Wild Wales: The People, Language, & SceneryBorrow, George
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Wild Wales: The People, Language, & Scenery
Borrow, George
Borrow, George, 1803-1881 -- Travel -- Wales; Wales -- Description and travel
“Ah, you want to see the church,” said honest Scrub. “Yes sar! you shall
see the church. You go up road there past church—come to house, knock at
door—say what you want—and nice little girl show you church. Ah, you
quite right to come and see church—fine tomb there and clebber man
sleeping in it with his wife, clebber man that—Owen Tiddir; married great
queen—dyn clebber iawn.”
Following the suggestions of the man of the hairy cap, I went round the
church and knocked at the door of the house, a handsome parsonage. A
nice little servant-girl presently made her appearance at the door, of
whom I inquired whether I could see the church.
“Certainly, sir,” said she; “I will go for the key and accompany you.”
She fetched the key and away we went to the church. It is a venerable
chapel-like edifice, with a belfry towards the west; the roof, sinking by
two gradations, is lower at the eastern or altar end than at the other.
The girl, unlocking the door, ushered me into the interior.
“Which is the tomb of Tudor?” said I to the pretty damsel.
“There it is, sir,” said she, pointing to the north side of the church;
“there is the tomb of Owen Tudor.”
Beneath a low-roofed arch lay sculptured in stone, on an altar tomb, the
figures of a man and woman; that of the man in armour; that of the woman
in graceful drapery. The male figure lay next the wall.
“And you think,” said I to the girl, “that yonder figure is that of Owen
Tudor?”
“Yes, sir,” said the girl; “yon figure is that of Owen Tudor; the other
is that of his wife, the great queen; both their bodies rest below.”
I forbore to say that the figures were not those of Owen Tudor and the
great queen, his wife; and I forbore to say that their bodies did not
rest in that church, nor anywhere in the neighbourhood, for I was
unwilling to dispel a pleasing delusion. The tomb is doubtless a tomb of
one of the Tudor race, and of a gentle partner of his, but not of the
Rose of Mona and Catherine of France. Her bones rest in some corner of
Westminster’s noble abbey; his moulder amongst those of thousands of
others, Yorkists and Lancastrians, under the surface of the plain, where
Mortimer’s cross once stood, that plain on the eastern side of which
meanders the murmuring Lug; that noble plain, where one of the hardest
battles which ever blooded English soil was fought; where beautiful young
Edward gained a crown, and old Owen lost a head, which when young had
been the most beautiful of heads, which had gained for him the
appellation of the Rose of Anglesey, and which had captivated the glances
of the fair daughter of France, the widow of Monmouth’s Harry, the
immortal victor of Agincourt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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