The odd effigy of Iorwerth Sulien, an early vicar of the church, divides with the fine old timber roof the honours of the interior.
The “Owen Glendower” inn at Corwen has long since lost the “fierce gigantic figure like that of some Saracenic Soldan” that once served for a sign, and attracted the attention of every eighteenth-century traveller; and has in other ways altered since the time when the first tourists came, note-books in hand. It must be confessed that the first tourists in Wales are now become highly amusing where they intended to be improving, and not a little dull when their intent was jocular. One of them who says he was “Josephus Rex,” is not a little obscure at first, but presently we find that phrase to be a ponderous play upon words, and that, in short he meant he was Jo King—joking. You take him, do you not? How exquisitely pretty a wit!
Such an one as this must have been the Rev. Mr. Evans who, in 1705, toured the Principality. He found “decent accommodation,” and pointed civility at Corwen, where others had found nothing of the kind; but it was stupid of him to ask for a “tonsor” when he meant “barber,” and wanted a shave. Instead of bringing him a tonsor, they brought him a blind harper. He retained the harper, but still clamoured for his shave; whereupon, a “blooming damsel of twenty-five years” came with razors, soap and hot water, and deftly scraped his chin.
Most of Corwen’s business activity is centred in its railway-station at the further end of the town, where roads divide like the two arms of the letter Y; one, to the left, going to Bala, and the other for Holyhead. Here those two leviathans, the Great Western and the London and North-Western Railways, meet and go their several ways to Barmouth and to Rhyl. Beyond, for twenty-two miles, there is a vast expanse of country where no railway goes, and if Corwen wants to visit Bettws-y-Coed and Bettws desires to return the call, they have either to take the road or else embark upon a roundabout railway journey of fifty miles. The engineering works for a line that should connect the two along the Alwen, Geirw, and Conway valleys would not be so very great; the difficulty perhaps lies in the question, which of the rivals is to do it? Meanwhile, one passes over the ancient bridge that spans the Dee on six lichened arches, and bids good-bye to the modern world for awhile just as effectually as Borrow did when he tramped the road fifty-five years ago.