Mallwyd—Falling waters—Dinas Mawddwy—Amongst the moors and mountains—A wild drive—A farmer's logic—A famous old inn—A fisherman's tale—A Roman inscribed stone—Brass to old Thomas Parr—A cruel sport—Wem and its story—A chat with "mine host"—Hawkestone and its wonders.

We left Machynlleth on a blustery morning when the wild west wind was out for a rampage across country, and who could say it nay? We retraced the road we came by for a short distance, but the landscape had a fresh look seen in the reverse direction; then we turned up the narrow Dyfi valley, hills rising near and bare on either hand, those to the right mist-crowned and scarred by numberless streams that would be torrents, which had worn for themselves long stony channels on the steep hillside, and down these they dashed, milk-white in their mimic, harmless fury, filling the valley with the sound of their complainings. A hill

... that shows

Inscribed upon its visionary sides
The history of many a winter storm.

It was a day full of movement; the clouds above were hounded along relentlessly by the hurrying wind that even blew the birds on the wing about—a wind that played riot with the woods, tossing the tops of the trees this way and that, swaying their branches even to breaking one here and there, and surring through their leaves with a sound like that of a stormy sea heard afar off. The air was full of the confused sounds of the roaring wind and raging waters. The clouds above looked drooping and threatening, but the wind trailed them along and drove them over the mountains before they had time to do much mischief, tearing some even to shreds. Nature was at play that day, and in as rampageous a mood as ever a schoolboy out for a holiday; but no mood of hers would have suited better the bare hills and bleak mountains, for, as Coleridge remarks, "there is always something going on amongst the mountains in stormy weather." There was a good deal going on that day, and loud was the din of the contending elements, and rough the embrace of the wind.

At the end of the valley we found ourselves at Mallwyd, a tiny hamlet consisting of a cottage or two, a curious and ancient church, and an old-fashioned little stone-built inn half drowned in dark ivy. Mallwyd is a lonely spot shut in by gloomy mountains; its inn is the fit resort of anglers and artists, for who else, except perhaps a poet, would seek such solitary quarters, unless it were some one who desired to flee mankind? The old inn appealed to me, so far removed from the busy world it seemed, so restful with all around so full of unrest, its strong stone walls fit to bear the buffeting of all weathers; such strong walls it needed, and it looked so cosy, solid, and comfortable, in such contrast with the inhospitable country about and the wild winds that were raging.

In front of the inn, overhung by drooping trees, is a deep ravine down which the flooded river rushed and roared, a ravine spanned by a grey old bridge; and this with the tumbling, churning waters below, the dark, damp, shining rocks, the boulders that would impede the river's rush, the green, dripping, and trembling foliage of the trees above, made a picture to be remembered—"A roaring dell, o'er-wooded, narrow, deep." There on the bridge I stood awhile watching the turmoil of the waters; for a space they glided smoothly but swiftly over the rounded rocks with a polished surface clear as crystal, only the occasional and sudden darting lines of white foam and bubbles revealing their movement; then they broke and crashed into the dark pools beneath, sending their spray up on to the rocks and trees, which in turn dropped back beads of moisture into the whirling waters below. Strange that watching the restless waters should have given me a feeling of rest, but so it did; and do not some people find rest by the restless sea?

Great is the fascination that falling water has for certain people, and of the number I am one. Give me a mountain torrent in some wild and rocky glen remote in the wilderness, and let me be there alone, then I can, for an hour or more, contentedly watch its mad downward dash and mazy side-plays, its plunges and its plashings, its struggles with the boulders it overleaps and that itself has brought down but to obstruct its troubled course; its changeful colours, here silvery and bright in the shine of the sun, there dark and porter-hued in the shade of the rocks, a translucent amber tint where just escaping from the shelving rocks, with many greens above; and the bass roar of it sounds like music to my ears, the memory of which brings to me a sense of deep refreshment when in the thronged and bustling town; and sometimes at night in the roar of the streets' traffic I fancy I hear again the torrent's hoarse voice.

