CLEAR WATERS 



So sang Wordsworth, though more susceptible, per- 

 haps, to the shepherd's cot than to rehcs of the mailed 

 fist. Indeed he incurred, it is said, the displeasure 

 of his hostesses, the aristocratic old ladies of Plas- 

 Newydd, by apostrophising that picturesque, half- 

 timbered abode as * a lowly cot by Deva's banks.' 

 Dinas Bran is not surpassed for pose and significance 

 among the great hill fortresses of Wales, though the 

 last note of its mediaeval story comes to us, not from 

 an epic but from a lovelorn bard — a man, too, of fame 

 and note. And it was Myfanwy Trevor, the beauty 

 of the castle in the fifteenth century who broke all 

 hearts upon the Dee, that invoked the stanzas of this 

 famous one among her victims, Gutyn Owen : — 



The winds around thy towers may rave, 



But there I roam thy form to see, 

 As brilliant as the dangerous wave 



That murmurs o'er Caswennon's sea. 



My song shall tell the world how bright 



Is she who robs my soul of rest ; 

 As fair her face, all smiles and light, 



As snow new fallen on Arran's crest. 



So much for a sample in English of Gutyn's im- 

 passioned outpouring, a man who, though lovelorn 

 for a brief hour, admits elsewhere his partiality for a 

 good horse and a good dinner, and smacks his poetic 

 lips over the hospitalities of his neighbours the monks. 

 For in a glen at the mountain foot hard by, in the vale 

 of the pillar of Eliseg, are the stately ruins of the great 

 abbey of Valle Crucis, beneath whose turf-clad, roof- 

 less aisles lies the dust of the Powys princes, who 



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