which did not seem to be going
on much to the advantage of the allies. Soon flinging the paper aside, I
stuck my feet on the stove, one on each side of the turf fire, and
listened to the noises without. The bellowing of the wind down the
mountain passes and the roaring of the Rheidol fall at the north side of
the valley, and the rushing of the five cascades of the river Mynach,
were truly awful. Perhaps I ought not to have said the five cascades of
the Mynach, but the Mynach cascade, for now its five cascades had become
one, extending from the chasm over which hung the bridge of Satan to the
bottom of the valley.

After a time I fell into a fit of musing. I thought of the Plant de Bat;
I thought of the spitties or hospitals connected with the great monastery
of Ystrad Flur or Strata Florida; I thought of the remarkable bridge
close by, built by a clever monk of that place to facilitate the coming
of pilgrims with their votive offerings from the north to his convent; I
thought of the convent built in the time of our Henry the Second by Ryce
ab Gruffyd, prince of South Wales; and lastly, I thought of a wonderful
man who was buried in its precincts, the greatest genius which Wales, and
perhaps Britain, ever produced, on whose account, and not because of old
it had been a magnificent building, and the most celebrated place of
popish pilgrimage in Wales, I had long ago determined to visit it on my
journey, a man of whose life and works the following is a brief account.

CHAPTER LXXXVI

Birth and Early Years of Ab Gwilym--Morfudd--Relic of Druidism--The Men
of Glamorgan--Legend of Ab Gwilym--Ab Gwilym as a Writer--Wonderful
Variety--Objects of Nature--Gruffydd Gryg.

Dafydd Ab Gwilym was born about the year 1320, at a place called Bro
Gynnin in the county of Cardigan. Though born in wedlock he was not
conceived legitimately. His mother being discovered by her parents to be
pregnant, was turned out of doors by them, whereupon she went to her
lover, who married her, though in so doing he acted contrary to the
advice of his relations. After a little time, however, a general
reconciliation took place. The parents of Ab Gwilym, though highly
connected, do not appear to have possessed much property. The boy was
educated by his mother's brother Llewelyn ab Gwilym Fychan, a chief of
Cardiganshire; but his principal patron in after life was Ifor, a cousin
of his father, surnamed Hael, or the bountiful, a chieftain