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His wife, the heroic Gwenllian who died leading her husband's army against the Normans was Griffith ap Conan's daughter. The great final battle between Griffith and the Normans was fought at Cardigan in 1136, in which the great prince won a memorable victory over the strongest army the Normans could put in the field.
On Conan's death, Geoffrey, then ten years old, was called Duke of Brittany, but his father took the whole government into his hands, and made it a heavy yoke. John, Count of Mortagne, for whom no heiress had been obtained, was gayly called by his father Lackland a name which his after-life fitted to him but too well.
What, however, diminishes the suspicion is that, after and in spite of Conan's death, several Breton knights, and, amongst others, two sons of Count Eudes, his uncle, attended at the trysting-place of the Norman troops and took part in the expedition. Dives was the place of assemblage appointed for fleet and army. William repaired thither about the end of August, 1066.
"At this message," say the chronicles, "William was at first somewhat dismayed; but a Breton lord, who had sworn fidelity to the two counts, and bore messages from one to the other, rubbed poison upon the inside of Conan's hunting-horn, of his horse's reins, and of his gloves.
The second race of invaders, the Nemedians, were also given a war with the Fomorians, in the story of the seige of Conan's Tower.
The house was closed up like a sleeping eye when I got before it. It was a big, old, rambling stone house with a tangle of vines half torn away by the winds: I hammered on the door and finally an aged man-servant holding a candle high above his head let me in. This was the manner of my coming to Saint Conan's Landing. I had some supper of cold meat brought in by this aged servant.
She and her goat lived in the low, rubble-built hovel, that adjoined the Pierrés' cottage, and from her lonely, eccentric habits, and uncanny appearance, she had the reputation of being a sorceress. Antoine called to her to know where Marie was. "Gone to the widow Conan's," mumbled the old woman, her strange eyes gleaming under the sprays of sea-weed, "she and her father and mother, all of them."
To the eye they were not the height of a man above the level water; they glistened in the brilliant sun like a sheaf of black pikes. This was Saint Conan's Landing, and it occurred to me that if the holy man came in rough weather from the Irish coast he required, in truth, all the perspicacity of a saint to get his boat in without having it impaled on these devil's needles.
He could swear that M. Conan had repeatedly told his servants to watch that the domestic animals did not get at the poisoned bait prepared for the rats. M. Conan's servants had complete access to the arsenic used. Helene interposed at this point. ``I know, she said, ``that M. Conan had asked for arsenic, but I wasn't there at the time. My aunt told me about it.
I was told in many places of Osgar's bravery and Goll's strength and Conan's bitter tongue, and the arguments of Oisin and Patrick. And I have often been given the story of Oisin's journey to Tir-nan-Og, the Country of the Young, that is, as I am told, "a fine place and everything that is good is in it.
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