60 Wild Life in Wales 



boring, and judging from the accounts given in the Triads 

 it must, at all events occasionally, have been found in some 

 plenty in ancient days. Lywarch Hen describes warriors 

 wearing gold spurs, and bearing golden shields on their 

 backs, and the Gododin tells of 



" Three hundred battle knights of Eiddyn in gilded armour, 

 Three loricated hosts, three leaders with golden chains." 



Not far from Cymmer is Nannaw ("The Ravines"), 

 where the Welsh family of Vaughan have been seated from 

 time immemorial, and, as might be expected, bards ancient 

 and modern have vied with one another in surrounding it 

 with a halo of romance and legend. 



" Who shall tell the mysteries of Nannaw, 

 Or interpret the whisper of the wind, 

 Murmuring through the trees of elden days ? 

 Shades of the mighty dead roam the ravines, 

 The echoes of her halls are eloquent ; 

 The stones have voices, and the walls do live j 

 It is the house of memory." 



A brass plate marks the site of an ancient oak which 

 stood here till 1813, when it was destroyed by lightning. 

 The trunk was decayed, and is said to have measured 27 

 feet in girth. It was known as the Hollow Tree, or Demon 

 Haunt (" Derwen Ceubren yr Ellyll "), from a tragedy that 

 occurred during the reign of Richard II. Even at that date 

 the tree appears to have been very old ; for Owain Glyndwr 

 having quarrelled with his cousin, the then owner of 

 Nannaw, slew him in a duel, and hid the body in the hollow 

 trunk, where the widow discovered it after a lapse of forty 

 years, and gave it fitting interment, the ghost of her departed 

 lord having troubled the lady regularly, during the interval. 

 With the age assigned to this tree before me, I had the 

 curiosity to count the rings of growth on several large Oaks 

 recently felled on an adjoining property, though not, it must 

 be confessed, with any desire to question the verity of the 

 legend, to which, in all charity, must be extended the same 



