S. ASAPH
Situation of the city--The cathedral--Tomb of Bishop Barrow--Epitaph
of Dean Lloyd--The _Red Book of S. Asaph_--Dick of Aberdaron--Parish
church--Catherine of Berain--Meiriadog--The legend of Cynan, and
of the Eleven Thousand Virgins--Ffynnon Fair--Cefn caves--Plas
Newydd--Cawr Rhufoniog--Covered avenue--Rhuddlan--The air
“Morfa Rhuddlan”--Welsh airs--Need for careful examination and
discrimination--Stories connected with certain tunes--Welsh hymn
tunes--Gruffydd ab Llewelyn--Constitution of Rhuddlan--Edward “Prince
of Wales.”
THE city of S. Asaph is pleasantly planted, for the most part, on
rising ground above the River Elwy, in the vale of the Clwyd, which
unites with the Elwy below this miniature city.
The cathedral is small and not particularly interesting, and the
interior effect is spoiled by the choir being moved under the central
tower, and the transepts being closed in to form vestries, chapter
house, consistory court, and library. The structural choir is a mere
chancel without aisles, and possibly the dean, canons, and choristers
may have felt cramped in it; but the alteration has robbed the interior
effect of its dignity. The clerestory windows are square-headed, and
the arches of the nave rise from pillars without capitals. The chancel
was restored by Sir Gilbert Scott in the Early English style, and
contains some good modern glass, and some that is execrable.
Outside the cathedral, at the west end, is the tomb of Bishop Isaac
Barrow, who died in 1680, with the epitaph: “O vos transeuntes in
Domum Domini, domum orationis, orate pro conservo vestro ut inveniam
misericordiam in Die Domini.”
In the cathedral yard is a cross, with eight figures about it, of
those who assisted in the translation of the Bible into Welsh, but
it commemorates especially the tercentenary of Bishop Morgan’s first
complete translation, published in 1588.
One of the deans of S. Asaph, Dr. David Lloyd, who died in 1663, is
said to have made for himself the following epitaph:--
“This is the epitaph
Of the Dean of S. Asaph,
Who, by keeping a table
Better than he was able,
Ran much into debt
Which is not paid yet.”
He was buried at Ruthin, of which he was once warden, but there is no
monument there to his memory.
In the episcopal library is preserved the _Red Book of S. Asaph_,
originally compiled in the fourteenth century, containing a fragmentary
life of the saint who gives his name to the church and diocese, and
early charters and other documents connected with it.
The site was granted to S. Kentigern, of Glasgow, when driven away
by the king of Strathclyde, Morcant, and he only returned after
the defeat, in 573, of Morcant by Rhydderch Hael. Then he left his
favourite disciple Asaph to take charge of the foundation he had made
on the banks of the Elwy.
[Illustration: CATHERINE OF BERAIN]
In the cathedral library is preserved the polyglot dictionary of Dick
of Aberdaron, a literary vagabond. He is reported to have acquired
thirty-four languages. He was a dirty, unkempt creature, who wandered
about the country, his pockets stuffed with books. His predominant
passion was the acquisition of languages. A dictionary or a grammar was
to him a more acceptable present than a meal or a suit of clothes. He
had no home, and was sometimes obliged to sleep in outhouses.
Bishop Carey did what he was able for him, but his personal habits made
him unsuitable to have in a decent house, and he was impatient of every
restraint. He died in 1843, and was buried at S. Asaph.
The little parish church consists of nave and aisle of equal
length--one dedicated to S. Kentigern and the other to S. Asaph.
It lies at the bottom of the hill, and has a somewhat original
Perpendicular east window.
Not far from S. Asaph is Berain, the residence once of Catherine Tudor,
an heiress with royal blood in her veins, for she was descended from
Henry VII., who, when he was in Brittany collecting auxiliaries for his
descent on England to win the crown from Richard III., had an intrigue
with a Breton lady named Velville, and became the father of Sir Roland
Velville. Sir Roland’s daughter and heiress, Jane, married Tudor ab
Robert Vychan of Berain, and their only child was Catherine. She is
commonly spoken of as Mam Cymru, the Mother of Wales, as from her so
many of the Welsh families derive descent.
