His First Piece To Morfudd Is Full Of
Levity Quite Inconsistent With True Love.
It states how, after
seeing her for the first time at Rhosyr in Anglesey, and falling in
love with her, he sends her a present of wine by the hands of a
servant, which present she refuses, casting the wine contemptuously
over the head of the valet.
This commencement promises little in
the way of true passion, so that we are not disappointed when we
read a little farther on that the bard is dead and buried, all on
account of love, and that Morfudd makes a pilgrimage to Mynyw to
seek for pardon for killing him, nor when we find him begging the
popish image to convey a message to her. Then presently we almost
lose sight of Morfudd amidst birds, animals and trees, and we are
not sorry that we do; for though Ab Gwilym is mighty in humour,
great in describing the emotions of love and the beauties of the
lovely, he is greatest of all in describing objects of nature;
indeed in describing them he has no equal, and the writer has no
hesitation in saying that in many of his cowydds in which he
describes various objects of nature, by which he sends messages to
Morfudd, he shows himself a far greater poet than Ovid appears in
any one of his Metamorphoses. There are many poets who attempt to
describe natural objects without being intimately acquainted with
them, but Ab Gwilym was not one of these. No one was better
acquainted with nature; he was a stroller, and there is every
probability that during the greater part of the summer he had no
other roof than the foliage, and that the voices of birds and
animals were more familiar to his ears than was the voice of man.
During the summer months, indeed, in the early part of his life, he
was, if we may credit him, generally lying perdue in the woodland
or mountain recesses near the habitation of his mistress, before or
after her marriage, awaiting her secret visits, made whenever she
could escape the vigilance of her parents, or the watchful of her
husband, and during her absence he had nothing better to do than to
observe objects of nature and describe them. His ode to the Fox,
one of the most admirable of his pieces, was composed on one of
these occasions.
Want of space prevents the writer from saying as much as he could
wish about the genius of this wonderful man, the greatest of his
country's songsters, well calculated by nature to do honour to the
most polished age and the most widely-spoken language. The bards
his contemporaries, and those who succeeded him for several hundred
years, were perfectly convinced of his superiority, not only over
themselves, but over all the poets of the past; and one, and a
mighty one, old Iolo the bard of Glendower, went so far as to
insinuate that after Ab Gwilym it would be of little avail for any
one to make verses -
"Aed lle mae'r eang dangneff,
Ac aed y gerdd gydag ef."
"To Heaven's high peace let him depart,
And with him go the minstrel art."
He was buried at Ystrad Flur, and a yew tree was planted over his
grave, to which Gruffydd Gryg, a brother bard, who was at one time
his enemy, but eventually became one of the most ardent of his
admirers, addressed an ode, of part of which the following is a
paraphrase:-
"Thou noble tree, who shelt'rest kind
The dead man's house from winter's wind;
May lightnings never lay thee low;
Nor archer cut from thee his bow,
Nor Crispin peel thee pegs to frame;
But may thou ever bloom the same,
A noble tree the grave to guard
Of Cambria's most illustrious bard!"
CHAPTER LXXXVII
Start for Plynlimmon - Plynlimmon's Celebrity - Troed Rhiw Goch.
THE morning of the fifth of November looked rather threatening.
As, however, it did not rain, I determined to set off for
Plynlimmon, and, returning at night to the inn, resume my journey
to the south on the following day. On looking into a pocket
almanac I found it was Sunday. This very much disconcerted me, and
I thought at first of giving up my expedition. Eventually,
however, I determined to go, for I reflected that I should be doing
no harm, and that I might acknowledge the sacredness of the day by
attending morning service at the little Church of England chapel
which lay in my way.
The mountain of Plynlimmon to which I was bound is the third in
Wales for altitude, being only inferior to Snowdon and Cadair
Idris. Its proper name is Pum, or Pump, Lumon, signifying the five
points, because towards the upper part it is divided into five
hills or points. Plynlimmon is a celebrated hill on many accounts.
It has been the scene of many remarkable events. In the tenth
century a dreadful battle was fought on one of its spurs between
the Danes and the Welsh, in which the former sustained a bloody
overthrow; and in 1401 a conflict took place in one of its valleys
between the Welsh, under Glendower, and the Flemings of
Pembrokeshire, who, exasperated at having their homesteads
plundered and burned by the chieftain who was the mortal enemy of
their race, assembled in considerable numbers and drove Glendower
and his forces before them to Plynlimmon, where, the Welshmen
standing at bay, a contest ensued, in which, though eventually
worsted, the Flemings were at one time all but victorious. What,
however, has more than anything else contributed to the celebrity
of the hill is the circumstance of its giving birth to three
rivers, the first of which, the Severn, is the principal stream in
Britain; the second, the Wye, the most lovely river, probably,
which the world can boast of; and the third, the Rheidol, entitled
to high honour from its boldness and impetuosity, and the
remarkable banks between which it flows in its very short course,
for there are scarcely twenty miles between the ffynnon or source
of the Rheidol and the aber or place where it disembogues itself
into the sea.
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