A wayfarer in Wales : with twenty-seven illustrations and a map

Front matter

$3.00

SO YOU'RE GOING TO ENGLAND!

By Clara E. Laughlin

Contents

I, WALES OF THE WELSH ., ; é ; : : I II, THE APPROACH TO WALES : : ‘ : ne 20 Mii] THE DEE . : ‘ 5 : ‘ . : On ors IV. THE MERIONETH HIGHLANDS . : ; : ae Ae Vv. IN THE HEART OF MERIONETH ‘ : ; 6I VI, THE CAMBRIAN COAST : : ‘ ; ; ts" s, VII. CAERNARVONSHIRE , : : : ‘ : SP Bie Vill. THE NORTH WALES COAST : : : ; plan te (8. IX. THROUGH MID-WALES : ; , : : wEAO X. CARDIGANSHIRE , ‘ ; : : : ; laa XI. CARMARTHENSHIRE , ; : : ‘ oan EL 02 XII, PEMBROKESHIRE . : A : : : LTE XII, RADNORSHIRE AND BRECKNOCK TERT XIV. THE INDUSTRIAL SOUTH ., ; seals vii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MAP OF WALES ‘ : ‘ ‘ - : Front endpaper (From a drawing by Frank Adams) THE PEAK OF SNOWDON AND LLYN GLASYN ., Frontispiece (Photo: G, We Thompson) Facing page MOUTH OF THE TOWY FROM LLANSTEPHAN* . ; ‘ 8 HARLECH CASTLE f+ : Wear 8 ‘ y : ew: THE SWALLOW FALLS, BETTWS-Y-COED * , : ‘ e320 LLANGOLLEN AND DINAS BRAN * : : : : pan taG VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY f ‘ : ; : : : Soria © | THE PILLAR OF ELISEGT ., : : é ‘ : Seas CADER IDRIS AND LLYN-Y-CAE * : aah Pah ets me! ky BARMOUTH ESTUARY * , : : : - : ‘ ce Re DYFFRYN, MOELFRE{ ., ; : ; ‘ : : 1 QS LLANBEDR, BWLCH DRWS ARDUDWY tf : : ; he ae ROMAN STEPS, CWM-BYCHAN?{ , : A : : “hb ey. LLYN CWM-BYCHAN}{ . : A - : : ; - 04 BARMOUTH VIADUCT AND CADER IDRIS f F : - 108 CRICCIETH * , , ‘ : : : : , ‘ - 108 OLD BRIDGE OVER RIVER SCETHIN, MERIONETHSHIRE ered tO (Photo: Author’

Chapter I

| Dige majority of sensible folk who have had a fairly long and varied experience of holiday-making have - come to the conclusion that an essential ingredient in the composition of a perfect holiday is that the locality visited should be foreign. This implies not the slightest disparagement of one’s native land. It carries with it no verdict on the relative beauty of the scenery, the salubrity of the climate, or the amiability of the population. Undoubtedly the ugly little watering-places on the coast of Normandy cannot compare with the bewitching picturesqueness of many of the tiny fishing ports on the opposite shore of the English Channel. No foreign town excels London in interest. The beauty of Oxford or Bath is fully equal to that of Florence, Prague, or Salzburg. Sublimity apart, I am very doubtful whether the valleys of the Alps excel in sheer loveliness the very best that Cumberland has to offer. We have castles as romantic as those of the Rhine, abbeys as impressive as the Grande Chartreuse, cathedrals as exquisite as Chartres. All this may readily be admitted; yet the fact remains that, for the Englishman, these places can be nothing but ‘home’, and ‘at home’ is the very last thing you want to feel when on holiday. With all their charms R 1 they still lack one thing needful, and that something so important that without it the rest counts for little—the quality of ‘foreignness’.

