Photos: Hudson.
VIEWS IN THE LOWER ELAN VALLEY (p. [128]).
Legend, however, weaves a charm over many an else dreary waste, and up amongst the scramble of hills of which Plinlimmon is monarch, legend and history unapocryphal combine to fill the home of mists with interest for all who love a stirring tale. Here, at the very source of the Wye, Owain Glyndwr—the Owen Glendower of Shakespeare’s King Henry IV.—who could call spirits from the vasty deep, had his stronghold, and gathered around him his vicious little band of followers:—
“Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head
Against my power: thrice from the banks of Wye
And sandy-bottomed Severn have I sent him
Bootless home, and weather-beaten back.”
This he truthfully told his fellow-conspirators. Plinlimmon and the surrounding country is rich in records and legends concerning this turbulent prince, whose very birth, on May 28th, 1354, is said to have been attended by remarkable premonitions of coming trouble, for it is told that on that eventful night his father’s horses were found in their stalls standing in a bath of blood that reached to their bellies. This is the popular account, but Shakespeare’s imagination created other and farther-reaching warnings to the world concerning the fiery spirit that had been ushered upon the scene:—
“At my nativity