LLANGOLLEN
The Vale of Llangollen--S. Collen--A Breton Llangollen--Dinas
Bran--Maelor--The old maids--The church--Vale Crucis--The
pillar of Eliseg--Plas Eliseg--Owen ab Cadwgan and Nest--End of
Owen--Corwen--Church rebuilt--English and French capitals to
pillars--Inscribed stones--Cup-markings--Caer Drewyn--Owen Gwynedd and
Henry II.--Rûg--Gruffydd ab Cynan--Image of Derfel Gadarn--Burning
of Friar Forest--Pennant Melangell--Patroness of hares--The Welsh
harper--Different kinds of harps--Satire on harpers.
THE Vale of Llangollen is proverbial for its beauty, and possibly
because it has been so spoken, written, and sung about, it disappoints
at first sight, but it is only at first sight that it does disappoint.
Its beauties grow on one. The really finest portion is at Berwyn, which
is the next station on the line to Bala, and not at the town that gives
its name to the vale.
The mountains are not very lofty, rising only to 1,650 feet, but the
Eglwyseg rocks redeem them from being regarded as hills. Llangollen
owes its name to a founder named Collen in the seventh century. He
descended from Caradog Freichfras who drove the Irish out of Brecknock,
and whose wife, the beautiful and virtuous Tegau Eurfron, has been
made famous by the ballad of “The Boy and Mantle,” which is in Percy’s
_Reliques_.
A wonderful Life of Collen exists in Welsh that has not as yet been
translated. It relates how that he went abroad and studied at Orleans,
then he returned to Britain and settled at Glastonbury, where he was
elected abbot. This post he soon resigned for another that was “heavier
and harder,” which consisted principally in going about preaching. He
again got tired of this, and returned to Glastonbury, where everything
went on smoothly for five years, when he happened to quarrel with the
monks, for he was a peppery Welshman; and cursing them, he left for
Glastonbury Tor, and made for himself a cell under a rock, where he
could grumble to himself unmolested.
As he was in his cell one day, he heard two men talking about Gwyn
ab Nudd, and saying that he was king of the under-world and of the
fairies. Collen put his head out, and told them to hold their peace and
not speak about these beings as if they were deities, for in fact they
were only devils.
“You had best not use any disrespectful words about Gwyn,” retorted
they, “or he will serve you out for doing so.”
Now at dead of night Collen heard some raps at the door of his
habitation, and in answer to a call, “Who is there?” received the
reply, “It is I. Gwyn ab Nudd, king of the nether world, has sent me,
his messenger, to bid you meet him at the top of the hill.”
“I won’t go,” retorted the saint.
[Illustration: BERWYN]
Again the messenger summoned him, and still Collen refused to be drawn.
Then the messenger said, “If you don’t come, Collen, it will be the
worse for you.”
This disconcerted him; so, taking some holy water with him, he went.
On reaching the top of the tor, Collen beheld the most beautiful
castle that he had ever seen, manned by the best-appointed soldiery.
A great many musicians, with all manner of instruments, made glorious
music. About the hill were young men riding horses; at the palace gate
handsome sprightly maidens--in fact, every element becoming the retinue
and appointments of a great monarch.
Collen, carrying his pot of holy water, was invited to enter; he
obeyed, and was ushered into a banqueting hall where he saw the king
seated in a chair of pure gold. Gwyn very graciously invited Collen to
take a seat and refresh himself at the table, whereon were all kinds of
dainties. Collen replied churlishly, “Bah! I don’t browse on leaves.”
“Hast thou ever seen,” said the king, “men better dressed than these my
servants in red and blue?”
“The clothing--such as it is--is good enough.”
“Such as it is!” repeated the king. “What do you mean?”
“Red for fire, blue for cold,” replied Collen, and he dashed the pot of
holy water in the king’s face and the liquid was splashed about on all
sides. Instantly everything disappeared, and Collen was alone on the
tor and the stars were shining down on him out of a frosty sky.
That is the story as he told it to the monks of Glastonbury, and it was
a dream and nothing more, but so vivid that he believed in its reality.
