The Skirts of Precelly.
The mountain vale opening out upon our left holds the springs of the eastern Cleddau, a stream that, after forming for some miles the county-boundary, passes below picturesque Llawhaden, and flows onwards amidst the rich woodlands of Slebech and Picton Castle, to merge in the broad, tidal waters of Milford Haven.
For the next few miles we enjoy a breezy tramp athwart the wild, uncultivated shoulders of Precelly—'Parcilly the Proud,' to use old Drayton's phrase. In his own quaint fashion, George Owen thus describes these famous hills: 'The chiefest and principall mountaine of this shire is Percellye, which is a long ridge or rancke of mountaines runninge East and West; beginninge above Penkellyvore, where the first mounte of highe land thereof is called Moel Eryr, and so passinge Eastward to Comkerwyn (being the highest parte of yt), runneth East to Moel Trygarn and to Llanvirnach.'
So far George Owen. Meanwhile we trudge onward across the springy turf, avoiding here a stretch of dusky bogland feathered with white tufts of cotton-grass, yonder a huge pile of weather-stained boulders, riven and tossed asunder by the tempests of ten thousand winters. One of these rugged cairns is known as King Arthur's Grave; another bears a Welsh name signifying the 'rocks of the horsemen': indeed, every feature of the landscape has its story or legend for the imaginative Cymro.
Rounding the head of a lonely glen, a rough but sufficiently easy ascent lands us beside the cairn that marks the summit of Foel Cwm Cerwyn, the loftiest peak of Precelly, and the highest ground in all broad Pembrokeshire. 'This mountaine,' says George Owen, 'is so highe and farre mountid into the ayre that, when the countrey about is faire and cleere, the toppe thereof wilbe hidden in a cloude, which of the inhabitantes is taken a sure signe of raigne to follow shortelie, whereof grewe this proverbe:
'"When Percellye weareth a hatte,
All Penbrokeshire shall weete of that."'
Standing well apart, and removed from the mass of loftier South Welsh hills, the view from Precelly top is both extensive and interesting. Near hand, one's gaze wanders across a vast expanse of rather monotonous, treeless landscape, until the attention is arrested by the lake-like reaches of Milford Haven, spreading like crooked fingers far into the heart of the land.
South and west the sea encompasses all, with Gower lying far away upon the Bristol Channel, and perhaps a faint outline of the cliffs of Devon verging the remote horizon. The isolated hills overlooking St. Davids are easily identified, flanked by a broad stretch of St. Bride's Bay, and its group of guardian islets. Strumble Head thrusts its tempest-torn crags seawards into Cardigan Bay, whose coast-line trends away league upon league with infinite gradation to where, softened by the humid, brine-laden atmosphere,
'The gray, cloud-cradled mountains spread afar.'
Newport Bay, lying under the lee of Dinas Head, looks as though one might cast a stone into its calm waters; and upon turning our gaze inland, the eye loses itself amidst the many-folding hills, as they rise in soft undulations to the dusky highlands of Glamorganshire.