Woodland Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland E-Book

Lisa Schneidau

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 263

Beschreibung

Once upon a time, most of Britain and Ireland was covered in woodland. Many of the trees have been cleared, but our connection with the wildwood remains. It is a place of danger, adventure and transformation, where anything could happen. Here is a collection of traditional folk tales of oak, ash and thorn; of hunting forests and rebellion, timber and triumph in battle, wild ghosts and woodwoses. Lisa Schneidau retells some of the old stories and relates them to the trees and forests in the landscape of our islands today.

Leseprobe

For my father, Oscar Schneidau, with love

Cover illustration: © David Wyatt

First published 2020

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Lisa Schneidau, 2020

The right of Lisa Schneidau 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 9577 1

Typesetting and origination by Typo•oglyphix, Burton-on-Trent

Printed and bound by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1   Wildwood

Niall and the Hag at the Well

Merlin

The Ancient Ones

The Rowan of Dubros

2   Royal Prerogative

Mad Sweeney

Robin Hood and the Beggar

A Test of Love

The Red King’s Deer

3   Hunter and Hunted

Herne the Hunter

The Vixen and the Oak

The Boar of Eskdale

The Man and the Nightingale

4   The Clearing in the Woods

Perceval

The Green Lady

The Giant with Seven Heads

5   The Other Ones

Tamlane

The Woodman and the Axe

The Swallowed Court

Pixy-Led

The Hound of the Hill

6   Escape to the Wild

Diarmuid and Grainne

Jack and the Green Man

The Flight of Birds

7   Tree Folk

Auld Cruivie

Three Wishes

The Gurt Vurm of Shervage Wood

Jeanie the Bogle

8   The Path Ahead

The Green Women of One Tree Hill

The Tree’s Revenge

The First Crop

The Woodland under the Sea

The White Hind of Hope

Story Sources and Further Reading

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lisa Schneidau trained as an ecologist. She has worked with wildlife charities all over Britain to restore nature in the landscape, in roles including farm advisor, river surveyor, political lobbyist and conservation director. She is also a professional storyteller, sharing stories that inspire, provoke curiosity and build stronger connections between people and nature. She lives on Dartmoor.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Where possible, I have drawn on multiple story sources for every traditional story retold here. I’m grateful to the folklorists, ecologists and authors whose work has heavily influenced this book, especially Katherine Briggs, Niall Mac Coitir, Oliver Rackham and Ruth Tongue. My thanks to the ever-generous and wondrous storytelling community; the audiences and school groups who have listened and shared the stories and given feedback; and all the storytellers who have collected and shared these tales in the telling down the generations. I hope that I have honoured their stories well here, and added something useful to the tradition.

Thanks to David Wyatt for his beautiful cover artwork, and to Nicola Guy at The History Press for all her support in bringing the book together.

Thanks in particular to Ronnie Conboy, Moira Houghton, Lisa Kenwright, Sam Lee, Karl Schneidau, Beccy Swaine, Ruth Testa and Nikki Walsh; and to Tony Whitehead, who has provided support, encouragement and inspiration throughout.

INTRODUCTION

It’s the end of February in south Devon, and hope is springing everywhere in the woods. The first of the tender green bluebell and ramsons leaves cover the ground, and hazel catkins are shaking out their pollen. The great-tit’s ‘tee-che tee-che’ call is heralding the new life to come, although the trees will be bare of leaves for a while yet. It’s been a cruel winter, and I am heartened to be here. The same woodland springtime has been happening in this place for centuries – perhaps even millennia. Wildlife is thriving here, yet this is not wildwood.

After the last great ice melted, ten thousand years ago, trees slowly started to spread across the islands of Britain and Ireland. Pollen records show that birch, aspen and willow came first, followed by pine, hazel, oak and alder, then lime and elm. Holly, ash, beech and hornbeam were more recent, but even they arrived many tree-lifetimes ago. Scientists describe the period around 4500 BC as our ‘climax wildwood’, before human activity started to change everything.

From oak-hazel woods to the Caledonian pinewoods, and from soggy alder and willow carr to graceful ash woodlands on limestone, our woodlands have always been a patchwork of different species, all determined by local soils and conditions. The land never had a continuous cover of trees: in our original ecosystems, gaps in the canopy would have been caused by tree death and grazing animals as well as water and altitude.

