On a bright morning, early in August, I left London, with my dear
friends, Mr. and Mrs. B., for a visit to Ireland, by the way of Wales
and Holyhead. The first remarkable place we came to was the town of
Chester, which stands just outside the Principality of Wales, and is so
very ancient that antiquarians, who are often rather quarrelsome old
gentlemen, have had many a hot dispute about its founder. Some say it
was Leon Gaur, "a mighty strong giant," who first built caves and
dungeons here, in which he confined all the poor stragglers he could
catch, and fatted them for his table. Others affirm that it was old
King Lear, whom you will sometime read about in Shakspeare, as being
afflicted with a very testy temper and two wicked daughters, who were
quite too sharp for him.
When the Romans had possession of Great Britain, they made Chester an
important military station, under the name of Dova. There are many
Roman remains shown here, to this day. Afterwards some of the Saxon
kings held their court here. It is related that the proud Edgar once
took a grand pleasure trip on the Dee, when his boat was rowed by eight
tributary kings.
Under the Normans, the town grew fast in strength and importance, and,
at last, took the name of Chester. Lupus, the first Earl of Chester,
built a castle, rebuilt the walls, and made it the head-quarters of an
army, maintained on the frontiers, to keep down the Welsh. That brave,
half savage people kept attacking the town and setting fire to the
suburbs; but were always beaten back with great slaughter and left so
many of their dead behind them, that the cold-blooded English actually
made a wall of Welshmen's skulls. So, in years after, when the young
Welsh soldiers undertook to take the town; they were obliged, it may be
said, to climb up over their fathers' and grandfathers' heads.
Chester is now a very interesting place, full of quaint, old-fashioned
houses, with high pointed roofs and carved gables turned toward the
streets, which are wide and straight. The walls remain nearly
perfect--not preserved for defence, but as relics of the old fighting
times.
The Dee is a strange looking river when the tide is low, for the sands
stretch far out on each side. Mr. Kingsley, an English author, in a
beautiful song, tells a sad story of a poor girl, who was sent one
evening to call the cattle home across these wide sands. A blinding
mist came up and the tide came in, but Mary never came home--only as
she floated ashore the next morning, drowned.
A little way off the railway track, lies Maes Garmon, the scene of a
great victory gained by the Britons over the Scots and Picts, in 429.
It was in the season of Lent;--the Britons had assembled in great
numbers, in a valley amid the mountains, to listen to the preaching of
St. Germanus and Bishop Lupus. These holy men preached with such
extraordinary power, that thousands of rude warriors came forward,
vociferously professing religion, and eager to be baptized. The enemy,
hearing of this by their scouts, thought that here would be a fine
opportunity to take them by surprise, and hastened to the spot to make
the attack. But St. Germanus somehow got wind of their coming, and,
taking the pick of the warriors; conducted them to a pass through which
the heathen army must enter the valley. As soon as the enemy appeared,
the Saint, lifting the rood in his hands, shouted three times at the
top of his voice, "Hallelujah!" All his warriors repeated the cry, and
the mountains echoed and reëchoed it, till their caves and forests
seemed to be alive with lurking Britons. The bloody-minded heathens
were so astonished and frightened by this strange Christian uproar,
that they flung down their aims and ran for their lives! The Britons,
instead of going on with their Hallelujahs, as I think they should have
done, took after them with great fury--slew thousands and drove
thousands into the river, where they were drowned. It was a queer way
to win a battle that--scaring the enemy out of their wits by shouting
holy words at them. I doubt whether the plan would succeed as well in
our enlightened Christian times.
The next object of interest is Flint Castle, to which King Richard II.
was carried as a prisoner, and where he met the banished Bolingbroke,
who was soon to step into his royal shoes and dub himself King Henry IV.
Next was the town of Holywell--so called for the famous, and, it is
said, miraculous well of St. Winifred, which it contains. If you
inquire for this, you are conducted to a beautiful Gothic building,
erected by the good Margaret, Countess of Richmond. Within this
edifice is a large bath; and in and out of this, the maimed, palsied,
and rheumatic, are constantly hobbling, crawling, or being carried.
