1. J1‘(‘If BYEGONEs

RELATING TO

WALES AND THE BORDER COUNTIES.

1880-1.

MR5. HARDCASTLE.—Ay, your times were fine times, indeed. . I hate such old-fashioned trumpery.

MR. HARDCASTLE.——-And I love it. I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.

OSWESTRY;

PRINTED AT THE CAXTON \VORKS, O_SWALD ROAD.

(Only one hundred and fifty Copies printed.) 236 BYE-GONES. MAY, 1881.

SOUTHEY AND HEBER AT . Few are the vestiges that remain of this once famous palace of the Princes of —nothing to betoken its a In very interesting paper contributed to the Mont royal splendour. The lofty mound, first raised to guard gomeryshire Collections the Vicar of describes a the river ford, and afterwards converted into a keep, when “Visit of Southey and Heber to Powysland.” The two was the_castle erected on its bank ; the broken ground poets were guests at Llan edwyn Hall, when it was occu which shows roughly where the foundations of the build ied by the Member for léontgomeryshire, the ings ran; an angle of Rt. Hon. the walling upon which it is robable

8!. W. ‘Villiams Wynn. Mr. Thomas says that at the that a wooden t was raised, and e deep time Mr. Wynn was in the Cabinet, and suggests the foss which that enclosesuserstructurethe whole space : these are all that re visit, as far as Heber was was main, concerned, not unconnected all that ever survived the disastrous fire on with his gerhaps nomination to the See of Calcutta. As we shall the 2n of August, 1212, when King John set it ablaze, in see further on, the facts order to are against this state check the victorious rising of Llewelyn ap lor ment. Southey and were and werth, and the Mr. Wynn intimate life-long chieftains of Powys. Decay and silence friends. They were schoolfellows together at Westminster, have been its after portion, a strange contrast to that life

and in the poet's earlier years it was and Mr. Wynn’s generous splendour of its earlier days, which the poet has re aid which enabled him to pursue his literary career. For awakened in those vivid lines :— some time he received from Mr. Wynn an annuity of £160, Frorn Cyveilioc‘s hall The voice of ha and which he relinquished on receiving a pension from the song commlngled came ; It was that day he Crown. Their lon and honourable connection with one feast of victory there ; Around the Chleftain's board the warriors safe; anotherisrecorded y Southey in the lines— The sword and shield and helmet, on the wall

My earliest friend whom I And round the illars, were in peace hung up ; Have ever, through all chan as, found the same, And, as the has as of the central fire From boyhoo to grey hairs o! 0 In goodness, and in worth, and 6 warmth heart. B arses.-081' ‘1235*’enin"s ‘as.B who we At the deli htful retreat at Llangedwyn Southey and So ‘lien had wielded in tlie work of :sghms' Those weapons Heber Mr. homas says, made their first acquaintance sate around the board,to uafi The beverage oi‘ the brave, and hear with i’owysland; but here again we see some reason to their ame. Msthraval's Lord, the Poet and the Prince, differ with Mr. Thomas, as we shall show. In “An Ode Cyveilioo stood before them, in his pride ; on ” Bisho Heber's Portrait (again quoted from below His hands were on the harp, his eyes were

clos'd ' three or our times), the laureate refers to the visit :— His head, as if in reverence to receive The Ten ears have held their course inspiration, bent; anon, he raised

ince last I looked upon eye,' Hisdglowiiégn sws w(iizilintenancetange baigtllli‘ter That living countenance, assiona an 8 Fill highpthe Hirplas mm ham When on Llangedwyn's terraces we paced Horn." Together to and fro; Mr. Thomas, _singularly enough, gives no date to this Partaking there its hospitality, visit to memorable Llangedwyn, but it is fixed We with its honoured master spent, by a letter in Southey's own hand as having taken Well pleased, the social hours. place early in 1820. The letter is written from , on the 25th Mr. Thomas mentions two of April interesting incidents which and Southe says Mr. Wynn had kept'him at Llan he learnt from “the honoured master's" son, the present until that edwyn ay that the might visit Pennant Me angell. hIr. Charles ‘Williams-Wynn. New Madoc was pu “ lished in 1805 ; so that It was during this visit that Heber, after hear'in the could have collected Southey ‘ ’ not his materials in 1820, and his old Welsh air of Ar hyd y nos played upon the harp first visit must have been paid many years earlier, if, and while the tune was still ringing in his ears, composed as seems almost certain, he saw the scenes he to its music his well-known Evening Hymn. Indeed describes. we know from his own pen that he had travelled God, that madest in than earth' and heaven, more once, and the evidence that he visited Darkness and ht; Powysland is almost overwhelming. In the Preface to the Who the day for toil has given, Fifth Volume of " his poems he as. s, For rest the night, It was my wish before Msdoc could he May Thine angel guards defend us, considers as completed, to see

