8 - Among the Ancient Britons

Summary

The soldier-writer Thomas Churchyard composed an unusual verse description of Wales in 1587. The Worthines of Wales promised ‘wonders and right strange matter’. Churchyard's Wales nearly outshone Scotland as Britain's salmon fishery:

A thing to note, when Sammon failes in Wye,

(And season there: goes out as order is)

Than still of course, in Oske [Usk] doth Sammons lye,

And of good fish, in Oske you shall not mis.

And this seemes straunge, as doth through Wales appeere,

In some one place, are Sammons all the yeere;

So fresh, so sweete, so red, so crimp withall,

As man might say, loe, Sammon here at call.

Churchyard may have heard the story during his travels, but can we pin down where and with whom it originated?

We might begin with the Welsh antiquary Humphrey Llwyd. Llwyd included a brief topographical description of Wales in his Cronica Walliae. Llwyd did not live to see it through the press after its completion in 1559. Instead, with the support of William Cecil and Henry Sidney (Lord President of the Council in the Marches of Wales), David Powel published an expanded and corrected version of Llwyd's Cronica in 1584 as The Historie of Cambria, Now Called Wales. A repackaged version of Llwyd–Powel's Cronica was published in 1663 as A Description of Wales, attributed to Sir John Prise. Powel took over the original project from a fellow scholar interested in the history and geography of Britain, the famed John Dee. He followed up in 1585 with an omnibus collection that included the Historia Britannica of Ponticus Virunnius (an abridgement of Geoffrey of Monmouth) and the works of Gerald of Wales.

Among these possibilities the source is not actually hard to find. The original account, translated into English, runs something like this: ‘There is no lack of freshwater fish, both in the Usk and the Wye. Salmon and trout are fished from these rivers, but the Wye has more salmon and the Usk more trout. In winter salmon are in season in the Wye, but in summer they abound in the Usk.’ As Leland had, Churchyard read Gerald's Journey Through Wales. With Leland's notebooks ‘lost’, the authoritative Gerald was the natural starting point for Churchyard. Before 1585, travellers would have known Gerald's Wales only through manuscripts.