Part 1

By Jeannette Marks

GALLANT LITTLE WALES. Sketches of its People, Places, and Customs. Illustrated.

THE END OF A SONG. Illustrated.

THROUGH WELSH DOORWAYS. Illustrated.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK

_Gallant Little Wales_

_Gallant Little Wales_

_Sketches of its People, Places and Customs_

BY JEANNETTE MARKS

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1912

COPYRIGHT 1912, BY JEANNETTE MARKS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

_Published October 1912_

CALON WRTH GALON

_Preface_

As a guide-book this volume will be found to contain too few unpronounceable Welsh place-names to be adequate, but as an introduction to the North Welsh land, its customs, its village life, its little churches, its holiday possibilities, its history and associations, its folk-lore and romance, its music, its cottages and castles, GALLANT LITTLE WALES should be useful. It is my intention to follow this book with a companion volume on South Wales.

I wish to express my debt to Mr. Henry Blackwell, who has always been quick to lend me volumes from his priceless Welsh library and who went over some of my manuscript for me. I am under obligations also to Rev. Gwilym O. Griffith of Carnarvonshire, North Wales. Thanks, too, I owe to Miss Dorothy Foster for her work upon the map which appears as a separate page in this volume.

The English know where beauty and comfort, good care, and good Welsh mutton are to be had for a moderate tariff. But long before the Englishman went for his vacations to these British Alps and the American followed him, excursions were made into Wales. The Roman spent a summer holiday or so both in North and South Wales, and left there his villas and his fortresses and his roads. The Roman, having set or followed a good example--and who shall say which it was?--and having with Roman certainty got what he wanted, departed, leaving the country open to other invaders who pillaged and plundered. Nor, since that time, has the country ever been without an invader.

I, too, have gone my wonder-ways in Wales, plundering where I could. I, too, Celt and Celt again, have followed its beauty and felt a biting hunger for a land which, once loved, can never be forgotten. As did another Celt, William Morris, in his poems, so in prose this little book and I have wrought in an old garden, hoping to make “fresh flowers spring up from hoarded seed” and to bring back again--“back to folk weary”--some fragrance of old days and old deeds. Friendliness, solitude, memories, beauty for the eye and beauty for the ear,--he who would have one or all of these, let him go and go again to gallant little Wales.

JEANNETTE MARKS.

ATTIC PEACE, May 13, 1912.

_Contents_

I. WELSH WALES 3

II. A VILLAGE IN ERYRI 17

III. HILLTOP CHURCHES 30

IV. DR. JOHNSON’S TOUR OF NORTH WALES 59

V. WELSH FOLK-LORE 86

VI. THE CITY OF THE PRINCE OF WALES 105

VII. THE EISTEDDFOD 117

VIII. CAMBRIAN COTTAGES 133

IX. CASTLE AND ABBEYS IN NORTH WALES 155

APPENDIX: SUGGESTIONS FOR SOME TOURS 177

_Illustrations_

THE LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN _Frontispiece_

CONWAY CASTLE 10 From an old print.

THE QUEEN’S TOWER, CONWAY CASTLE 24 From an engraving by Cuitt, 1817.

THE GREAT HALL AT CONWAY CASTLE 32 From an engraving by Cuitt.

ST. WINIFRED’S WELL, HOLYHEAD 40 From an engraving by Cuitt, 1813.

THE EAGLE TOWER OF CARNARVON CASTLE 52 From an engraving by Cuitt.

GATEWAY OF CARNARVON CASTLE 66 From an engraving by Cuitt.

A VIEW OF DENBIGH CASTLE 80 From an engraving by Boydell, 1750.

RUTHIN CASTLE 92 From an engraving by Buck, 1742.

THE COMPLEAT ANGLER IN WALES 100

THE TOWER OF DOLBADARN ON LLANBERIS LAKE 112

LLANBERIS 124 From an old print.

BEAUMARIS 140 From a proof before letters by Turner.

A WELSH WATERFALL NEAR PENMAEN-MAWR 148 From an engraving by Boydell, 1750.

BEDDGELERT 160 From an old print.

