Sleeping giants

The land rises from the north Pembrokeshire coastline towards the Preseli hills, the range seen in the distance here. But these are the lower outliers, known as Carnedd Meibion Owen, the Cairns of the Sons of Owen: four massive tors of tumbled rhyolite boulders that crouch along a rising ridge above the ancient woodland of the Newport baronies.

This moorland area, between sea and mountains, was at one time the resort of squatters, cotters, and outlaws who threw together meagre dwellings of stone and turf and scraped a living or a grazing from the stony soil. Although the rocky outcrops are natural formations they have not surprisingly been imbued with myth.

Owain Glyndwr/Owen Glendower, caricatured by Shakespeare in Henry IV part 1 as a boastful, self-important wizard,* was in fact a highly significant historical figure and folk hero who raised a very-nearly successful rebellion against the English in 1403/4.** He was invested Prince of Wales (the last Welsh one), and he established a Welsh parliament with a legal system and a foreign policy. The whereabouts of Glyndwr's grave is unknown but these tors are said to be the resting places of his warrior sons, sleeping here till such time as they are needed to rise up and come to the aid of Wales once more. And now that Independence for Scotland and Wales is being seriously mooted, that could not be far into the future.

*Shakespeare:
[A]t my nativity,
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
Of burning cressets, and at my birth
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shaked like a coward.

** Manic Street Preachers: 1404