more of Wales than I had Slumber sweet Thy mercy send us, yet seen. This I had some opportunity s of Holy dreams and he attend as, doing in the summer of 1801, with my old

t. ' This livelong nig friends and schoolfellows, Charles Wynn and Peter Guard us waking, guard us sleeping, Elmsley." Can of our readers give us any any account of And when we die, this early visit to Vales and probably to Llnngedwvn? May we in Thy mighty keeping, Turning now to Heber and the See of All peaceful lie ' Calcutta, it must be that Mr. Wynn did When the last dread call shall wake us, remembered not enter the Cabinet until 1822, it was in Do not Thou, our God, forsake us, and the following year that Heber accepted the But to in glory take us bishopric. Indeed, in the life of Heber weread that the Withreigilil ee on high. See fell vacant towards the end of 1822, and that Wynn, And it was when accompanying Mr. Wynn to Meifod, Mr: then at the head of the Board of Control for ‘India, wrote when the latter was about to purchase the Humphreys to Heber, who, after some hesitation. accepted the property in that parish, that Southey extended his expe appointment. To return to Mr. Thomas‘; of dition to the ruins of Mathravsl, and there, after careful One the excursions from Llangedwyn was to gaper.ycharth, in the investigation into the stories and legends of the place, adjoining parish of — collected (says Mr. Thomas) the materials for one of the Together traced s Thegrass- Wu tihento, w vile chief scenes, if not for the whole scheme of his poem, en ere armed feet on e trod

' The thresli-li‘l of titled Madoc in Wales :’— Glendower's embattled hiilL He came Of the ancient palace no traces are left, but the site is Where Warnway rolls its waters out by the underneath marked enclosing foss, the outer ward, and the Ancient Mathraval's venerable walls, inner keep, and Iolo Goch, Glyndwr’s Cyveilioc’s and domestic bard. princely paternal seat. gives a minute description of it. MAY, 1881. BYE-GONES. 237

"The palace, he tells us, was surrounded by a well mal. And the letters which he read for Etward are filled moat, and was entered through a spacious gate, Et Made.” Mr. Thomas remarks "that no notice plainly " standing on a bridge. It had a tower of Irish type, that is recorded of the giant rib still reserved within the reminded him of the Cloisters at \Vestminster, with their porch; but in the letter we have a ready mentioned—a vaults and arches, and gilded chancel. The basement rhyming one the poet addressed to Edith Mary Southey, (apparently of stone) comprised eighteen compartments, he says—"They show a mammoth rib (was there ever and above were four stories, raised on four firm and richly such a fib ?) as belonging to the Saint Mslangel. -It carved pillars, each story being subdivided into eight sleep was no use to wrangle, and tell the simple people, that if ing chambers. The whole was covered with ashingle roof, this had been her bone she must certainly have grown, to and there were chimney stacks to carry off the smoke. In be three times as tall as the steeple." The Paper concludes the rooms were wardrobes, stored with apparel, not unlike with a legend mentioned by Southey, and never met with the shops in London. It had a church, too, quadrangular before by Mr. Thomas :— in form, with chapels richly glazed. Around the palace “ The old house alluded to is evidently, from his account he an and a a ‘ enumerates orchard vineyard, park with of it, Llechweddgarth,’ an ancient mansion of the a and cornfields, mill, a deer, rabbit warren, meadows, a Thomases, from whom it passed by marriage to the late pigeon-house, and a fish-pond, stocked with pike and Mr. Griifiths of Caerhun :—

gwyniaid, and here, in the poet’s trystingiplace, ‘ We together visited the ancient house Yu Sycharth, bunrth y beirdd, Which from the hill-top takes

