The Name Snowdon Was Bestowed
Upon This Region By The Early English On Account Of Its Snowy
Appearance In Winter; Eryri By The Britons, Because In The Old Time
It Abounded With Eagles, Eryri (5) In The Ancient British Language
Signifying An Eyrie Or Breeding-Place Of Eagles.
Snowdon is interesting on various accounts.
It is interesting for
its picturesque beauty. Perhaps in the whole world there is no
region more picturesquely beautiful than Snowdon, a region of
mountains, lakes, cataracts, and, groves in which nature shows
herself in her most grand and beautiful forms.
It is interesting from its connection with history: it was to
Snowdon that Vortigern retired from the fury of his own subjects,
caused by the favour which he showed to the detested Saxons. It
was there that he called to his counsels Merlin, said to be
begotten on a hag by an incubus, but who was in reality the son of
a Roman consul by a British woman. It was in Snowdon that he built
the castle, which he fondly deemed would prove impregnable, but
which his enemies destroyed by flinging wild-fire over its walls;
and it was in a wind-beaten valley of Snowdon, near the sea, that
his dead body decked in green armour had a mound of earth and
stones raised over it. It was on the heights of Snowdon that the
brave but unfortunate Llywelin ap Griffith made his last stand for
Cambrian independence; and it was to Snowdon that that very
remarkable man, Owen Glendower, retired with his irregular bands
before Harry the Fourth and his numerous and disciplined armies,
soon however, to emerge from its defiles and follow the foe,
retreating less from the Welsh arrows from the crags, than from the
cold, rain and starvation of the Welsh hills.
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