you come across a bright orange-red flower1 in some of the hollows, contrasting pleasingly with the greenish-gray of the rushes. In some parts, too, on the landward margin of the dunes, are tiny wild dwarf-roses (Burnet or Scotch-rose, Rosa spinosissima), with pale-pink blossoms, which scatter their fragrance around, and nestle close to the sand for fear of the winds; small wild pansies (Viola tricolor) keep them company. Mingling with them is found the delicious dewberry (Rubus caesius). The sea spurge (Euphorbia paralias) is very abundant on the sands.

As you approach the beach, and the sun shines brightly, occasional glimpes are had of the bright blue of sea between the golden-coloured hills, and you are glad at a beautiful bit of scenery with such fine difference of colour. These peeps of the sea tell you the sands are not limitless-an idea which comes over you as you pass hillock after hillock of the same yellow sand, with tufts of rushes which never vary in colour-and that you are not shut out entirely from the world of life and stir.

You are wrong in thinking there is no life in such a dreary waste. Sit quietly on a hillock, and soon a rabbit will come and look out from a hole high up in the face of a steep sloping bank of sand in front of you; if you move you just catch sight of the little white "scut," as bunny retreats to warn his family. If you sit on, your approach is forgotten-you had not come along without bunny scouts seeing you-and you will presently see rabbits come from their holes in all directions. Some scamper aimlessly off, others sit up for very joy of living, and for delight in having such a paradise for their own, with rich feeding-ground close at hand in the fields. But, if it happens to be windy, and you feel the driven sand sting you sharply in the face, as it will then, never a rabbit will you see; he hears the roar of the wind outside his burrow, and lies close, perhaps by reason of thinking that in such a din his foe-inan, stoat, or weasel-may steal a march on him. Hares speed past you, and the whirr of the pheasant is not absent. You may be so fortunate as to see a Shellduck bringing her brood out of a deserted rabbit-hole, their home; she is taking the ducklings for a bathe and a swim in the sea. Watch them waddle across the beach, and you will soon see the little family, with the mother, tossing about in the tumbling waters. Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, in Shooting, writes of the Shellduck (Shellduck or Shelldrake): "We have seen a Shellduck, when the tide was low, unable to lead her brood to the

1 One of the Iris species; it has sharp-edged and sword-like leaves. It may be Iris fætidissima, although the blossom is not of the usual colour. 2 Tadorna cornuta.

sea, carry them on her back, each duckling holding on by a feather, having, while she lay down, climbed up and ensconced themselves with the greatest ease."

You will often startle a partridge with her little brood; and very pretty they are as they scurry off to hide in the rushes.

The solemn white owl loves the dunes, and a species of hawk hovers generally on the sea-side fringe of the dunes. I once had two from the dunes, and kept them for years: they became quite tame. The buzzard likes the dunes when small rabbits are about.

Of course, the green plover, the "peewit" is there, flying in circles over your head with plaintive cry, at times approaching quite close-so close that you hear the fan-like hum of the wings, and so like a fan that the French name the bird "Vanneau." Here and there you come across a flat stone, with a little heap of broken shells by it. It is one of the slaughterstones on which blackbird or thrush has cracked the shells of snails to get at the succulent food inside.

In the winter, when the sun is bright as it is at times even in this land-and there is a bite of frost in the air, a walk among the dunes is pleasant; but you have to walk with halfclosed eyes, the sand, with the rime on it, glistens and dazzles So. At this time you hear the "honck-honck" of the grey geese, chiefly the "white-fronted." and, I think, the "greyleg,"2 which visit us from icy northern lands, as they fly high in the air overhead in their well-known wedge-like flight. I wish I could tell of all the birds we find there, but I do not know them by name.

The beach, too, has somewhat of sadness about it, for up in the sand-hills, at its margin, partly embedded in the sand, are piled the wreckage of days gone by; and as you walk along it you come across spars or parts of hulls that tell of recent wrecks and human suffering. If you are laggard, and evening still finds you there, the sea looks black and the sand hills assume weird shapes; then it becomes uncanny, and you are glad to hasten your steps homeward; the only sound of life is a quick rustling of the rushes, now and again as a rabbit starts off frightened at your footsteps.

Such, then, is the scene amid which the ruins of the ancient Grange have remained so long hidden. The ruins, as you look upon them, add in your thoughts to the desolateness of the place. You wonder what catastrophe could have piled up mountains of sand over and around them, and driven the brethren back to the Abbey home. The catastrophe happened so long 2 Anser cinereus.

