and tell Harold
to look well to his walls and his trenches. We will vouchsafe him grace
for his grace--we will not take him by surprise, nor under cloud of the
night. With the gleam of our spears and the clash of our shields, we
will come from the hill: and, famine-worn as he deems us, hold a feast in
his walls which the eagles of Snowdon spread their pinions to share!"

"Rash man and unhappy!" cried the monk; "what curse drawest thou down on
thy head! Wilt thou be the murtherer of thy men, in strife unavailing
and vain? Heaven holds thee guilty of all the blood thou shalt cause to
be shed."

"Be dumb!--hush thy screech, lying raven!" exclaimed Gryffyth, his eyes
darting fire and, his slight form dilating. "Once, priest and monk went
before us to inspire, not to daunt; and our cry, Alleluia! was taught us
by the saints of the Church, on the day when Saxons, fierce and many as
Harold's, fell on the field of Maes-Garmon. No, the curse is on the head
of the invader, not on those who defend hearth and altar. Yea, as the
song to the bard, the CURSE leaps through my veins, and rushes forth from
my lips. By the land they have ravaged; by the gore they have spilt; on
these crags, our last refuge; below the carn on yon heights, where the
Dead stir to hear me,--I launch the curse of the wronged and the doomed
on the children of Hengist! They in turn shall know the steel of the
stranger--their crown shall be shivered as glass, and their nobles be as
slaves in the land. And the line of Hengist and Cerdic shall be rased
from the roll of empire. And the ghosts of our fathers shall glide,
appeased, over the grave of their nation. But we--WE, though weak in the
body, in the soul shall be strong to the last! The ploughshare may pass
over our cities, but the soil shall be trod by our steps, and our deeds
keep our language alive in the songs of our bards. Nor in the great
Judgment Day, shall any race but the race of Cymry rise from their graves
in this corner of earth, to answer for the sins of the brave!" [173]

So impressive the voice, so grand the brow, and sublime the wild gesture
of the King, as he thus spoke, that not only the monk himself was awed;
not only, though he understood not the words, did the Norman knight bow
his head, as a child when the lightning he fears as by instinct flashes
out from the cloud,--but even the sullen and wide-spreading discontent at
work among most of the chiefs was arrested for a moment