Baring-Gould Sabine
A Book of North Wales
CHAPTER IX
S. ASAPH
Situation of the city – The cathedral – Tomb of Bishop Barrow – Epitaph of Dean Lloyd – The Red Book of S. Asaph– Dick of Aberdaron – Parish church – Catherine of Berain – Meiriadog – The legend of Cynan, and of the Eleven Thousand Virgins – Ffynnon Fair – Cefn caves – Plas Newydd – Cawr Rhufoniog – Covered avenue – Rhuddlan – The air “Morfa Rhuddlan” – Welsh airs – Need for careful examination and discrimination – Stories connected with certain tunes – Welsh hymn tunes – Gruffydd ab Llewelyn – Constitution of Rhuddlan – Edward “Prince of Wales.”
THE city of S. Asaph is pleasantly planted, for the most part, on rising ground above the River Elwy, in the vale of the Clwyd, which unites with the Elwy below this miniature city.
The cathedral is small and not particularly interesting, and the interior effect is spoiled by the choir being moved under the central tower, and the transepts being closed in to form vestries, chapter house, consistory court, and library. The structural choir is a mere chancel without aisles, and possibly the dean, canons, and choristers may have felt cramped in it; but the alteration has robbed the interior effect of its dignity. The clerestory windows are square-headed, and the arches of the nave rise from pillars without capitals. The chancel was restored by Sir Gilbert Scott in the Early English style, and contains some good modern glass, and some that is execrable.
Outside the cathedral, at the west end, is the tomb of Bishop Isaac Barrow, who died in 1680, with the epitaph: “O vos transeuntes in Domum Domini, domum orationis, orate pro conservo vestro ut inveniam misericordiam in Die Domini.”
In the cathedral yard is a cross, with eight figures about it, of those who assisted in the translation of the Bible into Welsh, but it commemorates especially the tercentenary of Bishop Morgan’s first complete translation, published in 1588.
One of the deans of S. Asaph, Dr. David Lloyd, who died in 1663, is said to have made for himself the following epitaph: —
“This is the epitaph
Of the Dean of S. Asaph,
Who, by keeping a table
Better than he was able,
Ran much into debt
Which is not paid yet.”
He was buried at Ruthin, of which he was once warden, but there is no monument there to his memory.
In the episcopal library is preserved the Red Book of S. Asaph, originally compiled in the fourteenth century, containing a fragmentary life of the saint who gives his name to the church and diocese, and early charters and other documents connected with it.
The site was granted to S. Kentigern, of Glasgow, when driven away by the king of Strathclyde, Morcant, and he only returned after the defeat, in 573, of Morcant by Rhydderch Hael. Then he left his favourite disciple Asaph to take charge of the foundation he had made on the banks of the Elwy.
In the cathedral library is preserved the polyglot dictionary of Dick of Aberdaron, a literary vagabond. He is reported to have acquired thirty-four languages. He was a dirty, unkempt creature, who wandered about the country, his pockets stuffed with books. His predominant passion was the acquisition of languages. A dictionary or a grammar was to him a more acceptable present than a meal or a suit of clothes. He had no home, and was sometimes obliged to sleep in outhouses.
Bishop Carey did what he was able for him, but his personal habits made him unsuitable to have in a decent house, and he was impatient of every restraint. He died in 1843, and was buried at S. Asaph.
The little parish church consists of nave and aisle of equal length – one dedicated to S. Kentigern and the other to S. Asaph. It lies at the bottom of the hill, and has a somewhat original Perpendicular east window.
Not far from S. Asaph is Berain, the residence once of Catherine Tudor, an heiress with royal blood in her veins, for she was descended from Henry VII., who, when he was in Brittany collecting auxiliaries for his descent on England to win the crown from Richard III., had an intrigue with a Breton lady named Velville, and became the father of Sir Roland Velville. Sir Roland’s daughter and heiress, Jane, married Tudor ab Robert Vychan of Berain, and their only child was Catherine. She is commonly spoken of as Mam Cymru, the Mother of Wales, as from her so many of the Welsh families derive descent.
