Extracts from “In Search of Wales” by H.V.Morton, 1932
Owen and Nesta
I wonder if the 'Ladies of Llangollen' ever visited the neighbouring mansion of Plas Eglwyseg and reflected with a shocked expression how very untidy and difficult life can be when a man takes control of things. The memories of Plas Newydd and Plas Eglwyseg could not be more sharply different.
Seven miles by lovely narrow lanes bring you to a green fairyland at the foot of the Eglwyseg Rocks, and here, well hidden, is an attractive Tudor manor-house that is built on haunted earth. Over the door is an inscription which states that 'This Manor of Eglwyseg was inherited by the Princess (Princes?) of Powys from Bleddyn ap Cynvyn, King of North Wales, who fell in Battle 1073'. Beneath a shield are the words ' Ovna na ovno angau,' which mean 'Fear him who fears not death'.
Centuries ago there stood on this spot a hunting-lodge of young Prince Owen of Powys, who ruled these parts in the time of Henry I. In the year 1108 his father Cadwgan made a great feast in honour of God at Christmas-time in Ceredigion.
To this feast came his turbulent son, Prince Owen. This young man was typical of his time and class. He was a violent, headstrong man, a type that goes down to posterity in ballads. After dinner the conversation turned on the beauty of Nesta, the wife of Gerald of Windsor, the Norman baron who held Pembroke Castle for King Henry.
Nesta has been called the `Helen of Wales'. She was a daughter of Rhys ap Tudor, Prince of South Wales, and had been a ward, and mistress, of Henry I. The King had married her to his favourite, Gerald.
As the Christmas drink circulated, the young Prince of Powys decided to pay a visit to the beautiful Nesta. He went into Pembrokeshire, entered the newly-built castle which Gerald had just built at Cenarth in the Valley of the Teivy, and became so infatuated by the charms of Nesta that he decided to carry her off under the eyes of her husband.
Owen must have been either blind with love or mad with youth. A more sober head might have seen that to abduct a woman who had borne a son to the King of England, and was now the wife of the royal Constable in Pembrokeshire, would plunge Wales into war and deny those still independent regions in the north the peace they so desperately needed. Nothing like this seems to have occurred to him.
He gathered together a band of young Welshmen as crazy as himself. They crept by night to the castle, dug their way under the gate, set fire to it and in the confusion seized Nesta and her two children and were soon galloping like madmen for Powys. Gerald, the unfortunate Menelaus, suffered the indignity of escaping down a drain-pipe.
While Owen and Nesta lived in the hunting-lodge in the shadow of the Eglwyseg cliffs, the whole of Wales and the Border Marches were on fire. King Henry was furious. Cadwgan trembled for his safety. He attempted to persuade his son to return Nesta to her husband. Owen refused. But he returned the children ! Cadwgan's lands were seized.
Owen was forced to fly to Ireland. Nesta after some time returned, so it seems, to Pembroke.
She retained her sway over the hearts of men even when she was a grandmother. Her children and her grandchildren were among those stormy knights who conquered Ireland under Strongbow. So Nesta, the Beautiful, passes across a page of Welsh history like a figure in a mist. . . .
I wandered in the 'green lanes listening to the song of birds and watching the sunlight play over the pink limestone cliffs.
Any place in which men and women have felt deeply retains a pathetic significance. It seems almost as if some part of their passion has scorched the earth. We shall never know whether Nesta loved her stormy prince; and there is no answer to our thought but the swaying of the trees and the brightness of the primroses that have grown in her footsteps.
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Valle Crucis
In the evening, if you would like to enjoy one of the most beautiful short walks in Great Britain, take the right bank of the Dee and follow the canal to the ruins of the Abbey of Valle Crucis.
You will see all that is left of a small Cistercian abbey nestling in the shelter of hills and set in that peaceful beauty which the monks loved so well. On the hills at the back the Cistercians, who were great sheep farmers, kept their flocks.
The languishing flannel industry of Llangollen is an inheritance
from the monks of Valle Crucis.
The evening sun pours through the ruined arches and lies in gold bars over grass. A thrush sings his evensong from the top of a larch-tree. The Lord of Powys, Madoc ap Gryffydd, built this church in the Valley of the Cross in 1201;
and for centuries while the wrath of man raged in the hilltop castles, this little acre in the glen basked in the peace of the Church. They say that Myfanwy Fychan, the scornful beauty of Dinas Bran, lies buried there; but no stone marks her resting-place. Lost also is the grave of Iolo Goch, the bard of Owen Glendower.
You can think of this story as you stand in the peaceful shell of this abbey. Early one morning when the Abbot of Valle Crucis was praying on the hill at the back, the figure of a man appeared silently before him. It was Owen Glendower.
'Sir Abbot,' said Glendower, 'you have risen too early.'
'No,' replied the Abbot, 'it is you who have risen too early by a hundred years.'
The Welsh patriot gazed at the man of God and disappeared as silently as he had come.
Owain Glyn Dwr
The road now ran, with the delicious Dee to the right, bending and twisting through one of the most peaceful and gentle valleys I have ever seen. The river suddenly lost itself in a great loop, but I met it again in a mile or so, cool, brown and, I am sure, full of trout ; and then I came to a little place which calls itself Glyn Dyfrdwy. I met a postman on a bicycle `How do you pronounce this name ? ' I asked.
' Glynduvrdooe,' he said quickly with the accent on the penultimate syllable and an upward kick to his voice.
' Say it slowly.'
Eventually I got it. Like so many Welsh words it looks terrible in print but when spoken is exquisite.
Glyn-duvr-doo-e. . . .
It is like the cooing of doves in a wood.
This village of Glyn-duvr-dooe, known now only to men with trout and salmon rods, was part of the patrimony of one of the greatest characters in Welsh history-Owen Glendower, or Owain Glyn Dwr as the modern historians spell him. (I will stick to Shakespeare's spelling.)
Glendower, had he been an Englishman, would perhaps not have become a national hero, because he was a material failure. The Saxon mind will endure any amount of idealism as long as it ends in a practical success. The Celtic mind, on the other hand, adores a sad ending to a story and is often
liable to idealize failure. Bonnie Prince Charlie, for instance, in failure and in flight is a more appealing figure to the Celtic imagination than Bonnie Prince Charlie in victory. So it is with Owen Glendower, a great Welshman who has something in common with Wallace, Charles Edward and Michael Collins.
At Glyn-duvr-dooe stood one of his two mansions. His name was Owen of Glyndyfrdwy, or Owen of the Glen of Dee. His other mansion was at Sycharth in Denbighshire.
He was born about 1359, a fortunate young man who owned land which his forefathers had ruled as Welsh princes. He was therefore supplied with that blue blood without which no Welsh nationalist could be successful in the old days.