Wild Wales | Page 3

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Wild Wales by George Borrow Scanned and proofed by David Price
email [email protected] Second proof by Jane Gammie
Wild Wales: Its People, Language and Scenery
INTRODUCTORY
WALES is a country interesting in many respects, and deserving of
more attention than it has hitherto met with. Though not very extensive,
it is one of the most picturesque countries in the world, a country in
which Nature displays herself in her wildest, boldest, and occasionally
loveliest forms. The inhabitants, who speak an ancient and peculiar
language, do not call this region Wales, nor themselves Welsh. They
call themselves Cymry or Cumry, and their country Cymru, or the land
of the Cumry. Wales or Wallia, however, is the true, proper, and
without doubt original name, as it relates not to any particular race,
which at present inhabits it, or may have sojourned in it at any long
bygone period, but to the country itself. Wales signifies a land of
mountains, of vales, of dingles, chasms, and springs. It is connected
with the Cumbric bal, a protuberance, a springing forth; with the Celtic
beul or beal, a mouth; with the old English welle, a fountain; with the
original name of Italy, still called by the Germans Welschland; with
Balkan and Vulcan, both of which signify a casting out, an eruption;
with Welint or Wayland, the name of the Anglo-Saxon god of the forge;
with the Chaldee val, a forest, and the German wald; with the English
bluff, and the Sanscrit palava - startling assertions, no doubt, at least to
some; which are, however, quite true, and which at some future time
will be universally acknowledged so to be.

But it is not for its scenery alone that Wales is deserving of being
visited; scenery soon palls unless it is associated with remarkable
events, and the names of remarkable men. Perhaps there is no country
in the whole world which has been the scene of events more stirring
and remarkable than those recorded in the history of Wales. What other
country has been the scene of a struggle so deadly, so embittered, and
protracted as that between the Cumro and the Saxon? - A struggle
which did not terminate at Caernarvon, when Edward Longshanks
foisted his young son upon the Welsh chieftains as Prince of Wales; but
was kept up till the battle of Bosworth Field, when a prince of Cumric
blood won the crown of fair Britain, verifying the olden word which
had cheered the hearts of the Ancient Britons for at least a thousand
years, even in times of the darkest distress and gloom:-
"But after long pain Repose we shall obtain, When sway barbaric has
purg'd us clean; And Britons shall regain Their crown and their domain,
And the foreign oppressor be no more seen."
Of remarkable men Wales has assuredly produced its full share. First,
to speak of men of action:- there was Madoc, the son of Owain
Gwynedd, who discovered America, centuries before Columbus was
born; then there was "the irregular and wild Glendower," who turned
rebel at the age of sixty, was crowned King of Wales at Machynlleth,
and for fourteen years contrived to hold his own against the whole
power of England; then there was Ryce Ap Thomas, the best soldier of
his time, whose hands placed the British crown on the brow of Henry
the Seventh, and whom bluff Henry the Eighth delighted to call Father
Preece; then there was - who? - why Harry Morgan, who led those
tremendous fellows the Buccaneers across the Isthmus of Darien to the
sack and burning of Panama.
What, a buccaneer in the list? Ay! and why not? Morgan was a scourge,
it is true, but he was a scourge of God on the cruel Spaniards of the
New World, the merciless task-masters and butchers of the Indian race:
on which account God favoured and prospered him, permitting him to
attain the noble age of ninety, and to die peacefully and tranquilly at
Jamaica, whilst smoking his pipe in his shady arbour, with his smiling

plantation of sugar-canes full in view. How unlike the fate of Harry
Morgan to that of Lolonois, a