As human influence increased, so wider areas of Britain and Ireland were cleared for farming or used as wood pasture. Other areas gradually recolonised with trees, as different groups of people claimed land for agriculture and settlement. Woodlands were worked for timber, for tan-bark, for charcoal and coppice and fuel; they were used as hunting-grounds, to escape or to find food. No woodland was left untouched.

We are now among the least wooded countries in Europe. Only about 6 per cent of the UK and 2 per cent of Ireland is covered in native woodland. A similar area is planted with conifer forest, a relatively modern invention that has more in common with industrial crops, and limited wildlife value. Our woodlands are now mainly used for recreation and nature conservation, and we have lost many connections to woodland products and crafts. Most woodlands are privately owned and inaccessible to the public.

Yet still we are drawn to woodlands in our culture and our imaginations. One of the commonest practical responses to the dawning realisation of the climate and ecological emergency is to plant trees. Membership of organisations like the Woodland Trust and the Wildlife Trusts is growing, and politicians compete for the highest tree-planting target. Collectively, perhaps we are slowly starting to realise the importance of our woodlands, and their value to us, on many levels. We have a lot more to learn.

Our emotional relationship to woodlands is a complicated matter. Folk memories of woodlands may remind us of predators and danger, and of being ‘outside the village’ in wild places that may not be kind; but also of adventure and magical realms. What do our folk tales and our folklore tell us about this relationship, and do they hold any wisdom for us in our current predicament? These are the questions I have set out to answer in collecting the stories for this book.

Here are my own versions of thirty-two traditional tales about woodland from Britain and Ireland. I have chosen this geography because trees don’t respect political borders, and because of the ways in which the cultures of our countries share a common heritage. I am a great believer in re-wilding storytelling, and I have worked to honour the stories while bringing them alive in the context of nature and place.

I have hunted out stories from many different sources: folklore archives and collections, natural history literature, and of course listening to storytellers. Some tales are well known, others more obscure. Like all storytellers, I am grateful to those who have collected and told these stories all down the generations, known and unknown. I have tried wherever possible to pursue a story back to its oldest referenced source. A list of story sources and further reading is provided.

I have told many of these stories to different audiences, indoors and out in the field, sharing ideas and emotions that the stories provoke. Folk tales have their own personalities and idiosyncrasies. Some are darker than others, and the teller will need to decide which stories to share with very young ones.

Here, then, are fragments of woodland in folk-tale form. I hope this book will help to inspire and re-forge connections with our woodlands, past, present and future. Have fun reading these stories, try telling them, and let them work their magic on your emotions and your imagination, as they have worked on mine.

1

WILDWOOD

Bright the tops of the grove; constantly the trees

and the oak leaves are falling;

Happy is he who sees the one he loves.

attr. Taliesin, sixth century

Woodlands in Britain and Ireland that have been recorded continuously on maps since the sixteenth century are called ‘ancient’. These venerable fragments are the richest in flora and fauna of all our woodlands, although they have all been influenced by humans in some way. ‘Wildwood’ no longer exists in our islands.

But the idea of ‘wildwood’ is pervasive and persistent in our hearts, our culture and our folklore. Figures like the Green Man and the Woodwose haunt our art, literature and architecture, and the very act of going out to the woods takes us closer to the ‘wilderness’ that we both fear and crave.

Here are some of our traditional tales of wildwood and ancient beginnings.

NIALL AND THE HAG AT THE WELL

Niall is considered by many to be the first modern high king of Ireland. He was also called ‘Niall of the Nine Hostages’ after the captives held by him from people and lands he had conquered. Niall had many children and recent research has suggested that a high percentage of people in Ireland are directly related to him.

Tara, the seat of the kings of Ireland, is an ancient sacred site near Skryne in County Meath. Excavations nearby have unearthed giant oak pillars that probably came from the mixed broadleaved woodland that used to surround the Hill of Tara. Meath is now the least wooded county in Ireland, because the agricultural land is of high quality.

