Visitors and the aged pony!
For many years Carreg Waldo was a mystery to visitors who knew nothing about Waldo Williams. Often the story is told of Scandinavian visitors trying to decipher the significance of the memorial stone. As the information was so sparse – and on seeing the mountain ponies in the vicinity – they concluded it must be there in memory of a notable stallion – a 67 year old stallion!
As a result, one of the first deeds of Cymdeithas Waldo Society was to place a plaque near the stone providing added information, so that no misunderstanding would ever occur again. The plaque was unveiled on September 30, 2010 – Waldo’s birthday – by his niece, Eluned Richards, with the approval of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority, the guardian of the surrounding landscape. It was Eluned who also unveiled the bluestone itself on May 20, 1978, when a large gathering was addressed by some of the nation’s great and good. Among them were national chaired bard, James Nicholas; the Quaker, Steffan Griffith; librarian, B. G. Owens and young revolutionaries, Emyr Llewelyn and Dafydd Iwan.
The placing of the stone was not without its difficulties. The original stone had to be returned from stonemason Hedd Bleddyn’s workshop at Llanbrynmair, in Mid-Wales, and re-laid across the River Banon, in the vicinity of Whitechurch, where it was still in use as a foot-bridge, and another stone chosen from this side of the mountain.
The Mynachlog-ddu mountain bailiff, Sid Jenkins, would often offer the view that the stone should really be placed with its back to the mountain in order to be in harmony with the cited quotation from the poem ‘Preseli’.