Collen passed into Brittany, and there is a Llangollen there, near
Quimper, by no means as lovely a spot as his Llangollen in Wales. Long
before Collen settled here the conical hill that commands the vale,
called Dinas Bran, had been crowned by a fort, and a fort it remained
throughout the Middle Ages till the fifteenth century, when it was
demolished.
Flintshire was the great doorway, or main gate, of entrance into North
Wales, watched from the strong fortress of Chester, but the postern
was the Vale of Dee, and to command this Dinas Bran must have been
all-important. On looking at the map it will be seen that there is
a portion of Flintshire detached from the rest, with no great town
in it, but including Overton and Hanmer and Penley. It is hardly ten
miles long by five miles broad; it forms a break between Shropshire and
Cheshire, and its Welsh name is Maelor Saesneg (Saxon Maelor), whereas
Welsh Maelor is on the west side of the Dee.
This was placed by Edward I. under the jurisdiction of the Sheriff of
Flint by the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284. Why this was done is hard to
understand, yet there must have been purpose in it.
Mr. Godsal explains it thus:--
“Since Maelor Saesneg, as we find it to-day, originated in a time of
war, it is evident that military principles are likely to prove the
best guides to the answers to these questions. The chief, in fact the
dominating military feature on the eastern side of Maelor Saesneg,
is a morass more than four miles long, and a mile or more wide, that
is impassable to this day except by individuals on foot who know the
ways across. From this morass runs a brook down the Wych Valley which
protects the northern flank of Maelor, and which must have been very
difficult to pass before the days of roads and bridges. The morass
is called on the Maelor side the Fenns Moss; on the Shropshire side
Whixall Moss. In ancient times it was covered by a forest.”
[Illustration: BERWYN FROM CASTELL DINAS BRAN]
It had been a stronghold of the British protected by the fens. Yet we
do not see why it was not placed under the Earl of Shrewsbury instead
of under the Sheriff of Flint, unless it were, in the event of an
attack up the valley of the Dee, that the Sheriff might hold this
portion in check whilst the Dee valley was entered.
To return to Dinas Bran.
It had been a stronghold of the princes of Powys, and held to be
important as commanding this pass up the valley of the Dee. Perhaps
Collen got across with the men of Dinas Bran as he had with the monks
of Glastonbury, and in a huff packed up his duds and went away.
As everyone has heard of the beauties of Llangollen, so has everyone
heard of its old maids. These were Lady Eleanor Butler, sister of John
Earl of Ormonde, and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, daughter of Chambre Brabazon
Ponsonby, Esquire, grandson of the first Lord Bessborough. They had
been friends from early girlhood, and their tastes coincided. Both
loved quietude, and neither felt any vocation for the married life.
Many and brilliant offers had been made to Lady Eleanor, but she
rejected every suitor, and in 1779 induced her friend to retire with
her to Llangollen, and there they spent the rest of their lives--full
half a century. They protested that not once for thirty hours
successively had they quitted their peaceful retreat since they entered
it.
Miss Seward describes this house as it was during their lives:--
“It consists of four apartments--a kitchen, the lightsome little
dining-room, the drawing-room, and library.
“This room (the parlour) is fitted up in the Gothic style, the door
and large sash-windows of that form, and the latter of painted glass.
Candles are seldom admitted into this apartment. The ingenious friends
have invented a prismatic lantern, which occupies the whole elliptic
arch of the Gothic door. The lantern is of cut glass, variously
coloured, enclosing two lamps. The light it imparts resembles that
of a volcano, sanguine and solemn. It is assisted by two glow-worm
lamps that, in little marble reservoirs, stand on the chimney-piece. A
large Æolian harp is fixed in one of the windows, and when the weather
permits them to be opened, it breathes its deep tones to the gale,
swelling and softening as that rises and falls.
“This saloon of the Minervas contains the finest editions, superbly
bound, of the best authors; over them the portraits in miniature, and
some in larger ovals, of their favoured friends. The kitchen garden
is neatness itself. The fruit trees are all of the rarest and finest
sort, and luxuriant in their produce.”
She further describes their personal appearance:--
“Lady Eleanor is of middle height, and somewhat beyond the
_embonpoint_ as to plumpness; the face round and fair, with the
glow of luxuriant health. She has not fine features, but they are
agreeable; enthusiasm in her eye, hilarity and benevolence in her
smile. Miss Ponsonby, somewhat taller than her friend, is neither
slender nor otherwise, but very graceful. A face rather long than
round, a complexion clear, but without bloom, with a countenance
which, from its soft melancholy, has peculiar interest.”
