Merionethshire

“ And I really think I shall astonish the good folks in Merionethshire by my account of that saint's festival. In my young days I wandered much in that beautiful shire and other shires which he contiguous: and many a kind thing was done to me in poor men's cottages which to my dying day I shall never be able to repay individually: hence, as occasions offer, I would seek to make my acknowledgments generally to the county. Upon Penmorfa sands I once had an interesting adventure, and I have accordingly commemorated Penmorfa. ”

“ Dolgelly, which is the principal town of Merionethshire, forms a local board district. There is an inconsiderable manufacture of coarse flannels and tweeds carried on by the inhabitants. Population in 1871, 2357. ”

“ In the 19th century, however, the population nearly doubled. The area of the administrative county is 422,018 acres. Welsh is the tongue par excellence of Merionethshire. The county returns one member to parliament, and has neither parliamentary nor municipal borough. The urban districts are: Bala (pop. 1544) , Barmouth (Abermaw, 2214) , Dolgelley (Dolgellau, 2437) , Festiniog (11,435) , Mallwyd (885) , Towyn (3756) . The shire is in the north-west circuit, and assizes are held at Dolgellau. ”

“ There were lately (and I believe are still) to be seen in the sands of this bay, large stones with inscriptions on them, the characters Roman, but the language unknown. This disastrous circumstance is recorded by many other ancient Welsh writers. ↑ ‘Cyric,’ the patron saint of the Welsh mariners. ↑ ‘Dyssynni,’ a river in Merionethshire, running through a beautiful country. ↑ ‘Mervinia,’ Merionethshire. ↑ ‘Dyvi,’ a large river dividing Merionethshire from Cardiganshire. ↑ ‘My Morvyth sails.’ It was usual for those (even females) who went from North Wales, on pilgrimages to St. ”

“ Montgomeryshire extends about p. 140thirty miles in length, by the same in breadth, and occupies a surface of four hundred and ninety-one thousand acres. The counties of Denbigh and Merioneth form a northern boundary; Shropshire joins it on the east; Radnor and Cardiganshires bound it on the south; and it touches both Cardigan and Merionethshires on the west. In this county the manufacture of Welsh flannel is established on a permanent basis and extensive scale. Valuable minerals abound in the interior regions ”

“ In the central counties—Brecon, Radnor, Cardigan, Merioneth, Montgomery—the population is below one for 10 acres; the industrial and agricultural population are about equal, except in Radnor, where the agricultural is more than two to one. Though Merioneth has more sheep even than Brecon—and each of them has nearly 400,000—its industrial population, owing to the slate districts, is double the agricultural. The population begins to thicken again as we get nearer the slate, limestone, and coal districts. ”

“ A few miles to the northwest of Coventry lies the village of Meriden, which is called the centre of England. There on a tableland is a little pool from which the water flows both west and east, on the one side reaching the Severn and the British Channel, on the other the Trent and the North Sea. "Leafy Warwickshire" is watered, as all the world knows, by the Avon. The county, though its borders show here and there a hilly fringe, and though the spurs of the Cotswolds invade it on the south, is in the main a fertile river-basin, given over to agriculture and to pasturage. ”

“ Merio`neth (49) , a mountainous county of North Wales, abutting on Cardigan Bay, between Carnarvon and Cardigan; lofty peaks, Aran Mowddy, Cader Idris, and Aran Benllyn; rivers, Dee and Dovey, and Lake Bala afford picturesque scenery; the soil is fit only for sheep-grazing; but there are slate and limestone quarries, manganese and gold mines; the county town, Dolgelly (2) , on the Wnion, has woollen and tweed manufactures.
Merivale, Charles, dean of Ely, born at Exeter; held a succession of appointments as lecturer ”

“ Then it becomes the boundary between Merioneth and Cardigan, making its way to the sea through an estuary 61⁄2 miles long—broad, noble, and impressive, with hills green, gentle, and round on its left, and on its right high mountains and purple heather, and “the sleep that is among the lonely hills.” It is a river much beloved of angling folk, for there are “salmons” not only, as Fluellen said, in Monmouthshire, but also in Montgomery and Merioneth. Likewise there is abundance of sewin and trout ”

