Here, on the very border of Wales, one is conscious of the Celtic atmosphere. We left the quiet orderliness of England behind us when we dipped down into this little valley, where the sparkling, bubbling Ceiriog—every inch a Celt—calls to us to follow it up into the hills. And so we will, as soon as we have climbed the other side of the valley into Chirk village; turning there to the left, though our rightful road, the road to Llangollen, lies directly in front of us. In Wales we shall find ourselves constantly tempted to leave the highway, and in most cases we shall be rewarded if we yield to the temptation without ado. In this particular case we shall be rewarded with a dear little glen, feathery birch-trees on the steep slopes, a yellow carpet in primrose time, and a most charming little hotel about six miles up the valley, at Glyn Ceiriog.
Near Chirk the road sweeps round under the trees of the deer-park, where “there is on a smaul hille a mighty large and stronge castel with dyvers towers”; towers that have stood here for many generations, defying time and war; for this castle of Chirk is no ruin like most of its contemporaries, but an inhabited house. Yet not these towers, I believe, but the old Welsh Castell Crogen, stood here when Henry II., with “the chosen warriors of England,” and of several other countries, marched up this valley to join battle with the great Owen Gwynedd and all the might of Wales, who were encamped near Corwen. The English, finding the trees in their way, cut them down as they advanced, which so much infuriated some of the Welsh who were separated from their main army, that the Ceiriog ran red with the blood of Henry’s chosen warriors. This Battle of Crogen took place just below the older castle.
Perhaps the most dramatic event in the life of the present Chirk Castle was when it fell into the hands of the cavaliers, and its owner, Sir Thomas Myddleton, a Parliamentary leader, was obliged to besiege his own house in his own person. I believe that on one day of the week the world at large is allowed to pass through the beautiful gates of wrought iron, and up the long slope of the avenue, and into the castle itself, to see all the treasures of art and history that George Borrow saw when he was here: the cabinet of Charles II., and the portraits of Nell Gwynne, and of “the very proud daughter of the house,” as Borrow calls Addison’s wife, “the Warwick Dowager who married the Spectator, and led him the life of a dog.”
Across Chirk Park runs Offa’s Dyke, the long embankment “that was cast up with great labour and industry by Offa the Mercian, as a boundary between his Subjects and the Britains, from the mouth of Dee to that of the River Wye.... Concerning which Joannes Sarisburiensis in his ‘Polycration’ saith that Harald establish’d a law that whatever Welshman should be found arm’d on this side the limit he had set up, then ... his right hand should be cut off by the King’s Officers.” It touches the high-road a few miles beyond Chirk, just before we begin the wonderful descent into the Vale of Llangollen; that long slope down which we swing for several miles on a perfect gradient and a perfect surface—marred, however, by an awkward turn—with the whole beautiful valley spread out before us, and the Dee sweeping far below us, spanned by the remarkable aqueduct called Pont-y-Cysylltau. Beyond it rise the Eglwyseg crags, and far away the shattered fortress of Dinas Bran is visible almost from the first on its peak above Llangollen. “The castelle of Dinas Brane,” says Leland, “was never a bigge thing, but sette al for strenght as in a place half inaccessible for enemyes.” Even in his day it was “al in ruine,” and now there is only a fragment left of it to remind us of those princes of ancient Powys who built it in days so old as to be unchronicled, and defied the power of the Saxon from within its walls; and of its owner in later days, Madoc ap Gryffyth Maelor, who built the Abbey of Valle Crucis; and of the fair Myfanwy, “all smiles and light,” who was loved by a poor bard of the fourteenth century, and celebrated by him in a poem that still exists.
At the foot of the crag on which Dinas Bran is perched lies Llangollen—a little town that owes its charm entirely to its position. Only a few miles away, in Shropshire, an ugly house is an exception: in Wales it is unfortunately the rule. A town or village that is really pretty in itself, apart from its surroundings, is almost unknown. But so lovely is the position of Llangollen that in spite of its rather squalid streets it is an entrancing place; so entrancing that Robert Browning lived for some time at the Hand Hotel, and the two famous “Ladies of Llangollen,” Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby, chose it out of all the world for their life-long home. Llangollen is still dominated by “the Ladies,” almost as much as by Dinas Bran itself. They adorn the windows of all its photograph shops; they shine in crude colours from all its china mugs; and in its churchyard we learn from an extremely ugly tombstone that one of them, in the opinion of the other, had “manners worthy of her Illustrious Birth.” It must be admitted that such is not the impression given by the impartial. It became the fashion for travellers of mark to visit this quaint couple in their house up there on the hill, and they themselves insisted on its being also the fashion to give them presents—carvings, miniatures, curiosities of all kinds. If we care to climb a steep hill we may see the outside of Plas Newydd now, a black-and-white house, which must have been really pretty in its original simplicity, but is now overladen with a mass of carving. From the road we can see the porch in which “the Ladies” once stood “fussing and tottering about in an agony of expectation,” waiting for Sir Walter Scott, and looking, says Lockhart, “like a couple of hazy or crazy old sailors.” “Who could paint,” he goes on, “the prints, the dogs, the cats, the miniatures, the cram of cabinets, clocks, glass-cases, books, bijouterie, dragon-china, nodding mandarins, and whirligigs of every shape and hue—the whole house outside and in covered with carved oak ... and the illustrated copies of Sir W.’s poems, and the joking, simpering compliments about Waverley.” But whether their manners were worthy of their Illustrious Birth or not, they were true friends to each other, and the guardian angels, as Lockhart admits, of Llangollen. It is an interesting fact (which should not be forgotten) that the church under whose shadow they lie is dedicated to St. Collen ap Gwynnawg ap Clydawg ap Cowrda ap Caradog Freichfras ap Llyr Merimap Eini Yrth ap Cunedda Wledig.