[Illustration: THE LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN]
Now compare this with the description given by Charles Mathews:--
“Oh! such curiosities! I was nearly convulsed. I could scarcely get on
for the first ten minutes after my eye caught them. As they are seated
there is not one point to distinguish them from men: the dressing and
powdering of the hair; their well-starched neck-cloths; the upper part
of their habits, which they always wear even at a dinner party, made
precisely like men’s coats; and regular beaver black hats. They looked
exactly like two respectable superannuated old clergymen.”
They were a century before their time. The lamp so admired, with its
rosy light “like a volcano,” is now in every drawing-room; and as to
the dressing like men!--why, every girl now tries to rig herself out
like them and ape them in everything, even in bad manners.
Llangollen Church has been much altered by rebuilding, but it retains
some points of interest. The south aisle and chancel are new, but the
very fine roof has been retained, supposed to have been brought at the
Dissolution from Vale Crucis Abbey.
This abbey may possibly take its name from the pillar stone of Eliseg
that still stands after the abbey has been broken down. But the stone
itself has suffered. Originally it was twelve feet high; now it is
broken in half, and what remains is but a little over six feet in
height. It bears an inscription testifying that it was set up by one
Cyngen in memory of his great-grandfather Eliseg, a descendant of
Brochwel, king of Powys.
The abbey was never very large. It was founded in 1200 by Madog ab
Gruffydd Maelor, prince of Powys, and the remains of the church belong
to the period when founded, or are but little subsequent.
The church was exquisitely beautiful, and in the dearth of really fine
architectural specimens in Wales it is to be deeply deplored that it
was wrecked. The west end has in it three double-light windows, with
cusped circles enclosed within the arch, and below them is a beautiful
doorway.
Some of the domestic offices remain, and in one of these is a Decorated
window of rich and original design. Three lights filled in with
flamboyant tracery are surmounted most strangely by bold, uncusped
tracery richly sculptured with foliage.
Plas Eliseg is one of those delightful old timber-and-plaster houses of
which there are so many, and all so charming and so peculiarly English,
in Shropshire and Montgomeryshire; it is a gem of its style and quite
unspoiled, in an exquisite situation, and rich with oak panelling and
ancient furniture. It contains Lely’s portrait of Cromwell, mole and
all, as well as one of his mother. The house belonged to Colonel Jones,
the regicide, who was executed at the Restoration; it has passed out of
the possession of his descendants.
[Illustration: THE PILLAR OF ELISEG]
[Illustration: VALE CRUCIS ABBEY]
The place has earlier associations. Hither Owen ab Cadwgan, a wild
blood of the twelfth century, carried off the Helen of Wales, Nest,
daughter of Rhys ab Tewdwr. Her story is worth recording.
Cadwgan was king of Powys and lord of Ceredigion. His son Owen
“possessed the best and the worst characteristics of the Cymric
princely families.” On Christmas, 1108, Cadwgan held a great eisteddfod
at Cardigan, to which he invited all the kings, princes, and chiefs
of the three kingdoms of Wales. To this gathering came Nest, daughter
of Rhys, king of Deheubarth, who had been sent as a child as hostage
to the English court, and Henry I. had basely taken advantage of her
unprotected position to seduce her. He, however, quickly married her
to Gerald of Windsor, whom he appointed Governor of Dyfed, with his
residence at Pembroke. She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman,
and Owen, son of Cadwgan, seeing her at his father’s court, fell
desperately in love with her.
Assembling some wild fellows, he went with them to Pembroke, attacked
the castle and set it on fire. Gerald had only time to escape by a
drain, and so save himself, but Nest and his two children were taken
by Owen, who carried them off to Plas Eliseg. This created a great
commotion. King Cadwgan, fearing for the consequences, went promptly
to his son and commanded him to restore at once the fair Nest to her
husband. But the turbulent and enamoured Owen refused to give back the
lady, and only reluctantly returned the children to their father.
