“‘Ae os wyt ti’n fy ngharu i
Fel ’rwyf fi’n dy garu di,
Mal un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech,’
Go the bells of Aberdovey.”
Seated in a boat in the middle of the estuary of the DOVEY river, one laments the fact that the bells exist in legend only. How sweetly they would sound through the distance and in the dusk, over this wide expanse of shallow water and glimmering sand! But the little town of Aberdovey, hugging the hillside at the south-westerly corner of Merionethshire, has certainly had no peal of bells at any date more recent than the time when Owen Glendower descended into the Dovey valley to procure his own proclamation as Prince of Wales. It is a humble little town, which, as somebody has remarked, seems to ask itself why it is not Liverpool. It has a wharf and a deep-water pier, and a railway at only a few yards from the beach. Large vessels could lie in safety near to the doors of the Aberdovey folk, and the maps insist strenuously on the directness of the sea-routes to Dublin, to Rosslare, and to Waterford. They are direct enough, no doubt; but who cares to travel by them? Only a few small schooners are to be seen in the harbour of Aberdovey. Two or three others are drawn up high and dry on the sands, so that one might almost leap on board from the thresholds of the cottages. If the world were more happily ordered, the chief trade of the place might be the exchange of rich merchandise; but, as one may perceive from the pier yonder, it is merely the exportation of slates.
The river Dovey—or Dyti, as it is called in the more ancient language—rises among the peaks of Aran Mowddwy, and, dashing down the mountain-sides with a pretty music, leaves Merioneth for a while to course through a jutting corner of Montgomeryshire. Then it becomes the boundary between Merioneth and Cardigan, making its way to the sea through an estuary 6½ miles long—broad, noble, and impressive, with hills green, gentle, and round on its left, and on its right high mountains and purple heather, and “the sleep that is among the lonely hills.” It is a river much beloved of angling folk, for there are “salmons” not only, as Fluellen said, in Monmouthshire, but also in Montgomery and Merioneth. Likewise there is abundance of sewin and trout; and the fisherman who visits Dinas Mowddwy, Mallwyd, or Machynlleth will be likely enough to store his memory with recollections not only of fine scenery but of glorious days.
Dinas Mowddwy is a small village with a large hotel; but it was nothing less than a city in the old days, and it calls itself a city still. Even up to so recent a date as 1886, it had all the honours of a borough, with a Mayor of its own, and a Corporation, and a Recorder, and the tradition of a charter dating from James I. It may be reached by means of a ridiculous but convenient railway from Cemmaes Road, the trains consisting of an engine and one carriage, with, possibly, a few truckloads of slates attached behind. Aran Mowddwy, on which the Dovey rises, is, next to Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. It is the centre of a district full of vague traditions and curiously varied grandeur and beauty. After the death of Owen Glendower, “many powerful gentlemen of Wales” assembled at Dinas “for the purpose of making compacts to enforce virtue and order.” Their success can scarcely have been very great, for it was at this place, not long afterwards, that the “Red-Haired Banditti of Mowddwy” were wont to hold their meetings and arrange their murders. It is pleasant to be able to record that in due course these gentry were as effectually suppressed as were the Doones of Exmoor, if the story of John Ridd is to be believed. How they found means to exist by rapine in a country so sparsely peopled is not now intelligible; but they were, clearly, a very savage and revengeful folk, for forty arrows were found in the body of a judge who had condemned some of their brethren to death.
Sparkling along through Dinas, and flowing under the ruins of an ancient bridge, with a more modern and substantial structure close beside it, the river Dovey shortly reaches Mallwyd, where there is a church that is much visited, occupying the site of an earlier edifice which is said to have been erected by St. Tydecho in the sixth century, and with an ancient yew-tree which the saint himself is believed to have planted. On the other side of the river stands the farmhouse of Camlan, associated by a tradition, into the veracity of which we need not now inquire, with Camelot, and that “battle long ago” in which King Arthur is said to have been overthrown. All this wide, winding Dovey valley teems with history of a sort. At the farmhouse of Mathafarn, below Cemmaes Road, “the great poet and scholar,” David Llwyd ap Llewelyn, entertained the Earl of Richmond, who was afterwards to become King Henry VII., and was then on his way to Bosworth fight. At Machynlleth, with its fine, broad, mediæval street, much frequented by salesmen of cattle and sheep, you may see the house in which Owen Glendower held his Parliament after he had “defeated” the English by flying before them into the hills. Machynlleth itself was the Roman station of Maglona, and is now a fairly considerable town, situated almost as happily as Dolgelley, with the square ivy-clad tower of an ancient church dominating the centre of the valley. Here the beautiful river Dulas joins the Dovey, and hence one may travel by the tiny Corris railway to Tal-y-Llyn, through some of the most satisfying scenery in all Wild Wales.
