To the Memory of Thomas Edmunds
Who died April the ninth 1802 aged 60 years.
And of Mary Edmunds
Who died January the fourth 1810 aged 70.
The beams of the descending sun gilded the Quakers’ burial-ground as I trod its precincts. A lovely resting-place looked that little oblong yard on the peninsula, by the confluence of the waters, and quite in keeping with the character of the quiet Christian people who sleep within it. The Quakers have for some time past been a decaying sect, but they have done good work in their day, and when they are extinct they are not destined to be soon forgotten. Soon forgotten! How should a sect ever be forgotten, to which have belonged three such men as George Fox, William Penn, and Joseph Gurney?
Shortly after I left the Quakers’ Yard the sun went down and twilight settled upon the earth. Pursuing my course I reached some woodlands, and on inquiring of a man, whom I saw standing at the door of a cottage, the name of the district, was told that it was called Ystrad Manach—the Monks’ Strath or valley. This name it probably acquired from having belonged in times of old to some monkish establishment. The moon now arose and the night was delightful. As I was wandering along I heard again the same wild noise which I had heard the night before, on the other side of Merthyr Tydvil. The cry of the owl afar off in the woodlands. Oh that strange bird! Oh that strange cry! The Welsh, as I have said on a former occasion, call the owl Dylluan. Amongst the cowydds of Ab Gwilym there is one to the dylluan. It is full of abuse against the bird, with whom the poet is very angry for having with its cry frightened Morfydd back, who was coming to the wood to keep an assignation with him, but not a little of this abuse is wonderfully expressive and truthful. He calls the owl a grey thief—the haunter of the ivy bush—the chick of the oak, a blinking eyed witch, greedy of mice, with a visage like the bald forehead of a big ram, or the dirty face of an old abbess, which bears no little resemblance to the chine of an ape. Of its cry he says that it is as great a torment as an agonizing recollection, a cold shrill laugh from the midst of a kettle of ice; the rattling of sea-pebbles in an old sheep-skin, on which account many call the owl the hag of the Rhugylgroen. The Rhugylgroen, it will be as well to observe, is a dry sheepskin containing a number of pebbles, and is used as a rattle for frightening crows. The likening the visage of the owl to the dirty face of an old abbess is capital, and the likening the cry to the noise of the rhugylgroen is anything but unfortunate. For, after all, what does the voice of the owl so much resemble as a diabolical rattle. I’m sure I don’t know. Reader, do you?
I reached Caerfili at about seven o’clock, and went to the “Boar’s Head,” near the ruins of a stupendous castle, on which the beams of the moon were falling.
CHAPTER CVII
Caerfili Castle—Sir Charles—The Waiter—Inkerman.
I slept well during the night. In the morning after breakfast I went to see the castle, over which I was conducted by a woman who was intrusted with its care. It stands on the eastern side of the little town, and is a truly enormous structure, which brought to my recollection a saying of our great Johnson, to be found in the account of his journey to the Western Islands, namely “that for all the castles which he had seen beyond the Tweed the ruins yet remaining of some one of those which the English built in Wales would find materials.” The original founder was one John De Bryse, a powerful Norman who married the daughter of Llewellyn Ap Jorwerth, the son-in-law of King John, and the most war-like of all the Welsh princes, whose exploits, and particularly a victory which he obtained over his father-in-law, with whom he was always at war, have been immortalized by the great war-bard, Dafydd Benfras. It was one of the strongholds which belonged to the Spencers, and served for a short time as a retreat to the unfortunate Edward the Second. It was ruined by Cromwell, the grand foe of the baronial castles of Britain, but not in so thorough and sweeping a manner as to leave it a mere heap of stones. There is a noble entrance porch fronting the west—a spacious courtyard, a grand banqueting room, a corridor of vast length, several lofty towers, a chapel, a sally-port, a guard-room and a strange underground vaulted place called the mint, in which Caerfili’s barons once coined money, and in which the furnaces still exist which were used for melting metal. The name Caerfili is said to signify the Castle of Haste, and to have been bestowed on the pile because it was built in a hurry. Caerfili, however, was never built in a hurry, as the remains show. Moreover, the Welsh word for haste is not fil but ffrwst. Fil means a scudding or darting through the air, which can have nothing to do with the building of a castle. Caerfili signifies Philip’s City, and was called so after one Philip a saint. It no more means the castle of haste than Tintagel in Cornwall signifies the castle of guile, as the learned have said it does, for Tintagel simply means the house in the gill of the hill, a term admirably descriptive of the situation of the building.
I started from Caerfili at eleven for Newport, distant about seventeen miles. Passing through a toll-gate I ascended an acclivity, from the top of which I obtained a full view of the castle, looking stern, dark and majestic. Descending the hill I came to a bridge over a river called the Rhymni or Rumney, much celebrated in Welsh and English song—thence to Pentref Bettws, or the village of the bead-house, doubtless so called from its having contained in old times a house in which pilgrims might tell their beads.
The scenery soon became very beautiful—its beauty, however, was to a certain extent marred by a horrid black object, a huge coal work, the chimneys of which were belching forth smoke of the densest description. “Whom does that work belong to?” said I to a man nearly as black as a chimney sweep.
“Who does it belong to? Why, to Sir Charles.”