This story begins in a greenwood in the middle of the kingdom of Ireland. It was an ancient place, thick with oak trees and ash, wych elm and birch, honeysuckle, green moss and rich earth. It had been woodland since anyone could remember, and it covered the valley of a place called Tara.

Through the seasons of the year, and the circles of the years all through time, that great woodland held all of the hopes and dreams and wishes and fears of the kingdom of Ireland. In the very centre of the greenwood, in a glade they say was protected by the spirits, was a deep well of sacred, clear, cool water.

It was around the year 400, just before Christianity became widespread in Ireland, and the high king of Ireland, Eochaid Mugmedón, held his court at the Hill of Tara. He had three sons by his first wife, Mongfind. She was strong of thigh, strong of fist and strong of voice. Her sons were called Brian, Ailill and Fiachra, and all were fine young men.

But then the king took a second wife, Cairenn. She was beautiful, willowy, kind and eager to please other people for the sake of her king. Mongfind was jealous of her, and made no secret of the fact. She treated Cairenn as little more than a servant, and all the king did about it was to sit back and watch.

When Cairenn was expecting her first child, Mongfind ordered her to go to the woods and haul water from the sacred well in the centre of the greenwood, knowing what a heavy job it was. It was there in the centre of the greenwood, in the clearing by the sacred well, on soft green moss and brown earth, that Cairenn gave birth, before her time, to a tiny baby: a beautiful son.

Cairenn was scared for his safety at court, scared that Mongfind would find him and kill him. So she asked her friend Torna, the poet, to look after the little prince. Torna and his wife brought him up as their own. They called him Niall.

Time went by, and Niall grew up to be a strapping lad with a gleam of mischief in his eye. He was one of those young men who was sure he knew the right thread of every matter. Although many of Niall’s ideas didn’t match the harsh reality of the world, you couldn’t help but love his wild eyes and his sincerity and his curiosity for life, and hope he didn’t trip up too many times on his way to wisdom. And he had a way with words – what a way with words! For how could he be otherwise, brought up by the king’s poet, travelling around ancient Ireland with all its magic and mysteries?

In his eighteenth year, Niall vowed to return to the court at Tara, free his mother from the clutches of the king’s first wife, and claim his birthright as the son of the high king of Ireland. At midsummer, when the sun was high and the leaves were strong and hearty and the acorns were beginning to form, Niall took his horse and his ash staff and his travelling cloak, and he made his way back to Tara. It was there that his quick wit and turn for poetry, and his complete innocence and naivety, made Niall very popular among the king’s people.

Now Mongfind had two people to be jealous about. She was determined that one of her own sons should be the next king of Ireland, and she forced the issue. ‘Husband! Are you scared of the future? Now is the time when you should name your successor, the one who is to come after you as the true high king, the real man.’

The high king was ready for such a challenge, and he had his own thoughts: but he wanted to set a test for his four sons. He asked Sithchenn, the druid, his right-hand man, to devise a contest that would reveal the next true king – a test that would find the one who had the stoutest heart, the highest honour and the strongest compassion.

Sithchenn stroked his long beard and pondered, and sifted through all his wisdom. Then he went from the court and did the best thing he could think of. He invited the four brothers into his house at the edge of the greenwood. Then he went outside and went round to the back of the house with a bow drill. He fitted the stick to the stout leather and started to drill, tended the first sparks of fire with hay and dry leaves, and soon there was a merry fire that took to the house like a torch, with all the brothers still inside. Sithchenn sat on the branch of a nearby tree and watched.

Now this situation was not all that it seems. Sithchenn was a blacksmith, and the test he had devised was to set fire to his smithy and see what each of the lads chose to rescue. He watched as Brian came out with a sword, Ailill with a bundle of wood, and Fiachra – thoughtfully – with a pail of beer.

But Niall was nowhere to be seen. Sithchenn and the three brothers watched with horror as the cottage continued to burn, and there was still no Niall. They waited. And waited.

At last, a slightly charred Niall-shaped figure emerged from the cottage – hefting the anvil, the heart of the forge, from which it could be built new again. So it was Niall who was proclaimed the true leader.

Mongfind was not happy, and she would not accept the druid’s decision. ‘That’s ridiculous. As any fool would know,’ she said, ‘the sword is the most valuable!’

