On The Welsh Border

bore the cross of life throughout four centuries. About half-way between the Wynd Cliff and Tintern there is a jutting crag overhung by gloomy branches of the yew, called the Devil's Pulpit. His Satanic eminence used in other and wickeder days to preach atrocious morals, or immorals, to the white-robed brethren (who must have taken no little trouble to come so far to hear him) from this rocky pulpit. The story would not be creditable to the monks if it stopped here, so of course it continues. One day the devil grew bold, and taking his tail under his arm in an easy and dégagée manner, hobnobbed familiarly with the monks, and finally proposed, just for a lark, that he should preach them a nice red-hot sermon from the rood-loft of the abbey. To this the monks agreed, and the devil came to church in high glee. But fancy his profane perturbation (I had nearly written holy horror) when the treacherous Cistercians proceeded to shower him with holy water. The devil clapped his tail between his legs and scampered off howling, and never stopped till he got to Llandogo, where he leaped across the river into England, leaving the prints of his talons on a stone; and if you doubt the story, there is Llandogo on the map before you to prove it.

The Cistercian monks arose in 1098, but were not introduced in Britain until thirty years later. One of the wealthiest edifices occupied by them was Tintern Abbey, which the Norman family of Clares, living in Chepstow Castle, founded on the spot where the Welsh king Theodoric of Glamorgan was slain by pagan Saxons in 600, while fighting for the Cross. This king had a palace hard by. There was also a temple on this spot in the Druidical clays. At first the Cistercians were ascetics of the sternest sort, vowed to poverty, humility, toil, privation, and life in solitudes far from the haunts of men. But as time went on they grew rich, and with riches came luxury, good living, and bad practices.