Baring-Gould Sabine
A Book of North Wales
CHAPTER IV
HOLYHEAD
The Menai Straits to Holyhead – Llangadwaladr – The story of Cadwallon – Cadwaladr – Plague in 664 – Ruskin on Holyhead – The old caer – Chapel of the Irishman – Story of S. Cybi – The menhir of Clorach – Cybi and Elian – Church of Caergybi – Chapel of Llochwyd – Holy well – Chapel of S. Brigid – Breakwater – The South Stack – Sea-birds – Their eggs – Cytiau’r Gwyddelod – Old villages – Camp – Construction of the huts – A conservative people that votes Liberal
THE line from Bangor to Holyhead, after crossing the Menai Straits, runs through country that does not impress the traveller with an opinion that it is fertile or beautiful. The land is for the most part flat, or slightly undulating; there are no trees, much waste land, no mountains – only hills, and these away to the north. The surface of the island is speckled with little white houses with whitewashed roofs, as though a giant’s wedding had taken place there, and it was sprinkled over with the rice cast at the bride.
The line traverses the Malldraeth Marsh, and beyond Bodorgan station skirts Llyn Coron, a tarn with no picturesque surroundings, through which trickles the River Ffraw, that flows to the Aber, where once stood the residence, probably of timber, of the kings of Gwynedd.
Near the Llyn is Llangadwaladr, that takes its name from the last British prince who bore the title of King of All Britain. He was the son of Cadwallon ab Cadfan, and in the church is preserved the stone that bears the sententious inscription to inform the world that King Cadfan was “the wisest, the most renowned of all kings.”
The screen at Llaneilian has been already spoken of. It was delivered over to a joiner, who restored it by daubing over the paintings that decorated it, by hacking away the tracery that enriched it. Critics treat history in much the same fashion. They efface all the warm colouring that fancy has laid on, and eliminate all the detail which adorns it, leaving us but the naked scaffolding of fact.
If we deal in this way with the story of Cadfan and his grandson Cadwaladr, we arrive at very meagre and uninteresting outlines. We will therefore take the story much as we find it. Ethelfrid was king of Northumbria, and he sent away his wife, probably a British woman, and she took refuge with King Cadfan in Môn. There, shortly after her arrival at the court of Cadfan, the discarded queen became a mother, and bore a son to whom she gave the name of Edwin. About the same time the queen of Gwynedd bore one also, who was named Cadwallon.
The two boys were sent to be fostered in Brittany to King Solomon (there happened to be no king there of that name till two centuries later, but we will not be hypercritical).
In due course, when they were grown to man’s estate, the youths returned to Mona, and remained either there or at Deganwy till Cadfan died. Then Cadwallon assumed the crown of Gwynedd and the title of King of All Britain. Edwin went to Northumbria, where he was chosen king, and first of all the invading Angles and Saxons adopted a circlet of gold as symbol of sovereignty. Now one day Cadwallon was with his nephew Brian by the River Dulas when, overcome with the heat of the day, he laid himself down to sleep, with his head on Brian’s lap.
As he slept, Brian’s mind turned to the wrongs and sorrows that his countrymen had endured at the hands of the Teutonic invaders, and his tears ran down, and fell on Cadwallon’s face. The king was disturbed in his sleep by the falling drops, and, half asleep and half awake, he said, “It rains! It rains!”
Then he opened his eyes and saw that the sky above was blue as a corn-flower, and he remarked, “It is strange. There has been a shower, and the sun is shining. But where is the rainbow?”
Then Brian said, “Uncle, on the head of Edwin.” Cadwallon looked in his nephew’s face and saw that his eye-lashes were heavy with tears, and he asked the reason.
Thereupon Brian told him all that was in his heart, and Cadwallon rose up and vowed that he would make a desperate effort to recover the land for the British people.
So he made war on Edwin, but met with defeat after defeat, and was finally obliged to escape into Ireland.
There he resolved on seeking the assistance of the Armoricans, so he took ship and sailed for Brittany, but encountered a storm and was wrecked on an island, probably Ouessant, and all on board were lost save only Cadwallon and Brian.
Through distress at the death of his followers, and dearth of food, the king fell into a fit of profound dejection.
