VWelsh Folk-Lore

Heb Dw, Heb Dym (Without God, without all)Dw o’ diggon (God is all sufficient).[1]

Heb Dw, Heb Dym (Without God, without all)

Dw o’ diggon (God is all sufficient).[1]

And though of not very difficult construction, the gentleman seemed wholly confounded, and unable to explain them; till Dr. Johnson, having picked out the meaning by little and little, said to the man, ‘Hebis a preposition, I believe, Sir, is it not?’ My countryman, recovering some spirits upon the sudden question, cried out, ‘So I humbly presume, Sir,’ very comically.”

About Bodvel they found the Methodist “prevalent,” which could not have been a pleasant circumstance to Johnson. With nonconformity the great Doctor had no sympathy. Boswell says that Johnson thought them “too sanguine in their accounts of their success among savages, and that much of what they tell is not to be believed. He owned that the Methodists had done good; had spread religious impressions among the vulgar part of mankind; but, he said, they had great bitterness against otherChristians, and that he never could get a Methodist to explain in what he excelled others.”

This unhappy day they concluded suitably by going to Pwllheli, “a mean old town at the extremity of the country,” where they bought something by which to remember its meanness. Pwllheli is still mean, but in a different way, for it has become a noisy watering-resort from which the quiet traveller longs to escape at the first moment to quiet Abersoch or to Llanengan or Aberdaron, where “trippers” cease from troubling and tourists are at rest.

Nowadays, even the most breathless will grant Snowdon a few words of praise—praise for its lakes, awe for its rock-strewn valleys like the valley of the shadow of death. Of the two lakes, Llyn Beris and Llyn Padarn, which receive the waters on the northern slope of Snowdon, Johnson did not think much, for he complained that “the boat is always near one bank or the other.” As for Snowdon itself, the record is, “We climbed with great labour. I was breathless and harassed.” There is no word for all that is romantic or awe-inspiring, not an exclamation for the summit to which have mounted king, poet, priest, bard, wise men, through countless ages—onlya record of Queenie’s goats, “one hundred and forty-nine, I think.” Mr. Thrale, Queenie’s father, was near-sighted and could not see the goats, so he had promised the child a penny for every one she showed him. Dr. Johnson, the devoted friend of Queenie, kept the account.

On their way back to the English border again, they passed through Bangor, where Johnson must have been happy in finding that “the quire is mean!” On August twenty-eighth they were once more with hospitable Mr. Myddleton. Here they stayed for over a week, and the journal contains, among other things, a long note about a Mr. Griffiths. The addition of the name of his estate or village fails to identify him now; looking for a Griffiths or a Jones in Wales, even a particular Jones or Griffiths, is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Perhaps the present limitation to a dozen patronymics is a blessing for courts of law, but it is baffling for the curious-minded man. The historian finds the old Welsh John ap Robert ap David ap Griffith ap Meredith ap David ap Vauchan ap Blethyn ap Griffith ap Meredith, and so on for a dozen more “aps,” easier for purposes of identification.

On their homeward way Johnson was enthusiastic about Wrexham and its “large and magnificent” church, one of the Seven Wonders of Wales. On the seventh of September they came to Chirk Castle, but I cannot find that they went into this residence, a place which undoubtedly would have delighted Johnson more on account of its “commodity of living” and solid grandeur than because one of its heiresses was the unamiable Warwick Dowager who had married Addison. They left for Shrewsbury after they had viewed the little waterfall of Pistyll Rhaiadr, where the Doctor remarked only upon its height and the copiousness of its fall. If Johnson had been an up-to-date Cambrian railway tourist, he could not have entered and left North Wales in more approved style, for he came in by way of Chester and left by way of Shrewsbury. Safely out of Wales they journeyed homeward through Worcester, probably Birmingham, and Oxford. On September twenty-fourth there is this simple record: “We went home.”

A VIEW OF DENBIGH CASTLEFrom an engraving by Boydell, 1750

A VIEW OF DENBIGH CASTLE

From an engraving by Boydell, 1750

It is to be remembered that on this tour Johnson lacked the companionship of the faithful Boswell. Yet the scantiness of the diary andits critical attitude cannot be accounted for wholly on this ground, but were due, I think, far more to the fact that the Doctor was thoroughly English in prejudice. Tobias Smollett’s feeling in “Humphrey Clinker,” for example, is even more English and uncomplimentary. All through his tour of the Hebrides, though he denounced Scotland and all things Scottish, called the Scotch liars and their country naked, yet the Doctor had an uneasy conviction of their superiority. As far as Wales was concerned, he simply did not consider this country of Arthur, of bard and of poet, this country of an indestructible nationalism, worthy his serious interest. Had he lived in Shakespeare’s day his concern would have been much greater, his respect more solicitous.

