Welsh Journals

They are not so open to the temptation to acquire debts, and to flaunt them as a mark of learning, nor are they so liable to ape habits which they know they cannot afford. In these hard times the poverty of our students offers possibilities of discipline and grappling with life which are an excellent equipment for the future, though it can be over-rated. If the aim of education is to collect "plums," even Welsh "plums," exodus is necessary. If to the glorious experience of life at one of the Welsh Colleges one can add that of a few sessions at Oxford or Cambridge, exodus is desirable. If opportunity for extended research is our aim, it will doubtless be wise on our part to seek it both Clunton and Clunbury, Clungunford and Clun are the quietest places under the sun." SO runs the couplet of "A Shropshire Lad," the poet Thomas Housman. But in the so- called good old days that Time, with its arch handmaiden Romance, has such a subtle way of gilding and painting in all the dazzling colours of a summer sunset, life in the Middle Ages in this now remote corner of the English and Welsh borderland was stirring enough in the long drawn- out fight for possession between Welsh prince and Norman lord-marcher, with the king of Eng- land taking a hand in the game as and when he listed. Roughly fifteen miles long and ten miles broad, this is the district known in those days as Clunes- land, and it formed part of the great Fitzalan fief. Included in its borders are places with such Welsh names as Bettws y Crwyn. Caer Caradoc, Pen y Wern, and Llanvair Waterdine. It is a country of upland farms and sheep walks and of wood-clad hills, and it boasts its own native and excellent breed of sheep. No coal pits or copper smelting works besmirch its face and kill the glory and timely use of wood and field and river around, so the lover of the long tramp out for a country ramble and a roll on mother earth need have no fear that his sight will be offended by those eyesores of modern industrialism. On the west and south, Clunesland marches with Rad- norshire, and on the north-west the Kerry Hill range is a natural boundary between it and Mont- gomeryshire. It is watered by the rivers Teme and Clun, and Offa's Dyke cuts through it, as we shall show. In great part it is known as Clun Forest, and by forest is meant not merely a in Wales and beyond the older universities have much to offer us, and we should be more than foolish to reject that offer. But if life sentences us to three years at Aberystwyth or Bangor or Swansea, and then bids us take up our task, whatever it be, we can obey without regret, and with joy unspeakable. Some day the people who "run" our Colleges will be as proud of them as we are, and the twin devils of snobbishness and inferiority complex will have been exorcised. Until then our students can rest assured that in the essential heart of Wales, despite the attitude of a few authorities to home products, they and their work and play occupy as warm a place as ever. A RAMBLE IN CLUN FOREST by Uwchaled great stretch of woodland, but open uplands as well, with scrub and bracken. We hadn't been to Clunesland for many a long year, and time had outrun memory. So we went to have a look at it afresh at this Whitsuntide of 1930 to see what of Wales was in it still, what the breeds of men and of stock, what manner of life generally, and what of its camps, its scenery, and its traditions. In her foreword to "Precious Bane," Mary Webb says that Shropshire is a county where the dignity and beauty of ancient things lingers long. It is our happy lot also to bear witness to that fact, and if the reader will lend us his ears we will tell him what of those things we found in this out-of-the-way corner of that proud shire. The Castle at Bishop's Castle was our hotel, and very good we found everything. The reader will do well to make a note of all that, with the certainty, too, of a good hot bath at any time of day and night. Our first day's tramp was to the village of Llanvair Waterdine in the valley of the Teme, with Radnorshire on the far side. The way along in all the greenery of the new-come spring took us through the interesting little town of Clun, with its ruined castle on a hillock commanding all the country around. (How those castle builders of the Middle Ages knew their grim business!) Our object was to see the oaken altar rail with the Welsh inscription on it in the church at Llanvair Waterdine, and the fourteen mile walk to the little place was well repaid, even though made under a blazing hot sun. This inscription had been a bone of contention for a long time. It was "Ancient Celtic," Pali script (from the north-western frontier of India and in placid