Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

CAMEO XXXII. The CYMRY. (B.C. 66 A.D. 1269.)

In ancient times the whole of Europe seems to have been inhabited by the Keltic nation, until they were dispossessed by the more resolute tribes of Teuton origin, and driven to the extreme West, where the barrier of rugged hills that guards the continent from the Atlantic waves has likewise protected this primitive race from extinction.

Cym, or Cyn, denoting in their language "first," was the root of their name of Cymry, applied to the original tribe, and of which we find traces across the whole map of Europe, beginning from the Cimmerian Bosphorus, going on to the Cimbri, conquered by Marius, while in our own country we still possess Cumberland and Cambria, the land inhabited by the Cymry.

The Gael, another pure Keltic tribe, who followed the Cymry, have bestowed more names, as living more near to the civilized world, and being better known to history. Even in Asia Minor, a settlement of them had been called Galatians, and the whole tract from the north of Italy to the Atlantic was, to the Romans, Gallia. The name still survives in the Cornouailles of Brittany and the Cornwall of England (both meaning the horn of Gallia), in Gaul, in Galles, in the Austrian and Spanish Galicias, in the Irish Galway and the Scottish Galloway, while the Gael themselves are still a people in the Highlands.

Mingling with the Teutons, though receding before them, there was a third tribe, called usually by the Teuton word "_Welsh_" meaning strange; and these, being the first to come in contact with the Romans, were termed by them Belgae. The relics of this appellation are found in the German "Welschland," the name given to Italy, because the northern part of that peninsula had a Keltic population, in Wallachia, in the Walloons of the Netherlands, who have lately assumed the old Latinized name of Belgians, and in the Welsh of our own Wales.

This last was the region, scarcely subdued by the Romans, where the Cymry succeeded in maintaining their independence, whilst the Angles and Saxons gained a footing in the whole of the eastern portion of Britain. The Britons were for the most part Christian, and partly civilized by the Romans; but there was a wild element in their composition, and about the time of the departure of the Roman legions there had been a reaction toward the ancient Druidical religion, as if the old national faith was to revive with the national independence. The princes were extremely savage and violent, and their contemporary historian, Gildas, gives a melancholy account of their wickedness, not even excepting the great Pendragon, Arthur, in spite of his twelve successful battles with the Saxons. Merlin, the old, wild soothsayer of romance, seems to have existed at this period under the name of Merddyn-wilt, or the Wild, and bequeathed dark sayings ever since deemed prophetic, and often curiously verified.

Out of the attempt to blend the Druid philosophy with Christianity arose the Pelagian heresy, first taught by Morgan, or Pelagius, a monk of Bangor, and which made great progress in Wales even after its refutation by St. Jerome. It was on this account that St. Germain preached in Wales, and produced great effect. The Pelagians gave up their errors, and many new converts were collected to receive the rite of baptism at Mold, in Flintshire, when a troop of marauding enemies burst, on them. The neophytes were unarmed and in their white robes, but, borne up by the sense of their new life, they had no fears for their body, and with one loud cry of "Hallelujah!" turned, with the Bishop at their head, to meet the foe. The enemy retreated in terror; and the name of Maes Garman still marks the scene of this bloodless victory.

After this the heresy died away, but the more innocent customs of the Druids continued, and the system of bards was carried on, setting apart the clergy, the men of wisdom, and the poets, by rites derived from ancient times. Be it observed, that a Christian priest was not necessarily of one of the Druidical or Bardic orders, although this was generally preferred. Almost all instructions were still oral, and, for convenience of memory, were drawn up in triads, or verses of three-a mystic number highly esteemed. Many of these convey a very deep philosophy. For instance, the three unsuitable judgments in any person whatsoever: The thinking himself wise-the thinking every other person unwise-the thinking all he likes becoming in him. Or the three requisites of poetry: An eye that can see Nature-a heart that can feel Nature-a resolution that dares to follow Nature. And the three objects of poetry: Increase of goodness-increase of understanding-increase of delight.

