July 27.
Fall of Nanneu Oak.
This is a remarkable incident in the annals of events relating to the memorials of past times.
The Haunted Oak of Nanneu,
Near Dolgelly, in Merionethshire.
On the twenty-seventh of July, 1813, sir Richard Colt Hoare, bart., the elegant editor of “Giraldus Cambrensis,” was at Nanneu, “the ancient seat of the ancient family of the Nanneus,” and now the seat of sir Robert Williams Vaughan, bart. During that day he took a sketch of a venerable oak at that place, within the trunk of which, according to Welsh tradition, the body of Howel Sele, a powerful chieftain residing at Nanneu, was immured by order of his rival Owen Glyndwr. In the night after the sketch was taken, this aged tree fell to the ground. An excellent etching of the venerable baronet’s drawing by Mr. George Cuitt of Chester, perpetuates the portrait of this celebrated oak in its last moments. The [engraving] on the [next page] is a mere extract from this masterly etching.
It stood alone, a wither’d oak
Its shadow fled, its branches broke;
Its riven trunk was knotted round,
Its gnarled roots o’erspread the ground
Honours that were from tempests won,
In generations long since gone,
A scanty foliage yet was seen,
Wreathing its hoary brows with green,
Like to a crown of victory
On some old warrior’s forehead grey,
And, as it stood, it seem’d to speak
To winter winds in murmurs weak,
Of times that long had passed it by
And left it desolate, to sigh
Of what it was, and seem’d to wail,
A shadeless spectre, shapeless, pale.
Mrs. Radclife.[269]
The charm which compels entrance to Mr. Cuitt’s print within every portfolio of taste, is the management of his point in the representation of the beautiful wood and mountain scenery around the tree, to which the editor of the Every-Day Book would excite curiosity in those who happen to be strangers to the etching. But this gentleman’s fascinating style is independent of the immediate object on which he has exercised it, namely, “the spirit’s Blasted Tree,” an oak of so great fame, that sir Walter Scott celebrates its awful distinction among the descendants of our aboriginal ancestors, by the lines of “[Marmion],” affixed to the annexed representation.