The Northern
Wall Abuts Upon A Frightful Ravine, At The Bottom Of Which Is A
Canal.
From the western one there is a noble view of the Welsh
hills.
As I stood gazing upon the hills from the wall a ragged man came up
and asked for charity.
"Can you tell me the name of that tall hill?" said I, pointing in
the direction of the south-west. "That hill, sir," said the
beggar, "is called Moel Vamagh; I ought to know something about it
as I was born at its foot." "Moel," said I, "a bald hill; Vamagh,
maternal or motherly. Moel Vamagh, the Mother Moel." "Just so,
sir," said the beggar; "I see you are a Welshman, like myself,
though I suppose you come from the South - Moel Vamagh is the
Mother Moel, and is called so because it is the highest of all the
Moels." "Did you ever hear of a place called Mold?" said I. "Oh,
yes, your honour," said the beggar; "many a time; and many's the
time I have been there." "In which direction does it lie?" said I.
"Towards Moel Vamagh, your honour," said the beggar, "which is a
few miles beyond it; you can't see it from here, but look towards
Moel Vamagh and you will see over it." "Thank you," said I, and
gave something to the beggar, who departed, after first taking off
his hat. Long and fixedly did I gaze in the direction of Mold.
The reason which induced me to do so was the knowledge of an
appalling tragedy transacted there in the old time, in which there
is every reason to suppose a certain Welsh bard, called Lewis Glyn
Cothi, had a share.
This man, who was a native of South Wales, flourished during the
wars of the Roses. Besides being a poetical he was something of a
military genius, and had a command of foot in the army of the
Lancastrian Jasper Earl of Pembroke, the son of Owen Tudor, and
half-brother of Henry the Sixth. After the battle of Mortimer's
Cross, in which the Earl's forces were defeated, the warrior bard
found his way to Chester, where he married the widow of a citizen
and opened a shop, without asking the permission of the mayor, who
with the officers of justice came and seized all his goods, which,
according to his own account, filled nine sacks, and then drove him
out of the town. The bard in a great fury indited an awdl, in
which he invites Reinallt ap Grufydd ap Bleddyn, a kind of
predatory chieftain, who resided a little way off in Flintshire, to
come and set the town on fire, and slaughter the inhabitants, in
revenge for the wrongs he had suffered, and then proceeds to vent
all kinds of imprecations against the mayor and people of Chester,
wishing, amongst other things, that they might soon hear that the
Dee had become too shallow to bear their ships - that a certain
cutaneous disorder might attack the wrists of great and small, old
and young, laity and clergy - that grass might grow in their
streets - that Ilar and Cyveilach, Welsh saints, might slay them -
that dogs might snarl at them - and that the king of heaven, with
the saints Brynach and Non, might afflict them with blindness -
which piece, however ineffectual in inducing God and the saints to
visit the Chester people with the curses with which the furious
bard wished them to be afflicted, seems to have produced somewhat
of its intended effect on the chieftain, who shortly afterwards, on
learning that the mayor and many of the Chester people were present
at the fair of Mold, near which place he resided, set upon them at
the head of his forces, and after a desperate combat, in which many
lives were lost, took the mayor prisoner, and drove those of his
people who survived into a tower, which he set on fire and burnt,
with all the unhappy wretches which it contained, completing the
horrors of the day by hanging the unfortunate mayor.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 12 of 450
Words from 5725 to 6406
of 235675