Such maxims were committed to the keeping of the Bards, who were admitted to their office after a severe probation and trying initiatory rites, among which the chief was, that they should paddle alone, in a little coracle, to a shoal at some distance from the coast of Caernarvonshire-a most perilous voyage, supposed to be emblematic both of the trials of Noah and of the troubles of life. Afterward the Bard wore sky-blue robes, and was universally honored, serving as the counsellor, the herald, and the minstrel of his patron. The domestic Bard and the chief of song had their office at the King's court, with many curious perquisites, among which was a chessboard from the King. The fine for insulting the Bard was 6 cows and 120 pence; for slaying him, 126 cows. With so much general respect, and great powers of extemporizing, the Bards were well able to sway the passions of the nation, and greatly contributed to keep up the fiery spirit of independence which the Cymry cherished in their mountains.

When the Saxons began to embrace Christianity, and Augustine came on his mission from Rome, the Welsh clergy, who had made no attempts at converting their enemies, looked on him with no friendly eyes. He brought claims, sanctioned by Gregory the Great, to an authority over them inconsistent with that of the Archbishop of Caerleon; and the period for observing Easter was, with them, derived from the East, and differed by some weeks from that ordained by the Roman Church. An old hermit advised the British clergy, who went to meet Augustine, to try him by the test of humility, and according as he should rise to greet them, or remain seated, to listen to his proposals favorably or otherwise. Unfortunately, Augustine retained his seat: they rejected his plans of union; and he told them that, because they would not preach to the Angles the way of life, they would surely at their hands suffer death.

Shortly after, the heathen king, Ethelfrith, attacked Brocmail, the Welsh prince of Powys, who brought to the field 1,200 monks of Bangor to pray for his success. The heathens fell at once on the priests, and, before they could be protected, slew all except fifty; and this, though the Welsh gained the victory, was regarded by the Saxon Church as a judgment, and by the Welsh, unhappily, as a consequence of Augustine's throat. The hatred became more bitter than ever, and the Welsh would not even enter the same church with the Saxons, nor eat of a meal of which they had partaken.

Cadwallader, the last of the Pendragons, was a terrible enemy to the kings of Mercia and Northumbria, and with him the Cymry consider that their glory ended. Looking on themselves for generation after generation as the lawful owners of the soil, and on the Saxons as robbers, they showed no mercy in their forays, and inflicted frightful cruelties on their neighbors on the Marches. Offa's curious dyke, still existing in Shropshire, was a bulwark raised in the hope of confining them within their own bounds:

"That Offa (when he saw his countries go to wrack), From bick'ring with his folk, to keep the Britons back, Cast up that mightly mound of eighty miles in length, Athwart from sea to sea."

The Danish invasions, by ruining the Saxons, favored the Welsh; and contemporary with Alfred lived Roderic Mawr, or the Great, who had his domains in so peaceful a state, that Alfred turned thither for aid in his revival of learning, and invited thence to his court his bosom friend Asser, the excellent monk and bard. Roderic divided his dominions-Aberfraw, or North Wales, Dinasvawr, or South Wales, and Powys, or Shropshire-between his three sons; but they became united again under his grandson, Howell Dha, the lawgiver of Wales.

Actuated perhaps by the example of Alfred, Howell collected his clergy and bards at his hunting-lodge at Tenby, a palace built of peeled rods, and there, after fasting and praying for inspiration, the collective wisdom of the kingdom compiled a body of laws, which the King afterward carried in person to Rome to receive the confirmation of the Pope; and much edified must the Romans have been if they chanced to glance over the code, since, besides many wise and good laws, it regulated the minute etiquettes and perquisites of the royal household. If any one should insult the King, the fine was to be, among other valuables, a golden dish as broad as the royal face, and as thick as the nail of a husbandman who has been a husbandman, seven years. Each officer's distance from the royal fire was regulated, and even the precedence of each officer's horse in the stable-proving plainly the old saying, that the poorer and more fiery is a nation, the more precise is their point of honor. It seems to have been in his time, as a more enlightened prince, that the Welsh conformed their time of keeping Easter to that of the rest of the Western Church. But Howell was no longer independent of the English: he had begun to pay a yearly tribute of dogs, horses, and hawks, to Ethelstane, and the disputes that followed his death brought the Welsh so much lower, that Edgar the Peaceable easily exacted his toll of wolves' heads; and Howell of North Wales was one of the eight royal oarsmen who rowed the Emperor of Britain to the Minster of St. John, on the river Dee.