Over head, fixed in the roof, are hosts of old canes and crutches,
placed there by cripples who say they have been cured by the waters.
Doubtless this spring has medicinal properties, like many in our own
country, and very likely many a poor creature is cured by simply
bathing repeatedly in pure cold water--a treatment tried here for the
first time in all their lives.
But who was St. Winifred?
All I know of her I get from a Roman Catholic legend, which I, being a
Protestant, and because it seems to me absurd, cannot credit; but which
many good, simple-hearted people find no difficulty in
believing--especially such as have had a lame leg cured by the well,
and have hung up a crutch in the shrine.
There was once, (says the legend,) a great lord, whose name was
Thewith, and a noble lady, whose name was Wenlo, and they had one only
daughter, whose name was Winifred. Now Winifred grew up to be a
marvellously beautiful maiden, and her hand was sought in marriage by
lords and princes far and near. But strangely enough, she would have
nothing to say to any of them, and seemed to care nothing for the pomps
and pleasures of the world. She was pious and charitable, and loved
better to nurse and pray with the sick than to wear fine dresses, or
dance with handsome young gentlemen. Perhaps she had visions, in which
she saw and heard all the palsied old men and women, and all the
miserable cripples that were, or ever would be in the world, shaking
their heads and thumping with their crutches at her. At any rate, she
resolved to live a single, devout, and charitable life, and for that
purpose, placed herself under the care and instruction of her uncle,
Breno, a very holy priest.
But it happened that Prince Caradoc, the son of King Alen--who _he_ was
I don't know--saw her, and instantly fell desperately in love with her,
and in the authoritative way which princes have, asked her to be his
wife. Winifred said "no" very decidedly, and then he undertook to
carry her off by force. But she escaped, and ran down the hill toward
her uncle's cell. Caradoc followed, foaming with rage, and with his
drawn sword in his hand. She ran very fast, but he soon overtook her,
and with one blow of his sword cut off her head! The body dropped on
the spot, but the head bounded forward and fell at the feet of Father
Breno, who stood at the door of his cell. The good priest caught it
up, and running to the body, put it on again--being very careful not to
have it twisted toward one shoulder, or what would have been more
awkward still, facing backward.
Immediately Winifred arose, as well as ever, only a little weak from
loss of blood--and with nothing to remember her decapitation by, but a
red line around her neck, which looked like a small string of coral
beads, and was rather pretty than otherwise.
From that day it was settled that Winifred was a Saint, for on the spot
where her head had rested, there bubbled up a spring of pure water, for
the healing of the sick--particularly the crippled and rheumatic.
Believers say that, in the Saint's time, the waters were more powerful
than they are now. Then, after one dip, the palsied stopped shaking,
the paralytic began talking, and cripples flung away their crutches
while the maimed had only to thrust the stumps of arms and legs into
the spring, to have beautiful new hands and feet sprout out before
their eyes!
The part of North Wales through which we passed, is not so mountainous
and picturesque as some other portions of the Principality; but it is
very beautiful, even as seen in flying glimpses, from the railway
carriage. We were very sorry that we could not stop to explore the
lovely vales of Clwyd and Llangollen, and visit the little city of St.
Asaph, where Mrs. Hemans once resided.
I longed to go and pay my respects to some of those grand, old
mountains, that stood afar off, in their stern majesty, clothed with
purple-blossomed heather, flecked with golden sunshine and crowned with
gorgeous clouds, or silvery mists. The dark-waving foliage of many a
shadowy glen and rocky gorge seemed beckoning to us to search into
their lovely, lonely places, and many a glad rill and wild cascade
seemed to call to us to come and look upon its unsunned beauty. But
the swift locomotive remorselessly whirled us away from glen and gorge,
and its rush and clang soon drowned those pleasant mountain voices of
dancing rivulet and laughing waterfall.
We hardly caught a breath of the free, fresh air of the hills, in
exchange for the long, brown train of heavy, hot smoke we left behind
us;--in truth, puffing and whirling in and out of the Principality, as
we did, I am almost ashamed to count Wales as one of the countries I
have seen.
