The sides of this great bowl are walled in by mountains, though not of the height, desolation, and grandeur of those to the north, where the Cothi takes its rise. The broad basin in the midst of the highlands, once probably occupied by a lake, is traversed near its head by the Sarn Helen, a paved Roman-British road, still in use, that connects the vales of the Towy and the Teify, and passes the once famous gold-mines of Ogofau.
At the head of this oval trough or basin stand the church and village of Cynwyl Gaio, backed by mountains that rise rapidly, and are planted on a fork between the river Annell and a tributary, whose mingled waters eventually swell the Cothi.
The lower extremity of the trough is occupied by a rocky height, Pen-y-ddinas, crowned with prehistoric fortifications, and a little tarn of trifling extent is the sole relic of the great sheet of water which at one time, we may conjecture, covered the entire expanse.
At the time of this story, the district between the Towy and Teify, comprising the basin just described, constituted the sanctuary of David, and was the seat of an ecclesiastical tribe--that is to say, it was the residence of a people subject to a chief in sacred orders, the priest Pabo, and the hereditary chieftainship was in his family.
And this pleasant bowl among the mountains was also regarded as a sanctuary, to which might fly such as had fallen into peril of life by manslaughter, or such strangers as were everywhere else looked on with suspicion. A story was told, and transmitted from father to son, to account for this. It was to this effect. When St. David--or Dewi, as the Welsh called him--left the synod of Brefi, in the Teify Vale, he ascended the heights of the Craig Twrch, by Queen Helen's road, and on passing the brow, looked down for the first time on the fertile district bedded beneath him, engirdled by heathery mountains at the time in the flush of autumn flower. It was as though a crimson ribbon was drawn round the emerald bowl.
Then--so ran the tale--the spirit of prophecy came on the patriarch. His soul was lifted up within him, and raising his hands in benediction, he stood for a while as one entranced.
"Peace!" said he--and again, "Peace!" and once more, "Peace!" and he added, "May the deluge of blood never reach thee!"