Crossing the Menai Straits by the suspension bridge, we pass through a treeless moorland and over a causeway into Holy Island, from whence rises up the great headland known as Holyhead.
“A divine promontory,” Ruskin calls it, “looking westward—the Holy Headland—still not without awe when its red light glares first through the gloom.”
The first thing we shall want to visit here is South Stack, a precipitous mass of cliff climbed by three hundred and eighty steps. From thence we look down on the lighthouse, which, though one hundred and fifty feet high, looks from this point like a child’s toy. The cliff scenery is magnificent here, and a grand sea rolls in to the foot of the rocks.
On our way back we must go to see some most interesting relics of old days. They are known as the Irishmen’s Huts, and were first built in those ancient times when tribes of Irish Celts crossed over to the island, and thence to the mainland, threatening, indeed, to displace altogether the original people of the land, and themselves driven out in later days by another race. These huts are grouped together so as to form tiny villages, in spots where they are guarded either by steep rocks or by roughly-constructed walls. They are round in shape, and built of stone, though the remains of the walls are now not more than two feet high. All the entrances look towards the south, as though the inhabitants knew the value of sunshine; and the doorways are formed of two upright stones, with another placed across the top. The roofs were probably thatched or turfed over poles, which stretched from one wall to the other.
From what was found under the ground on which they stand when it was examined some years ago, it seems as though some of these huts were used for living in, some for bathing, some for working metal, some for kitchens. Necklaces of jet, stone lamps, weapons of bronze, and moulds for making bronze buttons were found in some. In others there are the remains of an apparatus for working metal; in others there are tanks, in which water was boiled by throwing hot stones into the water they contained.
Retracing our way by rail, we pass the village of Llangadwaladr, the home of the last British Prince to hold the title of King of All Britain. The son of this Prince, Cadwaladr, who lived and died in the seventh century, is buried in the church of the place that bears his name, the “enclosure, or church, of Cadwaladr.” But the chief interest lies in his father, Cadwallon, and his cousin, Brian, who together won one of the last great battles in the cause of British freedom against the English conquerors.
Cadwallon, son of King Cadfan, and Edwin, son of King Ethelfrid of Northumbria, were both born about the same year in the island of Anglesey, or Mona, as the Celts call it; for the Celtic mother of Edwin had been driven out of the royal palace, and had returned to her former home. The boys were brought up together in Brittany, another Celtic kingdom, and returned together to Anglesey, where they lived until, on the death of his father, Cadwallon was chosen King of All Britain. This was, however, but an empty title, for almost at that very time Edwin left the island and made his way to Northumbria, where he seized the kingdom and with it much of the land of the Britons which lay upon its borders. But Cadwallon cared not, because he had been his friend.
Now the heart of Brian, the nephew of the British King, was very sore because of the sufferings of his fellow-countrymen at the hands of the English conquerors. One day, as he hunted the otter with his uncle on the banks of a river, the King was overcome with heat and lay down to sleep, putting his head on the lap of the lad.
But Brian’s heart was so heavy that his tears ran down upon the face of Cadwallon, who muttered uneasily: “It rains, it rains!”
Then, opening his eyes, he saw the blue sky above him, and said to his nephew: “Surely there has been a shower, and now the sun is shining. But where is the rainbow?”