SOURCE: Owen, Henry. “The Irish Topography,” “The Conquest of Ireland,” “The Itinerary through Wales,” “The Jewel of the Church.” In Gerald the Welshman, pp. 32-67, 81-92. London: Whiting & Co., 1889.

[In the following excerpt, Owen summarizes four of Gerald's most important works: the Topographia Hibernica, the Expugnatio Hibernica, the Itinerarium Kambriae, and the Gemma Ecclesiastica.]

The Topographia Hibernica was the earliest of Gerald's works. It was the one which he read to the University of Oxford, and the praise of which by Archbishop Baldwin was so pleasing to the author. He seems to have frequently revised it; manuscripts of various editions are in existence in the libraries at Oxford and Cambridge, and at the British Museum and Westminster Abbey. Gerald explains to us why he made this new departure, held to be unworthy of a man of letters, and descended to treat of the scenery and social condition of a wild and barbarous country. He remains the sole authority for the state of Ireland during the whole of the middle ages. The work is dedicated to the king (Henry II), and is divided into three books, or distinctions, as it was then the fashion to call them. The first deals with the physical features of the island and with its natural history, the second with its miracles, and the third with its inhabitants.

In the first book, after attributing the prevalence of rain to the hills and the frequent westerly breezes, and speaking of the rivers and lakes in a manner which shows that his knowledge of some of them was not derived from personal acquaintance, he proceeds to dilate, at some length, on the various birds and beasts, deducing from the habits of each some moral for our edification. Thus, from the statement that in the birds of prey the female is larger and stronger than the male, he shows the superior capability for mischief in female kind. He never misses an opportunity, in all his works, of proclaiming his opinion of the sex, and, as he feels that it may be objected that his views on the subject, as a celibate ecclesiastic, are merely those of a theorist, he generally fortifies them by citing the judgment of King Solomon, who may be said to have had a practical acquaintance with the subject. But it must be remembered, to his credit, that there was one woman of whom he spoke in praise, and that was his own mother.¹

He describes the different kinds of hawks with the delight of an accomplished falconer, moralises over the hibernation of birds, and the clouds of larks singing praise to God. He states that no partridges, pheasants, jays, or nightingales were to be found in Ireland; but stags, wild boars, hares, and rabbits were in abundance. His accuracy of observation is shown by his distinguishing the species of the Irish from the English hare, a fact unknown to scientific naturalists until some fifty years ago. His remark on the neglect of mankind of the marvellous beauty of the rising and setting of the sun, because of its frequent occurrence, deserves to be recorded. He accounts for the absence of noxious vermin by physical causes, and, with a restraint meritorious in him, declines to believe in their coercion by St. Patrick.² In his own time a frog was found near Waterford—probably brought over in some ship of the invaders—and was brought to King Donnell (a man of sense, for an Irishman), who tore his hair, saying, “This creature is the bearer of dire news to Ireland.”

In the second book, after dealing in a scientific manner with the tides and the moon's influence upon them, he discards all scientific method in a lengthy treatise on Irish miracles. It would seem as if the Irish, discovering their guest's keen appetite for the miraculous, had fed him with true Irish hospitality. There is St. Colman, who fed the teal (always thirteen in number, on the model of the prior and his twelve monks) during his life, and protects them still; St. Kevin, who grew apples, to feed the sick, off a willow-tree; St. Bridget, who takes her turn in watching the fire by night with her nineteen nuns; St. Kevin, again, in whose hand, outstretched in prayer, a blackbird settled and laid her eggs, and the holy man held his hand steady until the brood was reared; and St. Nannan, most beneficent of all, who cursed the fleas out of a village into a neighbouring meadow, where they covered the grass.

There are the sacred wells, scattered all over the country, relics of the well-worship the earlier settlers had brought with them from more arid climes. One of them overflowed the country because a woman forgot to shut down the lid. There are the two isles in a lake: the greater is fatal to any woman or female who enters it, the cock-birds settle on the bushes, but the hens fly by and leave their mates. In the lesser, where the celibate Coelicolae (the Culdees) devoutly worship God, no man can die until, wearied of the burden of life, he entreats to be ferried over to the main to breathe his last. And there is the island in the lake in Ulster haunted by good and evil spirits, the purgatory of St. Patrick, famous in mediæval legend. He tells us of the lake, of which Tom Moore sung in later days,³ where the fishermen can see the round ecclesiastical towers buried beneath its clear waters; of the Giant's Dance in Kildare, moved by Merlin to form Stonehenge; and digresses to Iceland to tell us of its geysers and its inhabitants who speak the truth.

He finds the Irish saints (like the Welsh) usually of an irascible and vindictive temper, which he attributes to the way in which their souls were vexed while here on earth. He enforces his favourite argument of the finiteness of man's understanding, and the necessity for admiration, and not discussion, of divine miracles; and he approves of the reply of St. Augustine to the scoffing inquiry, what the Deity was engaged in before the creation of the world—“He was preparing a hell for those who ask silly questions.”

In the third book Gerald gives an account, which, he says, he has compiled from more or less untrustworthy records, of the arrival of the various bands of settlers in Ireland, from Caesara, the grand-daughter of Noah, to the Norse and Danes, still a great power in the land in his time, who, he explains, were called in Ireland Ostmen, as to it they came from the East.⁴ He observes how the various new-comers speedily became infected with the indigenous vices of the soil—a phenomenon which has been observed in more recent times.

The progress of mankind, he says, is from the forest to the field and from the field to the town; the Irish were then in the forest stage. He attributes to the mildness of the climate and the natural fertility of the soil the invincible laziness of the people. They are too indolent to work the various metals beneath their feet, or to employ themselves in manufacture, or in any trade or mechanical art, and agriculture they despise. They dress in a barbarous fashion; instead of cloaks they wear woollen rugs, generally black, the colour of the sheep of the country, and beneath, breeches and hose of one piece, and generally dyed bright. They have no saddles, and guide their horses with a crooked stick. They at all times carry a battleaxe, which they have acquired from the Ostmen (and which, deprived of its head, is the modern shillalagh), and Gerald points out the danger of permitting such a people to have always in their hands a weapon ready for murder, for it is a treacherous race, inconstant and cunning. Nature has been bountiful to them, but for any work of their own hands they are absolutely worthless.

In one thing he praises them, their love of music. And this leads him to a digression in praise of music. It cheers the sorrowful, smooths the troubled brow, stimulates the valour of the brave and the devotions of the pious; it is a comfort to all, a medicine to many. To be ignorant of music is as disgraceful as not to have learned to read. The Irish excel in instrumental music all other nations with whom he was acquainted, although some held that Scotland was then the equal, and perhaps the superior, of Ireland, her teacher. The Irish (like the Spanish) wailing at funerals, although it may seem to add to the present grief, may tranquillise the mind, he thinks, when the outbreak has passed.

He finds much to praise in the Irish clergy, remarkable above all for their chastity. They are devoted to their religious duties, they fast, and are sparing in their diet; but he grieves that so many of them, after a day of prayer and fasting, will strike a balance by drinking the whole night through. But the bishops are dumb heralds, they do not preach, nor do they enforce discipline; but this is sufficiently accounted for in Gerald's eyes by the fact that they were chosen from the monasteries. The monk has the care of only one person—himself; the clerk is the guardian of his flock. Gerald upbraided the Archbishop of Cashel, because Ireland had furnished no martyr for Holy Church. “The Irish”, replied the archbishop, “may be uncivilised and cruel, but they have never raised their hands against God's saints. But there is now come among us a people who know how to make martyrs. Henceforth Ireland will have her martyrs like other nations.”