This outrage was the occasion of civil war. Gerald of Windsor, with
his followers, raged against the Welsh, destroying all around them with
fire and sword. Two uncles of Owen, Ithel and Madog, were goaded on by
the unscrupulous Bishop of London to take up arms and kill or capture
Owen and his father, the king of Powys, who was guiltless of connivance
in the abduction of Nest. Two other Welsh princes associated themselves
with Ithel and Madog, urged by revenge, as Owen had killed their
brothers; and these foes solemnly vowed to bring Owen and his father,
alive or dead, to the bishop, who was at Shrewsbury. They marched into
Ceredigion, laying waste the country as they went, and unless the
inhabitants had been forewarned all would have been butchered. The day
before these blood-thirsty human hunters reached the coast Owen had
fled to Ireland, and Ceredigion was devastated, every house and church
burnt, and every human being come across was massacred.
Cadwgan appealed to King Henry, protesting his innocence, and at
last the English king consented to allow him to return to desolated
Ceredigion, but exacted from him a fine; however, he allowed Ithel and
Madog to keep possession of Powys.
Owen, hearing that his father had made peace with King Henry, returned
from Ireland, but his father refused to see him. Owen went off into
Powys and managed to patch up a reconciliation with Madog, who had
lately sought his life as the murderer of his brothers. The recent
enemies met and swore a solemn oath of perpetual friendship and of
united hostility to the King of England. Owen, with a party of
ruffians who had come with him from Ireland, now entered his father’s
territories in Ceredigion, and thence made a series of marauding
visits into Dyfed, using for the purpose the ships in which he had
crossed from Ireland. In one of these he killed a Bishop William of the
Flemings, who was on his way to the English court. The news reached
King Henry whilst Cadwgan was with him on some business connected with
the settlement of Welsh affairs. The King, exasperated to the last
degree, bitterly reproached Cadwgan for not restraining this wild son
of his, and at once despatched troops to chastise Owen, who immediately
fled to Ireland.
Cadwgan was suffered to return to Powys, but was there assassinated by
Madog, his son’s ally, who at once hastened to announce the news to the
Bishop of London, and was received with favour.
Owen hurried back from Ireland; Madog was caught in an ambush, and Owen
put out his eyes with red-hot irons.
Curiously enough, now King Henry received Owen into his favour, and
took him as a companion to Normandy, where he acquitted himself
gallantly, and was knighted by the King. On his return to England
Henry sent him into Wales with a commission and promises of favour
and assurances of confidence. But Gerald of Windsor was awaiting his
opportunity. Owen on entering Wales began to butcher and burn with the
utmost barbarity, and some peasants who escaped informed Gerald as to
his whereabouts. Gerald hastened to intercept him, surrounded him, and
Owen was pierced to the heart with an arrow.
A run of half an hour by train takes us to Corwen, a dingy little town
at the junction of the line to Ruthin and Rhyl. Lying under steep
mountains to the south, it comes off scantily for sun in winter.
Here the church has been rebuilt in very bad taste, with hideous
plate-tracery in the windows, and a cumbrous French “Gothic” arcade
within. The English and French architects of the Middle Ages started
with different conceptions as to how to deal with the arch and the
capital of the pillar on which it rested. The Frenchman made of his
arch a hole bored in slabs of stone with sharp angles. If he had to
sustain it on a circular drum of a pillar, he accommodated the capital
to the arch by taking the Ionic crown as his type and reproducing the
horns at the corners which serve as supports to the four angles of the
arch resting on it.
But the English architect saw how crude and harsh and unpleasant to
the eye was the bald, sharp-angled arch, and he bevelled it away,
substituting delicate mouldings, and the section of the block of
masonry at the spring of the arch was now not a parallelogram, but a
hexagon. There was accordingly no need for the Ionic horns, and he
treated his capital as a basket of flowers or foliage, or as a bowl
wreathed round with leaves. This is infinitely more beautiful.
But our architects fifty years ago, when taking a holiday, rushed off
to Normandy and filled their sketch-books with drawings made in French
churches, and on returning home used them up in “restoring” our English
sacred buildings, or in designing churches and town halls on foreign
lines.
