ond of. On the Thursday he
and I started on an expedition on foot to Ruthyn, distant about fourteen
miles, proposing to return in the evening.

The town and castle of Ruthyn possessed great interest for me from being
connected with the affairs of Owen Glendower. It was at Ruthyn that the
first and not the least remarkable scene of the Welsh insurrection took
place by Owen making his appearance at the fair held there in fourteen
hundred, plundering the English who had come with their goods, slaying
many of them, sacking the town and concluding his day's work by firing
it; and it was at the castle of Ruthyn that Lord Grey dwelt, a minion of
Henry the Fourth and Glendower's deadliest enemy, and who was the
principal cause of the chieftain's entering into rebellion, having, in
the hope of obtaining his estates in the vale of Clwyd, poisoned the mind
of Harry against him, who proclaimed him a traitor, before he had
committed any act of treason, and confiscated his estates, bestowing that
part of them upon his favourite, which the latter was desirous of
obtaining.

We started on our expedition at about seven o'clock of a brilliant
morning. We passed by the abbey and presently came to a small fountain
with a little stone edifice, with a sharp top above it. "That is the
holy well," said my guide: "Llawer iawn o barch yn yr amser yr Pabyddion
yr oedd i'r fynnon hwn--much respect in the times of the Papists there
was to this fountain."

"I heard of it," said I, "and tasted of its water the other evening at
the abbey;" shortly after we saw a tall stone standing in a field on our
right hand at about a hundred yards' distance from the road. "That is
the pillar of Eliseg, sir," said my guide. "Let us go and see it," said
I. We soon reached the stone. It is a fine upright column about seven
feet high, and stands on a quadrate base. "Sir," said my guide, "a dead
king lies buried beneath this stone. He was a mighty man of valour and
founded the abbey. He was called Eliseg." "Perhaps Ellis," said I, "and
if his name was Ellis the stone was very properly called Colofn Eliseg,
in Saxon the Ellisian column." The view from the column is very
beautiful, below on the south-east is the venerable abbey, slumbering in
its green meadow. Beyond it runs a stream, descending from the top of a
glen, at the bottom of which the old pile is situated; beyond the stream
is a lofty hill. The glen on the north is bounded by a noble mountain,