Howel

“ Howel's father died in 1169. According to the version of 'Brut y Tywysogion,' printed in the 'Myvyrian Archæology,' Howel, as Owain's eldest son, thereupon seized the government and kept possession of it for two years. During his absence in Ireland, looking after certain property which came to him in right of his mother and wife, his brother David rose up against him. Howel returned, but he was defeated, wounded in battle, and taken to Ireland, where he is said to have died in 1170, leaving his Irish possessions to his brother Rhirid. ”

“ There Howel and I parted from the Danes, they going back to Tenby, while we returned slowly to Pembroke. And when we came to the palace yard we found a little train of horses and men there, as though some new guests had come in lately.
"I know who these will be," said Howel. "You will have company in your homeward crossing. Here is Dunwal of Devon, and his daughter, who have been on pilgrimage to St. Davids, for Christmastide. They knew that Nona returned at this time, and have come hither on the chance of a passage home in the ship which brought her. In good time they are, after all." ”

“ For as Rhodri would bring all Wales under the direct sway of one family, so Howel would bring the whole of the Welsh people under one law. A common rule implied a common law, and in order that men might know what this common law was, it had to be codified and thereby reduced to writing. This was the task to which Howel applied himself, and by having laid a sound foundation he occupies a foremost place not only amongst the rulers of the Welsh people, but also amongst all those who have distinguished themselves throughout the centuries by their devotion to the cause of Wales. ”

“ Howel always showed that preference for the foreigner which caused patriotic historians of a much later generation to call him Howel the Bad, though there is nothing to show that he otherwise justified the title. ”

“ Remembering that it represents a late thirteenth-century form of Howel's codification of Welsh law and custom in the tenth century, he will enter safely into the midst of the social and political conditions of pre-Norman Wales. It befits him, however, to be wary, for he treads enchanted ground, and it will not be long before he meets Cadwaladr and Arthur and all the heroes of the Mabinogion and kindred tales. Many are they who have boldly entered here only to succumb to the charm of this realm of phantasy and illusion. ”

“ Wasn't it when you was dining with Prince Albert wanst, and was wanting that money of my Griffey?'
'Do hold your tongue, mother,' shouts Howel, shuddering; he always shivers when he hears his father's name. ”

“ Perhaps it was all summed up in a letter that came, one February morning of Nineteen-Eighteen, to Professor Howel-Jones.
The old botanist was sitting in his study. It was a wide, cleared room with a table as chaotic as that had been at Les Pins, set, as at Les Pins, before a window; but the view here was not of a lagoon with a belt of dunes and a lighthouse. It showed the roofs of Liverpool.
Professor Howel-Jones had just returned, after various wanderings, to find a big mail awaiting him. He sighed, as he opened the letters, for his little niece and secretary. (Olwen had not been replaced.) ”

“ And I have not seen Howel this day...."
"Howel, Richard's man, say ye?" panted the ale-wife, as she deposited mugs of beer before two of her customers. "Howel passed the ford three weeks ago, or nearer four. I know not whither he went."
"Richard also crossed over this day at dawn," said Munulf the maltman, "and with him his firstborn boy. They took the road to Stretton."
"Hey? it is not like Richard to miss the fair," said Ulwin. "I see bondmen of his who watch his wares."
"But not the goodwife?" said Kenric. "How not? She loves the mirth of the market." ”

“ Three copies were made, and it is significant of the change already creeping over the Welsh Church, that Howel and his four bishops are said to have journeyed to Rome and submitted one of them to the Pope for his approval. The Laws of Howel Dda may be read to-day by anyone with access to a reference library. The rights of every class of person are herein clearly set forth, and the precise value of each man’s life according to his rank, and of every animal’s hide and carcase accurately defined. ”

