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Gwendolen By Wirt Sikes

Until, George Eliot introduced it in her novel of "Daniel Deronda" the name Gwendolen is generally supposed by English readers to have had no existence. Most people have thought it an invention of that writer's. Others have suggested that it is a construction out of the Welsh language. "Gwendolen," says one commentator, learnedly, is Welsh for "beautiful curve," and is intended to be characteristic of a fair maiden who gets herself up as a serpent, and " twists her neck about." The suggestion sets inquiry in the right road - i.e., toward the Welsh language. Entering upon an examination of the matter, to while away an idle hour, I found myself led into a field where I was so fascinated that I remained therein contented for many days. In pursuing this slight thread of interest I came into ancient castles of Wales, through whose chambers had wandered the Gwendolens of long ago, and brushed the dust from volumes which had not been disturbed, for generations, and listened to tales related by descendants of the original actors in them. In one instance I sat in the pleasant parlor of a high-born old Welsh dame who lives on the very spot where for seven hundred years her family has lived, as the records in the ancient church there show. And the Gwendolens whose stories I thus gathered were not fictitious characters, though some of them lived in the period covered by the Arthurian romances. If in what follows the reader finds something he has not before encountered, however familiar he may be with tales of Gwendoline, let me assure him that Welsh story is rich in material as enchanting as any yet used by Tennyson or the other modern propagators of Arthurian legend. Even of King Arthur himself there is much more to be revealed to the modern reader than can be found in the "Morte d'Arthur."

But the suggestion referred to above is altogether unwarranted. "Gwendolen" is not Welsh for "beautiful curve." "Gwen" is Welsh for white, and also means a fair one, a beauty, but beautiful is not "gwen," it is "prydferth," "glan," or "glandig." "Gwenol" is smiling, pleasing. "Dolen" is not a curve, but a ring, a loop, or a bow. A curve is "crymedd," which is a very different matter. The truth is, Gwendolen is no invention of George Eliot's, it is simply that wonderfully accurate writer's correcter spelling of the familiar old English name, Gwendoline. Gwendoline is but the Anglicized shape of the ancient British (i.e., Welsh) name Gwenllian. But the pronunciation of Gwenllian is pretty nearly given by Gwendolen - not so nearly by Gwendoline. The ll in Welsh is an aspirated sound peculiar to that tongue, but nearly like the Italian gl and the Spanish ll; and in Gwenllian it results, with the nimble utterance of a Welshman, in a pronunciation as closely like Gwendolen as may be. This, I am convinced, is the reason why George Eliot gives the name a new spelling in English, and it is characteristic of a writer whose learning is so unusual and in such exceptional fields.

It is curious that the name Gwenllian is still a common one in Wales, while the other ancient Welsh names of the gentler sex are so very rare as to be almost obsolete. Gwladys, Gwenhywyvar (Guinvere), Gwawr, Arianwen, Gwenddydd, Tanglwstl, etc., are all ancient female names of great beauty of signification, but have almost gone out of use in Wales, while Gwenllian is as popular as ever, and there is no period of Welsh history - at least since Arthur's time - when the name has not been in constant use among the Welsh people. Its diminutive is Gwenny, and some English observers have supposed that from this comes Winny or Winnifred, which is a mistake. Go where you will in rural Wales, you are sure to find a Gwenny-vach, or little Gwenny, among the girls of the neighborhood. I have encountered the name among the Welsh in America, though the Welsh there, like all other nationalities, are disposed to drop such distinctive cognomens in naming their young. John Highwood. of St. Louis (originally Hans Hochholzenes, of Coblentz), does not name his daughter Gretchen, but Maggie, and Owen Apjohn, of Philadelphia (who may possibly have been Owain ab Sion in Wales), does not call his little girl Gwenllian, but Gwendoline; or more probably Ellen or Mary. In an instance which came under my notice in Chicago a lady who was named Gwenllian had suffered the name to be Anglicized - or rather Americanized - into Gwenthlean, which is neither her fish nor flesh.

In almost all cases the ancient Welsh names had a clear signification, which was generally beautiful and poetic. The signification of Gwenllian is so, though at first sight it may not appear so. It means simply white linen. But this fabric, common as it is in our day, was in ancient times of inestimable value. In the Welsh "Mabinogion," or ancient romances of "The Red Book of Hergest," etc., linen is repeatedly particularized in the gorgeous descriptions of fabled splendor in princely castles - linen, silk, satin, velvet, gold-lace, and jewels, are the constantly-recurring features of sumptuous attire. In his account of the royal tribes of Wales Yorke mentions that linen was so rare in the reign of Charles VII. of France (i.e., in the fifteenth century) "that her majesty the queen could boast of only two shifts of that commodity. White linen was in the middle ages the type of all that was chaste and pure. The word "llian," or "lleian," signifies also a vestal nun, the appellation first coming from the white-linen robe of the Virgin; and it is here that we may look for the original reason of the great popularity of the name among the Welsh people. In the days when the significance of names was understood and heeded such a name as Gwenllian must have recommended itself strongly to the British mother contemplating her girl-babe, and anxious to give her a name which might prove a life-long blessing.