was abundance of Shropshire ale and malt liquor.” lts Cymric name euphonious : there to view, The nearest house is still called Parc Sycharth, probably Though drawn by some rude limnerinexpert, The faded portrait of that lady fair, the old deer park, and not far ofi is Pentref-y-Cwn, which Beside whose corpse her husband watched, tells of the pack of staghounds. The present Pandy was And with perverted faith, in earlier times a corn mill, and the Rev. Walter Davies has Preposterously placed, identified the site of the fish ponds. Here, fifty years after Thought, obstinate in hopeless hope, to see The beautiful dead, by miracle, revive.‘ Southey, came George Borrow, who has given us aspirited translation of Iolo uoch’s poem, which Mr. Thomas re The legend is not mentioned in Mr. Hancock's parochial produces. account in the Montgomcryshire Collections, 1878-9; and I Another excursion, in which Southey and Heber though I have made inquiries, can hear of no such tradi joined, was to the secluded but wildly beautiful valley of tion now surviving in the parish. It does not, indeed, ‘ Pennant (thus described in Madoc '):— follow that the lady was an actual resident here; and a )Ielaingel‘s lonely church— similar story exists relating to a former lady at Newtown Amid a grove of evergreens it stood, Hall. Perhaps the inquiry may lead to further informa A garden and a grove, where every grave tion relative to the Pennant legend and clear up the was deck'd with flowers, or with unfailing plants mystery." o'er-grown, sad rue and funeral rosemary. There they Saw the dark yews, majestic in decay, LITERATURE. Which in their flourishing strength LOCAL Cyveilioc might have seen— Mr. Alexander Ellis, President of the Philological

Letter by letter traced the lines Societ , who was recently elected an honorary member of 0n lorwerth's fabled tomb : of the ymmrodorion Council has sent the latter a copy of a And curiously observed what vestiges curious old hymn, "To the Virgin,"written in the sixteenth Mouldering and mutilate notes. 0i’ Monacella's legend there are left." century, with Welsh phonetic " Lit. Thomas gathers from the epithet “fabled that If anyone has a right to speak with authority on matters

Southey was misled by the legendary tradition (as given connected with Archery, it is Mr. J. Sharp, of the in Pennant’s Tours) that it was the tomb of Iorwerth Shrewsbury Journal. He was the man of all England

Drwyndwn, with whom he connects it in his Madoc :— selected b Professor Baynes to write on the subject in

His glancing eye fell on a monument the new e ition of the Encyclopadia Britannica, and by Around whose base the rosemary droop'd down the honorary secretaries of "some thirty or forty 'l‘oxophil As yet not rooted well. Sculptured above ite Societies (from the Royal” downwards) he is A warrior lay ; the shield was on his arm, acknowled ed as the authorized recorder of their proceed Mndoc appronch'd and saw the blnzonry. . . . ings. Wit such credentials to back our opinion, we have A sudden chill ran through him—as he read— confidence, as well as much pleasure, in recom " Here Yorworth lies .it was his brother's grave. much “ mending to the notice of our readers Mr. Sharp's Archer's hfr. Thomas says the legend on the efligy Hic Jncet " Register for 1881, a year book of facts" and fancies con Edwart,” and the local tradition that the neighbourin nected with the pastime. The book is full of archery Croes Iorwerth took its name from a memoria news, and also contains much that is interesting in archery cross marking the scene of Iorwerth Drwyndwn’s fall, literature. Messrs. Adnitt and Naunton of Shrewsbury harmonize well with this idea. The blazonry on the are the publishers. shield, however, connects the tomb with another Iorwerth, ap Mndoc ap Rhirid Fluidd, lord of Penllyn ; and Mr. Edwin Poole, of the County Times, has re Edward “ " it is probable that what is called the rude image of St. printed, from the columns of that paper, a History of Monacel,” is that of Gladus, his wife. But we find the the Breconshire Charities," which he has compiled from ‘ ‘ returns, and other sources. In his preface the following note to Madoc’ correcting Gough’s Camden,’ ofiicial “ where the tradition of Bwlch Gross Iorwerth is given :— compiler states his belief that he has given all that is ” is " ; Mr. Gough has certainly been mistaken concerning one known on the subject but" he evidently open to con monuments, not both. \Vhat be supposed to viction, for he adds that he will be glad to receive further of these if ” be the Image of St. Monacel is the monumental stone of communications ; but these, he expects to partake some female of distinction, the figure being recumbent, of details in connection with the charities he has catalogued with the hands joined, and the feet resting upon some ani rather than the record of any he has omitted. There is

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