“ At this time houses in High Street, Marylebone, particularly on the western side, continued to be inhabited by families who kept their coaches, and who considered themselves as living in the country, and perhaps their family affairs were as well known as they could have been had they resided at Kilburn. [70] In Marylebone, great and [40] wealthy people of former days could hardly stir an inch without being noticed; indeed, so lately as the year 1728, the Daily Journal assured the public that “many persons arrived in London from their country-houses in Marylebone” ”

“ The chief difference between a shire and a lordship is that the king's writ runs to the shire, but not to the lordship. The king administers the law in the shire, through the sheriff; the lord administers the law in the lordship through his own officials.
In 1535 the marches of Wales were turned into shire ground. The bulk of them went to make seven new shires—Pembroke, Glamorgan, Monmouth, Brecon, Radnor, Montgomery, and Denbigh. The others were added to the older English and Welsh counties. ”

“ In Wessex and the east the counties are either older kingdoms, like Kent, Sussex, and Essex; or else tribal divisions of the kingdom, like Dorset, Somerset, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Surrey. In Mercia, the recovered country is artificially mapped out round the chief Danish burgs, as in the case of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, and Leicestershire, where the county town usually occupies the centre of the arbitrary shire. In Northumbria it is divided into equally artificial counties by the rivers. ”

“ The primary meaning of shire is, a division of a realm; of county, the district held or governed by a count or earl. Every shire implies a realm, and was usually committed or left by the supreme ruler to the government of an earl. On the other hand, every county joined to a realm became a shire, or part of a shire. But many counties were not within any realm. Long after the formation of the ancient shires of Wales, the term "county" continued to be applied to Lordships Marchers which never even gave their names to shires, although, of course, comprised in the final shire-distribution. ”

“ It's true that I love wild Wales.'
'And so do I' Caroline raised her eyes to imagined mountains.
'You will pardon me, Camminy,' said Mr. Adister.
The lawyer cracked his back to bow to the great gentleman so magnanimously humiliating himself. 'Sir! Sir!' he said. 'Yes, Welsh blood is queer blood, I own. They find it difficult to forgive; and trifles offend; and they are unhappily just as secretive as they are sensitive. The pangs we cause them, without our knowing it, must be horrible. ”

“ Wales, England, Scotland, and Ireland! forming the finest panorama the empire can boast. The circle begins with the mountains of Cumberland and Westmorland; those of Ingleborough and Penygent, in the county of York, and the hills of Lancashire follow; then are observed the counties of Chester, Flint, Denbigh, and a portion of Montgomeryshire. Nearly the whole of Merioneth succeeds; and drawing a line with the eye along the diameter of the circle, we take in the regions stretching from the triple crown of Cader Idris to the sterile crags of Carnedds-David and Llewellyn. ”

“ We are now in a broad and fertile valley; the hills are wooded; the river is growing slow and stately in its demeanour. The whole aspect of the country has changed, for at Hay we shall leave all the wildness of Wales behind us, and shall enter the quiet, homely county of Hereford. ”

“ He and his country stood to meet the issue together the moment the Countess of Fleetwood and her escort crossed the Welsh border; when it became a question between the hot-hearted, at their impetuous gallop, and the sedatively minded, in an unfortified camp of arm-chairs. The earl’s adroitness, averting a collision fatal or discomforting to both, disengaged him from an incumbent odium, of which, it need hardly be stated, neither the lady nor her attendant cavaliers had any notion at the hour of the assembly for the start for England on the bridge of Pont-y-pridd. ”

“ Melenyth is a hundred in the northern part of the county, extending into Montgomeryshire, in which is the church of Keri: Elvein retains in modern days the name of Elvel, and is a hundred in the southern part of the county, separated from Brecknockshire by the Wye; and Warthrenion, in which was the castle built by prince Rhys at Rhaiadyr-gwy, seems to have been situated between the other two. Warthrenion may more properly be called Gwyrthrynion, it was anciently one of the three comots of Arwystli, a cantref of Merioneth. ”

