Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock

by Thomas Love Peacock

Seithenyn leaned against a pillar, and stared at the sea through the rifted wall, with wild and vacant surprise. He perceived that there was an innovation, and he felt that he was injured: how, or by whom, he did not quite so clearly discern. He looked at Elphin and Teithrin, at his daughter, and at the members of his household, with a long and dismal aspect of blank and mute interrogation, modified by the struggling consciousness of puzzled self-importance, which seemed to require from his chiefship some word of command in this incomprehensible emergency. But the longer he looked, the less clearly he saw; and the longer he pondered, the less he understood. He felt the rush of the wind; he saw the white foam of the sea; his ears were dizzy with their mingled roar. He remained at length motionless, leaning against the pillar, and gazing on the breakers with fixed and glaring vacancy.

  “The sleepers of Gwaelod,” said Elphin, “they who sleep in peace and security, trusting to the vigilance of Seithenyn, what will become of them?”

  “Warn them with the beacon fire,” said Teithrin, “if there be fuel on the summit of the landward tower.”

  “That of course has been neglected too,” said Elphin.

  “Not so,” said Angharad, “that has been my charge.”

  Teithrin seized a torch, and ascended the eastern tower, and, in a few minutes, the party in the hall beheld the breakers reddening with the reflected fire, and deeper and yet deeper crimson tinging the whirling foam, and sheeting the massy darkness of the bursting waves.

  Seithenyn turned his eyes on Elphin. His recollection of him was extremely faint, and the longer he looked on him he remembered him the less. He was conscious of the presence of strangers, and of the occurrence of some signal mischief, and associated the two circumstances in his dizzy perceptions with a confused but close connexion. He said at length, looking sternly at Elphin, “I do not know what right the wind has to blow upon me here; nor what business the sea has to show itself here; nor what business you have here: but one thing is very evident, that either my castle or the sea is on fire; and I shall be glad to know who has done it, for terrible shall be the vengeance of Seithenyn ap Seithyn. Show me the enemy,” he pursued, drawing his sword furiously, and flourishing it over his head, “Show me the enemy; show me the enemy.”

  An unusual tumult mingled with the roar of the waves; a sound, the same in kind, but greater in degree, with that produced by the loose stones of the beach, which are rolled to and fro by the surf.

  Teithrin rushed into the hall, exclaiming, “All is over! the mound is broken; and the springtide is rolling through the breach.”

  Another portion of the castle wall fell into the mining waves, and, by the dim and thickly-clouded moonlight, and the red blaze of the beacon fire, they beheld a torrent pouring in from the sea upon the plain, and rushing immediately beneath the castle walls, which, as well as the points of the embankment that formed the sides of the breach, continued to crumble away into the waters.

  “Who has done this?” vociferated Seithenyn, “Show me the enemy.”

  “There is no enemy but the sea,” said Elphin, “to which you, in y our drunken madness, have abandoned the land. Think, if you can think, of what is passing in the plain. The storm drowns the cries of your victims; but the curses of the perishing are upon you.”

  “Show me the enemy,” vociferated Seithenyn, flourishing his sword more furiously.

  Angharad looked deprecatingly at Elphin, who abstained from further reply.

  “There is no enemy but the sea,” said Teithrin, “against which your sword avails not.”

  “Who dares to say so?” said Seithenyn. “Who dares to say that there is an enemy on earth against whom the sword of Seithenyn ap Scithyn is unavailing? Thus, thus I prove the falsehood.”

  And, springing suddenly forward, he leaped into the torrent, flourishing his sword as he descended.

  “Oh, my unhappy father!” sobbed Angharad, veiling her face with her arm on the shoulder of one of her female attendants, whom Elphin dexterously put aside, and substituted himself as the supporter of the desolate beauty.

  “We must quit the castle,” said Teithrin, “or we shall be buried in its ruins. We have but one path of safety, along the summit of the embankment, if there be not another breach between us and the high land, and if we can keep our footing in this hurricane. But there is no alternative. The walls are melting away like snow.”

