A. G. Bradley

“ But there are water-fowl here at any rate, if of a less elusive and more clamorous kind; for the osier beds by the chalk streams are strident by day with the various notes and boisterous antics of the breeding moor-hens, and often melodious by night with the song of the reed-warbler. The willow-wren keeps you company in the pollards, the rare kingfisher loves the chalk stream, and there is nothing in which the corncrake more delights than to grind out his monotonous love notes—for all the world like a gigantic salmon reel—in a water-meadow put up for hay. ”

“ Dafydd ap Gwylim, the greatest of all Welsh love-poets, was still alive in Glyndwr’s youth, while Gutyn Owen was almost a contemporary. Welsh poetry had attuned itself, since the Edwardian conquest had brought comparative peace in Wales, to gentler and more literary themes. The joys of agriculture and country life, the happiness of the peasant, the song of birds, the murmur of streams, and, above all, the gentler passions of human nature had supplanted to a great extent the fiercer notes of martial eulogies, the pæans of victory, and the plaintive wails over long-past but unforgotten defeats. ”

“ GLYNDWR was now, by the lowest estimate, in his forty-sixth year. For that period, when manhood began early, and old age, if it came at all, came quickly, he certainly carried his years with remarkable lightness. Who can say, however, with what feelings he surveyed his handiwork? From end to end, with almost the sole exception of Anglesey and Carnarvonshire and western Pembroke, Wales lay desolate and bleeding. Owen’s hands were red, not only with the blood of Saxons, but with that of old friends and even kinsmen. ”

“ Wordsworth has struck roots so deep into this glorious country, has so identified it with his own personality, that even if he were a much lesser poet, immortal fame would be as surely his as the endurance of Skiddaw or Helvellyn. But Wordsworth has a firmer grip than that of mere atmosphere on unborn generations, though this almost alone would endear him to all those with any sense of feeling who love the Lake country, and of such it is inconceivable that future generations will not each supply their ample store. ”

“ The, in this respect, utterly guileless Cathedral town of Hereford is, indeed, the only place above the scale of a small market-town within touch of its banks. Everywhere, even between the rapids, the river itself is instinct with the sense of buoyancy. After leaving the Black Mountains above Hereford it becomes at intervals for pleasure-boats a navigable stream; but till it leaves Wales it has all the boil and rush and stir of a salmon river. It is easy to pick out those sections of the Wye, charming as they are in a quiet, pastoral, Severn-like fashion, which are the least distinguished. ”

“ The weather for a wonder favoured the English, and we might be excused for giving our imagination play for a moment and painting in fancy the gorgeous sight that the chivalry of half England, unsoiled by time or tempests or war, with its glinting steel, its gay colours, its flaunting pennons, shining in the October sun, must have displayed as it wound in a long, thin train through those familiar and matchless scenes. The great Cistercian house of Ystradfflur had shared with Conway in olden days the honour of both making and preserving the records of the Principality. ”

“ The Wye is there what you expect to find it—a characteristic mountain river. Down here, however, its suddenly uplifting qualities and transcendent beauty burst upon you in the nature of the unexpected. In a series of quite extraordinary loops it burrows in deep troughs for many tortuous miles, overhung on both sides by masses of woodland. These almost perpendicular walls of foliage, 600 to 800 feet in height, are buttressed, as it were, by grey bastions and pillars of rock that project in bold and fine contrast to the soft curtain of leaves that hang in folds round them. ”

“ A May morning out on Crummock, the fly rod laid aside in despair for the moment with its capricious little trout, though the compensations forbid so untoward a word; the boat drifting idly with gently gurgling keel upon the faint ripples stirred by the very softest of zephyrs; the distant murmur of the Cocker splashing toward the lake head; the faint dull roar of Scale Force, and, above all, the silent throng of overhanging mountains fairly pealing with the cuckoo's note, is a memory always to be treasured. ”

