In the last hundred years the village has harboured many a distinguished man who, giving thanks for his undiscovered seclusion, has come and gone unknown. Wordsworth came there with his friend, Robert Jones; Shelley, living at Tan yr Allt, a few miles out of Beddgelert, must often have passed through its lanes, his ragged brown hair whipped by the valley wind, his great eyes blue as the roadway of sky overhead; Kingsley, with a quick smile for the jolly little urchins perched venturesomely on the sharp slate coping of the bridge, Frederic Temple, Derwent Coleridge, J. A. Froude, Professor F. W. Newman, Huxley, Tyndall, all found holiday rest in this quiet meadow sheltered by its rampart of mountains. Gladstone came there, too. A village cow with an eye for distinction endeavoured to hook the Prime Minister and had afterwards the satisfaction of being sold for a large sum of money. There also in the valley was born “Golden Rule” Jones, of Toledo fame, a good man, and but one of many good men who have gone forth from this fastness of peace to dream ever afterwards of a return to its gray houses, its streams, its hills and heather and wilderness of crags.
Ty Isaf and Ty Ucha are the oldest inns of the village. Ty Isaf is at the entrance of the lane leading to the church, and it was there, not so many years ago, that the minister was still expected to drink a cup or two of ale before entering the pulpit or fail in due prelusive inspiration. At Ty Isaf was kept the Large Pint of Beddgelert (“Hen Beint Mawr Bedd Gelert”), a pewter mug which held two quarts of old beer. Any man who could drink this quantity at a breath might charge the amount to the lord of the manor; if he failed, he paid for it himself. But so often was the heroic deed accomplished by capacious Welshmen that it is recorded the tenants paid but half their rent in money. It would be interesting to know for how many goblins, fairies, “Lantern Jacks,” flickering “Candles of the Dead,” Hen Beint Mawr was responsible! Now over every little inn is the sign “Temperance,” for Welsh revivals have played havoc with these noble drinking-feats. One signboard, I can never pass without a smile, has gone so far as rather to insist upon the temperance issue in the words, “Rooms and Temperance.” Incidentally, the rector of the Episcopal Church has given up his potation, and next door the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist minister, also unsupported by home-brewed beer, wrestles with his flock. Beddgelert Sabbath-keeping has all the force of an unbroken tradition. A gentleman riding a-hunting on Sunday was confronted by an old woman who shook her Welsh Bible at him and showered vindictive Welsh l’s on his worldly head. Nor was our own experience much happier. Our drinking-water was fetched from Ty Ucha, and we had good reason to believe it was responsible for wretched feelings. One Sunday morning I consulted our Welsh hostess, explained to her what we thought of the water, and asked whether we might have some brought from another spring. We were told that it could not be drawn on the Sabbath, but would be brought to us on Monday morning! In every cottage there is a mammoth Welsh Bible, and groups of smaller Bibles both Welsh and English. We went into one deserted mountain hut to take pictures of the interior; inside, together with an old trunk, a rusty fluting-iron, kettles, pans, a portion of the woven couch strung over the wide fireplace, and old clothes, we found two Welsh Bibles, one English Bible, and a torn portion of “Pilgrim’s Progress.”
THE QUEEN’S TOWER, CONWAY CASTLE
From an engraving by Cuitt, 1817
Indeed, the religious spirit of the place is a tradition but infrequently broken in the past thousand years. Edward I had burned the priory (now St. Mary’s Church), which was erected as a hospitium in connexion with a small chapel and schoolhouse in the second half of the sixth century; Henry VIII endeavoured to crush its power, and then in 1830 the good villagers themselves entered upon the pious task of renovation. In order to make the renovation as thorough as possible, they tore down all the rare wood-carving, using it for kindling-wood, and in some instances making pieces of household furniture from it; they put in a false ceiling of clapboards hiding the fine Gothic arch of the roof; the ceiling, together with the walls, they whitewashed, and completed their pious task by boarding up several exquisitely shaped lancet windows. Fortunately the renovation has been followed by a restoration, and now the priory may be seen in some of its ancient beauty, with the old yew tree spreading low over the gravestones and the Gwynen pouring by its northern walls, singing the same mountain song it sang when the canons regular of St. Augustine, barefooted, gray-habited, with crucifix and rosary, marched solemnly from chapel to hospitium.