“ This picturesque village is situated upon the great road from Shrewsbury to Holyhead, and about a quarter of a mile from the banks of the river Dee, in the county of Merioneth. It is seated art the base of a bold rock, a projection of the Berwyn mountains, against which the white tower of its church is well relieved, and forms an imposing feature in the beautiful landscape which the valley of the Dee presents at this place. It is an inland town, possessing the advantages of a market and good inn, but without any trade or manufacture ”

“ Although every shire is a county, it is not every county to whose individual name the word “shire” may be added. The latter is essentially Anglo-Saxon, denoting a division of land possessed by an earl, and wherever it occurs it points conclusively to the Saxon occupation of England. Certainly, we do not speak of Essex-shire, Middle-sex-shire, or Sussex-shire, because the Saxon territories referred to, as well as their relative positions, are fully indicated in the names themselves. ”

“ The southern portion of the country is remarkably fertile, highly cultivated, and presents to the stranger a long succession of luxuriant corn-fields, verdant pastures, and animated pictures of rural happiness and independence. It would be difficult to find any tract of land in Great Britain that can surpass the Vale of Glamorgan in richness of soil, or in soft and graceful scenery. This favoured region extends the whole length of the county—from the base of the mountains on the north to the shore of the Bristol Channel on the south-west. ”

“ Mereworth village, on the borders of the wide-spreading Mereworth Woods, lies up a turning to the right, on the fine broad road leading to Maidstone. Mereworth is remarkable for its hideous church, resembling some of Wren’s City of London churches; with a classical colonnaded porch, windows like those of a factory, and great overhanging eaves, very like those of that “great barn,” St. Paul’s, Covent Garden. A tall steeple, with classic peristyle, completes the outward composition. Now turn to the interior; an even more pagan sight than the exterior prepares the stranger for. ”

“ The Countess bowed, and murmured to Sir John:
“A dismissal!”
“I fear my fascinations, Lady Jocelyn, may not compete with those fresh young persons.”
“Ha! ha! ‘fresh young persons,’” laughed Sir John: for the ladies in question were romping boisterously with Mr. Harry.
The Countess inquired for the names and condition of the ladies, and was told that they sprang from Farmer Conley, a well-to-do son of the soil, who farmed about a couple of thousand acres between Fallowfield and Beckley, and bore a good reputation at the county bank. ”

“ Meath (77) , a county in Leinster, Ireland, touching the Irish Sea between Louth and Dublin, is watered by the Boyne River and its tributary the Blackwater; the surface is undulating, the soil fertile; some oats and potatoes are grown, but most of the county is under pasture; there is a little linen and coarse woollen industry; the chief towns are Navan (4) , Kells (2) , and the county town Trim (1) .
Meaux (13) , on the Marne, 28 m. NE. of Paris, a well-built town, with Gothic cathedral; has a large corn and provision trade, and some copper and cotton industries ”

“ My fear is, that the consideration of the young ladies will deter you, should you otherwise be disposed to listen to our plan; and, indeed, England seems at first sight the best place for daughters that have lost their mother. But I have great hopes that these plains may be like an English county before your young ladies have grown up. When once gentlemen, especially clergymen, begin to come, more follow; and this is all we want to make the Dairy Plains like parts of Sussex or Dorsetshire. ”

“ Distance and difficulty, and in early times danger too, keep many people away. And though a shire is not a wide tract of country for most purposes, and according to modern ideas, it was nevertheless quite wide enough in former times to bring about the result I have mentioned. In the times before the Norman conquest, if not before the completed union of England under Edgar, the shire-mote or county assembly, though in theory still a folk-mote or primary assembly, had shrunk into what was virtually a witenagemote or assembly of the most important persons in the county. ”

“ The streets of all the etchings of the sixties are filled with excited crowds or little groups of tall, unnatural looking people, and all kinds of curious monsters and allegorical figures hover in the sky or swoop in rapid flight across it. The Collège Henri IV (plate 29) in some of its states, has for background a sea with sails and whales and sea-gods, and the figures in the foreground are the most extraordinary that Meryon ever drew. ”

“ Even the very counties, those -results of the breaking up of the stateships and the making of English shire-lands, are unreal things that express little of the life of the people. Their long continuance has made them familiar, and so has given them a fictitious reality; but they again are a configuration and not an organisation. ”