Brian was troubled for his uncle, whose heart seemed to be broken. He went about the island seeking for food, but could find naught. The sea-fowl had been disturbed by the gale, and the season was not that for eggs. He endeavoured to collect shell-fish, but the waters still boiled and tumbled on the rocks, and he could obtain none. Then he cut a slice from his own thigh, lighted a fire, roasted the flesh, and brought it to the king, and said that it was venison. Cadwallon, believing this, ate, and his spirit revived within him, and he determined on making an effort to reach the mainland. The wind fell, and he and Brian were able to get their battered ship afloat, and in it they were wafted over to the coast of Brittany. They went before King Solomon, who received them kindly and promised his aid.
So it was resolved that Cadwallon should return to Wales with a thousand men of Armorica, and that Brian should make his way in disguise to the court of Edwin and spy out how matters stood there.
Brian landed at Southampton, and assuming the rags of a beggar, but armed with a spiked staff, made his way to York, where was King Edwin. Brian, in a mendicant’s garb, went to the palace and stood outside among the beggars who waited daily for alms. As he thus stood his sister came forth. She had been taken captive, and had been placed in the household of the queen. She bore a pitcher, and was on her way to the well to fetch water when Brian addressed her in a whining tone. Nevertheless, she at once recognised him, and they carried on a conversation together with caution, lest he should be discovered. What he particularly desired was that a certain counsellor of Edwin should be pointed out to him by whose advice the king was principally governed, and whom the Britons regarded as a specially dangerous adversary.
Brian’s sister did so as the man issued from the door with alms for the beggars. Thereupon Brian pressed through the crowd, and, raising his staff, struck him in the breast and transfixed him there. Then he stepped back and disappeared among the beggars.
Brian now fled to Exeter, where he roused the Western Britons, and they held the city.
Meanwhile Cadwallon had arrived, and through Brian entered into a league with Penda, king of the Mercians, against Edwin. Both forces marched into Northumbria, and a battle was fought at a place called Heathfield, and Edwin was slain and his Northern Angles routed.
Then, for a while, Cadwallon reigned over all the British peoples in Wales, Strathclyde, and Devon and Cornwall.
He was succeeded by his son Cadwaladr, whose mother was a sister of Penda the Mercian. He was a good and peace-loving prince, not made of the same stuff as his father, and although he gained some victories his reign was marked by loss of ground on all sides.
He wore the crown for twelve years. In 664 a terrible plague broke out which spread desolation over Britain and Ireland, and in the latter swept away two-thirds of the inhabitants. Cadwaladr was one of the victims, and was buried in the church that bears his name by Llyn Coron. The church has an east window to the chancel of a flamboyant character, with some old stained glass in it representing the Crucifixion and saints.
The line to Holyhead passes a cluster of lakes of not much beauty – that of Llyn Penllyn has a little island in it – then it crosses a causeway into Holy Isle, and draws up at the terminus of Holyhead, under Pen Caergybi, the highest elevation in Anglesey.
Ruskin says: —
“Just on the other side of the Mersey you have your Snowdon and your Menai Straits, and that mighty granite rock beyond the moors of Anglesey, splendid in its heathery crest, and foot planted in the deep sea, once thought of as sacred – a divine promontory, looking westward, the Holy Head or Headland, still not without awe when its red light glares first through the gloom.”
The cliff scenery here is of the finest quality, and Holyhead well merits a prolonged visit, what with the stimulating air rushing through one’s lungs charged with sparkles, the look-out on the green sea flecked with foam and skimmed by gulls as flakes of froth that have been detached from the waves and become alive, the plunging water on the beach, the purple folds of the hills, and the abrupt cliffs, their feet ever bitten into and worried by the angry waves.
The town is as busy as Beaumaris is inert. It lives on the Irish trade, whereas Beaumaris picks up subsistence during a few short months only from bathers.
The one object of antiquarian interest in the town is the church, planted in the midst of an old caer, or fortress, the walls of which still stand in places 16 feet high, and are over 6 feet thick. The enclosure is quadrangular, and measures 220 feet by 130 feet. To what period the walls belong is hard to determine. They are constructed of unshaped blocks of granite rounded by the action of wind and rain, and are set in mortar made of sea-shells. In places they are arranged herring-bone fashion. The construction is too uncouth to be Roman, and the round towers at the angles are not Irish. It is certainly prior to the English conquest. A Norman builder would have disdained to put forth such work, and it is probably a unique specimen of a caer of late British erection. The two entrances are much more modern. This fortress was held by the Gwyddyl against Caswallon Long-hand. Then the walls were of stones set up without mortar, and probably faced with huge granite slabs. Caswallon forced his way in, and slew the Irish king Serigi with his own hand, where now stands Llan-y-Gwyddel in the churchyard.
