Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/54

30 Bradley says, "good to die here." On this cross are the lines:

When the lighthouse was built and the present farms replaced the older dwellings, the bones of hundreds of "saints" were discovered and reinterred. Coins, gold in some instances, were also brought to light, for the pilgrims did not always come empty-handed; "the road to heaven and the gate to paradise," as the bards called it, was worthy of toll. Twenty thousand may be far above the mark; one cynic says "it would be much more facile to find graves in Bardsey for so many saints, than saints for so many graves." But at Mecca all are saints; the travel-stained, footsore pilgrim who washed in the healing wells thought so, at any rate. What do we really know of those early inhabitants? Tradition tells of the American refugees, and of the survivors, a century later, of the massacre at Bangor Is-y-coed; of St. Beuno ending his days here, though Nevin and Clynnog both claim him; of Bishop Hywyn, and of Archbishop Dubricius. Did not this last crown King Arthur in 506, and were not his bones removed half a century later to Llandaff?

Doubtless when the population was so extensive sea-fowl were much in request. Even to-day the shearwater is relished on some of the Scottish islands, and, as was the case with the puffin, a considerable business was done in "pickled" shearwater. The birds were salted, packed in barrels, and exported for inland consnmption. There is no record of an export trade from Bardsey, though, not so very long ago, puffins were shipped from Puffin Island. We were advised to take