Wild Wales: The People, Language, & SceneryBorrow, George
General
Wild Wales: The People, Language, & Scenery
Borrow, George
Borrow, George, 1803-1881 -- Travel -- Wales; Wales -- Description and travel
About half-past eight o’clock at night John Jones came to bid me
farewell. I bade him sit down, and sent for a pint of ale to regale him
with. Notwithstanding the ale, he was very melancholy at the thought
that I was about to leave Llangollen, probably never to return. To
enliven him I gave him an account of my late expedition to Wrexham, which
made him smile more than once. When I had concluded, he asked me whether
I knew the meaning of the word Wrexham; I told him I believed I did, and
gave him the derivation which the reader will find in an early chapter of
this work. He told me that with all due submission he thought he could
give me a better, which he had heard from a very clever man, gwr deallus
iawn, who lived about two miles from Llangollen, on the Corwen road. In
the old time a man of the name of Sam kept a gwestfa, or inn, at the
place where Wrexham now stands; when he died he left it to his wife, who
kept it after him, on which account the house was first called Tŷ wraig
Sam, the house of Sam’s wife, and then for shortness Wraig Sam, and a
town arising about it by degrees, the town, too, was called Wraig Sam,
which the Saxons corrupted into Wrexham.
I was much diverted with this Welsh derivation of Wrexham, which I did
not attempt to controvert. After we had had some further discourse, John
Jones got up, shook me by the hand, gave a sigh, wished me a “taith
hyfryd,” and departed. Thus terminated my last day at Llangollen.
CHAPTER LXIV
Departure for South Wales—Tregeiriog—Pleasing Scene—Trying to Read—Garmon
and Lupus—The Cracked Voice—Effect of a Compliment—Llan Rhyadr.
The morning of the 21st of October was fine and cold; there was a rime
frost on the ground. At about eleven o’clock I started on my journey for
South Wales, intending that my first stage should be Llan Rhyadr. My
wife and daughter accompanied me as far as Plas Newydd. As we passed
through the town I shook hands with honest A—, whom I saw standing at the
door of a shop, with a kind of Spanish hat on his head, and also with my
venerable friend old Mr. Jones, whom I encountered close beside his own
domicile. At the Plas Newydd I took an affectionate farewell of my two
loved ones, and proceeded to ascend the Berwyn. Near the top I turned
round to take a final look at the spot where I had lately passed many a
happy hour. There lay Llangollen far below me, with its chimneys
placidly smoking, its pretty church rising in its centre, its blue river
dividing it into two nearly equal parts, and the mighty hill of Brennus,
overhanging it from the north. I sighed, and repeating Einion Du’s verse
“Tangnefedd i Llangollen!”
turned away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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