Wild Wales: Its People, Language And Scenery By George Borrow





































































 -   I proceeded at once to 
the castle, and clambering to the top of one of the turrets, looked 
upon Beaumaris - Page 119
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I Proceeded At Once To The Castle, And Clambering To The Top Of One Of The Turrets, Looked Upon Beaumaris

Bay, and the noble rocky coast of the mainland to the south-east beyond it, the most remarkable object of

Which is the gigantic Penman Mawr, which interpreted is "the great head- stone," the termination of a range of craggy hills descending from the Snowdon mountains.

"What a bay!" said I, "for beauty it is superior to the far-famed one of Naples. A proper place for the keels to start from, which, unguided by the compass, found their way over the mighty and mysterious Western Ocean."

I repeated all the Bardic lines I could remember connected with Madoc's expedition, and likewise many from the Madoc of Southey, not the least of Britain's four great latter poets, decidedly her best prose writer, and probably the purest and most noble character to which she has ever given birth; and then, after a long, lingering look, descended from my altitude, and returned, not by the ferry, but by the suspension bridge to the mainland.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Robert Lleiaf - Prophetic Englyn - The Second Sight - Duncan Campbell - Nial's Saga - Family of Nial - Gunnar - The Avenger.

"AV i dir Mon, cr dwr Menai, Tros y traeth, ond aros trai."

"I will go to the land of Mona, notwithstanding the water of the Menai, across the sand, without waiting for the ebb."

SO sang a bard about two hundred and forty years ago, who styled himself Robert Lleiaf, or the least of the Roberts. The meaning of the couplet has always been considered to be, and doubtless is, that a time would come when a bridge would be built across the Menai, over which one might pass with safety and comfort, without waiting till the ebb was sufficiently low to permit people to pass over the traeth, or sand, which, from ages the most remote, had been used as the means of communication between the mainland and the Isle of Mona or Anglesey. Grounding their hopes upon that couplet, people were continually expecting to see a bridge across the Menai: more than two hundred years, however, elapsed before the expectation was fulfilled by the mighty Telford flinging over the strait an iron suspension bridge, which, for grace and beauty, has perhaps no rival in Europe.

The couplet is a remarkable one. In the time of its author there was nobody in Britain capable of building a bridge, which could have stood against the tremendous surges which occasionally vex the Menai; yet the couplet gives intimation that a bridge over the Menai there would be, which clearly argues a remarkable foresight in the author, a feeling that a time would at length arrive when the power of science would be so far advanced, that men would be able to bridge over the terrible strait. The length of time which intervened between the composition of the couplet and the fulfilment of the promise, shows that a bridge over the Menai was no pont y meibion, no children's bridge, nor a work for common men.

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