Floating Island at Hawkshead

In 1188 Gerald of Wales and Archbishop Baldwin went on a preaching tour to gain support for the Third Crusade. Their travels were written up in Gerald's The Journey Through Wales, which includes a good example of pre-Romantic description of mountains. When Gerald reached Snowdonia his interest centred not on the snowy peaks and cataracts, but on their usefulness as extensive grazing-grounds (illustrated with a quotation from Virgil) and some of the marvels you could apparently see there:

• A lake with a floating island, blown around by the winds
• Another lake in which the eels, perch and trout all had only one eye
• An eagle that waited to feed on men killed in battle, perched on a particular stone with a hole pierced through it where the eagle would clean and sharpens its beak.

Gerald repeats his facts about the lakes and the extensive pasture lands in a later work, The Description of Wales. Although there is no direct reaction to the mountain landscape in these books, the inclusion of these marvels gives a sense of how Snowdonia could still have been a source of some fascination even in the Middle Ages. And later on marvels like these might easily have inspired Romantic tales or poems. There is for example, a floating island in a poem by Dorothy Wordsworth. Here are some lines from 'Floating Island at Hawkshead: An Incident in the Schemes of Nature' (1820):

Once did I see a slip of earth
By throbbing waves long undermined,
Loosed from its hold--how no one knew,
But all might see it float, obedient to the wind;

Might see it from the verdant shore
Dissevered float upon the lake,
Float with its crest of trees adorned
On which the warbling birds their pastime take...