She was first married to John Salusbury of Lleweni, and by him became the mother of Sir John Salusbury, who was born with two thumbs on each hand, and was noted for his prodigious strength. At the funeral of her husband, Sir Richard Clough gave her his arm. Outside the churchyard stood Maurice Wynn of Gwydir, awaiting a decent opportunity for proposing to her. As she issued from the gate he did this. “Very sorry,” replied Catherine, “but I have just accepted Sir Richard Clough. Should I survive him I will remember you.”
She did outlive Clough and married Wynn. She further survived Wynn, and her fourth husband was Edward Thelwall of Plas-y-Ward. She died August 27th, and was buried at Llannefydd, September 1st, 1591, but without a monument of any kind.
Popular tradition will have it that she had six husbands in succession, and that as she tired of them she poured molten lead into their ears when they slept, and so killed them. Her last husband, seeing that her affection towards him was cooling, and fearing lest he should meet with the same fate as her former husbands, shut her up in a room that is still shown at Berain, and starved her to death. There are several supposed portraits of Catherine to be found in Wales, but not all are genuine. One by Lucas de Heere, painted in 1568, is in the possession of Mr. R. J. Ll. Price of Rhiwlas, near Bala, and shows her to have been a very beautiful woman with hard, dark eyes. Another genuine portrait is at Wygfair, in the possession of Colonel Howard, and this was taken when Catherine was an old woman. The remorseless stony eye is that of one quite capable of the trick of the molten lead.
In a lovely situation on the Elwy is Meiriadog, whence came Cynan, brother or cousin of the road-building Elen. When Maximus went to Gaul to assert his claims to the purple, Cynan accompanied him and never returned. Much fabulous matter has attached itself to this Cynan. It was supposed that after the death of Maximus he retired to Brittany, with all the gallant youths who had accompanied him to the war, and as they were forbidden to return home they appealed for a shipload of wives to be sent out to them. Accordingly Ursula, daughter of Dunawd, a Welsh king, started with eleven thousand marriageable damsels, but they were carried by adverse winds up the Rhine, and landing at Cologne were there massacred by the Huns. The walls of a church there are covered with little boxes containing their skulls.
The earliest mention of these gay young wenches starting out husband-hunting, and meeting instead with a gory death, is found in a sermon preached between 752 and 839, but in it Ursula is not named. In an addition to the chronicle of Sigebert of Gemblours, made by a later hand, is an entry under 453: —
“The most famous of wars was that waged by the white-robed army of 11,000 Holy Virgins under their leader, the holy Ursula. She was the only daughter of Nothus (Dunawd), a most noble and rich prince of the Britons.”
She was sought in marriage, the writer goes on to say, by “a certain most ferocious tyrant,” and her father wished her to marry him. But Ursula had dedicated herself to celibacy, and the father was thrown into great perplexity. Then she proposed to take with her ten virgins of piety and beauty, and that to each, with herself, should be given an escort of a thousand other girls, and that they might be suffered to cruise about for three years and see the world. To this her father consented. And the requisite number of damsels having been raked together, Ursula sailed away with them in eleven elegantly furnished galleys. For three years they went merrily cruising over the high seas, but at the end of that time, having ventured up the Rhine to Cologne, they were all put to the sword.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, who died in 1154, gives another form to the story. He relates that the Emperor Maximian (Maximus), having depopulated Northern Gaul, sent to Britain for colonists wherewith to repeople its waste places. Thus out of Armorica he made a second Britain, which he put under the rule of Conan Meriadoc, who sent to have a consignment of British girls forwarded to him. At this time there reigned in Cornwall a king, Dinothus by name, and he listened to the appeal and despatched his daughter Ursula with eleven thousand young ladies, and sixty thousand others of lower rank. Unfavourable winds drove the fleet to barbarous shores, where all were butchered.
