ELAN LAKES— WILD SOUTH WALES 



These mountains vitally influenced racial distribution 

 in ancient Wales. They were a leading military factor 

 in the domestic Welsh wars and the Anglo-Welsh 

 wars and the earlier Irish invasions for hundreds of 

 years. Their summits, steeps, and valleys bear fre- 

 quent testimony by their names to the woes, the 

 triumphs, the anguish, and the slaughter of centuries 

 of strife. You could drop Dartmoor and Exmoor 

 together into their wild, uplifted waste. But they 

 have no collective designation. The average English- 

 man never heard of them, and you can't explain their 

 situation by county reference, as they cover bits of 

 five, and these five, moreover, counties not generally 

 well defined in the public mind. The before-men- 

 tioned scorcher to Aberystwith may sometimes be 

 aware that he is passing over the toe of Plinlimmon, for 

 Plinlimmon is a well identified mountain, but that is 

 the limit of his understanding. For he doesn't in the 

 least know whither the green and tawny steeps he is 

 brushing with his left shoulder trend, or what they 

 signify, and, as I said before, they have no name. In 

 the old fighting days they acquired one of necessity, 

 for Giraldus tells us the English called them the 

 Moruge, and the Welsh the mountains of Elenydd, 

 and there was a fearful lot of blood-letting within 

 them and around their skirts. However this may be, 

 about five hundred cars and motor cycles per diem 

 race through this valley in the summer hoHdays, but I 

 have never seen one slow down except of necessity, 

 nor detected the faintest sign of interest in the un- 

 common region they are screaming through. Within 

 sound of their profane and ceaseless discords you may 



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