“I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” Shakespeare makes him boast to Hotspur; who rudely replies: “Ay, but will they answer?” But let the rough Northern Earl scoff as he might, Owen certainly met with almost uncanny success. The English troops, “bootless and weatherbeaten,” were driven back across the borders again and again. Not only North Wales, but the South country also rose under him. Midway between the two stands “Pumlumon,” better known as Plynlimmon, a five-pointed peak that rises, almost solitary, from the surrounding plain. Upon this top Glendower planted his standard, and from thence he managed to capture Mortimer, the powerful English Earl of royal blood, who became before long his son-in-law. Owen was now openly acknowledged as Prince of Wales; castle after castle fell into his hands, and Parliaments were held by him at Dolgelly, under the shadow of Cader Idris, and elsewhere. But meantime Prince Henry, the future Henry V., was growing up and learning the art of war. It was he who, while Owen was busy in South Wales, came to his own valley of Glyndyfrdwy, and burnt his house down. For seven years the war went on, until the land was wellnigh ruined and the people weary of warfare. Pardons were freely offered and as freely accepted, until at last Owen Glendower found himself deserted. Still he would not give in, and when Henry V., soon after he was made King, sent him an unasked for pardon by the hands of Glendower’s own son, it came too late; the hero of Wales’ last bid for independence was dead. Nearly eighty years later Wales recovered her name for loyalty to an English Sovereign when a certain Henry Tudor, grandson of a Welsh country gentleman who had married a King’s widow, landed at Milford Haven, and, with the aid of his fellow-countrymen, won the Battle of Bosworth, and was crowned King as Henry VII. And so, when Henry VIII., his son, wished to bring about the Union of England and Wales by Act of Parliament, no voice was lifted against it. But if Henry thought by this Act, and by forbidding all magistrates in Wales to use the Welsh language, he was going to make the country actually a part of England, he was greatly mistaken. The upper classes might flock to the English Court and forget their Welsh homes, but the greater part of the people--the workers of the nation--kept their own speech, their own customs, their own traditions. The days of warfare were over; but still you can tell a Welshman from an Englishman wherever he is found. He may talk the purest English, but the fall and rise of his voice as he talks differs from the more monotonous tones of his Anglo-Saxon companion. He is more excitable, more easily moved to wrath, or tears, or laughter, and he possesses, as a rule, a far more vivid imagination than is found anywhere outside the Celtic race of which he forms a part. CHAPTER IV A WELSH MARKET-TOWN