The book closes with the characters of Henry II and his sons, drawn by the court chaplain; they were afterwards drawn by the same hand in an entirely different manner.

The Expugnatio Hibernica is frequently called by its author the Vaticinalis Historia. The original intention was that it should consist of three books, and the third book, the Liber Vaticiniorum, was probably written but not published. The preface only is extant,⁵ and from this it appears that Gerald, aided by men skilled in the Welsh tongue, had translated the prophecies of Merlin Sylvester, an ancient copy of which he had found during the Itinerary.⁶ In the two books which remain he quotes some of these prophecies which relate to Ireland. The book was, like the Topography, revised by the author. The manuscripts are in the British Museum, at Lambeth, and at Oxford and Cambridge. There is an English translation of it, of early fifteenth century date, in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Gerald's unfavourable comments on Ireland called forth much indignant remonstrance from that country, the principal of which was contained in the elaborate work published by the eminent Irish scholar, Dr. John Lynch, in 1662, and called by him Cambrensis Eversus. Dr. [John] Lingard,⁷ who may be held to be impartial in such a matter, states that he has attentively perused Dr. Lynch's book, and that on all important points the Irishman had “completely failed” to overturn the Welshman. The principal contemporary authorities for the period are, among the English chroniclers, Hovedon, and among the Irish, The Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, a work compiled in the seventeenth century from the Irish annals from the earliest times to the year 1616. There is, besides, a contemporary Anglo-Norman poem, a chanson de geste, composed by an unknown rhymer from accounts furnished to him by Maurice Regan, the secretary (latinier or latimer) of King Dermot.

It must be borne in mind that one great object Gerald had always before him in writing this history was to extol the gallant deeds of his kinsmen. “Who are they who penetrated into the fastnesses of the enemy?—The Geraldines. Who are they who hold the country in submission?—The Geraldines. Who are they whom the foemen dread?—The Geraldines. Who are they whom envy would disparage?—The Geraldines. Yet fight on my gallant kinsmen,

“Felices facti si quid mea carmina possuit.”(8)

The work is dedicated to Richard I, then Earl of Poitou. In the dedication of the later edition to King John, Gerald ventures to suggest that it may be translated into Norman-French, that he might reap some reward for his labours, and he proceeds to quote his facetious friend, Walter Mapes—“on whose soul God have mercy” (his old friend was dead): “You have written a great deal, Master Gerald, and I have talked a great deal; your writing is of much more value than my talk. But I talk in the vulgar tongue, which everybody can understand, while you write in Latin, for learned and liberal princes, and there are not many of them about in these days.”

The history begins with the landing of Fitz Stephen near Wexford, in 1169, and ends with the visit of Earl John in 1185. It is of especial interest to Welshmen, as the first conquerors of Ireland under the Norman kings came from Wales. Gerald speaks of them as the “men of St. David's”. They included the kinsmen of Gerald, all descendants of Nesta—the Fitz Geralds, the De Barris, the Fitz Stephens, the Fitz Henrys, and the De Cogans (who have been identified with the old Pembrokeshire family of the Wogans). We hear, too, of Maurice de Prendergast⁹; that stout and brave soldier from Roose, David Welsh, who took his name from his family and his race; and Robert le Poer, whose descendant (the Marquis of Waterford) still bears among his titles that of Baron of Haverfordwest.

The original object of the expedition was to restore to his dominions Dermot MacMurchard, or MacMurrough, King of Leinster, who had fallen into trouble through what Gerald's historical lore had told him had been the origin of evil since the world began—a woman. He had run away with another man's wife. The MacMurroughs were one of the four ruling houses of Ireland, whose dominions corresponded roughly with the four provinces. Meath, sometimes considered a fifth kingdom, was the royal domain assigned to the ard-rìgh, or high king, an elective office (which may be compared with the Saxon Bretwulda), then held by Roderic O'Connor of Connaught. There were also several kinglets and chiefs, whose perpetual dissensions and wars were a source of great assistance to the invaders.

Dermot, a barbarian, whose brutality afterwards disgusted his allies, fled to England and obtained the favour of the king, and promise of help from the men of Bristol (then, after London and Norwich, the chief city in the kingdom), and from Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke and Strigul (near Chepstow).¹⁰

The expedition was also favoured by Rhys ap Griffith, Prince of South Wales, whose father and grandfather had been aided in their time by the Kings of Leinster. There are traces of frequent communication between the people of West Wales and their kin across the channel. The Goidelic division of the Celts, who had been driven before the advancing Kymry, had returned to Dyved and North Wales, in the fifth century, to bring Christianity and to leave their mark on the country.¹¹

Dermot, who had been feasting his eyes with the sight of his native shores from St. David's, crossed first, and was soon followed by Robert Fitz Stephen, who had been released from prison by Prince Rhys for this purpose. The combined forces take Wexford and defeat the men of Ossory, a district of Leinster comprising the present county of Kilkenny. Roderic, the high king, summons all Ireland to his aid, and the invaders come to terms. But the truce was of short duration. Maurice Fitz Gerald, “a man of maiden modesty, true in word and deed”, arrives with more Welshmen, and the invaders march on Dublin, which sues for terms. Dermot now aspires to be high king, and sends a message to rouse the lagging Strongbow: “We have watched the storks and the swallows, the summer birds have come and gone, but no breeze has brought to us your long-expected aid.”

Then comes the earl from Milford; Waterford falls; the marriage of Strongbow with Eva, the daughter of Dermot, is duly solemnised, in accordance with the previous arrangement; and the army marches on Dublin. A desperate effort is made by Godred, the Norse king of Man, and the lords of the Southern Isles¹² to relieve the Ostmen of Dublin, aided by King Roderic and the Archbishop Laurence; but the Norse and Irish hosts are beaten off, and Dublin remains thenceforth under English rule.¹³

The principal resistance to the invaders had come from the Ostmen—the Norse and Danes—who had been in Ireland as pirates, colonists, and traders since the eighth century, and who, although their power had been broken by the famous battle of Clontarf, fought on Good Friday, 1014, still held their detached strongholds, principally on the east coast. The Ostmen, after the invasion, became incorporated in the English pale.¹⁴ Gerald describes the earthen forts in Ireland of the earlier Norse settlers, who have left so many traces in his native county in their raths—the Scandinavian names of places—and in their descendants along the coast.

The author puts into the mouths of the leaders set orations, after the classical models, and the Irish chieftains are represented as animating their followers by citing examples from Roman history. We also have full-length portraits of the principal actors in the drama, and the colouring in some of them is laid on with no unsparing hand.

Meanwhile the king grew jealous; he feared that Strongbow might set up in Ireland an independent rule, to the danger of the English crown; he forbade further supplies to be sent, and Strongbow submitted to hold all his conquests of the king. In 1171 Henry landed at Waterford with an army and his title-deed.

This was the famous bull “Laudabiliter”, granted in 1155 (at which time Henry meditated an invasion of Ireland), by Adrian IV, the only English pope,¹⁵ and confirmed by his successor, Alexander III, the then reigning pontiff. Gerald gives us the document in full, which, he says, was deposited with the royal archives at Winchester. It sets forth that Adrian, the bishop, the servant of the servants of God, in recognition of the laudable desire of the king of the English to restore Ireland to the garden of the Lord, grants him that country, which, like all islands on which the sun of righteousness has shed its rays, is the dominion of the Holy Roman Church,¹⁶ reserving to the blessed Peter the annual tribute of one penny for every house.

