INTRODUCTION 



Court and Moorhampton." Douro sounds so 

 suggestive of Spanish settlers that I must 

 quote what my MS. says about it : " The 

 vale of Straddel is that which we call the 

 Golden Valley ystrad in Welsh is valley 

 and we may believe this is the most ancient 

 denomination of it, for dyffrin dwr being 

 sounded among the Normands, they thought 

 they had heard the word d'or, and so Eng- 

 lished it the Golden Valley, whereas the latter 

 Welsh denomination signifies noe more than 

 the Watry Valley." 



Thus my manuscript ; but another legend 

 has it that when the Saxon invaders pushed 

 the Welsh back into " Welsh Wales," they 

 asked some captive the name of the little 

 brook which runs purling through the valley, 

 and were told Dwr, which means simply 

 water, but which they caught up as Dor, 

 and hereafter called the river "the Dor." In 

 later days the monks, moved either by the 

 fairness of the landscape or the golden rich- 

 ness of the fields ripe for harvest, perpetrated 

 a monkly jest, and called the valley Voile 

 d'Oro, the Golden Valley, or the Valley of the 

 Dor. However that may be, in Rowland's 

 time it was always called the Golden Valley, 

 xix 



