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
Nothing worthy of commemoration took place during the two following days,
save that myself and family took an evening walk on the Wednesday up the
side of the Berwyn, for the purpose of botanizing, in which we were
attended by John Jones. There, amongst other plants, we found a curious
moss which our good friend said was called in Welsh Corn Carw, or deer’s
horn, and which he said the deer were very fond of. On the Thursday he
and I started on an expedition on foot to Ruthyn, distant about fourteen
miles, proposing to return in the evening.
The town and castle of Ruthyn possessed great interest for me from being
connected with the affairs of Owen Glendower. It was at Ruthyn that the
first and not the least remarkable scene of the Welsh insurrection took
place by Owen making his appearance at the fair held there in fourteen
hundred, plundering the English who had come with their goods, slaying
many of them, sacking the town and concluding his day’s work by firing
it; and it was at the castle of Ruthyn that Lord Grey dwelt, a minion of
Henry the Fourth and Glendower’s deadliest enemy, and who was the
principal cause of the chieftain’s entering into rebellion, having in the
hope of obtaining his estates in the vale of Clwyd poisoned the mind of
Henry against him, who proclaimed him a traitor, before he had committed
any act of treason, and confiscated his estates, bestowing that part of
them upon his favourite, which the latter was desirous of obtaining.
We started on our expedition at about seven o’clock of a brilliant
morning. We passed by the abbey and presently came to a small fountain
with a little stone edifice, with a sharp top above it. “That is the
holy well,” said my guide: “Llawer iawn o barch yn yr amser yr Pabyddion
yr oedd i’r fynnon hwn—much respect in the times of the Papists there was
to this fountain.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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