Myddfai Herbs

 

A Welsh Herbal has 21 different stories about Welsh culture, ranging from traditional myths and legends, historical tales, to contemporary essays. Below is one of the most popular traditional stories - The Fairy Salve, followed by the legendary Welsh wizard, Merlin. Next is found The Woodcutter - a contemporary children's story and finally included here is the story of Alice Liddell.
 

The Fairy Salve
 

 

An old couple named Huw and Bet travelled to Aberystwyth to hire a maid at the mid-winter fair. When they arrived at the hiring-place, they saw a young girl standing alone with a sweet face so they decided to choose her. The couple spoke to the young girl, who agreed to work for them. She told them her name was Elin.

The three lived happily on the farm on the hills overlooking Aberystwyth. In the long winter evenings Elin and her mistress would sit weaving while Huw sang and recited to the strumming of his harp.

When summer came with long and light evenings, Elin could no longer stay in the kitchen. She took her spinning-wheel to the stream in the meadow, where she worked and sang.

The fairies came and helped her to spin, but Elin said nothing of this at home lest
her helpers should be displeased. Huw and Bet knew nothing of the fairies' work, but when they saw all the wool Elin had spun, one would look at the other and cry, "We have indeed been fortunate in hiring so good a maid as Elin."

Winter came, and Elin helped her mistress to weave during the long evenings. Spring came and Elin was with them no more. They looked everywhere for her and eventually wondered if the fairies had taken her. There was no way of knowing as mortals could not see into the fairy world.

 

One stormy winter's night Bet was sitting alone in the farmhouse when someone knocked at the door Bet told her visitor to enter. A tall man out of breath with running, came in and asked Bet to go with him over the hillside.

"Why?" asked Bet in astonishment. "I need your help!" exclaimed the man, “and there are others too who need your help."

Bet was the most generous of women. As soon as she heard that someone needed her help, she threw her cloak over her shoulders, pausing only to raise the hood over her head, bowed down in the face of the storm and followed the stranger up the hill. Bet had known the paths from childhood but on this particular evening she seemed to be following a new one.

She kept close behind her companion and followed him into a great cavern in the side of the hill. At the far end of the cave was a lofty doorway. The man, after pausing to unlock the heavy studded door, stood aside for Bet to enter.

When her eyes had grown familiar with the light, Bet saw that she was in a spacious room with splendid furnishings. There was a four-poster bed with golden curtains. On it lay a beautiful lady and her little baby.

"Take care of them," said the man, and Bet ministered to the two who needed her help.

"This will be your room," said the man, opening the door of a smaller room. Bet entered. The table was laid, with all manner of good food upon it. In her room she found all the things that she needed. She was most surprised, for she could see no servants or anyone who could have prepared for her wants.

"I do not understand," muttered Bet to herself. "Perhaps I am growing old but in truth I do not understand."

One morning the man came to Bet and said: "In future when you bath the little baby, place some of this eyebright salve on his eyes. Be very careful you do not put any on your own eyes. Should you do so, evil will befall you."

"I will take care, sir," said Bet.

 For several days Bet was very careful. She rubbed the eyebright salve over the baby's eyes, and at once washed her hands. "Evil will befall me if it reaches my eyes," Bet reminded herself each day. One day Bet had bathed the baby and placed the salve on his eyes. Suddenly her left eye began to itch. Without thinking of the evil that might befall her, Bet raised her hand to soothe her eye. Some salve upon her fingers caused a strange thing happened; with her right eye she saw everything as she had seen it before, however with her left eye, she saw things altogether differently.

To her right eye the room appeared as beautiful and luxurious as before. To her left eye it appeared as a damp miserable cave, not fit to live in. Bet looked round and where the four-poster bed had stood with its beautiful hangings, she saw a clump of ferns and bracken. Bet stepped forward and looked more closely at the baby and the young woman who lay upon the bed.

"Elin!" cried Bet. "My dear, dear maid. What are you doing here?"

Before Elin could answer, Bet could see with her left eye that they were not alone. There were many servants, maids, and pages moving about the cave, as light in their movements as the passing of dandelion tufts.

