Gwent Folk Tales E-Book

Christine Anne Watkins

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 243

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Gwent teems with stories of magic and strange transformations above and below ground. To tell them afresh, storyteller Christine Watkins has searched out of darkness through a maze of mountain mist and salvaged a wisewoman's ironstone from the river. Read on to discover how and why the star-browed ox walked through a dream, what happened when Pegws found herself without Reverend Ridge in Carmel Chapel, and how the owl flew in low over the foxgloves, trying to sense from which direction change might come . . . Gwent Folk Tales brings to life long-told tales and weaves them beautifully with stories told to the author by family members. Wonderfully illustrated and engaging, there is a tale for everyone.

Leseprobe

For the Gwent motherline… and the fatherline, too.

First published 2019

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Text © Christine Anne Watkins, 2019

The right of Christine Anne Watkins to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 8679 3

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Frank Olding

Introduction

1    Hen Wen

2    The Star-Browed Ox

3    The Waters Salt and Sweet (1)

4    The Waters Salt and Sweet (2)

5    Here I Am

6    ‘Up I Go!’

7    Gwarwyn-a-Throt

8    The Prophet

9    Tredunnock

10  The Whitson Henwife

11  Treacle

12  Pegws

13  Buttercups

14  Pwll Tra

15  Spirit Margaret

16  Conjuring at Home

17  The Secret of the Old Japan House

18  Mallt y Nôs

19  Black, White and Grey

20  Ten

21  Clean and Clever

22  Bailey and the Banksman

23  Red Cloak, Black Hat

24  The Sabbath of the Chair

25  Rhamanta! (or Nansi Llwyd and the Dog of Darkness)

26  The Giant

27  Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief

28  Pontypool

29  The Boar and the Salmon

Notes

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My joyful thanks go to the many people who have helped me research the stories in this book. First and foremost, to all the tellers, noters, mutterers and shouter-outers of the tales and fragments of tales. I’m glad I heard what they had to say.

To the work of Fred Hando, whose wonderful books and sketches of the ‘shy corners’ of the Gwent landscape were eagerly bought and passed between my gran and her sisters in the 1950s. Battered and irreplaceable, the books live on my shelves now; I often consult them and always find them inspiring.

To the people and organisations who are walking their talk, actively researching the land of Gwent and its histories. To the hugely knowledgeable Frank Olding for several things, from an iron-mountain walk to the foreword for this book. To Evelyn Jenkins for her excellent research on wells, especially Gwladys’ Well, and to the Twmbarlwm Society for boots-on-the-ground sheer hard work.

To the staff at Gwent Wildlife Trust, Newport Wetlands Nature Reserve, Pontypool Museum, Gwent Archives, the National Library of Wales and Monmouth Museum. To Richard Urbanski for help along the way.

Huge thanks to staff at The History Press and to Cath Little for making the link; and last but by no means least the heroic illustrators who have helped bring the pages to life: Katherine Soutar for the marvellous cover, Stuart Evans (pp. 17, 39, 51, 65, 69, 73, 77, 87, 111, 117, 125, 131, 135, 147, 155), David England (pp. 29, 35, 83, 103, 107, 123, 167, 170), Lily Constance Urbanska (pp. 13, 43, 57, 91) and Janusz Llywelyn Urbanski (pp. 23, 95, 161).

Diolch o galon.

FOREWORD

The honoured place of the cyfarwydd, the storyteller, in Welsh society is as old as Wales herself. In the fourth Branch of the epic medieval saga of the Mabinogi, Gwydion, the great warrior–magician, comes to the court of Pryderi, the hero of the Four Branches:

They entered, disguised as poets. They were made welcome. Gwydion was seated next to Pryderi that night.

‘Well,’ said Pryderi, ‘we would like to have a story from some of the young men over there.’

‘Our custom, lord,’ said Gwydion, ‘is that on the first night we come to a great man, the chief poet performs. I would be happy to tell a story.’

Gwydion was the best storyteller in the world. And that night he entertained the court with amusing anecdotes and stories, until he was admired by everyone in the court …

The old tradition still thrives in some corners of Wales and these folktales of Gwent reach far back to those ancient ways and customs. Christine Watkins stands firmly in that honoured lineage; she has taken up the mantle of Gwydion and the ancient storytellers who won the admiration of prince and pauper alike for their ‘amusing anecdotes and stories’.

