Wild
looked the men, yet wilder the women. The men were very lightly
clad, and were all barefooted and bareheaded; they carried stout
sticks in their hands. The women were barefooted too, but had for
the most part head-dresses; their garments consisted of blue cloaks
and striped gingham gowns. All the females had common tin articles
in their hands which they offered for sale with violent gestures to
the people in the streets, as they walked along, occasionally
darting into the shops, from which, however, they were almost
invariably speedily ejected by the startled proprietors, with looks
of disgust and almost horror. Two ragged, red-haired lads led a
gaunt pony, drawing a creaking cart, stored with the same kind of
articles of tin, which the women bore. Poorly clad, dusty and
soiled as they were, they all walked with a free, independent, and
almost graceful carriage.
"Are those people from Ireland?" said I to a decent-looking man,
seemingly a mechanic, who stood near me, and was also looking at
them, but with anything but admiration.
"I am sorry to say they are, sir;" said the man, who from his
accent was evidently an Irishman, "for they are a disgrace to their
country."
I did not exactly think so. I thought that in many respects they
were fine specimens of humanity.
"Every one of those wild fellows," said I to myself, "is worth a
dozen of the poor mean-spirited book-tramper I have lately been
discoursing with."
In the afternoon I again passed over into Anglesey, but this time
not by the bridge but by the ferry on the north-east of Bangor,
intending to go to Beaumaris, about two or three miles distant: an
excellent road, on the left side of which is a high bank fringed
with dwarf oaks, and on the right the Menai strait, leads to it.
Beaumaris is at present a watering-place. On one side of it, close
upon the sea, stand the ruins of an immense castle, once a Norman
stronghold, but built on the site of a palace belonging to the
ancient kings of North Wales, and a favourite residence of the
celebrated Owain Gwynedd, the father of the yet more celebrated
Madoc, the original discoverer of America. I proceeded at once to
the castle, and clambering to the top of one of the turrets, looked
upon Beaumaris Bay, and the noble rocky coast of the mainland to
the south-east beyond it, the most remarkable object of which is
the gigantic Penman Mawr, which interpreted is "the great head-
stone," the termination of a range of craggy hills descending from
the Snowdon mountains.
"What a bay!" said I, "for beauty it is superior to the far-famed
one of Naples. A proper place for the keels to start from, which,
unguided by the compass, found their way over the mighty and
mysterious Western Ocean."
I repeated all the Bardic lines I could remember connected with
Madoc's expedition, and likewise many from the Madoc of Southey,
not the least of Britain's four great latter poets, decidedly her
best prose writer, and probably the purest and most noble character
to which she has ever given birth; and then, after a long,
lingering look, descended from my altitude, and returned, not by
the ferry, but by the suspension bridge to the mainland.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Robert Lleiaf - Prophetic Englyn - The Second Sight - Duncan
Campbell - Nial's Saga - Family of Nial - Gunnar - The Avenger.
"AV i dir Mon, cr dwr Menai,
Tros y traeth, ond aros trai."
"I will go to the land of Mona, notwithstanding the water of the
Menai, across the sand, without waiting for the ebb."
SO sang a bard about two hundred and forty years ago, who styled
himself Robert Lleiaf, or the least of the Roberts. The meaning of
the couplet has always been considered to be, and doubtless is,
that a time would come when a bridge would be built across the
Menai, over which one might pass with safety and comfort, without
waiting till the ebb was sufficiently low to permit people to pass
over the traeth, or sand, which, from ages the most remote, had
been used as the means of communication between the mainland and
the Isle of Mona or Anglesey. Grounding their hopes upon that
couplet, people were continually expecting to see a bridge across
the Menai: more than two hundred years, however, elapsed before
the expectation was fulfilled by the mighty Telford flinging over
the strait an iron suspension bridge, which, for grace and beauty,
has perhaps no rival in Europe.
The couplet is a remarkable one. In the time of its author there
was nobody in Britain capable of building a bridge, which could
have stood against the tremendous surges which occasionally vex the
Menai; yet the couplet gives intimation that a bridge over the
Menai there would be, which clearly argues a remarkable foresight
in the author, a feeling that a time would at length arrive when
the power of science would be so far advanced, that men would be
able to bridge over the terrible strait. The length of time which
intervened between the composition of the couplet and the
fulfilment of the promise, shows that a bridge over the Menai was
no pont y meibion, no children's bridge, nor a work for common men.
Oh, surely Lleiaf was a man of great foresight!
A man of great foresight, but nothing more; he foretold a bridge
over the Menai, when no one could have built one, a bridge over
which people could pass, aye, and carts and horses; we will allow
him the credit of foretelling such a bridge; and when Telford's
bridge was flung over the Menai, Lleiaf's couplet was verified.