“ Dee, Usk, and Wye, with their boisterous tributaries that crossed the English line of march, roared bank-high, and buried all trace of the fords beneath volumes of brown tumbling water, while bridges, homesteads, and such flocks as the Welsh had not driven westward for safety were carried downwards to the sea. In these days of rapid travel it seems incredible that so overwhelming and, for the times, well-found a host, could be beaten in less than a fortnight without striking a blow. It is an object-lesson in medieval warfare worth taking to heart and remembering. ”

“ But though in the deer park at Stoneleigh its streams really frolic upon gravel and turn corners with a hurried swish almost like a Herefordshire grayling river, it is in later stages drifting idly with a pair of oars on its quiet surface that the Avon commends itself so irresistibly to those—and they are many, nay, almost a multitude—who know it. The wider expanse of water at Guy’s Cliff, the beautiful stretch above which Warwick Castle rises so superbly, are as familiar to almost as large a public as the reaches of the Thames at Windsor. ”

“ An engine house at one point and the big dam, only visible at the far end, are more than counterbalanced in the raising for many feet of a lake that is three miles long and only a quarter of a mile wide. That first delicious view of it which greets the pilgrim on the downward winding road from the pass of Dunmaile Raise, deep channelled between the rugged wall of Armboth Crags and the northern shoulders of Helvellyn, with the pale cone of Skiddaw rising over the hidden interval beyond, will be among the most familiar memories of the lake tourist. ”

“ I have, however, seen myself, from the overlooking vantage-point of a highway traversing the Kennet valley, three partners in an angling syndicate well out of sight of one another, flogging a noted dry-fly water down and across with a wet-fly before a light breeze, and probably not without success. It{92} was delightful to the wayfaring angler to watch these furtive and guilty souls, each thinking no eye but that of some unconscious waggoner could peradventure behold their crooked deeds, and safe at least from one another. Alas, weak human nature! ”

“ This is Dinas Brân, the most proudly perched mediæval fortress in Wales, perhaps in all Britain. Here in this eagle’s nest, swung betwixt earth and heaven, lived the Princes of Powys Fadog; and no more fitting refuge could be imagined for men who, like them, had sometimes to look eastward for their foes and sometimes to the west. It was in 1270, close to the final conquest, that Madoc’s son Griffith died, after dividing his life between friendship with the English King and repentant alliances with his own race. ”

“ As the lake shoots southward, however, in a straight line, without any conspicuous curves or headlands, and no heights comparable to those it leaves behind, one feels upon thus looking down it that Coniston lacks something of the fascination which never flags at any part of the other lakes. If Windermere, too, trails away from the mountains, it does so in glorious bends and headlands, curves and islands, and has an opulence of detail and colouring all its own. ”

“ The lush wandering hedgerows again climb the steeps; the little white houses blink through orchards upon high-pitched terraces. Here still are the rich red patches of tillage, the woodland drapery, the country-seats, conscious no doubt that they have an atmosphere to live up to. All these are grouped with an effect peculiar to the Wye, for the simple reason that no other English river valley combines the luxuriance of a soft and forcing climate with a physical environment so consistently distinguished in scale and altitude as does the Wye for the 30 odd miles between Ross and Chepstow. ”

“ OF the last six years of Owen’s life, those from 1410 to 1416, there is little to be said. His cause was hopelessly lost and he had quite ceased to be dangerous. Wales was reconquered and lay sick, bleeding, and wasted beneath the calm of returning peace. Thousands, it is to be feared, cursed Glyndwr as they looked upon the havoc which the last decade had wrought. The unsuccessful rebel or patriot, call him what you will, has far more friends among those yet unborn than among his own contemporaries, above all in the actual hour of his failure. ”

“ It is almost as captivating, I think, to watch the gurgling sweep of a chalk stream as the more boisterous humours of her wilder sister of the mountain. The Itchen, having regard merely to the water between its banks, is singularly beautiful. As pellucid as the Wiley, there is a life and movement and rush over the gravel greater even than in that engaging stream, whose surroundings, however, like those of the Upper Avon, are far more natural and characteristic than the slightly conventional atmosphere of the Itchen. ”