Henry spent six months in Ireland, the longest stay ever made there by an English monarch. His return appears to have been delayed by the tempestuous winter of that year. He organised the civil government, and caused a synod of the Irish clergy to be held at Cashel, whose constitutions Gerald gives us at length; they relate to baptism, marriage, funerals, the making of wills, the payment of tithes, the exactions of the petty kings (reguli) and chiefs on Church property, and enact that all the sacred offices shall henceforth be performed in accordance with the usage of the Holy Catholic Church as observed in England. Gerald had previously told of the synod of Armagh, held two years before, when the Irish clergy ascribed the recent invasion to the sins of the people, especially to the slave trade, of which the headquarters were at Bristol.¹⁷

Henry kept the feast of the Nativity at Dublin in a palace constructed of wattled work, after the manner of the country, and received the submission of all the native chiefs, with the possible exception of those of Ulster. He granted to his men of Bristol the city of Dublin to dwell in (the charter is still preserved in the Dublin archives), and, as lord paramount, gave Meath, the domain of the ard-rìgh, to Hugh de Laci, the deputy, whom Gerald praises as a very Frenchman for temperance.

After the departure of the king we hear of the famous storming of Limerick, and various incursions into Ulster, Munster, and Connaught. But these had no permanent result, and the power of the English king was for centuries confined to the Pale—a succession of counties palatine along the east coast.

In 1185, Earl John, the king's son, came over. His father had created him Lord of Ireland—a title borne by the English kings until Henry VIII renounced the successor of Pope Adrian, and called himself King of Ireland—or, as the Irish Act phrased it, “King and Emperor of the realm of England and of the land of Ireland.” In John's train came Gerald, this being his second visit.

Gerald seems to have been disgusted with the conduct of John and his court, and leaves to other historians to narrate this part of the history; but he cannot refrain from declaring the causes of the failure of the prince, whom he afterwards denounced as the worst of a bad breed. He relates the arrival of John Comyn, a monk of Evesham, the future builder of St. Patrick's Cathedral, appointed, through the influence of the king, to the archbishopric of Dublin, and quotes the four prophets of Ireland, who declare that Ireland shall be subdued by the English from the centre to the sea—some time before the Day of Judgment.

He digresses, after his manner, on the Crusades, the death of Becket, the character of the king (still in the style of the court chaplain), and various events in contemporary history which occur to him. He attributes to the check of the first invaders by the jealousy of the king, the disastrous fact in Irish history that the country never became thoroughly subjugated to the English crown, and that the people remained for centuries divided into the three classes of the king's friends, the king's enemies, and the king's rebels.¹⁸

He divides the invaders at the time of John's visit into Normans, English, and “our people”, i.e., the Welsh. He forgets his own Norman blood in denouncing the first named as a grasping, boasting set, who despised everybody else. He gives his receipt for the conquest of Ireland, and, with characteristic gallantry, addresses himself to the insoluble problem how Ireland should be governed. He finds the ideal ruler of Ireland in the strong man armed.

There are three editions of the Itinerarium Kambriæ to be found among the manuscripts in the libraries of the British Museum and of the two Universities. The first two editions were dedicated to William de Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, Justiciary of the realm in the absence of Richard I, and to St. Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln. In the third there are two dedications to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the barons against King John, in one of which Gerald regrets his error in dedicating his Irish works to that graceless and thankless person, Henry II, and to his successor in vice, Richard of Poitou.

Henry II had been deaf to all entreaties to succour the failing kingdom of Jerusalem, but, in 1187, all Christendom was thrilled by the news that the Holy City was again in the hands of the infidels.¹⁹ The king then assumed the cross,²⁰ and vast preparations were made for the third crusade, which was led to Palestine, after Henry's death, by his son Richard and by Philip Augustus of France.

Baldwin, the Archbishop of Canterbury,²¹ was sent into Wales to preach the crusade, accompanied by the first minister of state, Ranulf de Glanville, the Justiciary, the most famous lawyer of the day.²² The expedition was not without its political reasons. The royal officials had an opportunity of surveying the country, not possible under any other circumstances; the religious conscription would send to Palestine many of the king's troublesome enemies; and the metropolitan of the English Church would have the opportunity of asserting his still not undisputed rights by celebrating Mass in each of the four cathedrals of Wales. It is to be noted that the canons of St. David's attempted to persuade Prince Rhys to prevent the archbishop having access to the metropolitan church of St. David's, but the prince's notions of hospitality forbade it, “lest he might wound the holy man's feelings.”

“The sages of the church and the law”, says Dean [Walter Farquhar] Hook,²³ “were under the guidance of a young man, tall, slender in figure, with delicate features, and a fine complexion, over-shadowed by large, wide eyebrows; a man of learning and a wit, but self-sufficient, conceited, and an intolerable egotist.” It was not without reason that on the Archbishop's right hand was placed the leader of the clergy of St. David's—the scion of the blood-royal of Wales. The effect of that solemn and stately procession, with the successor of St. Thomas of Canterbury riding in full armour at its head, the white cross on his breast, it is easy to imagine. The champions of the captive Jerusalem were received with reverence alike by the Welsh princes and the Norman barons, and could traverse the remote country districts with equal safety as the towns.

The Welsh princes of the time were: in South Wales, Rhys ap Griffith (Gerald's Welsh uncle), called, by the English, the Lord Rhys, the last prince of Deheubarth. Rhys was a man of conspicuous ability. He was made by Henry II, in 1176, Chief Justice of South Wales, and on the death of that king, being cavalierly treated by his successor, he reconquered nearly the whole of his ancient Principality. He died of the yellow plague in 1197. In North Wales, on the death of the famous Owen Gwynedd in 1169, the Principality was usurped by his son David, who was ousted, in 1194, by his (Owen's) grandson, Llewelyn ap Iorwerth—Llewelyn the Great.²⁴ Powys, from its situation had been more exposed to English attacks. On the death of Madoc ap Meredith, the last prince of Powys, in 1160, it was divided into Higher Powys, afterwards called Powys Gwenwynwyn,²⁵ held at the date of the Itinerary by Madoc's nephew, Owen Cyveilioc, a bard, some of whose poems are still extant; and Lower Powys, or Powys Vadoc, held by the sons of Madoc. There were, also, still Welsh chieftains of importance in Merioneth, Glamorgan, and elsewhere.

Among the Norman barons settled in Wales we hear of William de Braose, a man of might in the neighbourhood of Gerald's house at Llanddew, a grasping soldier of most pious conversation; of Bernard de Newmarch, the Norman conqueror of Brecheiniog, who, like some of the other invaders, married a Welshwoman, and whose daughter brought the province as her dower to Milo, Earl of Hereford. It is of Milo that Gerald relates that, when riding near the lake of Brecheiniog²⁶ with Griffith ap Rhys, he jestingly said to his companion, “It is an old Welsh tradition that the birds of this lake will sing at the bidding of their lawful prince.” Griffith bade Milo, as actual lord of the country, to try; he tried, and failed. Then Griffith, dismounting from his horse, prayed: “O Lord, who knowest all things, if I am the rightful prince, I command these birds, in Thy name, to declare it.” And immediately the birds, flapping the water with their wings, began to cry aloud. Milo tells the king (Henry I), who exclaims, “By the death of Christ (his usual oath), we do wrong and robbery to this people, for the land is theirs.”

We hear, too, of Maurice de Londres (lord of Kidwelly²⁷) who, like the Conqueror, “loved the high deer as if he had been their father”. But his wife persuaded him that they killed her sheep, “for women are very apt in deceiving men”. There is also Robert de Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury, who had a stud-farm of Spanish horses in Powys.