The chapel had a chancel, which has been pulled down, and it was converted into a grammar school in 1748, but is now disused. After the expulsion of the Irish the enclosure became a royal caer, and was occasionally occupied by Maelgwn Gwynedd, who made it over to S. Cybi.
The story of the saint is as follows. Cybi was the son of Solomon, king of Cornwall, and Gwen, the aunt of S. David. He was born between the Lynher and Tamar at Callington, and was sent to school when aged seven. Till he was twenty-seven years old Cybi remained in Cornwall, and then he started on his travels on the Continent. There he made the acquaintance of S. Elian the Pilgrim, and a friendship was formed that was to last through life, though little did both suppose at the time that they would be neighbours in their old age. From his travels Cybi returned to Cornwall, where he became involved in a political disturbance.
His father had died whilst he was away, and his uncle Cataw, or Cado, had assumed the rule, but he was succeeded by the turbulent Constantine. The arrival in Cornwall of Cybi gave occasion to an insurrection, and an attempt was made to displace Constantine, and elevate Cybi to the throne. It failed, and Cybi was obliged to fly for his life. He took with him a party of attached disciples and his uncle Cyngar. After a brief stay in Glamorgan he crossed into Ireland, and visited S. Enda in Aran, and remained with him for four years.
Cyngar was so decrepit with age that he could eat no solid food, and Cybi bought a cow with its calf to supply the old uncle with milk. This led to ructions. The calf strayed into the meadow of a monk of the name of Fintan, who impounded it. The consequence was angry altercation and so much unpleasantness that Cybi had to leave. He crossed to Ireland, took boat in Dublin Bay, and landed in Lleyn, the rocky promontory of Carnarvon, where his wicker-work coracle got on a reef that tore the leather covering. However, all reached the shore in safety, and Cybi founded a church where is now Llangybi, near Pwllheli.
Maelgwn, king of Gwynedd, was hunting in Lleyn one day, when a goat he was following fled for refuge to Cybi’s cell, and this led to the king meeting the saint. He was so impressed with his goodness and dignity that he made him a present of the caer at Holyhead, and to this day the Welsh name for the town is Caergybi.
Shortly after this “Magna et verbosa epistola venit e Capreis,” the violent tirade of Gildas was launched at the heads of the British princes. Now one of the companions of Cybi was Caffo, a brother of Gildas. Maelgwn insisted on his dismissal, and Cybi reluctantly obeyed. Caffo left and got as far as Rhosyr, now Newborough, in Anglesey, when some shepherds of Maelgwn’s queen, incensed at the indignity put on their master, fell on him and killed him. The church of Llangaffo marks the site of the murder. This took place about 545, and Maelgwn died of the yellow plague in 547. Cybi survived him to about 554.
There is a menhir at Clorach, near Llanerchymedd, with a curious hunch on it, popularly called “Tyfrydog’s Thief.” The story goes that a thief got into the church of Llandyfrydog and stole the Bible, put his spoil on his back, and ran away, but was turned to stone with the Bible he had carried off.
Not far from this prehistoric monument were two wells called after S. Cybi and S. Seiriol. Here they were wont to meet at midday, Cybi walking from the west and Seiriol from the east.
Cybi would start in early morning along the old Roman road, and he had the sun in his face all the way, and in like manner Seiriol had it behind him. They met at noon, and lunched together and drank from their respective wells. Then Cybi turned west to retrace his steps, so also did Seiriol; and consequently Cybi had the evening sun blazing on his face for his homeward walk, and Seiriol was still in dusk, with his shadow running before him. The result was that Cybi was tanned, whereas Seiriol remained fair, and the former on this account obtained the name of Cybi the Tawny and his comrade from Penmon that of Seiriol the Fair.
Matthew Arnold wrote a poem on the meeting at Clorach, but not knowing the place, and not knowing the directions taken, missed the point of the story.