THE SUMMIT OF SNOWDON 172 From an old print.

MAP _Inside front cover_

_Gallant Little Wales_

I

_Welsh Wales_

It is a vanished past that haunts the imagination in Wales, so that forever after in thoughts of that country one goes spellbound. It is the beautiful present, the cry of the sheep upon the mountain-sides, the church bells ringing from their little bell-cots and sounding sweetly in valleys and on highland meadows, the very flowers of the roadsides,--foxglove, bluebell, heather,--that keep one lingering in Wales or draw one back to that land again. There are little churches of twelfth-century foundation, gray or washed white,--their golden glowing saffron wash of long ago unrenewed by the Welsh of to-day. There are little cottages, white or yellow or pink, with their bright doorsills of copper, their clean, shining flagstones, their latticed windows, and all the homely and dignified tranquillity within. There, towering above, are bare rock-strewn summits upon which the yew still stands, and, by its side, springing from the tuft of grass which the wind has not swept away, grows the white harebell; the yew monument to a thousand years, the harebell a fragile thing of yesterday. And above these church-crowned hills are mountain summits, gray and craggy, stripped of everything verdant, places where there are “shapes that haunt thought’s wilderness,” and suggestions of an endless, unending journey.

It was Bishop Baldwin, I think, accompanied on his famous twelfth-century journey through Cambria by Gerald of Wales, who said, getting his breath with difficulty as he surmounted a Welsh hill, “The nightingale followed wise counsel and never came into Wales.” Were this true, the reply might be that Wales has no need of nightingales, so many and so beautiful are the wind-played songs over the rocks, and so incomparably lovely are the voices of the Welsh people themselves. In any event, _had_ the nightingales come into Wales, a plump one--as it seems Bishop Baldwin himself must have been--would never have remained long in the mountain fastnesses of northern Wales,--at least not in the neighbourhood of Snowdon or Nant Francon or Twll Ddu,--the “black hole” of Wales. Neither, if Bishop Baldwin ever climbed to a Welsh mountain-top, would this princely prelate have liked the views there. A comfortable, fat living in some Welsh community like Valle Crucis Abbey, near the river Dee, by Llangollen, would probably have been far more to his liking. Even now these mountain inns are not of the accepted kind, but merely a cromlech over which the wind still plays its devil tunes, a cave or the ridgepole of a long sharp mountain crest, broken by crags down to the very edge of the sea.

Wales is a land of mountains, of little alpine heights ranged on the western coast of Great Britain. Set between plain and sea, full of hill fastnesses, its turbulent history is partly explained by the topography of Gwalia. Independence, lack of unity,--these words summarize most of the early history of Wales. To the different parts of Cambria, alpine Snowdonia, the pasture lands of Berwyn, the moorlands and vast coal-fields of the south, came two races: one short and dark, the Iberian; the other tall and fair, the Celtic. These are still the two peoples of Wales. And after them came Rome; but Rome is gone, has vanished, except for her walls and foundations and roads, and these dark and fair races are still there, mingled, their racial traits still impregnable, still intact.

When you add to what might be called the natural and inherent difficulties of the necessary mountain climbing in Wales, those of the Welsh language, you have a combination that is beyond words to describe. Even the veriest tyro a-visiting Wales will tell you that the language defies all description and the most conscientious efforts to master it.

One warm day we were making a melancholy progress up a mountain-side when steps passed swiftly and a voice said in Welsh, “Stepping upwards?” The young man, an itinerant Welsh minister, was travelling in the same direction with us and it did not seem polite to say “Goodbye,” although I could think of no other Welsh words. Finally two inept ones came to me, “Da iawn” (very good), and I spoke them. But then, not content to let well enough alone, something more had to be said and I kept on repeating those words like a parrot. The Welshman looked around doubtfully, as if he wondered what the “Very good” was all about, and I heard him murmuring to himself and saw him hasten upwards a little faster.

“Say something else,” my companion whispered.

“I am going to if you will just give me time,” I snapped back.

