ELAN LAKES— WILD SOUTH WALES 



over a thousand feet. At Newbridge and Llysdinam 

 the broken hills on either side fall back, but the Wye 

 surges on with a vigour no whit abated by its recent 

 efforts in more contracted channels, till the Ithon, 

 from the far solitudes of Radnor forest, and big with 

 the burden of many tributary brooks, pours in a broad 

 volume that in flood-time fills the brown, peaty Wye 

 with the ruddy stain of a red-sandstone country. 

 But these after all are par excellence the haunts of the 

 salmon-fisher. Here, just above, are the pools of 

 Caerwnon, and away down beyond the railway bridge 

 which bears the trains bound for their stiff cHmb up 

 the Yrfon and over the Sugar Loaf and down the 

 wonderful pitch beyond, into the vale of Towy and 

 South-west Wales, are the famous salmon catches of 

 ' Builth rocks.' The long gorge of Aberedw through 

 the Epynt range looms near, and to see the Wye 

 rage through it in a big flood is a memory to be treas- 

 ured. And far beyond, the Black mountains will be 

 cutting the sky-hne, and thrusting back the now 

 quieting river to the eastwards and to the pleasant 

 pastures of Hereford. It was hereabouts at Builth 

 that the Wye inspired the first of the many poets 

 who have invoked it, and that was a long time ago, so 

 long ago as the early fourteenth century, and the 

 singer was Dafydd ap Gwylim, the greatest Welsh 

 poet of all time, though he may not be judged by an 

 EngHsh translation : 



Sweet Wye, with thy waters as white as the snow, 

 Now dark as the thunder-cloud's banner of woe. 

 Oh why should we wander beyond thy wild stream, 

 From the land of the harp and the bard and his dream ! 



199 



