the blessing of bringing forth a son worthy of Thy
service." This son was probably worth more than the twelve archers of
the castle of St. Clears who were forcibly signed with the cross for
committing a murder; and one may reasonably look with suspicion on the
sudden conversion of "many of the most notorious murderers and robbers
of the neighbourhood" at Usk. It was this kind of thing that turned
the Holy Land into a sort of convict settlement.

The preachers clearly worked hard and had some trying experiences, and
kept up their spirits by little jokes, which Gerald retails. They
nearly came to grief in quicksands at the mouth of the river Neath.
"Terrible hard country this," said one of the monks next day in the
castle at Swansea. "Some people are never satisfied," retorted his
companion; "you were complaining of its being too soft in the
quicksand yesterday." The mountains were trying to men no longer in
their youth; after toiling up one the archbishop sank exhausted on a
fallen tree and said to his panting companions, "Can any one enliven
the company by whistling a tune?" "Which," adds Gerald, "is not very
easily done by people out of breath." From whistling the conversation
passed to nightingales, which some one said were never found in Wales.
"Wise bird, the nightingale," remarked the archbishop.

One serious difficulty they had was that none of them, not even
Gerald, knew Welsh sufficiently well to preach in it, though they
generally had interpreters. The archbishop, who would sometimes preach
away for hours without result, felt this much more than Gerald. He
declares he moved crowds to tears though they did not understand a
word of what he was saying. But one may take the words of Prince
Rhys's fool as evidence (if any were needed) that ignorance of Welsh
weakened the effect. "You owe a great debt, Rhys, to your kinsman the
archdeacon, who has taken a hundred or so of your men to serve the
Lord; if he had only spoken in Welsh, you wouldn't have had a soul
left."

In all about three thousand took the cross; but the Crusade was
delayed, zeal cooled, and it is probable that comparatively few went.
The _Itinerarium Regis Ricardi_ mentions, I think, only one exploit by
a Welshman in the Third Crusade; he was an archer, and so a South
Walian.

This brings me to one of the incidental notes of great value scattered
about the Itinerary. Speaking of the siege of Abergavenny (1182),
Gerald tells us that the men of Gwen