

credit



Transcribed from the 1841 Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans
edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

[Picture: Decorative title page, with Goodrich castle (followed by proper
                               title page)]





                                 THE WYE
                           AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS


                          A PICTURESQUE RAMBLE.

                                * * * * *

                         BY LEITCH RITCHIE, ESQ.

     AUTHOR OF "WANDERINGS BY THE LOIRE," "WANDERINGS BY THE SEINE,"
                           "THE MAGICIAN," ETC.

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

                                 LONDON:

                     LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, AND
                                LONGMANS.

                                  1841.

                                * * * * *

                                 LONDON:
              PRINTED BY J. HADDON, CASTLE STREET, FINSBURY.




ADVERTISEMENT,


A portion of the lower part of the Wye has been described by Gilpin,
Archdeacon Coxe, and some others; and the same portion has been touched
upon, with greater or less minuteness, by Prince Puckler Muscau, and
various Welsh tourists, as well as by Whateley in his Essay on Modern
Gardening.  It seemed, however, to the writer of the present sketch, that
something more was due to the most celebrated river in England; and that
another book (not too large for the pocket, and yet aspiring to a place
in the library) which should point out the beauties of the Wye, and
connect them with their historical and romantic associations--beginning
at the source of the stream on Plinlimmon, and ending only at its
confluence with the Severn--might still be reckoned an acceptable service
by the lovers of the picturesque.  Hence this little work, which may be
consulted at will either as a finger-post by the traveller, or as a
companion by the reading lounger at home.

_London_, _November_ 28_th_, 1840.




CONTENTS.

                              CHAPTER I.
                                                                 Page.
Philosophy of the picturesque--Peculiarities of English              1
scenery--Worcester--Immigration of peasant girls--The
Devils' Garden--The Rest on the
Stones--Plinlimmon--Inhabitants of the summit--The
Inn--Source of the Wye
                             CHAPTER II.
Descent of Plinlimmon--Singular                                     17
illusion--Llangerrig--Commencement of the
picturesque--The Fall of the Wye--Black Mountain--Course
of the river--Builth--Peculiarity of the
scenery--Approach to the English border--Castle of the
Hay--First series of the beauties of the Wye
                             CHAPTER III.
Clifford Castle--Lords-marchers--Fair Rosamond--Ruins of            31
the Castle--The silent cottage--Approach to
Hereford--Castle--Cathedral--Nell
Gwynn--Cider--Salmon--Wolves
                             CHAPTER IV.
Beauty and tameness--The travelling hill--Ross--The                 45
silver tankard--The Man of Ross--The sympathetic
trees--Penyard Castle--Vicissitudes of the river--Wilton
Castle--A voyage to sea in a basket--Pencraig Hill
                              CHAPTER V.
Roman passes of the Wye--Goodrich                                   58
Castle--Keep--Fortifications--Apartments--Its
history--Goodrich Court--Forest of Dean--Laws of the
Miners--Military exploit--Wines of Gloucestershire
                             CHAPTER VI.
Iron furnaces of the Wye--Lidbroke--Nurse of Henry                  74
V--Coldwell Rocks--Symond's Yat--New Weir--Monmouth
                             CHAPTER VII.
Monmouth--History of the Castle--Apartment of Henry of              87
Monmouth--Ecclesiastical remains--Benedictine
priory--Church of St. Mary--Church of St. Thomas--Monnow
Bridge--Modern town--Monmouth caps--The beneficent
parvenu
                            CHAPTER VIII.
Welsh pedigree of queen Victoria--A poet's                         100
flattery--Castles of Monmouthshire--Geoffrey of
Monmouth--Henry of Monmouth--The Kymin--Subsidiary
tour--Sir David Gam--White Castle--Scenfrith--The Castle
spectres--Grosmont--Lanthony Abbey
                             CHAPTER IX.
Raglan Castle--Description of the ruins--History of the            121
Castle--The old lord of Raglan--Surrender of the
fortress--Charles I. and his host--Royal weakness--The
pigeons of Raglan--Death of the old lord--Origin of the
steam engine
                              CHAPTER X.
Troy House--Anecdote--Antique custom--Village churches of          140
Monmouthshire--White-washing--The bard--Strewing graves
with flowers--St. Briavels' Castle--Llandogo--Change in
the character of the river--The Druid of the
Wye--Wordsworth's "Lines composed above Tintern Abbey"
                             CHAPTER XI.
Vales of the Wye--Valley of Tintern--Tintern                       156
Abbey--History--Church--Character of the
ruin--Site--Coxe's description--Monmouth--Insecurity of
sepulchral fame--Churchyarde on Tombs--Opinions on
Tintern--Battle of Tintern
                             CHAPTER XII.
The Wye below Tintern--Benagor                                     174
Crags--Lancaut--Piercefield Bay--Chepstow--Ancient and
modern bridge--Chepstow Castle--Roger de
Britolio--Romance of History--Chepstow in the civil
wars--Marten the regicide
                            CHAPTER XIII.
Piercefield--Points of view--Curious appearance--Scenic            192
character of the place--View from Wyndcliff--Account of
Valentine Morris--Anecdotes--The Wye below Chepstow--Aust
Ferry--Black Rock Ferry--St. Theodoric--Conclusion

ENGRAVINGS.