  The bard, who was now recovered from his awen, and beginning to be perfectly alive to his own personal safety, conscious at the same time that the first duty of his privileged order was to animate the less-gifted multitude by examples of right conduct in trying emergencies, was the first to profit by Teithrin’s admonition, and to make the best of his way through the door that opened to the embankment, on which he had no sooner set his foot than he was blown down by the wind, his harp-strings ringing as he fell. He was indebted to the impediment of his harp, for not being rolled down the mound into the waters which were rising within.

  Teithrin picked him up, and admonished him to abandon his harp to its fate, and fortify his steps with a spear. The bard murmured objections: and even the reflection that he could more easily get another harp than another life, did not reconcile him to parting with his beloved companion. He got over the difficulty by slinging his harp, cumbrous as it was, to his left side, and taking a spear in his right hand.

  Angharad, recovering from the first shock of Seithenyn’s catastrophe, became awake to the imminent danger. The spirit of the Cymric female, vigilant and energetic in peril, disposed her and her attendant maidens to use their best exertions for their own preservation. Following the advice and example of Elphin and Teithrin, they armed themselves with spears, which they took down from the walls.

  Teithrin led the way, striking the point of his spear firmly into the earth, and leaning from it on the wind: Angharad followed in the same manner: Elphin followed Angharad, looking as earnestly to her safety as was compatible with moderate care of his own: the attendant maidens followed Elphin; and the bard, whom the result of his first experiment had rendered unambitious of the van, followed the female train. Behind them went the cupbearers, whom the accident of sobriety had qualified to march: and behind them reeled and roared those of the bacchanal rout who were able and willing to move; those more especially who had wives or daughters to support their tottering steps. Some were incapable of locomotion, and others, in the heroic madness of liquor, sat down to await their destiny, as they finished the half-drained vessels.

  The bard, who had somewhat of a picturesque eye, could not help sparing a little leisure from the care of his body, to observe the effects before him: the volumed blackness of the storm; the white bursting of the breakers in the faint and scarcely-perceptible moonlight; the rushing and rising of the waters within the mound; the long floating hair and waving drapery of the young women; the red light of the beacon fire falling on them from behind; the surf rolling up the side of the embankment, and breaking almost at their feet; the spray flying above their heads; and the resolution with which they impinged the stony ground with their spears, and bore themselves up against the wind.

  Thus they began their march. They had not proceeded far, when the tide began to recede, the wind to abate somewhat of its violence, and the moon to look on them at intervals through the rifted clouds, disclosing the desolation of the inundated plain, silvering the tumultuous surf, gleaming on the distant mountains, and revealing a lengthened prospect of their solitary path, that lay in its irregular line like a ribbon on the deep.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE LAMENTATIONS OF GWYTHNO

  Not, though grief my ages defaces,

  Will I cease, in concert dear,

  Blending still the gentle graces

  With the muses more severe.

  KING Gwythno had feasted joyously, and had sung his new ode to a chosen party of his admiring subjects, amidst their, of course, enthusiastic applause. He heard the storm raging without, as he laid himself down to rest: he thought it a very hard case
for those who were out in it, especially on the sea; congratulated himself on his own much more comfortable condition; and went to sleep with a pious reflection on the goodness of Providence to himself.

  He was roused from a pleasant dream by a confused and tumultuous dissonance, that mingled with the roar of the tempest. Rising with much reluctance, and looking forth from his window, he beheld in the moonlight a half-naked multitude, larger than his palace thrice multiplied could have contained, pressing round the gates, and clamouring for admission and shelter; while beyond them his eye fell on the phænomenon of stormy waters, rolling in the place of the fertile fields from which he derived his revenue.

  Gwythno, though a king and his own laureate, was not without sympathy for the people who had the honour and happiness of victualling his royal house, and he issued forth on his balcony full of perplexities and alarms, stunned by the sudden sense of the half-understood calamity, and his head still dizzy from the effects of abruptly-broken sleep, and the vapours of the overnight’s glorious festival.

