Motor Tours in Wales & the Border Counties

by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell

ST. DAVID’S CATHEDRAL, INTERIOR.

Now Henry VIII., as we well know, had little enough respect for the shrines of the saints or for the beauties of architecture, but he had a great respect for the bones of his own grandfather—and these lay here. So Barlow had to hold his hand; and we, as we stand in the presbytery of the cathedral beside Edmund Tudor’s tomb, must remember all we owe to it. Nor is his the only notable tomb in this place; for here is the simple shrine before which so many kings, such countless pilgrims, have knelt, and there is the recumbent figure that some say is the Lord Rhys, the son of the brave Gwenllian, the greatest of the princes of South Wales, of whom it was said that “his prowesse passed his manners, his wytte passed his prowesse, his fayre speeche passed his wytte, his good thewes passed his fayre speeche.” Of the grave of Giraldus we must not be too sure, for though it is pointed out to us there has been much discussion with regard to it. Yet somewhere in this cathedral his dust lies we know.

Just beyond St. David’s is the sea. And here too we must go, and, if possible, see the sun setting behind that western horizon where the hills of Holy Ireland are said to be sometimes visible. St. Patrick saw them, says the legend, as he sat on this shore, and vowed to give his life to the conversion of that land. He kept his vow; but William Rufus, who stood here with very different intentions, was less successful. As he looked across the sea to Ireland, he said, “I will summon hither all the ships of my realm, and with them make a bridge to attack that country.” His words were reported to Murchard, Prince of Leinster, who, says the story, paused awhile, and answered, “Did the King add to this mighty threat, If God please?” and being informed that he had made no mention of God in his speech, he replied, “I fear not his coming.”

The legend that connects St. Patrick with this shore is extremely circumstantial, but whether it has the least foundation in truth I do not know. In the Rosy Valley, says the story, he built a college, where he taught both boys and girls, and trained missionaries who afterwards became Irish saints. One of the girls was Nôn, the mother of St. David, and it was near Porth Clais that that saint was born. And when he was old enough the boy too became a pupil of St. Patrick; and so, when his college days at Llantwit were over, and he was made “Archbishop of Legions,” because “his life was a perfect example of that goodness which by his doctrine he taught,” he moved the see from Caerleon to Menevia for love of his master St. Patrick. In this way was fulfilled the prophesy of Merlin: “Menevia shall put on the pall of the City of Legions”; and from that time forward Menevia has been called after its first and most famous bishop, St. David.

From this strange, remote land of dreams and legends and memories of early saints the transition to the world of modern progress is rather sudden; for only fifteen miles lie between the shrine of St. David and the new turbine steamers of Fishguard. We shall do well to choose the upper road, which runs for the most part through a bare, inhospitable land that is far more suggestive of the remoteness of the village-city than the most dramatic mountain pass could be. Here and there we have a fine glimpse of the coast, and there is a sudden softening in the scenery as we draw near Goodwick. Here, at one side of the pretty bay of Fishguard, are all the evidences of the new route to Ireland—the station, the hotel, and the steamers at the quay, while across the bay, beyond the long beach, the upper town of Fishguard appears above the headland. Here, at Fishguard, the French landed in 1797. Then, as they looked at those heights above the town, their hearts misgave them, for the hills were ominously streaked and patched with scarlet. It became plain to them that a very large force—a far larger force than they were prepared to meet—was waiting to descend upon them. And so it happened that their general, without loss of time, repaired to the Royal Oak Inn, where he signed his capitulation to Lord Cawdor. I do not know when, if ever, he found out that the masses of scarlet figures on the hills were not soldiers, but the enterprising matrons and maids of all the county round, who had come out in the red cloaks that were then part of the national dress, to see what was going forward.

The lower town of Fishguard lies in a cleft between two steep hills, and its pretty little harbour has all the picturesqueness that quays and boats and rippling green water can give. The further hill of the two, which we must climb, is of a most amazing gradient—computed in contour-books as averaging 1 in 7, but certainly 1 in 5 in places. From the high ground to which it leads us, lying between Fishguard and Newport, there are glimpses from time to time of fine coast scenery, and beyond Newport the road lies through very pretty country, under the conspicuous peak of Carningly. In the churchyard at Nevern there is a beautiful Celtic cross, the cross of St. Brynach, an Irish contemporary of St. David. From this point the road gradually rises to a considerable height, and then runs down a long hill to Cardigan.

Cardigan, once “the lock and key of all Wales,” gives us no hint of its former greatness. It appears an uninteresting little town till one realises that it is the Aberteifi whose castle was taken and retaken, burnt, and shattered, and built again, through all the stormiest years of Welsh history; captured by the men of the north from the men of the south; defended by both against the Anglo-Normans; attacked by the Flemings; at one time the court of Llewelyn, the greatest of the northern princes; and at another the court of Lord Rhys, the greatest of the southern princes. Here lived Griffith, the father of Rhys, “the light and the strength and the gentleness of the men of the south,” whose brave wife, Gwenllian, was killed by Maurice de Londres; and here he and Gwenllian’s brother, the great Owen Gwynedd, avenged her, when Cardigan bridge broke under the retreating Normans, and “the salt green wave of Teivy was clogged” with the bodies of the slain. And here the Lord Rhys held his famous revels, which included one of those mediæval Tournaments of Song with which Wagner has made us so familiar. The invitations were sent out in good time—a year and a day before the event—and many hundreds of English and Normans were bidden from “all Britain, Ireland, and the islands adjacent.” The historian goes on to tell us how “Rhys caused all the bards or poets throughout all Wales to come thither; and for a better diversion to the company he provided chairs to be set in the hall, in which the bards being seated, they were to answer each other in rhyme, and those that acquitted themselves most handsomely and overcame the rest, were promised great rewards and rich presents.” And the men of Gwynedd won the prize for poetry, but the men of the south were victorious in music.

Such in the old days was Cardigan, where the tourist may pause for a mid-day chop or buy a picture postcard.

Two miles above Cardigan, on a crag beside the Teify, are the ruined towers of Cilgerran, which have been very little concerned with history, though they have stood here since the days of Henry I. Their striking position above the wooded banks of the river, however, will repay us for a detour of a mile or two, and we can rejoin the main road at the beautiful bridge of Llechryd. Here, where the prevailing note of the landscape is peace, the gentle Teify, whose purling waters have so often run red, was once actually dammed—as on another occasion at Cardigan—by the bodies of the slain, when the princes of the south met the invading princes of Powys and overthrew them.