After I Had Satisfied Myself With Wandering About The Town We
Proceeded To The Castle.
The original castle suffered terribly in the civil wars; it was
held for wretched Charles, and was nearly demolished by the cannon
of Cromwell, which were planted on a hill about half a mile
distant.
The present castle is partly modern and partly ancient.
It belongs to a family of the name of W- who reside in the modern
part, and who have the character of being kind, hospitable and
intellectual people. We only visited the ancient part, over which
we were shown by a woman, who hearing us speaking Welsh, spoke
Welsh herself during the whole time she was showing us about. She
showed us dark passages, a gloomy apartment in which Welsh kings
and great people had been occasionally confined, that strange
memorial of the good old times, a drowning pit, and a large prison
room, in the middle of which stood a singular-looking column,
scrawled with odd characters, which had of yore been used for a
whipping-post, another memorial of the good old baronial times, so
dear to romance readers and minds of sensibility. Amongst other
things which our conductor showed us was an immense onen or ash; it
stood in one of the courts and measured, as she said, pedwar y
haner o ladd yn ei gwmpas, or four yards and a half in girth. As I
gazed on the mighty tree I thought of the Ash Yggdrasill mentioned
in the Voluspa, or prophecy of Vola, that venerable poem which
contains so much relating to the mythology of the ancient Norse.
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