Part 9

This pleasant little story, recalled by the name of the ugly smoky town of Briton Ferry, will help us through the dismal streets that lead to Neath.

Neath itself is not an attractive town. Its abbey to Leland “semid the fairest abbay in al Wales.” To-day it is perhaps the most pathetic. During its last and most splendid days a Welsh bard sang of it and of the monks who lived in it; sang of its towers and cloisters, and coloured windows and princely shields; of its columns of blue marble and of the painted archangels on its roof. It was just at this time that it seemed to Leland so fair, that is to say just before Leland’s employer, Henry VIII., silenced the “peaceful songs of praise” of its white monks for ever. Even now we can guess at its past splendour, for though the blue marble and the archangels are gone, the crypt still has its vaulted roof, and through the heavy ivy there are fragments visible of the gleaming white stone with which it was once faced. It stands, unspeakably desolate, on the low, squalid outskirts of the town, amid a waste of scrap-iron and nettles and rubbish; but when Edward II. came to beg for a night’s lodging under its roof, when Neath was little more than a village and a castle, and there were no shunting, shrieking trains between the abbey and the hills, this must indeed have seemed a beautiful refuge for a tired, hunted king.

For close behind the abbey the hills begin to rise, and through them the river Neath cleaves its way to the sea in a valley that will lead us, if we follow it, to extremely desirable things. Ultimately the road will lead us to Brecon, by no means to be despised in itself, but it is rather for the sake of the miles of moorland that lie between that we must here strike up into the hills in a way that may seem eccentric till we know what they are like.

The Vale of Neath itself is famous for its lovely scenery, its woods and mountains and river. The road is practically level as far as Glyn-Neath, where, if the day is young, and the mood enterprising, we may, instead of keeping to our rightful road, diverge for a mile or so to Pont Neath Fechan. Thence the active-minded and able-bodied may visit a series of very pretty waterfalls on the river Mellte. This entails a considerable walk of a rough kind, but it also gives one an excuse for exploring a little more of this lovely moorland country: for the best way to approach the falls is to drive up for two miles into the hills and so reach the river from above.

But probably the most usual course is, at Glyn-Neath, to turn towards Hirwain. It is after this point that the really distinctive features of this run become apparent, the features that make the road essentially one for motorists; for no railway crosses these hills, and if there be strong-limbed bicyclists who do, they cannot often be women, I think. For the road that seems to the engine of a car to be merely gently undulating, is really climbing steadily upwards for miles. Gradually the scene becomes wilder and wilder, more and more desolate, till at last we are spinning over a moor as wide as the eye can see, on a road that winds visibly before us far away into the distance. Range beyond range, the hills completely encircle us: stern, bare hills with rugged outlines, and never a tree to soften them; and in the foreground great sweeping curves covered with short grass and here and there a glowing patch of heather. Then, when the summit is reached, and Cardiff waterworks are passed, begins the descent of nine miles on a perfect surface, close under the shoulder of the Brecon Beacons. I think this gentle descent is one of the most perfect runs, from a motoring point of view, that I have ever enjoyed; and if, as is likely, there is a touch of evening softness over the great hills, few people will regret having forsaken their direct westward road for the sake of this drive. Close under the Beacons lies Brecon.

A prodigious amount of fighting has raged round this peaceful-looking little town. It was not without bloodshed that Brychan the Irishman, in the fifth century, made this country his own with complete thoroughness, supplying it not only with a new name but with a new population (for he is said to have had forty-nine children); and Brecon was one of the many places that were attacked and overcome by the army of Alfred’s warlike daughter Ethelfleda; and truly there was no lack of fighting in the days of the Normans, the Neuf-Marché, and the de Braose. It was Bernard de Neuf-Marché, or Newmarch, who built the castle, once “very large, strong, and wele mainteynid,” but now only a remnant, a bit of battlemented wall and a tower, which passed through many stormy experiences before it came to the strangest end to which, surely, a castle was ever brought. For it was the inhabitants of Brecon themselves who, feeling that they had figured sufficiently in the annals of their country, demolished their own castle. It was during the Civil War, and a siege seemed imminent. The simplest way of avoiding this was to remove the castle.

Brecon might well be tired of fighting. Newmarch had fortified it well, with walls and gates and the “keepe of the castel very large and faire,” but it required all its defences and more, for a border castle was never safe. From the family of Newmarch it passed to that of de Braose, and they lost it again, not by the sword but by the seditious spirit and shrewd tongue of a woman. Matilda de St. Valerie, the wife of William de Braose, “uttered reproachful language against King John,” which though perfectly just, was rash. She lost not only her castle, but her husband and finally her life, for Brecon became Crown property; de Braose, after slaughtering the King’s garrison, fled to Ireland; and Matilda was starved to death in prison.