The Welsh had destroyed all their wolves before the close of Dunstan's regency, and Ethelred the Unready not being likely to obtain much respect, the tribute was discontinued, until the marauding Danes again exacted it under another form and title of "Tribute of the Black Army."

Fierce quarrels of their own prevented the Welsh from often taking advantage of the disturbances of England. As in Ireland, the right of gavelkind was recognized; yet primogeniture was also so far regarded as to make both claims uncertain; and the three divisions of Wales were constantly being first partitioned, and then united, by some prince who ruled by the right of the strongest, till dethroned by another, who, to prove his right of birth, carried half his genealogy in his patronymic.

Thus Llewellyn ap Sithfylht, under whom "the earth brought forth double, the cattle increased in great number, and there was neither beggar nor poor man from the South to the North Sea," was slain in battle, in 1021, by Howell ap Edwin ap Eneon ap Owayn ap Howell Dha, who reigned over South Wales till the son of Llewellyn, or, rather, Gryflyth ap Llewellyn ap Sithfylht ap, &c., coming to age, dispossessed him, and gained all Wales. It was this Gryffyth who received and sheltered Fleance, the son of Banquo, when flying from Macbeth, and gave him in marriage his daughter Nesta, who became the mother of Walter, the ancestor of the line of kings shadowed in Macbeth's mirror.

In the early part of Gryffyth's reign, the Welsh flourished greatly. Earl Godwin, in his banishment, made friends with him, and, favored by Saxon treachery, he overran Herefordshire, and pillaged the cathedral. But, after Godwin's death, Harold, as Earl of Wessex, deemed it time to repress these inroads, and, training his men to habits of diet and methods of warfare that rendered them as light and dexterous as the wild mountaineers, he pursued them into their own country, and burnt the palace and ships at Rhuddlan, while Gryffyth was forced to take refuge in one of his vessels.

Harold set up a pillar with the inscription, "Here Harold conquered;" and the Welsh gave hostages, and promised to pay tribute, while Harold erected a hunting-seat in Monmouthshire, and made an ordinance that any Welshman seen bearing weapons beyond Offa's dyke should lose his right hand. Welshwomen might marry Englishmen, but none of the highborn Cymry might aspire to wed an Englishwoman. Hating the prince under whom they had come to so much disgrace, the Welsh themselves captured poor Gryffyth, and sent his head, his hands, and the beak of his ship, to Edward the Confessor, from whom they accepted the appointment of three of their native princes to the three provinces.

Thus the strength of Wales was so far broken, that William the Conqueror had only to bring a force with him, under pretext of a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. David, to obtain the submission of the princes; and, in fact, the Cymry found the Norman nobles far more aggressive neighbors than the Angles had been since their first arrival in Britain.

The mark, or frontier, once the kingdom of Mercia, was now called the March of Wales, where the Norman knights began to effect settlements, by the right of the strongest, setting up their impregnable castles, round which the utmost efforts of the Welsh were lost. Martin de Tours was one of the first, and his glittering host of mail-clad men so overawed the inhabitants of Whitchurch that they readily submitted, and he quietly established himself in their bounds, treating them, as it appears, with more fairness and friendliness than was then usual. He was a great chess-player, and the sport descended from father to son, even among the peasantry of Whitchurch, who long after were most skilful in the game.

Hugh Lupus, the fierce old Earl of Chester, was likewise a Lord Marcher, and had, like the Bishop of Durham, the almost royal powers of a Count Palatine, because, dwelling on the frontier, it was necessary that the executive power should be prompt and absolute. Indeed, the Lords Marchers, as these border barons were called, lived necessarily in a state of warfare, which made it needful to entrust them with greater powers than their neighbors, around whom they formed a sort of _cordon_, to protect them from the forays of the half-savage Welsh.

