54 LLANDDWYN 



the same name, Caer Arianrhod (caer, a walled or 

 fortified place), but sunk in the sea. "Stationem 

 hie in ipso littore," writes a travelling botanist of the 

 earlier half of the seventeeth century, " Romani 

 milites habuerunt, cujus adhuc satis clara vestigia 

 manent." But, so strange are the courses of man's 

 findings-out and forgettings, that it is safe to say he 

 knows to-day as much of the Arianrhod in the sky as 

 of that submerged in the sea. 



The light lingers long in these midsummer days, 

 in fact never wholly fades, the glow creeping round 

 by the north, and so back again eastwards, ere a 

 midnight watcher is well aware that day has ended 

 and again begun, "so near are the out-goings of the 

 night and of the day." And the time assorts well 

 with the place. For the world is old in these parts, 

 a twilight world, physically and historically. Here- 

 abouts are ancient shores of some lost Western Land ; 

 for the fabled Atlantis is not all myth. Here, too, 

 is the race of the little black-eyed, black-haired man, 

 who once held the land by aboriginal right ; for no 

 earlier occupants are known than the small-bodied, 

 smooth-faced creatures whose bones modern science 

 has drawn from their ancient burial-places to 

 measure and name. Pushed everywhere into 

 corners, or clinging on among the hills, they 

 have been thrust westward by successive hordes 

 of stronger invaders, until they remain only in 

 these extreme western shores of Europe, the Celtic 

 Fringe as some have called them, because their own 

 tongue has gone down in silence and they speak a lan- 

 guage thrust on them by Celtic-speaking conquerors. 

 After the first feeble resistance, they would resign 