Who does not remember with delight the thrill at the first appearance of the jabbering crowd of blue-bloused sailors and porters as the Channel boat approached the quay at Calais or Ostende? Who, in day-dreams long after, does not see the vision of long Continental express trains, with their wonderful assortment of place-names printed upon them? The Customs House is annoying; but for the innocent and the good-tempered it has a joy of its own. Then the delicious ham-rolls and cherries bought from smiling French girls on the platform, the shrill whistle of the engine, the clatter and the bumping, the sight of the flat, well-tilled fields and the queer houses, carts, and peasant folk, as we dash on towards our goal—Switzerland, the Black Forest, the Riviera, or Italy. Nobody except a schoolboy feels this thrill when he enters King’s Cross or Paddington. Travelling in England may be pleasant, but it can hardly be exciting. We arrive at our hotel, and if it is quite comfortable we exclaim: ‘Why, this is just like home!’ When we say that we no doubt honestly intend to praise: really it is the most damning verdict that could be pronounced upon a holiday place.

The patient reader who has got thus far will at this point perhaps angrily exclaim: ‘How, if all that be true, can you have the face to invite us to accompany you through Wales? Surely Wales is only a part of England, just like the Lake District, the Peak, or Dartmoor?’ Thousands of English people, in all probability, visit Wales every summer with that idea firmly fixed in their minds, with the result that, while enjoying the scenery of the country, they entirely miss what is its real charm. What does, in fact, make Wales worthy of the attention of the Wayfarer is that it is a foreign country as well as a beautiful one. Of course, for next-door neighbours like the English Wales is not so strikingly foreign as France or Belgium. But then neither is France or Belgium so foreign as Hungary or Bulgaria, nor those two countries as Tibet or Abyssinia. There is such a thing as an irreducible minimum of ‘foreignness’, and that irreducible minimum is possessed by Wales. Unfortunately the real Wales has of late been largely covered over by a veneer of Anglo-Saxondom, and like all the countries of Western Europe it has suffered the process of cultural levelling which, in the last fifty years, has dressed us all alike, taught us to eat the same kind of food, to build the same kind of streets, and largely to think the same thoughts. But down beneath the surface the real Wales is still there, ready to reveal itself to every sympathetic traveller. There is far too little of such sympathy, and of intelligent interest, evinced by the average Englishman who takes his family to Wales for the summer holiday. The crowds that one finds on the beach at Aberystwyth, Tenby, or Llandudno on a day in August are of much the same mental quality as the crowds that one finds on the ski-ing slopes of Switzerland on a day in January: that is to say, they are shallow men and women who take not the slightest interest in the people whose guests they are, make no endeavour to learn their language, or even to pronounce correctly the place-names they are compelled to use, and display no curiosity with regard to the religion, politics, laws or manners of the country. For them the country is simply a ‘playground’, Doubtless they have their reward; but it is not the reward sought after by the true traveller.

Of course this is not so of all, and I trust it is not true of the majority of English people who visit Wales every year, and who love its sea and its mountains, its lakes and its valleys. A great surgeon, speaking to me some time ago about Wales as a holiday haunt, remarked: ‘What I like so much about Wales is that you feel at once that you are in a foreign country.’ His trained scientific intellect had led him immediately to make this discovery; but it is a discovery which the most ordinary men and women can easily make if they have the inclination to do so, and if they find a proper guide by the way.

Throughout the pages which follow it will be my endeavour to reveal the charms of Wales as a foreign land, for it is in this respect that all books on Wales written by Englishmen, with two or three illustrious exceptions, have so lamentably failed. This book is in no sense a history of Wales; but as no country can be properly understood or enjoyed by a traveller who is ignorant of its past, a few pages must be spared for a brief bird’s-eye view. I myself have told the story of Wales in one of the volumes of the Home University Library, and to that, as well as to the many better and bigger books, I refer the reader whose appetite for greater detail has been whetted.

When the Romans began to take an active interest in the island which we now call Great Britain, somewhere about the middle of the first century A.D., they found the land occupied by a number of tribes to which we have given collectively the name ‘Ancient Britons’. Closer investigation would reveal many differences among them, for they were a composite people formed out of successive waves of invaders that had come over from the Continent in the course of the preceding three to six thousand years. They were linked together by the possession of a common Celtic language, and by similar religious, legal, and social customs. Although brave and pugnacious, they naturally were unable to withstand the disciplined valour of the Roman legions, and by degrees were completely subjugated. Rome extended her sway northwards to the Wall of Hadrian, and westward to the shore of the Irish Sea and its connecting channels. There was no distinction between England and Wales; both constituted one Roman province.