If we spend a night in Brecon we may sit in the pretty garden of the hotel under the shadow of the last remaining wall of Newmarch’s castle. Opposite us, filling almost the whole landscape, are the solemn Beacons; just below us is the Usk and its picturesque bridge.

We must cross that bridge to reach Carmarthen; and following the course of the Usk, pass through Trecastle, where the scenery becomes strikingly beautiful as the road cleaves a narrow gorge and then runs gently down for miles between wooded hills. At Llandovery we enter the valley of the Towy.

There is nothing to detain us at Llandovery; but as the gay flowers of the Castle Inn catch our eye in passing we may remember that George Borrow once spent a night there; and the remains of the castle hard by may perhaps call to mind the great chieftain Griffith ap Nicholas, who was lord of Dynevor and Kilgerran as well as of Llandovery and many another castle. He was also a Justice of the Peace, and a harbourer of thieves; a _protégé_ of the House of Lancaster who yet died in fighting for the house of York at Mortimer’s Cross: not a very conventional person, in short.

We leave the fragments of his castle on our left, and, on a practically level road, follow the slow-flowing Towy through Llangadoch to Llandeilo. This pretty little place, where there is a really nice inn, was once dignified with the name of Llandeilo Vawr, or the Great; probably because of its close proximity to the great castle of Dynevor. If we pause for a moment on the bridge that here crosses the Towy we shall see reflected in the river a thickly wooded bluff. Among these trees are the ruins of Dynevor, perhaps the most important stronghold of the princes of South Wales. It was in the ninth century that Roderic the Great built the first castle here, and from that day forward till Roderic’s fortress had for many years been replaced by a Norman one, Dynevor passed from hand to hand, from Welsh to English and from English to Welsh, and from one turbulent chieftain to another. It seems to have been regarded more or less as the key to South Wales; for on one occasion Henry II. sent a special spy to inquire into the strength of Dynevor and the general character of the country. This artless knight asked his way of a Welsh dean, and was, as he might have expected, led by a route so wild, so rough, and so extremely circuitous that the castle seemed to be practically inaccessible. By way of heightening the effect this humorous divine paused at intervals to satisfy his hunger with handfuls of grass. It was the custom in that poor country, he said. The knight returned to Henry with the report that the country round Dynevor was “uninhabitable, vile, and inaccessible, only affording food to a beastly nation, living like brutes.”

Within a few miles of Dynevor there is another castle that looks as if it might well have been inaccessible--Cerrig Cennen. It is worth while to drive a few miles out of our way to see this circlet of towers on its pale grey crag, dominating the whole landscape of rounded hills. It is best to approach it by Derwydd Station, partly because the more direct route leads over a long and precipitous hill, and partly because from this side one’s first view of the old fortress is more striking. I think there is little to be gained by trying to drive close to the actual ruins: the impressive effect is in the distant outline of this strange and sudden crag, on which, it is said, a Knight of the Round Table built his fortress before the Norman of later days made it his stronghold.

From Llandeilo to Carmarthen we have a choice of roads. The upper one is perhaps slightly the faster of the two, but from the lower there is a better view of Dynevor, and Dryslwyn Castle, and Abergwili, the palace of the bishops of St. David’s. In Carmarthen itself there are few relics left of a history that begins in the days of the Romans and has been stormy to a most unusual degree; so stormy, indeed, that one marvels the place exists at all. The wicked Vortigern, King of Britain in the fifth century, is said to have built a castle here, to defend himself against a too persistent saint who was trying, quite in vain, to turn him from the many errors of his ways. He had first taken refuge at Rhayader, but, says Nennius the historian, “St. Germanus followed him with all the British clergy, and upon a rock prayed for his sins during 40 days and 40 nights.” So the worried King fled here to Carmarthen and built a castle in which to hide. But, says the story, “the saint as usual followed him there and with his clergy fasted and prayed ... and on the third night a fire fell suddenly from heaven and totally burnt the castle.” How many times since then Carmarthen has been burnt to the ground and besieged and plundered I do not know, but one or other of these incidents is casually recorded on nearly every page of the History of Wales. But Carmarthen, like hope, “springs eternal.” Among the many who burnt it is Owen Glyndwr, who at the very time that the foolish legend describes him as sitting in a tree watching the Battle of Shrewsbury was really occupied, not only in destroying this town, but also, as though influenced by the reputed birthplace of Merlin, in having his fortune told by a soothsayer brought from Gower for the purpose. But though this brave fortune-teller prophesied evil things they were not fulfilled. Owen had still many successes before him, and his dealings with this ill-fated town of Carmarthen made a great sensation. There is an agitated letter still existing which the Archdeacon of Hereford, the “lowly creature,” as he signed himself, of Henry IV., wrote in “haste, great haste,” to implore that King for help. “And note,” he adds in a postscript, “on Friday last Kemerdyn town is taken and burnt, and the castle yielded ... and slain of the town of Kemerdyn more than L persons. Written in right haste on Sunday; and I cry your mercy and put me in your high grace that I write so shortly; for by my troth that I owe to you, it is needful.” The exciting effect of Owen’s presence, we see, was of somewhat wide radius. Yet even Owen could not suppress Carmarthen for more than a short time. Leland tells us of two “reparations done on the castel,” and in his day, he says, it was “veri fair and doble waullid.” Even now there is some of it left, but unless we exceed the speed-limit and refuse to pay the fine we shall probably not see it, as it has been made into a prison.

