"What A Difference," Said I To My Wife, After We Had Departed,
"Between A Welshman And An Englishman Of The Lower Class.
What
would a Suffolk miller's swain have said if I had repeated to him
verses out of Beowulf or even Chaucer, and had asked him about the
residence of Skelton.
CHAPTER XX
Huw Morris - Immortal Elegy - The Valley of Ceiriog - Tangled
Wilderness - Perplexity - Chair of Huw Morris - The Walking Stick -
Huw's Descendant - Pont y Meibion.
Two days after the last adventure I set off, over the Berwyn, to
visit the birth-place of Huw Morris under the guidance of John
Jones, who was well acquainted with the spot.
Huw Morus or Morris, was born in the year 1622 on the banks of the
Ceiriog. His life was a long one, for he died at the age of
eighty-four, after living in six reigns. He was the second son of
a farmer, and was apprenticed to a tanner, with whom, however, he
did not stay till the expiration of the term of his apprenticeship,
for not liking the tanning art, he speedily returned to the house
of his father, whom he assisted in husbandry till death called the
old man away. He then assisted his elder brother, and on his elder
brother's death, lived with his son. He did not distinguish
himself as a husbandman, and appears never to have been fond of
manual labour. At an early period, however, he applied himself
most assiduously to poetry, and before he had attained the age of
thirty was celebrated, throughout Wales, as the best poet of his
time. When the war broke out between Charles and his parliament,
Huw espoused the part of the king, not as soldier, for he appears
to have liked fighting little better than tanning or husbandry, but
as a poet, and probably did the king more service in that capacity
than he would if he had raised him a troop of horse, or a regiment
of foot, for he wrote songs breathing loyalty to Charles, and
fraught with pungent satire against his foes, which ran like wild-
fire through Wales, and had a great influence on the minds of the
people. Even when the royal cause was lost in the field, he still
carried on a poetical war against the successful party, but not so
openly as before, dealing chiefly in allegories, which, however,
were easy to be understood. Strange to say the Independents, when
they had the upper hand, never interfered with him though they
persecuted certain Royalist poets of far inferior note. On the
accession of Charles the Second he celebrated the event by a most
singular piece called the Lamentation of Oliver's men, in which he
assails the Roundheads with the most bitter irony. He was loyal to
James the Second, till that monarch attempted to overthrow the
Church of England, when Huw, much to his credit, turned against
him, and wrote songs in the interest of the glorious Prince of
Orange. He died in the reign of good Queen Anne. In his youth his
conduct was rather dissolute, but irreproachable and almost holy in
his latter days - a kind of halo surrounded his old brow. It was
the custom in those days in North Wales for the congregation to
leave the church in a row with the clergyman at their head, but so
great was the estimation in which old Huw was universally held, for
the purity of his life and his poetical gift, that the clergyman of
the parish abandoning his claim to precedence, always insisted on
the good and inspired old man's leading the file, himself following
immediately in his rear. Huw wrote on various subjects, mostly in
common and easily understood measures. He was great in satire,
great in humour, but when he pleased could be greater in pathos
than in either; for his best piece is an elegy on Barbara
Middleton, the sweetest song of the kind ever written. From his
being born on the banks of the brook Ceiriog, and from the flowing
melody of his awen or muse, his countrymen were in the habit of
calling him Eos Ceiriog, or the Ceiriog Nightingale.
So John Jones and myself set off across the Berwyn to visit the
birthplace of the great poet Huw Morris. We ascended the mountain
by Allt Paddy. The morning was lowering and before we had half got
to the top it began to rain. John Jones was in his usual good
spirits. Suddenly taking me by the arm he told me to look to the
right across the gorge to a white house, which he pointed out.
"What is there in that house?" said I.
"An aunt of mine lives there," said he.
Having frequently heard him call old women his aunts, I said,
"Every poor old woman in the neighbourhood seems to be your aunt."
"This is no poor old woman," said he, "she is cyfoethawg iawn, and
only last week she sent me and my family a pound of bacon, which
would have cost me sixpence-halfpenny, and about a month ago a
measure of wheat."
We passed over the top of the mountain, and descending the other
side reached Llansanfraid, and stopped at the public-house where we
had been before, and called for two glasses of ale. Whilst
drinking our ale Jones asked some questions about Huw Morris of the
woman who served us; she said that he was a famous poet, and that
people of his blood were yet living upon the lands which had
belonged to him at Pont y Meibion. Jones told her that his
companion, the gwr boneddig, meaning myself, had come in order to
see the birth-place of Huw Morris, and that I was well acquainted
with his works, having gotten them by heart in Lloegr, when a boy.
The woman said that nothing would give her greater pleasure than to
hear a Sais recite poetry of Huw Morris, whereupon I recited a
number of his lines addressed to the Gof Du, or blacksmith.
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