WALES is a country interesting in many respects, and deserving of
more attention than it has hitherto met with. Though not very
extensive, it is one of the most picturesque countries in the
world, a country in which Nature displays herself in her wildest,
boldest, and occasionally loveliest forms. The inhabitants, who
speak an ancient and peculiar language, do not call this region
Wales, nor themselves Welsh. They call themselves Cymry or Cumry,
and their country Cymru, or the land of the Cumry. Wales or
Wallia, however, is the true, proper, and without doubt original
name, as it relates not to any particular race, which at present
inhabits it, or may have sojourned in it at any long bygone period,
but to the country itself. Wales signifies a land of mountains, of
vales, of dingles, chasms, and springs. It is connected with the
Cumbric bal, a protuberance, a springing forth; with the Celtic
beul or beal, a mouth; with the old English welle, a fountain; with
the original name of Italy, still called by the Germans Welschland;
with Balkan and Vulcan, both of which signify a casting out, an
eruption; with Welint or Wayland, the name of the Anglo-Saxon god
of the forge; with the Chaldee val, a forest, and the German wald;
with the English bluff, and the Sanscrit palava - startling
assertions, no doubt, at least to some; which are, however, quite
true, and which at some future time will be universally
acknowledged so to be.
But it is not for its scenery alone that Wales is deserving of
being visited; scenery soon palls unless it is associated with
remarkable events, and the names of remarkable men. Perhaps there
is no country in the whole world which has been the scene of events
more stirring and remarkable than those recorded in the history of
Wales. What other country has been the scene of a struggle so
deadly, so embittered, and protracted as that between the Cumro and
the Saxon? - A struggle which did not terminate at Caernarvon, when
Edward Longshanks foisted his young son upon the Welsh chieftains
as Prince of Wales; but was kept up till the battle of Bosworth
Field, when a prince of Cumric blood won the crown of fair Britain,
verifying the olden word which had cheered the hearts of the
Ancient Britons for at least a thousand years, even in times of the
darkest distress and gloom:-
"But after long pain
Repose we shall obtain,
When sway barbaric has purg'd us clean;
And Britons shall regain
Their crown and their domain,
And the foreign oppressor be no more seen."
Of remarkable men Wales has assuredly produced its full share.
First, to speak of men of action:- there was Madoc, the son of
Owain Gwynedd, who discovered America, centuries before Columbus
was born; then there was "the irregular and wild Glendower," who
turned rebel at the age of sixty, was crowned King of Wales at
Machynlleth, and for fourteen years contrived to hold his own
against the whole power of England; then there was Ryce Ap Thomas,
the best soldier of his time, whose hands placed the British crown
on the brow of Henry the Seventh, and whom bluff Henry the Eighth
delighted to call Father Preece; then there was - who? - why Harry
Morgan, who led those tremendous fellows the Buccaneers across the
Isthmus of Darien to the sack and burning of Panama.
What, a buccaneer in the list? Ay! and why not? Morgan was a
scourge, it is true, but he was a scourge of God on the cruel
Spaniards of the New World, the merciless task-masters and butchers
of the Indian race: on which account God favoured and prospered
him, permitting him to attain the noble age of ninety, and to die
peacefully and tranquilly at Jamaica, whilst smoking his pipe in
his shady arbour, with his smiling plantation of sugar-canes full
in view. How unlike the fate of Harry Morgan to that of Lolonois,
a being as daring and enterprising as the Welshman, but a monster
without ruth or discrimination, terrible to friend and foe, who
perished by the hands, not of the Spaniards, but of the Indians,
who tore him limb from limb, burning his members, yet quivering, in
the fire - which very Indians Morgan contrived to make his own firm
friends, and whose difficult language he spoke with the same
facility as English, Spanish, and his own South Welsh.
For men of genius Wales during a long period was particularly
celebrated. - Who has not heard of the Welsh Bards? though it is
true that, beyond the borders of Wales, only a very few are
acquainted with their songs, owing to the language, by no means an
easy one, in which they were composed. Honour to them all!
everlasting glory to the three greatest - Taliesin, Ab Gwilym and
Gronwy Owen: the first a professed Christian, but in reality a
Druid, whose poems fling great light on the doctrines of the
primitive priesthood of Europe, which correspond remarkably with
the philosophy of the Hindus, before the time of Brahma: the
second the grand poet of Nature, the contemporary of Chaucer, but
worth half a dozen of the accomplished word-master, the ingenious
versifier of Norman and Italian tales: the third a learned and
irreproachable minister of the Church of England, and one of the
greatest poets of the last century, who after several narrow
escapes from starvation both in England and Wales, died master of a
paltry school at New Brunswick, in North America, sometime about
the year 1780.
But Wales has something besides its wonderful scenery, its eventful
history, and its illustrious men of yore to interest the visitor.
Wales has a population, and a remarkable one. There are countries,
besides Wales, abounding with noble scenery, rich in eventful
histories, and which are not sparingly dotted with the birthplaces
of heroes and poets, in which at the present day there is either no
population at all, or one of a character which is anything but
attractive.
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