A Book of North Wales

by S. Baring-Gould

What has stood in the way of the work of exploration has been the solitude and height at which stands the stone castle. Those undertaking the excavation would have to camp in it, and snatch the chances of bright days.

Below Yr Eifl is Nant Gwrtheyrn, the Valley of Vortigern, with some mounds indicating the site of the wooden hall of this unfortunate king. Hither he retired as his last place of refuge.

Unable effectively to resist the incursions of the Picts and Scots, he invited the Germans to come to his aid. But he did not venture on this upon his own initiative. He summoned a great national council to devise a remedy for the distress of Britain when an appeal to Rome had failed. The unanimous voice of the assembly authorised Vortigern to call to his assistance the Teutonic rovers. Hengest and his brother Horsa, with three tribes of Jutes and Angles, were accordingly invited over, and they landed in the Isle of Thanet in 449. With their aid Vortigern successfully rolled back the tide of northern barbarians, and then assigned Thanet to his new auxiliaries, in the fond belief that this would content them. He further undertook to furnish them with provisions in proportion to their numbers. Tempted by the alluring reports sent home by these adventurers, fresh tribes of Angles now poured in, and on the plea of insufficient remuneration, Hengest and Horsa led their countrymen to plunder the neighbouring Kent.

At the same time the beautiful Rowena, daughter of Hengest, arrived, and Vortigern, who met her at a banquet, was so fascinated by her charms that to gain her hand he consented to assign Kent to Hengest.

The Angles still pressed on; several battles were fought with various success. In one of these Vortimer, the gallant son of the king, was wounded, and, when he died, the exasperated Britons declared that he had been poisoned by Rowena. Still the invaders advanced, and the Britons met with a crushing defeat at Ebbsfleet.

Vortigern was doubtless incapable, vacillating, and weak. The anger of the Britons, now in deadly alarm, was concentrated on him. A general revolt against him ensued, and, headed by Ambrosius Aurelius and encouraged by S. Germanus—not he of Auxerre, but a nephew of S. Patrick—he was driven from his throne, and took refuge under the old Irish fortress of Tre’r Ceiri. Germanus pursued him, and the wooden structure was set on fire. Tradition varies as to what became of him. Some supposed that he perished in the flames, others asserted that he managed to escape and wandered about with a few followers from place to place, and finally died of a broken heart. In the palace at the time was his granddaughter Madryn, wife of Ynyr, king of Gwent, with her little son. She was allowed to pass out of the fire, and she fled to the fortified hilltop that now bears her name—Carn Fadryn. Thence at the earliest opportunity she took boat, and found a home for the rest of her days in Cornwall. Her son embraced the ecclesiastical profession, and built himself a church under the shadow of the mountain to which his mother had fled for refuge.

In Madryn Hall, the seat of the Jones-Parry family, is a beautiful marble statue of her by an Italian artist, representing her flying from the burning palace with her babe in her arms.

Below Tre’r Ceiri, as already mentioned, is the village of Llanaelhaiarn, with a remarkable spring. It consists of a tank with stone seats about it for the bathers who awaited the “troubling of the waters.” This troubling consists in the sudden welling up of a gush of water charged with sparkling bubbles, first in one place and then in another.

The well has been closed and locked, as it adjoins the highway and is liable to contamination. To this was attributed an outbreak of diphtheria in the village a few years ago, when an order was made for the closing of the well doors, and the water is now conducted into the village by a pipe.