From Mallwyd we went to Dinas Mawddwy, a little more than a mile away, a village veritably walled in by high mountains that rise close and sheer around. It lies at the bottom of a mighty rock-girt cup. When we were there the mountains were roofed across with clouds, so they might have been of any height our fancy pleased. Dinas Mawddwy oppressed me with a sense of gloom—not but what there was a certain grandeur about its gloom, but the mountains around looked so dark, dreary, and enclosing. The place obsessed me, it had such an eerie look under the louring sky; I was glad to get out of it. The prevailing gloom depressed my spirits, a depression that lasted till I got far away on to the wide open moors. I love mountains, to be on them, but I do not care to be imprisoned in them.

Returning to Mallwyd we began to climb high amongst the hills; it was a wild, glorious drive, one vastly to be enjoyed, though on our exposed road we came in for a rare buffeting with the wind, but little we heeded that. Right bracing we found it, a tonic of tonics. As we rose the clouds began to break, and great patches of bright blue showed overhead; then frequent bursts of sunshine raked the distant mountains and swept over the moors, causing the wet rocks to glitter here and there, revealing too, now and again, a sparkling rill or a gleaming pool, so enlivening the wide waste of green and dull grey. We had exchanged mountain gloom for mountain glory. It was a fine landscape, delightful in its spaciousness and far-receding distances.

Having climbed some miles we began a gradual descent to a sheltered hollow, where we entered into a straggling wood that had a civil look after the bareness of the mountains and the bleakness of the moors. Here our road took a sudden bend and crossed a deep dell boldly spanned by a one-arched bridge, and beyond the bridge we looked up to a cleft in the hills down which a tumbling stream left its white and broken trail, a stream that lost itself for a space in the woods below to shortly reappear again. This was one of the beauty-spots of the journey. The wooded dell, the grey bridge spanning it in one leap, the water falling and foaming down the dark rocks of the mountain side, the tawny-coloured stream below the bridge—altogether what a picture they made! "It seemed but a comparatively short and easy step from Nature to the canvas or to the poem" at that captivating spot!

Leaving the wooded glen we came to the open moors again, moors strewn with great weather-stained boulders that have lain there untold ages, before the stones of the Pyramids were hewn or the monoliths of Stonehenge raised from the ground, lain there since the close of the last geological epoch—some old writers indeed have declared "since God created the world." Centuries come and go, kingdoms wax and wane, but the moors remain the same, unchanged, and apparently unchangeable, in an age of change, in an age when most of the land is tilled to the uttermost. Here was a solitude with nothing but the mountains and the moors for the eyes to look upon; the wind had dropped, and great was the silence prevailing except for the faint tinkling of unseen rills that made the silence seem the more profound—not the comparative silence of the countryside, which to the attentive listener is not silence at all.

Gradually we dropped down to where the moors gave place to more kindly soil, though treeless and open still excepting for some rough and low stone walls by the roadside, but of what service (there being only hardy Welsh sheep dotted sparsely about) I could not imagine, for such sheep can climb a wall as well as any man; the only way to confine them is to place thorn branches along the tops of the walls, held there by big stones on them; even this arrangement sometimes fails, for the sheep are apt to pull down both branches and stones.

As we descended we came to patches of cultivated fields, and these increased till most of the land was enclosed and tilled, or under grass, so the scene became tamer. At the beginning of our descent we espied, close to the road, a lone farmhouse with a large water-wheel by the side of its outbuildings, so that the farmer, enlightened man, evidently utilised the power provided by the running streams instead of letting it go to waste, presumably to do his threshing, corn-grinding, chaff-cutting, and possibly churning, to the saving of labour. In a village I know the water-mill there grinds corn by day and generates electricity at night for its inhabitants, thus doing double duty. Rather different to a certain village in Essex where a meeting of the inhabitants—so I read in my morning paper—was held as to the lighting of it. At the meeting a local farmer opposed the project on the ground that "the Creator would have provided light if it had been necessary in the country at night," and strange to say, but true all the same, the lighting scheme was abandoned, though possibly on account of the expense and not because of the farmer's logic.