                                         Page.
GOODRICH CASTLE                VIGNETTE TITLE.
LLANGERRIG                                  19
RHAIADYR                                    21
NEAR RHAIADYR                               22
CLIFFORD CASTLE                             35
HEREFORD                                    44
ROSS                                        48
THE NEW WEIR                                81
TINTERN                                    158
TINTERN ABBEY                              160
CHEPSTOW                                   177
VIEW FROM WYNDCLIFF                        198

CHAPTER I.


Philosophy of the picturesque--Peculiarities of English
scenery--Worcester--Immigration of peasant girls--The Devils' Garden--The
Rest on the Stones--Plinlimmon--Inhabitants of the summit--The
Inn--Source of the Wye.

Foreigners have often expressed their surprise that the English should
travel so far in search of picturesque scenery, when they have abundance
at home: but the remark is conceived in an unphilosophical spirit.  We do
not travel for the mere scenery.  We do not leave the Wye unexplored, and
go abroad in search of some other river of its own identical character.
What we gaze at in strange lands is not wood, and water, and rock, but
all these seen through a new medium--accompanied by adjuncts which array
universal nature herself in a foreign costume.  A tree peculiar to the
country--a peasant in an un-English garb--a cottage of unaccustomed
form--the slightest peculiarity in national manners--even the traces of a
different system of agriculture--all contribute to the impression of
novelty in which consists the excitement of foreign travel.

The proof of this is our keener perception of the beauties of English
scenery after returning from abroad.  We are then capable of instituting
a comparison; and our national manners are no longer the sole medium, but
one of various media through which nature is viewed.  An untravelled
Englishman is ignorant of his own country.  He must cross the seas before
he can become acquainted with home.  He must admire the romance of the
Rhine--the sublimity of the (mountain) Rhone--the beauty of the Seine and
the Loire--before he can tell what is the rank of the Wye, in picturesque
character, among the rivers of Europe.

The journey from London to Worcester, which is the direct route to the
Upper part of the Wye, discloses many of the peculiarities of English
scenery and character--peculiarities which to the natives are of so every
day a kind, that it is only by reflection and comparison they learn to
appreciate them.  The country seats of the great land proprietors, with
their accompaniments of lawn and plantation, extending as far as the eye
can reach, form a part of the picture; and so do the cottages of the
village peasantry, with their little gardens before the door, admitting a
peep into the interior of the humble abode.  In the aristocratical
dwellings, half hidden in that paradise of groves and glades, we find
every refinement that gold can purchase, or taste produce: in the huts,
comfort, and its inseparable adjunct cleanliness, are the most striking
characteristics.

The former speak of wealth, and the happiness that depends on wealth; the
latter of comparative poverty, and the home pleasures that are compatible
with poverty.  On the continent, there is always something out of keeping
in the picture.  In the great chateaux and their grounds, there is always
some meanness, some make-shift observable; while in the great country
seats of England, on the contrary, all is uniform.  In the cottages
abroad, even those of a higher order, there are always dirt and
slovenliness--inattention to the minute comforts of humble life--meals
snatched anyhow and anywhere--sleep taken without an idea of the luxuries
of sleep.  In England, on the other hand, notwithstanding the
irregularities of fortune, we find an absolute identity in the various
classes of the population.  The labourer--returned, perhaps, from mending
the highway, sits down in state to dinner, with a clean white
table-cloth, and the coarse ware nicely arranged before him.  The floor
is swept, perhaps washed, to do honour to the occasion; and his wife, who
is at once the mistress and the servant of the feast, prides herself on
making her husband (whom she calls her "master")--_comfortable_.

We need not be told that this is not a universal picture.  We need not be
reminded of the want and misery which exist in numerous parts of the
country, for with these we are well acquainted.  The _foreigner_,
however, to whom such scenes are new, will meet with them frequently
enough, and especially on the road we are now travelling, to induce him
to set them down as one of the grand characteristics of England.

The road presents, also, at various turnings, that truly English scene, a
well-known specimen of which is viewed from Richmond Hill.  A level
country lies a few hundred feet below us, and extends in front, and on
either side, till it is lost in the distance, or bound in by low and
filmy hills which just mark the horizon with their waving line of shadow.
This expanse is studded with towns, and villages, and seats, and
cottages, and square towers, and tapering spires, rising amidst woods and
groves, and surrounded by green fields and meadows.  A great part of the
peculiar character of the landscape is due to the enclosures of various
kinds of foliage which separate one field from another.  In most parts of
the continent--and more especially in France--these are of very rare
occurrence; and thus the beauty of the picture, when it has any beauty at
all, depends upon the colours of the different kinds of grain or other
productions, which make the vast expanse of vegetation resemble an
immense and richly variegated carpet.  In spring, therefore, before these
colours have been fairly brought out, it may easily be conceived that
France is one of the least interesting countries in Europe.  With us, on
the other hand, the face of the earth resembles a garden, and more
especially in one of those flat landscapes we have alluded to.  The
changes of the seasons diversify without diminishing the beauty; and even
winter presents, instead of a uniform and dreary waste, a varied picture
executed in hoar frost and snow.

