【英文原著类】The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales(巴德温在威尔士).pdf

The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales
The Itinerary of
Archbishop Baldwin
through Wales
1
The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales
INTRODUCTION
Gerald the Welshman - Giraldus Cambrensis - was born, probably in
1147, at Manorbier Castle in the county of Pembroke. His father was a
Norman noble, William de Barri, who took his name from the little island
of Barry off the coast of an. His mother, Angharad, was the
daughter of Gerald de Windsor {1} by his wife, the famous Princess Nesta,
the "Helen of Wales," and the daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr Mawr, the last
independent Prince of South Wales.
Gerald was therefore born to romance and adventure. He was reared
in the traditions of the House of Dinevor. He heard the brilliant and
pitiful stories of Rhys ap Tewdwr, who, after having lost and won South
Wales, died on the stricken field fighting against the Normans, an old man
of over fourscore years; and of his gallant son, Prince Rhys, who, after
wrenching his patrimony from the invaders, died of a broken heart a few
months after his wife, the Princess Gwenllian, had fallen in a skirmish at
Kidwelly. No doubt he heard, though he makes but sparing allusion to
them, of the loves and adventures of his grandmother, the Princess Nesta,
the daughter and sister of a prince, the wife of an adventurer, the
concubine of a king, and the paramour of every daring lover - a
Welshwoman whose passions embroiled all Wales, and England too, in
war, and the mother of heroes - Fitz-Geralds, Fitz-Stephens, and Fitz-
Henries, and others - who, regardless of their mother's eccentricity in the
choice of their fathers, united like brothers in the most adventurous
undertaking of that age, the Conquest of Ireland.
Though his mother was half Saxon and his father probably fully
Norman, Gerald, with a true instinct, described himself as a "Welshman."
His frank vanity, so naive as to be void of offence, his easy acceptance of
everything which Prov