GOODRICH CASTLE (p. [138]).
By the time Hay is reached the Wye is fast becoming a stream of considerable size. Now entering Herefordshire, it flows through a broad vale, cultivated and mellow, where Clifford Castle stands a hoary ruin. Here, if history speak true, was born, in the reign of Henry II., one of great and general notoriety, whose name—or nom de guerre, as Dryden has it—is woven richly into the ballads of that and later days; for doubtless her beauty, like her failings, was great, and her death untimely and cruel:—
“Jane Clifford was her name, as books aver;
Fair Rosamond was but her nom de guerre.”
Fair Rosamond was born about the year 1140. How much of the story coming to us through the medium of ballads and folk-tales be true, it is now quite impossible to discover, but popular fancy still clings to the idea of a lonely and innocently unfortunate girl installed at Woodstock, protected by a nurse who proved insufficient when pitted against the cunning of a scandalised wife and queen. Fair Rosamond was buried at Godstow, and upon her tomb was carved the famous epitaph:—
“Hic jacet in tumba Rosa Mundi, non Rosa munda:
Non redolet, sed olet, quæ redolere solet.”