1 Anser albifrons.

ago, that it is difficult to realise that six hundred years wellnigh had passed since faces had looked out from those dormer windows, and since people had passed in and out of the dwelling, and went up the same steps we can go up to-day.

The dwellers there thought, when the fierce Welshmen from the hills came and destroyed their cattle, that worse could not befall them. But worse still was to come: the blinding, irresistible sand enemy came like an avalanche, to drive them away, and to hide for so long and so completely their home, that even the name of the Grange was no more to be seen in the Abbey Charters as of old; and the monks wondered, as they wandered over the desolate waste, where its position had been.

It is long since the brethren, hearing cries from the shipwrecked, used to hasten to the rescue; and it is long since the cry for help came wailing to the Grange from Susannah and her companions in their ill-fated voyage. No brethren hastened to their help while they battled for life in the furious surf, for even before this they had gone, driven away by a ruthless enemy, and the Grange lay hidden under its winding-sheet of sand, and the cries were unheeded.

Close upon six hundred years have passed since then, and yet we know the names of those who perished. They were Philip Filias, Thomas de Wallare, John le Rede, John de Chorchehey, Thomas de Penmark, Henry le Glovare, and a girl named Susannah.

The Abbot and Lord William La Zousche, Lord of Glamorgan, fought over the wreck, and the case was tried in the County Court, at Cardiff, on January 18th, 1333. The Abbot won, for the jury found that he had the right of wreck," a tempore quo

non extat memoria."

The great Abbot, probably John de Cantelo, became the owner of the boat, valued at 40s., three bales of wool, 60s., a small box, and a cask worth 8d.1 He was glad of even this windfall, so much had the sand impoverished him.

The rush which grows on the sand is the arundo arenaria;2 planting it is the only means of stopping the drifting of the sand. It grows freely, throwing out in all directions long underground stems or rhizomes, which bind and hold fast the hillocks, which would otherwise only too gladly accompany the wild winds from the sea.

For some reason, the planting of this rush was abandoned for years, and, in consequence, hundreds of acres of land were

1 To arrive at the value of these sums to-day we should multiply them by ten or fifteen.

2 Linnaeus. Now called Ammophila arundinacea.

covered by sand. The late Mr. Talbot tried hedges of brushwood in lines along the sands; but the sand made light of them, and, like boys who wishing to reach their prey over a wall, cause some to bend against it, as in leap-frog, then others to mount and over, piled itself against the obstruction, and soon enabled the later-coming sand to pass over and on in its career of destruction. Planting was afterwards resumed and the sands anchored.

I here offer my grateful thanks to Miss Talbot for her assistance in enabling me to uncover the ruins, and to Dr. de Gray Birch for allowing me to draw so freely as I have from his Histories of Margam and Neath Abbey; and I also beg to thank Mr. J. T. Micklethwaite for his valuable information, and Mr. Edward Roberts, Swansea, for his help in elucidating the meaning of place-names-in this he is a master.

These fragmentary notes are compiled in the hope that they may lead to the discovery of the actual site of Pendar. I had hoped to keep Pendar for Margam, but so far I have been unsuccessful.

I head these notes as First Part, hoping I may some day be able to give Part Two.

THE GOLDEN GROVE BOOK OF PEDIGREES. BY EDWARD OWEN, ESQ.

CONSIDERABLE attention has recently been directed to what is perhaps the best known collection of Welsh pedigrees still remaining in manuscript, the Golden Grove Book (in four volumes), now the property of the earl of Cawdor; and there appears to be fair hope of settling some of the questions to which it has given rise questions relating to its authorship and its authority.

In the number of our Journal for October, 1898 (5th Ser., vol. xv, p. 377), Mr. Stepney-Gulston drew attention to" this extremely interesting manuscript," gave a brief account of its arrangement, of its supposed compiler, of its past possessors and present owners; and suggested that if any enterprising person, society, or firm of publishers, obtaining permission, could see their way to the reproduction of the said Golden Grove Book in a printed form, it would undoubtedly prove of inestimable value to all those interested in the genealogical history of Wales.'

In the next volume but one of our Journal (5th Ser., vol. xvii, p. 277, October, 1900), in the course of an article under the somewhat misleading title, " Welsh Records," Mr. J. Pym Yeatman dealt with the authorship of the Golden Grove Book; and, whatever may be thought of that gentleman's argument, or of his conclusions, it must be admitted that his was the first real attempt to grapple with the important and fundamental questions of its source, date, and authorship.

66

Take," says Mr. Yeatman (p. 279), (p. 279), "the Golden Grove Book, almost the latest of the great [Welsh pedigree] authorities; that is obviously drawn from many sources, and a list is given to