But the occupation of Wales was less thorough than that of England. The country was more distant, and on account of its mountains and bogs more inaccessible. From the agricultural point of view it possessed less fertile land; while its mineral wealth, though certainly exploited to some extent, did not count for much. For strategic reasons, however, it was natural that the Romans should desire to conquer this western land, especially as the Silures of Monmouth and Glamorgan under their great leader Caractacus were a powerful foe to reckon with, always ready to raid the adjoining parts of England. These warlike people were finally defeated by the Roman General Ostorius Scapula, probably at the spot now called Caer Caradoc, near Church Stretton. To keep the Silures in subjection the first of the great Roman forts in Wales was built at Caerleon on the River Usk.

Following on the death of Ostorius, in A.p. 52, the Silures recovered a degree of liberty; but with the arrival of a new Roman general, Quintus Veranius, in a.D. 58, the struggle recommenced. The real attack upon Wales, however, began with that consummate soldier Suetonius Paulinus. He adopted the plan of erecting strong forts at various strategic points all over Britain, from which the legions could control the surrounding country. Two of these forts were placed close to the Welsh border of later times, one at Chester (Deva), the other at Wroxeter (Viroconium), The great desire of Suetonius was to conquer the hitherto unmolested island of Anglesey (Mona). There was the home of the Druids, the last remnants of the cruel custodians of Celtic learning, protected by the surrounding sea, and by the mighty mountain barrier of Snowdonia. Flat-bottomed boats were constructed, and the soldiers safely conveyed across the Menai Straits. There, for a moment, the legionaries were appalled by the weird sight of the Druids drawn up in a body, with uplifted arms, calling down imprecations upon the heads of the profane invaders; while women, with dishevelled hair and with lighted torches in their hands, ran in and out among the ranks. But the terror of the soldiers was but momentary: they pressed forward, completely routed the opposing army, burnt their camp, cut down the sacred groves of oak, and cleared away the last emblems of Druidism.

It was in the hundred years after A.D. 78 that the task of organizing Wales on Roman lines was seriously proceeded with. Throughout its history the Roman occupation of Wales was largely military in character. Wales was a poor country, and there was little to tempt the Romans to settle in it for life. The towns that came to be built were consequently military rather than civil; but whatever their character and purpose, they were both numerous and important. The most considerable of them, perhaps, was Chester, long the home of the Twentieth Legion, from which it derived its Welsh name Caer Lleon (Fort of the Legion). Chester became the permanent home of the legion; and around the fort a thriving town sprang up, with baths, theatre, and all those amenities considered so indispensable by the Romans. Right down the ages to the present day Chester has remained, as it were, a Welsh outpost. From its fine old walls the plains of Flint, the uplands of Denbighshire, and towering beyond them the

WALES OF THE WELSH i!

peaks of Snowdonia can clearly be discerned. As for the Roman soldier, so too for the pacific traveller of to-day, it is one of the chief gateways into the desired land.

As everybody knows, the Romans were incomparable road-makers, and they have left in Wales a rich legacy of finely planned highways. From Chester one of these great roads ran to Wroxeter. From this another branched off, and ran along the hill-sides to Conway (Caerhun) and Caernarvon (Segontium). In the course of our journeyings we shall visit these places, for they are rich in historic interest. There were several Roman forts in North Wales, but with the single exception of Caernarvon no towns of any consequence. The almost inaccessible valleys and ravines of Merioneth, now the paradise of the walker, were kept in subjection by the triangle formed by Tomen-y-Mur, now a solitary mound which the traveller by road can see on the way from Trawsfynydd to Festiniog, Caergai near Bala, and Pennal near Machynlleth.