So Sithchenn the druid offered to set another task for the four brothers. This time he forged each of them a sword and sent them out hunting one by one into the great greenwood of Tara, to see what they could find.

They each went off in different directions, but soon the tangles of the brambles and bracken at their feet and the tiny criss-crossed paths through the wood meant that they all lost their way in the trees.

Now, whether it was the magic of the place, their thirst, or simply their terrible lack of direction, each one of the brothers was eventually drawn towards a clearing at the centre of the greenwood, and in the clearing there was a well.

The first brother, Brian, got to the clearing, and he could see that standing by the well, and blocking the way, was a woman. To his eyes, she was harsh and coarse: one of the commoners who didn’t know any better in life. Her clothes were ill fitting and patched and hadn’t been washed in a good while. Her feet were bare and calloused; and birds had been nesting in her raven-coloured hair.

She moved towards him, and he could see that under her dirt and filth her green eyes were sparkling. She hissed, ‘A kiss, sir! A kiss for some water!’ Her breath was so foul that he nearly lost his balance.

‘Eugh! No, madam, I can think of nothing worse,’ said Brian, and he went on his way, her laughter ringing in his ears as he went.

The same happened with the second brother, Ailill, and he beat a hasty retreat from the clearing as soon as he was challenged by the hag.

By the time the third brother, Fiachra, found the clearing and the well, he was thirsty. There barring his way was a woman; at least he thought it was a woman … or was it a very large crow? Her eyes were a little too piercing, her clothes were black, her gaze was hooked and hungry … A warrior should not get too close to such a spirit. But to turn away would be to show fear, and that he would never do.

‘A kiss, sir,’ she croaked.

‘Why of course, madam,’ he said, closing his eyes and giving her the slightest dainty peck on the cheek, and then waiting expectantly.

‘You think that’s enough?’ she spat. She stepped aside and Fiachra strode past … only to find himself at the other side of the clearing, behind where they had been standing. He walked towards the centre again … only to find himself, once again, in a different place. The crow-woman cackled and it echoed round the trees. Fiachra reflected that he had done his part, and maybe wasted enough of his royal time here … and he retreated into the trees, in search of a more generous welcome fit for a prince of the realm.

And finally here was Niall, striding through the forest, cutting the woodbine and the ivy with his sword, slashing this way and that, completely determined but without the foggiest clue of what he was looking for, let alone how to find it. And here was Niall, standing at the edge of the glade and taking in the whole scene, quick as a flash. Clearing. Sunlight. Well of water.

As Niall scanned the scene, he felt a strange flutter of recognition across his skin and his soul at this precious place. Somehow, he knew it. Had he been here before?

He was alone in the clearing. There was a well, and he was thirsty. He stepped forward, licking his lips; then from the shadows, seen and yet unseen, the figure of a woman appeared.

She had neither strength of thigh or fist, nor willowy beauty. She was like no woman he had ever met: he wondered if she was entirely human. Bones were plaited in her filthy hair and knotted around her waist, and she wore a badly skinned hare over her head in the manner of a hood. She was wild and dirty and elemental, made of the earth, completely at one with the greenwood.

‘A kiss! A kiss for some water!’

Niall was under the spell of this place, and anything seemed possible. He took a deep breath, took the stinking form into his arms, closed his eyes, and pressed his lips to hers.

She stepped back then, taking his hands, and he opened his eyes. Standing there was an ordinary young woman, dark curling hair and twinkling green eyes. And yet, and yet … she was not ordinary at all. She stood tall and straight and confident in this magical clearing, strong as oak, graceful as ash, deathless as the yew tree. Next to her, Niall noticed a small wooden harp propped against the well.

She talked straight, but her voice sang. ‘Niall, I give you all of myself, that is the sovereignty of all the land of Ireland. You will be high king of a royal and proud line. The water of this well, and the love of this place, will flow through you and all of your bloodline. And maybe … maybe … you might get me as well. If I feel like it.’

And so in that great greenwood of Tara, at midsummer, the kingship was secured and Niall (whom they later called Niall of the Nine Hostages) made his most important alliance of all: he married the land itself, and so found the heart of all that was to come.

