A road passing from Brecon through Llandovery to Llandilo, in Caermarthenshire, we did not travel; but find it described as highly picturesque, and otherwise interesting. For several miles it traverses an undulating district enlivened by the Usk; which now, approaching its source in the Trecastle hills, assumes all the impetuosity of a mountain torrent. The spacious lawns, long avenues of trees, and extensive plantations of Penbont, grace the bonders of the stream about three miles from Brecon; and on the left of the road, a small distance further, appear the trifling remains of Davenock castle. TRECASTLE, ten miles from Brecon, a small village but possessing a good inn, is deprived of every vestige of its ancient fortification. From this place the road winds for nine miles to Llandovery, in a deep valley, between the mountains, called CWM-DWR, a romantic pass watered by a lively stream, and dotted with numerous cottages, whose fertile hollow is beautifully contrasted by the wild aspect of the impendent heights. LLANDOVERY is a small irregular town, nearly encompassed by rivulets, and only to be noticed by the picturesque traveller for the small ruins of its ivy-mantled castle. The road then continues to Llandilo on a high terrace, ornamented on the right by the groves of Taliaris and Abermarle parks, and overlooking the upper vale of Towey, rich in cultivation and the beauty of its stream.
On the road to Hereford from Brecon, about seven miles, is BRUNLYSS CASTLE; the principal and almost only feature of which is a high round tower on an artificial mount. Its foundation is uncertain, but cannot be later than the first settlement of the Normans in the county. There is a curious circumstance connected with an incident in the history of this castle, which I think very probably suggested the character of Faulconbridge in Shakespeare’s play of King John. The acknowledged son and heir of Bernard de Newmarch and his wife Nesta was Mahel, a dauntless, youth, who, after the death of Bernard, having affronted a paramour of his mother’s, and upbraided the matron herself, became in a most extraordinary manner deprived of his inheritance. Nesta, enraged at the interference of her son in her tender arrangements, presented herself before Henry the Second, and solemnly made oath that he was not the son of Bernard lord of Breton; but was begotten by a Cambrian warrior, thereby proclaiming her son a bastard, and satisfying her revenge, though at the expence of every maternal tie and of the strongest sentiments of female worth. Bernard’s estates, in consequence, fell to his daughter Sibyl wife of Milo earl of Hereford; and Mahel, ejected from his patrimony, became a lawless desperado. Once, as he was on a predatory excursion over the domains of David Fitzgerald, bishop of St. David’s, he was entertained by Walter de Clifford in Brunlyss Castle for one night; when the building took fire, and he, in endeavouring to escape, was crushed to death by the falling of a stone.