On the first visit to Mr. Myddleton the preservation of the Welsh language had been discussed. In his journal for that date Dr. Johnson wrote, “Myddleton is the only man, who, in Wales, has talked to me of literature.” He was visiting people who, almost universally, were supremely indifferent to Wales and all things Welsh. In other words, he was visiting the upper or ruling classes. It is not so many yearsago that the children of the gentry were still not allowed to learn Welsh for fear their English accent might be spoiled. Now, happily, they are taught Welsh, a fact which not only improves the relationship between them and the working classes, but also is contributing generously to a revival of all that is best in Welsh song and literature. Even a prince of the blood royal learns Welsh and speaks it.

Dr. Johnson was in Wales at a time when the intellectual interests of Welshmen were most flagging, that is, just before the introduction of the Welsh Sunday Schools which, with their educational rather than exclusively religious function, gave impulse to a period of modern Welsh literature. Not only in chronology but also in importance, the establishment of the Welsh Sunday School must take precedence of Lady Charlotte Guest’s translations of the “Mabinogion.” Yet what Macpherson’s “Ossian” did for Scotland in the seventies in arousing interest, Lady Guest did for Wales in 1838. It is possible, if one can presuppose the impossible, that with these translations in hand Dr. Johnson’s journal would have been very different. However, one is fearful that, fortifiedeven with Lady Charlotte’s beautiful translations, there would have been passages in the authentic Welsh “Mabinogion” as angrily rejected by him as Macpherson’s imposture was. Johnson said that he never could get the meaning of an Erse song explained to him. He asked a young lady who had sung such a song what it was about, and she replied that it was for the entertainment of the company. He explained that it was its meaning he could not understand, whereupon she answered that it was a love song. And that was all the intelligence, Johnson said, that he could get.

There was strong probability, as a Welsh traveller in 1682 expressed it, of Welsh being “English’d out of Wales, as Latin was barbarously Goth’d out of Italy.” From the time of the Great Rebellion, however, the condition of the Welsh language began to improve, and it is possible greatly to overrate the difficulties with which Johnson met in coming to know the life of the people. Impatiently he had exclaimed, “Let us, if we do talk, talk about something; men and women are my subject of enquiry; let us see how these differ from those we have left behind.” But from any evidence in his journalJohnson did not consider it worth his while to discover how much the Welsh really do differ from the English. The visible physical fact with which he was confronted was the dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-complexioned Welshman of medium stature, very Spanish-looking, sometimes almost Oriental. What he heard were voices quite distinct from the English, quiet and pure in enunciation. What he must have felt—if he felt the Welsh as distinct, except in inferiority—was a race as different as the south is from the north, sensitive, imaginative, excitable, deeply impressionable to everything that is beautiful, as capable of the “howl” as the Irish, yet more critical, of an intellectual independence which makes Roman Catholicism unwelcome to the Welsh, with a shrewdness that is the logic of success in money-getting, a captive race with minds which can never be servile. Yet in a letter to Boswell announcing that he had visited five out of the six counties of North Wales, Dr. Johnson wrote: “Wales is so little different from England, that it offers nothing to the speculation of the traveller.” Johnson was capable, too, of taunting Boswell with the sterility of Scotland. He had a certain strain of contrarinessin him, “tonic” some call it, which made him emphasize the undesirable features of a country or a personality. Three years after this journey, forgetting even his interest in castles, he was able to say: “Except the woods ofBachycraigh, what is there in Wales that can fill the hunger of ignorance, or quench the thirst of curiosity?”

[1]Heb Duw, Heb Dym (Without God, Nothing), Duw a’ diggon (God and plenty) would be more correct Welsh and a better translation.

Many and attractively full of poetry are the superstitions still living in the solitary Welsh hills. One day I encountered a hillside woman while we were looking for a hilltop church. She was in great distress, breathless and flapping her apron. Now there is a Welsh legend that bees were created in paradise, and her bees were running away. Apparently, this worldly, heartless creature had no intention, if an apron could prevent it, of allowing her bees to go back to heaven. Fairyland is Cambria in Wales, if you will let me juggle with my words in this fashion, for I do not know how to express it otherwise. And yearning for continued love and life, even with the bees, is the breath of the phantom and spirit world called “Fairyland.” Although the instinct of faith in the supernatural may be primitive and the Welsh of to-day highly civilized, yet supernatural belief is still ineradicated among the people. Their childish tales, often so hard to understand, are full of a haunting race life. Conviction,for example, that fairies are the souls of dead mortals, mortals not good enough for heaven or bad enough for hell,—at least the thought is a gentle one, and as such not to be despised. And to their gentle masters the fairies themselves seem to have given an uncommon devotion. If fairies are troublesome, one can sometimes get rid of them by changing one’s residence. But not so with these Welsh fairies! Like the family servant for whom every one longs, they stick closer than a brother. Even going into England will not drive Welsh fairies away from those they love. Matthew Arnold should have considered this when he was studying the Celtic temperament, and denouncing it for its inconstancy, for the essence of all that is Celtic is the Welsh fairy.