But I didn’t say anything else; I couldn’t, for not another thing would come. If any one feels disposed to criticize an alien because he is unable to speak Welsh, then let him go test its difficulties for himself, its long words, its savage consonants, its poor little vowels lost like some bleating lamb upon rocky mountain-sides. You just get it satisfactorily settled in your own mind that “Dad” means father,--very natural and proper,--when suddenly you discover that “Tad” and “Nhad” and “Thad” also mean father and are one and the same word. With mother or “Mam” you suffer a similar though not the same fate. To begin with, the Cymric alphabet differs from ours: it consists of thirty-one letters, some of which, “mh,” “ch,” “dd,” “ff,” “ng,” “ngh,” “ll,” “nh,” “ph,” “rh,” “th,” never occur in the English alphabet as letters _per se_. Your honest grammarian will tell you flatly that in the case of “ll” there is no sound in any language corresponding to it. Most like it are the Spanish “ll” and the Italian “gl.” Then what to do? Do as you would have to do in rope skipping: watch the rope, run and jump in if you can. The “c” is hard in Welsh, never soft like “c” in “city”; “ch” is like the guttural German “ch”; the “dd” sometimes like “eth”; “f” like “v”; “ff” like “f”; “g” is never soft as in “giant,” but like “g” in “get”; “i,” both long and short, as “i” in “pin” and “ee” in “fleet”; “o” is short like “o” in “got” or long like “o” in “note”; “p” as in English; “s” is like “s” in “sin”; “u” is sometimes like “i” and sometimes not; the “w” is like “u”; “y” has two sounds, first like “u” in “fur,” second like the Welsh “u.” A few words will illustrate Welsh pronunciation. “Cymru” is pronounced, as nearly as one can suggest its pronunciation, as if spelled “Kumree”; “Gwalia” as if “Gooalia”; “Mawddwy” as if “Mauthooy”; “Wnion” as if “Oonion”; “Pwllheli” as if “Pooltheli”; “Dolgelley” as if “Dolgethley.”

I have had some experiences with my “small” Welsh which I would not exchange for those of “big” German in the past, or of any other language in which I have been trained to read or speak. I remember one experience that happened when we were in search of a certain little church of ancient foundation, set upon a hilltop. In Wales there are many of these little churches on the hilltops, like Llanrychwyn and Llangelynin, and also little churches by the sea, like Llandanwg, almost at the foot of Harlech. Within their mediæval lychgates and high stone walls the dead are crowded close in their last sleep. Sweet places are those old churches, with the yew standing sentinel near them, and about them the shelter of the valley or the wide sweep of the hilltop view. This time it was a hilltop church for which we were searching. Again it was “Da iawn” which graced the conversation, but in how different a manner!

We were in need of tea, and at the cottage next to the church, the only cottage upon that summit, I rapped with my stick and said to the old woman who came, “Dyma le da i gael te” (this is a good place to have tea).

“Yiss,” was her reply, her face brightening; “Te?”

“Yes,” said I; “tea and bread-and-butter.”

“Jam?” asked she, remembering what I had forgotten.

“Yes,” I answered.

She spread the cover in the place on the turf to which we pointed and smiled brightly at me, as if she, too, appreciated the beauty of that place with its wide mountain and valley landscape, the trustful sheep browsing near me, and down at our feet the magnificent pile of Harlech Castle looking across the wide flat marsh at its feet and over the sea toward the palace of King Mark.

“Da iawn” (very good), said I emphatically.

And her answering smile told me that we understood each other, even if we could not speak each other’s language very well.

Changeling Welsh words are begot of elves and fairies. Even as those words are full of poetry, of romance, of a wild emotionalism,--the “Scream of the Celt” it has been called, but in Wales it is a subdued scream,--so, still, are the superstitions about fairies and elves living among these Welsh hills and valleys. Childish tales they may seem to you, if you are fortunate enough to be told anything about them at all by the Welsh peasants, who are both suspicious and shy of the “foreigner.” The tales one may hear even now in Wales are full of a haunting race life. The Welsh speak of the fairies as the “little folk” or the “fair folk” or “family”--“y Tylwyth Teg.” And well do these little creatures deserve the name, for they are friendly in Wales. Ghosts there are, too, and the death portents, the old hag of the mist and others that groan or moan or sing or stamp with their feet. And there are “Corpse Candles” and “Goblin Funerals.” Shakespeare knew a deal about Welsh folk-lore, but where he got it from no one has yet discovered. With Shakespeare “mab” meant a little thing, just as in any Welsh village to-day “mabcath” means a kitten.