In Gwent, in our small corner of Wales, the old stories have other resonances. These old folktales have survived persistent and determined attempts over the centuries to suppress the language and Welsh identity of our county. Thankfully, those attempts did not succeed but generations of the children of Gwent were deprived of their heritage and their birthright. In preserving and re-telling these tales for a new audience, Christine has righted an old wrong. Let her be ‘admired by everyone in the court’!

Frank Olding2019

INTRODUCTION

I spent the first part of my childhood in the village of New Inn, in the Eastern Valley of Monmouthshire, where many generations of my motherline and some of my fatherline had lived. Some had come from their fields and their trades to mine ironstone and coal, some were here long before, farming the land.

In the house built by my great-grandparents I could look out every morning through the front room window and see the Rising Sun – not the heavenly body, but the pub of the same name. In the back of the house, from the bedroom window of the room where I was born, I could see Mynydd Twyn-glas, and Mynydd Maen resting her shoulder. My mother told me that, if I woke in the night, rather than calling her I should just go over to the window and look out at the mountain, with its lighted ‘mast’, and I would know that all was well. Old Stone Mother, the mountain herself, never slept, even if flesh and blood ones did. Her dark skirts are threaded through with whinberry roots. Her blood flows iron, and through her body run shining seams of coal and long, deep caves, where sharks once swam and left their teeth embedded in her bones. She is wise and watchful. And sometimes she may make herself known to you, just a little. And when she does, it is by no means always a comfortable thing.

Some of the stories you will find here come from fragments my grandmothers tucked into their skirt waistbands, gathered with twists of wool as they walked the hill paths. Or, in later years, slipped under their hats as they selected a cream cake from the cake stand and drank their tea on a rare day off in town. Others have been carefully saved by different folk.

In researching this book I’ve done a lot of walking, remembering and some forgetting, too. When pathways disappear from view, you have to find a new route, a way round, or strike out in some other direction. I have needed to discover quite a few new routes through some of the stories in this book. Sometimes, when it has been the only way I could find to tell the tale, I have taken some of them in a new direction. I’ve tried to include stories from across the old county of Monmouthshire, the ‘pleasant land of Gwent’, from the mountains to the sea.

Looking down towards my home village from the mountain-top, you will see Llandegfedd Reservoir just a little further beyond. The reservoir was created in the early 1960s. Following a public inquiry, the farms and houses were acquired by compulsory purchase order and the water was pumped into the valley from the River Usk, since the only natural stream there is the little Sôr brook. For generations, my foremothers and fathers had walked the footpaths through the valley going about their daily business, visiting family, sharing news. Now their paths stop dead at the lake edge, reappearing on the far side. I’d need to be able hold my breath for a long time to walk their routes again.

The daffodils that my gran picked every year with her friends in the fields at Pettingale Farm now bloom and sway beneath the waves. If I look hard enough from the top of the mountain, I glimpse them.

Christine Anne Watkins2019

1

HEN WEN

She was certainly old. Her eyes were tiny and deep and they twinkled with something like ancient starlight journeying out through the cosmos. She knew all the paths over land and over water; she had crossed continents and gone rootling far and wide beneath the trees, poking her snout into the earth. And long ago she had dived down into the depths of the sea to rest and there she had stayed for many, many generations. Hen Wen, the Great Mother Sow, Old and Blessed, her name hidden deep in the oldest stories, herself hidden deep in the sea. Far beneath the waves time rolled on and at last a precious burden began growing in the womb of Hen Wen. And the time came when she felt the pangs of birth coming on, and she swam up from the deep to find a birthing ground. Yes, she came rootling, rummaging and grunting from deepest story, making her way to the muddy shoreline of Gwent Is Coed, with her burden of abundance and fertility. She approached from the south-east, and there was someone with her; a swineherd who had been on the lookout – and now he had her in his sights. The swineherd’s name was Coll, son of Collfrewy, and he had his work cut out for him, because really there was no herding this old sow. So he was trotting along beside her as best he could, making sure to keep his hand in contact with her bristly flesh at all times so as not lose track of her. He was determined to stick with it.

On came Hen Wen, until she reached Aust Cliff at the edge of the great river estuary. And when she reached the clifftop, she stood for a moment or so with her snout into the wind. There was the grey-blue sky; there was the grey-brown expanse of water, and there on the other side was Gwent Is Coed – Gwent below the wood, and the wood itself, stretching away into the distance. After spending a few moments savouring the breeze, Hen Wen trotted on. Quite straightforwardly she went, stepping out into thin air, right over the edge of the cliff. And Coll, who knew that he had to keep his hand on her whatever it took, he went over too. For that alone you could have said that he earned his place in song as one of the Three Powerful Swineherds of the Isle of Britain. But that wasn’t all. Down she plummeted, Hen Wen, a pig in space, serene in the fine fresh air for a couple of seconds until she entered the Severn Sea with the most enormous splash, setting off her own little tidal bore. And down went Coll too, since at that point he had no choice.

