“Though bright the waters of the Towy,
The Wye, the Severn, and the Tivy;
Yet, well I wot, they cannot shew ye
Such salmon as the Uske can give ye!
It was—(we choose not to go farther)—
The favoured dish of bold King Arthur;
Who, when he chose like king to dine,
Went down to Uske with rod and line,
And there drew slily to the bank
Such trout as best became his rank;
Sometimes by twains, at others singly,
But always with a twitch so kingly,
The salmon seemed as much delighted,
As if they really had been ‘knighted!’
No wonder, for they quickly found
An entrée at the Table Round,
Where, seated with his gallant knights,
Those heroes of a hundred fights;—
‘Leave,’ quoth he, ‘acorns in the husk,
Here’s glorious salmon from the Uske!’” &c.
Pembroke Castle
PEMBROKE CASTLE,
Pembrokeshire.
“Hic exarmatum terris cingentibus æquor,
Clauditur, et placidam descit servare quietem.”
“In agro totius Walliæ amœnissimo, principale provinciæ municipium Demetiæq. caput, in Saxosa quadam et oblonga rupis in capite bifurco complectitur. Unde Britannis Pembro dicitur, quod caput marinum sonat, et nobis Penbroke.”—Gyrald.
Earldom.—“There have been divers Earls of Pembroke,” says Camden, “out of sundry houses. As for Arnulph of Montgomery, who first wonne it, and was afterwards outlawed, and his castellan Girald, whom King Henry the First made afterwards president over the whole country, I dare scarcely affirm that they were Earles. The first that was styled Earle of Pembroke was Gilbert, surnamed ‘Strongbow,’[367] son of Gilbert de Clare, in the time of King Stephen. This Gilbert, or Gislebert, de Clare, let it unto his sonne, the said Richard Strongbow, the renowned conqueror of Ireland, and descended, as Gyraldus informs us, “ex clara Clarenium familia”—the noble family of Clare, or Clarence. His only daughter, Isabel,[368] brought the same honour to her husband, William, surnamed the Mareschal, for that his ancestours had beene by inheritance mareschals of the King’s palace, a man most glorious in war and peace,[369] and protector of the kingdome in the minority of K. Henry the Third,[370] concerning whom this pithie epitaph is extant in Rodburne’s Annales: ‘Sum quem Saturnus,’[371] &c., which is thus done into English—
‘Whom Ireland once a Saturn found, England a sunne to be;
Whom Normandie, a Mercury, and France, Mars,—I am he.’”