'You see that the rock below me is
not larger than a man can carry in one of his hands:
I have seen
it so large that it would have taken a hundred oxen to drag it, and
it has never been worn save by my drying my beak upon it once every
night, and by my striking the tip of my wing against it in rising
in the morning, yet never have I known the owl older or younger
than she is to-day. However, there is one older than I, and that
is the toad of Cors Fochnod; and unless he knows her age no one
knows it.' To him went the eagle and asked the age of the owl, and
the toad replied: 'I have never eaten anything save what I have
sucked from the earth, and have never eaten half my fill in all the
days of my life; but do you see those two great hills beside the
cross? I have seen the place where they stand level ground, and
nothing produced those heaps save what I discharged from my body,
who have ever eaten so very little - yet never have I known the owl
anything else but an old hag who cried Too-hoo-hoo, and scared
children with her voice even as she does at present.' So the eagle
of Gwernabwy; the stag of Ferny-side Brae; the salmon trout of Glyn
Llifon; the ousel of Cilgwry; the toad of Cors Fochnod, and the owl
of Coomb Cowlyd are the oldest creatures in the world; the oldest
of them all being the owl."
CHAPTER LIV
Chirk - The Middleton Family - Castell y Waen - The Park - The
Court Yard - The Young Housekeeper - The Portraits - Melin y
Castell - Humble Meal - Fine Chests for the Dead - Hales and
Hercules.
THE weather having become fine, myself and family determined to go
and see Chirk Castle, a mansion ancient and beautiful, and
abounding with all kinds of agreeable and romantic associations.
It was founded about the beginning of the fifteenth century by a St
John, Lord of Bletsa, from a descendant of whom it was purchased in
the year 1615 by Sir Thomas Middleton, the scion of an ancient
Welsh family who, following commerce, acquired a vast fortune, and
was Lord Mayor of London. In the time of the great civil war it
hoisted the banner of the king, and under Sir Thomas, the son of
the Lord Mayor, made a brave defence against Lambert, the
Parliamentary General, though eventually compelled to surrender.
It was held successively by four Sir Thomas Middletons, and if it
acquired a war-like celebrity under the second, it obtained a
peculiarly hospitable one under the fourth, whose daughter, the
fruit of a second marriage, became Countess of Warwick and
eventually the wife of the poet and moralist Addison. In his time
the hospitality of Chirk became the theme of many a bard,
particularly of Huw Morris, who, in one of his songs, has gone so
far as to say that were the hill Cefn Uchaf turned into beef and
bread, and the rill Ceiriog into beer or wine, they would be
consumed in half a year by the hospitality of Chirk.
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