But even the modern streets that have risen from so many ashes are not without their own memories of the great. They were once lined with shouting, excited crowds, gathered from all the country round to see Nelson drive through the town: and through them passed the strange funeral procession of Richard Steele, who was carried by night, attended by twenty-five torch-bearers, to his grave in St. Peter’s Church. Above it a modern brass has been placed of late years, but for long the grave was, at his own dying request, left nameless. “I shall be remembered by posterity,” he said. There are other monuments worth seeing in St. Peter’s Church: the tomb of Sir Rhys ap Thomas, to whose efforts Henry VII. owed much in his quest for the crown; and a mural tablet of the seventeenth century, to “virtuous Anne, the lady Vaughan,” who was, we learn, “the choice elixir of mortalitie.”

From Carmarthen we must certainly not neglect to visit Kidweli, ten miles away near the sea, for there we shall find much of that visible romance that has, by storm and stress, been battered out of the county town. Kidweli once had walls, and three gates, and a priory of Black Monks, as well as the castle that still stands above the river Gwendraeth in all its imposing simplicity. The round towers and the curtain-wall and the great gateway have a very distinctly Edwardian character, but Caradoc of Llancarvan says there was a castle built here quite at the end of the twelfth century by Rhys ap Griffith, that great prince of South Wales who is known in Welsh history as The Lord Rhys; and even in those destructive days a hundred years was a short time for a castle to last. Probably Rhys built it and Edward repaired it, giving it the special character of his own work, but not entirely wiping out the work of Rhys. In this way we may account for the name of Gwenllian’s Tower, for Rhys had a much-loved daughter Gwenllian, “a woman of such incomparable beauty, and exceeding in all feminine qualifications, that she was accounted the fairest and best accomplished lady in all the country.” She had fine traditions behind her, but they were not so much “feminine” as warlike; for her father Rhys was “the protection of his country, the splendour of arms, the arm of power,” and her great uncle was the valiant Owen Gwynedd, and her grandmother was that gallant lady after whom she was doubtless named, Gwenllian the wife of Griffith. It was quite near Kidweli that this other Gwenllian died. In her husband’s absence she led his men to battle against the Norman invader, Maurice de Londres, whose grave we saw in his priory-church of Ewenny. Her forces were defeated, and she herself, by order of de Londres, was beheaded there and then. Her brother Owen Gwynedd, however, was still alive, and he saw to it that the reckoning was heavy.

The road from Carmarthen to Tenby lies at first through rather dull country, but after a time passes between extremely pretty wooded hills. Presently we catch sight of the sea shining at the end of a deep valley, and after this a delightful run on a downward gradient carries us within sight of Tenby, the most charming of watering-places. Now, it is not altogether an artificial classification if we divide the civilised world into two parties: those who delight in watering-places and those who flee from them. For this taste or distaste is really, more or less, an indication of temperament, and at the end of half an hour one could usually guess correctly in which of the two classes to place a new acquaintance. But I really defy any one to dislike Tenby. There is something endearing about it. From the roadside the cliffs drop steeply to the sands below--very yellow sands sweeping in long curves to the edge of a brilliantly green sea, while beyond them the long headlands stretch one behind the other, mere blurs of purple or misty blue. On the right the remnant of the castle stands upon a rock, and below it there juts into the sea a picturesque little pier, entirely for use, and innocent of pavilion or bandstand. Here the innumerable trawlers take shelter, till in the early morning they unfurl their crimson or brown sails, and one by one glide out into the bay--a brave sight, and one that calls to mind the early name of this place, Dynbych-y-Pysgod, the Little Town of Fish.

There is something almost incongruous in the thought of the many sieges that this quiet, sunny town has suffered. From very early days it played an active part in the history of this strange English corner of Wales, and if its walls and gateways are still standing to add to its beauty, this is not for want of use, but because their uses were so constant that they were kept in good order. Of the castle, indeed, little enough remains: a ruined tower, an archway, and a fragment of wall are all that is left on the rock that juts out so picturesquely into the green sea.

