BETWEEN RIVERS is a quarterly series edited by Alan Horne. It is focused on the
area bounded by the rivers Alun, Dee and Gowy, on the border between England
and Wales in Flintshire, Denbighshire and Cheshire. You can read about the
background to Between Rivers in the Introduction .
As a child in primary school I found myself reading what we might call a boy’s
adventure story in which the young protagonist was able to pass – in a dream, I think
– into medieval Wales, and took part in warlike exploits around Castell Dinas Brân,
the fortress of the Welsh princes on the north side of the river Dee near Llangollen. I
have occasionally tried to track down this book, with no success; if anyone
recognises my description, I would be very pleased to hear. Dinas Brân is an abrupt
eminence dominating the valley of the River Dee, and there have been fortified
structures there since pre-Romas times. What we can see today is the ruin of a
medieval castle which was in active use only for part of the thirteenth century, during
the wars between Llywelyn ap Gruffudd Prince of Wales, and Edward I of England.
It has had a much longer life as an artistic subject.
The castle first appears in literature around the time that its military importance
lapsed, in a 13th century romance called Fouke le Fitz Waryn, based on the life of a
real historical figure, Fulk FitzWaryn, one of the marcher lords of Shropshire. This
only survives in a prose version in medieval French: the 16th Century antiquarian
John Leland says that there was a well-known version in middle English verse, but
like much similar material this has disappeared.
Fouke le Fitz Waryn relates numerous adventures set in the period sometimes
known as the Anarchy, a period of baronial wars and lawlessness during the reign of
the 12th Century English king Stephen. In one episode, a Norman knight, Payn
Peveril, and his men take up a challenge to stay in the ruin of an early settlement on
Dinas Brân which is haunted by the demon-inhabited corpse of a giant called
Geomagog. The translation comes from the edition made by Thomas Wright in
1855.
And when it was night, the weather became so foul, black, dark, and such a
tempest of lightning and thunder, that all those who were there became so
terrified that they could not for fear move foot or hand, but lay on the ground
like dead men.
Payn prays to God for help.
Hardly had he finished his prayer, when the fiend came in the semblance of
Geomagog ; and he carried a great club in his hand, and from his mouth cast
fire and smoke with which the whole town was illuminated.
They fight, and Payn Peveril defeats the giant. As the devil is leaving Geomagog’s
body he tells Payn the story of how he drove out King Brân, the founder of the
stronghold, and ruled the countryside around. He says that Geomagog had a hoard
of treasure inside the hill.
“What treasure”, said Payn, “had Geomagog?” “Oxen, cows, swans,
peacocks, horses, and all other animals, made of fine gold; and there was a
golden bull, which through me was his prophet, and in him was all his belief;
and he told him the events that were to come.
… “Now you shall tell me,” said Payn, “where is the treasure of which you
have spoken?” “Vassal,” said [the devil], “speak no more of that; for it is
destined for others; but you shall be lord of all this honour, and those who
shall come after you will hold it with great strife and war.
Vassal. It is a curious change of register, or note of defiance, from the defeated devil.
Dinas Brân also had a place in the Welsh-language poetry of the time. In the
fourteenth century, Myfanwy Fechan (“little Myfanwy”), the daughter of the castellan,
was the subject of an ode by Hywel ap Einion Lygliw, in which the speaker protests
his unappreciated love. Some lines from an English prose translation gives an idea
of the vigorous beauty of Hywel’s writing:
I have rode hard, mounted on a fine high-bred steed, upon thy account, O
thou with the countenance of cherry-flower bloom. The speed was with
eagerness, and the strong long-hamm’d steed of Alban reached the summit of
the high land of Bran.
There is then a gap in the record. Dinas Brân appears to slip quietly out of artistic
view for three or four hundred years, other than for a quatrain translated from Welsh
by the Victorian linguist and author George Borrow, which he ascribes to Roger
Cyffyn “who flourished at the beginning of the seventeenth century.”
Gone, gone are thy gates, Dinas Bran on the height!
Thy warders are blood-crows and ravens, I trow;
Now no one will wend from the field of the fight
To the fortress on high, save the raven and crow.
As the Romantic movement appeared in the later eighteenth century however, the
hill and castle – embodying so many of the characteristics valued by the Romantics,
yet easily accessible from industrial England – became a significant subject. At this
time it acquired the English name of Crow Castle, brân meaning crow in Welsh,
although in this case it is just as likely to be a personal name. One of the first to pay
attention to Dinas Brân in this later period was the Welsh painter Richard Wilson,
and below we see one of several studies of the hill and castle painted by him,
probably in 1771, rather in the style of the paintings of the Grand Tour fashionable at
the time.
Castell Dinas Bran. Richard Wilson. 1771.
In 1798 J.M.W. Turner toured north Wales and created several studies of the
Llangollen area. Below we have Dinas Bran, with the Dee in the Foreground. There
is a marked contrast with Wilson’s restrained and sunny image with its bucolic
figures. For Turner, hill and castle are dim and mysterious, the Dee is cold and
rough; whether we are looking at a bridge or at a bank fronted by boulders is unclear,
and the animal figures are less distinct the closer we look.
Dinas Brân, with the Dee in the Foreground. J.M.W. Turner. 1798.