The expedition started on Ash Wednesday from Hereford. They visited Radnor, crossed the Wye at Hay to Llanddew²⁸ (a mansion of the see of St. David's, near Brecon, where Gerald then lived), thence by Talgarth across the hills to Abergavenny, and so down the valley of the Usk by Caerleon to Newport and the noble castle of Cardiff. They pass through Llandaff and Ewenny to the noble Cistercian monastery of Margam. Thence along the coast, over dangerous quicksands and across rivers not yet bridged, to Neath and Swansea, and so by Kidwelly and across the Towy, in boats, to Caermarthen. From Caermarthen by Whitland (Alba Domus or Alba Landa)²⁹ and Llawhaden, the castle of the Bishop of St. David's, to Haverfordwest, thence by Camrose and Newgale Sands³⁰ to St. David's. From St. David's along the old pilgrims' way, by the northern coast of the county, where the cross, cut deep in some old stone in the road-side, still marks the route to the sacred city. They visit St. Dogmael's, and are handsomely entertained by Prince Rhys at his castle at Aberteivi (Cardigan). From Cardigan up the Tivy to Strata Florida—“the Westminster Abbey of Wales”³¹—and so to Llanbadarn Vawr, once, and perhaps again to be, a cathedral church.³² They cross the Dovey into North Wales and follow the coast line to Pwllheli;³³ then strike across to Nevin on Carnarvon Bay, where Gerald is said to have found the works of Merlin Sylvester. Still keeping to the coast, they reach the little cell of Basingwerk (near Holywell), and go up the Dee to Chester, visiting on their way the island of Anglesey and the cathedrals of Bangor and St. Asaph (the latter Gerald always speaks of as “that poor little church of Llanelwy”). They had hurried to Chester to keep the Easter festival. After Easter they turn inland, and traversing with greater rapidity Powys and the borders, they pass through Album Monasterium (probably Whitchurch in Shropshire), Oswestry, Shrewsbury, and Ludlow, back to the starting point at Hereford. A like journey had never been made through Wales. After spending a month in South Wales, they passed through North Wales in eight days; Powys had already been worked by the bishop of the diocese (St. Asaph), and it does not seem to have been thought necessary to do much preaching in that district.

Of course, Gerald gets off the track whenever the occasion suggests itself. He digresses to Llanthony, to describe, with his appreciation of the beauties of nature, the wild grandeur of the valley in which originally was founded the little church of St. David on the Hodni, which developed into the famous Abbey of the Order of St. Augustine, and to denounce with his impartial hatred all the monastic orders. He proposes more fully to expound his views in a book hereafter, by the grace of God, to be written. This book, the Speculum Ecclesiæ, he wrote late in life; and in it, by the grace of God, he lashed the monks in a way his old friend Walter Mapes could not have excelled. Gerald closes the digression with a sermon on the virtues of frugality and contentment, and sets before us, as an eminent example of both, the Venerable the Archdeacon of Brecon.

He digresses to Pembroke, to tell us of the slender fortress of stakes and turf built there in the reign of Henry I, by Arnulph de Montgomery, who entrusted it to that worthy and discreet man, Gerald de Windsor (Gerald's grandfather), who, in order to make his position more secure, married the Welsh princess Nesta; to tell us of the beauties of his own loved Manorbier, which he attributes, after the fashion of the time, to an eponymous hero, Pyrrus (mansio Pyrri), in the same manner as he attributes Brecheiniog to Brachanus, with his four-and-twenty saintly daughters.³⁴

He praises the beautiful situation of his old home, its genial climate, its vineyards and orchards, its plenty of corn, sea-fish, and imported wines.

Houses in the county of Pembroke³⁵ had even then attained to the respectability of being haunted. The inmost secrets of the inmates of Stephen Wiriot (of Orielton?) were divulged by unclean spirits, who did not scruple to slander even the priests armed with crucifix and holy water. The steward of Elidor de Stakepole was Satan, in the guise of a red-haired young man, who knew all the family secrets; fed the servants well, on the plea that those who produced had the first right to consume; but who never went to church or uttered one Catholic word.

It was not in Gerald to pass through St. David's without a long dissertation on the ancient glories of the seat of the Primate of Wales. He enumerates the successors of St. David to his own time, but omits all mention of the great church then being reared by his successful rival, Peter de Leia.

His love of the picturesque and the miraculous leads him to describe the mountains of Snowdon and its two lakes—one with floating islands, of which he gives a rational explanation, and the other with one-eyed fish, which he will not take on himself to explain.

We have miracles galore. There is the staff of St. Curig, a certain cure for glandular swellings upon devout application, and the oblation of one penny. And the saint would not take less. A thrifty patient, who only invested to the extent of a halfpenny, found himself still with half a swelling. Another, who was cured on credit, and did not meet his engagements on settling day, had his swelling back until he brought to the saint an apology and a fine of threepence. There are the portable bells, a church property used at funerals, which had such miraculous power that both clergy and laity of Wales preferred to forswear themselves on the Holy Gospels.

There is the boy who stole pigeons from a church of St. David, and St. David held him tight by the hand for three days and three nights, while all his friends and relatives were supplicating before the high altar for his release. And this story is authentic, for Gerald had seen at Newbury the boy when he had become an old man, and the stone is “alive at this day to testify it”. There is the Welshman of Caerleon, “in our time”, who began the downward path by going courting on Palm Sunday “in a pleasant and convenient spot”, and who was straightway possessed with devils, who affected him principally when near a monastery, but who taught him how to prophesy and how to detect a liar. If the gospel of St. John were placed on his bosom, the devils fled; but when the History of the Britons, by Geoffrey ap Arthur,³⁶ was substituted, they returned in greater numbers. We are not told whether the same experiment was tried with the Itinerary through Wales. It is an example of the uncritical spirit in which history was then written that Gerald should mention as an interesting and noteworthy fact that when his uncle was bishop the little river Alan at St. David's (he calls it a turbid stream) on one occasion ran with wine. Students of folklore will be interested in the account of the visits of a priest of Gower in his boyhood to fairyland, where he learned the language, which was akin to Greek (he was ejected for stealing a golden ball for his mother). Gerald gives us some specimens of the fairy tongue, and airs his learning in furnishing the equivalents in Welsh, English, Latin, Greek, Irish, German, and French. We have occasional glimpses of the state of the country in those days; of the ceaseless fueds between the native princes, to whom even the experience of having their country filched from them piecemeal would not teach wisdom; of the barbarities inflicted on the Welsh by the Norman governors of the castles, and retaliated on the Normans by the Welsh whenever they got the chance. Gerald thinks it better to omit the narration of the atrocities perpetrated at Abergavenny (of which he accuses Henry II of being the instigator), lest bad men might be induced to follow the example.³⁷ The history of the time is summed up in one sentence: “This man was, after the manner of the Welsh, the owner of a tract of wild mountain land, of the whole or part of which the Earl was for ever trying to deprive him.”