Then we left the hills behind and came down into a green and fertile valley and to "Cann Office Inn"—why so curiously called I cannot say. "What's in a name?" says Shakespeare. Now I think there is much in a name; Aberdovey has a pleasant sound, but Cann Office is not a name suggestive of rural pleasantness, yet "Cann Office Inn" is a charming, old-fashioned, comfortable-looking wayside hostelry, ivy-covered to boot, and it boasts a restful garden; moreover, it is set in the heart of a lovely country far from the sight and sound of the fussy railway, though to be reached by the ubiquitous motor-car, for where goes the road there comes the car. Truly I wish the car was not so ubiquitous; indeed, oftentimes I find myself looking longingly and selfishly back to the desirable old days when the motor-car was not, when I travelled either afoot or by horses, slowly perhaps but contentedly enough on the then little-travelled, peaceful country roads, and took my ease at quiet rural inns, feeling fairly certain of accommodation and even of the best room of the house; now I do not feel so certain of either, nor of the old-time quiet—inns that in those days seemed so remote, and I delighted to give myself up to the delusion of their remoteness. How pleasantly those past wanderings linger in my memory, when in the country you were sure of finding peace and often solitude away from the railway! There is no getting away from the car or the sound of its horn. But vain is the cry of Backward Ho!

"Cann Office Inn" was a famous hostelry in the good old coaching and posting era, so I have heard, and that there our hard-drinking ancestors made right merry over their glasses—

In the past Georgian day
When men were less inclined to say
That time is gold, and overlay

With toil their pleasure.

Nor troubled they about the morrow—or the gout.

Unlike many other coaching inns, Cann Office never seems to have fallen upon evil days, for when it lost its travelling and posting custom, anglers, just in the nick of time, happily discovered it, and ever since have haunted the troutful rivers and streams around. One angler indeed said to me, "If you can't catch fish here, you won't catch them anywhere." By my map I see that the rivers Banwy, Gam, and Twrch meet close at hand, and many a minor stream runs near by. "Twrch"—there is a fine specimen of a Welsh name, without a vowel in it, for a Saxon to pronounce! Truly it is short, but there are others that are long, and still have not a helpful vowel in all their astonishing array of consonants.

An angler friend, who in years gone by had fished the rivers about Cann Office, told me that on bringing back his catch to the inn one day, by some mischance his fish got mixed with those of another angler who had fished another river there. He was somewhat vexed, but the landlord said he could quite easily sort them out, for the trout of the one river differed in appearance from the trout of the other—and he sorted them to the satisfaction of both parties. The same angler friend told me a story, for the truth of which he vouched. It appears that though a fairly good fisherman there were days when his sport was poor, and even he had to return at times with an empty creel, yet another angler there on those very days generally came back to the inn with a more or less satisfactory show of fish. So he consulted a native on the matter who knew, or was supposed to know, all about local conditions. The native replied that the man mentioned had a special fly to which the trout rose greedily, but he kept it a secret. One day, however, the man lost his cast on the branches of a tree; this the native discovered and recovered, and, for a consideration, handed to my friend. "All's fair in love—and fishing," so my friend sent the fly to his rod-and-tackle maker to be copied. The fly was unlike any fly my friend had ever seen, but he used it with marked success, and during the rest of his stay he used no other.

At Llanerfyl, a little village beyond Cann Office, I pulled up to inspect a long printed notice I observed on the church door there. I found this related to the proposed Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Welsh Church. A great deal has been said of late, both in Parliament and out of it, about the neglect of the Welsh parsons of their parishes in past times.

