1

works; while recently, in Merionethshire, the gold nuggets are stated to value, in the aggregate, £36,000. And £20,000 a year from the gold workings for several consecutive years point to former auriferous abundance in Wales. The examination of Mr. Owen Stanley's estate at Holyhead revealed a number of furnaces, slag, metal, and surroundings connected with pre-historic remains, indicating their great antiquity. The copper workings, for bronze, in The Great Orme's Head; the route of the Senonese to Ireland by the large settlement Sinnodune, or Senodun, about a mile from Conway, as mentioned by Leland, vol. v, 49; and at Llys Faen, a few miles to the east of Conway, a superb gold ring, finely enamelled, and one rough, ready for the enameller, indicate the whole district as one producing the materials in metal, with the manufacture of the raw material, and its application to the art of enamelled jewellery.

In the museum at Chester are also two pre-historic bronze pins, found in very small urns indicating precious deposits, in pre-Roman graves, and bearing some indications of having been enamelled.

In my lengthened and repeated travels in Greece and my voyages in the Aegean Seas, in search for Mykenaean and Trojan relics, in which I was most successful, the accompanying view of the range of Mount Olympos was taken by me at various intervals of fine weather, being probably the only view of the entire range ever published. The goldsmiths were raised in Wales to the rank of nobility.

The word Gorsed, Gor sed (sedes), appears to mean the highest, the supreme, the golden seat or throne.

The Gorsed was like the Eastern Durbar, to which all the chiefs, princes, and kinglets were summoned, and in which the goldsmiths or metallurgists were allowed a seat of nobility.

1 Tacitus and Strabo describe "gold", "silver", etc., as British products.

2 A Phoenician coin was found here not many years ago, and was in the possession of Rev. Owen Jones of Llandudno; but, on his death, it was most unfortunately lost.- ED.

parts of Greece."-Brit. Arch. Journal, 1895.

"Tri Meib Rhydd o Gaeth, Bardd, Ysgolhaig, a Gôf."

"Hynny a phynnag au medro, braint iddo fonedd a Brodoriaeth a Thrwydded Cymro."

"Tri dyn a gyfanneddant Lys" (Llys), "Bardd, gof, a Thelynor."

"There are three persons free from bond, a Bard; a scholar; and a smith, and each is entitled to the privileges of nobility", and "social rights of a Cymro." More literally Nobility (or splendour) to whosoever is proficient in those arts. Rank and dignity to him, and the staff (or sceptre) of social rights, and a pass through the Cymru.

"Three men who constitute a court, a Bard; a smith; and a harpist."

The great officers could pass through any armed hostile force in their azure robes: azure was their sacred colour.

The strong Edwardian castles show that, till Edward I, this way was still held as a pass by the descendants of the Druids and Aurdovicae.

These preserved rules were amongst those for the preservation of which the recorder received a "Bardic tiara in Gold" at the Eisteddvod in 1858, together with "a very high encomium"; they were published by the Welsh MSS. Society; some of the words are very ancient, and only appear in Dr. Pughe's original dictionary, and not in the modern edition.

Well might the goldsmiths be so ennobled, if, as is probable from Caesar's account of the Eastern "articles of luxury" brought by the Greeks to the Rhine, such articles were exchanged in Britain for the Welsh torques made of Irish gold.

Livy states that from one Gaulish tribe alone, the Boii, the Romans took 1470 gold torques, all, judging from recent analysis, being of Irish produce and Welsh make.

These flexible necklets, which appear only to have been made by the Aurdovicae from the peculiarly pliant quality of the Irish gold, are mentioned by Virgil as of great antiquity, as he describes them as worn by the Trojan youths in the funeral games in Sicily, under Aeneas (Eneid, v. 1, 559), thus establishing the connection between Italy and Britain in remote times, as well as their trade in gold; so that the Greek enamels mentioned

by Homer and this flexible gold work were both placed by the ancients in the Trojan era.

The gold work of Irish-Welsh make also agrees with the Trojan period, as well as the Kvávos, or enamel. Thus, in Il., xiii, 11. 25-6, Neptune is described as using a well-wrought golden whip to his horses of the sea.

ἱμάσθλην χρυσείην, εύτυκτον,

Such an idea as the usable lash of a whip wrought in gold could never have beer expressed had not the gold

work of the Trojan period been of a nature so pliant as to warrant it. In the illustrations of Irish gold work, two examples are so wrought that they appear to have been made to be used as whips or lashes, Figs. 2 and 3.

The terminal band, decorated with small spherical bosses, is the same in the Irish, Welsh, and Greek examples, Fig. 4.

In Hesiod's poem "The Shield of Hercules", the latter is described as attiring himself in just such a golden corselet as that found at Mold in Flintshire, Fig. 1. θώρηκα περὶ στήθεσσιν ἔδυνε,

Καλὸν, χρύσειον, πολυδαίδαλον.—11. 124-5.

("He put on his breast a beautiful corselet of elaborately-worked gold.")