CLEAR WATERS 



II 



THE WELSH DEE 



THE cult of the Highlands has been so 

 dominant among south country sports- 

 men and tourists of later generations, that 

 the ancient fame of the Welsh Dee has been in a 

 measure eclipsed by its northern namesake. It 

 seems always to require the distinguishing prefix 

 which writers on the Scottish Dee appear to regard 

 as superfluous. Royalty, moreover, now dwells 

 upon the banks of the Highland river, and has 

 further glorified it. It is a long time since seven kings 

 rowed upon the Welsh Dee with their would-be Saxon 

 suzerain as cox, though how they succeeded with 

 such a lob-sided crew in trimming the boat history 

 does not say. The Angevin and Plantagenet kings 

 knew only one Dee, this Welsh one, and that pretty 

 nearly as well as they knew the Thames, and usually 

 to their great discomfort. And did not Henry of 

 Bolingbroke and his son know every yard of its banks 

 from Chirk to Bala through the long years before 

 they had finished with its unconquerable son Owain 

 of Glyndyfrdwy, Owen of the Glen of the Dee. More- 

 over, is not the Dyfrdwy by ancient tradition held as 

 sacred, a fact its very name proclaims to the initiated. 



44 