But to go back to the eighteenth century, here is the story told by the author of The Spiritual Quixote, published in 1772, who in his Welsh wanderings found "a poor Welsh vicar of the diocese of Llandaff, sitting in his humble kitchen paring turnips for dinner, while he read a book and listened to one of his children repeating his lesson." Then he repeats what the vicar said to him:—

In the churchyard of Llanerfyl I noticed a large and ancient yew-tree, its extended branches shadowing the ground far around, its roots amongst the dead. In the shade of it I discovered what I took to be, from the look, the shape, and the lettering on it, a Roman inscribed stone, a stone weathered and worn, with much of the inscription wasted away; still, with difficulty, I managed to decipher a part of it—not that the deciphering left me much the wiser—and this is what I recovered:—

HIC......

......

D.......

GEDLAPA
TERMIN..

AN..XII.N.

Our road presently followed alongside the river Banwy, a river overhung with trees through which we caught constant silvery peeps of it tumbling over its bed of shelving rocks in shallow murmuring falls, anon resting, here and there, in many a quiet pool where the big trout lie hidden, or should do so. The English language, and perhaps all others, needs a word to express the sound of falling water—"gurgling" and "plashing" are the nearest I can think of, but they hardly fulfil the need. Then Llanfair village, picturesquely situated on a hill just above the running river, came in view, with its large, tall-towered church keeping watch and ward over its cottage homes; you rarely see so fine a church in a Welsh village—most frequently you find a chapel, a gaunt and square eyesore, where they preach the Calvinistic Creed.

A signpost informed me that the road led to Welshpool. Now to Welshpool I had no desire to go; it is a large town where, I believe, they manufacture flannels, a useful town, but it had no interest for me; however, as the road was a pleasant one I kept to it. By the way, the first signpost was inscribed "To Welshpool," but farther on this was shortened to simply "Pool." We duly reached Welshpool; it had a prosperous look; there was much traffic in its streets. We were glad to get out of it into the quiet country again, and a very pleasant country it proved to be, our road leading us along the hillsides and past fragrant pine-woods, with distant peeps of finely-shaped hills.

Close to the hamlet of Wollaston I pulled up to consult the map, and to ask the name of the place from a youth who was passing by, and when he had told me this I jokingly queried if there were anything to see there, for it looked an uninteresting spot where nothing had ever happened, or was likely to happen. "Well," replied he, "old Parr lived here—you may have heard of him; there's a brass about him in the church. I know where the key's kept, I'll run and get it for you"—doubtless with an eye to earning an honest penny or two, where, I should imagine, pennies were hard to earn. But he was a civil youth, so I let him get the key. There in the church I found a brass against the wall with a portrait of that old man engraved on the top, and the following inscription below:—

The Old, Old, very Old Man
Thomas Parr
Was born at the Glyn
In the township of Winnington
Within the Chapelry of Great Wollaston
And Parish of Alberbury
In the County of Salop
In the year of our Lord 1483.
He lived in the reigns of Ten Kings
And Queens of England (viz.) King Edward 4th
King Edward 5th King Richard 3rd King Henry 7th
King Henry 8th King Edward 6th Queen Mary Queen
Elizabeth King James 1st and King Charles. Died the 13th
And was buryed in Westminster Abby
On the 15th of November 1635
Aged 152 years and 9 months.

From Wollaston we had for some miles a pleasant stretch of pastoral country varied by shady woodlands, and we caught peeps on the way of some charming old half-timber homes, such as one finds in Shropshire, for we were in that shire now and approaching Shrewsbury again—so the signposts told us. We managed to drive round Shrewsbury by the Severn side, so did not enter the town, and were soon again on the open road, climbing, most of the way, to the village of Albrighton, having glorious panoramas, over a richly wooded country to our left, presented to us the latter half of the stage.

At Albrighton I learnt there used to prevail the cruel sport of whipping a cat to death on Shrove Tuesday, and the old signboard, that once hung in front of the inn there, is still preserved, on which is a painted and faded representation of a man whipping a cat, and the legend below—

The finest sport under the sun
Is whipping the cat at Albrighton.

At the place I could glean no information as to the origin of this cruel and curious custom, but later on during the journey I found enlightenment of a Shropshire parson, who told me he believed it arose from a cat having got into the church and having ate the Sacrament.

