“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lessened, cheaper may this humble cottage heritage of the present seem than those times which have gone their “journey of all days” into the past. But not so does this sweet homeliness seem to me. Life is gentler, life is better, perhaps even kindlier within them by the bright hearth where, for the asking, any one may sit welcomed and at ease. Their purple roofs are but modest regal seal upon the happiness within. One feels singularly close to that great mother of us all in these tiny Welsh cottages, near to what is essential, what is real. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fair valley, the path by the riverside, the lustrous castle, the torrent—all are still a part of the life of Wales to-day. Again, for the mere opening of a book, we may see knights in their encounters as of old: the horse that pricks forward, the furious blows upon the faces of the shields, the broken armour and bursting girths, and then the battle on foot, their arms striking sparks, and blood and sweat filling their eyes. ”

“ Their low, quiet voices, their gentle ways, their spiritual intensity, all throw a glamour about the lives they lead. One does not expect to find a sage in yon little cottage where the village bread is baked. Yet he is there, his books two deep on every shelf of his little room, his lamp burning far into the night. Nor does one expect to find a Welsh Jenny Lind in this cot whose brass doorsill we have just left; but, busy about her work, a voice the world might well run to listen to follows us down these Welsh upland meadows. ”

“ In some rock-strewn valley, bleak and barren as the uttermost parts of the earth or terrible as the valley of the shadow of death, rises the cry of human sacrifice. Hundreds of years later, down a roadway bordered then as now with foxglove and bluebells and heather, rides a gallant company, gentle-mannered, on pleasure bent. Or by the walls of Conway Castle, Edward I bears the body of his Eleanor to its far resting-place in Westminster Abbey, where the stones are still fresh from the chisels of the builders. ”

“ The grass looks peace into tired eyes, and to eyes eager with plans rest here is merely an emphasis upon the joy of living. And here, as the stiles into the close show, the children play and have played from generation to generation. Here they climbed upon the roof, and here against the north and west walls, where burials are never made, they played ball and scratched upon the stone their scoring-marks.
At Llangelynin there are no yew trees; that windy height is too bleak for even the sturdy yew. Only white harebells and hardy grass blow about on its bare rock-strewn summit. ”

“ The death portents in Cambria reveal all the strangeness and lawlessness of the Celtic imagination. No one who does not know the Welsh hills, who has not been on them day after day, can feel the significance of these death portents. One must have travelled on the top and edge of the Welsh mountain world to understand,—have looked out upon a sea of hills gray and barren in their utter colourlessness, and down upon valleys like the valley of the shadow of death. ”

“ Again the old market-place, beyond Plas Mawr and the church, rings with their laughter and their lively barter, and the clatter of their ponies’ hoofs; again the soft voices of the women are heard and the heavier voices of the men; again they mount their horses, sometimes double, and ride away out of the lively town to the silent hills beyond, through Gyffin, where the colours in the old barrel vault of the church must have been even brighter than they are now; perhaps they go as far as some hillside like that on which Llangelynin still keeps its gray sanctuary. ”

“ Welsh cottages life has continued more or less unchanged in a beautiful simplicity. It is not merely the simplicity imposed by poverty,—although that does exist to a depressing extent in Wales,—it is rather their sense of fitness, their love of what is beautiful, that innate instinct of theirs, not only for the right word, but also for the right beauty of a room, even of a kitchen. When they would imitate under the pressure of modern fussiness and vulgarities, something still holds them back. ”

“ Along the road on one side is the sea; on the other, green hills rise into the blue of the sky, their slopes a mosaic of gray sheep walls. And here out of the village at the end of a grass-grown road, by the sea, lies a little church, around which the sands have blown through so many centuries that the windows show just the caps looking like sleepy eyes out of the huddled graves. One minute time rolls like a chariot wheel crushing all things, another moment and it is a mystic circle without beginning and without end. ”

“ Or, like Moses, I came down from Nebo, only it was a Welsh Nebo [145] and my hands were full of peppermints bought for twopence, and children, rosy-cheeked youngsters in a frenzy of joy, were running about me. Into strange places may even a cottage gleam lead. Once it took me to that most primitive of all shelters, a cromlech, where gorse made sunshine on the hill and heather made a glory, and in a near-by oat-field pansies bloomed, and, above, a crown of pines sung in the ever-blowing winds. ”

“ I looked down what seemed like a particoloured gulf of greensward into valleys where men and cattle had become dots in size, and up to more fern and heather and altitudes where the curlew cried. It was as I looked up that I saw an impressively large black dog that went through an impossibly small sheep-hole in a sheep-wall. But a wisp of mist came over the Welsh mountain-side, and one never makes an effort to see that sort of thing or to run after it. Hunting rollicking elves and lightfoot fairies is quite a different matter! ”