Roman roads must have been fairly numerous in Wales, for the legionaries, burdened with their immense load of arms and utensils, demanded smooth and straight surfaces to march upon, but they are extremely difficult to trace at the present day. One thing is quite certain, and that is that the majority of mountain tracks pointed out to the too credulous modern tourist as Roman roads belong either to prehistoric or else to comparatively late medieval times. Some of them, however, are of indisputable genuineness. There is the famous highway running from Conway, over moorland and mountain, to Tomen-y-Mur, Caergai, and Pennal, and thence on into South Wales, to which the name Sarn Helen (Helen’s Causeway) is given. Much of it is obliterated; but for long stretches it can be clearly traced. Another road leads from Tomen-y-Mur to Chester. Every visitor to the shores of Cardigan Bay at any point between Barmouth and Criccieth is told, and rightly told, to visit the Roman Steps, a flagged path, some two miles long, and still perfect for yards on end, leading over one of the passes _ of Ardudwy at a height of some fifteen hundred feet, and connecting the seacoast with the elevated plateau of Trawsfynydd and Festiniog. Mid-Wales possessed in Roman times the forts of Caersws, Caerflos, Y Gaer, and Castell Collen. The passage of the River Teifi, that beautiful stream which flows through Cardiganshire, beloved of artist and fisherman alike, was guarded by a fort at Llanio. On the Towy stood Carmarthen, a place about which I shall have a good deal to say later on. In Pembrokeshire there do not appear to have been any Roman settlements or roads; in all probability the country was left to its own devices just as Cornwall was. On the upper reaches of the Towy stood Llandovery. From thence a road led to Y Gaer near Brecon, then following the valley of the Usk to Abergavenny and Caerleon. Beyond Caerleon, between the Usk and the Wye, lay Caerwent, where so much of archeological interest has recently been discovered. On the Bristol Channel there were forts at Cardiff, as well as at the mouths of the Neath and the Loughor.

Any country has reason to be proud of having at one time found a place within the Pax Romana; and happy is the traveller who, when exploring, can discover for himself tangible evidence of the fact. How infinitely the poorer, despite other charms, would Trier be without its magnificent Porta Nigra, or Nimes without its colossal amphitheatre, or Susa without its great triumphal arch, or the French coast by Monte Carlo without the towering column of La Turbie! Wales has not much to show for its one-time membership of the Roman Empire: all the more reason

NVHdaHLSNVTI WONA AMOL AHL AO HLNOW a ee 4 oo ihe aan ; wf A 4 : 4b ere Ne uy Ph % we at ; , ive & r ye A Paty a ‘ habe f Lael 7 7 — a is ’ - he ? \ P "4 »~ ™ ‘ ’ . ' a ’ !

- 4 + q - g sa x ! ‘ j , _ - rey ; m ys A 4 , h - s> Fi —_ ‘i < a i ; hs . , . Py way ry ; Ws viet eee oP. Pee , - a re ; , at ' 4 “ — » : . rey, - ‘ AS eS ‘7 © ft A Vv er. ry 7 Ye | aA oe, Miaee oie| eee a iv : HCY, Ya dia M4 4 yeah ent ae) Re aes ke ee eo why the traveller should seek diligently for what there is— a few crumbling walls, some green mounds, and the straight, grass-grown roads. But the influence of the Romans upon the Welsh people is perhaps best attested by the large number of words in common usage derived from Latin. One need be no expert etymologist to recognize the parentage of the following Welsh words: pont (bridge), dant (tooth), eglwys (church), canwyll (candle), ceffyl (horse), mur (wall), saeth (arrow). Dozens of others could be cited. One thing is certain: Wales, at the departure of the Romans, was a highly civilized land, civilized in its political ideas and laws, and Christian in religion. A love of literature, of art, of independence, and of unity had been so firmly rooted that, in spite of the welter of lawlessness and bloodshed which the unhappy country had to endure during the subsequent eight hundred years, they persisted through it all. Wales was to enjoy nothing comparable with the tranquillity and good government of the Roman period until the great Tudor sovereigns began to turn their thoughts and to direct their splendid political instinct towards the little land from which they derived the best part of their blood.