It was now growing late, and I began to think about my night's quarters. I passed an inviting-looking inn by the roadside, but, as I saw no stabling for the car there, I drove contentedly on in the gathering gloaming through a country that appeared to me to be exceedingly beautiful and richly wooded, and then with the evening star I made the little town of Wem (no town could surely well have a shorter title); there at the "Castle Inn" I found excellent accommodation, much civility, and a landlord who was interesting, informing, and obliging. I was glad I came to Wem.

That evening in his cosy bar I had a long chat with "mine host." I discovered him seated there reading Mitford's History of Greece, which much surprised me, as being, I thought, a rather heavy work for a landlord to read, and he told me he was reading for his amusement! He also lent me a History of Wem, by Herbert Merchant, which I found interesting, and from this I learnt that Hazlitt lived for twelve years at Wem. Augustine Birrell says that "by his writings Hazlitt, the most eloquent of English essayists, has so infected the place with his own delight that it is hard to be dull at Wem"—but not impossible, I think. Coleridge visited Hazlitt at Wem, walking with him from Shrewsbury to that place; I presume they walked along the same road we had come, and Coleridge was so delighted with the scenery on the way that he exclaimed, "If I had the quaint muse of Sir Philip Sidney I would write a sonnet to the road between Shrewsbury and Wem." Surely Coleridge's muse was quaint enough—who else but he could have composed The Ancient Mariner? Hazlitt, it appears, like Thackeray, first sought fame as an artist, for he had inscribed on his tomb, "William Hazlitt. Painter, Critic, Essayist. Born 1778. Died 1830."

In 1643, when the rest of Shropshire was loyal to the King, Wem declared for the Parliament; thereupon the King sent Lord Capel with five thousand men to capture the town, but—so the story goes—he was repulsed by the garrison of only forty men, aided by the women of the place, who were dressed in red cloaks and placed in positions where they could be seen by the King's forces. Lord Capel, judging from the number of red figures he observed, thought the garrison was too strong to be successfully attacked, and ignominiously retired. Hence the old couplet—

The women of Wem and a few musketeers
Beat Lord Capel and all his cavaliers.

There was, too, a Royalist mock litany of the time, a part of which reads—

From Wem, and from Nantwitch,

Good Lord, deliver us.

This story of the red-coated women of Wem reminds me of the similar story told of the French invasion of Fishguard in 1797, where and when a small French force was landed from three frigates to raid the country. Lord Cawdor at the head of a hastily collected body of militia, of about half the strength of the enemy, went forth to meet them; a number of Welsh women, in red cloaks, gathered on the hills around to watch the expected battle, and these were mistaken by the French for regular troops prepared to cut off their retreat; thereupon, deeming they were overpowered, the Frenchmen surrendered. Both stories read much alike. I wonder if either one is true? "I hae my douts."

I learnt much about Wem from the landlord, how in past days the houses of the town were all thatched, and that there is still preserved in the old town hall a huge iron hook fixed to the end of a long oak pole that was used to pull down the thatch from any house that was alight and so to prevent the flames spreading, and he offered to show it me in the morning if I cared to see it. I thought I should; such a contrivance must be somewhat of a curiosity—at least I had never seen or heard of anything of the kind before. However, in spite of the hook, it happened that the whole town was burnt down, the church steeple too, in 1677. "Wem was quite a large place at one time," he continued; "and though you might hardly think it, some of the quiet country lanes around were once the town streets. It is the only Shropshire town mentioned in the Doomsday Book, which perhaps may prove its former importance. Judge Jeffreys, who had his home a mile from the town, was created Baron of Wem. His house is still standing and has his coat-of-arms carved over the doorway." Then some customers came in and the conversation became general; I wish they had not, for I was interested in the landlord's account of the place, and I fancy there was much more he could have told me about it.

