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It commences thus: "Heddychol ddyffryn tlws," Peaceful, pretty vale, and contains many lines breathing a spirit of genuine poetry. The next day I did not get up till nine, having no journey before me, as I intended to pass that day at Machynlleth. When I went down to the parlour I found another guest there, breakfasting. He was a tall, burly, and clever-looking man of about thirty-five.

Not without reason, therefore, do the inhabitants of Machynlleth consider the residence of such a man within their walls, though at a far by-gone period, as conferring a lustre on their town, and Lewis Meredith has probability on his side when, in his pretty poem on Glen Dyfi, he says: "Whilst fair Machynlleth decks thy quiet plain, Conjoined with it shall Lawdden's name remain."

He therefore went to Machynlleth with the full intention of stabbing Glendower, perfectly indifferent as to what might subsequently be his own fate. Glendower, however, who had heard of his threat, caused him to be seized and conducted in chains to a prison which he had in the mountains of Sycharth.

As I did not intend to journey farther this day than Machynlleth, a principal town in Montgomeryshire, distant only twelve miles, I did not start from Mallwyd till just before noon. Mallwyd is a small but pretty village. The church is a long edifice standing on a slight elevation on the left of the road.

But though Machynlleth was his place of residence for many years, it was not the place of his birth, Lychwr in Carmarthenshire being the spot where he first saw the light.

First, to speak of men of action: there was Madoc, the son of Owain Gwynedd, who discovered America, centuries before Columbus was born; then there was "the irregular and wild Glendower," who turned rebel at the age of sixty, was crowned King of Wales at Machynlleth, and for fourteen years contrived to hold his own against the whole power of England; then there was Ryce Ap Thomas, the best soldier of his time, whose hands placed the British crown on the brow of Henry the Seventh, and whom bluff Henry the Eighth delighted to call Father Preece; then there was who? why Harry Morgan, who led those tremendous fellows the Buccaneers across the Isthmus of Darien to the sack and burning of Panama.

At Machynlleth, in 1402, Owen Glendower, after several brilliant victories over the English, held a parliament in a house which is yet to be seen in the Eastern Street, and was formally crowned King of Wales; in his retinue was the venerable bard Iolo Goch, who, imagining that he now saw the old prophecy fulfilled, namely, that a prince of the race of Cadwaladr should rule the Britons, after emancipating them from the Saxon yoke, greeted the chieftain with an ode, to the following effect:

Connected with Machynlleth is a name not so widely celebrated as those of Glendower and Dafydd Gam, but well known to and cherished by the lovers of Welsh song. It is that of Lawdden, a Welsh bard in holy orders, who officiated as priest at Machynlleth from 1440 to 1460.

He said that he hoped the court were not going to convict his client, one of the most respectable farmers in the county, on the evidence of two such fellows as the keepers, one of whom was a well-known bad one, who for his evil deeds had been driven from Machynlleth to London, and from London back again to Machynlleth, and the other, who was his brother, a fellow not much better, and who, moreover, could not speak a word of English the honest lawyer forgetting no doubt that his own client had just as little English as the keeper.

MACHYNLLETH, pronounced Machuncleth, is one of the principal towns of the district which the English call Montgomeryshire, and the Welsh Shire Trefaldwyn or the Shire of Baldwin's town, Trefaldwyn or the town of Baldwin being the Welsh name for the town which is generally termed Montgomery.