On Asking The Woman On Whose Property The Fall Was, She Informed Me
That It Was On The Property Of The Gwedir Family.
The name of
Gwedir brought to my mind the "History of the Gwedir Family," a
rare and curious book which I had read in my boyhood, and which was
written by the representative of that family, a certain Sir John
Wynne, about the beginning of the seventeenth century.
It gives an
account of the fortunes of the family, from its earliest rise; but
more particularly after it had emigrated, in order to avoid bad
neighbours, from a fair and fertile district into rugged Snowdonia,
where it found anything but the repose it came in quest of. The
book which is written in bold graphic English, flings considerable
light on the state of society in Wales, in the time of the Tudors,
a truly deplorable state, as the book is full of accounts of feuds,
petty but desperate skirmishes, and revengeful murders. To many of
the domestic sagas, or histories of ancient Icelandic families,
from the character of the events which it describes and also from
the manner in which it describes them, the "History of the Gwedir
Family," by Sir John Wynne, bears a striking resemblance.
After giving the woman sixpence I left the fall, and proceeded on
my way. I presently crossed a bridge under which ran the river of
the fall, and was soon in a wide valley on each side of which were
lofty hills dotted with wood, and at the top of which stood a
mighty mountain, bare and precipitous, with two paps like those of
Pindus opposite Janina, but somewhat sharper.
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