"Mistress! Mistress!" cried Elin. "Yes, it is I Elin, but tell me, how is it that you know me?"

Bet told how she had by accident rubbed the salve into her eye.

"We must be careful," said Elin in a whisper, "that my husband does not get to know of it."

"So that strange man is your husband!" Bet exclaimed. She did not know whether she was glad or sorry at Elin's news.

"I will tell you all about it this evening, when he is safely away."

For Bet the hours dragged slowly by as she was so impatient to hear Elin's tale.

"This is my story," said Elin. "You and the master were pleased when I could spin and weave so well. Yet you did not know that the fairy-folk helped me. They helped me freely on only one condition – that one day I should marry their king."

Elin paused as though she were thinking deeply. "I promised," she continued, "for I wanted their help, but " - and here she laughed - "I had no intention of keeping that promise. To make sure that they would not bother me about keeping it, I always carried with me a knife, sharp and keen. They were afraid of the sight of that knife.

"I feared that they might carry me away when I was sleeping. To save myself, each night I used to lay a branch of the mountain ash across the foot of my bed. For months and months I was safe from them - so safe that I grew careless. One evening, very tired, I crept into bed, having forgotten to place the mountain ash at my feet. I woke in the land of the fairies - but hush! Here comes my husband."

In his presence Bet was very careful not to show that she could see differently with
her left eye. Time passed.

"Good-bye, mistress! Good-bye! sobbed Elin one evening. "He will take you away in the morning. Maybe I will not see you again."

 

At sunrise the man beckoned to Bet. He gave her a bag of gold and led her home by the path she had come. Huw was greatly surprised on Bet’s return home. He asked so many questions but alas Bet could not explain.

"We must go to the mid-winter fair at Aberystwyth," said Huw some months later. "We need to hire a maid to take Elin's place."

When they reached the town Bet saw her sister busy bargaining at a stall. "The fairy folk are here to-day right enough, said Nance.” Did you ever see such a crowd? Prices too are right high. Good for those who are selling."

The fairy-folk were there as Nance had guessed, but no-one saw them but Bet. She saw them clearly with her left eye. Near by she saw a stall of flannel. A man was stealing a roll of cloth from it.

"Nay! nay! do not be dishonest, cried Bet. She ran forward and saw that the man was Elin's husband. Overcome with surprise, Bet forgot Elin’s warning not to show she could see magic things with her left eye.

 

“How is Elin? " asked Bet, all excitedly, "How are Elin and the little baby?"

"They are well - quite well," the man answered. "But tell me, which eye you see me with."

"With this one," said honest Bet, pointing to her left eye. Immediately the man struck her left eye hard with a plantain seed head causing it to become dead and useless. Thereafter Bet could only see with her right eye and try as she might to find the flowers of the fairy salve, she was unable to find them.

"One eye will serve me as well as two,” she said, comforting herself. As time passed by, Bet learned how to make do with only one eye. Then one day at the market she met an old woman bent double and wearing only rags. Over her arm she had a basket of herbs. As Bet passed she offered her a healing salve made of eyebright and plantain and told Bet to rub it onto her useless eye. Bet rubbed it onto her eye and at once her eyesight returned even better than before. When she looked round to thank the old woman, she saw that the old crone was in fact her beautiful Elin dressed luxuriously in fairy gold and green.

The two greeted each other very warmly recounting tales of their lives. Elin told her that her son was now the king of the fairies and still remembered the kind mortal who had tended him as a child. She told Elin that no kind deed was ever forgotten by the fairies and that was why she had returned to help her. With fond farewells Bet and Elin parted for the last time. No-one ever knew if Bet could see fairies after that, but if she did, she kept very, very quiet about it.

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Merlin

 

 

Merlin is the hero of many stories. He was sometimes called Merlin Sylvester or Myrddin Wyallt and lived in Carmarthen, Caerfyrddin or Merlin’s fort. It was reported that he grew up in a monastery just outside the Town in a small hamlet called Abergwilli, not far from the hill in Whitemill, called Merlin’s mount. It was during the early days of Christianity when remnants of the old religion of Goddess worship or paganism were still practised.