She was first married to John Salusbury of Lleweni, and by him became
the mother of Sir John Salusbury, who was born with two thumbs on
each hand, and was noted for his prodigious strength. At the funeral
of her husband, Sir Richard Clough gave her his arm. Outside the
churchyard stood Maurice Wynn of Gwydir, awaiting a decent opportunity
for proposing to her. As she issued from the gate he did this. “Very
sorry,” replied Catherine, “but I have just accepted Sir Richard
Clough. Should I survive him I will remember you.”
She did outlive Clough and married Wynn. She further survived Wynn, and
her fourth husband was Edward Thelwall of Plas-y-Ward. She died August
27th, and was buried at Llannefydd, September 1st, 1591, but without a
monument of any kind.
Popular tradition will have it that she had six husbands in succession,
and that as she tired of them she poured molten lead into their ears
when they slept, and so killed them. Her last husband, seeing that her
affection towards him was cooling, and fearing lest he should meet
with the same fate as her former husbands, shut her up in a room that
is still shown at Berain, and starved her to death. There are several
supposed portraits of Catherine to be found in Wales, but not all are
genuine. One by Lucas de Heere, painted in 1568, is in the possession
of Mr. R. J. Ll. Price of Rhiwlas, near Bala, and shows her to have
been a very beautiful woman with hard, dark eyes. Another genuine
portrait is at Wygfair, in the possession of Colonel Howard, and this
was taken when Catherine was an old woman. The remorseless stony eye is
that of one quite capable of the trick of the molten lead.
In a lovely situation on the Elwy is Meiriadog, whence came Cynan,
brother or cousin of the road-building Elen. When Maximus went to Gaul
to assert his claims to the purple, Cynan accompanied him and never
returned. Much fabulous matter has attached itself to this Cynan. It
was supposed that after the death of Maximus he retired to Brittany,
with all the gallant youths who had accompanied him to the war, and
as they were forbidden to return home they appealed for a shipload of
wives to be sent out to them. Accordingly Ursula, daughter of Dunawd, a
Welsh king, started with eleven thousand marriageable damsels, but they
were carried by adverse winds up the Rhine, and landing at Cologne were
there massacred by the Huns. The walls of a church there are covered
with little boxes containing their skulls.
The earliest mention of these gay young wenches starting out
husband-hunting, and meeting instead with a gory death, is found in a
sermon preached between 752 and 839, but in it Ursula is not named. In
an addition to the chronicle of Sigebert of Gemblours, made by a later
hand, is an entry under 453:--
“The most famous of wars was that waged by the white-robed army of
11,000 Holy Virgins under their leader, the holy Ursula. She was the
only daughter of Nothus (Dunawd), a most noble and rich prince of the
Britons.”
She was sought in marriage, the writer goes on to say, by “a certain
most ferocious tyrant,” and her father wished her to marry him. But
Ursula had dedicated herself to celibacy, and the father was thrown
into great perplexity. Then she proposed to take with her ten virgins
of piety and beauty, and that to each, with herself, should be given
an escort of a thousand other girls, and that they might be suffered
to cruise about for three years and see the world. To this her father
consented. And the requisite number of damsels having been raked
together, Ursula sailed away with them in eleven elegantly furnished
galleys. For three years they went merrily cruising over the high seas,
but at the end of that time, having ventured up the Rhine to Cologne,
they were all put to the sword.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, who died in 1154, gives another form to the
story. He relates that the Emperor Maximian (Maximus), having
depopulated Northern Gaul, sent to Britain for colonists wherewith
to repeople its waste places. Thus out of Armorica he made a second
Britain, which he put under the rule of Conan Meriadoc, who sent to
have a consignment of British girls forwarded to him. At this time
there reigned in Cornwall a king, Dinothus by name, and he listened
to the appeal and despatched his daughter Ursula with eleven thousand
young ladies, and sixty thousand others of lower rank. Unfavourable
winds drove the fleet to barbarous shores, where all were butchered.