The story is, of course, devoid of a shred of historic truth, and is a mere romance, and a silly and poor one.
But there is something to be added.
Conan Meriadoc has figured largely in fabulous Breton history. At the beginning of the eighteenth century a priest of Lamballe, named Gallet, wrote a history for the glorification of the dukes of Rohan, and he spun a wonderful tale that imposed on later serious historians. According to him, Conan or Cynan Meiriadog, disappointed at not getting Ursula, married Darerca, the sister of S. Patrick, and from this union descended the kings of Brittany and the dukes of Rohan. This he achieved by identifying Cynan with Caw, the father of Gildas, entirely regardless of chronology, for Gildas, son of Caw, king in Strathclyde, died in 570, and Cynan was contemporary with Maximus, who was killed in 388, and Patrick was born about 410.
Dom Morice, whose History of Brittany was published in 1750, reproduces this absurd and impossible pedigree, and further identifies Conan with Cataw, son of Geraint, and uncle of S. Cybi, who died about 554.
There is a holy well, Ffynnon Fair, in the parish of Cefn, in a beautiful situation, once very famous, but the chapel is in ruins, though the spring flows merrily still. It was the “Gretna Green” of the district, for here clandestine marriages were wont to take place, celebrated by one of the vicars choral of the cathedral, till all such marriages were put a stop to by the Act of Lord Hardwicke in 1753. The chapel was of the fifteenth century, and is now overgrown with ivy, and in a clump of trees. Mrs. Hemans made this, “Our Lady’s Well,” the subject of one of her poems. In the unpretending-looking house just across the Elwy was written one of the earliest printed Welsh grammars (1593).
The Cefn caves are in an escarpment of mountain limestone high above the river, and have been carefully explored. They yielded bones of extinct animals – the cave bear, wolf, elephas antiquus, bos longifrons, reindeer, the hyæna, and the rhinoceros – but very scanty traces of man. The bones are preserved at Plas-yn-Cefn, the residence of Mrs. Williams-Wynn, on whose property the caves are. The caves are worth visiting more for the view from the rocks than for any intrinsic interest in themselves.
A quaint Elizabethan mansion, Plas Newydd, has in its wainscoted hall an inscription to show that it was built by one Foulk ab Robert in 1583 when he was aged forty-three. It is said to have been the first house in the neighbourhood covered with slates. A giant, Cawr Rhufoniog, used to visit there, and a crook is shown high up near the cornice, on which he was wont to suspend his hat. Giants, it would appear, were in days of yore pretty plentiful in this neighbourhood. The grave of one is pointed out close by, and another, Edward Shôn Dafydd, otherwise called Cawr y Ddôl, lived at an adjoining farm. His walking-stick was the axle-tree of a cart, with a huge crowbar driven into one end and bent for a handle. He and Sir John Salusbury (of the double thumbs) once fell to testing their strength by uprooting forest trees.
Between Plas Newydd and Plas-yn-Cefn, in a field, is a “covered avenue,” only it has lost all its coverers. It was in a mound called Carnedd Tyddyn Bleiddyn, with some trees on the top. When these were blown down in a storm, a little over thirty years ago, the cromlech within was exposed. It was found to contain several skeletons, in a crouching position, of what have been called the Platycnemic Men of Denbighshire.
Between S. Asaph and Rhyl is Rhuddlan with its castle in ruins. Formerly the tide washed its walls. The marsh, Morfa Rhuddlan, was the scene of a great battle, fought against the Saxons in 796, in which the Welsh, under their King Caradog, were defeated with great slaughter, and the prisoners taken were all put to the sword. The beautiful melody “Morfa Rhuddlan” has been supposed to pertain to a lament composed on that occasion; but the character of the melody is not earlier than the seventeenth century, and it apparently owes its name to the verses adapted to it by Iean Glan Geirionydd, who lived a thousand years after the event of this battle.
