Wild Wales Part 104

CHAPTER CVI

Pen y Glas-Salt of the Earth-The Quakers' Yard-The Rhugylgroen.

As I proceeded on my way the scenery to the south on the farther side of the river became surprisingly beautiful. On that side n.o.ble mountains met the view, green fields and majestic woods, the latter brown it is true, for their leaves were gone, but not the less majestic for being brown. Here and there were white farm-houses: one of them, which I was told was called Pen y Glas, was a truly lovely little place. It stood on the side of a green hill with a n.o.ble forest above it, and put me wonderfully in mind of the hunting lodge, which Ifor Hael allotted as a retreat to Ab Gwilym and Morfydd, when they fled to him from Cardigan to avoid the rage of the Bow Bach, and whose charming appearance made him say to his love:

"More bliss for us our fate propounds On Taf's green banks than Teivy's bounds."

On I wandered. After some time the valley a.s.sumed the form of an immense basin, enormous mountains composed its sides. In the middle rose hills of some alt.i.tude, but completely overcrowned by the mountains around.

These hills exhibited pleasant inclosures, and were beautifully dotted with white farm-houses. Down below meandered the Taf, its reaches shining with a silver-like splendour. The whole together formed an exquisite picture, in which there was much sublimity, much still, quiet life, and not a little of fantastic fairy loveliness.

The sun was hastening towards the west as I pa.s.sed a little cascade on the left, the waters of which, after running under the road, tumbled down a gulley into the river. Shortly afterwards meeting a man I asked him how far it was to Caerfili.

"When you come to the Quakers' Yard, which is a little way further on, you will be seven miles from Caerfili."

"What is the Quakers' Yard?"

"A place where the people called Quakers bury their dead."

"Is there a village near it?"

"There is, and the village is called by the same name."

"Are there any Quakers in it?"

"Not one, nor in the neighbourhood, but there are some, I believe, in Cardiff."

"Why do they bury their dead there?"

"You should ask them, not me. I know nothing about them, and don't want; they are a bad set of people."

"Did they ever do you any harm?"

"Can't say they did. Indeed I never saw one in the whole of my life."

"Then why do you call them bad?"

"Because everybody says they are."

"Not everybody. I don't; I have always found them the salt of the earth."

"Then it is salt that has lost its savour. But perhaps you are one of them?"

"No, I belong to the Church of England."

"O you do. Then good night to you. I am a Methodist. I thought at first that you were one of our ministers, and had hoped to hear from you something profitable and conducive to salvation, but-"

"Well, so you shall. Never speak ill of people of whom you know nothing.

If that isn't a saying conducive to salvation I know not what is. Good evening to you."

I soon reached the village. Singularly enough, the people of the very first house, at which I inquired about the Quakers' Yard, were entrusted with the care of it. On my expressing a wish to see it a young woman took down a key, and said that if I would follow her she would show it me. The Quakers' burying-place is situated on a little peninsula or tongue of land, having a brook on its eastern and northern sides, and on its western the Taf. It is a little oblong yard, with low walls, partly overhung with ivy. The entrance is a porch to the south. The Quakers are no friends to tombstones, and the only visible evidence that this was a place of burial was a single flagstone, with a half-obliterated inscription, which with some difficulty I deciphered, and was as follows:-

To the Memory of Thomas Edmunds Who died April the ninth 1802 aged 60 years And of Mary Edmunds Who died January the fourth 1810 aged 70.

The beams of the descending sun gilded the Quakers' burial-ground as I trod its precincts. A lovely resting-place looked that little oblong yard on the peninsula, by the confluence of the waters, and quite in keeping with the character of the quiet Christian people who sleep within it. The Quakers have for some time past been a decaying sect, but they have done good work in their day, and when they are extinct they are not destined to be soon forgotten. Soon forgotten! How should a sect ever be forgotten, to which have belonged three such men as George Fox, William Penn and Joseph Gurney?

Shortly after I left the Quakers' Yard the sun went down and twilight settled upon the earth. Pursuing my course I reached some woodlands, and on inquiring of a man, whom I saw standing at the door of a cottage, the name of the district, was told that it was called Ystrad Manach-the Monks' Strath or valley. This name it probably acquired from having belonged in times of old to some monkish establishment. The moon now arose, and the night was delightful. As I was wandering along I heard again the same wild noise which I had heard the night before, on the other side of Merthyr Tydvil. The cry of the owl afar off in the woodlands. O that strange bird! O that strange cry! The Welsh as I have said on a former occasion call the owl Dylluan. Amongst the cowydds of Ab Gwilym there is one to the dylluan. It is full of abuse against the bird, with whom the poet is very angry for having with its cry frightened Morfydd back, who was coming to the wood to keep an a.s.signation with him, but not a little of this abuse is wonderfully expressive and truthful. He calls the owl a grey thief-the haunter of the ivy bush-the chick of the oak, a blinking-eyed witch, greedy of mice, with a visage like the bald forehead of a big ram, or the dirty face of an old abbess, which bears no little resemblance to the chine of an ape.

