Which is
the gigantic Penman Mawr, which interpreted is "the great head-
stone," the termination of a range of craggy hills descending from
the Snowdon mountains.
"What a bay!" said I, "for beauty it is superior to the far-famed
one of Naples. A proper place for the keels to start from, which,
unguided by the compass, found their way over the mighty and
mysterious Western Ocean."
I repeated all the Bardic lines I could remember connected with
Madoc's expedition, and likewise many from the Madoc of Southey,
not the least of Britain's four great latter poets, decidedly her
best prose writer, and probably the purest and most noble character
to which she has ever given birth; and then, after a long,
lingering look, descended from my altitude, and returned, not by
the ferry, but by the suspension bridge to the mainland.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Robert Lleiaf - Prophetic Englyn - The Second Sight - Duncan
Campbell - Nial's Saga - Family of Nial - Gunnar - The Avenger.
"AV i dir Mon, cr dwr Menai,
Tros y traeth, ond aros trai."
"I will go to the land of Mona, notwithstanding the water of the
Menai, across the sand, without waiting for the ebb."
SO sang a bard about two hundred and forty years ago, who styled
himself Robert Lleiaf, or the least of the Roberts. The meaning of
the couplet has always been considered to be, and doubtless is,
that a time would come when a bridge would be built across the
Menai, over which one might pass with safety and comfort, without
waiting till the ebb was sufficiently low to permit people to pass
over the traeth, or sand, which, from ages the most remote, had
been used as the means of communication between the mainland and
the Isle of Mona or Anglesey. Grounding their hopes upon that
couplet, people were continually expecting to see a bridge across
the Menai: more than two hundred years, however, elapsed before
the expectation was fulfilled by the mighty Telford flinging over
the strait an iron suspension bridge, which, for grace and beauty,
has perhaps no rival in Europe.
The couplet is a remarkable one. In the time of its author there
was nobody in Britain capable of building a bridge, which could
have stood against the tremendous surges which occasionally vex the
Menai; yet the couplet gives intimation that a bridge over the
Menai there would be, which clearly argues a remarkable foresight
in the author, a feeling that a time would at length arrive when
the power of science would be so far advanced, that men would be
able to bridge over the terrible strait. The length of time which
intervened between the composition of the couplet and the
fulfilment of the promise, shows that a bridge over the Menai was
no pont y meibion, no children's bridge, nor a work for common men.
