Castles in the Air

Next May my brother Don and his wife Mary are flying to London to attend her nephew's wedding. Don wants to take an extra week and go to Wales to see the famous castles, mostly in ruins, in that area. They came to my house to pick up three books I pulled off the shelf which give detailed descriptions of castles in Britain.

I spread the books out on the coffee table. While Don and I leafed through the pages, marveling at pictures of the huge ruins and locating castles on maps, Mary read the Dallas Morning News, as she sat on one of the little chairs I inherited from Mother. Mary does not want to drive around mountains looking at ruins; she will go just to please her husband.

Mary knows nothing about Wales. Is it part of England? Or, if part of Great Britain but a separate country like Scotland, why does it not have a parliament? Why did someone build all those castles during the Middle Ages? Mary has no idea of the turbulent history between the English and the Welch. She did not even know that the term "Welch" referred to the people of Wales.

I wish I could go in her place. I love history. Looking back on my life, I am grateful for many things. I read and acquired books on history, art, and architecture; then I journeyed to see the places I read about. Many things surprised me everywhere I went.

The only castle I saw in Wales was Cardiff, which I remember as mostly a Victorian reconstruction, a neo-Gothic fantasy embellished by the Marquis of Butte, a Welch version of Nieuw Schwanstein (spelling?), the often-photographed castle built by Mad Ludwig of Bavaria on a mountain in Bavaria. Today, reading one of my books before Don came, I found out that the walls of Cardiff Castle, now topped with 19th Century sculptured animals, were built in 1080 on the ruins of a ROMAN fort. It had a long and amazing history before I showed up.

The great age of castle building was the 12th Century. In Germany it seems as if every hill is crowned by a ruined castle; no village felt safe unless fortified against its neighbors. Then came the discovery of gun powder and cannons that could knock holes in thirty-feet thick castle walls. Thousands of castles fell into ruins for tourists like Don and me to climb up their crumbling stairways to the crenelated battlements.

Understanding today's events requires us to look back at what happened in the past. The ruins of numerous castles throughout Britain and Europe are reminders that we have made progress in cooperation between peoples. Some Welch still clamor for separation from England, but they are not going to fight for it.

It takes a long time to learn the lessons of history. Up through the 19th Century we were still building castles in this country. When my children were small, they played in the case mates of old Fort Wayne, built on traditional castle designs to protect Detroit from an invasion from Canada. On an Elderhostel I saw the fort in Savannah harbor, complete with moat, draw bridge, and portcullis; during the Civil War the garrison surrendered without firing a single cannon ball.

I remember wars hot and cold. I knew young Americans who died fighting Germans in World War II; then I went to Paris and sat in sidewalk cafes with German tourists drinking coffee at the next table. I remember fear during the Cold War. That dissolved without any armed conflict, and I made two trips to Russia.

Today no one builds castles. The stoutest of stone walls are no defense against missiles or hijacked airplanes. Even the Irish gave up on planting bombs in London. Sadly, Hamas fires missiles into Israel, and Israeli planes drop bombs on Gaza. Our only hope is that Muslim fanatics will realize that in today's world we are all neighbors. Somehow we must learn to live near each other without setting up walls, neither of stone nor in our minds.