MERLIN

Merlin is a shadowy and enigmatic figure in British folklore, and I think this suits him very well. He dances through the Matter of Britain as sage, prophet, shape-shifter, trickster and occasionally stern teacher to Arthur, the high king of Britain. There are several different versions of Merlin’s story, which have been woven together and lovingly reimagined by authors since Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century. According to the stories, Merlin was born of a mortal mother and a fairy father; he prophesied the coming of Arthur, and he helped Utha Pendragon win the queen of Cornwall and father the new high king. One story tells how Merlin’s lover Nimue tricked him to his death by trapping him by magic inside a hawthorn tree.

But here I would like to consider a different Merlin: Myrddin, a bard who lived in the sixth century, and who escaped to the woods and became a hermit, flirting with madness. The story is derived from a lesser-known work by Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Life of Merlin. It is likely that a large area of wildwood still existed in the Scottish borders at the time.

Could this be a manifestation of the Woodwose, our mythical wild man of the woods? Here is the magician who has lost control and given himself up completely to the elements and the land. He is wild man in the wildwood: he is truly outside of civilisation and much more content as a result, despite all the dangers. Perhaps as an elder of his craft, Merlin remembers something the rest of us have forgotten.

Peredur, prince of north Wales, and Gwenddolau, king of Scotland, were at war. They met in battle many times. The battle at Arthuret, near Carlisle, was the bloodiest – and in the thick of the fight, all three of Peredur’s younger brothers were slain.

For Merlin, this battle was different to the others. He let the stories of all the warriors and their families seep under his skin and into his sensibilities, and he re-lived their horrors every day. He could no longer draw a tune from a harp or a meaning from a bird. Half-crazed, he fled into the great wood of Caledon and he became a hermit there.

Merlin walked the woods, learning the ways of the animals and birds and their language, eating nothing but berries and roots. His stories from this time were little more than one long, bitter complaint at the unfairness of life, especially in the winter when food became scarce.

After a year, Merlin’s sister, Ganieda, who was queen at the nearby court of King Rodarch of Cumbria, was worried and sent men to search for her brother. Most couldn’t find him, because Merlin was better at woodcraft than they were. One man, however, after many false trails and weeks of searching, came to a hill where the whole canopy of the woods spread out before him, and crab-apple trees grew all around. A young wolf lay fast asleep in the grass. Next to the wolf was Merlin, wild of hair and beard, lying naked and emaciated and complaining to the sky and the apple trees and the birds around him.

‘Now, my friend the wolf, there is no food and no comfort; hard hunger has weakened both of us.’

The watching man quietly took his harp and started to play a tune. It was a lament from Ganieda at the plight of Merlin and how she was sick with worry; she had been right, he was in danger. Merlin had not heard music for a long time, and it tugged at his heart. He asked the singer to lead him to King Rodarch’s court.

Merlin was glad to see his sister; but the change in noise and pace of life at court was too much for him after a year in the woods, and his madness increased. The king offered him gifts if he would stay. Merlin was about to reply, when he was distracted: he pointed to his sister Ganieda and laughed.

‘What are you laughing at, madman?’ demanded the king.

‘I’m laughing at that leaf in my sister’s hair,’ replied Merlin. ‘I know how it got there. It was less than an hour ago that she was lying in the woods with her lover. Ha!’

The king was furious and looked to his wife for an explanation. ‘He has taken leave of his senses,’ said Ganieda hurriedly, blushing. ‘Let me show you just how mad my dear brother has become, and how little you should believe him.’

She called a young boy of the court to her. ‘Merlin,’ she demanded, ‘tell me how this boy will meet his death.’

‘That’s easy,’ said Merlin. ‘He will fall from a high place.’

Ganieda had the boy led away, his hair cut off and his clothes changed. Then she arranged for the same boy to be brought before Merlin. ‘Brother, tell me now how this boy will meet his death.’

Merlin laughed and said, ‘He will hang from a tall tree.’

Ganieda now had the same boy led away and put into girl’s clothing. She then called for the ‘girl’ and asked her brother: ‘Now foretell the manner of this girl’s death.’

‘Girl or boy,’ said Merlin, ‘she will die in a river.’

‘You see,’ said Ganieda, turning to her husband, ‘he has predicted three different deaths for the same child,’ and now it was the king’s turn to laugh.