  Gwythno was altogether a reasonably good sort of person, and a poet of some note. His people were somewhat proud of him on the latter score, and very fond of him on the former; for even the tenth part of those homely virtues, that decorate the memories of “husbands kind and fathers dear” in every churchyard, are matters of plebeian admiration in the persons of royalty; and every tangible point in every such virtue so located, becomes a convenient peg for the suspension of love and loyalty. While, therefore, they were unanimous in consigning the soul of Seithenyn to a place that no well-bred divine will name to a polite congregation, they overflowed, in the abundance of their own griefs, with a portion of sympathy for Gwythno, and saluted him, as he issued forth on his balcony, with a hearty Duw cadw y Brenin, or God save the King, which he returned with a benevolent wave of the hand; but they followed it up by an intense vociferation for food and lodging, which he received with a pitiful shake of the head.

  Meanwhile the morning dawned: the green spots, that peered with the ebbing tide above the waste of waters, only served to indicate the irremediableness of the general desolation.

  Gwythno proceeded to hold a conference with his people, as deliberately as the stormy state of the weather and their minds, and the confusion of his own, would permit. The result of the conference was, that they should use their best exertions to catch some stray beeves, which had escaped the inundation, and were lowing about the rocks in search of new pastures. This measure was carried into immediate effect: the victims were killed and roasted, carved, distributed, and eaten, in a very Homeric fashion, and washed down with a large portion of the contents of the royal cellars; after which, having more leisure to dwell on their losses, the fugitives of Gwaelod proceeded to make loud lamentation, all collectively for home and for country, and severally for wife or husband, parent or child, whom the flood had made its victims.

  In the midst of these lamentations arrived Elphin and Angharad, with her bard and attendant maidens, and Teithrin ap Tathral. Gwythno, after a consultation, despatched Teithrin and Angharad’s domestic bard on an embassy to the court of Uther Pendragon, and to such of the smaller kings as lay in the way, to solicit such relief as their several majesties might be able and willing to afford to a king in distress. It is said, that the bard, finding a royal bardship vacant in a more prosperous court, made the most of himself in the market, and stayed where he was better fed and lodged than he could expect to be in Caredigion; but that Teithrin returned, with many valuable gifts, and most especially one from Merlin, being a hamper, which multiplied an hundredfold by morning whatever was put into it overnight, so that, for a ham and a flask put by in the evening, an hundred hams and an hundred flasks were taken out in the morning. It is at least certain that such a hamper is enumerated among the thirteen wonders of Merlin’s art, and, in the authentic catalogue thereof, is called the Hamper of Gwythno.

  Be this as it may, Gwythno, though shorn of the beams of his revenue, kept possession of his palace. Elphin married Angharad, and built a salmon-weir on the Mawddach, the produce of which, with that of a series of beehives, of which his princess and her maidens made mead, constituted for some time the principal wealth and subsistence of the royal family of Caredigion.

  King Gwythno, while his son was delving or fishing, and his daughter spinning or making mead, sat all day on the rocks, with his harp between his knees, watching the rolling of ocean over the locality of his past dominion, and pouring forth his soul in pathetic song on the change of his own condition, and the mutability of human things. Two of his songs of lamentation have been preserved by tradition: they are the only relics of his muse which time has spared.

  GWYDDNAU EI CANT,

  PAN DDOAI Y MOR DROS CANTREV Y GWALAWD.

  A SONG OF GWYTHNO GARANHIR,

  ON THE INUNDATION OF THE SEA OVER THE PLAIN OF GWAELOD.

  Stand forth, Seithenyn: winds are high:

  Look down beneath the lowering sky;

  Look from the rock: what meets thy sight?

  Nought but the breakers rolling white.

  Stand forth, Seithenyn: winds are still:

  Look from the rock and heathy hill

  For Gwythno’s realm: what meets thy view?

  Nought but the ocean’s desert blue.

  Curst be the treacherous mound, that gave

  A passage to the mining wave:

  Curst be the cup, with mead-froth crowned,

  That charmed from thought the trusted mound.

  A tumult, and a cry to heaven!

  The white surf breaks; the mound is riven:

  Through the wide rift the ocean-spring

  Bursts with tumultuous ravaging.

  The western ocean’s stormy might

  Is curling o’er the rampart’s height:

  Destruction strikes with want and scorn

  Presumption, from abundance born.

  The tumult of the western deep

  Is on the winds, affrighting sleep:

  It thunders at my chamber-door;

  It bids me wake, to sleep no more.

