It was noted that disasters of various kinds attended the expeditions of King Henry into Wales. The natives of the country attributed them to the magic powers of Owen Glendour, whom they believed able to control the elements, and who, when his men grew faint and weary, and he himself wished for a short respite from the toils of war, could pour upon the bands of Henry the fury of the northern storm. It was said that he could loose the secret springs of the wild cataract, and cause it to send forth such a flood of water, that the moors and valleys, through which the invader had to pass, would seem like an inland sea. Some believed that he could even summon the loud thunders from their secret cell, and cause the forked lightning to strike terror into the stoutest heart; that in one moment he could not only bring to his assistance a wild storm from off the hills, but that, when the beautiful glens and woods appeared in all their loveliness and repose, and every hill was lighted up with a glorious sunbeam, he could suddenly obscure them with the darkest shades of night. Thus men thought; they saw not, in the strange and terrible calamities which continually opposed the progress of King Henry, a continuation of events which had attended him since the death of Richard. Richard had been the friend and benefactor of Glendour; he had fought for him while living, and now that he was gone, he sought not only to revenge his death, but to preserve his native land from the usurpations of a foreign yoke. He performed, in consequence, such feats of valour, bore up beneath the pressure of such heavy trials, and devised such masterly schemes to circumvent the devices of the enemy, as his countrymen believed could neither be planned nor achieved by mortal mind or arm. They knew not the strength and the enthusiasm which injury and oppression will produce in either. Excited, therefore, to the highest pitch of feeling, Owen inspired his men with much of his own energy: aided by them, he foiled the power of the wary and martial Henry, and drove him ignominiously from the field. At the head of his choicest armies, the English king had often to retreat before a handful of men, whose chief had been unused to a military life; and though Glendour and his adherents were reduced at times to take shelter in caves and fastnesses, known only to themselves, they emerged again, and fell with terrible fury on the English, in moments, too, when they thought themselves most secure from their aggressions.
Had Glendour lived in peaceful times, he would have been a poet of no ordinary rank. The bard Rhys Coch, was his cotemporary and chosen associate in his days of woes and wanderings. A stone still remains near Bethgellert, where the bard used to sit and pour forth the melody of his harp to his own inspiring lays. There, tradition says, Glendour would sit beside him in that beloved retreat, where around them was all the stern majesty of nature, in her darkest, her loneliest, her loveliest moods. The rapid Gwinan prattled near them over her rocky bed, laving on one side green meadows, filled with cowslips and cuckoo-flowers, where cattle feed, and skirted with groves of oak, and ash, and birch; on the other, its bright waters race beside a wild and heathy tract of moorland, which slopes upward to the very base of Snowdon, that king of mountains, whose awful brow is often hidden in the clouds.
The bard, too, had suffered much, and had fled from cave to cave, and from hill to hill, pursued by the English forces, who sought to still those bold and pathetic strains—those deep laments, which aroused his countrymen to fresh deeds of valour against their oppressors. His enemies were not permitted to accomplish their designs. He continually eluded their pursuit, and died at length in peace, amid his beloved haunts of Bethgellert.
Here then stands the ancient tree, though reft of its former greatness. More than four hundred years have elapsed since Owen Glendour climbed its lofty trunk, and surveyed the battle-field of Tewksbury; since his bannered hosts were stationed round, and he heard the shout which told him that his friend had fallen.
From this tree, also, might be heard, in ancient times, the sound of the workman’s hammer, for King Henry appointed that a chapel should be built, and two priests placed within it, to pray both morning and evening for the souls of those who had been slain. Rapidly the chapel rose, for men thought that they did good service to their Maker when they wrought in such holy work; and the chapel, being enlarged in after years, became a handsome parish church. The condition of the time-worn tree, and of the church are somewhat similar. The tree is grown so hollow that it seems to stand on little more than a circle of bark, yet life still lingers, green leaves appear in the spring season, and acorns are gathered from its branches in the autumn. Great part of the once stately building has likewise fallen to decay; ivy grows luxuriantly over the broken walls, and sparrows build their nests among the matted branches; but Divine worship is to this day still carried on in the part that remains entire. The country people and neighbouring gentry meet there; they bear the name of Englishmen, though blending in themselves varied and dissimilar races—the ancient Briton and the Roman, the Dane, the Saxon, and the Norman. But how widely different in their habits and their manners from those who assisted in building the ancient chapel, and those who assembled within its walls when the chapel was completed!