The story is, of course, devoid of a shred of historic truth, and is a
mere romance, and a silly and poor one.
But there is something to be added.
Conan Meriadoc has figured largely in fabulous Breton history. At
the beginning of the eighteenth century a priest of Lamballe, named
Gallet, wrote a history for the glorification of the dukes of Rohan,
and he spun a wonderful tale that imposed on later serious historians.
According to him, Conan or Cynan Meiriadog, disappointed at not getting
Ursula, married Darerca, the sister of S. Patrick, and from this
union descended the kings of Brittany and the dukes of Rohan. This he
achieved by identifying Cynan with Caw, the father of Gildas, entirely
regardless of chronology, for Gildas, son of Caw, king in Strathclyde,
died in 570, and Cynan was contemporary with Maximus, who was killed in
388, and Patrick was born about 410.
Dom Morice, whose _History of Brittany_ was published in 1750,
reproduces this absurd and impossible pedigree, and further identifies
Conan with Cataw, son of Geraint, and uncle of S. Cybi, who died about
554.
There is a holy well, Ffynnon Fair, in the parish of Cefn, in a
beautiful situation, once very famous, but the chapel is in ruins,
though the spring flows merrily still. It was the “Gretna Green” of
the district, for here clandestine marriages were wont to take place,
celebrated by one of the vicars choral of the cathedral, till all such
marriages were put a stop to by the Act of Lord Hardwicke in 1753. The
chapel was of the fifteenth century, and is now overgrown with ivy,
and in a clump of trees. Mrs. Hemans made this, “Our Lady’s Well,” the
subject of one of her poems. In the unpretending-looking house just
across the Elwy was written one of the earliest printed Welsh grammars
(1593).
The Cefn caves are in an escarpment of mountain limestone high above
the river, and have been carefully explored. They yielded bones
of extinct animals--the cave bear, wolf, _elephas antiquus_, _bos
longifrons_, reindeer, the hyæna, and the rhinoceros--but very scanty
traces of man. The bones are preserved at Plas-yn-Cefn, the residence
of Mrs. Williams-Wynn, on whose property the caves are. The caves are
worth visiting more for the view from the rocks than for any intrinsic
interest in themselves.
A quaint Elizabethan mansion, Plas Newydd, has in its wainscoted hall
an inscription to show that it was built by one Foulk ab Robert in 1583
when he was aged forty-three. It is said to have been the first house
in the neighbourhood covered with slates. A giant, Cawr Rhufoniog, used
to visit there, and a crook is shown high up near the cornice, on which
he was wont to suspend his hat. Giants, it would appear, were in days
of yore pretty plentiful in this neighbourhood. The grave of one is
pointed out close by, and another, Edward Shôn Dafydd, otherwise called
Cawr y Ddôl, lived at an adjoining farm. His walking-stick was the
axle-tree of a cart, with a huge crowbar driven into one end and bent
for a handle. He and Sir John Salusbury (of the double thumbs) once
fell to testing their strength by uprooting forest trees.
Between Plas Newydd and Plas-yn-Cefn, in a field, is a “covered
avenue,” only it has lost all its coverers. It was in a mound called
Carnedd Tyddyn Bleiddyn, with some trees on the top. When these were
blown down in a storm, a little over thirty years ago, the cromlech
within was exposed. It was found to contain several skeletons, in a
crouching position, of what have been called the Platycnemic Men of
Denbighshire.
Between S. Asaph and Rhyl is Rhuddlan with its castle in ruins.
Formerly the tide washed its walls. The marsh, Morfa Rhuddlan, was the
scene of a great battle, fought against the Saxons in 796, in which the
Welsh, under their King Caradog, were defeated with great slaughter,
and the prisoners taken were all put to the sword. The beautiful melody
“Morfa Rhuddlan” has been supposed to pertain to a lament composed on
that occasion; but the character of the melody is not earlier than the
seventeenth century, and it apparently owes its name to the verses
adapted to it by Iean Glan Geirionydd, who lived a thousand years after
the event of this battle.