Gerald, at Llanddew, presented the Archbishop with his work on Irish Topography. He graciously received it, and read a portion every day, and, when the journey was over, took the book home to finish. Gerald, with his easy credulity, believes that he did it.³⁸

The crusaders were accompanied by the Welsh bishops through their respective dioceses, and by the Welsh princes through their Principalities.³⁹ They were also attended by interpreters to the Welsh. To give all the details of interest would be to rewrite the book. It must suffice to notice that Gerald details the vestiges of Roman splendour then still to be found at Caerleon, and prophesies of the gold to be found in Wales when men would work for it. At Cardiff we have the story of the warning to Henry II (on Sunday observances) in English, which language the king could understand but not speak.⁴⁰ At Llandaff the English part of the congregation stand on one side, the Welsh on the other. At Caermarthen, Gerald found remains of the old Roman brick walls. Near Whitland, a young Welshman, devoutly coming to meet them, was murdered by some archers of the castle at St. Clears, who were signed with the cross as punishment of their crime. At Haverford, Gerald preaches in Latin and French; and the people, although they did not understand a syllable, are moved to tears by his eloquence, and rush in crowds to take the cross. We hear, in the De Rebus,⁴¹ that the Archbishop frequently remarked on the journey that he had seen weeping in his day, but such weepers as the men of Haverford were beyond the range of even his experience; and Gerald takes a neighbourly pride in their exuberance. It would have been interesting if Gerald had told us what language the men of Haverford then used. Richard, the son of Tancard, the castellan, seems to have been a Fleming, from which it would appear that the Flemings were in the ascendant; but some of the old Norse settlers might still have been in evidence.⁴²

Gerald describes the Flemings settled in the district, in the reigns of Henry I and Henry II,⁴³ as a brave and robust people; ever hostile to the Welsh; with skill in commerce and manufacture, and a keen eye to the main chance. The Welsh chronicler calls the Flemings cowards.⁴⁴ Gerald gives a long account of their divination by the blade-bone of a ram's shoulder; but this was also a Celtic use.

We hear much of Caradoc of St. Ishmael's,⁴⁵ a local hermit, and the last of the Welsh saints, whom Innocent III canonised at Gerald's instance,⁴⁶ the annual festival at whose sacred well, near Haverfordwest, developed, in later times, into the less saintly pastimes of Portfield Fair.

At St. David's, in the vale of Roses, in which the cathedral stands, was Llech Llafar, the famous speaking stone of white marble which bridged the Alan. A prophecy of Merlin was held to mean that on it Henry II should meet his death. As that king was on his return from Ireland, going to the cathedral in pilgrim's garb, a woman of the crowd urged some petition against the bishop. The king paid no heed, and the woman shouted aloud in Welsh: “Revenge us this day, Llech Llafar, revenge us on this man.” The king had heard of the prophecy, he paused, gazed earnestly at the stone, then firmly stepped across, and looking round on his attendants, cried in triumph: “Who will hereafter place his trust in that liar, Merlin?”

We have two other legends of St. David's. One of the same king, who, while hawking on the coast, spied a noble falcon on the cliff, and let loose his favourite hawk at him. But the native bird, soaring to a great height, struck the foreigner dead at the king's feet; and from that day the royal sportsman sent, every breeding season, for his hawks to Ramsey Island.

The other is also a twice-told tale by Gerald. William Rufus,⁴⁷ observing the Irish coast from St. David's Head, exclaimed: “I will summon all the ships of my realm and make a bridge over to that country.” “Did the king say, If God so will?” said the prince of Leinster, when the story was told to him; and being informed that the king was not in the habit of making that sort of remark, replied, “Then I fear him not.”

The noble river Tivy excites the author's admiration, with its salmon, still happily to be found there, and its beavers (on which he learnedly digresses), long since extinct.⁴⁸ Crossing the hills from Strata Florida they are met by Cynwrig, the fair-haired son of Prince Rhys, with a company of light-armed youths, clothed, according to the custom of the country, with thin cloaks and light under-garments, their legs and feet bare.

The lay-abbot of Llanbadarn Vawr is the text for a discourse on the evil habit among the Welsh clergy of appointing powerful laymen to be patrons of their churches, who eventually appropriate the possessions of the church and leave them to their children.

Merioneth is the rudest and roughest district of all Wales, and as South Wales excels in the use of the bow, so does North Wales in that of the lance. We have a passing notice of Bardsey, the Isle of the Saints (off the south coast of Caernarvonshire), where, through the merits of the blessed saints, disease is unknown, and no one dies except from old age. The difficulties of the journey through Caernarvon are so great that Gerald looks on it as the rehearsal of the great journey to Jerusalem. We see the Archbishop sitting on the trunk of a tree, uprooted by the wind, at the crest of some hill which he had surmounted, and inviting his panting attendants to regale him by whistling a tune; and Gerald approves the pleasantry of so grave and dignified a personage. Some one then remarks that the nightingale never came to Wales: “Wise bird the nightingale”, says the way-worn primate.

The Bishop of Bangor, although he had accompanied the crusaders, would not take the cross, except upon compulsion; nor were the sons of Roderic (ap Owen Gwynedd), who met the Archbishop in Anglesey, less unwilling than their diocesan. Traces of the visit are said to have been left in Anglesey in the local names of the “Careg-yr-Archesgob” and of the “Maen Roderic”, as also in Dyved, in the “Pont-y-Baldwin” over the little river Duad, near College, and in the “Parc-y-Capel”, on the Tivy, where a chapel was built in memory of the sermons delivered there.

We have a description of Mona, so fertile in corn as to give rise to the proverb, “Mon mam Kembre”,—Mona, the mother of Wales; but externally it reminded Gerald of the district of Pencaer, in his native county. The adjacent island of Priestholme was another isle of the saints, where the women were, as usual, not admitted.

The Bishop of Bangor is commanded to remove from before the high altar of his cathedral the body of Owen Gwynedd, who had died excommunicated by St. Thomas of Canterbury;⁴⁹ and the bishop, in divided allegiance to the spiritual and civil power, secretly deposited the late Prince of North Wales among his faithful subjects outside through an underground tunnel.

Dinas Emrys, where Merlin uttered his prophecies, calls to the author's mind the two Merlins—Ambrosius of Caermarthen, and Celidonius or Sylvester of Scotland.⁵⁰ Coleshill, where Henry II fled ignominiously before the Welsh, gives him leave to speak of the three Welsh expeditions of that king in 1157, 1162, and 1165; and the story of the greyhound who defended the body of a young Welshman who was slain in the battle, affords him the opportunity, which he always takes, of showing his love for dogs. The English, though they hated the Welsh, gave to the master the rights of sepulture and humanity—as a mark of favour to the dog.

Chester, we hear, is the burial-place of two famous monarchs, Henry V, the emperor,⁵¹ and Harold, the last of the English kings. For the first statement there is no authority; for the second, many old writers assert that Harold escaped from Hastings. Oswestry is memorable for the sumptuous entertainment given by William Fitz Alan, after the English manner, and the crusaders appear to have keenly appreciated the change of diet.

At Shrewsbury the Archdeacon preached an elegant sermon, and, with the aid of the primate, struck from the roll of the faithful, Owen Cyveilioc of Powys—Owen of the silver tongue—for he of all the princes of Wales came not to the help of the Lord. Nevertheless, Gerald names him as among the Welsh princes of his time who were famous for their justice, wisdom, and princely moderation.

During the pilgrimage, about three thousand recruits were made for the crusade,⁵² and many and great were the lamentations of their friends and neighbours. The women opposed throughout. Prince Rhys was diverted from his noble purpose by the female artifices of his wife, a daughter of Eve and of Powys. The recruits at Hay fled from their wives to the Archbishop at the castle.⁵³ A Welsh chieftain from the Usk was stamped in a different mould; being urged by Baldwin to take the cross, he replied that he would like to consult his friends. “I suppose”, said the Archbishop, “you wish to ask your wife?” Then he modestly made answer: “When the work of a man is to be done, the advice of a woman need not be asked”; and straightway took the cross like a man. But few of the recruits ever went. Dissensions arose among the sovereigns, and the enterprise was delayed until the zeal of the Welsh had grown cold. But that some, at least, did go, we know elsewhere from the valiant deeds of Welshmen recounted by the chronicler of the third crusade.