One is a little of the opinion of the youth, who, when he first saw the Lady of the Lake, thought she was a goose. That is what I thought of my first fairies, and still think of them. Yet, in this day and generation, it is something to have seen a fairy at all! It was dusk, and I had come through a tiny hill village, where white cottages were gleaming in the dark, and light shining on garden walls. It was so quiet that Icould hear pine needles dropping on the ground, and the wind talking in the branches of the rain, still miles distant upon the sea. The noise of a tardy bumblebee, hurrying homeward in the dark, fairly boomed in my ears, and the sounds of shale rock slipping down the hillside came and went mysteriously. Through lighted windows I caught glimpses of evening comfort, of a bright fire glowing with peat, whose aroma was everywhere on the soft air, of dressers and tridarns, brave with countless ornaments, of a grandfather’s clock whose wise old face shone with light, of children’s heads about the supper table.

But a higher hill was calling me, and an adventure of whose nature I had not even dreamed. I turned off the road by a Wesleyan chapel and mounted a steep path. Up, up, up I went around the side of a green hill, sometimes listening to the night stir of the birds, sometimes startled by a brown rabbit, leaping for cover. Out beyond, the mountains of Snowdonia were piled height on height, all washed in sepia depth upon a sky, moonless, but brilliant with stars. I hastened, for I was eager to reach the pine-crowned summit. Up there would be no soundexcept the wind in the trees, and once in a while some homely noises from the villages in the valley below: the sharp bark of a dog, the bleating of a lamb, the closing of some cottage door, a resonant “good-night.”

Once on the hilltop, I lay down to rest, listening to the soft flight and hooting of some young owl, and feeling the grass cool and deep to my head and hands. As I lay there, eyes half closed, I heard some one coming up the path. Nearer and nearer drew uncertain footsteps and the tapping of a cane over loose stones. I sat up quickly, and there in the dark was an old woman, a cane in one hand, a basket in the other. Something cried piteously from the basket and I asked what it was. The old crone said that it was a kitten, and showed me a sack in which something else, tied up, squirmed and mewed. But she did not open the bag. After a due amount of greeting and curtseying, the old woman went on. I noticed that she kept looking back as she followed the path over the crown of the hill.

My attention was diverted from her by the approach of more footsteps. It was a boy, a very large boy, and in his hand I could clearly see aschool-bag, ridiculously small for such a big lad, in which he, too, carried something. Behind him walked a huge dog, feathered on back and legs so heavily that his shaggy hair trailed on the ground. I heard something cry from the little bag, and I asked what it was. The lad replied in Welsh that it was a kitten. I could see him smiling as he stood his ground. Except in Welsh there was nothing further for me to do. Under the most favourable circumstances it is a great deal to do anything at all in Welsh, and with my heart beating rapidly and my tongue growing dry, I did not feel that I could do anything more in any language. We were silent while the little thing kept on “miaowing,” and this boy, like an ordinary boy, hitched about for a few moments, kicking stones from the path, and then went on, followed by the dog.

Erect and uneasy, I continued to sit up. Just as dog and boy were out of sight I heard some one else stumbling up the path and a faint kitten-like noise. I began to be afraid of those kittens being carried one after one over this desolate hilltop. It suggested a little the enchantments in the “Mabinogion,” only in the “Mabinogion” mice and not kittens played theleading part. I got up and fled before this experience should have a chance to become the beginning of some enchantment. But already I felt as if a spell were upon me, and even when I was quite far away from the kitteny place, I was still in a strange condition of excitement. One feels a natural dislike for any sort of hilltop enchantments, and I did.

I was making considerable speed in my Welsh-soled boots and feeling more like an ordinary person, when the path took a sharp turn and I saw something strange in front of me. Down below ran the road, hard enough to be a fact, and lighted by the clear glow of the stars. If only one could always be sure of what is coming in this world, such a turning as I had taken would be like Keats’s beauty, “a joy forever.” But alas! close at my own right hand, very distinct, unmistakably clear, rose something my eyes had never met before: a chimney with no house attached to it. And on the treeless meadow in front of this apparition I saw the old woman leaning on her stick and the boy sitting beside his dog. Clearly the spell had worked. But how I struggled out from under this enchantment is another story.

The least credulous may look at fairy and goblin food in the woods and fields, and their gloves, the foxglove, growing beside the road. And their animals, their sheep, their horses, their dogs are visible on many a dim hillside. The Welsh speak of these little people as the fair folk or family—“y Tylwyth Teg.” And well do they deserve the name. Sometimes they are spoken of as the fair folk of the wood or the fair folk of the mine. In gowns of green, blue, white, and scarlet they dance on moonlit nights. If they like you they will bestow blessings on you, and are frequently called “mothers’ blessings” because mothers are glad to have such little ones. But if one speaks unkindly of them, one will get into trouble. And here, whether one be talking of fairies or of mortals, who cannot always avenge themselves as readily as fairies, is a lesson worth remembering.

