dolbadarn, and was immured
there for twenty years; but David was liberated in 1258, as he feigned
the profoundest contrition.
[Illustration: ABERGLASLYN PASS]
But David only waited his opportunity, and he entered into a secret
arrangement with Owen, prince of Powys, to murder his brother Llewelyn,
so that he might secure the crown of Gwynedd. In order to further this
plot, David recommended Llewelyn to invite the prince of Powys to a
great banquet at Aberffraw, to be followed by hunting parties in Môn.
This was in 1275. Llewelyn, unsuspecting treachery, agreed. Prince Owen
arrived, but his retinue, on which he relied for obtaining the mastery
of the palace, in the confusion consequent on the murder, was detained
by bad weather and the impassability of the roads. David was alarmed.
He suspected that Owen of Powys purposed betraying him, and he took to
flight.
Llewelyn, perplexed at the disappearance of David, questioned Owen,
who made full confession of the plot. The conspirators intended to
have surrounded the bedroom of Llewelyn in the night, and to have
assassinated him in his sleep.
The Prince of Wales, on learning all particulars, cited David to
appear before him and answer to the charge of high treason; but David
declined to attend, and, collecting a body of armed men, fell on and
ravaged portions of his brother’s territory, and when Llewelyn marched
to chastise him he fled to the court of Edward I., who received him
favourably.
In 1277 Edward invaded Wales, and was greatly assisted by David, who
knew the country and the people, and was able to foment jealousies
among the Welsh chieftains, and cripple Llewelyn in his resistance to
the advance of the invader, by detaching them from his allegiance. Owen
the Red from his prison contrived to send to Edward his best wishes for
his success.
Llewelyn was now obliged to take refuge in Snowdon, and was forced
to come to terms with Edward, and by these terms he was compelled to
release Owen. After this we hear little more of this red-haired fox,
and it is probable that his long captivity had broken his health.
Now the false and fickle David deserted Edward, and went over to the
side of Llewelyn, actuated, not by patriotism, but by self-interest.
In 1282 King Edward again invaded Wales, but his advance was checked
at Conway. He accordingly sent a fleet to effect the subjugation of
Anglesey, and to form that a base for operations against Llewelyn in
Snowdon. Having succeeded in this, Edward exclaimed exultantly, “Now I
have plucked the finest feather out of Llewelyn’s tail.”
Llewelyn, hard pressed in Snowdon, left that stronghold to be defended
by David, whilst he hastened south to rally the Welsh under the prince
of Dynevor. He fell into an ambush, as has been already related, and
was killed. David was captured, and hanged, drawn, and quartered.
Another prisoner detained in Dolbadarn was David Gam of Brecon, who
tried to assassinate Owen Glyndwr. But about him more when we come to
Machynlleth.
To understand the topography of the Snowdon district we must conceive
of Snowdon itself as shaped much like a star-fish with the radiating
arms curved, and little lakes lying in the hollows between the ridges.
The entire mass, however, forms a rude triangle with its base at Llyn
Dinas and Llyn Gwynant and the pass of Bwlch-y-Gwyddel, the neck that
attaches Snowdon to the stately mountain mass of Moel Siabod. North of
Llyn Padarn and Llanberis is again a great mountain bulk.
The geology of Snowdon is too complicated for the unscientific eye to
understand and unravel, but broadly it may be described as eruptive
matter breaking through the Cambrian slates. These slates are the best
in England, though their purple tinge is unpleasant to the eye, and the
silvery grey is far more grateful. The slate quarries find employment
for armies of workmen, but are detrimental to the beauty of the
scenery, the mountain-sides being sliced and hacked and hewn into, and
over the hideous piles of débris it will take thousands of years for
the grass to grow.
Even the uninitiated eye will soon be able to detect the traces of
glacial action in scored rocks as the great ice rivers moved over them,
scratching them with the stones embodied in the frozen stream, in the
fragmentary moraines, and in the eratic blocks.