The historian concludes with a panegyric on that gentle enthusiast, Archbishop Baldwin, one of the few monks of whom Gerald ever spoke in praise. Gerald himself had taken the cross at Radnor among the first, but, like many rich men, had bought a dispensation. The poor man had literally to go, or be—well, the alternative was unpleasant. But the saintly primate of the English Church, of whom even lying rumour dared not to speak ill, followed the crusading hosts to the rescue of Jerusalem, and died in the Holy Land, broken-hearted at the spectacle of the unbridled wickedness of the Soldiers of the Cross.

Of the Gemma Ecclesiastica there is only one manuscript known, that in the Lambeth Library. The middle leaves are stained with salt-water, and it may be the identical copy which was presented by the author to Innocent III. The Pope was a ripe scholar, and loved good books; the other works of Gerald he lent, after much importunity, to his cardinals, but this he would not allow out of his sight. It is an archidiaconal charge, intended, as we are told in the preface, only for the Welsh clergy, and it gives a wonderful insight into the actual state of learning and morality in the Principality. It is divided into two books, the first treating of the canon, and the second of the moral, law.

“Our little systems have their day”, says the Laureate; the learning of Gerald as a canonist, supported as it is by citations from the Decretals,⁵⁴ the Fathers, and from Holy Writ, has now, to most Welshmen, merely an historical interest; but his exhortation to his people to be honest, to be sober, and to speak the truth, might even now be repeated with profit in every church and chapel in the land.

The first book treats of the sacraments of the Church, and especially of the Eucharist. With Gerald this was the central doctrine; with the schoolmen who followed him “the central doctrine” was the mystery of the Trinity. He gives the now received etymology of the word “mass’, “Ite Missa est”—Go, the sacrifice has been sent to heaven. He directs that water should be mixed with the wine, as significant of Christ's passion; discusses whether other liquors than wine may be used; and tells many stories of the impure chalice, sometimes in those days used as a poisoned cup. He will not refuse the communion to stage-players or actors, on their repentance, or even to a thief on the gallows, although some hold that the body of Christ might thereby seem to be crucified again. For the more perfect Christians, communion every Sunday is commendable; the less perfect must be content with the three great festivals (Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas). For despisers of the Eucharist, we have the warnings of Richard de Aubrey, the English priest at Paris, a very mirror of religion and morality, who, through weakness of his faith, turned away his face from the last sacrament, and went the way of all flesh without the viaticum; of Pope Gerbert, who, instead of taking the host, secretly deposited it in a bag fastened to his neck, and when this was discovered by his confession, the Church at Rome decreed that henceforth a pope when communicating should turn his face to the people; of Master Simon of Tournay, who cried aloud, “How long shall this superstitious sect of Christians and their new-fangled ways endure?” and grievous and speedy was the divine vengeance. Laymen may, under certain circumstances, administer the sacraments, but they may not enter the chancel, nor should they, as is their wont, sing profane songs in the churchyard on saints' days. A priest of Worcester, who had lent a too attentive ear to such melodies, standing before the altar in full canonicals, instead of the Dominus vobiscum in the orthodox Latin, burst out into the English Swete lamman dhin are, a worldly ditty, beginning, “Sweetheart, thy lover calls”, and from that day that song is anathema in the diocese of Worcester.

The Archdeacon then attacks certain abuses and superstitions, such as the celebration of Mass over waxen images, to bring down curses upon those represented by them; the hurrying over a number of gospels by merely reading the opening sentences. “It is good physic”, said a priest, in excuse, “and helps to drive away ghosts, especially the beginning of the Gospel of St. John.” The laity had a reverence for certain gospels, and would make offerings on hearing them; wherefor, instead of one gospel for each Mass, there were now many. They were not all so easily satisfied as the woman who was churched by a subdeacon, who read her two epistles and then took her alms, on the assurance that two epistles were always held to be of equal efficacy to one gospel.⁵⁵ The Welsh people had, more than any other, a salutary dread of excommunication. The sacraments, prayers, and benedictions of the Church were cut off from the offender for the salvation of his soul; but they had now come to despise it, seeing how lightly it was imposed and taken off. The Archdeacon straitly enjoins his clergy to impose it only as a last resource, after all admonition had failed, and then with due solemnity and earnest prayers for the soul of their erring brother.

We have many examples to enforce his various precepts. For the efficacy of the sign of the cross: the Jew who was benighted in a ruined heathen temple, and, although he had no faith, protected himself by the holy symbol, and the evil spirits, coming down, turned him over, but left him unharmed, exclaiming, “Hallo! here is a sealed cask, but an empty one.” Against hasty words: of the husband who said to his wife, “I deliver thy body to the devil”; and Satan immediately entered upon his property. Of the many instances of God's judgment on perjury: the story, afterwards made famous by Cervantes, of the Christian who swore to a Jew before the altar of St. Nicholas that he had returned his loan, giving his creditor at the same time a hollow cane to hold, in which the money was concealed; the perjurer was run over and killed on his way home, and the cane broken; whereupon the Jew was converted to the faith and righteous dealing of the Christians. The evil of Sabbath breaking may be read in the fate of the harvesters in Dyved, in the reign of King Stephen, on the Holy Day of St. Lawrence, when the saint sent his fire and burnt up the waggons and the crops, and the oxen rushed down to the neighbouring sea and were drowned.

Throughout the book instruction is given on various ecclesiastical matters—the ornaments of the church; vestments; the confessional; the duties of sponsors in baptism; and the banns of marriage, which were published precisely as they are now.

The priest must exact no fee for any sacrament, for baptism, marriage, or burial; but he may accept such offerings as the faithful may give of their own free will.

A great portion of the second book is taken up with exhortations to the holy life, and considerations of the offences against the moral law which had come under the Archdeacon's notice. He was dealing with a needy and illiterate clergy, among whom much old Celtic practice and belief doubtless still lingered; little removed from their untractable and uncivilised people, and forced to eke out their scanty living by rearing cattle and feeding swine. And first he insists on the necessity of purity of life to those who have to offer the great sacrifice of the body of our Lord. The Welsh priest was wont to keep in his house a female (focaria)—“to light his fire but extinguish his virtue.” How, he asks, can such a man practise frugality and self-denial, with a house full of brawling brats, and a woman for ever extracting money to buy costly robes with long skirts trailing in the dust; and he draws a ludicrous picture of a priest jogging along to market on horseback, holding on his domestic—he will not even call her his mistress—in front of him, decked out in her holiday attire.

But Gerald admits that the vow of clerical celibacy imposed by Hildebrand on the Western Church had the sanction of neither the Old nor the New Testament; and he quotes the saying of his master, Peter Manducator, that the devil had never put greater mischief into the heads of the rulers of the Church than when he induced them to forbid the marriage of the clergy.

To enforce his precepts upon chastity he describes the ardent lover fleeing in horror from the body of his dead mistress, which he had worshipped a few short hours before. He quotes with approval the remedium amoris taken by St. Dogmael of Cemmaes; and gives the curious story of the reply of “Louis, the most Christian King of France” (Louis VII), to the seductive advice of the spiritual men of his court; and the awful example of the Welsh Abbot Enatus of Alba Landa,⁵⁶ who ran away with a nun, and was afterwards sorry. Another story is of the hermit who, after having spent thirty years of his life in solitary devotion, puffed up with his own merits, prayed that God would show to him another man as holy as himself. Soon a wandering minstrel comes to his oratory—a wretched outcast, the companion of thieves. The hermit enters into conversation, and asks him if he had done one good action in his life. The minstrel can think of none, but at last recollects that once, when with a band of robbers engaged in rifling a nunnery, a nun fell to him as part of his share of the booty—the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Touched by her entreaty, he disregarded the taunts of his comrades, and preserved her from insult, restoring her unharmed to her family “Verily, my son”, said the hermit, “this one single act of self-restraint of yours outweighs in real merit, and is more acceptable to God, than all my abstinence for these long years.”

