High in the Black Mountains of Wales on the borders of Gwent and Powys, stands Crug Dial, the Cairn of Revenge. This remembers an episode in 1135 when the Norman Lord Richard de Clare was returning home after a visit to his colleague Brian de Wallingford at his castle in Abergavenny. De Clare was a member of one of the most powerful of the Norman Marcher families, related to William the Conqueror himself and extremely rich, and he seems to have behaved that day with a rash confidence: for according to tradition he dismissed de Wallingford's escort as he approached the mountains and entered the dark valley of Crwyne Fawr, thick with beech forests, accompanied only by a few attendants. There, in that remote and dangerous place, a band of Welsh partisans, commmanded by Iorwerth ap Owain of Caerleon, ambushed the party. None of the Normans, we are told, escaped-even the poor musicians died. On the bare mountain ridge above the forest the Welsh erected that cairn to commemorate the day.154