The first Gwenllian in Welsh history was the seventeenth daughter of Brychan, Prince of Brecon, whose reign began in the year of our Lord 400. At least, this is the first of whom I can find any record, but it is possible there may have been Gwenllians before her (if there was linen), for Welsh history easily goes back two thousand years previous to her time. The Cymry were in Wales when Moses was leading the children of Israel out of Egypt, and the Greeks just beginning to be reclaimed from a savage state; such is the testimony of Cambrian historians, and I firmly believe it. This superb old Welsh patriarch Brychan (his full name was Brychan Brecheiniog - but enough is as good as a feast) was the father of twenty-four sons and twenty-six daughters. Some of the most respectable families in Wales are descended from him, and inhabit in our day the same ground he inhabited. Great numbers of his children became famous, and the names of all of them live in British annals. Several are among the Welsh saints and martyrs. One of the daughters, Tydfil, gives name to the largest and grimiest town in Wales, which is Merthyr-Tydfil. Among these daughters' names it is charming to observe the poetic significance. Thus Gwawr (Latinized into Julia) is in Welsh the hue of dawn; Arianwen is silver-white, Goleuddydd is the splendid day; Gwendydd, the white day, Clydai, shelter her;Tanglwstl, the hostage of peace. This last name is melodious in the extreme, in spite of its look to the inexperienced in Welsh vowels and consonants; and it is easily pronounced. Give the a broad and the w as oo - Tahn-gle-oostle. Brychan's daughter Gwenllian was the mother of one of the knights of Arthur's Round Table - viz., Sir Caradoc of the Brawny Arm, or Caradawg vraich-vras, as they say in Welsh. He was the lord-keeper of the Castle Dolorous, and those quaint records of Welsh history called "The Triads" mention him as one of the "three beloved chiefs of Arthur's court, who could never bear a superior in their families, of whom Arthur sang:

"There are my three cavaliers of battle,
Mael the tall, Llydd the armipotent,
And the pillar of Cymru, Caradoc,'"

In the early part of the fourteenth century lived that Lady Gwenllian who was the theme of the poet Casnodyn - a great beauty of her time. The works of Casnodyn are considered the last of the ancient classics of Siluria, and a specimen stanza or two will interest the reader. The translation is, of course, literal; the English language cannot convey any idea of the curious metrical ingenuity of this poem, which, although quite long, has every line ending in "eg."

"Transcendent in virtue! whose soft skin of gossamer is of the hue of the purely white spraying of the waves! Thy fame has been the subject of my lay, Gwenllian, sprightly and fair; a thousand more will sing in thy praise."

"The slender and elegant damsel, from whose lips the Welsh so purely flows; the kind, sleep-dispelling maid, causing health-depriving anguish! a myriad will praise her without ceasing, in undebased words, soft and pure, which in recital shall greatly bless the course of life."

"Hastening to view how glorious the path of the luminary of Arvon, causing anxieties to the mind, the queen of the stone-built castle, the far-famed ample place of resort to a splendid throne - the slender and gentle maid of Dinorweg."

Another Gwenllian who set the poets raving was a daughter of Owen Glendower. She was called "Gwenllian of the golden locks" and "Gwenllian of the hue of drifted snow," by the bard Lewis of Glyncothi. The same poet celebrated the beauty of a Caermarthenshire Gwenllian, the daughter of a chieftain of that section. She died in her teens, and the old bard, gray with the burden of nearly a hundred years, burst into lamentation :

"How brittle is the thread of life! - less-lasting than the spray of the sea!
Alas! that Gwenllian should have been cut off with the month of May!
Like that month, pleasant and sweet was the life of Gwenllian."

But the Gwenllian who stands out most prominently among all of her name in Welsh history is that one whose tragic story still makes the blood of Welshmen tingle in their veins, and their faces flush with indignation - a strange and impressive phenomenon to an American observer, in view of the fact that the heroine of the story has been dead some seven centuries. However. it is true enough that we often have our sympathies very much exercised over the woes of heroines - who never existed at all, except in the brains of novel-writers. So as this story is true, and has never been given to print in America (unless possibly in Welsh), I shall tell it from beginning to end.

