We must cross that bridge to reach Carmarthen; and following the course of the Usk, pass through Trecastle, where the scenery becomes strikingly beautiful as the road cleaves a narrow gorge and then runs gently down for miles between wooded hills. At Llandovery we enter the valley of the Towy.
There is nothing to detain us at Llandovery; but as the gay flowers of the Castle Inn catch our eye in passing we may remember that George Borrow once spent a night there; and the remains of the castle hard by may perhaps call to mind the great chieftain Griffith ap Nicholas, who was lord of Dynevor and Kilgerran as well as of Llandovery and many another castle. He was also a Justice of the Peace, and a harbourer of thieves; a protégé of the House of Lancaster who yet died in fighting for the house of York at Mortimer’s Cross: not a very conventional person, in short.
We leave the fragments of his castle on our left, and, on a practically level road, follow the slow-flowing Towy through Llangadoch to Llandeilo. This pretty little place, where there is a really nice inn, was once dignified with the name of Llandeilo Vawr, or the Great; probably because of its close proximity to the great castle of Dynevor. If we pause for a moment on the bridge that here crosses the Towy we shall see reflected in the river a thickly wooded bluff. Among these trees are the ruins of Dynevor, perhaps the most important stronghold of the princes of South Wales. It was in the ninth century that Roderic the Great built the first castle here, and from that day forward till Roderic’s fortress had for many years been replaced by a Norman one, Dynevor passed from hand to hand, from Welsh to English and from English to Welsh, and from one turbulent chieftain to another. It seems to have been regarded more or less as the key to South Wales; for on one occasion Henry II. sent a special spy to inquire into the strength of Dynevor and the general character of the country. This artless knight asked his way of a Welsh dean, and was, as he might have expected, led by a route so wild, so rough, and so extremely circuitous that the castle seemed to be practically inaccessible. By way of heightening the effect this humorous divine paused at intervals to satisfy his hunger with handfuls of grass. It was the custom in that poor country, he said. The knight returned to Henry with the report that the country round Dynevor was “uninhabitable, vile, and inaccessible, only affording food to a beastly nation, living like brutes.”
Within a few miles of Dynevor there is another castle that looks as if it might well have been inaccessible—Cerrig Cennen. It is worth while to drive a few miles out of our way to see this circlet of towers on its pale grey crag, dominating the whole landscape of rounded hills. It is best to approach it by Derwydd Station, partly because the more direct route leads over a long and precipitous hill, and partly because from this side one’s first view of the old fortress is more striking. I think there is little to be gained by trying to drive close to the actual ruins: the impressive effect is in the distant outline of this strange and sudden crag, on which, it is said, a Knight of the Round Table built his fortress before the Norman of later days made it his stronghold.
From Llandeilo to Carmarthen we have a choice of roads. The upper one is perhaps slightly the faster of the two, but from the lower there is a better view of Dynevor, and Dryslwyn Castle, and Abergwili, the palace of the bishops of St. David’s. In Carmarthen itself there are few relics left of a history that begins in the days of the Romans and has been stormy to a most unusual degree; so stormy, indeed, that one marvels the place exists at all. The wicked Vortigern, King of Britain in the fifth century, is said to have built a castle here, to defend himself against a too persistent saint who was trying, quite in vain, to turn him from the many errors of his ways. He had first taken refuge at Rhayader, but, says Nennius the historian, “St. Germanus followed him with all the British clergy, and upon a rock prayed for his sins during 40 days and 40 nights.” So the worried King fled here to Carmarthen and built a castle in which to hide. But, says the story, “the saint as usual followed him there and with his clergy fasted and prayed ... and on the third night a fire fell suddenly from heaven and totally burnt the castle.” How many times since then Carmarthen has been burnt to the ground and besieged and plundered I do not know, but one or other of these incidents is casually recorded on nearly every page of the History of Wales. But Carmarthen, like hope, “springs eternal.” Among the many who burnt it is Owen Glyndwr, who at the very time that the foolish legend describes him as sitting in a tree watching the Battle of Shrewsbury was really occupied, not only in destroying this town, but also, as though influenced by the reputed birthplace of Merlin, in having his fortune told by a soothsayer brought from Gower for the purpose. But though this brave fortune-teller prophesied evil things they were not fulfilled. Owen had still many successes before him, and his dealings with this ill-fated town of Carmarthen made a great sensation. There is an agitated letter still existing which the Archdeacon of Hereford, the “lowly creature,” as he signed himself, of Henry IV., wrote in “haste, great haste,” to implore that King for help. “And note,” he adds in a postscript, “on Friday last Kemerdyn town is taken and burnt, and the castle yielded ... and slain of the town of Kemerdyn more than L persons. Written in right haste on Sunday; and I cry your mercy and put me in your high grace that I write so shortly; for by my troth that I owe to you, it is needful.” The exciting effect of Owen’s presence, we see, was of somewhat wide radius. Yet even Owen could not suppress Carmarthen for more than a short time. Leland tells us of two “reparations done on the castel,” and in his day, he says, it was “veri fair and doble waullid.” Even now there is some of it left, but unless we exceed the speed-limit and refuse to pay the fine we shall probably not see it, as it has been made into a prison.