RUTHIN CASTLEFrom an engraving by Buck, 1742

RUTHIN CASTLE

From an engraving by Buck, 1742

Elves, according to the Welsh,—I have seen only a picture of one drawn by a Welsh miner,—also live on goblin food and wear foxgloves when they have any particularly hard work to do. The Queen of the Elves is none other than the Shakespearean fairy spoken of by Mercutio, who comes

“In shape no bigger than an agate stoneOn the forefinger of an alderman.”

“In shape no bigger than an agate stone

On the forefinger of an alderman.”

No one who hasnotseen a fairy can have any idea how difficult it is to draw the line between history and story. The difficulties of the folklorist are as nothing,—for his is the scientific spirit,—compared with the trouble the real fairy hunter has in the open. Nowadays, of course, no one believes everything or possibly anything he is told. But in times past mankind seems to have been gifted with a more intimate faith in and knowledge of some things than we have to-day. For example, people used to know Satan better and were more afraid of him. An honest Welsh farmer saw him lying across the road with his head on one wall and his tail on the other. The Devil was moaning horribly, which in this uncomfortable position would not be strange for any one.

In criticism of Welsh fairies there is one thing to be said. They not only have a rather practical-joking sort of humour, but they also have very little sense of equity. A man may do his best for them, and then they repay him in the end by a trick. A Welsh piper was coming home in the gray of the evening, and had tocross a little running stream, from which he saw only the shadowed hillside and heard only the voice of the wind. But when he had travelled beyond the hill, music became audible, and, turning, instead of the knoll he had been looking at, there was a great castle with lights blazing and music playing and the sound of dancing feet. He went back and was caught in the procession coming out from its doors and taken in to pipe to them. He piped for a day or so, but he was anxious to return to his people, and the fairies seemed to understand. They said they would let him go if he would play a favourite tune. He played his best, they danced fast and furiously. And at last he was set free on the dark hillside, with only the voice of the wind for company. He went home hastily, but when he entered his father’s house no one knew him. An old man awoke from a doze by the fire, and said that he had heard, when a boy, of a piper who had gone away on a quiet evening and never come back again. That was over a hundred years ago.

Perhaps there is no reason why the fairies, as well as poor mortals, should not be allowed a natural and happy alternation between badnessand goodness. Metaphorically speaking, they are not the only creatures who steal money and butter and cheese, and who whisk away helpless, unbaptized infants. Doubtless a New England Mather—those early New England Mathers were hard on babies—would say that an infant who remained unbaptized long enough to be discovered by a fairy deserved to be stolen. Such an idea could have flourished only in New England. As if it were not bad enough to face the-survival-of-the-fittest test in this life without carrying it over into heaven! I, for one, am not disposed to find fault with the fairies when, as happened in Beddgelert, they led a man into beautiful lodgings. To know what a temptation a beautiful apartment might become, one must have lived, as I have, in that little mountain-cupped village. When the man awoke in the morning after a peaceful night’s rest, he was sleeping on a swamp with a clump of rushes for his pillow. If he had been a nervous, sleepless, modern man, instead of finding fault as he did, he would have been grateful for the night’s sound rest and forthwith tried the swamp again. After this there would have been a “Swamp Cure for Insomnia.”

There are ghosts, too, in Wales, but they are rather spiritless creatures, much easier to catch and not so tricksy as the fairies. Nor do they select prickly furze and stony hilltops as their hiding-places. But on the whole they are difficult to subdue, especially the farm ghosts. While the servants are busy making the butter, the ghost or spirit frequently throws something unclean into the milk or sends the pans spinning around like mad. In one farm the farmer offered a reward of five pounds to any one who would lay their particularly lively spirit. Several people tried it, including an aged priest in whose face the impertinent ghost waved a woman’s bonnet. Finally, the Established Church being unable to cope with this sprightly situation, an Independent minister from Llanarmon coaxed the ghost into the barn. There the spirit, still unsubdued, turned into a lion, a mastiff, and other ferocious beasts, but in no incarnation could it do any harm to the Independent Griffiths. It became discouraged, and the minister persuaded the poor thing to appear in the form of a fly. Perhaps in this incarnation the wretched thing still had hopes of revenge. However, the intrepid Griffiths was too much for it, and itwas captured in a tobacco box and borne off, never to trouble the farmer any more.