The foreigner who visits Wales ought now to be able to see why the Welsh people feel that they have a right to live, and a right to be themselves rather than imitation Englishmen. They know that they are older in civilization than the English, that from the proud Roman days they have maintained unbroken the continuity of their cultural, if not of their political, life. For when the Romans left Britain in the early fifth century, all that we now call England was flooded with German barbarians, who ruled the country for centuries, obliterating all traces of Roman culture, and turning back the clock of progress some hundreds of years. But Wales resisted their advance, and gradually built up a number of native kingdoms, handing down what had been learnt from Rome, and adding to it new elements from age to age. It was during these Dark Ages, when England had sunk back into pure savagery, that Wales, together with the rest of the scattered Celtic family, produced the glorious mythology contained in the Mabinogion, and the splendid poetry, half history, half fiction, of the Arthurian legends. It was also during this period that St. David, Bishop of Minevia, made so profound an impression upon the country that he became its Patron Saint. Few must be the Welshmen who do not meet together on the first day of March to toast the immortal memory of | Dewi Sant. The Romans had failed to make the Welsh people town-dwellers like themselves. They remained an agricultural and pastoral folk living in scattered villages. In consequence of this no buildings have come down to us dating from the period (about A.D, 400 to A.D, I100) when Wales was completely independent. Unfortunately, it is a fact that almost every historic building in the country marks the coming of an invader: the camps and grass-grown roads came from the Romans; the castles and abbeys came from the Normans; the fine old manor houses were brought, if not by Englishmen, at least by Welshmen who had learnt how to build them in the London of the Tudors and Stuarts; the hideous rows of lodging-houses which now line the Welsh coast are mere copies of what one sees at Brighton and other places of like fame!

The national life of Wales was next broken in upon by the Normans, who, when the fertile lands of England had failed to satiate their greed, pressed on towards the western mountains, and afterwards across the sea to Ireland. By that time what we know as Wales had definitely come into © being; that is to say a boundary, which has not altered much since that day, had been drawn between it and England. The Saxon leader Ceawlin had, in 577, marched up the Severn valley and won a great victory over the native inhabitants at Deorham, the result of which was that the invaders reached the Bristol Channel, thus cutting off the people of Devon and Cornwall from their Celtic kinsmen in Wales. Some little time later Ethelfrith, King of the Angles, marched against Chester and established his power as far as the Irish Sea. This meant that a wedge was driven in between the people of Wales and their Celtic cousins in Strathclyde. Meanwhile all along the border English power was being consolidated under the able and vigorous Kings of Mercia; and soon Offa’s Dyke was raised to mark the boundary. This famous Dyke, running roughly from the mouth of the Dee to that of the Severn, still stands in places. Let the traveller by Great Western Railway, between Shrewsbury and Ruabon, with his face towards the north, be on the look-out for it on the left-hand side. For some miles it runs parallel with the railway, a wall of green mounds some six feet high. In spring-time it is covered with primroses, and its beautiful and peaceful aspect is not in the least suggestive of the sanguinary contests which must have been of almost daily occurrence in its neighbourhood in the seventh and eighth centuries.

Thus by the middle of the seventh century Wales had assumed what were to remain ever afterwards, to all intents and purposes, its geographical limits. Internally the country was forming itself into the principal territorial divisions, which remained until superseded by the shire system introduced by the Kings of England. For some six hundred years, namely from the seventh century until the thirteenth, the life of Wales was not seriously affected from the outside. Norman barons came, stole fat lands, built castles to guard them, but except within the precincts of the little towns which sprang up at the foot of their castle walls they did not interfere. Thus Wales escaped both the good and the evil of feudalism. It had its own laws, different in many fundamental respects from the Common Law of England. Welsh had become a well-developed language, with a fine literature, and was universally spoken by high and low. Moreover, it had an ancient form of Christianity which owed nothing to Canterbury.

The Norman barons, though they only touched the fringes, showed how Wales might one day be conquered; and incidentally they indicated to the Wayfarer of subsequent centuries the best approaches into the country. They grasped the important topographical fact that the chief mountain ranges run from north to south, presenting their flanks towards England. For the most part they would be impassable in those days when there were practically no roads, and when forests and morasses covered a much wider area than they do now. But there are convenient gaps between these mountain masses. If we put aside narrow valleys which could have been rendered almost impregnable by a small defending force, there are three gateways from England into Wales. The first is at Chester. This the Romans had discovered; and from it they, and subsequently the Normans and English, followed the left bank of the estuary of the Dee, and then the narrow strip of coast-land which, skirting the Penmaenmawr, leads straight into the fertile lands of Anglesey and south-west Caernarvonshire. The second gateway is at Shrewsbury, from which a broad and fertile valley stretches right into the heart of Mid-Wales. Hereford is the third: it is the natural starting-point for an excursion, bellicose or pacific, into the counties of South

Wales. At each of these places a Norman castle was built, and from them a long chain of other castles was gradually constructed. Soon the whole border and South Wales, and to a lesser extent the North as well, was studded with them. Mostly rebuilt in Plantagenet times, they stand to-day, some of them in almost perfect preservation, others merely a mouldering bit of wall. All of them are picturesque, and all are brimful of history and romance. How the native inhabitants of Wales must have detested the steel-clad robbers who built these proud and aggressive keeps! But it must be admitted that Wales to-day would be a much less fascinating country for the traveller if their ruins did not exist!