Once she was in the river, Hen Wen became hippo-like, revelling in the cool water, which was very soothing for her birth pangs. For a while she drifted and swayed and then she dived down deep. Slowly, ponderously, rolling her body this way and that, Hen Wen let the powerful currents carry her further out into the flow. And though the river is wide and the currents are fierce, they were no obstacle at all to Hen Wen. Coll held on and kicked his legs mightily. He held his breath in the murky greyness until he felt that his lungs were near to bursting. Then at last Hen Wen rose to the surface, right in the middle of the river, and floated for a while, looking around her with mild interest, blowing and breathing. Coll just about had long enough to take a couple of lung-wrenching gasps of air, then down went Hen Wen again, letting her pains, which were really quite monumental by now, be soothed and eased by the tides.

At last she beached, in the mud where the gulls were feasting by Aber Tarogi, at the place called Porth Is Coed – Portskewett. Not sure if he was dead or alive and still grimly clinging on to a handful of bristle, Coll lay for a moment blinking up at the sky, retching and spewing up water. But on went Hen Wen, hauling up through the squelching mud and Coll staggered to his feet and went slipping and slithering after her. She made her way unhesitatingly up from the water and around the edge of the great forest, the remains of which we now call Wentwood. She did not go in under the trees, but skirted around to the foot of Mynydd Llwyd and there she stopped and lay down. And her sides began to heave as a labour of vast proportions got under way; Hen Wen, old and blessed, farrowing abundance. Coll’s sides were heaving too, because he still hadn’t got his breath back and he was still full of river.

And Hen Wen grunted and rolled and squelched and then at last she squeezed out … a grain of wheat. Yes, one single little grain. It lay there on the damp mud, golden, complete. Within it golden fields stretched wide to the horizon, a whole land of plenty. And Hen Wen’s sides continued to heave until she birthed a second time, and this time out came a tiny little bee, complete and furry. And the newborn bee rested for a moment beside the grain of wheat, drying its wings in the sunshine. Coll knelt to watch it, his breath growing calmer and his gasps slowly dwindling into a few hiccups. As he watched for a moment it seemed to him that he saw a paradise of stalks grow up and wave golden, and wide meadows full of flowers bending with the weight of bees, and the air shining with pollen. And from that day the place where the grain and the bee were birthed has been called Maes Gwenith, the Wheatfield.

Hen Wen lay quiet for a while, tired from birthing such a generous landscape. The little grain of wheat was already burrowing down, burying itself in the rich ground. The little bee, as soon as its wings were dry, set its course, rose up into the air and went buzzing away. Hen Wen heaved herself to her feet. As she did so, Coll was sure he glimpsed the imprints of stalks of wheat on the sow’s hide, ears of corn marked out across her flesh and red clover and woundwort and knapweed. Hen Wen paused and looked at the swineherd for a moment, her little eyes twinkling from the depths. Then she turned her snout northwards along the coast and trotted on her way. Once again, Coll stretched out his arm and grasped her bristles, and kept pace by her side. They say Hen Wen never stopped till she reached Pembrokeshire, and then only long enough to birth another bee and a grain of barley. They say that in the North she bore fiercer fruits – she even bore a kitten who grew into a cat bold enough to challenge Arthur himself. It was a hard enough journey for the swineherd Coll, son of Collfrewy, but he stuck with it. And in Gwent Is Coed wheatfields waved abundant and golden as far as the eye could see, there was good bread to fill the belly of all those who hungered, and the air was heavy with the scent of wildflowers.

2

THE STAR-BROWED OX

An ox came walking steadily through the mud, out of the autumn mists. It was and was not an ox like any other. It was huge, it was white. It had a black mark shaped like a star high on its forehead. It came moving on, brushing past brambles and branches and nothing slowed it down at all. The mud was deep and gluey and splashed up where it walked, but the feet and legs and flanks of the ox remained white as could be. Because this was and was not an ox like any other.