Twenty-one baronies were formed in this manner along the March of Wales, which constantly travelled toward the west. Robert Fitzaymon, by an alliance with one Welsh chief, dispossessed another of Glamorgan, which he left to his daughter Amabel, the wife of Earl Robert of Gloucester; and Gilbert de Clare, commonly called Strongbow (the father of the Irish Conqueror), obtained a grant from Henry I. of Chepstow and Pembroke, but had to fight hard for the lands which had more lawful owners. In and out among these Lords Marchers, and making common cause with them, were settlements of Flemings. Flanders, that commercial state where cloth-weaving first flourished as a manufacture, had suffered greatly from the inundations of the sea, and the near connection subsisting between the native princes and the sons of the Conqueror had led to an intercourse, which ended in the weavers, who had lost their all, being invited by Henry I. to take up their abode in Pembrokeshire, where they carried on their trade while defending themselves against the Welsh, and thus first commenced the manufactures of England. Resolute in resistance, though not rash nor aggressive, and of industrious habits, they acted as a great protection to the English counties, and down even to the time of Charles I. they had a language of their own.

Owayn ap Gwynned, King of Aberfraw, or North Wales, had many wars with Henry II.; and, uniting with the bard king, Owayn Cyvelioc, of Powysland, did fearful damage to the English, which Henry attempted to revenge by an incursion into Merionethshire; but though he gained a battle at Ceiroc, he was forced to retreat through the inhospitable country, his troops harassed by the weather, and cut off by the Welsh, who swarmed on the mountains, so that his army arrived at Chester in a miserable state. He had many unfortunate hostages in his hands, the children of the noblest families, and on these he wreaked a cowardly vengeance, cutting off the noses and ears of the maidens, and putting out the eyes of the boys.

Well might Becket, in his banishment, exclaim, on hearing such tidings, "His wise men are become fools; England reels and stagers like a drunken man."

"You will never subdue Wales, unless Heaven be against them," said an old hermit to the King.

However, Henry had been carried by a frightened horse over a ford, of which the old prophecies declared that, when it should be crossed by a freckled king, the power of the Cymry should fall, and this superstition took away greatly from satisfaction in the victory. The Welsh princes were becoming habituated to the tribute, and in 1188, under pretext of preaching a Crusade, Archbishop Baldwin came into Wales, and asserted the long-disputed supremacy of Canterbury over the Welsh bishopries. He was attended by Gerald Barry, or Giraldus Cambrensis, a half-Norman half-Welsh ecclesiastic, who was one of the chief historians of the period, and had the ungracious office of tutor to Prince John.

When Owayn ap Gwynned died, in 1169, the kingdom of Aberfraw, or North Wales, was reduced to the isle of Anglesea and the counties of Merioneth and Caernarvon, with parts of Denbigh and Cardigan. A great dispute broke out for the succession. Jorwarth, the oldest son, was set aside because he had a broken nose; and Davydd, the eldest son by a second wife, seized the inheritance, and slew all the brethren save one, named Madoc, who sailed away to the West in search of new regions. Several years after, he again made his appearance in Aberfraw, declaring that he had found a pleasant country, and was come to collect colonists, with whom, accordingly, he departed, and returned no more. Many have believed that his Western Land was no other than America, and on this supposition Drayton speaks of him, in the "Polyolbion," as having reached the great continent "Ere the Iberian powers had found her long-sought bay, or any western ear had heard the sound of Florida."

Southey has, in his poem, made Madoc combine with the Aztecs in the settlement of Mexico, but traces were said to be found of habits and countenances resembling those of the Welsh among the Indians of the Missouri; and, in our own days, the traveller Mr. Buxton was struck by finding the Indians of the Rocky Mountains weaving a fabric resembling the old Welsh blanket. If this be so, Christianity and civilization must have died out among Madoc's descendants: but the story is one of the exciting riddles of history, such as the similar one of the early Norwegian discovery of America.