For centuries the red foot-marks of savage conflict scarred and covered its wild waste.

Never before did so small a people make so stout, and desperate and protracted struggle for local independence and isolation.

Never did one produce a more strong-hearted and blind-eyed patriotism, or patriotism more poets to thrill the listeners to their lays with the intoxicating fanaticism of a national sentiment.

On that Border-land the white lambs now lie in the sun.

The Welsh sentiment is as strong as ever in the Snowdon shepherd, and he may not speak a dozen words of the English tongue.