Stories,
Myths & Legends
The Barber of Llangollen
The tale of the Barber of Llangollen
starts in what is now the garden of the Hand Hotel and ends on
the top of Moel y Geraint, one of the hills that rise above
the town. The story tells of how the hill acquired another
name, which is still in use today.
Over 250 years ago there was a row of
small houses on the site of the Hand Hotel garden. In one of
them lived the Barber. He was also the Schoolmaster of the
village and was apparently an irritable character. One day, in
a dispute between himself and his wife about the boiling or
roasting of a neck of mutton, he drew his razor across her
throat and killed her. He ran out and shut the door. The
schoolchildren did not know what was the matter, but seeing
their Mistress bleeding and staggering ran out and told their
neighbours.
The barber ran up the street and
turned up Cross Lane. This now leads up to the A5 road, but
250 years ago it ended in open fields, across which the barber
ran. A lot of men were mustered and followed him across the
fields to the old Workhouse. The men caught him washing
himself at Pistyll y Workhouse – the Spring of the
Workhouse. The barber was condemned to be gibbeted on the
nearest hill overlooking the town of Llangollen. At the gib,
he was regaled with a pint of ale, and seeing people and
children running and climbing up the Geraint, he turned to
them and said in Welsh 'You need not hurry, there will be
no sport until I am there.' The story goes that a Mrs.
Parry, the landlady at the Hand, gave him a jug of ale as he
was passing.
He was hung in Gibbets at the top of
the Hill and ever since the hill has been known as 'Moel
y Barbwr', or 'The Barber’s Hill'.
This is a true story and is recorded
in documents at the Record Office. The barbers name was Thomas
Edwards and that of his unlucky wife Maria. The murder took
place in 1739 and the tale has now become local folklore. |
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Mary
had a little lamb,
Its
fleece was white as snow,
And
everywhere that Mary went,
The
lamb was sure to go.
It
followed her to school one day,
Which
was against the rule,
It
made the children laugh and play,
To
see a lamb at school.
This piece of Llangollen folklore
concerns the heroine of this well known nursery rhyme. Mary
Thomas was born in 1842 at Ty Issa Farm, Llangollen. She came
here, to what was then the British School, with over 200
pupils. With her she brought her pet lamb Billy who apparently
caused mayhem in class and had to be put out into the
playground. Mary’s schoolmates used to pat the lamb through
the railings of the playground. In 1861 Mary married Thomas
Hughes, a mining engineer from Cefn Mawr and they went on to
have 11 children before Thomas died at 47. Mary lived to be 89
years old and died in Worthing.
She is buried in Worthing but
comemmorated on a grave in Fron Bache cemetary,
Llangollen, along with her father, John Thomas. One face of
the tombstone is inscribed in memory of John Thomas. On
another side is the inscription 'Also in affectionate
remembrance of his daughter Mrs Mary Hughes who died in
Worthing in 1931, aged 89 years old. Heroine of the nursery
rhyme Mary had a little lamb'.
This is a lovely folklore story, but
sadly Mary Thomas of Llangollen was not the heroine of the
nursery rhyme. Why she died believing she was is not clear.
She was given a copy of the poem by visitors from London –
did this copy lead Mary to believe that she was its heroine?
The Mary of the rhyme was Mary Sawyer and the school was the
Redstone Schoolhouse in Sterling Massachusetts, U.S.A. The
original nursery rhyme was written in America in 1815 by John
Roulstone, and was first published in a magazine called
Juvenile Miscellany in 1830, 12 years before Mary Thomas of
Llangollen was born! |
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St
Collen's Well lies in a field at the top of the Horseshoe
Pass. The legend goes that there was a giantess that was
terrorising the people of Pentredwr. Hearing of this, St
Collen, the founder of Llangollen, took up his sword and went
to do battle with the giantess. After much struggle St Collen
killed the giantess and washed the blood from his sword in a
nearby spring, which afterwards became known as St Collen's
Well.
