That Lleiaf was a man of remarkable foresight, cannot be denied,
but there are no grounds which entitle him to be considered a
possessor of the second sight. He foretold a bridge, but not a
railroad bridge; had he foretold a railroad bridge, or hinted at
the marvels of steam, his claim to the second sight would have been
incontestable.
What a triumph for Wales; what a triumph for bardism, if Lleiaf had
ever written an englyn, or couplet, in which not a bridge for
common traffic, but a railroad bridge over the Menai was hinted at,
and steam travelling distinctly foretold! Well, though Lleiaf did
not write it, there exists in the Welsh language an englyn, almost
as old as Lleiaf's time, in which steam travelling in Wales and
Anglesea is foretold, and in which, though the railroad bridge over
the Menai is not exactly mentioned, it may be considered to be
included; so that Wales and bardism have equal reason to be proud.
This is the englyn alluded to:-
"Codais, ymolchais yn Mon, cyn naw awr
Ciniewa'n Nghaer Lleon,
Pryd gosber yn y Werddon,
Prydnawn wrth dan mawn yn Mon."
The above englyn was printed in the Greal, 1792, p. 316; the
language shows it to be a production of about the middle of the
seventeenth century. The following is nearly a literal
translation:-
"I got up in Mona as soon as 'twas light,
At nine in old Chester my breakfast I took;
In Ireland I dined, and in Mona, ere night,
By the turf fire sat, in my own ingle nook."
Now, as sure as the couplet by Robert Lleiaf foretells that a
bridge would eventually be built over the strait, by which people
would pass, and traffic be carried on, so surely does the above
englyn foreshadow the speed by which people would travel by steam,
a speed by which distance is already all but annihilated. At
present it is easy enough to get up at dawn at Holyhead, the point
of Anglesey the most distant from Chester, and to breakfast at that
old town by nine; and though the feat has never yet been
accomplished, it would be quite possible, provided proper
preparations were made, to start from Holyhead at daybreak,
breakfast at Chester at nine, or before, dine in Ireland at two,
and get back again to Holyhead ere the sun of the longest day has
set. And as surely as the couplet about the bridge argues great
foresight in the man that wrote it, so surely does the englyn prove
that its author must have been possessed of the faculty of second
sight, as nobody without it could, in the middle of the seventeenth
century, when the powers of steam were unknown, have written
anything in which travelling by steam is so distinctly alluded to.
Truly some old bard of the seventeenth century must in a vision of
the second sight have seen the railroad bridge across the Menai,
the Chester train dashing across it, at high railroad speed, and a
figure exactly like his own seated comfortably in a third-class
carriage.
And now a few words on the second sight, a few calm, quiet words,
in which there is not the slightest wish to display either
eccentricity or book-learning.
The second sight is the power of seeing events before they happen,
or of seeing events which are happening far beyond the reach of the
common sight, or between which and the common sight barriers
intervene, which it cannot pierce. The number of those who possess
this gift or power is limited, and perhaps no person ever possessed
it in a perfect degree: some more frequently see coming events, or
what is happening at a distance, than others; some see things
dimly, others with great distinctness. The events seen are
sometimes of great importance, sometimes highly nonsensical and
trivial; sometimes they relate to the person who sees them,
sometimes to other people. This is all that can be said with
anything like certainty with respect to the nature of the second
sight, a faculty for which there is no accounting, which, were it
better developed, might be termed the sixth sense.
The second sight is confined to no particular country, and has at
all times existed. Particular nations have obtained a celebrity
for it for a time, which they have afterwards lost, the celebrity
being transferred to other nations, who were previously not noted
for the faculty. The Jews were at one time particularly celebrated
for the possession of the second sight; they are no longer so. The
power was at one time very common amongst the Icelanders and the
inhabitants of the Hebrides, but it is so no longer. Many and
extraordinary instances of the second sight have lately occurred in
that part of England generally termed East Anglia, where in former
times the power of the second sight seldom manifested itself.
There are various books in existence in which the second sight is
treated of or mentioned. Amongst others there is one called
"Martin's Description of the Western Isles of Scotland," published
in the year 1703, which is indeed the book from which most writers
in English, who have treated of the second sight, have derived
their information. The author gives various anecdotes of the
second sight, which he had picked up during his visits to those
remote islands, which until the publication of his tour were almost
unknown to the world. It will not be amiss to observe here that
the term second sight is of Lowland Scotch origin, and first made
its appearance in print in Martin's book.