[Illustration: VALE CRUCIS ABBEY]
And what excuse can be found for plate-tracery that consists in
drilling holes in slabs in Caen stone for windows, when exquisite
tracery and moulding can be wrought out of the same stone? I should
have liked to take Mr. Ferry, the perpetrator of the abominations at
Corwen, to Vale Crucis Abbey and shame him by the comparison.
The only portions of the earlier church left at Corwen are the lancets
at the east end, and a bit of north wall of the chancel.
Over the south porch door into the church is an early incised cross,
that is popularly supposed to be the impression of Owen Glyndwr’s
dagger, flung from the height above, and which left its mark on the
stone. Into the east side of the north porch is built the leaning
Carreg-y-Big-yn-y-Fach-Rewlyd (the Pointed Stone in the Frosty Corner).
It is about six feet high, and is a prehistoric menhir. The story goes
that the church was begun on another site, but every night the stones
were removed and brought here and heaped about this block. Accordingly
the builders accepted the intimation and erected the church where it
now stands.
An old cross with interlaced Celtic work on it, and a short sword in
relief, stands in the churchyard. The Maen Llwyd, near Llandeilo,
has also a sword carved on it, and such stones probably indicate the
burial-place of a warrior. The base is indented with hollows, like
the cup-markings found in menhirs, dolmens, and flat rocks, which are
still a mystery to antiquaries, but which were perhaps intended as
receptacles for oil as oblations to the _manes_ of the dead, for some
councils and bishops denounced the superstitious anointings of standing
stones by the semi-Christianised peasantry.
Beyond the river rises Caer Drewyn. The stone wall encloses a large
area on a steep slope. It does not occupy the summit of the hill, but
a spur near a spring from which flows a tiny rill. The walls were of
stone unset in mortar, and they have fallen and form a continuous mound
of débris. Within are a few ruined _cytiau_. The camp is of the type
of the Irish forts near the coast, but has been supposed to be earlier
and to belong to the Bronze Age, and without an exploration with pick
and shovel there is no determining its period, for much the same
construction belonged to both epochs.
It was occupied at a much later time. Owen Gwynedd in 1164 rose in
revolt against Henry II. The English King collected a mixed force,
and from Oswestry ascended the Dee. Owen and his brother Cadwaladr of
Merioneth fought a battle with him at Crogen, near Chirk. The King’s
life was saved by the self-devotion of Hubert de Clare, who, seeing
an arrow hurtling through the air towards his master, interposed his
body, and received the missile in his breast. The Welsh retreated
across the Berwyn Mountains to Corwen, pursued by the English, and
Owen established himself and his forces within this venerable ring of
stones. They could obtain plenty of mutton from the mountains and moors
at their back, and there was water in the spring under the north wall.
Henry’s army camped on the opposite hill. The weather broke up, rain
poured down, and the ground of the English camp became a quagmire. The
English dared not venture far for fear of falling into ambushes among
the woods and rocks, and suffered for want of food. Men and horses
dwindled through sickness and privation. Military stores ran short,
and at length, in the mood of a baffled tiger, Henry was compelled to
withdraw without having accomplished the end aimed at in this campaign.
Raging at his discomfiture, he had the eyes torn out of the heads of
the sons of Owen Gwynedd and Rhys ab Tewdwr, whom he held as hostages.
Rûg, near Corwen, is the scene of the treacherous seizure of Gruffydd
ab Cynan, king of Gwynedd, in 1080, by Hugh the Fat, Earl of Chester.
He invited the king to come unattended and unarmed to a friendly
conference here, and when he arrived had him loaded with chains and
carried off to Chester, where he remained a prisoner for twelve years.
He owed his release to a young man of Corwen, who on some plea obtained
access to him in prison, and carried him forth on his back, chains and
all, on a night when the garrison was keeping high revel and his guards
were drunk. On his return into Gwynedd, he lurked for some time among
the mountains till he had rallied sufficient men about him, when he
swooped down on castle after castle of the Normans, took and burnt them
and drove the invaders out of his lands.