Henry I and Henry II had claimed lordship over Wales; but it was Edward I who made the title effective, and who definitely removed the ancient landmarks. He defeated Llewelyn, the last of the great native princes of Wales, and then proceeded to organize the country on English lines. From the castle of Rhuddlan, near St. Asaph, he issued, in 1284, the comprehensive Statute of Wales. Anglesey, Caernarvon, and Merioneth were made into shires under the jurisdiction of the Justice of Snowdon. Likewise Flint became a shire under the jurisdiction of the Justice of Chester. In the South Cardigan and Carmarthen were made shires under the Justice of South Wales. The main body of Welsh law was to remain in force. For the protection of the land, and especially for the cowing of the wild and turbulent Gwynedd, a chain of the newly devised concentric castles was built— Conway, Beaumaris, Caernarvon, Criccieth, and Harlech. In order to break the old tribal system, and in order to Anglicize the population as much as possible, the growth of towns was encouraged; and these were given special privileges by Royal Charter. Cardigan, Builth, Montgomery, Welshpool, Rhuddlan, Aberystwyth, Caernarvon, Conway, Criccieth, Harlech, Caerwys, Beaumaris, and Newburgh were among those which received charters from Edward I; while his successor gave charters to Bala, Llanfyllin, Cardiff, Usk, Caerleon, Newport, Cowbridge, and Neath. It is not easy to realize, when spending a holiday at Criccieth, that the trim little watering-place is a township of royal origin, dating back to the thirteenth century: only the great walls of the old castle, perched aloft on their rocky foundation, serve as a reminder. Thus castle and town jointly made war upon the national life of Wales. It has been noted that in the towns which Edward founded in Wales English was the language of the people down to the close of the sixteenth century. How vigorous is the native tongue may be inferred from the fact that practically all of them, in the course of the subsequent two centuries, became thoroughly Welsh.

As an independent State Wales had now ceased to exist: henceforward the struggle was not so much with the purpose of winning back that which had been lost as to protect the native language and culture from extinction. Except for.the stirring episode of the rebellion of Owen Glyndwr against Henry IV, Wales remained loyal to the English kings; and that loyalty became a patriotic sentiment when the more than half Welsh Tudors came to the throne in the person of Henry VII. Thus we have seen how Wales got its frontiers, its territorial divisions, its castles, and its towns; a word must be said about the ecclesiastical buildings—cathedrals, abbeys, and parish churches—which are so thickly scattered all over the land.

When St. Augustine came from Rome in A.D. 597 to convert the pagan English tribes Wales was already Christian. Legends have accumulated freely about the early

HARLECH CASTLE x history of pre-English Britain. According to one tradition St. Paul himself visited the island. According to another Joseph of Arimathea was the first to bring the glad tidings, as the beautiful ruins of the chapel dedicated to his memory at Glastonbury testify. A third legend has it that St. Andrew brought the Gospel, and became thenceforth the Patron _ Saint of the northern portion of the island. Yet another legend tells how Bran, the father of Caractacus, accompanied his captive son to Rome, became a convert to Christianity, then returned to his native land as a missionary. All, however, that we can say with certainty is that Christianity had made good progress in Britain many years before its adoption as the official religion of the Roman Empire early in the fourth century. The earliest Christian building that has been discovered is the one at Silchester. Of the progress of the new religion in Wales one must speak with great caution. Wales had been the last home of the Druids, and the people clung to their old mythology. Centuries even after the adoption of Christianity the ancient deities—Llud, Merlin, Ceridwen, Coil, Olwen— shared in popular esteem the fame of the newer saints of the Christian calendar.