Once, in that cold remote age, the sea, a red sea, swept from the mouth
of the Dee over Cheshire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire, to the estuary
of the Severn. Wales was a great mountainous island with glaciers
rolling down the valleys, discharging their mighty rivers of ice into
it. The Wrekin stood up above the waters, and the waves leaped about
it. The great rollers from the north plunged and shivered into foam
against Wenlock Edge. The swirls formed the pools that are now still
basins full of carp around Ellesmere; it deposited its salt in the
beds whence the brine is pumped at Droitwich and in Cheshire. Rafts of
ice broken off from the glacier, descending the valleys of the Dee,
the Severn, and the Wye, drifted about till they melted, tilted, and
discharged their burdens of stone, brought from the Welsh mountains,
over the sea bed, so that now these are found strewn around Birmingham
and Bromley, scattered over the Clent and Lickey Hills.
Snowdon, unhappily, is fond of wearing his cloud-cap, that Tarn-Kappe
of Northern mythology which was supposed to make him invisible who
donned it. In the _Niebelungen Lied_, one of the four greatest epic
poems the world has produced, when Gunther, the Burgundian king, goes
to court, Brunehild of Iceland, the virago, informs him she will
have none but such as can overmaster her in hurling and in leaping.
Siegfried dons the mist-cap, and puts his hand behind that of Gunther
to assist him in casting the spear and pitching the stone, and he
takes him in his arms to leap, and so wins the bride for Gunther. And
dear old Snowdon with his mist-cap on has baffled the forces of Norman
and English again and again as he hugged to his heart the gallant but
outnumbered Welsh. It was not the rugged heights or the impenetrable
ravines alone that bewildered and held back the invader, but the cap of
cloud which Snowdon drew over the refugees who clung to him for safety.
Standing forward, and looking over the western sea, Snowdon attracts
the vapours, and they are fortunate who, ascending it, can see from its
summit the glorious panorama of tossed mountain ridges and jewelled
lakes surrounding it.
[Illustration: LLANBERIS]
And now a few words relative to those places whence the visitor to
Snowdon will explore this beautiful neighbourhood.
Llanberis, much given over to slate quarrying, takes its name from
a certain Peris, “Cardinal of Rome,” of whom scarcely anything but
the name is known, not even his pedigree,[2] and that means a great
deal, or rather did so, till the Normans came into Wales and upset the
ecclesiastical order there.
_Achau y Saint_ was the _Who’s Who_ of the Welsh Church. Now when
an ecclesiastic founded a church and obtained land around it,
constituting what we may call his parish, that church and parish became
the hereditary property of his family. It was accordingly of first
importance to establish who he was, and who were his blood relations.
Thenceforth every pater-familias of his family had rights to land
in the benefice, be he layman or cleric. All the land in the parish
belonged to the family of the saint. To establish a right to land in
it a man had to prove his descent; consequently, next to fixing the
pedigree of the founder came the preservation of the genealogies of the
descendants.
It did not in the least matter whether they were in Holy Orders or not,
they had hereditary rights in the benefice. If among them there were
one, two, or even a dozen, who were clerics, all these clerics were
co-rectors--that is to say, they had their rights to land in the parish
as kinsmen of the saintly founder. What they received in their clerical
capacity were surplice dues. Gerald the Welshman, who lived in the
twelfth century, speaks of it as an “infamous custom.” No doubt it did
not work well. There was no responsible priest with the cure of souls.
Some one or other of the tribe who was in sacred orders celebrated
divine service and administered the sacraments, but all went on in a
hugger-mugger way. Gerald speaks of parishes with several rectors.