The ox walked on into a dream. Yes, it just pushed the gossamer walls of the dream aside and shouldered its way in and stood there for a few moments. This dream was not just any dream, but one that was being dreamed by Gwynllyw, ruler of the land that lay between the River Rumney and the River Usk, the land bounded by the coastal plain to the south and the wooded hills to the north. Gwynllyw’s land was good land, with its seashores and plains and lofty wooded groves, but Gwynllyw had gone to sleep that night, and for many nights before, with one question on his mind. ‘Where oh where,’ wondered Gwynllyw, ‘in all my good lands can I build a dwelling?’ He had a dwelling already, of course, but he desperately wanted another one, a new and special one.

And as he had done for many nights already, he lay awake in the small hours wondering and fretting about this question. He could build pretty much anywhere he liked, really. Nobody was going to stand in the way of Gwynllyw; he had might and right on his side, he was a fighter, feared and admired on land and on sea. He could build anywhere he chose – but that was the problem because, try as he might, he had not been able to decide on a place. And he had started to think that it was almost as if he didn’t know how to decide, and that thought irked Gwynllyw, because if there was one thing he had always prided himself on, it was being decisive. He had decided he would have Gwladys for his wife the minute he laid eyes on her. And he’d got her – even though it hadn’t been straightforward and her father King Brychan Brycheiniog had taken some persuading. And the famous Arthur and his men had ambushed them and would have taken her from him if they could have. Yet that time was long past and now Gwynllyw almost seemed to have forgotten how to make choices: he was frozen by indecision, and he found it to be a strange and horrible feeling.

So really it was quite a wonderful thing that as Gwynllyw lay tossing and turning that night, half awake and half asleep, an angel had actually come and explained to Gwynllyw where he should build. Or rather, he had explained how Gwynllyw could discover the place. The angel had begun rather generally, talking about a riverbank and a little hill, and then he had gone on to describe how Gwynllyw would see a white ox there. He was just describing the ox in more detail – white, a black star below its horns, signalling all good things to those whose path it crossed – when the ox itself pushed its way into the dream and stood looking around with mild interest. At that point the angel’s descriptions became a bit redundant, because Gwynllyw could see quite well for himself. Still, the angel shuffled a few discreet steps to one side to avoid being barged into by the ox and stoutly persevered with the message. The land on which Gwynllyw found the ox, said the angel, would become his and he would cultivate it with the ox’s help. And as the angel drifted away, these words echoed on after him:

There is no retreat in the world such as you will find in this place which you are destined now to inhabit. Happy therefore is the place, and happier therefore is he who inhabits it.

Gwynllyw woke with those words still sounding in his mind. He remembered his dream very vividly. He fought hard to keep the details in the forefront of his thoughts, not let them fade away. He felt a surge of certainty and it was very welcome. It was clear to Gwynllyw now that he didn’t actually have to choose a place, he just had to choose to follow – unconditionally. And that is what he did the moment he opened his eyes. His retinue were dumbstruck when Gwynllyw announced then and there that he’d had a dream and that he was going to build a sacred dwelling in a place that would be indicated to him. He concluded the brief announcement by adding that he was handing over the running of his lands to his son, Cadoc, with immediate effect. Having made his decision known, Gwynllyw did not for an instant pause to doubt or reconsider. He strode off and began to wait and keep watch in likely places, by rivers next to hills. Throughout the months that followed, Gwynllyw never wavered in his determination. He had found the decisive feeling again and he liked it.

It was snowing lightly when Gwynllyw saw the ox. Without hesitation he began to follow and he continued to follow until at last they came to rest. There on wild land where no furrow had been cut, there on Stow Hill, Gwynllyw rolled up his sleeves and began the work of wattle and daub, raising his house. A house sacred to the glory of creation. When Gwynllyw’s son, Cadoc, saw his father toiling in the snow, raising the house of his dreams, he sighed – and even though he was very busy with all the new duties that had been handed over to him, he took time to come over and nod knowingly. Cadoc was a saintly individual with a tendency to say wise and noble things even when people hadn’t actually asked for his opinion. ‘Ah!’ said Cadoc. ‘Not to those who begin good things has glory been promised, but to those who persevere!’

Gwynllyw, who had been persevering for quite some time already, just smiled and continued and when Cadoc had gone away Gwynllyw whispered to himself:

There is no retreat in the world such as you will find in this place which I am destined now to inhabit. Happy therefore is the place, happier then is he who inhabits it.

And even when the snow turned to blizzard, Gwynllyw did not pause in his labours. For if the air was freezing, he, Gwynllyw, was unfrozen, and the way had opened before him at last.