Amongst the company was a farmer, at least I took him to be such, and the weather was his main subject of conversation. I gathered from him that for some cause thunderstorms were fairly frequent at Wem and round about, and I understood that a farmer in the locality had recently lost several sheep by lightning. "Talking of lightning," he went on, "do you know it is a fact that lightning never strikes a moving object?" I did not, though I had to confess I had no recollection of such a circumstance, which was but negative evidence. Then said he, "According to my experience, if there's a full moon on a Saturday it's sure to rain the next day, and if there's a star close by the moon it's bound to blow hard the next morning." Though why this should be he could not explain—and little wonder! Many other things he said about the weather, but I did not note them down. The only man I trust about the weather is the shepherd of the downs or the plains, for on those open places the weather reveals its secrets to him who has little to do but observe it. I do not even trust the newspaper's forecasts except in settled times, when there is no need of them, for as a traveller who is concerned as to what the day will be, I have as often found them wrong as right. Sometimes they strike a provokingly uncertain note, such as "Rain in places," which is very safe forecasting and leaves me much in doubt.

During the conversation some one talked about his "near-dwellers," and the same man twice used the term "unked." These were unfamiliar expressions to me, and on inquiry I found "near-dwellers" to mean neighbours, and "unked" was employed to signify down-spirited. Then some one made use of the old saying, "You'll have to mind your P's and Q's." "Does any one know how that saying originated?" queried another of the party, "for I do." No one appeared to know. "Then I'll tell you," he went on, manifestly pleased to be informing. "In the old days, when the publican had to trust many of his customers, slates were kept in the bar with the customers' names written on them, with a P and a Q below. The P stood for pints and the Q for quarts, and crosses were chalked under the P's and Q's corresponding to the pints and quarts for which each customer owed. So, you see, they had to mind their P's and Q's." I had plenty of entertainment that night, of which I have given a fair sample. Much else about other things was said, but perhaps the talk of strangers at an inn is not a subject that profits to enlarge about or even worth mention at all; however, the conversation, and the unexpected turns of it, served to pass my evening pleasantly enough away. A fisherman once told me of a brother of the craft, which brother I own was given a little to romancing, that he "talked salmon and caught only tiny trout." Perhaps the moral applies to the conversation I listened to; agreeably tired after my long day in the open air, I grant I was in no exacting mood as to the quality of my entertainment, I was too dreamily lazy to be critical; then there was nothing to pay for it, and happy is the man who can find entertainment wherever he chance to be.

Glancing through the History of Wem that the landlord lent me, I read there a glowing description of Hawkestone Park, a most romantic spot according to the description, and as it was only four miles from Wem I determined to go there next day. I also discovered that Dr. Johnson visited Hawkestone on July 24, 1774, and this is what he had to say about it:—

Now all this strikes a most romantic note, and surely Dr. Johnson was too great a man to be given to gush, so all the more it surprised me how it was that I had never heard of Hawkestone and its wonders before. Just "Ignorance, pure ignorance," as the famous doctor once remarked to a lady in reply to her query how it was he did not know something that she considered he ought to know. Truly Hawkestone was one of the surprises and discoveries of the journey. There is one advantage in not knowing all about the country you are travelling in, for such lack of knowing keeps you ever in a delightful state of expectancy as to what fresh discoveries you may make; no matter though to others they are familiar, that does not rob you of the thrill of pleasure in discovering them.

Next morning I learnt from the landlord that there was a good inn at Hawkestone, so after a look at Wem I determined to spend the rest of the day there and explore its beauties at leisure. Wem did not detain me long that morning. My curiosity induced me to see the "fire fork" already mentioned that was used to drag down the burning thatch from the houses, and I estimated this to be thirty-six feet long, but I was told it was much more than that originally. It looked just like a big iron fishhook at the end of a pole. In a niche of the church tower I noticed a much-weathered stone figure, and this the clerk told me represented St. Chad, "a favourite saint in these parts." I asked him if there were anything of interest in the church, and he said no, "but there's a unique Gothic doorway at the west end well worth seeing, it's four hundred years old"; so I went to inspect it, and I found a most quaintly shaped doorway, the like of which I had not come upon before, but it struck me as more uncommon than beautiful—and this was all I discovered worthy of note in Wem; its interest is historical, and that does not appeal to the eye.