“Where woods, and wilds, and thorny ways appear,”
occupies part of the counties of Brecon, Cardigan, and Radnor, westward of the Wye. Among these deep solitudes, Camden informs us, king Vortigern sought a refuge from the persecutions that his crimes and follies raised against him. His ultimate fate is wrapped in uncertainty; but his vileness needed not a more agonizing torture than his wounded conscience, whether recurring to his incestuous intercourse with his own offspring, or to his miserable policy in resting the defence of Britain upon the assistance of foreign troops.
Rhayder-gowy, wildly situated at the foot of the mountainous barrier between South and North Wales, consists of two streets of neatly whitened houses, and is graced with the vicinity of two churches. A castle also added to the consequence of the town in the time of the Welch princes; but none of its remains now appear, except a deep trench cut in the rock of the town, and three or four barrows, which are, no doubt, connected with its history. The market-house is a neat little building, though of rough stones; and the Red Lion inn is no less remarkable for its neatness and accommodation, useful though unimposing, than for the obliging assiduities of its landlord.
The scenery of the Wye, close to this town, acquires an uncommon degree of grandeur. Raging in its rocky bed, the river is seen through the light foliage of impendent trees, and almost beneath a bold arch which bestrides the river, bounding over a ledge of rock in a fall of some depth; whence it tears its way among protruding craigs in a sheet of glistening foam, but is almost immediately concealed by the embowering ornaments of its banks.
Above the town of Rhayder, a bold hilly region, overspread with treacherous bogs, or broken into precipices of fearful depth, mixes with the magnificent forms of the North Wales mountains. Here nature wears her wildest garb; no stripe of cultivation controls the dreary majesty of the scene; the mountain sheep browse on the dizzy heights unmindful of danger; the hardy ponies here sport away their early years, unconscious of restraint; and, no less free, the bold mountaineer looks round his stormy world, nor hapless mourns the gayer spheres below:
“But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil,
Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil.
Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose,
Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes;
At night returning, every labour sped,
He sits him down the monarch of a shed;
Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys
His children’s looks, that brighten at the blaze;
While his lov’d partner, boastful of her hoard,
Displays her cleanly platter on the board:”* * * * *
“Such are the charms to barren states assign’d,
Their wants but few, their wishes all confin’d.”
This district is, however, rich in mineral treasure; and several lead-mines, and one or two copper-mines, are worked with considerable spirit.
Here my observations upon South-Wales draw to a close: they have been very brief upon Radnorshire; and yet the excursion on the banks of the Wye describes almost its only attraction. Indeed, this county is remarkably barren in subjects of picturesque beauty, memorials of antique grandeur, and remarkable towns and villas. I find but one religious house in this shire described in Dugdale’s Monasticon, or Tanner’s Notitia Monastica, which is Abbey Cwm Hir, situated about six miles east of Rhayder; but I understand that no part of the building remains. It was founded for Cistercian monks by Cadwathelan ap Madoc in the year 1143, and must have been a very inconsiderable foundation, as its revenues at the suppression of monasteries were only valued at 28l. 14s. 4d.
The castles that occur in this county are neither remarkable in their history nor venerable in decay. Yet frequent and memorable are the earthen works that characterize almost every hill in the county, which either wear the marks of cairns [343] or ancient encampments.
“’Twas on those downs, by Roman hosts annoy’d,
Fought our bold fathers, rustic, unrefin’d!
Freedom’s fair sons, in martial cares employ’d,
They ting’d their bodies but unmask’d their mind.”