Welsh melodies require to be taken in hand by some musical antiquary
and thoroughly investigated and sifted. It will be found that along
with many noble airs that are genuinely Welsh, a goodly number are
importations from England. This was inevitable, so mixed up were the
Welsh with English families in the great houses and castles. Edward
Jones published his _Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards_
in 1784. He collected the tunes from harpers and singers, but he knew
nothing of old English music, and was incapable of discriminating what
was of home production from what was an importation; consequently, in
his collection, a goodly percentage consist of English melodies.
He gives us a Welsh air, “Difyrwch Gwyr Dyfi,” as a bardic melody, but
it is found in Tom D’Urfey’s _Pills to purge Melancholy_, published in
1719-1720, and is the old English melody of “Greensleeves” spoiled.
The melody of “Cynwyd” is none other than the venerable English air
of “Dargason,” which may be traced back in England to the reign of
Elizabeth. A tune given by Jones as “Toriad y Dydd” is the old English
air “Windsor Terrace,” and “Y Brython” is a country dance published
in _The Dancing Master_ by Playford, 1696. Jones gives the “Monks’
March” as probably the tune of the monks of Bangor when they marched
to Chester, about the year 603, and it is none other than “General
Monk’s March,” composed at the restoration of Charles II., and “The
King’s Note” is none other than King Henry VIII.’s “Pastyme with
good company.” The “Ash Grove” is doubtful. It first appears as a
popular song in Gay’s _Beggar’s Opera_, 1727, “Cease your funning.”
The _Beggar’s Opera_ became the rage in London, throughout England,
Scotland, and Ireland, and we know that it was performed also in Wales.
Edward Jones in his _Bardic Museum_, in the second series published in
1802, inserted a tune that seems to have been formed on it, but the
resemblance was confined to the first part. John Parry touched it up
and altered all the second part of the tune to what it is now. It is,
of course, possible that Gay may have heard a Welsh air and introduced
it into his opera, but it is far more probable that the _Beggar’s
Opera_, which was repeatedly performed in Wales, introduced the melody
into the Principality. One Welsh air Gay did insert in his play, “Of
noble race was Shenkin,” and he may have picked up another.
Tunes are like birds of the air that fly from place to place and light
on every tree, and are at home everywhere. There is a popular melody
sung to very gross words by the peasantry in England. I picked it up
in Devon, and it has also been found in Yorkshire, and a lady sent it
me as heard in Wales, but without the words. Mr. Chappell has noted
sixteen in Jones’s collection that are certainly English, and he did
not exhaust the number.
A curious instance of the manner in which melodies drift from their
original connections is that of the popular hymn tune “Helmsley,” to
which is sung “Lo! He comes with clouds descending.”
Thomas Olivers was born in the village of Tregynon, in Montgomeryshire,
in 1725; his father was a small farmer, who died when Thomas was a
lad, and he was then committed to the charge of his father’s uncle
Thomas Tudor, a farmer at Forden. In his youth he was of a merry and
thoughtless disposition, and was dearly fond of dancing and all sorts
of amusements. In his autobiography he states “that out of sixteen
nights and days, he was fifteen of them without ever being in bed.”
Some years after, when he was in Bristol, he was “converted” by
Whitefield, and he became a Wesleyan Methodist lay preacher, and in
1777 undertook the printing of Wesley’s _Arminian Magazine_. But his
lack of education stood in his way, and in 1789 Wesley had to take
the periodical out of his hands. In his _Journal_, Wesley enters his
reasons: “1. The errata are unsufferable. I have borne them for these
12 years, but can bear them no longer. 2. Several pieces are inserted
without my knowledge, both in prose and verse.”
Olivers became noted, however, as a hymn writer, and especially for his
tune “Helmsley,” which he gave to the world, no doubt firmly convinced
that it was original. But this it was not; it was a reminiscence of his
old unregenerate days. In fact it is an opera air, and belongs to _The
Golden Pippin_, in which occurs the song:--
“Guardian angels now protect me,
Send to me the youth I love.”
_The Golden Pippin_ appeared in 1773.
Some of the stories connected with genuine Welsh airs are delightful.
