Welsh Fairy Tales Part 12

The same two elves or dwarfs, who had brought him into fairyland, were chosen to conduct him back. When they had led him again through the underground pa.s.sage into the sunlight, they made him invisible until he arrived at his mother's cottage. She was overjoyed to find that no wolf had torn him to pieces, or wild bull had pushed him over a precipice.

She asked him many questions, and he told her all he had seen, felt, or known.

When he rose up to go, she begged him to stay longer, but he said he must keep his word. Besides, he feared the rod of the monks, or his daddy, if he remained. So he made his mother agree not to tell anything--not even to his father, as to where he was, or what he was doing. Then he made off and reported again to his playmates in fairyland.

The King was so pleased at the lad's promptness in returning, and keeping his word, and telling the truth, that he allowed him to go see his mother as often as he wanted to do so. He even gave orders releasing the two little men from constantly guarding him and told them to let the lad go alone, and when he would, for he always kept his word.

Many times did Elidyr visit his mother. By one road, or another, he made his way, keeping himself invisible all the time, until he got inside her cottage. He ran off, when anyone called in to pay a visit, or when he thought his daddy, or one of the monks was coming. He never saw any of these men.

One day, in telling his mother of the fun and good times he had in fairyland, he spoke of the heavy yellow b.a.l.l.s, with which he and the King's sons played, and how these rolled around.

Before leaving home, this boy had never seen any gold, and did not know what it was, but his mother guessed that it was the precious metal, of which the coins called sovereigns, and worth five dollars apiece, were made. So she begged him to bring one of them back to her.

This, Elidyr thought, would not be right; but after much argument, his parents being poor, and she telling him that, out of hundreds in the King's palace, one single ball would not be missed, he decided to please her.

So one day, when he supposed no one was looking, he picked up one of the yellow b.a.l.l.s and started off through the narrow dark pa.s.sageway homeward.

But no sooner was he back on the earth, and in the sunlight again, than he heard footsteps behind him. Then he knew that he had been discovered.

He glanced over his shoulder and there were the two little men, who had led him first and had formerly been his guards. They scowled at him as if they were mad enough to bite off the heads of tenpenny nails. Then they rushed after him, and there began a race to the cottage.

But the boy had legs twice as long as the little men, and got to the cottage door first. He now thought himself safe, but pus.h.i.+ng open the door, he stumbled over the copper threshold, and the ball rolled out of his hand, across the floor of hardened clay, even to the nearly white-washed border, which ran about the edges of the room. It stopped at the feet of his mother, whose eyes opened wide at the sight of the ball of s.h.i.+ning gold.

As he lay sprawling on the floor, and before he could pick himself up, one of the little men leaped over him, rushed into the room, and, from under his mother's petticoats, picked up the ball.

They spat at the boy and shouted, "traitor," "rascal," "thief," "false mortal," "fox," "rat," "wolf," and other bad names. Then they turned and sped away.

Now Elidyr, though he had been a mischievous boy, often willful, lazy, and never liking his books, had always loved the truth. He was very sad and miserable, beyond the telling, because he had broken his word of honor. So, almost mad with grief and shame, and from an accusing conscience, he went back to find the cave, in which he had slept. He would return to the King of the fairies, and ask his pardon, even if His Majesty never allowed him to visit Fairyland again.

But though he often searched, and spent whole days in trying to find the opening in the hills, he could never discover it.

So, fully penitent, and resolving to live right, and become what his father wanted him to be, he went back to the monastery.

There he plied his tasks so diligently that he excelled all in book-learning. In time, he became one of the most famous scholars in Welsh history. When he died, he asked to be buried, not in the monk's cemetery, but with his father and mother, in the churchyard. He made request that no name, record, or epitaph, be chiseled on his tomb, but only these words:

WE CAN DO NOTHING AGAINST THE TRUTH, BUT ONLY FOR THE TRUTH.

XIV

THE WELSHERY AND THE NORMANS

Though their land has been many times invaded, the Welsh have never been conquered. Powerful tribes, like the Romans, Saxons and Normans, have tried to overwhelm them. Even when English and German kings attempted to crush their spirit and blot out their language and literature, the Welsh resisted and won victory.

