Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/91



MY TALE shall be of Caerleon-on-Uske; and since the Spigot Clerk devised his history of Abergavenny wherein our Court now holds session, it will not be amiss if I speak somewhat of Caerleon, whereat the tosspots of Gwent were first banded together by our glorious King Arthur, of right worthy memory. But I will not tell you any stories of roofs shining like gold, or of the tower that overtopped Christchurch Hill and looked on to the Severn Sea, or of chargeable palaces, standing splendidly in the little town, since all these things are underground like the Barons of Burgavenny and have become somewhat wearisome. But what I have to tell happened about two hundred years agone, when Caerleon was little different from what it is now, or from what it will be two hundred years hence, if the curtain do not fall on our merry Comedy, ere that time be accomplished. Now you have it well set in your heads that as there are two Sicilies, so there are two Caerleons, one on this side the bridge, and one on the other; and there being two Caerleons I must tell you that he, concerning whom this history is related, dwelt in Caerleon-over-Bridge, and in a little hut by the