Conan Meriadoc has figured largely in fabulous Breton history. At
the beginning of the eighteenth century a priest of Lamballe, named
Gallet, wrote a history for the glorification of the dukes of Rohan,
and he spun a wonderful tale that imposed on later serious historians.
According to him, Conan or Cynan Meiriadog, disappointed at not getting
Ursula, married Darerca, the sister of S. Patrick, and from this
union descended the kings of Brittany and the dukes of Rohan. This he
achieved by identifying Cynan with Caw, the father of Gildas, entirely
regardless of chronology, for Gildas, son of Caw, king in Strathclyde,
died in 570, and Cynan was contemporary with Maximus, who was killed in
388, and Patrick was born about 410.
Dom Morice, whose _History of Brittany_ was published in 1750,
reproduces this absurd and impossible pedigree, and further identifies
Conan with Cataw, son of Geraint, and uncle of S. Cybi, who died about
554.
There is a holy well, Ffynnon Fair, in the parish of Cefn, in a
beautiful situation, once very famous, but the chapel is in ruins,
though the spring flows merrily still. It was the “Gretna Green” of
the district, for here clandestine marriages were wont to take place,
celebrated by one of the vicars choral of the cathedral, till all such
marriages were put a stop to by the Act of Lord Hardwicke in 1753. The
chapel was of the fifteenth century, and is now overgrown with ivy,
and in a clump of trees. Mrs. Hemans made this, “Our Lady’s Well,” the
subject of one of her poems. In the unpretending-looking house just
across the Elwy was written one of the earliest printed Welsh grammars
(1593).
The Cefn caves are in an escarpment of mountain limestone high above
the river, and have been carefully explored. They yielded bones
of extinct animals--the cave bear, wolf, _elephas antiquus_, _bos
longifrons_, reindeer, the hyæna, and the rhinoceros--but very scanty
traces of man. The bones are preserved at Plas-yn-Cefn, the residence
of Mrs. Williams-Wynn, on whose property the caves are. The caves are
worth visiting more for the view from the rocks than for any intrinsic
interest in themselves.
A quaint Elizabethan mansion, Plas Newydd, has in its wainscoted hall
an inscription to show that it was built by one Foulk ab Robert in 1583
when he was aged forty-three. It is said to have been the first house
in the neighbourhood covered with slates. A giant, Cawr Rhufoniog, used
to visit there, and a crook is shown high up near the cornice, on which
he was wont to suspend his hat. Giants, it would appear, were in days
of yore pretty plentiful in this neighbourhood. The grave of one is
pointed out close by, and another, Edward Shôn Dafydd, otherwise called
Cawr y Ddôl, lived at an adjoining farm. His walking-stick was the
axle-tree of a cart, with a huge crowbar driven into one end and bent
for a handle. He and Sir John Salusbury (of the double thumbs) once
fell to testing their strength by uprooting forest trees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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