The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador | Page 2

is having one
every year. There are people, to be sure, who would like their birthdays
to be four years apart, but they are not boys.

Grenfell was also lucky, or, let us say, fortunate in the place where he
was born and spent his early boyhood. His father was Head Master of
Mostyn House, a school for boys at Parkgate, England, a little fishing
village not far from the historic old city of Chester. By referring to your
map you will find Chester a dozen miles or so to the southward of
Liverpool, though you may not find Parkgate, for it is so small a village
that the map makers are quite likely to overlook it.
Here at Parkgate the River Dee flows down into an estuary that opens
out into the Irish Sea, and here spread the famous "Sands of Dee,"
known the world over through Charles Kingsley's pathetic poem, which
we have all read, and over which, I confess, I shed tears when a boy:
O Mary, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call
the cattle home, Across the Sands o' Dee; The western wind was wild
and dank wi' foam, And all alone went she.
The creeping tide came up along the sand, And o'er and o'er the sand,
And round and round the sand, As far as eye could see; The blinding
mist came down and hid the land-- And never home came she.
Oh is it weed, or fish, or floating hair-- A tress o' golden hair, O'
drown'ed maiden's hair, Above the nets at sea? Was never salmon yet
that shone so fair, Among the stakes on Dee.
They rowed her in across the rolling foam, The cruel, crawling foam,
The cruel, hungry foam, To her grave beside the sea; But still the
boatmen hear her call the cattle home, Across the Sands o' Dee.
Charles Kingsley and the poem become nearer and dearer to us than
ever with the knowledge that he was a cousin of Grenfell, and knew the
Sands o' Dee, over which Grenfell tramped and hunted as a boy, for the
sandy plain was close by his father's house.
There was a time when the estuary was a wide deep harbor, and really a
part of Liverpool Bay, and great ships from all over the world came
into it and sailed up to Chester, which in those days was a famous port.
But as years passed the sands, loosened by floods and carried down by

the river current, choked and blocked the harbor, and before Grenfell
was born it had become so shallow that only fishing vessels and small
craft could use it.
Parkgate is on the northern side of the River Dee. On the southern side
and beyond the Sands of Dee, rise the green hills of Wales, melting
away into blue mysterious distance. Near as Wales is the people over
there speak a different tongue from the English, and to young Grenfell
and his companions it was a strange and foreign land and the people a
strange and mysterious people. We have most of us, in our young days
perhaps, thought that all Welshmen were like Taffy, of whom Mother
Goose sings:
"Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief, Taffy came to my house
and stole a piece of beef; I went to Taffy's house, Taffy wasn't home,
Taffy came to my house and stole a marrow bone; I went to Taffy's
house, Taffy was in bed, I took the marrow-bone, and beat about his
head."
But it was Grenfell's privilege, living so near, to make little visits over
into Wales, and he early had an opportunity to learn that Taffy was not
in the least like Welshmen. He found them fine, honest, kind-hearted
folk, with no more Taffys among them than there are among the
English or Americans. The great Lloyd George, perhaps the greatest of
living statesmen, is a Welshman, and by him and not by Taffy, we are
now measuring the worth of this people who were the near neighbors of
Grenfell in his young days.
Mostyn House, where Grenfell lived, overlooked the estuary. From the
windows of his father's house he could see the fishing smacks going out
upon the great adventurous sea and coming back laden with fish.
Living by the sea where he heard the roar of the breakers and every day
smelled the good salt breath of the ocean, it was natural that he should
love it, and to learn, almost as soon as he could run about, to row and
sail a boat, and to swim and take part in all sorts of water sports. Time
and again he went with the fishermen and spent the night and the day
with them out upon