“Good-night!” said I, and without staying to put the question in English, I pushed on up an ascent and was presently amongst trees. Heard for a long time the hooting of an owl or rather the frantic hollo. Appeared to pass by where the bird had its station. Toiled up an acclivity and when on the top stood still and looked around me. There was a glow on all sides in the heaven except in the north-east quarter. Striding on I saw a cottage on my left-hand, and standing at the door the figure of a woman. “How far to Merthyr?” said I in Welsh.
“Tair milltir—three miles, sir.”
Turning round a corner at the top of a hill I saw blazes here and there and what appeared to be a glowing mountain in the south-east. I went towards it down a descent which continued for a long, long way; so great was the light cast by the blazes and that wonderful glowing object that I could distinctly see the little stones upon the road. After walking about half-an-hour, always going downwards, I saw a house on my left hand and heard a noise of water opposite to it. It was a pistyll. I went to it, drank greedily, and then hurried on, more and more blazes and the glowing object looking more terrible than ever. It was now above me at some distance to the left, and I could see that it was an immense quantity of heated matter like lava, occupying the upper and middle parts of a hill and descending here and there almost to the bottom in a zigzag and tortuous manner. Between me and the hill of the burning object lay a deep ravine. After a time I came to a house, against the door of which a man was leaning.
“What is all that burning stuff above, my friend?”
“Dross from the iron forges, sir!”
I now perceived a valley below me full of lights, and descending reached houses and a tramway. I had blazes now all around me. I went through a filthy slough, over a bridge, and up a street, from which dirty lanes branched off on either side, passed throngs of savage-looking people talking clamorously, shrank from addressing any of them, and finally undirected found myself before the Castle Inn at Merthyr Tydvil.
CHAPTER CIV
Iron and Coal—The Martyred Princess—Cyfartha Fawr—Diabolical Structure.
Merthyr Tydvil is situated in a broad valley through which roll the waters of the Taf. It was till late an inconsiderable village, but is at present the greatest mining place in Britain, and may be called with much propriety the capital of the iron and coal.
It bears the name of Merthyr Tydvil, which signifies the Martyr Tydvil, because in the old time a Christian British princess was slain in the locality which it occupies. Tydvil was the daughter of Brychan Prince of Brecon, surnamed Brycheiniawg, or the Breconian, who flourished in the fifth century and was a contemporary of Hengist. He was a man full of Christian zeal and a great preacher of the Gospel, and gave his children, of which he had many both male and female by various wives, an education which he hoped would not only make them Christians, but enable them to preach the Gospel to their countrymen. They proved themselves worthy of his care, all of them without one exception becoming exemplary Christians, and useful preachers. In his latter days he retired to a hermitage in Glamorganshire near the Taf and passed his time in devotion, receiving occasionally visits from his children. Once, when he and several of them, amongst whom was Tydvil, were engaged in prayer a band of heathen Saxons rushed in upon them and slew Tydvil with three of her brothers. Ever since that time the place has borne the name of Martyr Tydvil. [587]