No matter where I have been I have found the Welsh conscious of the beauty and significance of their land, its legendary lore, its history, its marvellous natural attraction. They have always been eager to give me information about some landmark, some incident about which I might be inquiring. Over their shop counters, across the doorsills of the humblest of Welsh cottages, by some kitchen fire where the brass tea-kettle sang and glowed in the subdued light of the ingle, they have poured forth titles of books and data,--things for which I was searching, or needed to know. One old man, eighty-six years old and bedridden, held my hand in an eager, childish clasp, while he tried to tell me something about a church, the poor tired mind working like a rundown clock, the half-sightless eyes looking at me in petition to help him recall the days that had slipped so far away. He asked me about friends of his,--people who had died before I had thought of being born. He corrected my few words of Welsh, a ghost of a smile about the old mouth, but he could not recollect what I wanted to know. Without the information I was seeking, I went away saying “Nos da” to him, which was, indeed, good night.

When Dr. Samuel Johnson made his memorable tour of Wales, he wrote, “Wales is so little different from England that it offers nothing to the speculations of the traveller.” He seemed wholly oblivious to the strong racial difference between Welsh and English, which alters not only the visage of the people, but also the visage of the very country. He was so indifferent to the grandeur of Snowdon scenery that, going around the base of that mountain of eagles in a chaise, he spent his time keeping account of the number of sheep for “Miss Thrale,”--his little favourite “Queenie.” I do not believe that Johnson’s disgust would have been the least appeased by knowing that in the years to come other great people were to go and go again to Wales, as to a beloved lap of rest: Wordsworth, Shelley, Kingsley, Froude, Newman, Huxley, Tyndall, Tennyson, Arnold, Tom Taylor, John Bright, Carmen Sylva, and many another. The good Doctor scorned Welsh rivers, called them brooks and offered to jump over them. He would have despised such a cottage kitchen as I have lingered in many a time impressed by its beautiful and dignified simplicity. Sweet places are these old kitchens, hospitable, warm, cheerful. Sunlight or firelight, one or the other, you may have always in them. Bright they are with fuchsias and little gleaming leaded window-panes, with polished oak and polished brass and copper, with the shining face of a grandfather clock, with pewter, with lustre pitchers and creamers, with gleaming pots and kettles, and the salt glistening on bacons and hams hanging from the blackened oak rafters. Gay are they, too, with the life and laughter of children, with the good cheer of contented older people, with the purr of the house cat and the bubbling of the tea-kettle. More homelike, more motherly, more charming old kitchens, it has never been my good fortune to see.

There was only one thing in Wales which profoundly satisfied the great Doctor and that was its castles, Harlech and Conway, and Carnarvon Castle most of all. Almost every Welsh town has its historical traditions of importance, but Carnarvon, the city of the Prince of Wales, even more than others. There Elen, the Great Welsh road-maker, was sought and won by the Emperor Maximus. Of that little city, once the Roman city of Segontium, there is a description in the “Mabinogion,” the classic of Welsh literature and one of the classics of the world. The Roman Emperor saw in his dream but what we see now, a fair and mighty castle, rocks, precipices, mountains of great height. The Prince of Wales was born, according to legend, in Carnarvon Castle, and there investiture ceremonies are still held. But veracious history assures us that he was born in the town, outside the castle of which he himself had built the very tower where he was supposed to have been born. Tumultuous, confused, legendary is Welsh history, full of the more or less mythical deeds of their great King Arthur, their brave Prince Llewelyn, the fate that overtook the hopes and ideals of this prince, their last fight for independence and their loss of it; their submission to the yoke of conquerors and the history of English princes who were put over them. It is a wild, sad, eventful history whose sorrows and tragedies seem only to have bitten all that is most Cymric in Welsh Wales deeper into Welsh lives and hearts, so that to-day, despite all that conqueror or civilization can do, their language, their lives, are still separate.