Far more important than Plas Newydd or its memories of vanished mandarins and whirligigs is the work of that prince of Powys, whose name I mentioned in connection with Dinas Bran—Madoc ap Gryffyth Maelor. In Pant-y-Groes, or the Valley of the Cross, stands Madoc’s ruined abbey, the most perfect retreat, surely, that ever brought comfort to the sad or sinful. It was of the Vale of Llangollen that Ruskin characteristically wrote: “The whole valley, when once I got up past the Works (whatever the accursed business of them) seemed to me entirely lovely in its gentle wildness.” And it is this very quality of gentle wildness that gives such charm to the little Glen of the Cross, which joins the larger valley of the Dee just above Llangollen, and is reached by way of the old stone bridge that was the first of its kind in Wales.
When, in a few minutes, we see the gable of Valle Crucis Abbey below us on the right, we leave our car by the roadside. We leave, indeed, the whole world behind us as we pass through the heavy door by which there was once no returning. The narrow wooded valley hems us in, the trees are close round us, the waters of the fishpond, in their absolute stillness, add to the sense of aloofness and peace. And under our very feet, perhaps, is the dust of Iolo Goch, the famous bard who sang of “Owain Glyndwr, the great, the good”; for Iolo’s unmarked grave is here; and here, too, lies Madoc, who built this abbey in the last year of the twelfth century; and Myfanwy, the beautiful princess, “fairer than the cherry’s bloom”; and others who died long, long before them. To antiquarians the tombs of Valle Crucis are full of interest, for there are some that seem to prove, says the custodian—himself an antiquarian—that this Cistercian house rose on the site of an older Benedictine building. The Cistercians never used warlike symbols, but always the sign of the Cross; yet here on two stones of very early date—the sixth or seventh century—are carved the sword, the spear, and the battleaxe. Fragments of stained glass, too, have been unearthed, and coloured tiles, though the Cistercian Rule forbade the use of colour in any form. This austere Order, however, while avoiding the use of the sword as a symbol, was apparently not averse to using it as a weapon on occasion, for it was by fighting the Benedictines in a neighbouring field, according to the custodian’s theory, that they became possessed of the site of their abbey. Truth to tell, the extreme austerity of the Cistercians seems to have relaxed in later days, for we hear after a time of four courses of meat in silver dishes at Valle Crucis, and of an abbot with three of his fingers covered with rings. But these are disturbing thoughts. Let us rather take away with us a picture of the quiet fishpond, with its water-weeds and clumps of yellow flags, and the gable of the church reflected in it line for line, and on the bank a hooded figure, dressed in white, with a placid face and a busy fishing-rod.
Quite near the abbey in a field is a far older relic, Eliseg’s Pillar, the rough stone monument that gave its name to the Valley of the Cross, though as a matter of fact it was probably never a cross. It was once much higher than it is now, but in the days of the Civil War the name of the valley was enough to make it suspect, and the pillar was thrown down by the Puritans on the chance of its once having been a cross. It has been much discussed and disagreed about, but at all events its very great antiquity is a certainty, and the inscription that is now illegible was luckily copied several centuries ago. “Concenn,” it tells us, “the great grandson of Eliseg, erected this stone to the memory of his great-grandfather, Eliseg. This is that Eliseg who recovered his inheritance of Powis by his sword from the power of the Angles.”
Returning to Llangollen we cross the Dee again and go on our way upon the road to Holyhead, up the ridge of Rhysgog, past Berwyn Station, and so out of the Vale of Llangollen into that of Edeyrnion. The Dee is still below us on the right, with thickly wooded hills beyond it; and on the left are rocky heights, sometimes bare and sometimes softened by trees. We have a lovely run before us down the valley, but if we are prudent we will drive slowly in the neighbourhood of Corwen.
But here, at the head of the valley, we are eight miles away from Corwen, and have other things to think of—great things, indeed: the last struggle for Welsh freedom, and the man who was the heart and the head of it, that strange mixture of ruthless vengeance and lovableness, Owen Glyndwr, who as a pattern squire, rather scholarly and very hospitable, spent many quiet years, living sometimes here at Glyndyfrdwy beside the Dee and sometimes at his other house at Sycharth, and then suddenly, at the touch of injustice, unfurled the red dragon of Uther and became the implacable devastator whose name meets us in every ruin in Wales. Nothing remains now of his house, for Prince Hal descended upon it one day, and, having left it level with the ground, wrote to his “very dear and entirely beloved” Wardens of the Marches to tell them all about it. After describing the burning of Sycharth and of many houses round it he goes on: “Then we went straight away to his other place of Glyndourdy, to seek for him there. There we burnt a fine lodge in his park, and all the country round; and we remained there all that night.” Above the spot where the fine lodge stood is a curious tumulus crowned with firs, quite close to the road. It is known as Owen’s Mount, not because he made it, for it is far older than he, but because there is a story that he used it as a kind of watch-tower. It was at Corwen, some say, that he first raised his standard; but the other memories of him here are legendary and trivial.