Welsh Journals

hereby nominate and appoint and constitute and ordain my said beloved wife, and my said beloved son John Owen to be joynt executors of this my last will and testament. And last I ordain and and appoint my beloved friends and brethren in Ld Jesus, Walter Griffiths, Edward Poole, both of Llanvilling (sic) in the Co. of Montgomery, Mercers, Wm. Evans of Gwanas in the said Co. of Meirion, and Griffith Oliver of Machynlleth, in the sd Co. of Montgomery, Tanner, to be over- seers of the performance of this my last will and testt. In witness whereof I have hereunto put A Holiday in Glyn Ceiriog and Thereabouts. (By Uwchaled.) PLAY is only Work spelt differently though with the same number of letters, and the reader will agree that those who think otherwise are either supermen or would- be-supermen. But these are the people who cause all the mischief and trouble in the world, and they are not concerned with what follows, because the two individuals whose adventures are hereinafter recounted, are very far from being supermen, and moreover they have no wish to play the part or to be other than what Dame Nature in her inscrutability intended them for. So it befalls that, armed with permits from their loving and more or less obedient wives, these two, Mathafarn and Uwchaled, leaving behind them for a bachelor holiday the self-appointed capital and the increased demand for the new half-year's rates just received, duly arrived on the Thurs- day evening before Whit Sunday at that capital little place of entertainment, the Glyn Valley Hotel at Llansantffraid Glyn Ceiriog, in the writer's own native and bonny county of Denbigh, there to foregather for a brief five days and to see what there was to be seen and to meet whom- soever and whatsoever was to be met; and the reader will be pleased to learn that realisation even exceeded expectation. Friday opened appropriately with an obligato in rain, and the symphony worked away with a will right through the day. But as Welshmen are generally supposed to be both musical and poetical, and a lot has been written by the bards in praise of rain, and rain, again, to the serious thinker, is both a cleanser and a refresher, and these little things are sent to try us especially on a holiday, there was nothing more to be said. So pretending they didn't mind, the adventurers set out over the mountain for Llangollen across the steepest four or more miles of any road in Britain, across what is the backbone of the great Berwyn range, hereabouts two thousand or more feet at the top, which, beginning here, sweeps my hand and seal, the day and year just above written, 'Hugh Owen,' Signed, sealed, published and declared those words proper, otherwise I give and bequeath her or thr pt or share so dying to her or yr issue lawfully begotten, being intestined in ye sight and presence of William John Edwards Jenkin Evans." This will was proved in the Consistory Court of Bangor in common form of law on the 16th day of July, 1700, by Martha Owen, the testator's widow, and one of the executors within named. M. Hughes, Registrar. down to Dolgelley and Machynlleth and thence is the mighty boundary between the counties of Brecon and Cardigan with Aran Mawddwy and its three thousand feet of stature midway, for its crown and glory, and the Bwlch Oer Ddrws, for its golden necklace. Though 2,000 feet high at the summit, this is a land of smiling farm homesteads and pasture lands with tillage for home use and woodlands (mostly of larch and spruce), plentifully be- sprinkled about for shelter and cropping. Every- thing betokens a thrifty and hard-working countryside that knows its business and pays its rent with a good something to spare and to merit. And on the Plas-yn-Vivod estate the two travellers met a tenant who could not say enough for his landlord. And well he might find difficulty from what they saw of estate management on that property. Anybody who wishes to see a moun- tain turned to profitable stock-breeding and timber growing with buildings conform, let him hie him to the estate of Plas-yn-Vivod and learn his lesson there. Up, then, wool and horn, and the good old land for ever In the steep descent from the top a glorious view unfolds itself of the great rolling uplands of Ial and the bare Eglwyseg rocks, with the stately ruin of Dinas Bran still keeping watch and ward on the hill overlooking the town. Silver Dee is seen winding its cheerful way through the green vale of Glyndyfrdwv on its course down to Chester town, and in the far dis- tance to the right is the Vale Royal of Cheshire, with the Beeston Hills bounding its eastern border as if to screen it for all time from the smoke of the Industrial North close by. Mathafarn, as he looked and gazed, exclaimed what a pity Eryri the bard was not there to put into verse the exceeding beauty of the view- "What a masterpiece he would have made of it." Which just shows old Math's ignorance of that most elusive personality in Welsh contemporary letters, because Eryri, just as likely as not, would have been rewarding himself with a bottle of beer to quench his bodily thirst, and stringing together, as he gurgled, a bitter englyn on the vileness of the liquor itself, the enormity of the