Among the bullies that tried force, instead of justice, and played the slave-driver, rather than the Good Samaritan's way, were the Normans.

These brutal fellows, when they thought that they had overrun Wales with their armies, began to build strong castles all over the country.

They kept armed men by the thousands ready, night and day, to rush out and put to death anybody and everybody who had a weapon in his hand.

Often they burned whole villages. They killed so many Welsh people that it seemed at times as if they expected to empty the land of its inhabitants. Thus, they hoped to possess all the acres for themselves.

They talked as if there were no people so refined and so cultured as they were, while the natives, good and bad, were lumped together as "the Welshery."

Yet all this time, with these hundreds of strong castles, bristling with turrets and towers, no Englishman's life was safe. If he dared to go out alone, even twenty rods from the castle, he was instantly killed by some angry Welshman lying in ambush. So the Normans had to lock themselves up in armor, until they looked like lobsters in their sh.e.l.ls. When on their iron-clad horses they resembled turtles, so that if a knight fell off, he had to be chopped open to be rid of his metal clothes.

Yet all this was in vain, for when the Norman marched out in bodies, or rode in squadrons, the Welshery kept away and were hidden.

Even the birds and beasts noticed this, and saw what fools the Normans were, to behave so brutally.

As for the fairies, they met together to see what could be done. Even the reptiles shamed men by living together more peaceably. Only the beasts of prey approved of the Norman way of treating the Welsh people.

At last, it came to pa.s.s that, after the long War of the Roses, when the Reds and the Whites had fought together, a Welsh king sat upon the throne of England. Henry VIII was of Cymric ancestry. His full name was Henry Tudor; or, in English, Henry Theodore.

Among the Welsh, every son, to his own name as a child, such as Henry, William, Thomas, etc., added that of his father. Thus it happens that we can usually tell a man by his name; for example, Richards, Roberts, Evans, Jones, etc., etc., that he is a Welshman.

When a Welshman went into England to live, if he were a sister's son, he usually added a syllable showing this, as in the case of Jefferson, which means sister's son. Our great Thomas Jefferson used to boast that he could talk Welsh.

So the living creatures of all sorts in Wales, human beings, fairies, and animals took heart and plucked up courage, when a Tudor king, Henry VIII, sat on the throne.

Now it was Puck who led the fairies as the great peacemaker. He went first to visit all the most ancient creatures, in order to find out who should be offered the post of honor, as amba.s.sador, who should be sent to the great king in London, Henry Tudor, to see what could be done for Wales.

First he called on the male eagle, oldest of all birds. Though not bald-headed, like his American cousin, the Welsh eagle was very old, and at that time a widower. Although he had been father to nine generations of eaglets, he sent Puck to the stag.

This splendid creature, with magnificent antlers, lived at the edge of the forest, near the trunk of an oak tree. It was still standing, but was now a mere sh.e.l.l. Old men said that the children of the aborigines played under it, and here was the home of the G.o.d of lightning, which they wors.h.i.+ped.

So to the withered oak, Puck went, and offered him the honor of leaders.h.i.+p to an emba.s.sy to the King.

But the stag answered and said:

"Well do I remember when an acorn fell from the top of the parent oak.

Then, for three hundred years it was growing. Children played under it. They gathered acorns in their ap.r.o.ns, and the archers made bows from its boughs.

"Then the oak tree began to die, and, during nearly thirty tens of years it has been fading, and I have seen it all.

"Yet there is one older than I. It is the salmon that swims in the Llyn stream. Inquire there."

So of the old mother salmon, Puck went to ask, and this was the answer which he received.

"Count all the spots on my body, and all the eggs in my roe--one for each year. Yet the blackbird is older even than I. Go listen to her story. She excels me, in both talk and fact."

And the blackbird opened its orange-colored bill, and answered proudly:

"Do you see this flinty rock, on which I am sitting? Once it was so huge that three hundred yoke of oxen could hardly move it. Yet, today, it hardly more than affords me room to roost on.

"What made it so small, do you ask?

"Well, all I have clone to wear it away, has been to wipe my beak on it, every night, before I go to sleep, and in the morning to brush it with the tips of my wing."