But some of his stories seem to modern ideas more suited to the pleasant pages of the Decameron than those of a grave archidiaconal charge. What would be thought of a present archdeacon who illustrated his solemn admonitions on the higher life by some such story as this on the limit of Christian charity?—

“Exemplum de monacho, ad cujus thorum mulier de nocte veniens, rogavit ut in caritate Dei sub vestibus ejus stratum intrans se calefacere posset. Quo concesso, post pusillum petiit ut in caritate Dei ipsum amplexari ei liceret. Quo etiam concesso, tertio rogavit ut in caritate Dei voluptuosos carnis suae motus viriliter extingueret. Quo audito, vir Deo plenus ipsam a strato incontinenti acriter expellens, ‘Vade inquit ‘filia Sathanæ non sapis quae Dei sunt, quia caritas Dei non eo usque se extendit’.”

That the shortcomings of the clergy were not confined to Wales we may gather from the story of the matron who came to consult St. Hugh, the Bishop of Lincoln, not so much in his episcopal capacity as for the medical lore he had gained during his monastic life. She complained “super maritum quia debitum ei reddere non poterat”. The blessed man, we are told, loved a joke; he was well acquainted with the clergy of his diocese, and he knew of an infallible prescription for the payment of such debts in full. “Madam”, he said, “we will get him ordained.” And this part of the subject may be closed with the eloquent sermon of the Archdeacon on the danger of delaying repentance until old age. “Behold we die daily”, he says, quoting from Seneca, not St. Paul. Speaking of himself, as now past his fiftieth year: “Boyhood, the purer part of life, is dead; youth, the sweeter part of life, is dead; manhood, the stronger part of life, is dead; what now remains but old age, itself akin to death?” “You will be moved in reading history”, he tells us, “as I have been, at seeing how many of these great emperors, kings, and popes were cut off in their prime.” “Sancte Pater non videbis annos Petri”, was the solemn warning to his successor. “And let no man be safe in his own conceit; for what shall the rod of the desert do, when the cedar of Lebanon is shaken?”

He then admonishes his clergy on the evils of drink; but he is a temperance man, not a teetotaller, for he does not condemn the use of wine, but the abuse, and he is equally severe on the vice of excessive eating. And in this connection he inveighs against the church ales and feastings of the time, when men and women were assembled promiscuously under the excitements of religious emotion and strong drink, with the evil results that they (and we) all know. “If you must have a feast”, he says, “let it be in moderation, and let all that is superfluous be given to the poor.”

Even in the sacred rites of hospitality let them remember St. Philibert, who was overtaken in his zeal to do honour to his guests. As he lay on his back the devil approached him, and, patting him pleasantly where his dinner was in evidence, said: “Our friend Philibert has done pretty well to-day.” “He will be mighty bad to-morrow”, groaned the saint, and returned straightway to his diet of bread and water.

Of the many concealed unbelievers in the ministry he gives us an example—the priest who at length confessed: “Do you suppose that this bread can really become flesh, and this wine blood? Can you think that the Creator of all things took the flesh of a woman, or that a virgin can conceive and still remain a virgin? It is all hypocrisy, the invention of greybeards, to strike terror into men.”

The archdeacon then proceeds to lament the growing desire of riches among all orders of the Church, and gives us a long discourse against simony, and the search for temporal reward for spiritual office. And here he declares himself to be a communist. All the goods of the world are by natural law common property—“Dives aut iniquus est aut haeres iniqui”;⁵⁷ thereby anticipating the dictum of the French philosopher—“La propriété c'est le vol.” He much commends St. Thomas of Canterbury for exacting an oath from his chancellor that he would not accept so much as a penknife (knipulus) for the performance of his duties.

The higher he looked in the church the more he found this plague of avarice rampant, and especially in the Norman prelates sent into Wales—“pasci non pascere”⁵⁸—and in their even more rapacious officials. Among many examples we have the bishop who always promoted the most incapable among his relatives, alleging that the capable ones could get along without his aid, but the others would starve: the Welsh priest who was accused by his bishop of having turned “Catholic”,⁵⁹ he denied on oath, but it was proved against him, and, as he was well-to-do, he had to pay for it: another priest said to his diocesan; “My lord, I bring two hundred sheep”—he said “oves”, he was not a Latinist, he meant “ova” (eggs)—but the wolf, as Gerald calls him, took care that the sheep were forthcoming: a priest, who at gambling had lost his all except five shillings, offered these to any man who would tell him how, beyond any other sinner, he could offend his Maker; a bystander promptly replied, “Become the seneschal to the bishop”, and won the money by acclamation. And yet Gerald, in his large-hearted charity, will not say that no bishop can be saved: he merely asserts that it is more difficult for them than for other people.⁶⁰

Gerald then regales himself with stories of clerical ignorance (a subject in which he always delights); many of them are of bad Latinity, and lose their point when translated. There is the priest on St. Barnabas' Day, declaring how that good and holy man repented him of the days when he was a robber; another, on the feast of St. Simon and St. Jude, explaining that, although the latter was the traitor, he was honoured as a saint for his companion's sake; another, on the festival of St. John—“ante portam Latinam”—informed his hearers that this St. John was the first man who brought the Latin language into England, arriving at it thus: ante, “first”, portam, “he brought”, Latinam, “the Latin language”, subaudi, “into England”.

And in the next chapter we have similiar blunders of the higher clergy, especially of one Archbishop, doubtless Gerald's old enemy Hubert, who on one occasion compromised himself, even at Oxford, and Martin, his assessor, shouted out: “What are you all laughing at? This is the ancient grammar.”

This illiterateness Gerald attributes to the newfangled study of logic, which had driven out the older and sounder learning, a subject on which he speaks more at length in the Speculum Ecclesiæ. The barbarous Latinity of the rising schoolmen, and their frivolous and subtle distinctions, were distasteful to him. He tells the story, often since repeated, of the young Englishman who came home from a course of logic at Paris, and offered to prove to his father that four made eight and six made twelve. There were six eggs on the breakfast-table, and he proved his point to the conviction and satisfaction of his illogical parent, who took for his own breakfast the six eggs which the hen had laid, leaving for his son the six which his dialectical skill had created. He quotes with approval the remarks of an old divine to him when he himself was a Paris student, carried away by the new learning; “This logic of yours is of no use to you unless you can find some other fool to argue with, while I can read my books in a corner and be happy.”

And with a parting shaft at the ecclesiastical rulers who were responsible for all the evils he had been denouncing, the book closes with the archidiaconal benediction: “I beseech you, brethren, that you present your bodies a holy, acceptable sacrifice to God; that you assist me with your prayers that my offering may be received, and my vexation of spirit in the divine law acceptable, and that I may again come among you with joy. The God of peace be with you. Amen.”

Notes

1. Expug. Hib., i, 42.

2. But see Gemma Ecclesiastica, l. 53.

   “At St. Patrick's command vipers quitted the land,
   But he's wanted again in that island.”

3. “Let Erin remember” (Irish Melodies).

4. The prehistoric settlers of tradition were the Fomorians, a people of Turanian origin; the Firbolgs, a dark, pastoral people, who were afterwards fused with their successors, the fair and more civilised Danaans, to form the genuine Irish peasant of the West; and the warlike Milesians, stated to have come from Spain, the ancestors of the O's and Mac's, the chieftains and petty kings.