David Owen, of the Garreg Wen, lay on his death-bed, and fell into a
trance. His mother, who was watching him at the time, supposed that he
was dead. But presently he roused, and said to her that he had been in
an ecstasy, and had seen heaven open, and the harpers about the throne
were playing a wondrous strain. He called for his harp, and, with a
radiance as of the world he had visited on his face, played the tune
“Dafydd y Garreg Wen.” As the last note died away the flame of life
passed from him. The air became fixed in his mother’s memory, and has
thus been preserved.
Another story of the same musician is that he was returning home from
a feast in the early morning, and daybreak overtook him as he sat
on a stone--still pointed out at Portmadoc--and there, watching the
soaring skylark, he composed the air “The Rising of the Lark.” The
melody “Hoffedd merch Dafydd Manuel” (“The delight of David Manuel’s
daughter”) is associated with a member of a very remarkable family.
Dafydd Manuel was a poor cottager, born in Trefeglwys, Montgomeryshire,
in or about 1625. He became a poet, and lived to a very advanced age,
dying in 1726 at the age of a hundred and one. He left three children,
two daughters--also excellent poets--and a son David. The elder
daughter, Mary, noted for her wit and as a great harpist and singer,
is she whose tune is called “The delight of David Manuel’s daughter.”
Another member of the family, John, who fought in Egypt under Sir
Ralph Abercromby, was thoroughly conversant in English, French, and
Welsh. His daughter Sarah was quite illiterate till her thirtieth
year, when she learned to read fluently and became well acquainted
with the current literature of the day. Thomas Manuel, a sawyer, was
illiterate till he grew to manhood, but accidentally becoming possessed
of a French Testament, he resolved on mastering that language, which
he did very quickly. His son William was a very remarkable boy, who at
an early age--it is said at four, but this is hardly credible--could
read English, Welsh, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. At the age of eight
he was placed in Christ’s Hospital, where he died of consumption on
attaining his twelfth year. This extraordinary child had two brothers
also possessed of great natural gifts. Thomas, the eldest, was an
excellent Welsh, Latin, Greek, and English scholar. He also died of
decline. Edward, the youngest, gave promise of even more extraordinary
abilities than William. It is asserted that he could read English,
Welsh, German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew when only four years old, and
he died of consumption at the age of five. Precocious geniuses are like
candles that blaze away and gutter and are out quickly. The mother of
these remarkable children, perceiving the thirst for learning evinced
by them, taught herself to read and translate Latin and Greek, for the
sake of helping them in their studies.
Some of the Welsh hymn tunes are magnificent, and one cannot but desire
that some had been taken into such popular collections as _Hymns
Ancient and Modern_, in place of the utterly insipid trash which has
found its place there. But some are quite impossible of transference,
as “Crug-y-bar,” one of the very best. The Welsh accent so differs from
that of English, that to render the words into English, or write others
to suit the melody that are not nonsense, is almost impossible.
The Welsh melodies have a charm of their own, and they are harp tunes;
whereas a great many of the most popular of our English folk airs
are hornpipes. But, as already said, the thing needed is a critical
investigation and a sifting of Welsh melodies.
Gruffydd ab Llewelyn, king of Gwynedd (1039-1069) and prince of Wales,
had a fortress at Rhuddlan. He was a notable man, and he played a
conspicuous part in Welsh history before the Norman Conquest. Under
him the Cymry developed an amount of military capacity that was
unusual. At the commencement of his reign he raided Mercia and defeated
the English forces under Edwin, the brother of Earl Leofric, and slew
him in battle. Then Gruffydd turned his attention to South Wales, and
defeated its prince, Howel, and forced him to take refuge in Ireland.
Two years after Howel returned at the head of Irish kerns, and was
defeated again. On this occasion Gruffydd captured Howel’s wife and
made her his mistress. But in the ensuing year Gruffydd was himself
defeated and made prisoner. He, however, escaped, and returned to
Gwynedd. Howel, with a fleet from Ireland, entered the Towy, but was
beaten and killed in battle by Gruffydd.