“ As the misfortunes of the unhappy prince attracted much sympathy, Howel sent for a man named Cerialtan, Melor's foster-father, and promised him an extensive grant of lands if he would make away quietly with the young prince. Cerialtan consented, and confided his purpose to his wife. She was horrified, and resolved on saving the boy. During her husband's temporary absence, she fled with her nephew to the wife of Count Conmor at Carhaix in Brittany, who was Melor's aunt. When Howel heard of this he was incensed, and urged Cerialtan to get the boy back into his power. ”

“ In 1042 Howel, who had called the Danes from Ireland to his help, renewed the conflict, and won a victory over Gruffydd at Pwll Dyvach. Gruffydd was taken prisoner by the pagan Danes, but he soon escaped and reoccupied Howel's territory. In 1044 Howel collected a great fleet of his viking allies, and entered the mouth of the Towy on another effort to win back his own. The final battle was fought at the mouth of the river (Abertowy, possibly Carmarthen or somewhere lower down the stream) . Gruffydd won a complete victory, and Howel was slain. ”

“ But tell you your father there's more gold than he is thinking of; and Howel'll be a husband for any one, much less for Miss Netta. Promise me to be lending him a hand, if he do keep constant to your sister.'
'I am sorry, Uncle Griff, that I cannot promise anything for Howel. If he grows steady as you say, there can be no objection ”

“ King Howel, who was surnamed Good, that is, da, put together the laws of Britannia moderately and temperately with the unanimous consent and after the careful consideration of the wise men of his kingdom, namely, the men of Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth, who had assembled together in one place before his tribunal. ”

“ I would trust to the shepherds, and ride alone for once across the hills. I thought that, even were I set upon, my horse would take me from danger more quickly than hillmen could run, and Howel, unwillingly enough, agreed that it seemed to be the only chance. Maybe the men would speak more openly with me on the hillside and alone.
So I asked if there was any one could tell me where there were menhirs in the valleys, and a shepherd said that he knew two or three. ”

“ The common opinion is that Howel Dda lived in Deheubarth and especially in Dyved, [17] but in the light of the above passage he generally dwells in Powys. Moreover, the manner in which the White House is spoken of as being the king's hunting-lodge 'when he came to Dyved' seems to bear out the same idea. It is true that the preface to the Book of Cyvnerth appears to restrict Howel's dominions outside Powys, and it is curious that Powys appears to be the very division of Wales wherein that compilation had its origin. ”

“ The law is the law of Howel, but it is the law of Howel as modified and amplified both by the varying customs of different parts of Wales and also by the changes which are taking place throughout three and a half critical centuries in the general life of the people. ”

“ It do show how rich they are thinking us now. There's Jones, the Red Cow, and Lewis, draper, are letting us have as much credit as we like; and they 'ouldn't let us have as much as a dobbin or a yard of tape before poor Griffey died.'
Howel drank a wine-glass of raw brandy and went upstairs with the keys in his hand. He crept stealthily into that room where the miser breathed his last, as if fearful of arousing the body within the drawn curtains. He proceeded to the bureau and tried the various keys of the large bunch that he now grasped for the first time in his life. ”

“ Howel undoubtedly seems to have fought well, for he was knighted by the Black Prince, and received afterwards the constableship of Criccieth Castle, and also the rent of Dee Mills at Chester, 'besides other great things in North Wales;' and as a memorial of his services a mess of meat was ordered to be served before his axe in perpetuity, the food being afterwards given to the poor `for his soul's health.' This ceremony is said to have been observed till the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's time, eight yeoman attendants at 8d. ”

“ There remain therefore (excluding Buallt mentioned separately) the gwlads or patrias of Ceredigion, Dyved, Ystrad Tywi, Brycheiniog, and Morgannwg with Gwent. The first four comprise fifty-two cymwds, [33] and the last about twenty-five, exclusive of Cantrev Coch between the Wye and Gloucester. That there was some aggression on the part of Howel against Morgannwg with Gwent is clear from the dispute between him and King Morgan mentioned in the Book of Llandav (247-9) , a Welsh translation of which precedes the Cwta Cyfarwydd list of the cymwds and cantrevs of Wales. ”