The death portents in Cambria reveal all the strangeness and lawlessness of the Celtic imagination. No one who does not know the Welsh hills, who has not been on them day after day, can feel the significance of these death portents. One must have travelled on the top and edge of the Welsh mountain world to understand,—have looked out upon a sea of hills gray and barren in their utter colourlessness, and down upon valleys like the valley of the shadow of death. There abyss and altitude are alike full of terrors, of mist before which mind and step falter, of an Unknown which presses home in bodily anguish, which distorts the vision and strikes upon the ear with the outcry of bewildered souls. It is not strange, then, that the Welsh have the most horrible of banshees. It is known as the Gwrach y Rhybin, the old hag of the mist; and a Cyhyraeth which moans dolefully in the night but is never seen; and a Tolaeth which groans or sings or saws, or tramps with its feet, and is also unseen. And there are, besides, the “Dogs of Hell” and the “Dogs of the Sky” and the “Corpse Candle” and the “GoblinFuneral,”—all of them portents of death. Several years ago I came very near seeing one of these portentous dogs. I was on a treeless upland pasture, rich with ruby like a deep agate, with lavender, flecked with emerald-green as musk is freaked with brown; purple, pink, and opalescent in the sunshine that came and went. There were black sheep and white in that pasture, I remember, and some little lambs that straddled with surprise. One rose, stretching and curling its tail with the delicious energy of waking from sleep. I looked down what seemed like a particoloured gulf of greensward into valleys where men and cattle had become dots in size, and up to more fern and heather and altitudes where the curlew cried. It was as I looked up that I saw an impressively large black dog that went through an impossibly small sheep-hole in a sheep-wall. But a wisp of mist came over the Welsh mountain-side, and one never makes an effort to see that sort of thing or to run after it. Hunting rollicking elves and lightfoot fairies is quite a different matter!

One of the most beautiful legends in the Iolo Manuscripts is the story of one of these death portents. There was a lord rich in houses andland and gold. Every luxury of life was his for the asking. One night he heard a voice cry out distinctly three times, “The greatest and richest man of this parish shall perish to-night.” He was aware that there was no other man so great or rich as he, and he sent for the physician and prepared to die. But the night passed and day came and he still lived. At sunrise he heard the bell tolling and knew that some one must have died, and he sent to enquire who it was. It was an old blind beggar who had asked for charity at the lord’s gate and been refused. Then this great lord saw that the voice had come as a warning to him, that his riches were as nothing in comparison with the treasure and wealth which the blind man had in the kingdom of heaven. He accepted the warning and relieved all who were poor or in need. When he died, angels were heard to sing him a welcome, and after his death he was buried, as he had asked to be, in the blind beggar’s grave.

Of hags and witches there used to be far too many in Wales. Shakespeare tells all one needs to know of them. For some reasons, hidden to us, he had peculiarly intimate and extensive information concerning Celtic folk-lore. Macbeth,speaking of witches, says, “I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished.” These witches did not hesitate to throw even portions of human beings into seething cauldrons:—

“Round about the cauldron go;In the poisoned entrails throw.”

“Round about the cauldron go;

In the poisoned entrails throw.”

They threw in other things, too, as the third witch tells us,—

“Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,Witches’ mummy, maw and gulfOf the ravin’d salt-sea shark,Root of hemlock digged i’ the dark,Liver of blaspheming Jew,Gall of goat, and slips of yewSilver’d in the moon’s eclipse,Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips.”

“Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,

Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf

Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,

Root of hemlock digged i’ the dark,

Liver of blaspheming Jew,

Gall of goat, and slips of yew

Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse,

Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips.”

THE COMPLEAT ANGLER IN WALES

In Wales the knowledge which witches possessed they did not use for the good of others, but for their hurt; they tormented children and animals, they plagued the hard-working and industrious, and upset the Welsh household. In Cambria there are witches unlike any I haveever heard of, witches that will cause cows to sit down like cats before the fire. No wonder the Welsh farmer keeps his Bible handy in the kitchen chest, and runs for it post-haste, to read his seated cow a chapter and unwitch her! No wonder that with such witches conjurors are needed,—if for no other reason, then to unseat the cows; and that country folk pluck the snapdragon to protect themselves from these hags! No wonder the peasants cross their doors, even to this day in isolated districts, to shield themselves, and that they keep horseshoes and churchyard earth to preserve their cottages from spells!

No matter how he fumbled the English fairies, Shakespeare never made any mistake with the Welsh. He understood what “mab” meant,—that it meant a little thing,—just as “mabcath” in Welsh means a kitten, or “mabinogi,” the singular of “mabinogion,” means a tale told to the little ones. No one who has not seen a fairy can have any idea how difficult it is to draw the line between history and story. That some of the fairies seen on the way home from fairs and from patriotic Eisteddfodau—Welsh national festivals of poetry and song—are dueto ale, cannot be disputed. It is commonly said that the Methodists are driving the fairies out of Cambria. These nonconformists are usually teetotallers. However, the real fairy is still in Wales, and if you do not believe me, all I can say is, that you must go to Wales and prove that I am wrong. But perhaps it would be well before you take the journey to look at your foot, for if you find you have not a foot that water runs under, it is best for you not to go. So runs the ancient proverb, and without that lucky foot no fairy shall you see.