The church of Caergybi is fine. The chancel is Early English, with a Decorated east window. There was intended to have been a central tower, and the church was a cross church originally. The tower was never completed. The porch and side aisle are rich Perpendicular, and there is some quaint carving outside the south transept; and the south doorway within the porch is peculiarly rich, though the figure sculpture is poor. Over the door in a niche is the Trinity, popularly mistaken for a representation of Maelgwn Gwynedd. A south chapel, in excellent taste, from the designs of Mr. Harold Hughes, has been erected, with niches containing statuettes of Cybi and Seiriol. It contains a recumbent figure of the Hon. William Owen Stanley, good, but wrongly placed.
The nave has internally on each side an arcade of three Tudor arches. On the north, the piers are octagonal; on the south, clustered of four shafts, with general capitals. The arrangement of the transepts is clumsy, like other Welsh examples, running from north to south, uninterrupted by arches, and giving the effect of one church set at right angles to another.
Capel y Llochwyd is on the mountain. Bishop Stanley, in 1830, thus describes it: —
“A singular fissure, cleaved in a direct line from the summit to the base, forms, or rather did form, a passage of communication of no small celebrity in ancient days, and retaining its odour of sanctity till very recent date. It is known by the name of Ogof Lochwyd, ogof signifying a cave. A spring of crystal water filtering through the deep strata formed a deep well at the bottom of this chasm. Situated just at the higher opening of the gorge was a chapel for the accommodation of pilgrims called Capel y Llochwyd, of which a considerable remnant in ruins at the head of this gorge still remains. Till within sixty years the lonely chapel with its well were from time unknown the resort of lads and lassies of the island, who, at a certain annual festival called Suliau y Creiriau, the Sundays of the Relics, and held during three successive Sundays in July, assembled in troops to ascertain the contingencies awaiting them. Each diviner into futurity descended the chasm to the well, and there, if after having taken a mouthful of holy water and grasped two handfuls of sand from the charmed font, he or she could accomplish the re-ascent with them safely, each would obtain the wish of their heart before the close of the year. About sixty years ago (1770) the chapel was reduced to ruins, and the well was concealed by filling it with rubbish; but till twenty years ago the walls, to the height of seven or eight feet, remained sufficiently entire to convey a tolerable idea of the perfect building, which is represented to have been a substantial though rude and primitive edifice, composed of unhewn stones cemented with mortar, the windows and doorways excepted, which were well wrought by the chisel with considerable labour from some obdurated material, the whole apparently consisting of one oblong chamber not exceeding a few yards in length.
“Of the well, however, not a trace was left, though its existence was proved beyond a shadow of doubt a few years ago by a party who landed and at length succeeded in detecting the spot, from whence, after removing a quantity of sand and loose stone, again gushed the fountain of water in its pristine vigour and doubtless inherent virtues.”
There was at one time a chapel of S. Ffraid or Brigid on an islet where according to legend she disembarked from Ireland. This was not the Brigid of Kildare, but a namesake. The story goes that being unable to find a boat to serve her purpose, she cut a sod of turf, threw it into the sea, stepped on it, and was carried across. The turf lodged on this hump of rock, and became fast there. But the wintry waves have eaten away the isle, chewed up the turf, and torn down the chapel walls.
The breakwater of Holyhead is a stupendous achievement. It is about a mile and a half long, and has a lighthouse at the extremity. On the Skerries also, some seven miles north, is another lighthouse, and the Government had to buy it from the owner, a Mr. Jones, for the sum of £444,984.
The old Government pier had already cost a million and a half of money, but it was abandoned when the London and North Western Railway Company undertook the construction of the new pier. The new harbour has a water area of twenty-four acres.
Every visitor to Holyhead makes a point of going to the South Stack, just under four miles from the town. Cliffe thus describes it: —
“At first you feel disappointed, and it is not until you descend that you become impressed with the grandeur of the scenery. At the foot of the formidable stairs, 380 in number, you arrive at the entrance of a light suspension bridge. For some years after the lighthouse was erected (1809) the only means of access across the chasm was by a rope and basket; then a bridge of ropes was made, but the risk was so great that a chain bridge became necessary. After crossing the bridge you can descend to look at a vast fissure in the islet, and wonder, if the day be stormy, how the boats fared that conveyed the materials for the lighthouse to that rugged and perilous spot, where the surge of the sea is awe-inspiring. The sea in south-westerly gales often dashes over the dwellings of the lightkeepers, when the scene is truly sublime.”
