Pen Caer Gybi stands renown’d,
Proud in song, and known in story;
Where proud Rome in triumph frown’d
O’er the Welsh, who died in glory.
These were the mighty fastnesses to which the ancient Britons had recourse when overpowered by numbers and military tactics in the plain. There is no wonder that these “sons of the mountain heroes” so long successfully withstood the inroads of Roman legions, when such craggy and adamantine rocks, were the “external circumstances” in their “formation of character;” and nothing less than the refined expedient of powder and ball could dislodge them from these rocky fastnesses and natural barricades; bows and arrows, swords and spears, were only adapted for milder game, or closer quarters. On this mountain our hardy ancestors stood and nobly fought, when liberty made her last stand in this kingdom against the strides of Roman power; their determination was
To leave the battle only on their biers,
“to conquer or to die,” and thousands fell
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.
Here we tread
On sacred ground, and press the mingled dust of heroes;
Far, far beneath they sleep, nor does a stone
Or marble column rear its head to show
The spot where now they moulder.
ANTIQUITIES.
There are several remains of military forts in this neighbourhood, whose appearance indicates them to be of Roman origin. While reviewing them our thoughts are instinctively carried back to those days when the stranger tenanted the land—
When o’er this rugged mountain
Rome’s earliest legions past.
Upon the summit of the mountain called Pen Caer Gybi (the Head of Cybi’s Fort) is a remarkable Roman antiquity, viz.: Caer Twr, (Fort Tower). This circular building was formerly strongly cemented with the same kind of mortar as the Fort (church walls) of the Town, and supposed to have been a Roman Pharos, or Watch Tower. It had stood and braved the crushing thunder, vivid lightning, and warring winds and storms, for perhaps sixteen hundred centuries. But the rude hand of man has marred it, hoping by so doing to meet with an Australian digging.
Upon this mount a tower stands
Well known in days of yore;
When chieftains with their hostile bands,
Shed floods of human gore.’Tis now in ruins—but a spell
Of grandeur haunts the scene;
While none remain the deeds to tell,
The deeds of blood there seen.