Читать книгу Great Mountain Days in Snowdonia. 40 classic routes exploring Snowdonia онлайн

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I take the view that the lands of Snowdonia are named after eagles, especially as eagles were once here all year round, while snow most certainly wasn’t. These majestic birds have soared above the crags and cwms across the ages, and provided substance for bards, singers and storytellers. Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis), one of the most colourful, extrovert and dynamic of churchmen in the 12th century, writes of

a remarkable eagle which lives in the mountains of Snowdonia. Every fifth feast-day it perches on a particular stone, hoping to satiate its hunger with the bodies of dead men, for on that day it thinks that war will break out.

The stone on which the eagle is said to stand is known as the ‘Stone of Destiny’, thought by some to be Carreg yr Eryr, near Llyn Dinas in Nant Gwynant, and close to Dinas Emrys, the hill fort believed to be the spot that King Gwrtheyrn, better known as Vortigern, chose for his retreat from the unwanted attentions of Anglo-Saxon invaders.

In the 16th century, Thomas Price of Plas Iolyn sends an eagle on an errand to other poets, writing later of the ‘king of mountain fowl’ that dwelt on the ‘clear-cut heights above the rockbound tarn’ in such a way that it is evident that he was writing about something he had actually seen. But by the early 19th century, Snowdonia’s eagles were reduced to a wandering bird, ‘skulking on the precipices’.