Even bishoprics passed from father to son. Archbishop Peckham, in his
visitation in 1284, complained that this custom was ruinous to the
well-being of the Church. As all the householders of an ecclesiastical
tribe lived on the proceeds of the benefice, there was scarcely enough
coming in to the share of the actual priest who ministered, to support
him. The principle of co-ownership in land prevailed in the secular
tribes, and it extended to the ecclesiastical tribes as well, that is
to say, to those of the saint’s kin living about the church on Church
lands. Gerald says:--
“The Church has almost as many parsons or parties as there are
principal men in the parish, and the sons, after the decease of their
fathers, succeed to the ecclesiastical benefices, not by election, but
by hereditary right; and if a bishop should dare to presume to appoint
or to institute anyone else, the people would most certainly revenge
the injury on the institution or the instituted.”
It was probably to get rid of this mischievous custom that the Norman
conquerors and the English barons who occupied castles in Wales turned
such benefices as they could lay their hands on into vicarages under
monasteries. Then the abbots or priors appointed some of their monks
to minister in these parishes, and these men were entirely detached
from all family ties in the place, and could attend to its spiritual
charge and to that only. But till this new order of things came in--and
it came in slowly and by degrees, and was forced on a reluctant
people--the genealogies of the saints and of their kin were preserved
with the utmost care. People were much more anxious to remember their
pedigrees than the stories of the lives of the founders. The pedigrees
were the title deeds to the enjoyment of valuable rights to land and
other endowments.
In the Latin Church a saint was remembered for what he had done, for
his holy life; in the Celtic Church all that was nothing--he was valued
for the land he had acquired, and which he transmitted to his posterity.
In the Welsh Church, saints, bishops, abbots, clergy, as a rule, were
married, and took care to transmit their benefices parcelled up among
their sons. When the Latin ecclesiastics condescended to write the
lives of the Celtic saints they suppressed this fact. Thus Gildas the
historian, Abbot of Ruys, and a reformer of the Irish Church after the
reaction to paganism that followed the death of Patrick and his devoted
band, was a married man, and the father of some half a dozen children.
He had two biographers. Neither says a word about this; each asserts
that from boyhood he was “crucified to the world and the world to
him”; that he “scorned transitory things,” and lived a life of severe
self-abnegation. His son Cenydd, or Keneth, was a hermit in Gower,
and he also had wife and family. But those terrible genealogies, so
carefully preserved by the Welsh, tell us facts not quite in harmony
with the statements of these “Lives,” just as parish registers and the
wills in probate courts make sad havoc of some of the pedigrees of our
gentle families as given in “Burke” and in county histories.
Beddgelert is visited annually by a crowd of tourists, who drop a tear
on the grave of Llewelyn’s faithful hound. Who Celer was, who has given
a name to the place, is not known. Llewelyn may have had a dog called
Kill-hart, as we shall see presently, that was true and dear to him,
and the beast may have been buried here--that is possible enough; but
the story of the death of Gelert, killed by his master in mistake,
is not true--it is an importation. The full legend as connected with
Beddgelert appears first of all in Jones’s _Musical Relicks of the
Welsh Bards_ (ed. 1794, p. 75) about a dog, Cylart, at Beddgelert. Then
came Spencer’s poem, _Beth-Gelert, or the Grave of the Greyhound_,
which was first printed privately as a broadsheet in 1800, when it
was composed. He says: “The story of this ballad is traditionary in a
village at the foot of Snowdon, where Llewelyn the Great had a house.
The greyhound named Gelert was given him by his father-in-law, King
John, in the year 1205.” This is taken straight out of the note of
Jones, date and all. We may well inquire what was Jones’s authority.
The legend had found its way into Wales at least in the sixteenth
century, for there is an _englyn_, in a MS. written in that century,
to Llewelyn’s hound, Kilhart, “when it was buried at Beddgelert”; and
the legend occurs as one of the pseudonymous _Allegories_, or _Fables
of Catwg Ddoeth_, in the Iolo MSS., written about the same century,
and, as all the other documents there, in the South Welsh dialect.
