Caerfili Castle - Sir Charles - The Waiter - Inkerman.
I SLEPT well during the night. In the morning after breakfast Iwent to see the castle, over which I was conducted by a woman who was intrusted with its care. It stands on the eastern side of the little town, and is a truly enormous structure, which brought to my recollection a saying of our great Johnson, to be found in the account of his journey to the Western Islands, namely "that for all the castles which he had seen beyond the Tweed the ruins yet remaining of some one of those which the English built in Wales would find materials." The original founder was one John De Bryse, a powerful Norman who married the daughter of Llewellyn Ap Jorwerth, the son-in-law of King John, and the most war-like of all the Welsh princes, whose exploits, and particularly a victory which he obtained over his father-in-law, with whom he was always at war, have been immortalized by the great war-bard, Dafydd Benfras. It was one of the strongholds which belonged to the Spencers, and served for a short time as a retreat to the unfortunate Edward the Second. It was ruined by Cromwell, the grand foe of the baronial castles of Britain, but not in so thorough and sweeping a manner as to leave it a mere heap of stones. There is a noble entrance porch fronting the west - a spacious courtyard, a grand banqueting room, a corridor of vast length, several lofty towers, a chapel, a sally-1
The name Caerfili is said to signify the Castle of Haste, and to have been bestowed on the pile because it was built in a hurry.
Caerfili, however, was never built in a hurry, as the remains show.
Moreover, the Welsh word for haste is not fil but ffrwst. Fil means a scudding or darting through the air, which can have nothing to do with the building of a castle. Caerfili signifies Philip's City, and was called so after one Philip a saint. It no more means the castle of haste than Tintagel in Cornwall signifies the castle of guile, as the learned have said it does, for Tintagel simply means the house in the gill of the hill, a term admirably descriptive of the situation of the building.
I started from Caerfili at eleven for Newport, distant about seventeen miles. Passing through a toll-gate I ascended an acclivity, from the top of which I obtained a full view of the castle, looking stern, dark and majestic. Descending the hill Icame to a bridge over a river called the Rhymni or Rumney, much celebrated in Welsh and English song - thence to Pentref Bettws, or the village of the bead-house, doubtless so called from its having contained in old times a house in which pilgrims might tell their beads.
The scenery soon became very beautiful - its beauty, however, was to a certain extent marred by a horrid black object, a huge coal work, the chimneys of which were belching forth smoke of the densest description. "Whom does that work belong to?" said I to a man nearly as black as a chimney sweep.
"Who does it belong to? Why, to Sir Charles.""Do you mean Sir Charles Morgan?"
"I don't know. I only know that it belongs to Sir Charles, the kindest-hearted and richest man in Wales and in England too."Passing some cottages I heard a group of children speaking English.
Asked an intelligent-looking girl if she could speak Welsh.
"Yes," said she, "I can speak it, but not very well." There is not much Welsh spoken by the children hereabout. The old folks hold more to it.