Teutonic depth and earnestness, but in its stead a childlike spirit of
delicate enjoyment, a faint distant flush of passion like the rose-light of
dawn on a snowy mountain peak, a playful delight in beauty. "White is my
love as the apple-blossom, as the ocean's spray; her face shines like the
pearly dew on Eryri; the glow of her cheeks is like the light of sunset."
The buoyant and elastic temper of the French trouveur was spiritualized in
the Welsh singers by a more refined poetic feeling. "Whoso beheld her was
filled with her love. Four white trefoils sprang up wherever she trod." A
touch of pure fancy such as this removes its object out of the sphere of
passion into one of delight and reverence.


[Sidenote: The Bards]

It is strange to pass from the world of actual Welsh history into such a
world as this. But side by side with this wayward, fanciful stream of poesy
and romance ran a torrent of intenser song. The spirit of the earlier
bards, their joy in battle, their love of freedom, broke out anew in ode
after ode, in songs extravagant, monotonous, often prosaic, but fused into
poetry by the intense fire of patriotism which glowed within them. Every
fight, every hero had its verse. The names of older singers, of Taliesin,
Aneurin, and Llywarch Hen, were revived in bold forgeries to animate the
national resistance and to prophesy victory. It was in North Wales that the
spirit of patriotism received its strongest inspiration from this burst of
song. Again and again Henry the Second was driven to retreat from the
impregnable fastnesses where the "Lords of Snowdon," the princes of the
house of Gruffydd ap Conan, claimed supremacy over the whole of Wales. Once
in the pass of Consilt a cry arose that the king was slain, Henry of Essex
flung down the royal standard, and the king's desperate efforts could
hardly save his army from utter rout. The bitter satire of the Welsh