Llandderfel is noted as having been a foundation of Derfel Gadarn,
son of Hywel ab Emyr of Brittany. Before the Reformation there was a
huge wooden image of him in the church, which was held in so great
esteem that hundreds resorted to it daily with their offerings of cows,
horses, and money. It was believed to have power to fetch souls out of
Purgatory. Dr. Ellis Price was sent by Cromwell as Commissary to get
rid of it. He found that on the day when he visited Llandderfel between
five and six hundred pilgrims had been there. Price was ordered to send
the image to London; the people were angry, and offered £40 to have it
left. When the image arrived in London it was resolved to turn it to a
signal purpose.
Friar Forest, a Franciscan, had been chaplain and confessor to
Catherine of Aragon, and he declared that he “owed a double obedience,
first to the King by the law of God, and secondly to the Bishop of Rome
by his rule and profession.”
He was ordered to be burnt at the stake in 1538, and Latimer was
appointed to preach before him on the occasion. The letter in which
the Reformer accepted this commission is not pleasant reading. He
was ready, since Cromwell desired it, “to play the fool after his
customable manner when Forest should suffer,” and he complained that
the unfortunate man was treated with too great leniency by his gaolers,
and that he was even suffered to hear Mass and receive the Sacrament.
In Smithfield the pyre was built up, and the wooden statue of Derfel
Gadarn placed on it; above all was a pair of gallows from which Forest
was suspended in chains to be slowly burnt to death, whilst Latimer was
haranguing from his pulpit, which at Latimer’s own request was placed
close to the pyre.
In the church still remains a portion of a wooden horse, or rather
stag, popularly called _Ceffyl Derfel_, and a wooden crozier, his
_Ffon_, that formed part of the subject. “The common people used to
resort from all parts at Easter in order to have a ride on Derfel’s
horse. The horse was fixed to a pole, which was placed in a horizontal
position, and attached to another, which stood perpendicularly and
rested on a pivot. The rider, taking hold of the crozier, which was
fastened to the horse, was wheeled round and round, as children are
wheeled when they mount a wooden horse at a fair.”
From Llandderfel the old Sarn Helen, or Elen’s Road, runs to
Llandrillo; and with a visit to this place may be combined one to the
Pennant of Melangell, who was descended from this Elen and her husband
Maximus. Her mother was an Irishwoman.
The story goes that her father desired to marry her to a chief under
him, but either she disliked the man or the thought of marriage, and
determined to run away. Accordingly she found an opportunity to escape,
and secreted herself at Pennant, a lonely and lovely spot at the head
of the Tanat. Her story is represented on the cornice of the carved oak
screen of the church.
In this spot, sleeping on bare rock, she remained for fifteen years.
One day Brochwel, prince of Powys, was hunting and in pursuit of a
hare, when puss escaped into a thicket and took refuge under the robe
of a virgin of great beauty, whom the huntsman discovered. She faced
and drove back the hounds. The huntsman then put his horn to his lips,
and there it stuck as if glued. Upon this, up came the prince, and he
at once granted a parcel of land to the saint, to serve as a sanctuary,
and bade her found there a convent. This she did, and she lived in a
cell, which still remains, though somewhat altered, at the east end of
the church.
She was buried there, and fragments of her beautiful shrine, as it
is believed, remain built into the walls, sufficient to allow of its
reconstruction. The cell of S. Melangell is, as said, to the east of
the church, and has no communication with it. It goes by the name of
Cell-y-Bedd, or Cell of the Grave, and has a door and a window, and in
this cell formerly stood her shrine.
Melangell is considered the patroness of hares, which are termed her
lambs. Until the eighteenth century so strong was the superstition that
no one in the parish would kill a hare, and even now, when a hare is
pursued by hounds, boys will shout after it, “God and Melangell be with
thee!” and it is held that it will escape.
Her _gwely_, or bed, lies on the side of the valley opposite to the
church, a quarter of a mile further south. It is a recess in the rocks,
overgrown with a bush, above the road.
In the churchyard is a sculptured stone, on which is represented a man
in armour, with the inscription “HIC JACET EDWART.” This is believed
to be the tombstone of Iorwerth (Edward) with the Broken Nose. He was
the eldest son of Owen Gwynedd, prince of North Wales. Because of the
blemish he was set aside, and the crown accorded to his brother David,
and he was granted a few hundreds in Carnarvonshire and Merionethshire
for his lordship. But David grudged him even these, and he had to
fly from him to Pennant Melangell, as to a sanctuary. He was pursued
thither, and there murdered at his brother’s instigation.