Welsh melodies require to be taken in hand by some musical antiquary and thoroughly investigated and sifted. It will be found that along with many noble airs that are genuinely Welsh, a goodly number are importations from England. This was inevitable, so mixed up were the Welsh with English families in the great houses and castles. Edward Jones published his Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards in 1784. He collected the tunes from harpers and singers, but he knew nothing of old English music, and was incapable of discriminating what was of home production from what was an importation; consequently, in his collection, a goodly percentage consist of English melodies.
He gives us a Welsh air, “Difyrwch Gwyr Dyfi,” as a bardic melody, but it is found in Tom D’Urfey’s Pills to purge Melancholy, published in 1719-1720, and is the old English melody of “Greensleeves” spoiled. The melody of “Cynwyd” is none other than the venerable English air of “Dargason,” which may be traced back in England to the reign of Elizabeth. A tune given by Jones as “Toriad y Dydd” is the old English air “Windsor Terrace,” and “Y Brython” is a country dance published in The Dancing Master by Playford, 1696. Jones gives the “Monks’ March” as probably the tune of the monks of Bangor when they marched to Chester, about the year 603, and it is none other than “General Monk’s March,” composed at the restoration of Charles II., and “The King’s Note” is none other than King Henry VIII.’s “Pastyme with good company.” The “Ash Grove” is doubtful. It first appears as a popular song in Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, 1727, “Cease your funning.” The Beggar’s Opera became the rage in London, throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, and we know that it was performed also in Wales. Edward Jones in his Bardic Museum, in the second series published in 1802, inserted a tune that seems to have been formed on it, but the resemblance was confined to the first part. John Parry touched it up and altered all the second part of the tune to what it is now. It is, of course, possible that Gay may have heard a Welsh air and introduced it into his opera, but it is far more probable that the Beggar’s Opera, which was repeatedly performed in Wales, introduced the melody into the Principality. One Welsh air Gay did insert in his play, “Of noble race was Shenkin,” and he may have picked up another.
Tunes are like birds of the air that fly from place to place and light on every tree, and are at home everywhere. There is a popular melody sung to very gross words by the peasantry in England. I picked it up in Devon, and it has also been found in Yorkshire, and a lady sent it me as heard in Wales, but without the words. Mr. Chappell has noted sixteen in Jones’s collection that are certainly English, and he did not exhaust the number.
A curious instance of the manner in which melodies drift from their original connections is that of the popular hymn tune “Helmsley,” to which is sung “Lo! He comes with clouds descending.”
Thomas Olivers was born in the village of Tregynon, in Montgomeryshire, in 1725; his father was a small farmer, who died when Thomas was a lad, and he was then committed to the charge of his father’s uncle Thomas Tudor, a farmer at Forden. In his youth he was of a merry and thoughtless disposition, and was dearly fond of dancing and all sorts of amusements. In his autobiography he states “that out of sixteen nights and days, he was fifteen of them without ever being in bed.”
Some years after, when he was in Bristol, he was “converted” by Whitefield, and he became a Wesleyan Methodist lay preacher, and in 1777 undertook the printing of Wesley’s Arminian Magazine. But his lack of education stood in his way, and in 1789 Wesley had to take the periodical out of his hands. In his Journal, Wesley enters his reasons: “1. The errata are unsufferable. I have borne them for these 12 years, but can bear them no longer. 2. Several pieces are inserted without my knowledge, both in prose and verse.”
Olivers became noted, however, as a hymn writer, and especially for his tune “Helmsley,” which he gave to the world, no doubt firmly convinced that it was original. But this it was not; it was a reminiscence of his old unregenerate days. In fact it is an opera air, and belongs to The Golden Pippin, in which occurs the song: —
“Guardian angels now protect me,
Send to me the youth I love.”
The Golden Pippin appeared in 1773.
