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
Feeling indisposed either for writing or reading, I determined to take a
walk to Pentré y Dwr, a village in the north-west part of the valley,
which I had not yet visited. I purposed going by a path under the
Eglwysig crags, which I had heard led thither, and to return by the
monastery. I set out. The day was dull and gloomy. Crossing the canal,
I pursued my course by romantic lanes, till I found myself under the
crags. The rocky ridge here turns away to the north, having previously
run from the east to the west.
After proceeding nearly a mile amidst very beautiful scenery, I came to a
farm-yard, where I saw several men engaged in repairing a building. This
farm-yard was in a very sequestered situation; a hill overhung it on the
west, half-way up whose side stood a farmhouse, to which it probably
pertained. On the northwest was a most romantic hill covered with wood
to the very top. A wild valley led, I knew not whither, to the north
between crags and the wood-covered hill. Going up to a man of
respectable appearance, who seemed to be superintending the others, I
asked him in English the way to Pentré y Dwr. He replied that I must
follow the path up the hill towards the house, behind which I should find
a road which would lead me through the wood to Pentré Dwr. As he spoke
very good English, I asked where he had learnt it.
“Chiefly in South Wales,” said he, “where they speak less Welsh than
here.”
I gathered from him that he lived in the house on the hill, and was a
farmer. I asked him to what place the road up the valley to the north
led.
“We generally go by that road to Wrexham,” he replied; “it is a short but
a wild road through the hills.”
After a little discourse on the times, which he told me were not quite so
bad for farmers as they had been, I bade, him farewell.
Mounting the hill, I passed round the house, as the farmer had directed
me, and turned to the west along a path on the side of the mountain. A
deep valley was on my left, and on my right above me a thick wood,
principally of oak. About a mile farther on the path winded down a
descent, at the bottom of which I saw a brook and a number of cottages
beyond it.
I passed over the brook by means of a long slab laid across, and reached
the cottages. I was now, as I supposed, in Pentré y Dwr, and a pentré y
dwr most truly it looked, for those Welsh words signify in English the
village of the water, and the brook here ran through the village, in
every room of which its pretty murmuring sound must have been audible. I
looked about me in the hope of seeing somebody of whom I could ask a
question or two, but seeing no one, I turned to the south, intending to
regain Llangollen by the way of the monastery. Coming to a cottage, I
saw a woman, to all appearance very old, standing by the door, and asked
her in Welsh where I was.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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