52 LLANDDWYN 



no life were there at all. Only the black marsh- 

 cattle break the monotony of dull green reeds in 

 which they stand half hidden ; and even these have 

 lost all tendency to herd, roaming alone, one here, 

 another far away, and no one drives them afield in 

 the morning or rounds them up at night. Sea and 

 sand and marsh they play their part here as of old 

 ere man was, or as if, having been, he had ceased to 

 be. 



Seated that evening by Dwynwen's cross on the 

 hillock overlooking land and sea, one felt the chill 

 of that other loneliness the loneliness, not of space, 

 but of time. On the right the sun went down over 

 Malldraeth, throwing up in black relief the ridge that 

 forms its western shore ; ranged on the left were the 

 dark, confused forms of the mountains of Carnarvon- 

 shire, wrapping themselves in mist, for the day had 

 been hot ; behind, on either hand, lay the Warren 

 with its empty shores of yellow sand, from which the 

 long black rock of Llanddwyn is thrust out into the 

 sea that flanks it right and left, and fills the whole 

 forward view. 



Solitude was ever the keynote of Llanddwyn ; its 

 history is the history of its solitude. 



Here this Dwynwen, herself a solitary, unwed, 

 founded a house for solitaries fifteen centuries ago. 

 And here they buried her, her tomb becoming a 

 shrine, where lights were burned continually. For, 

 being herself a maid, she drew, as by some strange 

 law of contraries, all lovers to her, and became their 

 saint. And the monks throve because of her and 

 by means of their sooth-sayings, and out of their 

 riches built an abbey, as the saying goes ; but 