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The ruins of Castell Dinas Bran
overlook Llangollen from their hilltop position. The word
Dinas once denoted a fortress, although now is used to mean
city. Bran is generally taken to refer to a ‘raven’ or a
‘crow’, but apart from this literal interpretation there
is an alternative from the mythological past for the naming of
the castle.
A duke of Cornwall in ancient times
won the crown by conquest and on his deahbed left his kingdom
to his twin sons, Beli and Bran. The two heirs quarrelled and
were about to clash in battle when their mother, Queen Corwena,
made a plea to them for peace. Her sons obeyed and Beli
settled in New Troy (London) whilst Bran journeyed north to
build the fortress Dinas Bran. Legend has it that the Queen
founded the small nearby town now known as Corwen. |
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Oh
fairer thou, and colder too, Than
new fall'n snow on Aran's brow. Oh
lovely flower of Trevor race, Let
not a cruel heart disgrace The
beauties of thy heavenly face! Thou
art my daily thought; each night Presents
Myfanwy to my sight. So
wrote the bard Hywel ap Einion in the mid 14th century. The
object of his desires was Myfanwy, daughter of the tenant of
Dinas Bran Castle when it was owned by the Arundels of Chirk.
Legend says that Hywel hid his verses in the cleft of an oak
tree on the slopes of Dinas Bran. His passion seems not to
have been returned, but he did not write in vain. The poem
Myfanwy Fychan won the Silver Crown at the 1858 Llangollen
Eisteddfod and has been sung many times since by male voice
choirs across the country. |
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Thomas
Pennant, in his tour of 1773, refers to the House of
Llantysilio as being the seat of Thomas Jones and in 1750 and
again in 1792 we find that Thomas Jones of Llantysilio Hall
was the Sheriff of Denbighshire. Pennant says that the 'previous possessors were the Cupers or Cuppers –
styled even so early as the time of Henry II the ancient
Cuppers of the north'. Thomas Cupper purchased the estate
and built the original Hall at the beginning of the 18th
century, and his daughter and sole heiress conveyed it to the
Jones family by marriage with Thomas Jones, then of the county
of Montgomery. Thomas Jones’ son and grandson, both also
called Thomas, continued to own the estate, with the last
Thomas Jones dying in 1820 leaving no will. In 1822 the
housekeeper of the vicar of Oswestry dreamt that the will of
Thomas Jones had been buried with him. Because of this dream a
party of seven or eight people, including a lawyer and a
surgeon, broke into the tomb and opened the coffin. Although
it would appear that the will was not found. |
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W.T. Simpson in his account
of Llangollen in 1827 remarks that 'On the north side of
the river, nearly opposite the place where the wooden bridge
stood, was another pilliar, called Croes Gwen Hwyfr. It stood
on the road to Wrexham and has been removed only a few
years'. Who Gwenhwyfr was remains a mystery, but the name
was common in the area in the13th to 15th centuries and it is
likely that the cross commemorated a member of one of the
local families. One possibility is that it was put up in
memory of Gwenhwyfar, daughter of Iorworth Ddu of Pengwern in
the 14th century.
People still remember what
was taken to be the base of this monument being in the corner
of a field by the road. The base was just over 2 feet square
and 10 inches high, with a socket cut into the top (for the
cross) measuring 9 inches square. The location of the top part
of the monument has never been discovered and now the base has
also disappeared.
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There are a number of links
that have been proposed
between the Llangollen area and this famous mythological
character. The presence of Craig
Arthur (Arthur's Rock) to the north of the town in the
Eglwyseg Valley and Ffynnon Arthur (Arthur's Well) on the
south side of the town have led people to suggest that the
area around Llangollen formed his home. The presence of a
number of place names in North Wales that bear similarities to
the names of characters found in the Arthurian legends has
caused some authors to suggest that Arthur was a leader of the
Britons in Wales rather than king of the English and
connections with Dinas Bran castle (or presumably some kind of
fortification that stood on the same site in the Dark Ages)
have been proposed. However, there is not (and most likely
never will be) any substantial proof of such claims and for
the present time Arthur will have to remain in the realms of
legend.
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