There is only one thing that can possibly counteract the lack of a requisite instep for those who desire to see fairies, and that is eating a good deal of cheese. I do not know why this is, but I do know that as far back as one can go, much further back than Giraldus Cambrensis or even Taliessin or the archest of the archdruids, Welsh rarebit and roasted cheese have been the very bread of Cymric diet. There is a story in John Rastell’s “Hundred Mery Talys,” printed in the sixteenth century, which shows that before Shakespeare came to elucidate the Welsh fairy, this question of cheese and the Welsh had been duly considered: “I fyndewrytten amonge olde gestes, howe God mayde Saynt Peter porter of heuen, and that God of hys goodnes, sone after his passyon, suffered many men to come to the kyngdome of Heuen with small deseruynge; at whych tyme there was in heuen a great companye of Welchmen, whyche with crakynge and babelynge troubled all the other. Wherefore God sayde to saynte Peter that he was wery of them, and that he wold fayne haue them out of heuen. To whome Saynte Peter sayd: Good Lorde, I warrente you, that shall be done. Wherefore Saynt Peter wente out of heuen gates and cried with a loud voiceCause bobe(caws pob), that is as moche to saye as rosted chese, whiche thynge the Welchemen herynge, ranne out of heuen a great pace. And when Saynt Peter saw them all out, he suddenly wente into Heuen, and locked the dore, and so sparred all the Welchmen out.”

Undoubtedly among everything Welsh, even in literature, cheese is the “Open Sesame.” It is encountered in “Mabinogion” romance and beauty, which is the same thing as to say cheese among the Welsh! Is there any other folk-lore in the history of the world in which cheese plays so important a rôle? It might in German folk-lore,but the fact is that it does not. Bread, milk, the juice of the grape, but cheese? No, that is lifted into the realm of imagination and of a world-classic only in Cambria. Again Shakespeare showed his surprisingly accurate knowledge of the Celt when Falstaff exclaims, “Heaven defend me from that Welsh Fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!”

From the heart of Snowdon, some thirteen miles or more, on roads gray with altitudes of rock, green with shining hillside pastures dotted with white sheep, and crossed by rushing streams, we walked down to Carnarvon. From the rocky heights behind it, this city of the Prince of Wales—the great castle pile, the castle walls enclosing the roofs of many buildings—extends to the edge of the sea, where the boom of a sailing-vessel swinging around might easily touch the castle wall. And beyond are the ships, the Island of Anglesey, Mona, beloved in all Welsh hearts, peaceful and fertile, with the clouds above.

It was tranquil, luxuriant, established, unshaken by anything that Time had been able to do. There still were the walls strong to defend; the ships from the sea, and cottage chimneys symbol of many an ingle nook, of quiet firesides, of homely comforts, of beloved household faces, of young joy and ancient peace.

“Caer Seint yn Arfon!” “Caer ar Fon,” Carnarvon, meaning the stronghold opposite Mona or Anglesey. “Caer,” the fortress, the station, where in Welsh legend, Elen, the great Welsh road-maker, was sought and won by the Emperor Maximus,—history this, or tradition, which makes the thirteenth century and its Edwards and its castles seem but as the children of yesterday. I thought of the description of the old city in the “Dream of Maxen Wledig,” the dream of Maximus, the tyrant, in the “Mabinogion,” one of the classics of the world andtheclassic of Welsh literature. In that dream what did that Roman Emperor see but what we now saw? “Valleys he saw, and steeps, and rocks of wondrous height, and rugged precipices, never yet saw he the like. And thence he beheld an island in the sea facing this rugged land. And between him and this land was a country of which the plain was as large as the sea, the mountain as vast as the wood. And from the mountain he saw a river that flowed through the land and fell into the sea. And at the mouth of the river he beheld a castle, the fairest that man ever saw, and the gate of the castle was open, and he went into the castle.”

Probably “Helen of the Roads” is the legendary form which the power of Rome has taken in Wales. On either side of the mountains two roads run their straight course from south to north, roads that were marked by camps in strategic places and by Roman houses of stone in the sunshiny reaches of the hillsides. Rome is still everywhere in Wales: the way it thinks in politics, its speech, its literature,—and nowhere more beautifully than in the “Dream of Maxen Wledig.” The Britons were in the sorry plight of having to choose between enemies; and of the two, Roman or heathen invader, the Romans were the more friendly and beneficent, for the wild birds of the heathen carried only fire on their wings, and alighted on the ripe grain to burn it, but the Romans maintained order and conferred power. There in this most ancient city of Segontium are still the walls of the Roman town as well as the more recent walls of the castle town, and a remain which suggests a Roman hypocaust; there coins and other fragments of this ancient empire are constantly being found. There the body of the father of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, was discovered in the reign of Edward I. AndEdward, brutal and practical though he was, had it interred with pomp and honour in the church.