Of its cry he says that it is as great a torment as an agonising recollection, a cold shrill laugh from the midst of a kettle of ice; the rattling of sea-pebbles in an old sheep-skin, on which account many call the owl the hag of the Rhugylgroen. The Rhugylgroen, it will be as well to observe, is a dry sheep-skin containing a number of pebbles, and is used as a rattle for frightening crows. The likening the visage of the owl to the dirty face of an old abbess is capital, and the likening the cry to the noise of the Rhugylgroen is anything but unfortunate. For, after all, what does the voice of the owl so much resemble as a diabolical rattle! I'm sure I don't know. Reader, do you?

I reached Caerfili at about seven o'clock, and went to the "Boar's Head,"

near the ruins of a stupendous castle, on which the beams of the moon were falling.

CHAPTER CVII

Caerfili Castle-Sir Charles-The Waiter-Inkerman.

I slept well during the night. In the morning after breakfast I went to see the castle, over which I was conducted by a woman who was intrusted with its care. It stands on the eastern side of the little town, and is a truly enormous structure, which brought to my recollection a saying of our great Johnson, to be found in the account of his journey to the Western Islands, namely "that for all the castles which he had seen beyond the Tweed the ruins yet remaining of some one of those which the English built in Wales would find materials." The original founder was one John De Bryse, a powerful Norman, who married the daughter of Llewellyn Ap Jorwerth, the son-in-law of King John, and the most warlike of all the Welsh princes, whose exploits, and particularly a victory which he obtained over his father-in-law, with whom he was always at war, have been immortalised by the great war-bard, Dafydd Benfras. It was one of the strongholds which belonged to the Spencers, and served for a short time as a retreat to the unfortunate Edward the Second. It was ruined by Cromwell, the grand foe of the baronial castles of Britain, but not in so thorough and sweeping a manner as to leave it a mere heap of stones.

There is a n.o.ble entrance porch fronting the west-a s.p.a.cious courtyard, a grand banqueting-room, a corridor of vast length, several lofty towers, a chapel, a sally-port, a guard-room, and a strange underground vaulted place called the mint, in which Caerfili's barons once coined money, and in which the furnaces still exist which were used for melting metal. The name Caerfili is said to signify the Castle of Haste, and to have been bestowed on the pile because it was built in a hurry. Caerfili, however, was never built in a hurry, as the remains show. Moreover the Welsh word for haste is not fil but ffrwst. Fil means a scudding or darting through the air, which can have nothing to do with the building of a castle.

Caerfili signifies Philip's City, and was called so after one Philip, a saint. It no more means the castle of haste than Tintagel in Cornwall signifies the castle of guile, as the learned have said it does, for Tintagel simply means the house in the gill of the hill, a term admirably descriptive of the situation of the building.

I started from Caerfili at eleven for Newport, distant about seventeen miles. Pa.s.sing through a toll-gate I ascended an acclivity, from the top of which I obtained a full view of the castle, looking stern, dark, and majestic. Descending the hill I came to a bridge over a river called the Rhymni or Rumney, much celebrated in Welsh and English song-thence to Pentref Bettws, or the village of the bead-house, doubtless so called from its having contained in old times a house in which pilgrims might tell their beads.

The scenery soon became very beautiful-its beauty, however, was to a certain extent marred by a horrid black object, a huge coal work, the chimneys of which were belching forth smoke of the densest description.

"Whom does that work belong to?" said I to a man nearly as black as a chimney sweep.

"Who does it belong to? Why, to Sir Charles."

"Do you mean Sir Charles Morgan?"

"I don't know. I only know that it belongs to Sir Charles, the kindest heart and richest man in Wales and in England too."

Pa.s.sing some cottages I heard a group of children speaking English.

Asked an intelligent-looking girl if she could speak Welsh.

"Yes," said she, "I can speak it, but not very well. There is not much Welsh spoken by the children hereabout. The old folks hold more to it."

I saw again the Rhymni river, and crossed it by a bridge; the river here was filthy and turbid owing of course to its having received the foul drainings of the neighbouring coal works-shortly afterwards I emerged from the coom or valley of the Rhymni and entered upon a fertile and tolerably level district. Pa.s.sed by Llanawst and Machen. The day which had been very fine now became dark and gloomy. Suddenly, as I was descending a slope, a brilliant party consisting of four young ladies in riding habits, a youthful cavalier, and a servant in splendid livery-all on n.o.ble horses, swept past me at full gallop down the hill. Almost immediately afterwards seeing a road-mender who was standing holding his cap in his hand-which he had no doubt just reverentially doffed-I said in Welsh: "Who are those ladies?"

"Merched Sir Charles-the daughters of Sir Charles," he replied.

"And is the gentleman their brother?"

"No! The brother is in the Crim-fighting with the Roosiaid. I don't know who yon gentleman be."

"Where does Sir Charles live?"