“ Even the loaf of bread Baucis and Philemon set before their wanderers was no better, I am certain, than the bread of Beddgelert, light, sweet, with crackly golden-brown crust. Often have we done nothing but watch—and joy enough it was—the mammoth loaves coming home from the village bakery across the village bridge, little children staggering under them, small boys bearing them jauntily, mothers grasping them firmly under one arm, a baby tucked away under the other. ”

“ Wordsworth came there with his friend, Robert Jones; Shelley, living at Tan yr Allt, a few miles out of Beddgelert, must often have passed through its lanes, his ragged brown hair whipped by the valley wind, his great eyes blue as the roadway of sky overhead; Kingsley, with a quick smile for the jolly little urchins perched venturesomely on the sharp slate coping of the bridge, Frederic Temple, Derwent Coleridge, J. A. Froude, Professor F. W. Newman, Huxley, Tyndall, all found holiday rest in this quiet meadow sheltered by its rampart of mountains. ”

“ Fairyland is Cambria in Wales, if you will let me juggle with my words in this fashion, for I do not know how to express it otherwise. And yearning for continued love and life, even with the bees, is the breath of the phantom and spirit world called “Fairyland.” Although the instinct of faith in the supernatural may be primitive and the Welsh of to-day highly civilized, yet supernatural belief is still ineradicated among the people. Their childish tales, often so hard to understand, are full of a haunting race life. ”

“ For the gray of a gray day outside, here by this hearth is the rose of fire, the tongue of flame by which we warm ourselves, the fluttering of those [154] dreams beneath which we hide ourselves as under a sheltering wing. The passionate heart of a passionately sensitive people is this hearth and flame of a Welsh cottage. ”

“ No wonder that with such witches conjurors are needed,—if for no other reason, then to unseat the cows; and that country folk pluck the snapdragon to protect themselves from these hags! No wonder the peasants cross their doors, even to this day in isolated districts, to shield themselves, and that they keep horseshoes and churchyard earth to preserve their cottages from spells!
No matter how he fumbled the English fairies, Shakespeare never made any mistake with the Welsh. ”

“ I am not referring to the Welsh lodging-house which is all many an Englishman or American knows in Wales. The floor of the cottage may be but of beaten clay, neatly whitewashed around the edge. This, however, is surely a more attractive floor covering than many which cost, even before they leave the carpet factory, a good deal more. Beautiful rooms are these where, from the lustre-ware, the pewter, the copper and brass and latticed windows, many a lesson is still to be learned by some of us who think it impossible that we should be able to take anything from so humble a place. ”

“ With its ache of all the ages the dream of ancient beauty has no place in it for an hour’s weariness. As if the riddle of existence could be explained by a wall rain-washed and worn, upon which grow lichen, moss, rustling grass, and even trees, and by lintels tipping earthward, golden flowers blowing upon them! The eye travels thirstily from stone to stone, or to some peaceful bell-cot pointing the bare ridge of a bleak, sheep-covered hill, or to the far-away hills and gray sky and solemn, dreary places. ”

“ The least credulous may look at fairy and goblin food in the woods and fields, and their gloves, the foxglove, growing beside the road. And their animals, their sheep, their horses, their dogs are visible on many a dim hillside. The Welsh speak of these little people as the fair folk or family—“y Tylwyth Teg.” And well do they deserve the name. Sometimes they are spoken of as the fair folk of the wood or the fair folk of the mine. ”

“ English and Americans, unlike the Welsh, do not go lightly on a holiday without consideration of what there will be to eat. And our lodging-table, set by as kindly and generous a hostess as three wanderers ever found, bore slender chickens whose proportions [20] suggested mountain climbing, mutton tender as the ivy the poor sheep had been nibbling, salmon trout fresh as the stream pouring by the corner of our cottage, Glan Afon, pound-cake filled with plums, and tawny mountain honey. ”

“ Repeated experience of life in North Wales in its most isolated, tiny hamlets, where the tourist had never been before and where it was impossible to secure lodging; experience in the small towns like Conway and Carnarvon, full of association, quiet and yet prosperous; and experience in the larger centres of Welsh life, have given me a perspective which is, perhaps, uncommon. The great advantage of Bettws is that you can not only get everywhere from that delightful place, but that you can also be most comfortable at a reasonable rate. ”

“ And to their gentle masters the fairies themselves seem to have given an uncommon devotion. If fairies are troublesome, one can sometimes get rid of them by changing one’s residence. But not so with these Welsh fairies! Like the family servant for whom every one longs, they stick closer than a brother. Even going into England will not drive Welsh fairies away from those they love. Matthew Arnold should have considered this when he was studying the Celtic temperament, and denouncing it for its inconstancy, for the essence of all that is Celtic is the Welsh fairy. ”