As I stood gazing upon the hills from the wall, a ragged man came up and asked for charity. “Can you tell me the name of that tall hill?” said I, pointing in the direction of the south-west. “That hill, sir,” said the beggar, “is called Moel Vamagh; I ought to know something about it as I was born at its foot.” “Moel,” said I, “a bald hill; Vamagh; maternal or motherly. Moel Vamagh, the mother Moel.” “Just so, sir,” said the beggar; “I see you are a Welshman, like myself, though I suppose you come from the South—Moel Vamagh is the Mother Moel, and is called so because it is the highest of all the Moels.” “Did you ever hear of a place called Mold?” said I. “Oh, yes, your honour,” said the beggar; “many a time; and many’s the time I have been there.” “In which direction does it lie?” said I. “Towards Moel Vamagh, your honour,” said the beggar, “which is a few miles beyond it; you can’t see it from here, but look towards Moel Vamagh and you will see over it.” “Thank you,” said I, and gave something to the beggar, who departed, after first taking off his hat. Long and fixedly did I gaze in the direction of Mold. The reason which induced me to do so was the knowledge of an appalling tragedy transacted there in the old time, in which there is every reason to suppose a certain Welsh bard, called Lewis Glyn Cothi, had a share. This man, who was a native of South Wales, flourished during the wars of the Roses. Besides being a poetical he was something of a military genius, and had a command of foot in the army of the Lancastrian Jasper Earl of Pembroke, the son of Owen Tudor, and half-brother of Henry the Sixth. After the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, in which the Earl’s forces were defeated, the warrior bard found his way to Chester, where he married the widow of a citizen and opened a shop, without asking the permission of the mayor, who with the officers of justice came and seized all his goods, which, according to his own account, filled nine sacks, and then drove him out of the town. The bard in a great fury indited an awdl, in which he invites Reinallt ap Grufydd ap Bleddyn, a kind of predatory chieftain, who resided a little way off in Flintshire, to come and set the town on fire, and slaughter the inhabitants, in revenge for the wrongs he had suffered, and then proceeds to vent all kinds of imprecations against the mayor and people of Chester, wishing, amongst other things, that they might soon hear that the Dee had become too shallow to bear their ships—that a certain cutaneous disorder might attack the wrists of great and small, old and young, laity and clergy—that grass might grow in their streets—that Ilar and Cyveilach, Welsh saints, might slay them—that dogs might snarl at them—and that the king of heaven, with the saints Brynach and Non, might afflict them with blindness—which piece, however ineffectual in inducing God and the saints to visit the Chester people with the curses with which the furious bard