Some of the stories connected with genuine Welsh airs are delightful. David Owen, of the Garreg Wen, lay on his death-bed, and fell into a trance. His mother, who was watching him at the time, supposed that he was dead. But presently he roused, and said to her that he had been in an ecstasy, and had seen heaven open, and the harpers about the throne were playing a wondrous strain. He called for his harp, and, with a radiance as of the world he had visited on his face, played the tune “Dafydd y Garreg Wen.” As the last note died away the flame of life passed from him. The air became fixed in his mother’s memory, and has thus been preserved.
Another story of the same musician is that he was returning home from a feast in the early morning, and daybreak overtook him as he sat on a stone – still pointed out at Portmadoc – and there, watching the soaring skylark, he composed the air “The Rising of the Lark.” The melody “Hoffedd merch Dafydd Manuel” (“The delight of David Manuel’s daughter”) is associated with a member of a very remarkable family. Dafydd Manuel was a poor cottager, born in Trefeglwys, Montgomeryshire, in or about 1625. He became a poet, and lived to a very advanced age, dying in 1726 at the age of a hundred and one. He left three children, two daughters – also excellent poets – and a son David. The elder daughter, Mary, noted for her wit and as a great harpist and singer, is she whose tune is called “The delight of David Manuel’s daughter.” Another member of the family, John, who fought in Egypt under Sir Ralph Abercromby, was thoroughly conversant in English, French, and Welsh. His daughter Sarah was quite illiterate till her thirtieth year, when she learned to read fluently and became well acquainted with the current literature of the day. Thomas Manuel, a sawyer, was illiterate till he grew to manhood, but accidentally becoming possessed of a French Testament, he resolved on mastering that language, which he did very quickly. His son William was a very remarkable boy, who at an early age – it is said at four, but this is hardly credible – could read English, Welsh, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. At the age of eight he was placed in Christ’s Hospital, where he died of consumption on attaining his twelfth year. This extraordinary child had two brothers also possessed of great natural gifts. Thomas, the eldest, was an excellent Welsh, Latin, Greek, and English scholar. He also died of decline. Edward, the youngest, gave promise of even more extraordinary abilities than William. It is asserted that he could read English, Welsh, German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew when only four years old, and he died of consumption at the age of five. Precocious geniuses are like candles that blaze away and gutter and are out quickly. The mother of these remarkable children, perceiving the thirst for learning evinced by them, taught herself to read and translate Latin and Greek, for the sake of helping them in their studies.
Some of the Welsh hymn tunes are magnificent, and one cannot but desire that some had been taken into such popular collections as Hymns Ancient and Modern, in place of the utterly insipid trash which has found its place there. But some are quite impossible of transference, as “Crug-y-bar,” one of the very best. The Welsh accent so differs from that of English, that to render the words into English, or write others to suit the melody that are not nonsense, is almost impossible.
The Welsh melodies have a charm of their own, and they are harp tunes; whereas a great many of the most popular of our English folk airs are hornpipes. But, as already said, the thing needed is a critical investigation and a sifting of Welsh melodies.
Gruffydd ab Llewelyn, king of Gwynedd (1039-1069) and prince of Wales, had a fortress at Rhuddlan. He was a notable man, and he played a conspicuous part in Welsh history before the Norman Conquest. Under him the Cymry developed an amount of military capacity that was unusual. At the commencement of his reign he raided Mercia and defeated the English forces under Edwin, the brother of Earl Leofric, and slew him in battle. Then Gruffydd turned his attention to South Wales, and defeated its prince, Howel, and forced him to take refuge in Ireland. Two years after Howel returned at the head of Irish kerns, and was defeated again. On this occasion Gruffydd captured Howel’s wife and made her his mistress. But in the ensuing year Gruffydd was himself defeated and made prisoner. He, however, escaped, and returned to Gwynedd. Howel, with a fleet from Ireland, entered the Towy, but was beaten and killed in battle by Gruffydd.