Under Harold an English army assembled at Gloucester and marched
against the Welsh. Gruffydd made peace, but next year broke his
engagements and invaded Mercia, which was defended by the sheriff and
the Bishop of Hereford. They were, however, defeated, and both fell on
the field of battle.
In 1063 Harold determined to crush his dangerous neighbour, and he
marched to Rhuddlan and surprised Gruffydd, who, however, escaped in a
boat. Unable to follow, and not strong enough to maintain his hold on
the land, Harold contented himself with destroying Rhuddlan, and then
retired to Gloucester, but only to concert a plan for a systematic
invasion and subjugation of Wales. He collected a fleet at Bristol, and
sailed along the coast ravaging it, whilst his brother Tostig, at the
head of an army, wasted Gwynedd.
Hitherto the English had been accustomed to fight in close array,
heavily weighted with their armour. They now abandoned their old
methods, and adopted those of their foes, with the result that the
power of Gruffydd was broken, and some of his Welsh followers turned
against him and murdered him. “The shield and deliverer of the
Britons,” says the Brut, “the man who had hitherto been invincible, was
now left in the glens of desolation, after he had taken vast plunder,
and gained innumerable riches, and gathered treasures of gold and
silver, jewels, and purple raiment.”
The castle of Rhuddlan was rebuilt under the Earl of Chester at the
same time as that of Montgomery, and these formed redoubtable outposts
whence the Welsh could be watched and worried.
After the conquest of Wales by Edward I. a Constitution was drawn up at
Rhuddlan in 1284, which was included among the statutes of the realm.
English law was introduced. In the matter of succession to land, Welsh
custom was to be followed. Upon a death occurring, estates continued to
be divisible among all the children.
“The general constitutional effect was that the Principality was
considered a distinct parcel of the Kingdom of England, ruled,
however, by English laws, save so far as these were not modified by
the provisions of the statute.”[3]
I have already told the story of Llewelyn, the last of the Welsh
princes, and of his treacherous and unprincipled brother David, but I
may here enter into fuller particulars of the end of David.
He had been a fugitive with his wife and children in the forests and
mountains, hunted from place to place, with a few tenants accompanying
him, grumbling at short commons and wretched quarters, casting sidelong
glances at the English, and wondering whether they would not secure
better meals and more comfortable lodgings if they turned against their
lord and prince. And this desire took effect; for their own base ends
they betrayed him to the English king. With the same measure with which
he had dealt with his brother Llewelyn, it was meted to him. Delivered
over to the hereditary enemies of his race by men of his own household,
tongue, and blood, he was brought before Edward at Rhuddlan, and with
him were handed over the crown of King Arthur and the rest of the
regalia of Wales.
On the last day of September, 1283, Edward held a parliament at
Shrewsbury for the trial of David, who was condemned to be hanged,
cut down whilst still breathing, his belly sliced open, and his still
palpitating heart plucked out. Then his body was chopped in pieces,
and the parts distributed for exhibition in certain English towns. His
head, forwarded to London, was placed on a spike above the gatehouse of
the Tower. His steward, “faithful found, among the faithless faithful
only he,” was also convicted of high treason, and was condemned to be
torn to pieces by horses.
Edward, the second son of the King, was born at Carnarvon on April
25th, 1284, and the story goes that King Edward, then at Rhuddlan,
having assembled there the principal men of Wales, announced to them
that as the royal race of Cunedda was extinct, he would give to them
a Prince of Wales who could speak no word of English, and who was a
native of the Principality. The chieftains replied that this they
would accept, and to him they would yield obedience. Thereupon Edward
presented to them his infant son, recently born at Carnarvon.
By the death of Alphonso, Edward’s eldest son, at Windsor, this Prince
Edward became heir-apparent to the throne.
Some of the jewels of the Welsh regalia were used for the decoration of
the shrine of Edward the Confessor at Westminster.
In 1399 Richard II. was prisoner at Rhuddlan on his way to Flint. In
1646 it was captured by General Mytton from the Royalists, and was
dismantled by order of the Parliament, and has remained a ruin since.
[Illustration: RUTHIN CASTLE]