But if the shrewd blows of several centuries have left us little of Tenby Castle, it is far otherwise with the splendid walls and towers of Manorbier, which stand close above the sea a few miles further along the same coast. To see Manorbier at its best one should approach it from the road called the Ridgeway, and this route, too, has the advantage of commanding, here and there, some very lovely views of the coast, of Lydstep and Caldey Island. It is well to know that on Sunday no strangers are admitted within the gate of Manorbier.

It stands, as Leland says, betwixt two “hillettes, between the wich the Severn Se gulfith in”--a fine setting for its battlemented walls and towers, the “turrets and bulwarks” of which Giraldus proudly speaks. That most delightful chronicler declares this to be the pleasantest spot in Wales, and then half apologises for his enthusiasm over this “his native soil, his genial territory.” We may forgive him for his love of the place, even if we think he goes a little too far, for this Gerald de Berri the Norman, who oddly enough has been known to all who have come after him as Giraldus the Welshman, was born here at Manorbier; and down there on the shore are the sands where he played as a child, building, we are told, not castles, but always churches and abbeys.

Strange enough this belligerent-looking building seems to have no history. It has, apparently, led an entirely domestic life. We hear of mills and ponds, of parks and dovecots in connection with it, but of siege and bloodshed not a word. The great, grim walls and bastions, however, must have added greatly to the peace and comfort of the Norman barons who lived behind them, and they certainly add very much to our pleasure.

Climbing again to the Ridgeway we turn to the left, with a view to seeing Lamphey, Pembroke, and the Stack Rocks before, following in the footsteps of many a pilgrim, we visit the shrine of St. David.

Lamphey Palace was for several centuries one of the dwellings of the Bishop of St. David’s; and a good deal of it was built by Bishop Gower, whose “mason’s mark,” so to speak, is the arcaded parapet so conspicuous here and at his cathedral city. Bishop Gower seems to have been the benefactor of this see, as Bishop Barlow was its evil genius. It was owing to the latter that Lamphey passed to the Crown, and thence to the house of Devereux; and so it came to pass that in this sequestered corner Robert, Earl of Essex, passed the early years of a life that was destined to be anything but sheltered, and played his childish games with no thought of a capricious queen or of Tower Hill. And with him, no doubt, played his sister Penelope, whom the pen of Sir Philip Sidney has made more familiar to us as “Stella.”

From Lamphey two miles of level road will take us to Pembroke, and to the castle that is perhaps the most impressive in all this land of relics, where the castles are so strangely thick upon the ground. The great walls rise upon a rock whose base is lapped by the waters of Milford Haven; in the centre stands the mighty double keep, and round it is a ring of bastions; on the town side is the entrance-gate, flanked by massive towers. There is something peculiarly imposing about this gateway, whose implacable strength seems all the more uncompromising from its being unsoftened by ivy and very little discoloured by time, though its fine effect is, of course, cruelly marred by the lawn-tennis nets that seem so often to be regarded as pleasing and appropriate additions to mediæval castles. Pembroke, unlike Manorbier, is full of history; there has been no lack of sieges here. Even before the building of this castle there were stirring doings round this rock: fierce attacks and wily stratagems, not unmixed, some say, with romance. There was a “slender fortress” here, built by Arnulph de Montgomery of stakes and turf--a poor defence one would have thought, but apparently sufficient to bear a good deal under the guardianship of that “worthy and discreet” constable, Gerald de Windsor, grandfather of our Giraldus. He showed his discretion on one occasion, when the stakes and turf were besieged by the Welsh, and his garrison was extremely short of food, by cutting up the last few beasts that remained to them, and throwing the pieces to the enemy. In our day this would be described, not as discretion, but as “bluff,” and it was as successful as that quality so often is. It is said by some that it was this same Gerald who built the existing castle, but there seems to be a good deal of uncertainty on the subject; and even more uncertainty as to which castle it was from which Gerald’s wife Nest, who was less discreet, apparently, than her husband, was carried off by a Welsh prince, not without encouragement from the lady. But when one hears that the discreet Gerald escaped on this occasion by creeping down a drain-pipe, one feels that there was some excuse after all for Nest. But these are mere traditions. What is very certain is that one of the stern entrance-towers was the birthplace of Henry VII., who lived here with his mother through the early years of his life, and after his exile in Brittany landed only a few miles away at Dale, where he won the Welsh at once to his cause by unfurling the Red Dragon of Uther. When Leland was here he was shown the room in which Henry was born, and in it “a chymmeney new made with the armes and badges of King Henri the VII.”; but this fireplace must have vanished long ago, for even the local guide-books do not profess to know the room of Henry’s birth.