This Gwenllian was a, princess, and was born at the royal palace of Aberfraw, on the island of Anglesea, in 1097. Aberfraw is, now a decayed hamlet, the palace is gone, and a stone barn stands on the spot where it stood. One of the walls of the barn is built of stones; which were once part of the palace. American tourists who go ashore at Queenstown, and after a peep at Ireland take the packet across St. George's Channel, rattle through the ancient seat of the Welsh kings in the train which takes them from Holyhead up to London; but no American tourist ever stops there.

Down on the southern shore of Wales stands the grand old ruin of Kidwelly Castle, crumbling to decay. Owls have hooted and ivy has clambered in its grass-grown chambers, and on its rugged turrets, throughout many a hundred years. The old town of Kidwelly sleeps about the castle's feet, and the footstep of a stranger walking through the quaint, irregular streets calls ancient dames to ancient doors, to peer curiously forth upon the passer. Yet any villager you meet will point out the field called Maes y Bedd Gwenllian, "The Field of the Grave of Gwenllian," and can tell you the tragedy which the title commemorates. And if he be a true Welshman, "of pure red blood" as they say there, he cannot tell that story without bitterness.

When the Princess Gwenllian was seventeen, her beauty was dazzling. At this time there came to her father's palace at Aberfraw a handsome young prince, whose name was Griffith ab Rhys, and whose romantic story Gwenllian had known since childhood. This prince was. the Prince of South Wales, and his father and Gwenllian's father had been warm friends in other years. But the Normans had conquered South Wales when Griffith was an infant, beheaded his father and his elder brother Goronwy, hunted to death his brother Cynan, whom they drowned in a lake, and compelled himself to be taken in his nurse's arms to Ireland for safety and education. Prince Griffith was now grown to manhood, and come to Wales to reconquer from the proud and cruel Normans his ancestral domain. From Gwenllian's father, who was ruler of North Wales, the young prince sought aid toward the accomplishment of his purposes. Now, Gwenllian's father was old, and, though he had been warlike in his youth, he had grown prudent in his age. He was friendly with the Norman King of England, which king extended his protection to the Norman knights who had seized possession of South Wales; therefore, to encourage Prince Griffith in his purposes would be to invoke the Norman king's vengeance. So the "old gray lion" (as the Welsh bards called Gwenllian's father) resolved to oppose the young prince's schemes, but not openly, for he knew the lad's fiery race, and had been his father's friend. He made him welcome at the royal board, provided pleasures of every kind to divert him, set his daughters to amuse him, and by every means he could compass sought to enervate this young soul with luxury and ease. Nor was he sorry when he saw that his fairest daughter, the lovely Princess Gwenllian, had fallen in love with Griffith, and that, as for the young man, he was so madly enamored of Gwenllian that he could not live out of her sight. So time passed on, and the old gray lion fancied the prince had forgotten his great purpose.

There came a day when this sybaritic dream was rudely dispelled. The old gray lion awoke to the knowledge that the young prince was not only as firmly bent as ever on attacking the Norman barons who had usurped his domains, but that he had imbued the fair Gwenllian with his own fiery ambition. Together these young people came before the old man and begged that he would bless them in marriage, and then set them forth on their march into South Wales to conquer their domain. The old man was furious. He threw Gwenllian into the imprisonment of a chamber at the top of a mural tower, and secretly laid a plot to take Griffith's life. But the young prince suspected this danger, and escaped from the palace. He went at once into South Wales, made his purpose known, and flung to the breeze his ancient banner, the red dragon of Wales. His countrymen rallied round his standard with enthusiasm, and he soon had an army large enough to take the field.

Before quitting the palace, Griffith had won from Gwenllian her solemn promise that she would follow him and become his bride. The circumstance that she was in prison when he left did not prevent her from keeping her promise. When did fair maiden pent in mediaeval tower fail to win over jailers the most ferocious and terrible? It was not many weeks before she joined her lover in the wild forest of Ystrad Towy, in South Wales, and they were married. At first the young couple, maugre their royal blood, were in the depths of poverty, but, being also in the depths of love, they were well content. The Princess, having run away from her father's palace, could expect no help from that quarter; the prince, though in his own dominions, had yet to conquer the power to dwell in one of the castles there abounding. So the young couple's home was in the forest of Ystrad Towy, and was but a rustic bower of leaves and wattles. From this home Griffith sallied forth with his devoted band and struggled for his ancestral right. He became the terror of the Norman barons, whose castles he repeatedly captured and left smoking ruins. Had not the King of England been his enemy, he would have speedily routed these French adventurers from his domain, and established his dominion securely. As it was. he pursued his purpose with bitter and dogged resolution throughout many years, and would eventually have triumphed, on the death of the English king; but this event was speedily followed by the dark tragedy which befell Gwenllian, and broke the warrior's proud spirit forever.

