Pipes in
their mouths; they were talking together; as I passed, however,
they held their tongues, the women leering contemptuously at me,
the men glaring sullenly at me, and causing tobacco smoke curl in
my face; on my taking off my hat, however and inquiring the way to
the Monachlog, everybody was civil enough, and twenty voices told
me the way the Monastery. I asked the name of the river:
"The Teivi, sir: the Teivi."
"The name of the bridge?"
"Pony y Rhyd Fendigaid - the Bridge of the Blessed Ford, sir."
I crossed the Bridge of the Blessed Ford, and presently leaving the
main road, I turned to the east by a dung-hill, up a narrow lane
parallel with the river. After proceeding a mile up the lane,
amidst trees and copses, and crossing a little brook, which runs
into the Teivi, out of which I drank, I saw before me in the midst
of a field, in which were tombstones and broken ruins, a rustic-
looking church; a farm-house stood near it, in the garden of which
stood the framework of a large gateway. I crossed over into the
churchyard, ascended a green mound, and looked about me. I was now
in the very midst of the Monachlog Ystrad Flur, the celebrated
monastery of Strata Florida, to which in old times Popish pilgrims
from all parts of the world repaired.