“ By this time, however, and indeed before it, every man who was not a professed subject of the descendant of Llewelyn and of Madoc ap Griffith, had fled Wales, except those who were swelling the population of the ill-victualled and closely beleaguered castles. Glyndwr had before him many a doughty Anglo-Norman warrior, under walls well-nigh impervious to anything but starvation, whose crumbling shells on many a Welsh headland and hilltop still wake memories of the past and stir our fancy. ”

“ It is outside the immediate fringe of such a river that local character and features assert themselves. The South Tyne, from Haltwhistle to Hexham, sweeps bravely down a valley of grass farms, with here and there a village of stern uncompromising stone and slate set on its banks. There is no charm of village architecture in Northumberland, or scarcely any. Nor on the lofty slopes of Tynedale does the rose-embowered, orchard-girdled, thatched-roof cot that Wordsworth saw on the high terraces of the Wye, and sang of, send up its smoke wreaths. ”

“ A cruciform church of great age with an octagonal tower and spire springing from the centre lends force to the tradition of Grosmont’s former glories. Above all, the walls of the Norman castle, whence issued Prince Henry’s gallant band, still stand hard by the village, their reddish stonework half hidden amid a mass of ivy and the foliage of embowering trees; the moat half full of the leaves of many autumns, the ramparts green with the turf of ages ”

“ Escaping from this delightful and stupendous entanglement of cliff and wood, the Wye runs down to Monmouth through a most exquisite valley, and between hills of goodly stature verdant to their summits with green pastures, criss-crossed by straggling hedges or belts of woodland. Small farms and cottages, with brightly-tinted walls, perched here and there upon a ledge on the steep face of the hills, are a characteristic feature too of all this lower Wye. ”

“ The tables were indeed turned on the greedy and tyrannical Lord Marcher who had been the primary cause of all this trouble that had fallen upon Wales and England. Glyndwr would not have been human had he not then drained to the last drop the cup of a revenge so sweet, and Grey was immured in the castle of Dolbadarn, whose lonely tower, still standing between the Llanberis lakes and at the foot of Snowdon, is so familiar to the modern tourist. His treatment as a prisoner, amid the snows of those cold mountains, was not indulgent, if his friends in England are to be believed. ”

“ The descendants of the men who formed the greynes or clans of Tyne, soldiers, moss-troopers, cattle-lifters, the terror of the low countries, are all here in absolute possession—Charltons, Robsons, Hedleys, Dodds, Halls and Milburnes—great sheep-farmers many, landowners still some of them. But tempting as it is to pursue this wild and beautiful valley to the springs of Tyne on the Scottish watershed, with its still surviving peel-towers, its wealth of tradition and legend, it is necessary to forbear, for I have already somewhat exceeded the limits of my space. ”

“ Whether worthy or not, the fame is his, and though, curiously enough, uncommemorated in marble, stone, or brass, and recorded by the poet and historian in a fragmentary and disconnected fashion, it is fame that seems to grow no dimmer with the lapse of time. Genealogy has charms for few people, and Welsh genealogy, to the Saxon who has not served some kind of apprenticeship to it, is notoriously formidable. ”

“ Beautiful burns hurry down from the not very distant heart of this narrow but lofty northern point of the range, into the Till, babbling through deep glens, clad like the hills above with bracken, sprinkled in fine confusion with birch and alder, and littered with fragments of grey rock. The stone bridge over which Surrey led the English army as he marched down its valley to Flodden, whose high green ridge confronts you everywhere, still spans the Till. ”

“ His head was struck off and despatched at once to King Edward at Conway, who, receiving it with great joy, sent it immediately by sea to his army in Anglesey. Thence the gruesome trophy was forwarded to London, where crowds of people met it outside the city and placed upon the gory brows a wreath of ivy in mockery of the old Welsh prophecy that a Prince of Welsh blood should once more be crowned in London. It was then fixed upon the point of a lance and carried in triumph through the streets to the pillory, and from the pillory to its final resting-place above the gate of the Tower. ”