It is there entitled, “The Man who killed his Greyhound.” It is
therein connected with a man “who formerly lived at Abergarwan.” The
tale--infant in cradle, a greyhound, a wolf--is given complete, and one
of the popular sayings it gave currency to--“As sorry as the man who
killed his greyhound”--is found in most collections of Welsh proverbs.
As to the allegories of Catwg Ddoeth, the collection was itself an
importation from the popular mediæval volume _The Sayings of Cato the
Wise_, and it was foisted on S. Cadog of Llancarfan.
[Illustration: BEDDGELERT]
With respect to the grave of the greyhound at Beddgelert, Professor
Rhys says that there are still alive old men there who remember and can
testify to having seen the cairn erected by the landlord of the Goat
Inn.
We have, then, the story traced so far. It was brought into Wales in
one of the popular collections of tales that circulated in the Middle
Ages; then it was applied to some man, nameless, at Abergarwan, in
South Wales. Then it attached itself to Llewelyn; Jones took the
_englyn_, invented the date and the fable that it was presented by King
John to Llewelyn. Next, Spencer composed the ballad which at once
became popular, and finally the innkeeper at Beddgelert manufactured
the grave of the dog. But let us go a little further back, and track
the still earlier history of the tale.
It appears first of all in the _Pantschatantra_, a collection of
stories made in Sanskrit (in India) some centuries before the Christian
era. It was translated into Syriac under the title of _Kalilah and
Dimna_. This was rendered into Arabic under the Calif Almansor
(754-775), and by this means spread and became a popular story-book
throughout the Mussulman world. It was translated into Persian in or
about 1150, and into Greek by Simon Seth about 1080, and by John of
Capua into Latin about 1270. In Spain it had been rendered out of
Arabic by Raymond of Beziers in 1255, and it became a source of many
collections of tales, as that of the _Seven Wise Masters_ and the
_Gesta Romanorum_, that circulated in the Middle Ages throughout the
Western world.
The story of the faithful beast slain by its master through a hasty
conclusion that it had devoured his son is found in Thibet, in
Russia--almost everywhere in Asia and in Europe.
In its original form in the _Pantschatantra_ it stands thus:--
“The wife of a Brahmin had an ichneumon in the house, as well as a
child. One day she was about to go to the well to draw water, and she
said to her husband, ‘Look sharply after the baby whilst I am away,
lest the ichneumon do it a mischief.’ But the man went off begging,
and neglected his charge. In the meanwhile a venomous black serpent
approached the crib, and the ichneumon flew at it and killed it. Then
the creature ran out, with its mouth bloody, to meet the woman as she
returned from the well. When she saw the animal with its jaws dripping
with gore she rushed to the conclusion that it had killed her son, and
threw the pail at it and crushed the life out of it.”
[Illustration: CAPEL CURIG]
An ichneumon was not an animal known in Europe, and so the translators
changed it into any beast that they thought would serve--as a cat, a
weasel, or a dog--and some vaguely describe it as a “domestic beast.”
The oldest form of the local legend is found in a MS. dated 1592. This
relates that the Princess Joan, natural daughter of King John, and wife
of Llewelyn the Great, brought a noble staghound with her from England,
and that the dog was one day fatally wounded by a horn-thrust when on a
chase. In another MS. of the same period the dog is called Kilhart, and
this seems to have been its real, an English, name, “Kill-hart.”
Capel Curig takes its designation from S. Curig; he departed by
Cornwall to Brittany. In Cornwall and Wales the Latin clergy speedily
displaced him from the churches he had founded, and put Cyriacus, a boy
martyr of Tarsus, into his room.
But he has been better respected in his adopted land. At Perros-Guirec
is his oratory on a rock in the bay, to which he was wont to retire
from visitors and troublesome distractions, to read, meditate, and
pray. The tide flows around the rock, so that Curig was cut off from
interference by dancing waves. The wonderful spire of Kreisker at
S. Pol de Léon is attached to a chapel that he is reported to have
founded, and it is regarded as the finest in Brittany.