AND now “gallant little Wales” shall supply a scene to our pageant. History may not sanction the subject of it, but it may not be omitted. You are spectators within the gray walls of Carnarvon Castle, that grim old fortress which overlooks the fair waters of Menai Strait. From its soaring towers your eye takes in the wild mountain region of Snowdonia, a land of hoary summits and green valleys, in the recesses of which the old Celtic inhabitants of Britain stubbornly maintained their independence for more than five long centuries. You are now to see the nation subdued and an English king assert his sway. But you will not see it lose those essential things which mark its nationality—its language, its literature, its genius. To-day they are still dear to the Welsh nation, and are more jealously guarded and fostered than ever. Go to an Eisteddfod and hear twice a thousand Welsh voices unite in the stirring strains of Hen Wlad fy Nhadau (“Land of my fathers.”) You will then understand how ardently the flame of patriotism burns in the breast of the men and women who have been reared in this ancient land of beauty and song.

As the scene opens, you perceive that the death-knell of the nation’s independence has tolled. You gaze upon an assembly of chieftains—handsome, active men with long hair and moustaches and shaven chins. Their arms, their coats of mail, their helms and shields are laid aside, and they are clad simply in tunic and cloak, bare-kneed, and shod with brogues of hide. All are depressed, all are sorrowful, for they are here to acknowledge the surrender of their land.

As they wait the coming of the English king their minds fly back over the long story of resistance which they and their sires before them have made against their persistent and greedy foes. As they cast their thoughts back they recall the awful slaughter of Roman times, when the Druids of Mona were sacrificed on their own altars; they dimly remember how the deep snow of their hills baffled the haughty Conqueror, who, not to be beaten, planted his barons on their borders, and bade them win the land by never-ceasing strife. It was Griffith ap Rees—was it not?—who made the Norman bite the dust, and taught him to respect the might of the Cymric arm and the fury of the Cymric onset. Then they remember what their bards have told them of the brave days of Owen Gwynedd and the Lord Rees—how these twain drove back the Norman who called himself “Fine Scholar,” and baffled him too. For all his scholarship, he could not add the laurel of Wales to the wreath that encircled his brow.

Then they would think of Llywelyn the Great, and of that golden age which their fathers were never tired of recalling—how that wise and powerful prince strove to unite all Wales, and live on good terms with the Saxon on his borders. ’Twas Llywelyn, they remind one another, who married King John’s daughter, and aided the Saxon barons to make that false sovereign swear to observe the rights of the Cymry and keep their laws inviolate. ’Twas in his day, too, that the monk and the friar came into their land with a blessed ministry to the poor and the outcast. Strange that the great Llywelyn should have begotten so feeble a son as David, he who weakly threw in his lot with the Saxon and sent his patriot brother Griffith in chains to the Tower of London. Ah! it was a sad day when the rope broke by which that gallant prince was trying to escape, and he was killed by the fall!

But his son Llywelyn, their late king, was worthy of his sire, look you! He and the great Simon de Montfort had fought shoulder to shoulder, and the Saxon king had been obliged to recognize Llywelyn as Prince of Wales. And now he has gone too—slain by a foe who knew him not, in a mere skirmish down by Builth. Yes, and the old prophecy has come true—that Llywelyn should ride crowned through London. Crowned he was, in very sooth, but, alas, the crowned head was carried on a spear. Woe worth the day! David, his brother, had been caught too, and had suffered the awful death penalty of a traitor. Even now his head was rotting over Shrewsbury gate. Had Llywelyn but lived, even Edward’s great army might have been driven back, especially as winter was coming on, and the storms and the snows would fight on their side. But with Llywelyn’s death all hope has vanished, and what can they do but submit?

And now Edward, the Saxon king before whom they are to bow, comes on the scene. The chieftains scan him closely. Some of them have never seen him eye to eye before; but his warlike fame has long been familiar to them. As he strides into the courtyard, towering above his attendants, they can readily believe those wonderful stories which they have heard of his mighty prowess and physical strength—how, for example, he slew the assassin in the Holy Land, and how he bore himself at ChÂlons when the Burgundian knight strove to drag him from his saddle. What a fool the fellow must have looked when Edward clapped spurs to his horse and shook the man to the ground as though he had been a bag of straw! He is pitiful, too, and boasts—does he not?—that no man ever begged his life of him in vain. And what is that device which he bears so proudly on his shield? “Keep faith.” Ah, but will he keep faith with stricken Wales? Has he not slaughtered the very bards, lest their songs should keep the memory of the old free days fresh and green in their hearts?

And now the handsome, stern king with the drooping eyelid begins to speak in deep, vibrant tones, and the interpreter turns his words into the tongue of old Britain. He will give them a prince of their own. “Nay,” they cry out, “we will have no prince but one born in our own land and speaking our own tongue.” Edward turns to the nurse who stands by, takes from her his newly-born son, and holds him aloft to the astonished gaze of the chieftains. “Here is your prince,” he cries; “he was born in Wales, and he knows not a word of the English tongue.”

The humour of it appeals to the assembled throng. Yes, yes, they will swear fealty to him, but he must have a Welsh nurse, and he must learn to speak their language. Edward gladly agrees, and swears on the hilt of his sword to “keep faith.” So the Welsh have once more a prince of their own, and thus it comes about that the eldest son of an English king bears the proud title Prince of Wales.

Now Edward betakes himself to the more serious work of settling the government of the land. Wales is to keep her old customs and laws, and Welshmen are to retain the freedom and the estates which they enjoyed under their own princes. All is done that can be done to make the foreign yoke easy and the burden light; but many a wicked deed will be perpetrated and many an injustice will be wrought before Welshmen are reconciled to the loss of their independence. But the day will come when, secure in their freedom and reinforced by their union with the mightier land on their borders, there will be no more loyal and stauncher hearts in the whole Empire than those which beat in “gallant little Wales.”

THE FIRST PRINCE OF WALES.
(From the picture by P. R. Morris, A.R.A.)