Morriston has already been noticed for its “castle.” It deserves a word also for its bridge over the river. This bears the look of one of Edwards’s constructions; its eyelet holes and graceful single curve remind one of Pontypridd. From Morriston to Ystradgynlais, Tawe is continually trammelled. In one part there is a cañon of slag heaps half a mile long for it to descend through. It is here shallow, and not more tainted than you would expect. The hills rise in high long banks on the outer boundaries of the valley, with wooded reaches above the lofty collieries, and crowned by the naked rock. Just south of Ystradgynlais the river receives its chief affluent, the Twrch, which has as bright and lengthy a youth as Tawe itself, rising under the Carmarthen Van, the rival peak of this Fforest Fawr range, which makes so commanding a mark on the two counties of Brecknock and Carmarthen.
The ascent here begins to be steep, and it is constant to the source. The colliery villages become less and less assertive, and the woods greener. By Coelbren a little stream hurries to the Tawe through one of those deep, thickly-treed glens which the Neath river knows so well. It is an enchanting spot, with the blue and green and russet of Craig-y-Nos across the valley to the north-west. The river gets quite near to the palace of our sweetest singer, whose conservatories can be seen gleaming for miles. In South Wales Patti holds a court other than that assured to her in all the world’s capitals. She is at home here. Her photographs are in the shop-windows of Neath and Swansea, and so are the photographs of the various luxurious rooms of her mountain palace; and she is praised for other virtues than those that proceed from her entrancing throat. People wonder how she can isolate herself here, where collieries are not so remote that they cannot be seen. But that is Adelina Patti’s affair, and has nothing to do with us. She is queen of the Tawe valley, in one sense, as well as the world’s queen regnant of melody. At Craig-y-Nos, which is 700 feet above sea-level, Tawe is distant only five or six mountainous miles from its origin. It begins, like the Taff, with numerous slender rills from red cuttings in the stony sides of the bleak uplands, all hurrying together, as if anxious to compose a little strength with their divided weakness. But its chief source is the lonely tarn (to borrow the North-country word) of Lly-Fan Fawr, which never fails to keep it active. This is on the Brecknock Van. On the Carmarthen Van also there is a lake, Lly-Fan Fach, some two miles from the source of Tawe. From Lly-Fan Fach comes the Sawddy, one of the Towy’s band of tributaries, which enters that river at Llangadock.
SWANSEA CASTLE (p. [174]).
THE MUMBLES (p. [175]).
The TOWY, which now claims our notice, in a far nobler river than the others treated in this chapter. From its start in the desolate wet uplands of Cardiganshire (less trodden than any other part of Great Britain) to the long channel south of Carmarthen, where it enters the bay of that name, it knows nothing of such pollution as spoils Tawe, Taff, and Neath. It is rural from first to last: savage almost in its upper reaches, beyond Ystradffin, where it can be explored only at some not inconsiderable risks, and where its first company of eager affluents rush to it from all sides in glens and defiles, as deep, craggy, and yet beautiful, as its own. Of its early affluents, the Doethiau certainly deserves particular mention. Hard by its junction with Towy is a strikingly picturesque wooded hill, one of Wales’s many Dinases.
Ystradffin is scarcely a village, but it boasts of attachment to the memory of a seventeenth-century cattle-raider named Twm Shon Catti (otherwise Tom Jones, the son of Catherine), who made use of a cave in the side of the Dinas by Towy for purposes of concealment. This hero of tradition at length determined to mend his ways, and, we are told, set about it by wooing an heiress. He secured her hand in the literal sense, and vowed to cut it off unless she gave it to him in the matrimonial sense. So stern a courtship was irresistible. Afterwards Twm Shon Catti became respectable, and died holding high office in the county. But the cave over Towy keeps the memory of his naughty youth and early manhood still green.
From Ystradffin the river descends circuitously some eleven miles to the well-known fishing and tourist townlet of Llandovery, gambolling gaily in its rocky pools as if resolved to make the most of its youth ere coming to the long green valley which extends from Llandovery to Carmarthen. Here it receives two voluminous aids in the Bran from the north-east, and the Gwedderig from the east, both yielding pleasant prospects even for the few miles their valleys are visible from Llanymddyfri (i.e. “the Church amid the Waters”), or, as we know it, Llandovery.