"Codais, ymolchais yn Mon, cyn naw awr
Ciniewa'n Nghaer Lleon,
Pryd gosber yn y Werddon,
Prydnawn wrth dan mawn yn Mon."
The above englyn was printed in the Greal, 1792, p. 316; the
language shows it to be a production of about the middle of the
seventeenth century. The following is nearly a literal
translation:-
"I got up in Mona as soon as 'twas light,
At nine in old Chester my breakfast I took;
In Ireland I dined, and in Mona, ere night,
By the turf fire sat, in my own ingle nook."
Now, as sure as the couplet by Robert Lleiaf foretells that a
bridge would eventually be built over the strait, by which people
would pass, and traffic be carried on, so surely does the above
englyn foreshadow the speed by which people would travel by steam,
a speed by which distance is already all but annihilated. At
present it is easy enough to get up at dawn at Holyhead, the point
of Anglesey the most distant from Chester, and to breakfast at that
old town by nine; and though the feat has never yet been
accomplished, it would be quite possible, provided proper
preparations were made, to start from Holyhead at daybreak,
breakfast at Chester at nine, or before, dine in Ireland at two,
and get back again to Holyhead ere the sun of the longest day has
set. And as surely as the couplet about the bridge argues great
foresight in the man that wrote it, so surely does the englyn prove
that its author must have been possessed of the faculty of second
sight, as nobody without it could, in the middle of the seventeenth
century, when the powers of steam were unknown, have written
anything in which travelling by steam is so distinctly alluded to.
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