Cardigan, once “the lock and key of all Wales,” gives us no hint of its former greatness. It appears an uninteresting little town till one realises that it is the Aberteifi whose castle was taken and retaken, burnt, and shattered, and built again, through all the stormiest years of Welsh history; captured by the men of the north from the men of the south; defended by both against the Anglo-Normans; attacked by the Flemings; at one time the court of Llewelyn, the greatest of the northern princes; and at another the court of Lord Rhys, the greatest of the southern princes. Here lived Griffith, the father of Rhys, “the light and the strength and the gentleness of the men of the south,” whose brave wife, Gwenllian, was killed by Maurice de Londres; and here he and Gwenllian’s brother, the great Owen Gwynedd, avenged her, when Cardigan bridge broke under the retreating Normans, and “the salt green wave of Teivy was clogged” with the bodies of the slain. And here the Lord Rhys held his famous revels, which included one of those mediæval Tournaments of Song with which Wagner has made us so familiar. The invitations were sent out in good time--a year and a day before the event--and many hundreds of English and Normans were bidden from “all Britain, Ireland, and the islands adjacent.” The historian goes on to tell us how “Rhys caused all the bards or poets throughout all Wales to come thither; and for a better diversion to the company he provided chairs to be set in the hall, in which the bards being seated, they were to answer each other in rhyme, and those that acquitted themselves most handsomely and overcame the rest, were promised great rewards and rich presents.” And the men of Gwynedd won the prize for poetry, but the men of the south were victorious in music.
Such in the old days was Cardigan, where the tourist may pause for a mid-day chop or buy a picture postcard.
Two miles above Cardigan, on a crag beside the Teify, are the ruined towers of Cilgerran, which have been very little concerned with history, though they have stood here since the days of Henry I. Their striking position above the wooded banks of the river, however, will repay us for a detour of a mile or two, and we can rejoin the main road at the beautiful bridge of Llechryd. Here, where the prevailing note of the landscape is peace, the gentle Teify, whose purling waters have so often run red, was once actually dammed--as on another occasion at Cardigan--by the bodies of the slain, when the princes of the south met the invading princes of Powys and overthrew them.