And the Welsh Eisteddfod, a festival of song and poetry, is a revelation of the unique national Welsh spirit. From every hamlet in Wales, even those reached only by Welsh ponies, visitors travel on foot or by train to this feast of song and to witness the Gorsedd, a druidical ceremony old as the Eye of Light itself. “Gallant little Wales” shows itself to the least and last participant in the Eisteddfod as Welsh Wales. Educationally this Eisteddfod ceremony is of great value to Wales, democratic, representative, instructive; and nowhere could the fact that Welsh educational ideals are quite different from those of England--popular and progressive, with something of the so-called American spirit in them--reveal itself more completely than in this assembly of the people. Wales is essentially a democracy--a democracy of song, a democracy of poetry, a democracy of education and religion, and the Eisteddfod is the popular university of the people. To comprehend what is deepest and best in Welsh Wales one must go to the Eisteddfod and hear the Welsh, sensitive, capable of the “Hwyl,” imaginative, passionate, fervidly patriotic, sing,--

HEN WLAD FY NHADAU (OLD LAND OF MY FATHERS)

“Old mountain-built Cymru, the bard’s Paradise, The farm in the cwm, the wild crag in the skies, The river that winds, have entwined tenderly With a love spell my spirit in me.”

_Chorus_: Land, Land, Too fondly I love thee, dear Land, Till warring sea and shore be gone, Pray God let the old tongue live on.”

II

_A Village in Eryri_

“Curates mind the parish, Sweepers mind the court, We’ll away to Snowdon, For our ten days’ sport.”

_Kingsley’s Letter to Tom Hughes._

At the centre of a wide meadow with valleys running in towards the centre from east and south and west lies a little village of North Wales. All the cottages are gray, gray as the stones of St. John’s, but they are of the crisp, compact gray of slate, and not the crumbling, fretted stone of Oxford. Occasionally some cottage nestling to the craggy side of one of the valley roads is whitewashed with white or pink, or fitted so neatly into the jutting rocks of the mountain-side that only the humble façade, a screen of blooming roses, is visible. Whitewash, roses, gleam of copper doorsills, running water, flash gaily in the midst of the gray of Beddgelert. Above the houses is the blue roadway of sky walled in by craggy mountain-summits, the sides of the mountains carpeted with myriad tufts of heather, lavender or purple or pink, and in autumn with the vivid yellow of the prickly gorse. Bees desert tiny gardens of well-hedged roses for this wide principality of bracken and heather, where around tufted blossoms they hum to the tossing of some stream casting itself down the hills. Up the rocks clamber ivy and sheep; about the moist edges of the pools and over the cushions of damp moss, black and brown watered-silk snails measure leisurely in well-fed content; and in little terraced glens of thick sod and along the roadways grow bluebells and columbine and foxglove and elfin white birches. But above these troops of upland bluebells and slender, swaying birches hang rocks, wild, rugged, whipped bare even of heather. And from the rough spine of Craig-y-Llan stretches away towards Snowdon and Pen-y-Pass, a wilderness of naked rocks, weird, jagged, shining gray and black in utter desolation.

At the meeting of the Colwyn and Gwynen rivers, with the hollow sound of rushing water in its village lanes and the tinkling of sheep bells scattering from the overhanging hills, the meadow strips lie beside the valley roads, deep green with abundant grass or yellow with grain. Life, however, has been strenuous in this village of fourscore mountain huts, and many fathers and sons have had to labour to clear the grassy fields. For these honest, independent, thrifty Welshmen, slate and sheep are the chief means of support. The rivers yield, too, a fair quantity of salmon as pink as some of the mountain huts, salmon weighing from one to eighteen pounds. In a flood, although the torrent sometimes reduces the number of inhabitants, the catch of salmon is greater, and the villagers face the delicate task of balancing an all-wise but unscrupulous Providence.