Expedition to Ruthyn - The Column - Slate Quarries - The Gwyddelod - Nocturnal Adventure.
NOTHING worthy of commemoration took place during the two following days, save that myself and family took an evening walk on the Wednesday up the side of the Berwyn, for the purpose of botanizing, in which we were attended by John Jones. There, amongst other plants, we found a curious moss which our good friend said was called in Welsh, Corn Carw, or deer's horn, and which he said the deer were very fond of. On the Thursday he and I started on an expedition on foot to Ruthyn, distant about fourteen miles, proposing to return in the evening.
The town and castle of Ruthyn possessed great interest for me from being connected with the affairs of Owen Glendower. It was at Ruthyn that the first and not the least remarkable scene of the Welsh insurrection took place by Owen making his appearance at the fair held there in fourteen hundred, plundering the English who had come with their goods, slaying many of them, sacking the town and concluding his day's work by firing it; and it was at the castle of Ruthyn that Lord Grey dwelt, a minion of Henry the Fourth and Glendower's deadliest enemy, and who was the principal cause of the chieftain's entering into rebellion, having, in the hope of obtaining his estates in the vale of Clwyd, poisoned the mind of Harry against him, who proclaimed him a traitor, before he had committed any act of treason, and confiscated his estates, bestowing that part of them upon his favourite, which the latter was desirous of obtaining.
We started on our expedition at about seven o'clock of a brilliant morning. We passed by the abbey and presently came to a small fountain with a little stone edifice, with a sharp top above it.
"That is the holy well," said my guide: "Llawer iawn o barch yn yr amser yr Pabyddion yr oedd i'r fynnon hwn - much respect in the times of the Papists there was to this fountain.""I heard of it," said I, "and tasted of its water the other evening at the abbey;" shortly after we saw a tall stone standing in a field on our right hand at about a hundred yards' distance from the road. "That is the pillar of Eliseg, sir," said my guide. "Let us go and see it," said I. We soon reached the stone. It is a fine upright column about seven feet high, and stands on a quadrate base. "Sir," said my guide, "a dead king lies buried beneath this stone. He was a mighty man of valour and founded the abbey. He was called Eliseg." "Perhaps Ellis," said I, "and if his name was Ellis the stone was very properly called Colofn Eliseg, in Saxon the Ellisian column." The view from the column is very beautiful, below on the south-east is the venerable abbey, slumbering in its green meadow. Beyond it runs a stream, descending from the top of a glen, at the bottom of which the old pile is situated; beyond the stream is a lofty hill. The glen on the north is bounded by a noble mountain, covered with wood. Struck with its beauty Iinquired its name. "Moel Eglwysig, sir," said my guide. "The Moel of the Church," said I. "That is hardly a good name for it, for the hill is not bald (moel)." "True, sir," said John Jones. "At present its name is good for nothing, but estalom (of old) before the hill was planted with trees its name was good enough. Our fathers were not fools when they named their hills." "I daresay not," said I, "nor in many other things which they did, for which we laugh at them, because we do not know the reasons they had for doing them." We regained the road; the road tended to the north up a steep ascent. I asked John Jones the name of a beautiful village, which lay far away on our right, over the glen, and near its top. "Pentref y dwr, sir" (the village of the water). It is called the village of the water, because the river below comes down through part of it. I next asked the name of the hill up which we were going, and he told me Allt Bwlch; that is, the high place of the hollow road.