At Llangollen the Welsh harper may still be heard. He frequents the
hotels and plays for sixpences and threepenny-bits given him by the
visitors. What a delightful instrument the harp is! Its resonant chords
thrill those in the human heart in a manner that the wires of the
harpsichord and piano that have superseded it cannot do. The latter
are mere mechanical instruments compared with harp and violin and the
ancient lute. The harp was adopted, in the reign of James I., as the
arms of Ireland, to be quartered with those of England and Scotland.
When this was proposed, then said the Earl of Northampton, “Very
suitable symbol for Ireland, costing more to keep in tune than it is
worth.”
But Wales would have had as much right to the harp as symbol as
has Ireland; it had, however, its own ancient arms--the four lions
quarterly. According to the Triads there were formerly in use three
harps--that of the king, that of the bard, and that of the gentleman.
The first two were valued at 120 pence, and the last at 60 pence; but
we do not know in what consisted the distinction.
The performers let their nails grow to claws, and the strings were
twanged with them. In the _Romance of Prince Horn_:--
“The King came into hall
Among his knights all
He calleth Adhelberus
His steward and him said thus:
‘Steward, take thou here
My foundling him to lere (learn)
To play upon the harp
With his nails sharp.’”
And Chaucer, in his _House of Fame_, says:--
“For though that the best harper upon live
Would on the beste sounid jolly harpe
That ever was, with his fingers five
Touch all one string, or aie one warble harpe,
Were his nails pointed never so sharp,” etc.
The most ancient harp had but a single row of strings, then a second
row was introduced, and, lastly, a third; and the final improvement was
the addition of pedals. The number of strings varied from 54, 56, 58
to 60. Formerly the Welsh harp was rested by the performer on the left
shoulder--the treble was played with the left hand, and the bass with
the right--but now the position is reversed.
That Edward I. ordered a massacre of the Welsh bards and minstrels is a
mere fiction.
“That Edward did this,” says Sharon Turner, “seems rather a vindictive
tradition of an irritated nation than an historical fact. The
destruction of the independent sovereignties of Wales abolished the
patronage of the bards, and in the cessation of internal warfare,
and of external ravages, they lost their favourite subjects and
most familiar imagery. They declined because they were no longer
encouraged.”
The early Welsh harps seem to have been strung with hair. Dafydd ab
Gwilym, a contemporary of Chaucer, boasts that his harp had not “one
string from a dead sheep” in it, but “hair glossy black.” The Irish
harp was strung with wire. Some of the Welsh harps of an inferior kind
were of leather, and Dafydd pours scorn on such:--
“The din of the leathern harp” (presupposes it shall not be played
with a horny nail), “of unpleasing form, only the graceless bears it,
and I love not its button-covered trough, nor its music, nor its guts,
sounding disgustingly, nor its yellow colour ... nor its bent column;
only the vile love it. Under the touch of the eight fingers, ugly is
the bulge of its belly, with the canvas cover; its hoarse sound is
only fit for an aged Saxon.”
The bards, according to Taliessin, himself one of them, do not seem to
have had a high character, although, according to the Triad, the bard
is equal to the king.
Taliessin is supposed to have lived in the time of Maelgwn Gwynedd, in
the first half of the sixth century, and is credited with a satire on
the king’s bards; but the poem was actually composed in the thirteenth
century, and satirises the bards of the writer’s own day:--
“Minstrels persevere in their false custom,
Immoral ditties are their delight;
Vain and tasteless praises theirs.
At all times falsehood they utter.
Innocent people they turn to jest,
Married women’s character they take away
And destroy the innocence of maids.
They drink all night; they sleep all day,
The Church they hate, and the tavern they haunt.
Tithes and offerings to God they do not pay,
Nor worship Him Sunday or Holyday.
Everything travails to obtain its food,
Save the minstrel and the lazy thief.”
It was the degradation of the minstrel that led to such severe Acts
being passed to put him down. But the harper and minstrel remained
attached to the household of a gentleman as a matter of course in Wales
till the eighteenth century, and, as we have seen, so late as in the
first half of the nineteenth century an Anglesey parson had his harper
as one of his household.
[Illustration: CADER IDRIS]