Throughout all these years of struggle Gwenllian had been a faithful and loving wife, her hero's joy in the hour of triumph, his consolation in defeat. She took no active part in the struggle; her office was to keep the home, and to rear her sons, three fine boys stood at their hearthstone, and from childhood learned to hate alike the Norman and the Saxon. Rhys, the eldest, was old enough to share in his father's military exploits, and accompanied him in all his movements. It was while the prince and this son were absent on a journey into North Wales that the emergency arose which called into sudden action all the courage, energy, and resolution, of the warrior's wife. The Lord of Kidwelly Castle had seized this moment to make trouble. It was necessary that the Welsh army should at once march against him. Brave and loyal as Griffith's soldiers were, they were a horde in their master's absence; they would not be commanded by any chieftain but their prince. Although still a beautiful young woman in her thirties, Gwenllian had the spirit of her royal race. She resolved to command the army in person. The men received her with shouts of enthusiasm. With their princess on horseback at their head, her two younger sons by her side, they marched away to battle.

Maurice de Londres, Lord of Kidwelly, was one of the fiercest of the Norman barons who disputed Prince Griffith's right to reign in South Wales. Many hard battles they had fought, and sincerely they hated each other. The baron was now furious when he learned that the army of his foe was before his castle, threatening to capture it, under the command of a woman. He tore his beard and stamped his feet, and swore great mouth-filling oaths by the score, to the effect that he would wreak his vengeance on the daring female when he should catch her. He had been momentarily expecting the arrival at his castle of reinforcements from England, and here were these pestiferous Welshmen before his gates, shutting him up like a rat in a trap, and with a woman at their head, too, as if in derision. To perdition he devoted the meddlesome she, who could not stay quietly at home when her husband was gone a journey; by all the saints, it was a thing to boil the blood of his veins; and again he swore till the rooks flew cawing from the Astragun tower.

But events were less cruel to De Londres than he had anticipated. The day was doomed to be a black one for the brave and devoted Gwenllian. The princess made that mistake which has been the ruin of many a more experienced general - divided her forces. Deeming it an east task to guard the castle, she sent off the larger part of her army to intercept the arrival of the English troops for which De Londres waited, swearing and gnawing his beard the while. A Welsh traitor, whose memory is still cordially execrated (but whose name is so like a thousand others that it is not worth mentioning), led the English troops by a circuitous route to the castle, where they fell upon poor Gwenllian's handful of men - without a word of warning. At the same moment, down clattered the drawbridge across the castle-moat, up rose the portcullis of the great gate, and forth rushed the Norman baron followed by his men. The result was inevitable. Gwenllian was taken, and every man of her force, alive or dead. The princess was wounded, but not fatally. And well would it have been for the fame of Maurice de Londres had the story ended here; but the muse of history has forever to blush with shame at mention of his name. His prisoner was the wife of the Prince of South Wales; she was the daughter of the Prince of North Wales, then in alliance with the Norman King of England; she was unquestionably of the noblest lineage native to the soil they stood upon; but, more than all, she was a woman. Surely, she had claims on all there might be of chivalry in the Norman breast, but the Princess Gwenllian lives in Welsh history with the tragic appellation of "The Beheaded One." Some say that De Londres wreaked the indignity of decapitation upon her inanimate body, after death; others that she died by the same stroke of his brutal axe which thus mutilated her fair form. It seems to be thought by the old chroniclers that if Gwenllian was alive when beheaded, something is taken away from the atrocity of the Norman's act ; but modern eyes can see very little palliation of the crime in this consideration.

Long and terrible was the period of vengeance with which the outraged Welsh people followed up this savage and inhuman deed - a deed unprecedented even in those fierce and bloody times. It was received as a personal insult by every true Welshman in the land. It fired the hearts of men who had hitherto been lukewarm; it stirred the blood of those already eager for strife till they were like madmen. Long thereafter, their every battle was a victory; nothing could stand against them. The old spirit of revolt against foreign oppression seemed to have given place to a new impulse, and their warfare had become a crusade of vengeance for the woes of Gwenllian. The ambition of the prince became satisfied to the utmost; but the heart of the husband was broken. He died within two years of his wife's brutal taking-off - not in battle, violently, but at home, crushed in the prime of life by grief at the loss of the fair woman who had loved him so well, and had perished so cruelly.

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