While other poets loudly rant
About Llangollen's Vale,
Let me, with better taste, descant
Upon Llangollen Ale.
The daughters of the place are fair,
Its sons are strong and hale:
What makes them so? Llangollen air?
No, no!--Llangollen Ale.
And Nature only beautified
The landscape, to prevail
On travellers to turn aside
And quaff Llangollen Ale.
For though the scene might please at first
As charms would quickly stale;
While he who tastes will ever thirst
To drink Llangollen Ale.
From rock to rock the Dee may roam,
And chafe without avail;
It cannot match its yeasty foam
Against Llangollen Ale.
The umber-tinted trees that crown
Bron-vawr's ridge are pale,
Contrasted with the nutty brown
That tints Llangollen Ale.
Nor is the keep of Dinas-bran,
Though high and hard to scale,
So elevated as the man
Who drinks Llangollen Ale.
Thy shattered arch, beside the way,
Val-crucis, tells a tale
Of monks who sometimes went astray
To quaff Llangollen Ale.
And still upon the saintly spot
The pilgrim may regale
His fainting spirits with a pot
Of good Llangollen Ale.
For though the ancient portress may
Not offer it for sale,
Yet cheerfully to all who pay
She gives Llangollen Ale.
And, Eliseg, thy pillar rude
Is merely--I'll be bail--
A monument to him who brewed
The first Llangollen Ale.
In short, each ruin, stream, or tree,
Within Llangollen's Vale,
Where'er I turn, whate'er I see,
Is redolent of Ale.
_Liverpool_. R. R.
The convivial disposition of the monks of the "olden time" has always
been a favourite theme with our romance writers and "ballad-mongers;" but
it would appear from a passage which Mr. Roscoe quotes, that the cowled
brethren of Valle Crucis Abbey did not content themselves in their hours
of festivity with draughts of "Llangollen Ale." The wealth of the
institution, he infers, may be judged of by the magnificent hospitality
of the monks, who are described by Owain as having the table usually
covered with four courses of meat, served up in silver dishes, with
sparkling claret for their general beverage.
"Many have told of the monks of old,
What a saintly race they were;
But 'tis most true, that a merrier crew
Could scarce be found elsewhere;
For they sung and laughed,
And the rich wine quaffed,
And lived on the daintiest cheer.
"And the Abbot meek, with his form so sleek,
Was the heartiest of them all,
And would take his place, with a smiling face,
When the refection bell would call;
And they sung and laughed,
And the rich wine quaffed,
Till they shook the olden hall."