The name Beddgelert, the Grave of Gelert (?), brings hundreds of Welsh people to see this town each year. It is not an uncommon spectacle to see a man, as he stands by the dog’s grave, brushing away tears, or a little child crying bitterly. The story is of Prince Llewelyn’s greyhound, who saved his master’s baby by killing a fierce wolf, and then was slain by his master’s sword, for the Prince, entering, saw the cradle overturned and the greyhound’s mouth covered with blood. The name of the place, however, has nothing to do with the myth of Gelert; the little hill on which the grave stands had for hundreds of years been called “Bryn-y-Bedd,” the “Hill of the Grave,” a mound where the Irish chief Celert, a far earlier hero than the dog, may have been buried. There are parallels in other folk-lore for this tale, and one even in the Sanscrit has been discovered in which, in place of Northern wolf, a snake is the evil agent. There is an unmistakable twinkle in a Beddgelert eye whenever the story is told. Alas! that the greyhound buried there was not presented to Prince Llewelyn by his father-in-law, King John, in the year 1205, but, the petted possession of two Beddgelert spinsters, was presented by them at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the sagacious David Prichard, the first owner of the Royal Goat Hotel, and promptly interred by him in the famous mound.
Every one of the three valley roads of Beddgelert is filled with incidents of Welsh legend and folk-lore. Even in our materialistic age the credulous spirit abides here in this mountain-bred people, quick, lively, romantic. The village is filled with lovely legend and quaint lore; in the farmhouses among the hills heroic stories are still told about Arthur and songs sung to Welsh melodies. There are tales of ghosts, and of goblins, brown road goblins, and gray goblins of the mist; of water sprites in the mountain torrents, now a beautiful, half-naked maiden, now a fleshless old man; of the “Candle of the Dead” with its clear white flame; of the little red-eyed, red-eared “Hounds of Hell” flocking like sheep down some mountain-path; of the pranks of “Lantern Jack” on dark winter nights; of the fairies living in the summer among the bracken, in winter among heather and gorse, coming out of their haunts to dive thievishly into the farmers’ pockets, or to steal butter and milk and cheese from the careful housewives. There are stories, too, of amiable, kindly fairies who carol and dance nightly.
Driving up from Tremadoc past Tan yr Allt, where Shelley lived for a year, one comes to the bridge at the mouth of the pass. This bridge is said to have been built by no less a person than the Devil, who for his trouble got nothing in toll but a poor little dog that was first to scamper over it. Down the Nant Gwynen Valley, a narrow river valley running east out of Beddgelert, is Dinas Emrys, the home of the magician Merlin and at many times the abiding place of King Arthur. Merlin’s well, on the very summit of Dinas Emrys, is still a discoverable well. There, too, surrounding the crown of this singular hill, are traces and remains of the walls of an old Roman fortress; and the entrance over the narrow ridge to the crown of Dinas Emrys bears marks of stone hewn hundreds of years ago. Not more than three miles further in the same valley is a precipitous pass leading up towards Lliwedd by Snowdon, where some legends say Arthur fell and lies buried. Up this valley road over Pen y Pass, in a wilderness of boulders and crags tumbled hither and thither, is an interesting specimen of cromlech, and near by some gigantic rocks so fitted together that they form a hut in which an old woman is said to have lived many, many years. I hope life was pleasanter to her during all those years than it was for us during even the few minutes we were within the strange enclosure.
The third valley running out of Beddgelert is the valley of the Colwyn. This leads past Moel Hebog—in a cave on whose perpendicular side Owen Glendwr lay in hiding for months—towards Carnarvon, a city of a castle with casements:—