There is a noble entrance porch
fronting the west - a spacious courtyard, a grand banqueting room,
a corridor of vast length, several lofty towers, a chapel, a sally-
port, a guard-room and a strange underground vaulted place called
the mint, in which Caerfili's barons once coined money, and in
which the furnaces still exist which were used for melting metal.
The name Caerfili is said to signify the Castle of Haste, and to
have been bestowed on the pile because it was built in a hurry.
Caerfili, however, was never built in a hurry, as the remains show.
Moreover, the Welsh word for haste is not fil but ffrwst. Fil
means a scudding or darting through the air, which can have nothing
to do with the building of a castle. Caerfili signifies Philip's
City, and was called so after one Philip a saint. It no more means
the castle of haste than Tintagel in Cornwall signifies the castle
of guile, as the learned have said it does, for Tintagel simply
means the house in the gill of the hill, a term admirably
descriptive of the situation of the building.
I started from Caerfili at eleven for Newport, distant about
seventeen miles. Passing through a toll-gate I ascended an
acclivity, from the top of which I obtained a full view of the
castle, looking stern, dark and majestic. Descending the hill I
came to a bridge over a river called the Rhymni or Rumney, much
celebrated in Welsh and English song - thence to Pentref Bettws, or
the village of the bead-house, doubtless so called from its having
contained in old times a house in which pilgrims might tell their
beads.
The scenery soon became very beautiful - its beauty, however, was
to a certain extent marred by a horrid black object, a huge coal
work, the chimneys of which were belching forth smoke of the
densest description. "Whom does that work belong to?" said I to a
man nearly as black as a chimney sweep.
"Who does it belong to? Why, to Sir Charles."
"Do you mean Sir Charles Morgan?"
"I don't know. I only know that it belongs to Sir Charles, the
kindest-hearted and richest man in Wales and in England too."
Passing some cottages I heard a group of children speaking English.
Asked an intelligent-looking girl if she could speak Welsh.
"Yes," said she, "I can speak it, but not very well." There is not
much Welsh spoken by the children hereabout. The old folks hold
more to it.
I saw again the Rhymni river, and crossed it by a bridge; the river
here was filthy and turbid, owing of course to its having received
the foul drainings of the neighbouring coal works.
