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.
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