VIII
I suppose I did not quite do my duty by the ruins of the Norman castle, and I feel that it is now too late to repair my neglect. The stronghold was more than once attempted by the Welsh in those wars which make their history a catalogue of battles, but it held out Norman till the Normans turned English. Owen Glendover took it in 1402, when it was three hundred years old, though not yet feeble with age, and in due time one of Cromwell’s lieutenants destroyed it. Some very picturesque fragments remain to attest the grace and strength of the ancient hold. It is near the University College and the Amusement Pier, so that the mere sight-seers can do all the ordinary objects of interest at Aberystwyth in half a day or half an hour. But we were none of these. We had fallen in love with the place, and we would fain have stayed on after the week was up for which we had taken our lodging. It appeared from a house-to-house canvass, that there was no other lodging to be had in all that long crescent of the Terrace; or, if this is incredible, there was none we would have. Our successors were impending; and though I think our English landlady might have invented something for us at the last moment, the Welsh Power was inexorable. Her ideal was lodgers who would go out and buy their own provisions, and we had set our faces against that. Some one must yield, and the Welsh Power could not; it was not in her nature. We were therefore in a manner expelled from Aberystwyth, but our banishment was not from all Wales, and this was how we went next to Llandudno.