“ The oak is the staple tree of these Devon valleys, and, as the latest to put forth its leaves, the bloom of spring flowers in which these vales are equalled by few and surpassed by none, shows upon the woodland banks in all the more bewitching brilliancy. Though the oak is the groundwork of woodland colouring in Devon valleys, the ash and the alder, the willow, the birch, the rowan, and the larch all play their part in the riotous foliage of the stream. ”

“ The deer brush beneath oaks and yews of such prodigious age and size that some of them must almost certainly have been of good size when Thomas Scudamore brought Alice, the daughter of Owen of Glyndyfrdwy, home as a bride; while just across the narrow valley, through which the waters of the Monnow rush swift and bright between their ruddy banks, the village and ruined castle of Grosmont stand conspicuous upon their lofty ridge. ”

“ From Greystone bridge downwards the great height of the country on both banks gives a distinction of environment to the Tamar above most of its fellows. On looking over the landscape through which it flows, from any high point, it gives the impression of a mighty gorge wriggling tortuously through an upheaved country. Not that you can actually see the Tamar till you get to quite close quarters with it. It is a most difficult river for the casual stranger to acquire an intimacy with, from the fact that it flows in so deep a trench. ”

“ It may well indeed have been the ubiquitous Glyndwr himself from whom the sagacity of the Duke delivered them in the wilds of Radnor or Carmarthen. Though Aberystwith and Harlech were safe for this winter, the Prince, with a deliberation perhaps emphasised by chagrin at his failure, made arrangements for a second attempt to be undertaken in the following summer.
The winter of 1407-1408 was the most terrible within living memory. It is small wonder that no echo of siege or battle or feat of arms breaks the silence of the snow-clad and war-torn country. ”

“ The people of Evesham, like those of Warwick and Stratford, have widened and beautified the Avon as it washes the foot of the green slopes on which the noble belfry of Abbot Lichfield, barely finished at the Dissolution, alone marks the site of the once splendid Abbey. Between Stratford and Evesham the long ridge of Edgehill, where the first great battle of the Civil War was fought, rises away to the south, and the villages by inference or evidence associated with Shakespeare’s life are all about the stream. ”

“ It will be enough to say that the mouth of the Dart is worthy of the river’s deserved reputation; a fine deep, winding harbour, channelled between lofty hills and embellished at its narrow mouth with the keep of an ancient castle. Dartmouth town is, in its different way, as picturesque as Totnes, and if it were not, its great memories would hallow the homeliest walls. But in treating of Devonshire villages and country houses one has hardly in mind the abodes of sea-goers and fishermen. They belong to another type altogether, and one regards them with different eyes. ”

“ It is not likely that a man who showed himself so able and so cool a leader would fail to take full advantage of forces which at this early stage were so supremely valuable.
He knew his countrymen and he knew the world, and when Wales was quivering with excitement beneath the interpretation of ancient prophecies bruited hither and thither and enlarged upon by poetic and patriotic fancy, Glyndwr was certainly not the man to damp their ardour by any display of criticism. ”

“ Of its great lonely heart, tuneful only with the noise of waters, the bleat of sheep, and the plovers’ cry, of its romantic girdle of crag and wood, of little white-washed sycamore shaded homesteads and rude hoary shrines of British saints through which these bog-fed torrents break, the outer world knows absolutely nothing at all. Here, however, are about 600 to 800 square miles of more continuously wild upland than anything even in North Wales, all lying in a block, to which the counties of Montgomery, Radnor, Brecon, Cardigan, and Caermarthen each contribute a slice. ”

“ For the Severn valley is so intercepted with small hills, so richly wooded, so ornate in places with the park lands and foliage of country seats, so sprinkled with pleasant villages, one is apt to forget that the little streams hurrying down to the river from the north come from a really wild Wales beyond, while lying back to the south the regions of Kerry and Clun speak in their very names to the initiated of the spirit of solitude. ”

“ Everything that shapely form and atmosphere can achieve in the way of effect these little mountains of ours are capable of. Our much maligned climate not merely clothes them in a chequered mantle of green and russet, of grey, purple, or saffron, only less in winter than in summer, but gives them those ever-changing moods and aspects that few people who know both would as a permanency exchange for all the sun glare of the earth. ”