The very size and strength of Carnarvon Castle as it still stands shows how important strategically Edward thought the town. That Roman stronghold which was there before the present castle must have been beautiful, too, if in the legend of “Maxen Wledig” we have recollection of what it was like. Both in the dream and with the messengers whom the Emperor sent, they traversed the land until they came to Snowdon. “Behold,” said the messengers, “the rugged land that our master saw.” And then they went forward until they saw Anglesey, and Aber Sain, and a castle at the mouth of the river. “And in the castle he saw a fair hall, of which the roof seemed to be all gold, the walls of the hall seemed to be entirely of glittering precious gems, the doors all seemed to be of gold. Golden seats he saw in the hall, and silver tables. And on a seat opposite to him he beheld two auburn-haired youths playing at chess. He saw a silver board for the chess, and golden pieces thereon. The garments of the youths were of jet black satin, and chaplets ofruddy gold bound their hair, whereon were sparkling jewels of great price, rubies and gems, alternating with imperial stones.… And beside a pillar in the hall he saw a hoary-headed man, in a chair of ivory, with the figures of two eagles in ruddy gold thereon. Bracelets of gold were upon his arms, many rings were on his hands and a gold torque about his neck; and his hair was bound with a golden diadem. He was of powerful aspect. A chessboard of gold was before him, and a rod of gold, and a steel file in his hand. And he was carving out chessmen. And he saw a maiden sitting before him in a chair of ruddy gold. Not more easy than to gaze upon the sun when brightest, was it to look upon her by reason of her beauty. A vest of white silk was upon the maiden, with clasps of ruddy gold at the breast, and a surcoat of gold tissue upon her, and a frontlet of ruddy gold upon her head, and rubies and gems were in the frontlet, alternating with pearls and imperial stones. And a girdle of ruddy gold was around her. She was the fairest sight that man ever beheld.” What more beautiful in any castle to be, in any modern royal pageant of to-day or to-morrow, could there be than thisHelen of Wales of whom the Emperor dreamed and whom he sought and found? Unlike the other Grecian Helen, she left, not records of war and strife behind to attest her beauty, but serviceable roads over many of which we may still travel to-day.

With the exception of Alnwick, Carnarvon Castle is the finest in Great Britain. It is a wonderful creation of man, a thing of strength and beauty, of might and grace; its decorated castellated architecture, facing two ways towards the sea, giving it a visionary appearance of charm wholly lacking in the bulky massiveness of Conway and Harlech,—magic casements, these, as I said before,—

“opening on the foamOf perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.”

“opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.”

Its thirteen towers, pentagonal, hexagonal, octagonal, perfect in their slender grace from walls ten feet thick. About one hundred and fifty years ago, Pennant wrote: “This town is justly the boast of North Wales, for the beauty of situation, goodness of the buildings, regularity of the plan, and, above all, the grandeur of the castle, the most magnificent badge of our subjection.”

It was in the Eagle Tower in which Edward II, the first Prince of Wales,—though why they should forget their own valiant Gruffyd ap Llewelyn is more than the writer can see,—is supposed to have been born. The ivy clings now everywhere upon its castellated summits. Probably the famous tower was so called because of the bird carved upon its walls. “Within a little dark room of this tower,” says Pennant, “not twelve feet long, nor eight in breadth, was born Edward II; so little, in those days, did a royal consort consult either pomp or conveniency.” Alas, the Prince was not born in that little tower as records well show! The Welsh refused to acknowledge the English king unless he would dwell in Wales. This was impossible; so their demands were modified to the requirement that the prince placed over them must be of their own nation and language and of an unblamable life. Queen Eleanor was about to be confined, and, although it was midwinter and harsh weather, the king sent for her and she was brought to Carnarvon where the first English Prince of Wales was born. As soon as Edward heard that the child was born he called the Welsh nobility together at Rhuddlan, ostensiblyto consult about the public good and safety of all Wales. Once there, he told them that in case he had to leave the country he would appoint in his place a prince who would fulfil the conditions they had given, provided they would obey him, naming one who had been “born in Wales, could speak no English, and whose life and conversation nobody could stain,” and then named his own son just born in Carnarvon. In his seventeenth year, 1301, this Prince of Wales was formally invested, even as in 1911 another Prince of Wales was endued, “with a chaplet of gold round his head, a golden ring on his finger, and a silver sceptre in his hand.” The title is never inherited, but is conferred by special creation and investiture.

THE TOWER OF DOLBADARN ON LLANBERIS LAKE

Unfortunate for romantic tradition is it that Edward II built the Eagle Tower and was not born in it. But these are the facts of the case, and the people of Carnarvon know them perfectly well. Undoubtedly, however, this prince was born in the town. One feels indignant sometimes, perhaps often, in Wales at the value set upon celebrity, the celebrity which “pays”; at Denbigh the proud claiming of Stanley, the explorer, where the poor lad was knocked aboutand abused worse than some cur of the streets; the exploitation of Dr. Johnson, who happened to be with Mrs. Piozzi in the vicinity of Denbigh for a few days; and then this English Prince of Wales whom the Welsh insist upon having born in the tower which he himself built! Ah, well,—

“Why should not gallant TaffyHave his relics and his bones,Llewelyns and Cadwallos,And Griffyevanjones?”

“Why should not gallant Taffy

Have his relics and his bones,

Llewelyns and Cadwallos,

And Griffyevanjones?”

And we must just be willing to let this cherished Eagle Tower be an indispensable Welsh bone—or relic of contention.

