“I don’t care if I do,” said I, “provided I save my legs, which are in some danger of this place, as well as my neck, which is of less consequence.”
I hurried back amidst rain and wind to my friendly hospice, where, after drying my wet clothes as well as I could, I made an excellent dinner on fowl and bacon. Dinner over I took up a newspaper which was brought me, and read an article about the Russian war, which did not seem to be going on much to the advantage of the allies. Soon flinging the paper aside I stuck my feet on the stove, one on each side of the turf fire, and listened to the noises without. The bellowing of the wind down the mountain passes and the roaring of the Rheidol fall at the north side of the valley, and the rushing of the five cascades of the river Mynach, were truly awful. Perhaps I ought not to have said the five cascades of the Mynach, but the Mynach cascade, for now its five cascades had become one, extending from the chasm over which hung the bridge of Satan to the bottom of the valley.
After a time I fell into a fit of musing. I thought of the Plant de Bat: I thought of the spitties or hospitals connected with the great monastery of Ystrad Flur or Strata Florida: I thought of the remarkable bridge close by, built by a clever monk of that place to facilitate the coming of pilgrims with their votive offerings from the north to his convent: I thought of the convent built in the time of our Henry the Second by Ryce ab Gruffyd, prince of South Wales; and lastly I thought of a wonderful man who was buried in its precincts, the greatest genius which Wales, and perhaps Britain, ever produced, on whose account, and not because of old it had been a magnificent building, and the most celebrated place of popish pilgrimage in Wales, I had long ago determined to visit it on my journey, a man of whose life and works the following is a brief account.
CHAPTER LXXXVI
Birth and Early Years of Ab Gwilym—Morfudd—Relic of Druidism—The Men of Glamorgan—Legend of Ab Gwilym—Ab Gwilym as a Writer—Wonderful Variety—Objects of Nature—Gruffydd Gryg.
Dafydd Ab Gwilym was born about the year 1320 at a place called Bro Gynnin in the county of Cardigan. Though born in wedlock he was not conceived legitimately. His mother being discovered by her parents to be pregnant was turned out of doors by them, whereupon she went to her lover, who married her, though in so doing he acted contrary to the advice of his relations. After a little time, however, a general reconciliation took place. The parents of Ab Gwilym, though highly connected, do not appear to have possessed much property. The boy was educated by his mother’s brother, Llewelyn ab Gwilym Fychan, a chief of Cardiganshire; but his principal patron in after life was Ifor, a cousin of his father, surnamed Hael or the bountiful, a chieftain of Glamorganshire. This person received him within his house, made him his steward and tutor to his daughter. With this young lady Ab Gwilym speedily fell in love, and the damsel returned his passion. Ifor, however, not approving of the connection, sent his daughter to Anglesey and eventually caused her to take the veil in a nunnery of that island. Dafydd pursued her, but not being able to obtain an interview he returned to his patron, who gave him a kind reception. Under Ifor’s roof he cultivated poetry with great assiduity and wonderful success. Whilst very young, being taunted with the circumstances of his birth by a brother bard called Rhys Meigan, he retorted in an ode so venomously bitter that his adversary, after hearing it, fell down and expired. Shortly after this event he was made head bard of Glamorgan by universal acclamation.
After a stay of some time with Ifor he returned to his native county and lived at Bro Gynnin. Here he fell in love with a young lady of birth called Dyddgu, who did not favour his addresses. He did not break his heart, however, on her account, but speedily bestowed it on the fair Morfudd, whom he first saw at Rhosyr in Anglesey, to which place both had gone on a religious account. The lady after some demur consented to become his wife. Her parents refusing to sanction the union their hands were joined beneath the greenwood tree by one Madawg Benfras, a bard and a great friend of Ab Gwilym. The joining of people’s hands by bards, which was probably a relic of Druidism, had long been practised in Wales, and marriages of this kind were generally considered valid, and seldom set aside. The ecclesiastical law, however, did not recognise these poetical marriages, and the parents of Morfudd by appealing to the law soon severed the union. After confining the lady for a short time they bestowed her hand in legal fashion upon a chieftain of the neighbourhood, very rich but rather old, and with a hump on his back, on which account he was nick-named bow-back or little hump-back. Morfudd, however, who passed her time in rather a dull manner with this person, which would not have been the case had she done her duty by endeavouring to make the poor man comfortable, and by visiting the sick and needy around her, was soon induced by the bard to elope with him. The lovers fled to Glamorgan, where Ifor Hael, not much to his own credit, received them with open arms, probably forgetting how he had immured his own daughter in a convent rather than bestow her on Ab Gwilym. Having a hunting-lodge in a forest on the banks of the lovely Taf, he allotted it to the fugitives as a residence. Ecclesiastical law, however, as strong in Wild Wales as in other parts of Europe, soon followed them into Glamorgan, and, very properly, separated them. The lady was restored to her husband, and Ab Gwilym fined to a very high amount. Not being able to pay the fine he was cast into prison; but then the men of Glamorgan arose to a man, swearing that their head bard should not remain in prison. “Then pay his fine!” said the ecclesiastical law, or rather the ecclesiastical lawyer. “So we will!” said the men of Glamorgan; and so they did. Every man put his hand into his pocket; the amount was soon raised, the fine paid, and the bard set free.
Ab Gwilym did not forget this kindness of the men of Glamorgan, and to requite it wrote an address to the sun, in which he requests that luminary to visit Glamorgan, to bless it and to keep it from harm. The piece concludes with some noble lines somewhat to this effect:—
“If every strand oppression strong
Should arm against the son of song,
The weary wight would find, I ween,
A welcome in Glamorgan green.”
Some time after his release he meditated a second elopement with Morfudd, and even induced her to consent to go off with him. A friend to whom he disclosed what he was thinking of doing, asking him whether he would venture a second time to take such a step, “I will,” said the bard, “in the name of God and the men of Glamorgan.” No second elopement, however, took place, the bard probably thinking, as has been well observed, that neither God nor the men of Glamorgan would help him a second time out of such an affair. He did not attain to any advanced age, but died when about sixty, some twenty years before the rising of Glendower. Some time before his death his mind fortunately took a decidedly religious turn.