“ From the Middle West, too, came the principal exponent of native realism, in himself almost an entire literary movement, almost an academy. William Dean Howells was born at Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, 1 March, 1837, the grandson of a Welsh Quaker and the son of a country printer and editor. Like his friend Mark Twain he saw little of schools and nothing of colleges, and like him he got his systematic literary training from enforced duties as a printer and journalist. ”

“ The obstacles in the way of the unity of Wales were stupendous, such as no bare coercion could overcome. We have seen their like on a modern and larger scale in the story of Italian and German unity. In the Dark Age the difficulty was accentuated by the fact that, even given a unity achieved by a capable ruler, the mind of the age as reflected in the Leges Barbarorum, of which the Laws of Howel are the Welsh exemplar, compelled that unity to be divided after his death among his sons. Charlemagne himself had so to divide his empire ; the same necessity rested on Rhodri the Great. ”

“ This last, the study of a frontier impostor who proclaims himself a god, as an actual person had once done in early Ohio, best hints at Howells's views of the relation between the real world which he had so long explored and those vast spaces which appear to be beyond it for the futile tempting of religionists and romanticists. The maturest Howells, like the Mark Twain whose Mysterious Stranger appeared in the same year as The Leatherwood God, speculated much upon such matters, but without losing himself in them. ”

“ The small brick Howells house stood close to the stream, where grime and squalor most abound at present. However, the railroad was not there then, and Martin’s Ferry was a village that had in some respects real rural attraction.
During the period of about twenty-five years which this book covers the Howells family lived in seven different places, many of them widely separated, but all within the confines of Ohio; and they seldom stayed long in any town without occupying more than one residence. Naturally, there have been marked changes in the aspect of most of the places where they dwelt. ”

“ Howells's work is essential to the student of the American provincial novel, as it is also to the student of our more generalized types of story-writing, and that he has never in his long career written an insincere, a slovenly, or an infelicitous page. My Literary Friends and Acquaintance gives the most charming picture ever drawn of the elder Cambridge, Concord, and Boston men who ruled over our literature when young Howells came out of the West, and My Mark Twain is his memorable portrait of another type of sovereign, perhaps the dynasty that will rule the future. ”

“ Howells—that poem of his is admirable; that’s the way to treat a person. Howells has a peculiar gift for seeing the merits of people, and he has always exhibited them in my favor. Howells has never written anything about me that I couldn’t read six or seven times a day; he is always just and always fair; he has written more appreciatively of me than any one in this world, and published it in the North American Review. ”

“ He was billed to speak that night, and as he was leaving for Rock Island the following day he arranged that I should bring Zulime to the hotel just before he started for his lecture.
After telling her of his wish to see her, I explained the significance of it. "You must understand that Mr. Howells is a kind of literary father confessor to me. He is a man of most delicate courtesy. Once you have seen him, once you have looked into his face, you will love him." ”

“ So Howells, Colonel Harvey, Martin Littleton, Augustus Thomas, Robert Porter, and Paderewski were invited. Paderewski was unable to come, and seven in all assembled.
Howells was first to arrive.
"Here comes Howells," Clemens said. "Old Howells a thousand years old."
But Howells didn't look it. His face was full of good-nature and apparent health, and he was by no means venerable, either in speech or action. Thomas, Porter, Littleton, and Harvey drifted in. Cocktails were served and luncheon was announced.
Claude, the butler, had prepared the table with fine artistry—its center a mass of roses. ”

“ Avoid all forms of eccentricity. IN THE RESTAURANT When you wish to get the waiter's attention, do not sing out “Say!” Simply say “Szt!”
His old abandoned notion of “Hamlet” with an added burlesque character came back to him and stirred his enthusiasm anew, until even Howells manifested deep interest in the matter. One reflects how young Howells must have been in those days; how full of the joy of existence; also how mournfully he would consider such a sacrilege now.
Clemens proposed almost as many things to Howells as his brother Orion proposed to him. ”