Peeps at many lands: WalesWilmot-Buxton, E. M. (Ethel Mary)
History
Peeps at many lands: Wales
Wilmot-Buxton, E. M. (Ethel Mary)
Wales -- Description and travel
On our way back we must go to see some most interesting relics of old
days. They are known as the Irishmen’s Huts, and were first built in
those ancient times when tribes of Irish Celts crossed over to the
island, and thence to the mainland, threatening, indeed, to displace
altogether the original people of the land, and themselves driven out
in later days by another race. These huts are grouped together so as
to form tiny villages, in spots where they are guarded either by steep
rocks or by roughly-constructed walls. They are round in shape, and
built of stone, though the remains of the walls are now not more than
two feet high. All the entrances look towards the south, as though the
inhabitants knew the value of sunshine; and the doorways are formed of
two upright stones, with another placed across the top. The roofs were
probably thatched or turfed over poles, which stretched from one wall
to the other.
From what was found under the ground on which they stand when it was
examined some years ago, it seems as though some of these huts were
used for living in, some for bathing, some for working metal, some for
kitchens. Necklaces of jet, stone lamps, weapons of bronze, and moulds
for making bronze buttons were found in some. In others there are the
remains of an apparatus for working metal; in others there are tanks,
in which water was boiled by throwing hot stones into the water they
contained.
Retracing our way by rail, we pass the village of Llangadwaladr, the
home of the last British Prince to hold the title of King of All
Britain. The son of this Prince, Cadwaladr, who lived and died in the
seventh century, is buried in the church of the place that bears his
name, the “enclosure, or church, of Cadwaladr.” But the chief interest
lies in his father, Cadwallon, and his cousin, Brian, who together won
one of the last great battles in the cause of British freedom against
the English conquerors.
Cadwallon, son of King Cadfan, and Edwin, son of King Ethelfrid of
Northumbria, were both born about the same year in the island of
Anglesey, or Mona, as the Celts call it; for the Celtic mother of Edwin
had been driven out of the royal palace, and had returned to her former
home. The boys were brought up together in Brittany, another Celtic
kingdom, and returned together to Anglesey, where they lived until, on
the death of his father, Cadwallon was chosen King of All Britain. This
was, however, but an empty title, for almost at that very time Edwin
left the island and made his way to Northumbria, where he seized the
kingdom and with it much of the land of the Britons which lay upon its
borders. But Cadwallon cared not, because he had been his friend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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