  The tumult of the midnight sea

  Swells inland, wildly, fearfully:

  The mountain-caves respond its shocks

  Among the unaccustomed rocks.

  The tumult of the vext sea-coast

  Rolls inland like an armed host:

  It leaves, for flocks and fertile land,

  But foaming waves and treacherous sand.

  The wild sea rolls where long have been

  Glad homes of men, and pastures green:

  To arrogance and wealth succeed

  Wide ruin and avenging need.

  Seithenyn, come: I call in vain:

  The high of birth and weak of brain

  Sleeps under ocean’s lonely roar

  Between the rampart and the shore.

  The eternal waste of waters, spread

  Above his unrespected head,

  The blue expanse, with foam besprent,

  Is his too glorious monument.

  ANOTHER SONG OF GWYTHNO

  I love the green and tranquil shore;

  I hate the ocean’s dizzy roar,

  Whose devastating spray has flown

  High o’er the monarch’s barrier-stone.

  Sad was the feast, which he who spread

  Is numbered with the inglorious dead;

  The feast within the torch-lit hall,

  While stormy breakers mined the wall.

  To him repentance came too late:

  In cups the chatterer met his fate:

  Sudden and sad the doom that burst

  On him and me, but mine the worst.

  I love the shore, and hate the deep:

  The wave has robbed my nights of sleep:

  The heart of man is cheered by wine;

  But now the wine-cup cheers not mine.

  The feast, which bounteous hands dispense,

  Makes glad the soul, and charms the sense:

  But in
the circling feast I know

  The coming of my deadliest foe.

  Blest be the rock, whose foot supplied

  A step to them that fled the tide;

  The rock of bards, on whose rude steep

  I bless the shore, and hate the deep.

  “The sigh of Gwythno Garanhir when the breakers ploughed up his land” is the substance of a proverbial distich, which may still be heard on the coast of Merioneth and Cardigan, to express the sense of an overwhelming calamity. The curious investigator may still land on a portion of the ancient stony rampart; which stretches, off the point of Mochres, far out into Cardigan Bay, nine miles of the summit being left dry, in calm weather, by the low water of the springtides; and which is now called Sarn Badrig, or St. Patrick’s Causeway.

  Thus the kingdom of Caredigion fell into ruin: its people were destroyed, or turned out of house and home; and its royal family were brought to a condition in which they found it difficult to get loaves to their fishes. We, who live in more enlightened times, amidst the “gigantic strides of intellect,” when offices of public trust are so conscientiously and zealously discharged, and so vigilantly checked and superintended, may wonder at the wicked negligence of Seithenyn; at the sophisms with which, in his liquor, he vindicated his system, and pronounced the eulogium of his old dilapidations, and at the blind confidence of Gwythono and his people in this virtual guardian of their lives and property: happy that our own public guardians are too virtuous to act or talk like Seithenyn, and that we ourselves are too wise not to perceive, and too free not to prevent it, if they should be so disposed.

  CHAPTER V

  THE PRIZE OF THE WEIR

  Weave a circle round him thrice,

  And close your eyes with holy dread;

  For he on honey-dew hath fed,

  And drank the milk of paradise.

  — Coleridge.

  PRINCE Elphin constructed his salmon-weir on the Mawddach at the point where the fresh water met the top of the springtides. He built near it a dwelling for himself and Angharad, for which the old king Gwythno gradually deserted his palace. An amphitheatre of rocky mountains enclosed a pastoral valley. The meadows gave pasture to a few cows; and the flowers of the mountain-heath yielded store of honey to the bees of many hives, which were tended by Angharad and her handmaids. Elphin had also some sheep, which wandered on the mountains. The worst was, they often wandered out of reach; but, when he could not find his sheep, he brought down a wild goat, the venison of Gwyneth. The woods and turbaries supplied unlimited fuel. The straggling cultivators, who had escaped from the desolation of Gwaelod, and settled themselves above the level of the sea, on a few spots propitious to the plough, still acknowledged their royalty, and paid them tribute in corn. But their principal wealth was fish. Elphin was the first Briton who caught fish on a large scale, and salted them for other purposes than home consumption.