WEST OF LLANFAIR P.O. 19 



that all who appealed to her might obtain the husbands 

 they desired or forget all about them. 



The picturesque ruins of an abbey stand on the highest 

 part of the island, and a modern cross has been erected 

 in memory of the many pilgrims who visited the shrine 

 and were buried there. Round the Abbey are the remains 

 of the monastic gartiens, still fruitful, for the once well- 

 tilled land, helped by rotting seaweed, an excellent ferti- 

 liser, produces the best early potatoes for Carnarvon 

 market. Starlings and a most valuable member of this 

 isolated colony, a donkey, were occupying the ruin on our 

 first visit, and we have since found that patient steed the 

 best method of transporting baggage across the soft and 

 shifting dunes. Llanddwyn was never large, but in 

 Tudor days it was important ; its inhabitants entertained 

 and traded with the pilgrims. One method of transferring 

 the wealth of the visitors to their own pockets was a 

 peculiar occult science, divination from fishes, but I have 

 failed to find how the finny tribe revealed the future; 

 the monks of St. Ddwyn knew. 



We sat amongst the ruins watching the children from 

 the cottages playing in a hollow below. Beyond the 

 four white cottages is a small harbour, where at one time 

 there was a lifeboat and where the pilot boats can be 

 hauled up the sandy beach. On a headland is a tower, 

 used as a landmark before the lighthouse was erected, and 

 beyond the lighthouse, on a couple of stacks, hundreds 

 of terns lay their nests on the bare, jagged rocks or 

 amongst the dense tangle of tree-mallow and sea-beet. 

 Drying their wings on a tangle-covered stack were three 

 or four cormorants, heraldic birds holding their black 

 pinions half unfurled; nearer an orange-billed oyster- 

 catcher eyed us suspiciously. Beyond, a wide sweep 

 of firm sand stretched to Aber Menai, once a ferry to 

 Carnarvon, and behind were the billowy dunes, their loose 



