Llewelyn ap Gruffydd Fychan

Llewelyn ap Gruffyth Fychan (easy for you to say!) is not to be confused with anyone called merely Llewelyn ap Gruffydd or the man called Gruffyth ap Llewelyn. If that makes you feel like a cup of tea and slice of CAKE, please go and indulge before reading on but bear in mind that "ap" in Welsh is a patronymic and tells you the name of the father of the person. Over time is has become reduced to a "p" and appears at the beginning of surnames like "Probert", son of Robert, or "Pugh", son of Huw (clearly the speakers were too out of breath climbing mountains to pronounce their h's.)  As you eat your CAKE you will think of others: Powell etc. Yet do not practise the initial "ll" sound simultaneously with your chocolate sponge - save that till later (the CAKE or the practice). Then put the tip of your tongue up against the hard palate behind your two top front teeth and say "ff" and you will make that genuine clicky sound that the Welsh have used for years to terrorise the English. Shakespeare got away with Fluellen and that was probably a wise move to make the leek-wearing warrior a popular, likeable and pronounceable character.

  My regular and devoted readers (love you all) who are endowed with a sharp acumen and instinctive faff filter will, by now, have concluded that I am flannelling (pronounced normally) and they will be right. We do not know much about him. What we do know is derived from our local and under-exposed hero, the chronicler Adam of Usk, Adda o Frynbuga. The other very tricky thing about Welsh is that the consonants change at the beginning of a word according to obscure grammatical rules intended to keep the English good targets for mockery when they attempt to learn the language. Brynbuga is the Welsh for Usk and the "b" has here become "f" - this cunning dodge makes use of a dictionary a teasing challenge for foreigners.

   Llewelyn ap Gruffydd Fychan (Vaughan) of Cayo in Cardigan, lived from 1341 to 9 October 1401 and joined the revolt against Henry IV, led by Owain Glyn Dwr. Adam calls him a "man of gentle birth and bountiful, who yearly used sixteen tuns of wine in his household". Because he was "well disposed" towards the rebel cause, he was executed in Llandovery on the feast of St. Denis, October 9th, "in the presence of the king and his eldest son, and by his command, drawn, hanged, and beheaded, and quartered." It is not crystal clear whether the son was Hal, the future Henry V of Monmouth, or Llewelyn's.  (He probably had 2 sons fighting in the rebel forces.) By the standards of the period, he was quite elderly when tortured in this way. It must be noted that 16 tuns is a remarkable amount of wine and suggests that much generous tippling with guests went on annually on the rich household. Another story tells that Llewelyn deliberately led the English forces the wrong way whilst pretending to take them to Glyn Dwr but Adam merely states that he "willingly preferred death to treachery."

   In 1998 a campaign was started in Llandovery to construct a memorial to this rebel, sometimes called the "Welsh Braveheart". Money was raised locally and from the Arts Council of Wales and, after an exhibition of proposed designs in 2000, a public vote secured the commission for Toby and Gideon Peterson of St. Clears (pronounced "Clares"). I do not know what the others in the competition would have been like but this is the most impressive statue I have ever seen as it stands on the motte of the ruinous castle overlooking the car park. It is 16 ft tall and made of stainless steel which glows in the sun and glowers in cloud: on its base of Cayo stone, it is a figure with empty cloak, helmet and armour representing both the universal nature of Llewelyn's actions and the violence of the mutilation of his body. You will have noted that the drawing of the entrails was the first torture, during which he would have been alive. The artist described it as depicting a "brave nobody."
  Even I, tireless devotee of public transport, would not really suggest a pilgrimage from the east especially but, if you are going to Pembrokeshire on the A40, do stop in Llandovery car park and eat your sarnies gazing at the statue and climb up afterwards to admire it in detail. It is simply stunning.

I have written about Owain Gly Dwr and his rebellion (as has Shakespeare!) and about Adam of Usk who seems little recognised as an important Medieval chronicler, though I am delighted that my blog post has received hundreds of hits. Henry V and Monmouth Castle are the subjects of other articles here. "Llan" at the beginning of Welsh place names means "church" or parish usually of a particular saint (Llandeilo, just down the road and very pretty, means "parish of St. Teilo") but here refers to the meeting of 2 rivers. It is twinned with Pluguffan in Brittany (finish your CAKE before embarking on that one.)