A little later in the Romantic period, in 1824, William Wordsworth visited the Ladies of
Llangollen and wrote a sonnet to them. At this time he also wrote the sonnet
Composed among the Ruins of a Castle in North Wales, probably after a visit to
Dinas Brân. As well as the shattered galleries, prying stars and other images which
make the poem attractive, Wordsworth gives us a novel view of time, not a destroyer
but a creator.
COMPOSED AMONG THE RUINS OF A CASTLE IN NORTH WALES
Through shattered galleries, ‘mid roofless halls,
Wandering with timid footsteps oft betrayed,
The Stranger sighs, nor scruples to upbraid
Old Time, though he, gentlest among the Thralls
Of Destiny, upon these wounds hath laid
His lenient touches, soft as light that falls,
From the wan Moon, upon the towers and walls,
Light deepening the profoundest sleep of shade.
Relic of Kings! Wreck of forgotten wars,
To winds abandoned and the prying stars,
Time loves thee! At his call the Seasons twine
Luxuriant wreaths around thy forehead hoar;
And, though past pomp no changes can restore,
A soothing recompence, his gift, is thine!
During the 19th century there was also renewed interest in Hywel ap Einion’s
Myfanwy Fechan. It inspired Howel’s Song, written by Felicia Hemans in 1822. John
Ceiriog Hughes, writing in Welsh, produced the poem Myfanwy Fychan in 1858; this
was later set to music and popularised by Joseph Parry as the song Myfanwy. You
can find versions of this to suit all tastes on YouTube. Here is one recorded with a dance accompaniment for the Welsh-language television channel S4C by Cerys
Matthews, the broadcaster and onetime vocalist with the band Catatonia.
So there is a considerable tradition for contemporary writers to build on. Pat Sumner,
whose poetry was the subject of the Between Rivers edition in August 2024, writes
about Dinas Brân as a site which has progressed from Wordsworth’s ill-frequented
haunt of poets to become a frequent resort for a day trip. Her poem Dinas Brân
gently connects this present incarnation with its long history. It first appeared in
Beyond the Glass, published by Thynks Publications, and is also in The Promise of
Dawn: Rites of Passage for All Beliefs, from Veneficia Publications.
DINAS BRAN
We clambered the hill’s crumbling skin –
children and dogs scattering,
teetering goat-like on rims –
our breath and legs burning,
laughter snatched by the wind.
Halfway to the crown,
a tapestry stilled us – tree-and-river stitches
fading into Cheshire haze –
while dogs and children leapt upon
the darting backs of ravens.
Spiders spinning webs of story,
we scaled the slope, linked
by threads of long ago,
as bright clouds skimmed like yesterdays
over a crumbling city of crows.
Readers of this website will find David Selzer writing from time to time about the Vale
of Llangollen. He has two poems about Dinas Brân. The first appeared on the website in 2011. We might think of this as a classic Selzer poem, in free verse, taking
the long view in a cool, observant tone. It sets the recorded history of the castle
against geological history and the natural world, but also makes the link between this
apparently secluded location and the states, armies and industry of the English plain,
so close at hand.
DINAS BRÂN, LLANGOLLEN
The path zigzags upwards to the keep, like
smoke or a hare hounded. Magpies lowfly
the gorse, bank to a clump of pine, barks pink
as coral. Ravens wheel. Birds and the wind
disdain the ruins peasants carted, raised,
razed and thieved. Before allegiances, walls
was this hill, that vast, limestone precipice
and, everywhere, silent, ancient waters.
Whoever sees the turf worn with walkers’
traffic and earth’s crust shining, whoever
looks across the vanished sea to the cliff’s
myriad catacombs will imagine the hoe
snick in the furrow, the clangour of arms
and the chough’s triumphant croak.
Defenders, tousled on the battlements,
watched fields sown, leaves fall, expected Saxons.
Foes were covert. A viaduct terminates
the valley and trim, mechanical
dynasties converge on the smoky plain.
The journey from Powys to the Five Towns
was all of sixteen leagues, as ravens fly,
a thousand years and such optimism.
We end this edition of Between Rivers with David’s CROW CASTLE, which appeared on this site in 2016 which appeared on this site in 2016. It quotes from the Wordsworth sonnet and takes us across some of the ground we have already traversed, but from a novel perspective, following a
strange and fortuitous apparition. This time the poem is intimate, personal, as if we
were chatting with someone who suddenly pointed and said, “Look at that!”
CROW CASTLE
Something – among the sparse, medieval ruins
silhouetted against a powder blue sky –
is catching the sun intermittently.
Something, at the top of the steep hill – from here
by the town’s tumultuous rapids
more than a mile away – large enough
to flash in daylight like a lighthouse beacon.
A figure appears then two – small sticks
among the stones – and the light has shifted
from the stark gatehouse to the empty keep.
It shines steady and bright as a prying star –
then sun, wind, whim change and there is nothing.
Perhaps it was a weather balloon fallen
on the crags, forecasting all but its own
demise. We climbed there – we three –
more than thirty years ago and saw
the summer valleys oozing sea green,
the layers and layers of limestone cliffs.
Maybe we will climb it again – with a fourth
and fifth. Who would have predicted the light
twinkling so like a star!
By David Selzer