Fine as is that description of a morning on Snowdon, it is not finer than the description of a Snowdon sunset, which forms the nobly symbolic conclusion of ‘Aylwin’:—
“We were now at the famous spot where the triple echo is best heard, and we began to shout like two children in the direction of Llyn Ddu’r Arddu. And then our talk naturally fell on Knockers’ Llyn and the echoes to be heard there. She then took me to another famous sight on this side of Snowdon, the enormous stone, said to be five thousand tons in weight, called the Knockers’ Anvil. While we lingered here Winnie gave me as many-anecdotes and legends of this stone as would fill a little volume. But suddenly she stopped.
‘Look!’ she said, pointing to the sunset. ‘I have seen that sight only once before. I was with Sinfi. She called it “The Dukkeripen of the Trúshul.”’
The sun was now on the point of sinking, and his radiance, falling on the cloud-pageantry of the zenith, fired the flakes and vapoury films floating and trailing above, turning them at first into a ruby-coloured mass, and then into an ocean of rosy fire. A horizontal bar of cloud which, until the radiance of the sunset fell upon it, had been dull and dark and grey, as though a long slip from the slate quarries had been laid across the west, became for a moment a deep lavender colour, and then purple, and then red-gold. But what Winnie was pointing at was a dazzling shaft of quivering fire where the sun had now sunk behind the horizon. Shooting up from the cliffs where the sun had disappeared, this shaft intersected the bar of clouds and seemed to make an irregular cross of deep rose.”
It is no wonder, therefore, that the path Henry Aylwin and Sinfi Lovell took on the morning when the search for Winifred began was a source of speculation, notably in ‘Notes and Queries.’ Mr. Watts-Dunton deals with this point in the preface to the twenty-second edition:—
“Nothing,” he says, “in regard to ‘Aylwin’ has given me so much pleasure as the way in which it has been received both by my Welsh friends and my Romany friends. I little thought, when I wrote it, that within three years of its publication the gypsy pictures in it would be discoursed upon to audiences of 4,000 people by a man so well equipped to express an opinion on such a subject as the eloquent and famous ‘Gypsy Smith,’ and described by him as ‘the most trustworthy picture of Romany life in the English language, containing in Sinfi Lovell the truest representative of the Gypsy girl.’
Since the first appearance of the book there have been many interesting discussions by Welsh readers, in various periodicals, upon the path taken by Sinfi Lovell and Aylwin in their ascent of Snowdon.
A very picturesque letter appeared in ‘Notes and Queries’ on May 3, 1902, signed C. C. B., in answer to a query by E. W., which I will give myself the pleasure of quoting because it describes the writer’s ascent of Snowdon (accompanied by a son of my old friend, Harry Owen, late of Pen-y-Gwryd) along a path which was almost the same as that taken by Aylmin and Sinfi Lovell, when he saw the same magnificent spectacle that was seen by them:—
‘The mist was then clearing (it was in July) and in a few moments was entirely gone. So marvellous a transformation scene, and so immense a prospect, I have never beheld since. For the first and only time in my life I saw from one spot almost the whole of North and Mid-Wales, a good part of Western England, and a glimpse of Scotland and Ireland. The vision faded all too quickly, but it was worth walking thirty-three or thirty-four miles, as I did that day, for even a briefer view than that.’
Referring to Llyn Coblynau, this interesting writer says:—
‘Only from Glaslyn would the description in “Aylwin” of y Wyddfa standing out against the sky “as narrow and as steep as the sides of an acorn” be correct, but from the north and north-west sides of Glaslyn this answers with quite curious exactness to the appearance of the mountain. We must suppose the action of the story to have taken place before the revival of the copper-mining industry on Snowdon.’
With regard, however, to the question here raised, I can save myself all trouble by simply quoting the admirable remarks of Sion o Ddyli in the same number of ‘Notes and Queries’:—
‘None of us are very likely to succeed in “placing” this llyn, because the author of “Aylwin,” taking a privilege of romance often taken by Sir Walter Scott before him, probably changed the landmarks in idealising the scene and adapting it to his story. It may be, indeed, that the Welsh name given to the llyn in the book is merely a rough translation of the gipsies’ name for it, the “Knockers” being gnomes or goblins of the mine; hence “Coblynau”—goblins. If so, the name itself can give us no clue unless we are lucky enough to secure the last of the Welsh gipsies for a guide. In any case, the only point from which to explore Snowdon for the small llyn, or perhaps llyns (of which Llyn Coblynau is a kind of composite ideal picture), is no doubt, as E. W. has suggested, Capel Curig; and I imagine the actual scene lies about a mile south from Glaslyn, while it owes something at least of its colouring in the book to that strange lake. The “Knockers,” it must be remembered, usually depend upon the existence of a mine near by, with old partly fallen mine-workings where the dropping of water or other subterranean noises produce the curious phenomenon which is turned to such imaginative account in the Snowdon chapters of “Aylwin.”’”
In ‘Aylwin’ Mr. Watts-Dunton is fond of giving his readers little pictorial glimpses of Welsh life:—
“The peasants and farmers all knew me. ‘Sut mae dy galon? (How is thy heart?)’ they would say in the beautiful Welsh phrase as I met them. ‘How is my heart, indeed!’ I would sigh as I went on my way.
Before I went to Wales in search of Winifred I had never set foot in the Principality. Before I left it there was scarcely a Welshman who knew more familiarly than I every mile of the Snowdonian country. Never a trace of Winifred could I find.
At the end of the autumn I left the cottage and removed to Pen-y-Gwryd, as a comparatively easy point from which I could reach the mountain llyn where I had breakfasted with Winifred on that morning.”
His intense affection for Welsh characteristics is seen in the following description of the little Welsh girl and her fascinating lisp:—
“‘Would you like to come in our garden? It’s such a nice garden.’
I could resist her no longer. That voice would have drawn me had she spoken in the language of the Toltecs or the lost Zamzummin. To describe it would of course be impossible. The novelty of her accent, the way in which she gave the ‘h’ in ‘which,’ ‘what,’ and ‘when,’ the Welsh rhythm of her intonation, were as bewitching to me as the timbre of her voice. And let me say here, once for all, that when I sat down to write this narrative, I determined to give the English reader some idea of the way in which, whenever her emotions were deeply touched, her talk would run into soft Welsh diminutives; but I soon abandoned the attempt in despair. I found that to use colloquial Welsh with effect in an English context is impossible without wearying English readers and disappointing Welsh ones.
Here, indeed, is one of the great disadvantages under which this book will go out to the world. While a story-teller may reproduce, by means of orthographical devices, something of the effect of Scottish accent, Irish accent, or Manx accent, such devices are powerless to represent Welsh accent.”