Under Harold an English army assembled at Gloucester and marched against the Welsh. Gruffydd made peace, but next year broke his engagements and invaded Mercia, which was defended by the sheriff and the Bishop of Hereford. They were, however, defeated, and both fell on the field of battle.
In 1063 Harold determined to crush his dangerous neighbour, and he marched to Rhuddlan and surprised Gruffydd, who, however, escaped in a boat. Unable to follow, and not strong enough to maintain his hold on the land, Harold contented himself with destroying Rhuddlan, and then retired to Gloucester, but only to concert a plan for a systematic invasion and subjugation of Wales. He collected a fleet at Bristol, and sailed along the coast ravaging it, whilst his brother Tostig, at the head of an army, wasted Gwynedd.
Hitherto the English had been accustomed to fight in close array, heavily weighted with their armour. They now abandoned their old methods, and adopted those of their foes, with the result that the power of Gruffydd was broken, and some of his Welsh followers turned against him and murdered him. “The shield and deliverer of the Britons,” says the Brut, “the man who had hitherto been invincible, was now left in the glens of desolation, after he had taken vast plunder, and gained innumerable riches, and gathered treasures of gold and silver, jewels, and purple raiment.”
The castle of Rhuddlan was rebuilt under the Earl of Chester at the same time as that of Montgomery, and these formed redoubtable outposts whence the Welsh could be watched and worried.
After the conquest of Wales by Edward I. a Constitution was drawn up at Rhuddlan in 1284, which was included among the statutes of the realm. English law was introduced. In the matter of succession to land, Welsh custom was to be followed. Upon a death occurring, estates continued to be divisible among all the children.
“The general constitutional effect was that the Principality was considered a distinct parcel of the Kingdom of England, ruled, however, by English laws, save so far as these were not modified by the provisions of the statute.”3
I have already told the story of Llewelyn, the last of the Welsh princes, and of his treacherous and unprincipled brother David, but I may here enter into fuller particulars of the end of David.
He had been a fugitive with his wife and children in the forests and mountains, hunted from place to place, with a few tenants accompanying him, grumbling at short commons and wretched quarters, casting sidelong glances at the English, and wondering whether they would not secure better meals and more comfortable lodgings if they turned against their lord and prince. And this desire took effect; for their own base ends they betrayed him to the English king. With the same measure with which he had dealt with his brother Llewelyn, it was meted to him. Delivered over to the hereditary enemies of his race by men of his own household, tongue, and blood, he was brought before Edward at Rhuddlan, and with him were handed over the crown of King Arthur and the rest of the regalia of Wales.
On the last day of September, 1283, Edward held a parliament at Shrewsbury for the trial of David, who was condemned to be hanged, cut down whilst still breathing, his belly sliced open, and his still palpitating heart plucked out. Then his body was chopped in pieces, and the parts distributed for exhibition in certain English towns. His head, forwarded to London, was placed on a spike above the gatehouse of the Tower. His steward, “faithful found, among the faithless faithful only he,” was also convicted of high treason, and was condemned to be torn to pieces by horses.
Edward, the second son of the King, was born at Carnarvon on April 25th, 1284, and the story goes that King Edward, then at Rhuddlan, having assembled there the principal men of Wales, announced to them that as the royal race of Cunedda was extinct, he would give to them a Prince of Wales who could speak no word of English, and who was a native of the Principality. The chieftains replied that this they would accept, and to him they would yield obedience. Thereupon Edward presented to them his infant son, recently born at Carnarvon.
By the death of Alphonso, Edward’s eldest son, at Windsor, this Prince Edward became heir-apparent to the throne.
Some of the jewels of the Welsh regalia were used for the decoration of the shrine of Edward the Confessor at Westminster.
In 1399 Richard II. was prisoner at Rhuddlan on his way to Flint. In 1646 it was captured by General Mytton from the Royalists, and was dismantled by order of the Parliament, and has remained a ruin since.
