“Shouldst thou a little red man descry
Asking about his dwelling fair,
Tell him it under the bank doth lie,
And its brow the mark of the coal doth bear.”
Dafydd remained confined till the fall of Glendower, shortly after which event he followed Henry the Fifth to France, where he achieved that glory which will for ever bloom, dying, covered with wounds, on the field of Agincourt after saving the life of the king, to whom in the dreadest and most critical moment of the fight he stuck closer than a brother, not from any abstract feeling of loyalty, but from the consideration that King Henry the Fifth was the son of King Henry the Fourth, who was the son of the man who received and comforted him in his house, after his own countrymen had hunted him from house and land.
Connected with Machynlleth is a name not so widely celebrated as those of Glendower and Dafydd Gam, but well known to and cherished by the lovers of Welsh song. It is that of Lawdden, a Welsh bard in holy orders, who officiated as priest at Machynlleth from 1440 to 1460. But though Machynlleth was his place of residence for many years, it was not the place of his birth, Lychwr in Carmarthenshire being the spot where he first saw the light. He was an excellent poet, and displayed in his compositions such elegance of language, and such a knowledge of prosody, that it was customary, long after his death, when any masterpiece of vocal song or eloquence was produced, to say that it bore the traces of Lawdden’s hatchet. At the request of Griffith ap Nicholas, a powerful chieftain of South Wales, and a great patron of the Muse, he drew up a statute relating to poets and poetry, and at the great Eisteddfodd, or poetical congress, held at Carmarthen in the year 1450, under the auspices of Griffith, which was attended by the most celebrated bards of the north and south, he officiated as judge, in conjunction with the chieftain, upon the compositions of the bards who competed for the prize—a little silver chair. Not without reason, therefore, do the inhabitants of Machynlleth consider the residence of such a man within their walls, though at a far by-gone period, as conferring a lustre on their town, and Lewis Meredith has probability on his side when, in his pretty poem on Glen Dyfi, he says:—
“Whilst fair Machynlleth decks thy quiet plain,
Conjoined with it shall Lawdden’s name remain.”
CHAPTER LXXX
The Old Ostler—Directions—Church of England Man—The Deep Dingle—The Two Women—The Cutty Pipe—Waen y Bwlch—The Deaf and Dumb—The Glazed Hat.
I rose on the morning of the 2nd of November intending to proceed to the Devil’s Bridge, where I proposed halting a day or two, in order that I might have an opportunity of surveying the far-famed scenery of that locality. After paying my bill I went into the yard to my friend the old ostler, to make inquiries with respect to the road.
“What kind of road,” said I, “is it to the Devil’s Bridge?”
“There are two roads, sir, to the Pont y Gwr Drwg; which do you mean to take?”
“Why do you call the Devil’s Bridge the Pont y Gwr Drwg, or the bridge of the evil man?”