LANGWM FISHWIVES.
The women, as a rule, are conspicuous by their absence; for they are for the most part abroad, hawking fish and oysters up and down the country. Clad in stout pea-jackets and warm blue homespun skirts, worn short for travelling the rough country roads, these hard-working women seem to belong to some alien race, as they elbow their way through the crowded streets of Tenby or Haverfordwest.
The Langwm people have, indeed, always kept very much to themselves, discouraging alliances with outsiders; nor until recent years would they even permit their girls to go out as domestic servants. In the old unregenerate days, courtship and marriage were attended with certain curious, primitive customs—customs which, to say the least, were 'more honoured in the breach than the observance.' One way and another, this singular people forms an interesting little community, which appears to have preserved intact to the present day much of the manners and customs of the early Flemish colonists.
Langwm Church is dedicated to St. Hierom. The little edifice stands, as its name implies, in a hollow combe near Milford Haven. To reach it we cross a bit of rough unenclosed greensward, littered over with oyster-shells, upon which, according to the local story, the village itself is built.
The interior of this church is enriched with some interesting Decorated features; notably a canopied niche and piscina of unusual type, upon the eastern wall of the north chapel, or transept.
Under an ogee canopy, in the gable wall of the same chapel, lies the effigy of a De la Roche (or Dolly Rotch in the vernacular), to whose family this chapel formerly belonged. The figure is that of a Crusader, clad in full armour and sword in hand; the face is both handsome and expressive, and the head reposes upon a plumed helmet. The thong of the boot, twisted around the leg, bears some resemblance to a serpent; and hence this monument is pointed out as that of the founder of Roch Castle, who, as an old story avers, met his death through the bite of a 'loathlie worme.'
Near Langwm the twin Cleddaus merge into the broad bosom of the tideway; becoming, as old George Owen says, 'both a salt sea of a myle broade and xvi myles longue before they forsake their native Countrie, ... and then by Curse of nature yeald themselves to the sea, the endinge of all Rivers.'
We now cross the ferry, and, after passing through Marteltewi, bear away in a southerly direction en route for Lawrenny. The latter is a pleasant-looking village, with comely cottages concentrated around the parish church of St. Caradoc, whose tall, ivy-mantled tower rises close at hand, overshadowed by a grove of stately elms where the rooks are making merry.
To the rear of the church the ground slopes up to a boss of open land, fringed with a thick growth of copsewood, and almost cut off from the circumjacent country by two converging 'pills,' or tidal creeks.