So the seven knights returned to Harlech with the head of their King, and with them they brought his sister, the unhappy Branwen. And on their way they rested in Anglesey, where Branwen, looking first towards Ireland and then towards Britain, cried with tears: “Woe is me that I was ever born, for two islands have been destroyed because of me!”
Then died poor Branwen of a broken heart, and they buried her in Anglesey, at a spot known henceforth as Ynys Branwen, “where a square grave was made for her on the banks of the Alaw, and there was she laid.”[1]
[1] From the “Mabinogion,” according to the version in Rev. S. Baring-Gould’s “Book of North Wales.”
Early in the last century a four-sided hole was discovered by a farmer in this place, covered over with coarse flagstones. Within was an urn, placed with its mouth downwards, and full of ashes and fragments of bone. The urn was certainly one of that period known as the Bronze Age, and belonged to the “days before history,” so we may not unsafely conclude that the ashes it contained were really those of the unhappy Branwen, sister of Bran the Blessed.
And so we come back to Harlech Castle, still with its Branwen Tower, built by Edward I. as a bulwark against the “rebel Welsh.”
In later days Owen Glendower besieged and obtained possession of the castle, and was in his turn besieged there by Prince Henry. There it was that his son-in-law, Mortimer, died, and there the wife and children of the latter took, for the last time, refuge when the place was once again captured by the English.
BRAN THE BLESSED AT HARLECH CASTLE WATCHING MATHOLWCH’S FLEET ARRIVE FROM IRELAND. Page [36].
The Wars of the Roses caused stirring times at Harlech. The castle was held against Edward IV. by David ap Sinion, who had offered to receive there under his protection Margaret, the unfortunate widow of Henry VI., and her son, young Edward, after she had lost the Battle of Northampton.
Against this “rebel” marched Lord Herbert, who called upon David to surrender. But David had done good work for the Lancastrian cause abroad, and he now replied that “he had held a castle so long in France that all the old women in Wales had talked about it; and now he was going to hold Harlech so long that he would set the tongues of all the old women in France wagging.”