Merlin made his preparations and left the court again for the great wood of Caledon. At the gates of the court, despite his knowledge of her secret affair, Ganieda fell down on her knees and begged him not to go. ‘Must I wait forever if you will not return? What is to become of your poor sister?’

‘The nut-rich woods are far richer a place than all the king’s court,’ said Merlin. ‘You will be fine.’

Weeks turned into months, months turned into years, and there was no news from Merlin. The young boy for whom Merlin had prophesied three different deaths grew into a strong young man who loved hunting. One day in the woods, he was chasing a stag when he found himself riding down a hill that was too steep. His horse stumbled and the lad fell down the hill, catching his foot in the branch of a tree, and dangling with his head submerged in the river that ran below. In this way, he did die a threefold death – by falling, hanging from a tree and drowning. So Merlin had been right all along.

Merlin continued to live in the woods that he loved better than any court or community. Very occasionally he was seen by travellers in the woods, lying among the trees and looking up to the sky, mumbling. On one occasion he was seen at the head of a great procession of stags, hinds, foxes, badgers and stoats, with Merlin himself riding a great antlered stag and leading them through the trees.

He only returned one more time to court, to attend a wedding. Queen Ganieda begged him not to return to the woods until winter was out, and he said, ‘The conditions may well be bad this winter. If you want me to be safe, build me a cabin in the woods, but let it have great windows so that I can see out to the stars and read their secrets. In this way I shall be able to foretell the future.’

Merlin set off again for the woods, and Ganieda sent men to build the cabin in a place of Merlin’s choosing. She visited her brother often then, on his own terms, and they had many discussions about what he had seen in the stars. Merlin even foretold the future of Britain:

What is this madness of the Britons, always greedy for something more? They won’t crave peace, but, goaded by fury, they begin civil wars and fight their own kind …

In time, Taliesin, the greatest of bards, also joined Merlin in that cabin in the great wood of Caledon, and they shared stories of the wondrous events that they had lived through and the times that were yet to come. Shortly after Taliesin arrived, a new spring of water burst out of the ground near to Merlin’s cabin, and as the hermit drank from the clear, cool water, his madness departed from him at last.

All that was left was to enjoy the greenwood, the wonders of nature and the conversation of good friends. Ganieda eventually joined Merlin and Taliesin again, and their prophecies travelled up through the clear air, through the trees and out into the starry night above the islands of Britain.

For all we know, they are talking there still.

THE ANCIENT ONES

This story has many correspondences across Welsh and wider British and Irish mythology. I was sorry to discover that owls are not particularly intelligent birds in real life. However, this story is about respect for elders and ancestry, not necessarily wisdom!

The Owl of Cwm Cowlyd would have once hunted through unbroken woodland cover across Wales. Only fragments of this woodland now remain. What stories and memories these places and their plants and animals hold, and how much we have forgotten …

There was an old golden eagle in the woods of Gwernabwy, nesting on a rocky crag that rose out of the trees. He was so old that even he couldn’t remember how many generations of children he had brought into the world with his mate. But then his mate died, and the old eagle soared far over the land, carrying his grief for the loss of his best friend.

He waited for death to come to him, too, but no death appeared. Another year came around. The days lengthened and the sun shone, and the eagle was lonely. ‘Perhaps I should find another mate,’ he thought. ‘I should like to find someone who is advanced in years like me; someone whose family roots run deep through this land.’

The eagle had heard about an old owl nearby, the owl of Cwm Cowlyd, but he wanted to know more about her. So he went to an old friend of his, the stag of Rhedynfre, in a great oak woodland, and asked him how old the owl was.

The stag said, ‘See this ancient oak tree we stand beside? I remember when this tree was an acorn. They say that an oak tree takes three hundred years to grow, three hundred years to live and three hundred years to die – so I am very old. But the owl of Cwm Cowlyd has been old since I was a tiny calf. I do have a friend who is much older than I am, and he is called the salmon of Llyn Llifon. Why don’t you ask him what he knows about the history of the owl?’

The eagle flew to Llyn Llifon, to the water’s edge, and there he found the salmon. He asked him how old the owl was.