This he truthfully told his fellow-conspirators. Plinlimmon and the surrounding country is rich in records and legends concerning this turbulent prince, whose very birth, on May 28th, 1354, is said to have been attended by remarkable premonitions of coming trouble, for it is told that on that eventful night his father's horses were found in their stalls standing in a bath of blood that reached to their bellies. This is the popular account, but Shakespeare's imagination created other and farther-reaching warnings to the world concerning the fiery spirit that had been ushered upon the scene:-- "At my nativity The front of Heaven was full of fiery shapes, Of burning cressets; and at my birth The frame and huge foundation of the earth Shak'd like a coward." From this lofty region, half earth and half sky--for the Wye can lay claim to trace its source to the very clouds that hang thick upon Plinlimmon's head--the tiny rivulet bounds down the mountain-side, and the Fates, catching at a myriad of still smaller rills, braid them into the main stream, as the tresses of a maiden's hair are woven together, till united they form a brook. For a number of miles the land through which the Wye's course is laid continues to be melancholy in the extreme, and the torrent, like all urchins brought up amidst harsh, inclement surroundings, goes on its way brawling and turbulent, playing leapfrog with rocks, flinging itself over precipices, swirling in little maelstroms, and almost getting blown away in spray; and it is not until the pretty village of Llangurig is reached that it comes in part to its senses, and, although still boisterous, shows itself amenable to the influence of civilisation. Not only does the Wye here meet for the first time with civilisation, but here, too, it becomes acquainted with that which later on in its life is one of its glories, almost its crowning glory--trees. The head and shoulders of mighty Plinlimmon afford no gracious foothold for these children of fat lands and lusty air, scarcely a bush raising its branches in the bog and marsh of the mountain. But up to Llangurig a few of them have straggled, to break the monotony of the mountainous region. Here, too, a bridge--one of the few works of man that sometimes add to rather than detract from the effect of river-scenery, always provided that it is not a modern railway bridge of iron--crosses the young stream; and a church, the first of many on the banks of the Wye, stands near by. A short distance below this village the stream spreads out in its valley, and flows more gently amongst huge boulders that have been hurled down from the sides of the mountains.