the English
once more united its chieftains, and the war between John and his barons
soon removed all dread of a new invasion. Absolved from his allegiance to
an excommunicated king, and allied with the barons under Fitz-Walter--too
glad to enlist in their cause a prince who could hold in check the nobles
of the border country where the royalist cause was strongest--Llewelyn
seized his opportunity to reduce Shrewsbury, to annex Powys, the central
district of Wales where the English influence had always been powerful, to
clear the royal garrisons from Caermarthen and Cardigan, and to force even
the Flemings of Pembroke to do him homage.

[Sidenote: Llewelyn and the Bards]

England watched these efforts of the subject race with an anger still
mingled with contempt. "Who knows not," exclaims Matthew Paris as he dwells
on the new pretensions of the Welsh ruler, "who knows not that the Prince
of Wales is a petty vassal of the King of England?" But the temper of
Llewelyn's own people was far other than the temper of the English
chronicler. The hopes of Wales rose higher and higher with each triumph of
the Lord of Snowdon. His court was crowded with bardic singers. "He pours,"
sings one of them, "his gold into the lap of the bard as the ripe fruit
falls from the trees." Gold however was hardly needed to wake their
enthusiasm. Poet after poet sang of "the Devastator of England," the "Eagle
of men that loves not to lie nor sleep," "towering above the rest of men
with his long red lance," his "red helmet of battle crested with a fierce
wolf." "The sound of his coming is like the roar of the wave as it rushes
to the shore, that can neither be stayed nor hushed." Lesser bards strung
together Llewelyn's victories in rough jingle of rime and hounded him on to
the slaughter. "Be of good courage in the slaughter," sings Elidir, "cling
to thy work, destroy England, and plunder its multitudes." A fierce thirst
for blood runs through the abrupt, passionate verses of the court singers.
"Swansea, that tranquil town, was broken in heaps," bursts out a triumphant
bard; "St. Clears, with its bright white lands, it is not Saxons who hold
it now!" "In Swansea, the key of Lloegria, we made widows of all the
wives." "The dread Eagle is wont to lay corpses in rows, and to feast with
the leader of wolves and with hovering ravens glutted with flesh, butchers
with keen scent of carcases." "Better," closes the song, "better the grave
than the life of