5. Symbolum Electorum, iv, 8.

6. Geoffrey of Monmouth had published the prophecies of Merlin.

7. History of England, ii, 87.

8. Virgil, Æneid, ix, 446; but the first two words are Geraldian.

9. Prendergast is now a suburb of Haverfordwest.

10. He was called Strongbow, a name before given to his father, Gilbert, the first earl, who had made extensive conquests in South Wales during the reign of Henry I. Richard succeeded in 1149 to his father's titles, but he was at this time in disgrace with the king, who had deprived him of his estates.

11. Of the two Celtic divisions, the Goidels or Gaels were the ancestors of the Irish, the Scotch Highlanders, and the Manxmen; the Brythons or Kymry, of the Welsh, the Bretons, and the Cornishmen.

12. Sudreyjar—whence Sodor—which survives in the title of the Bishop of Sodor and Man.

13. It is a curious fact that the capital of Ireland was never held by the Irish. It was founded by the Ostmen, and remained in their hands until the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion.

14. The Norse bishoprics of Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford were subject to Canterbury, not to Armagh.

15. Adrian IV—Nicholas Breakspeare—was pope 1154-1159.

16. This was founded on the alleged donation of Constantine (when he removed his seat of government to Constantinople) of the empire of the West to Pope Sylvester I. The claim, because of its inconvenient extent, was afterwards reduced to the Islands.

17. Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, had attempted to suppress it in the reign of William I.

18. The loyal inhabitants of the Pale, the “mere Irish” of the West, and the Anglo-Irish—ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores.

19. It had been captured by Godfrey de Bouillon in the first crusade, a.d. 1099.

20. The symbol worn by those who had vowed to join the crusade was originally a red cross sewn on the garments on the right shoulder; but afterwards the nationalities were distinguished by different colours. The English cross was white.

21. He was made Bishop of Worcester, 1180, and Archbishop, 1184. He died in Palestine, 1191.

22. Ranulf de Glanville was the writer of the Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Regni Angliæ, the oldest work on English jurisprudence. He died at the siege of Acre, 1191.

23. Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, ii [1860], 561.

24. It was Madoc, another son of Owen Gwynedd, whose discovery of America was celebrated by the Welsh bards before the era of Columbus, and who is the hero of Southey's poem.

25. From Gwenwynwyn, the son and successor of Owen Cyveilioc.

26. Llangorse Lake.

27. He was the son of William de Londres, one of the twelve Norman knights who were called in by Iestyn, lord of Morganwg, against Rhys ap Tudor, and who rewarded their ally by seizing his territory.

28. More properly Llandduw, which Gerald interprets, “Ecclesia Dei.”

29. The famous Cistercian monastery of Alba Domus replaced the old Bangor y Ty Gwyn, stated to have been founded by Paulinus (Pawl Hên), the tutor of St. David. The Ty Gwyn ar Dâf, where Howel Dda promulgated his laws in 940, was in the same neighbourhood.

30. Gerald notices the tradition, still remaining along the coast, of the submerged forest in St. Bride's Bay.

31. All Welshmen should read the history of this abbey, lately published by Mr. Stephen W. Williams.

32. The see of Llanbadarn was merged in that of St. David's in the eighth century, after an existence of some two centuries.

33. Gerald does not mention Harlech.

34. Gerald states that his own family took their name from Barry Island, on the Glamorganshire coast, and the island its name from St. Baruc.

35. The county of Pembroke was then confined to the old cantred of Penvro, corresponding nearly with the present hundred of Castlemartin.

36. Geoffrey ap Arthur, better known under his English name, Geoffrey of Monmouth, was the founder of the historical novel. His Historia Britonum, a history of the British kings from Brute the Trojan to Cadwallader, at the end of the seventh century, was professedly founded on a book in the Cymric tongue, brought out of Brittany by Walter (not Mapes), Archdeacon of Oxford. To this he added the prophecies of Merlin, translated into Latin prose. Geoffrey was archdeacon of Monmouth, and was made Bishop of St. Asaph in 1152.

37. As morbid minds have been sometimes induced to follow the examples set forth in all their loathsome details by the press, it may not be inappropriate to remark that there are some who might do well to imitate the reticence of this garrulous old Welshman of seven hundred years ago.

38. Having regard to the time occupied in the journey, a very slight portion appears to have sufficed to send the good man to sleep.

39. The area of the civil and ecclesiastical rule was, as in England, originally the same. For Deheubarth there was the unwieldy diocese of St. David's; for Gwent and Morganwg, Llandaff; for Gwynedd, Bangor; and for Powys, St. Asaph.

40. “God holde thee, Cuning”, said his interviewer; that is, “God save thee, King”.

41. ii, 18.

42. Haverford—Hafnafiord—“the creek on the haven”, is one of the numerous Norse place-names in Pembrokeshire. It may—or may not—be in connection with the Norse prefix of Honey, common in the county, that the natives of the old town are still wont to speak of it as Honey Harford.

    “Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes
    Angulus ridet.”

43. There were three Flemish settlements in Pembrokeshire; the first in 1107.

44. Brut y Tywysogion, the Chronicles of the Princes, anno 1135. The Brut (from a.d. 681 to 1282) was written chiefly by Caradoc of Llancarvan, who died in 1156, and is confused by the Rolls editor with St. Caradoc, who died in 1124. The whole was recast and added to by a later hand. There is no notice of Baldwin's journey in the Brut, but the Annales Cambriæ mentions it. The Annales, from a.d. 444 to 1288, are ascribed to the monks of Strata Florida. They exist in Latin, but were probably, like the Brut, originally written in Welsh. The entries until the eleventh century are very scanty.

45. Haroldstone St. Ishmael's or St. Issel's, near Haverfordwest.

46. De Jure et Statu, book ii.

47. William the Conqueror is said to have visited St. David's in 1079, but it is very doubtful if his son was ever there.

48. Gerald says that the Tivy was the only river in England or Wales in which beavers were then found. They were scarce in Wales in the days of Howel Dda.

49. He had married his first-cousin.

50. The principal works of wonder are attributed to the former.

51. He died in 1125.

52. Their efforts appear to have been directed wholly to the Welsh. The vassals of the Norman barons were subject to other influences.

53. Michaud, Bibliothèque de Croisades, ed. 1829, ii, 786, in an extract from another manuscript of the Itinerary, says: “Ils donnèrent la croix à un grand nombre d'hommes qui étaient presque nus, parce que leurs femmes avaient caché leurs vêtemens pour les empêcher d'aller s'enrôler dans la croisade.”

54. The Decretals were answers given by the pope ex cathedrâ, to questions submitted to him on points of doctrine and discipline. They are the source of much of the canon law.

55. The subdeacon was the lowest of the three major or holy orders, as opposed to the four minor orders of ministers. The other two were the priests and deacons. The deacon chaunted the gospel, the subdeacon the epistle.

56. Whitland.

57. I do not know whether this is an original remark. I suspect not. Gerald usually acknowledges his quotations, but his mind was so saturated with classical lore that he often incorporates phrases from Latin authors in his text.

58. See Mapes [Walter Maps], Goliae quaerela ad Papam:

    “Cum non pascant sed pascantur
    Non a pasco derivantur
                                  Sed a pascor pasceris.”

59. The ignorant priest supposed that a Catholic was some new species of heretic.

60. “Non dicimus episcopos non salvari, dicimus autem difficilius ipsos his diebus quam alios salvari.”