Welsh Journals

price, and the diabolically cynical indifference of a doubly perjured Government, in great part re- sponsible for that bare-faced robbery. A short half mile out of Llangollen was chanced upon the timber-fronted and picturesque mansion of Plas Newydd, with its lawns of smooth green turf and trees quaintly cut and clipped, beautiful specimens of the art and craft of topiary. For many years until well past the first quarter of the last century, this was the home of the Ladies of Llangollen, Lady Eleanor Butler and her friend Miss Ponsonby, and it is now in the occu- pancy of the Countess of Tankerville. It is not intended to say here anything at all upon the romantic and well-known tale of these two well remembered personalities, for are there not the guide books to refer to for those who would know more about them? But it may interest the reader to learn that an engraving of Plas Newydd, dated 1813, in the writer's possession, shows that the poet Wordsworth, who visited the Ladies and caused offence by describing the place in some verses as a "lowly cot by Deva's banks," was not so very wide of the mark after all, be- cause instead of the present mansion with its black and white timber work and figures of wood, Plas Newydd in those days was but a simple little two-storeyed house of stone with two windows and a front door on the ground level and three windows above. And that is the writer's contri- bution to the tale of the Ladies of Llangollen. A saunter round the little town with its five- arched and picturesque old bridge spanning the Dee, and then by train to Corwen, and by motor bus afterwards up past the mansion of Rhug and the waterfall of Pont-y-Glyn, a ten mile run to the village of Cerryg-y-Drudion in the upland country of Uwchaled-land of happy youthful memories where the writer's forefathers have been through the ages. Time in its ever-running train brings change upon change and all things come to an end and nought but Time remains. Thoughts and memories of the years that had gone crowded upon and chased one another as after many days the old White Lion was entered once again, and the writer realized the bitter- sweet truth of the axiom he has not been the first to expound nor will be the last. And what is that on the other side of the road? Why, a brand new bank house of cut stone on the site of his grandather's stable Well done, old Cerryg y Drudion But the motor bus, all un- heedful of everything but the flight of time in the prosaic guise of a printed schedule sounded his warning horn, and a bare quarter of an hour in the old village was all that could be got. So no sooner there than away again down the self- same road which used to be done in the long ago in eight and forty minutes behind a gallant Welsh cob with eight inches span of bone below the knee. But with the permission of the "Western Mail" the reader shall learn more of Uwchaled next year, may be, if Time keep tryst. Out of the train again at Llangollen for the climb back to the Glyn with the symphony still merrily at it. On the top and down there was crescendo. Still, one mustn't expect from life more than life has to give, so why bother ? But man is an adaptable creature-he has to be- and if he cannot get over a wall, a wise man tries for a way round and generally finds it. Which aphorism is a pretty useful guide in this all too brief span of sixty years and ten; and a nice hot bath at the refuge of the Glyn Valley was the way round in this case. Arriving wet to the skin, in they tumbled and out again refreshed as new men, with ears a-tingling for the dinner bell, and Mathafarn scenting Dee salmon from afar as surely as any hungry cat. After an honest old-fashioned dinner, both felt at once with M. F. H. John Jorrocks when on the celebrated occasion that he partook of the hospitality of Tom Turveylow in the cave, and in such delightful company, too, our master vowed that he "couldn't have dined better with the Grocer's Company." And the M.F.H. certainly hadn't earned it any bit more than the present company even after the famous run which landed him for the night at Onger Castle and 'Wor' James Pigg, his huntsman, at Farmer Butterfield's. Saturday morning broke with the threatening look of a fond mother anxious to show her un- willing guests her little girl's budding musical genius; but fortunately nothing happened. A meet of the Border Otter Hounds above Llan- armon Dyffryn Ceiriog seven miles up the little valley was fixed for that morning, and thither the two wended their way on foot for a run with them if the chance came along. But first a call on the roadside two miles out at the farm of Pont y Meibion, the birthplace of Huw Morys (Eos Ceiriog), sweet singer in the free measures, who burst into song with the new period of the ballad and the "canu rhydd." Huw was born, the second son of a small freeholder, in the year 1622, and to Pont y Meibion he returned after a broken apprenticeship to a tanner at Overton Madoc in Maelor Saesneg, there to pass the rest of his life, a bachelor, with his elder brother, and there he died in 1709, and lies buried in the churchyard of Llansilin over the hill. Much as the writer would like to have en- larged upon him, space will not allow much refer- ence to this most lovable and winsome character. It must suffice to say then that Huw was a great king's man, a loyal son of Mother Church, a great poet, and a great Welshman, and he hated with all the intensity of a sensitive, witty and kindly nature everything that savoured of Puritanism and Cromwellianism as he viewed them. With blind loyalty and idealistic zeal for the royal cause composed he those songs, the irony whereof is as acid, and the wit as keen as a two-edged sword. By the indulgence of the editor space is found for the following specimen verses:-