But even the modern streets that have risen from so many ashes are not without their own memories of the great. They were once lined with shouting, excited crowds, gathered from all the country round to see Nelson drive through the town: and through them passed the strange funeral procession of Richard Steele, who was carried by night, attended by twenty-five torch-bearers, to his grave in St. Peter’s Church. Above it a modern brass has been placed of late years, but for long the grave was, at his own dying request, left nameless. “I shall be remembered by posterity,” he said. There are other monuments worth seeing in St. Peter’s Church: the tomb of Sir Rhys ap Thomas, to whose efforts Henry VII. owed much in his quest for the crown; and a mural tablet of the seventeenth century, to “virtuous Anne, the lady Vaughan,” who was, we learn, “the choice elixir of mortalitie.”
From Carmarthen we must certainly not neglect to visit Kidweli, ten miles away near the sea, for there we shall find much of that visible romance that has, by storm and stress, been battered out of the county town. Kidweli once had walls, and three gates, and a priory of Black Monks, as well as the castle that still stands above the river Gwendraeth in all its imposing simplicity. The round towers and the curtain-wall and the great gateway have a very distinctly Edwardian character, but Caradoc of Llancarvan says there was a castle built here quite at the end of the twelfth century by Rhys ap Griffith, that great prince of South Wales who is known in Welsh history as The Lord Rhys; and even in those destructive days a hundred years was a short time for a castle to last. Probably Rhys built it and Edward repaired it, giving it the special character of his own work, but not entirely wiping out the work of Rhys. In this way we may account for the name of Gwenllian’s Tower, for Rhys had a much-loved daughter Gwenllian, “a woman of such incomparable beauty, and exceeding in all feminine qualifications, that she was accounted the fairest and best accomplished lady in all the country.” She had fine traditions behind her, but they were not so much “feminine” as warlike; for her father Rhys was “the protection of his country, the splendour of arms, the arm of power,” and her great uncle was the valiant Owen Gwynedd, and her grandmother was that gallant lady after whom she was doubtless named, Gwenllian the wife of Griffith. It was quite near Kidweli that this other Gwenllian died. In her husband’s absence she led his men to battle against the Norman invader, Maurice de Londres, whose grave we saw in his priory-church of Ewenny. Her forces were defeated, and she herself, by order of de Londres, was beheaded there and then. Her brother Owen Gwynedd, however, was still alive, and he saw to it that the reckoning was heavy.
The road from Carmarthen to Tenby lies at first through rather dull country, but after a time passes between extremely pretty wooded hills. Presently we catch sight of the sea shining at the end of a deep valley, and after this a delightful run on a downward gradient carries us within sight of Tenby, the most charming of watering-places. Now, it is not altogether an artificial classification if we divide the civilised world into two parties: those who delight in watering-places and those who flee from them. For this taste or distaste is really, more or less, an indication of temperament, and at the end of half an hour one could usually guess correctly in which of the two classes to place a new acquaintance. But I really defy any one to dislike Tenby. There is something endearing about it. From the roadside the cliffs drop steeply to the sands below—very yellow sands sweeping in long curves to the edge of a brilliantly green sea, while beyond them the long headlands stretch one behind the other, mere blurs of purple or misty blue. On the right the remnant of the castle stands upon a rock, and below it there juts into the sea a picturesque little pier, entirely for use, and innocent of pavilion or bandstand. Here the innumerable trawlers take shelter, till in the early morning they unfurl their crimson or brown sails, and one by one glide out into the bay—a brave sight, and one that calls to mind the early name of this place, Dynbych-y-Pysgod, the Little Town of Fish.
