St. Collen’s Church is by no means beautiful or interesting, and its crowded churchyard is damp and dismal. It is the first on the journey along the Holyhead Road in which the Welsh language usurps the place of English, and here certainly, if even other signs were wanting, the Englishman—the “Saxon” as the Welsh called him—will find himself, to all intents and purposes, in a foreign land. The average educated Englishman, from whom the general sense, at least, of Latin epitaphs and those in two or three Continental languages is not hidden, stands mystified before these Cymric tombstones and, if he be of a reflective nature, finds it not a little humiliating that even the ragged little urchins in the streets of Welsh towns and villages are often bi-lingual, and in this respect better educated than he.
Among the few English epitaphs is one not often met:—
Our life is but a winter’s day,
Some breakfast and away:
Others to dinner stay and are full fed;
The oldest man but sups and goes to bed.
Large is his debt who lingers out the day;
Who goes the soonest has the least to pay.
The subject of those lines had a short reckoning. He went (to pursue the simile) after lunch, dying in his nineteenth year.
The chief monument in the churchyard (ornament it is not) is the triangular pillar to those fantastical old frumps, the Ladies of Llangollen, and their servant. On it you may read of the “Amiable Condescension” of the one, the friendship of the other, and the faithful service of the servant. “It is believed,” continues the epitaph, “they are now enjoying their Eternal Reward.” Let us hope so—but what may be the most appropriate reward in the hereafter for collecting old oak and entertaining society travellers along the Holyhead Road to tea and small-talk, it is not easy to imagine. Let us hope the Bricklayers, Cabinet-makers, Blacksmiths, and Bakers who lie around, with their trades all duly specified on their tombstones, also have their reward for well and truly bricklaying, cabinet-making, blacksmithing, and baking.