Singular enough, the people of the
very first house, at which I inquired about the Quakers' Yard, were
entrusted with the care of it. On my expressing a wish to see it,
a young woman took down a key, and said that if I would follow her
she would show it me. The Quakers' burying-place is situated on a
little peninsula or tongue of land, having a brook on its eastern
and northern sides, and on its western the Taf. It is a little
oblong yard, with low walls, partly overhung with ivy. The
entrance is a porch to the south. The Quakers are no friends to
tombstones, and the only visible evidence that this was a place of
burial was a single flag-stone, with a half-obliterated
inscription, which with some difficulty I deciphered, and was as
follows:-
To the Memory of THOMAS EDMUNDS
Who died April the ninth 1802 aged 60 years.
And of MARY EDMUNDS
Who died January the fourth 1810 aged 70.
The beams of the descending sun gilded the Quakers' burial-ground
as I trod its precincts. A lovely resting-place looked that little
oblong yard on the peninsula, by the confluence of the waters, and
quite in keeping with the character of the quiet Christian people
who sleep within it. The Quakers have for some time past been a
decaying sect, but they have done good work in their day, and when
they are extinct they are not destined to be soon forgotten. Soon
forgotten! How should a sect ever be forgotten, to which have
belonged three such men as George Fox, William Penn, and Joseph
Gurney?
Shortly after I left the Quakers' Yard the sun went down and
twilight settled upon the earth. Pursuing my course I reached some
woodlands, and on inquiring of a man, whom I saw standing at the
door of a cottage, the name of the district, was told that it was
called Ystrad Manach - the Monks' Strath or valley. This name it
probably acquired from having belonged in times of old to some
monkish establishment. The moon now arose and the night was
delightful. As I was wandering along I heard again the same wild
noise which I had heard the night before, on the other side of
Merthyr Tydvil. The cry of the owl afar off in the woodlands. Oh
that strange bird! Oh that strange cry! The Welsh, as I have said
on a former occasion, call the owl Dylluan. Amongst the cowydds of
Ab Gwilym there is one to the dylluan. It is full of abuse against
the bird, with whom the poet is very angry for having with its cry
frightened Morfydd back, who was coming to the wood to keep an
assignation with him, but not a little of this abuse is wonderfully
expressive and truthful. He calls the owl a grey thief - the
haunter of the ivy bush - the chick of the oak, a blinking eyed
witch, greedy of mice, with a visage like the bald forehead of a
big ram, or the dirty face of an old abbess, which bears no little
resemblance to the chine of an ape. Of its cry he says that it is
as great a torment as an agonizing recollection, a cold shrill
laugh from the midst of a kettle of ice; the rattling of sea-
pebbles in an old sheep-skin, on which account many call the owl
the hag of the Rhugylgroen. The Rhugylgroen, it will be as well to
observe, is a dry sheepskin containing a number of pebbles, and is
used as a rattle for frightening crows. The likening the visage of
the owl to the dirty face of an old abbess is capital, and the
likening the cry to the noise of the rhugylgroen is anything but
unfortunate. For, after all, what does the voice of the owl so
much resemble as a diabolical rattle. I'm sure I don't know.
Reader, do you?
I reached Caerfili at about seven o'clock, and went to the "Boar's
Head," near the ruins of a stupendous castle, on which the beams of
the moon were falling.
CHAPTER CVII
Caerfili Castle - Sir Charles - The Waiter - Inkerman.
I SLEPT well during the night. In the morning after breakfast I
went to see the castle, over which I was conducted by a woman who
was intrusted with its care. It stands on the eastern side of the
little town, and is a truly enormous structure, which brought to my
recollection a saying of our great Johnson, to be found in the
account of his journey to the Western Islands, namely "that for all
the castles which he had seen beyond the Tweed the ruins yet
remaining of some one of those which the English built in Wales
would find materials." The original founder was one John De Bryse,
a powerful Norman who married the daughter of Llewellyn Ap
Jorwerth, the son-in-law of King John, and the most war-like of all
the Welsh princes, whose exploits, and particularly a victory which
he obtained over his father-in-law, with whom he was always at war,
have been immortalized by the great war-bard, Dafydd Benfras. It
was one of the strongholds which belonged to the Spencers, and
served for a short time as a retreat to the unfortunate Edward the
Second. It was ruined by Cromwell, the grand foe of the baronial
castles of Britain, but not in so thorough and sweeping a manner as
to leave it a mere heap of stones. There is a noble entrance porch
fronting the west - a spacious courtyard, a grand banqueting room,
a corridor of vast length, several lofty towers, a chapel, a sally-
port, a guard-room and a strange underground vaulted place called
the mint, in which Caerfili's barons once coined money, and in
which the furnaces still exist which were used for melting metal.
The name Caerfili is said to signify the Castle of Haste, and to
have been bestowed on the pile because it was built in a hurry.
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