In England, no town, however large it may be, is called a city, unless
it has a Bishop and a Cathedral, as the capital of an Episcopal See.
Thus the great seaport of Liverpool is only a _town_, while St. Asaph,
with but one street and eight hundred inhabitants, is a _city_.
The first Bishop of St. Asaph was St. Kentigern, a famous monk and
monk-maker, and founder of monasteries. He had a disciple by the name
of Asaph, whom he brought up to be a Saint.
Legends say that one day the good Bishop got severely chilled by
remaining in his bath too long, and young Asaph, not having any shovel
or tongs, took up some live coals in his hands, and carried them to his
master, without burning himself at all. People said this was a very
fair beginning for a Saint, and as he continued to improve, the church
canonized him when he died, and the city and diocese were named for him.
Near St. Asaph is Rhyddlan Castle--the place where Edward I. outwitted
the Welsh nobles, by proposing that they should be ruled by a _native_
Prince, whose character nobody could say a word against. All joyfully
agreed, and then he presented to them his infant son, born at Carnarvon
Castle, and whom he had made Prince of Wales.
At Conway, we passed close by a grand old castle, still very strong and
imposing, though it was built by Edward I. Here we crossed the Tubular
Bridge--a great curiosity--but far from equal to the Britannia Bridge,
across the Menai Straits, which lie between Wales and the Island of
Anglesea. I cannot describe this to you--but it is one of the most
wonderful works in all the world.
Holyhead is a small town, on an island of the same name--divided by a
narrow strait from the west coast of Anglesea. Here we took a steamer
to cross the Irish channel.
We made the trip in about four hours; but they seemed to me no less
than twelve--for I was mortally sick. I thought at one time that I was
surely dying. I did not care much; people never do when they are
sea-sick; still, I thought I should prefer a more romantic sort of a
death, and I was heartily glad when I found myself on shore, at
Kingstown, seven miles below Dublin, where we took the railway for that
city. We arrived late at night, and drove to our hotel on a regular
Irish jaunting car. This is a very funny looking vehicle--low and
broad, with two wheels, concealed by the seats, which run lengthwise.
There is another kind, called the _inside car_. An Irishman once
explained the difference to an English traveller, in this way: "An
outside car, yer honor, has the wheels _inside_, and an inside car has
the wheels _outside_."
All Irish carmen drive furiously, and the cars go jumping and hopping
along, and spinning round the corners, at such a rate that one feels
rather nervous at first, and has no little difficulty in keeping on.
But like many other things, it's easy enough, when you get used to it.
We found Gresham's Hotel a very comfortable, pleasant place, and we
soon felt at home, though we saw none but Irish faces, and heard only
the Irish brogue around us; for those faces were smiling and cordial,
and that rich, musical brogue seemed bubbling up from kindly hearts.
I have not told you much about Wales in this chapter, because rushing
through the country, as I did, I really saw very little of it. The
people seemed quiet, cleanly, and industrious; but they did not look,
or dress at all like the English. I noticed that many of the women
seemed rather masculine in their tastes--wearing hats and coats like
the men, and that the children were dressed in an odd old-fashioned
way, and looked serious, shrewd, and mature--almost as though they were
a race of dwarfs. The Welsh language had to me a strange, harsh,
barbaric sound, and when listening to it, I realized for the first time
since I had left America, that I was indeed far away from home. I do
not doubt, however, but that if I had seen more of the Welsh, I should
have liked them heartily, for they are said to be very kindly, honest,
and hospitable. They are naturally brave and sturdy lovers of liberty.
In old times the English had a hard and tedious struggle with them,
before they could subdue them. Often, when they thought they had the
whole rude nation under their hands, or rather under their feet, the
rebellious spirit would break out again in a new spot, fiercer and
hotter than ever, and all the work had to be done over again.
Many of the stories in Welsh history are very grand and heroic, but
they are also very terrible; and I think you will find more to your
taste a simple little story of domestic life, which I have picked up
somewhere, and can assure you is as true as a great deal we find in
history.