Now all this time Gwladys, wife of Gwynllyw and mother to his children, observed the work of her husband. She said little, though she knew many things. She knew the ox paths; she trod them in her dreams. But Cadoc had words of wisdom to impart to his mother, too. When he began to speak to her concerning the importance of living a goodly life, not ruled by fleshly matters, Glwadys responded by setting up her own house of prayer a furlong or so away, and for a while that seemed to keep Cadoc at bay. She and Gwynllyw still bathed together in the River Ebbw, as often in the dead of winter as in summer, if not more often. Then they would return chilled to the bone, and did not easily heat up again but lay, four cold legs in a bed. But Cadoc still felt the need to continue advising them both on matters of flesh and abstinence. The upshot was that Gwladys moved another five furlongs away. She didn’t see much of Gwynllyw then, though occasionally she thought about Arthur and the ambush and days long past. But mostly Gwladys swam alone in the river; floated in a rare slow pool in the fast-flowing Ebbw, and her thoughts were of strawberries, hay and wild dog roses. The hay she used to dry her feet when she came up out of the river, the roses and the strawberries she took to the Lady’s altar and placed them there as an offering. When she returned to the river, she said:

There is no retreat in the world such as in this place which I am destined now to inhabit …

For the rest of her days she swam there, strong-boned and sturdy, like an ox at the plough. And whenever Gwladys dreamed, in her dreams it was summer.

When the sacred dwelling of Gwynllyw was complete, it was his final resting place. The deeds of Gwynllyw were felt to be great and strange and were spoken of long after his death. One of the best poets of the land began a great work in praise of Gwynllyw’s life. Unfortunately, he experienced writer’s block and keen though he was on his subject matter, he sat for the best part of a year trying and failing to write something that would speak about the glory of Gwynllyw, and his sacred dwelling on the hill. Writer’s block is a cruel thing, really; it dams inspiration not quite at the source, but very soon after. The poet sat and struggled all through the winter, which that year was particularly hard. If Cadoc had been on hand to deliver his words of wisdom about perseverance, the poet would probably have punched him.

But it must have been his destiny to write this work, because when he had been struggling for a year and a day and was lying on his back wrapped in a blanket feeling as if he would never be warm again, a high spring tide came flooding up the river, carrying all in its path. People ran, but the water was faster, and carried them away before they could reach the safety of higher ground. People and animals flailed and sank beneath the waves, houses were washed away, but as it turned out the house where the poet was holed up was one of a small number that were not washed away. Instead, as the waters began to rise and rush, the dam had held the poet’s inspiration in check burst – and then and there the great poem of wonder at the life of Gwynllyw began to flow from him. He started to write at the table, but as the waters rose he climbed a ladder and continued balanced on a rafter. He perched there for three whole days while his house was filled with waves, and when the waters finally receded the countryside all around was a muddy morgue. But the poet and his house had survived; spared, he supposed, precisely in order to write of the strange deeds and dreams of Gwynllyw.

3

THE WATERS SALT AND SWEET (1)

When I was a little girl in the 1960s I often travelled by rail on family holidays to visit my great aunts, who had decamped from Monmouthshire to live amongst the palm trees of South Devon. One of the first adventures on the journey began when the light disappeared with a whoosh, a dark world filled the window and my ears went quiet inside. The Severn Tunnel. And always the question not to think about … what if the sea comes pouring in on our heads?

This is a question that must have been confronted by the engineers who planned the tunnel, of course. It probably wasn’t ever very far from the minds of the hundreds of men who went down and did the actual spadework either. But as it turned out, it wasn’t so much the salt sea channel above them that the tunnel builders had to worry about. It was the sweet, winding waters deep in the earth that had long been running in their own secret and particular way.

In the coastal marshlands of Monmouthshire, large springs of bright clear water bubble up to the surface in several places. The rock strata that form the hills of Wentwood a little to the north – limestone at first, then old red sandstone – are cracked and broken beyond their base, and the water that runs down from them has found cunning subterranean channels. These channels gather and flow into the valley of the little Nedern brook as it passes on its way to the Severn. Now, it was known that the Nedern, rising as a small stream in the hills above Llanfair Discoed, would sometimes suddenly run dry, losing all of its water near the foot of the hills, only to burst out again just as suddenly at a place near Caerwent called ‘The Whirly Holes’. For longer than anyone could remember people had told tales about the Whirly Holes – but surely those were just little tales told to warn children not to play too near the water? Surely they couldn’t be of much relevance to the great endeavour of the tunnel-builders?