Welsh Journals

THERE are few areas in Wales where Place and People have combined to produce a more coherent and vivid representation of continuous history than the setting of which Golden Grove is centre. Here in the parish of Llanfihangel Aberbythych we stand in the very heartland of the ancient kingdom of Deheubarth, the decisions of whose princes ^affected the lives of people as widely separated as the farmers of remote Genau'r Glyn, the herdsmen on the Precelly slopes, and the fishermen on the banks of Llwchwr. Below us lies the vale of Tywi through which Roman legions marched from Carmarthen to the gold-mines of Cynwyl Gaeo, flanked by the rolling plateau of Cantref Mawr to the west and rugged Cantref Bychan to the east within sight are two castled residences of the princes of Deheubarth from this very spot a thirteenth-century peasant might have heard the war-horns at Coed Lathen where a Norman force was routed in 1257, or the strike of hatchets as masked raiders demolished the tollgates in the days of the young Victoria. Within a few hundred yards of this house, some of the finest devotional works in the English tongue were written, while a nearby eminence inspired a poem whose descriptive periods still enthrall those who contemplate the brow of Grongar Hill. Should a Roman centurion, a freeman of Lletygariad, or a miller of Cilsaen, through Merlin's potent magic, suddenly appear amongst us today, they would have no difficulty in recognising familiar landmarks, for this valley and its hill- slopes have endured substantially unchanged, there are no towns and villages where none stood before, and the landscape remains mercifully free of those scars that industrial development has inflicted on less fortunate areas in South Wales. The generous soil and sheltered pastures of the valley have resulted in a flourishing husbandry which justifies our calling it the Garden of Carmarthenshire. From here we obtain glimpses of the Tywi winding through green meadows like some unfinished poem, a river that has its source in the distant Cardiganshire hills and flows through the entire length of this county. Here is the gateway to west and mid Wales, and the modern highway, the A4o, follows a route along which men have tramped since prehistoric days. On a wooded bluff just north of Golden Grove stands the turretted ruin of Dynevor Castle, capital of Deheubarth, cradle of spirited princes who ruled over the region comprised by the modern counties of Carmarthen, Cardigan, and Pembroke. It may give pleasure and *Based on an address given at the Society's meeting at Golden Grove, 30 June 1962.