The gateway of Carnarvon Castle is very impressive, of great size and strength, as are most of these North Wales castles, but, as is not the case with most of them, with romantic grace added. Vines clamber up it and over it, cracks etch the portions of the walls which are bare. Above the gateway, in its niche high out of reach of destructive enemies, is the figure of Edward II; and to the right and to the left graceful turrets rise above the walls. Low on the face of the gateway tower are slits for defence, above them at a safe altitude are windowswith part of the tracery still intact. This entrance was besieged by Glendower in the fifteenth century and by a Parliamentary army in the seventeenth. Bitter battles were fought about the old gate and in the town beyond. One day at Carnarvon, when the peasant folk were holding a fair, one Madoc, who claimed to be the son of Llewelyn, burst into the market square, stormed the castle, and left the town a smouldering ruin.

But distant, far, far distant are those ancient days of primitive strife. And as I turned off my Snowdon road to enter by this castle gateway I had still in mind the peaceful, prosperous town through which I had come and the ships on the sea beyond and the shining island shore of Mona, mother of Wales. We paid our entrance fee and, as I was doing that, my eye caught sight of an old table there under the arch, littered with books for sale. I looked at the shimmering green grass beyond in the castle courtyard down upon which the sun was flooding. We were in no haste. I wanted to dally, and dally I did by the bookstall, my hand falling upon a first edition of Goldsmith’s “Bee”, to be sold at sixpence! We paid for it, and I couldhear my friend saying, “Do you suppose it really is a first edition?”

My fingers between the leaves of this book, I turned to and opened “A City Night-Peace,” reading, “There may come a time when this temporary solitude may be made continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away, and leave a desert in its room.” Then we went through into the sunshine in the courtyard beyond, the book clasped tightly in my hand, and the hours passed as in a dream. There was the touch of time made visible, there was life carried forward even in the busy chirping of the birds upon the vine-covered walls, there was sunshine as it had been in those olden but not more golden days than this, there was the sound of voices, voices beloved so long, long ago, and speaking again; there was joy, and sorrow, living again for me and in me; there once more was all that eager, ardent, daily commonplace of human lives, that daily friendliness of little things which makes life so worth the living. I felt it in all about us, woven into everything, the cheerful noise of birds, the voices from beyond the castle walls, the sunshine, the colour; and more and more the spirit of the place took possession of me.

Again as in a dream within a dream we passed through the castle gateway out into the town with its simple old houses, its little shops with their signboards and gay windows, its inns and lodgings, past the Welsh children playing in the streets and their elders going gravely to and fro about their business, and the sleek horses and whirling motors, up the hill past Llanbeblig Church, the churchyard Watts-Dunton has used as part of the setting of his story “Aylwin,” and on to the country road which, with thirteen miles’ walking, would bring us home—to our Welsh home at the foot of Snowdon, Eryri, the home of eagles. Behind us, as we turned, the ships had become but white moths on a vast sea, Anglesey was growing dimmer, the cows pastured on the plain about the old town were but specks, the coast-line was merging into the water. But still the castle dominated everything, and I thought of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s delight in that vast pile and his naïve record in the Cambrian journal: “I did not think there had been such buildings; it surpassed my ideas.”

It was the first morning of my first Welsh National Eisteddfod, and I sat by the window working, and glancing away from my work to a hillside up which led narrow steps to the summits above, among which were hidden away some half a dozen tiny villages. Colwyn Bay, where the Eisteddfod was to be held, was—as the crow doesnotfly—about forty miles distant. It was a glorious morning of sunshine in which gleamed the river, glossy beeches and pines, and little whitewashed Welsh cottages. As I looked, there began to emerge from the steps a stream of people; down and down they flowed, bright in their pretty dresses or shining in their black Sunday-best broadcloth. All those mountain hamlets up above, reached by roads passable only for mountain ponies, were sending their men, women, and children to the Welsh festival of song and poetry.

Talking and excited about who would be chaired as bard, who would be crowned, what female choir would win in the choral contests, whatmale choir, and discussing a thousand little competitions, even to a set of insertions for sheets, shams, and towels, we were borne on the train from Bettws-y-Coed swiftly through the Vale of Conway, beside the river, past Caerhûn, the once ancient city of Canovium, past Conway Castle, with its harp-shaped walls still encircling the town, and so to Colwyn Bay.

Then all these enthusiastic people who had climbed down a hill to take the train, climbed up another to see the first Gorsedd ceremony. As we passed, from one of the cottages was heard the voice of a woman screaming in great excitement, “Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Jones, come to the front door quickly. There’s some people going by; they’re dressed in blue and white. Dear me, Mrs. Jones, they’reMEN!” The procession, fully aware that Mrs. Jones, and all the little Joneses and all the big and middling Joneses, too, had come, went on gravely up, up, up the hill to “Y Fanerig” (the Flagstaff), where stood the “Maen Llog of the Gorsedd” and its encircling stones. The paths were steep, and even bards and druids are subject toembonpoint. Old Eos Dar, who can sing penillion with never a pause for breath, lost his “wind,” and the“Bearer of the Great Sword of the Gorsedd” was no more to be found. A boy scout, perhaps thinking of Scott’s minstrel, who said,—

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