Llangollen owes its name to St. Collen, the patron saint of the parish church. “The name,” says the Reverend W. Bingley, “is pretty enough, and of no great length.” Sarcastic Mr. Bingley! Here is a portion of St. Collen’s name, quoted by him:—“Collen ap Gwynawc, ap Clydawc, ap Cowrda, ap Caradawc Freichpas ap Lleyr Meirion, ap Einion Urth, ap Cunedda Wledig,” and so forth, like recurring decimals. “Ap” being Welsh for “son of,” it becomes quite evident that Collen’s ancestry was, speaking in the decimal manner, corrected to at least six places. Welshmen, happily, have long ceased to thus trail their genealogical trees after them, and life in the Principality becomes simplified by so much. Nay, the “ap,” for all the tenacity with which the Welsh cling to their nationality, is rarely in use nowadays, and has long been used as a kind of alloy, wherewith to coin new family names. From this source come the patronymics of Price, Prichard, Probert, and other common Welsh surnames, once Christian; originally Ap Rhys, Ap Richard, and Ap Robert. “Prothero,” too, derives from Ap Rhyddero, “Pugh” from Ap Hugh, and Bevan and Bowen from Ab Evan and Ab Owen. In the case of the Thomases and other names where the combination is impossible, the prefix has been generally abandoned, and so while the Scot and the Irishman retain their “Mac” and “Mc,” Taffy has in this respect at least Anglicised himself. St. Collen’s Church is by no means beautiful or interesting, and its crowded churchyard is damp and dismal. It is the first on the journey along the Holyhead Road in which the Welsh language usurps the place of English, and here certainly, if even other signs were wanting, the Englishman—the “Saxon” as the Welsh called him—will find himself, to all intents and purposes, in a foreign land. The average educated Englishman, from whom the general sense, at least, of Latin epitaphs and those in two or three Continental languages is not hidden, stands mystified before these Cymric tombstones and, if he be of a reflective nature, finds it not a little humiliating that even the ragged little urchins in the streets of Welsh towns and villages are often bi-lingual, and in this respect better educated than he. Among the few English epitaphs is one not often met:— Our life is but a winter’s day, Some breakfast and away: Others to dinner stay and are full fed; The oldest man but sups and goes to bed. Large is his debt who lingers out the day; Who goes the soonest has the least to pay. The subject of those lines had a short reckoning. He went (to pursue the simile) after lunch, dying in his nineteenth year.