Worcester is one of the most aristocratic looking towns in England, and
presents every token of being a wealthy and flourishing place.  Its
cathedral, an edifice of the beginning of the thirteenth century, has
drawn hither many a pilgrim foot even from foreign countries.  Our
present business, however, is with the works of nature, or with those of
art fallen into decay, and their fragments standing amidst the eternal
youth of the hills and rivers, like monuments of the insignificance of
man.

Worcester is famous for its manufactures of porcelain and gloves; but our
attention was more strongly attracted to exports of another kind, of
which it appeared to be at least the entrepot, if it was not the original
market.  At a little distance from the town, several waggons had halted
near a public house, and their freight, a numerous party of peasant
girls, were breakfasting by the road side.  They were eating and drinking
as joyously as if their laps had been filled with far more enticing food
than bread and ale.  They were on their way to some greater mart--perhaps
to the all-devouring metropolis; and when breakfast was over, they
resumed their slow journey, some few who had mounted the waggons singing
in parts, and the rest, walking by the side, joining in the chorus.  They
had no fears, poor girls, of the result of their adventure--or rather, no
forethought.

But it is not till after we pass the little town of Kington, on the
eastern borders of Herefordshire, that the picturesque commences, and we
must hasten on to our more immediate task.  Between Kington and New
Radnor, are the Stanner Rocks, with the Devil's Garden on their summit,
luxuriously planted--of course by no human hand--with wild flowers.
Beyond New Radnor (formerly the county town, but now a paltry village,)
opens the Vale of Radnor on one side, and on the other, a rude mountain
scene, distinguished by a waterfall of some celebrity, called
Water-break-its-neck.  The stream rushes down a precipitous descent of
seventy feet, into a hollow with craggy and unequal sides.  The spot of
the cascade is marked by an insulated rock, eighteen or twenty feet high,
standing erect above it like a monument.

After passing the village of Penybont, the Llanbadarn Vawr, or great
church of Badarn, is to the left of the road, an edifice which dates from
the time of the Conqueror; and nothing else of interest is observable
till we reach Rhaiadyr, on the Banks of the Wye.  As it will be more
convenient, however, to examine the river in descending with the stream,
we shall only say here, that the journey from Rhaiadyr to the summit of
Plinlimmon lies through woods, and hill passes, becoming ruder and wilder
at every step we advance.  The character of the population seems to
change in conformity with their physical circumstances.  The want of
tidiness which marks the British mountaineer is the more conspicuous from
the contrast it presents to the opposite quality we have admired in the
plains; and already the women have assumed the round hat of the ruder
sex, and destroyed with its masculine associations the charms peculiar to
their own.  Against this absurdity we must protest, whether we meet with
it in the Welsh girl, or the fair equestrian of Hyde Park.  It betrays
not only the most pitiful taste, but the most profound ignorance of
nature, on which is founded the theory of female beauty.

Stedva Gerrig, or "the Rest on the Stones" now commonly called by the
name of the mountain, is a hamlet of three or four houses situated on a
stream which separates the counties of Montgomeryshire and Cardiganshire,
in a nook of comparatively level land, into which abut several of the
lower ridges of Plinlimmon.  The spot has little of the wildness of
mountain scenery, but its extreme solitude; for being here near the top
of the mountainous group, and surrounded by its remaining elevations, we
are insensible of our real altitude above the level of the country.
These elevations, besides, have none of the ruggedness of character we
usually find in such places.  They are, in general, smoothly-swelling
eminences, which if rising from the plain would receive the name of
hills; they are wholly naked of trees, or even brushwood; and being
covered with green herbage, they at first sight give one the idea of an
extensive grass farm, rather than a sterile mountain.  It is the altitude
of the spot, however, and the nipping blasts to which it is exposed, that
render it naked of the larger kinds of vegetation; and there is only a
nook here and there capable of bearing even a scanty crop of oats.  This
region, therefore, excepting a few fields around Stedva Gerrig, supplies
subsistence only to sheep; and the greater number even of these we found
had been withdrawn to situations less exposed to the Welsh winds.

Of the few inhabitants of the hamlet, the principal man of course is the
innkeeper; and the other fathers of families are shepherds.  The latter
class of men have wages amounting to twelve pounds a year, and enjoy
their houses and little fields of corn and potatoes, with as much
pasturage as they have use for free of rent.  The husband, assisted by
his sons, when young, tends the sheep on the mountain; the wife makes
flannel, and knits stockings; and