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I was brought into the world in a place called Lower Pen Parchell, on land which once belonged to the celebrated Iolo Goch.
This cruder belief is more familiar in the folklore of Europe than the other. Iolo Morganwg, a well-known Welsh antiquary, used to relate a curious tradition concerning this rock.
He says nothing of the "Mabinogion." He had apparently never heard of the pedestrian Iolo Morganwg. He perhaps never saw Stephens' "Literature of the Kymry." His knowledge was picked up anyhow and anywhere from Welsh texts and Lhuyd's "Archaeologia," without system and with very little friendly discussion or comparison. Wales, therefore, was to him as wonderful as Spain, and equally uncharted.
'On the 27th of October, at Brynmor, Bournemouth, Emily Olwen Josephine, widow of the late Thomas Cumberledge, sometime colonel of the 7th Bengal Regiment of Foot, and daughter of Iolo Gwyn Ford, Esq., J.P., of Hendre Coed, near Bangor. Am I correct?" She lifted her dark eyelashes once more and flooded me. "You are quite correct," I answered, surprised.
I have not read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested everyone's family announcements. I don't pretend to be the Peerage, the Clergy List, and the London Directory rolled into one. I remembered YOUR family all the more vividly, no doubt, because of the pretty and unusual old Welsh names, 'Olwen' and 'Iolo Gwyn Ford, which fixed themselves on my memory by their mere beauty.
His name was Thomas Edwards, but he generally called himself Twm o'r Nant, or Tom of the Dingle, because he was born in a dingle, at a place called Pen Porchell, in the vale of Clwyd which, by the bye, was on the estate which once belonged to Iolo Goch, the poet I was speaking to you about just now.
The bards his contemporaries, and those who succeeded him for several hundred years, were perfectly convinced of his superiority, not only over themselves, but over all the poets of the past; and one, and a mighty one, old Iolo the bard of Glendower, went so far as to insinuate that after Ab Gwilym it would be of little avail for any one to make verses
Our attendant pointed out to us some tombs, and told us the names of certain great people whose dust they contained. "Can you tell us where Iolo Goch lies interred?" said I. "No," said she; "indeed I never heard of such a person." "He was the bard of Owen Glendower," said I, "and assisted his cause wonderfully by the fiery odes, in which he incited the Welsh to rise against the English."
Iolo Goch, the bard of your celebrated hero, Owen Glendower, was buried somewhere in its precincts." We went on: my companion took me over a stile behind the house which he had pointed out, and along a path through hazel coppices. After a little time I inquired whether there were any Papists in Llangollen.
"Has he company, then?" "Oh, very good company plenty of company! he got Taliesin Owen Glyndwr Iolo Morganwg and all the rest of them! and he's quite happy in their company. But once he comes down to live with us he's as rough and prickly as a birch-broom. Indeed he wass nevver used to be like this whatever; 'tis ever since his brother John die, and leave all his money to Valmai."
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