The coast is alive with sea-birds, kittiwakes, razorbills, guillemots, solan geese, puffin, shag, cormorant, and tern; and collections of these birds’ eggs can be obtained at a very small cost in the town. An ingenious provision of Nature saves the eggs from being carried by the raging winds from the ledges of rock on which they are laid, when the mother-bird is not sitting. If, for instance, a guillemot’s egg be looked at, it will be seen that it is so balanced that the wind, catching it, spins it round on its centre of gravity, and does not obtain sufficient resistance to carry it away bodily, and precipitate it into the sea.
There are objects of considerable archæological interest in Holy Island, and these are the Cytiau’r Gwyddelod, or habitations of the Irish. There are several collections, and some were explored by the Hon. W. O. Stanley in 1871.
They are strewn over the side of Holyhead mountain, but there are others by Porth Dafarch and Mynydd Celyn.
The sites of ancient habitations have been selected for shelter from the prevailing winds, and the huts are usually grouped together forming villages of from twelve to fifty huts. They are always protected from hostile attack by rude walls of dry masonry or by precipitous rocks. They are circular, and have slabs of granite set on end to face them within and without. The entrances are to the south. The roofs were constructed of poles resting on the low walls, brought together in the middle, and thatched or covered with turf. The walls of the huts enclose a space of from fifteen to twenty feet in diameter, and the doorway is formed of two upright stones of about four feet high, upon which formerly rested a stone lintel.
Some of these huts were dwelling-houses, others served merely as kitchens, and some were sweating or bathing chambers, by the production of steam by throwing water over heated stones.
Mr. Stanley found bronze weapons, jet necklaces, ornamented spindle-whorls, stone lamps, and moulds for bronze buttons. The abundance of articles discovered in these dwellings is very unusual and seems to point to their having been left in a hurry.
There is a strong camp, Caer-y-Twr, on Holyhead mountain, facing east, and about two-thirds of the way up to the summit from the town. It is surrounded by a rude wall of dry masonry, following the ridge of the rock, which in places is almost perpendicular. The entrance is steep and seems to have been defended by hornwork.
There is a narrow cleft in the face of the mountain to the west, above débris of rock that has fallen in some convulsion of nature, leaving a perpendicular face of rock two hundred feet in height. This gap forms a passage through which only one person could pass at a time, and a steep path winds to it between rock faces. It may have served as a postern to the camp.
The construction of huts in the fashion described was derived by the Irish from the original population of the isle, the people who erected the rude stone monuments.
A traveller in Gilead and Moab will find precisely similar collections of hovels, similarly surrounded with walls of unhewn blocks, and associated, as in Ireland, with cromlechs and cairns and menhirs, the relics of the same prehistoric race which through long centuries, and after long journeys to new lands, continued to build houses, erect camps, and set up monuments to their dead in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, and Northern Africa precisely as they did in Central Asia and in Palestine. A mysterious people that never advanced in the art of building, but clung tenaciously, as the bee, the bird, the spider, and the ant, to traditional usage in the structure of their dwellings, and which clung with like tenacity to the cult of ancestors. It came out of Asia with polished stone weapons, and only slowly accepted, as foreign importations, axes and swords and personal ornaments, made of bronze.
Certainly these were the most conservative people that ever overran Europe; and possibly that clinging to old institutions, that aversion to change, which brought ruin on the Welsh cause, may have been due to the large admixture of Iberian blood in the Cymric veins.
Take the Welshman of the present day. In his politics he is a Liberal, but in his bent of mind, in his mode of life, in his social relations, he is the most conservative of men.
This tenacity to what is old and customary is a valuable asset; it counterbalances the volatile and experimental tendency to adopt every novelty, and wreck every institution to supplant it with what is new and untried, but which is loud in promise.
It may be, it probably is the case, that there is much of this immobility in the English race. It is because of this that the American and German are beating us in manufacture and commerce, and if we are ever routed in the field, it will be due to the clot of it that has settled in our War Office not having been expelled.