He was an orphan or, as many fatherless children were in the very old days, possibly a child of the midsummer pagan ritual of celebration of the female, her fertility as the goddess and the green man. Mating and celebration during that time often gave rise to “special” children who belonged to the community as a whole and were brought up in the secular professions as spiritual teachers, healers, story tellers or as in this case magicians. Tales of Merlin were written in very early times and it is possible that there was more than one Merlin or that he lived for an exceptionally long period of time.

It is written that King Vortigern wished to build a city and fortress in the kingdom of Gwynedd. He had fled to Wales when his rule in Britain came to an end as the Saxon hordes ravaged the whole of southern Britain. The King’s men led him to the highest peaks of the Snowden area. He commanded that the masons and carpenters set to work to build him a fortress. They worked tirelessly every day, but a strange thing happened and all the building work simply collapsed overnight.

They thought that it must be an evil spell so they consulted the wise men. They decided that a fatherless boy must be slaughtered and his blood offered to the spirits of that place to placate them, enabling the fortress to be built. King Vortigern paid heed to this and sent his messengers out to search Wales for a fatherless boy. When they arrived at a field near Carmarthen, they heard a group of boys taunting another young boy about his lack of a father. The messengers captured the boy and brought him to Lord Vortigern. The boy was called Merlin. When Merlin realized he was about to be killed, he spoke to the king in a strong clear voice which resonated throughout the hills, compelling the king to listen. Merlin told him that the cause of their collapsing buildings was not the anger of the spirits but an underground waterway which undermined the foundations and they should dig down a little way to reveal it. This they did and after they found the underground pond the boy cried out, “Dig deeper still and you will find two stones.”

The workmen continued to dig and they revealed two great hollow stones.
“A strange sight indeed” exclaimed Lord Vortigern.
“Come nearer,” said Merlin, “Examine them.”
Inside the stones were two sleeping dragons. Very soon they awoke and started to fight.
 

 

“What does this mean,” said Lord Vortigern. “It means,” said Merlin as he pointed to the dragons, “that two nations will fight. Look, the white dragon is the Saxon, the Red is the Celt.”
“Which will win,” cried Lord Vortigern as a mist came down and hid the fight from view.
Merlin just looked away at that moment with a tear in his eye and a mysterious smile, the smile of a wizard on his face.
Merlin became known to the powers of Wales at that time, as the most important Magician of Wales. There would be many more stories written about him, his life, his courage and his magic, especially his work with the beloved King Arthur and the court at Camelot.

Merlin often returned to Carmarthen and his native hills. One day he planted an oak tree on the crossroads in Carmarthen just where the road branches towards Abergwilli. According to legend, Merlin predicted was that if ever this oak tree would be cut down then Carmarthen town would flood and that this event would signal the days when the world would change as never before.

 

“When Merlin’s tree shall tumble down.
Then shall fall Carmarthen town.”

 

................. conclusion of the story can be found within A Welsh Herbal

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The Woodcutter

 

Once upon a time there was a poor woodcutter who lived in a small cottage in a forest. All his long life he looked after the woodland around his cottage. He loved the birds and the wildlife; in turn they loved and trusted him too. He used to talk to the rabbits and the birds as well as all the other small creatures that came to his house looking for food. The woodcutter gathered herbs in the spring, flowers in the summer and berries and roots in the autumn. He had a small garden for his vegetables which he protected with a wooden fence. He had some bees for honey, which he kept in straw hives and a friendly horse, called Emrys who pulled his cart of furniture to market every month. He had made his baskets from the rushes that grew by the stream near his house. He made furniture from all the different types of wood that grew in the forest. At the market he sold the wooden chairs and furniture, so used the money raised to buy a few necessities like cups, plates, knives, spoons, shoes and clothes, which he seemed to wear out very quickly. He was not married, as his childhood sweetheart had moved away and since then, he had not found anyone to share his solitary life with him in the forest. Yet he was happy enough and his days were full.

 

One day when he was singing a pretty song to himself he saw a small fairy flying from rose to rose gathering stamens. She seemed in a hurry and was struggling with the bunch that she had collected when he saw her slip and fall onto a rose thorn. “Oh deary me” said the poor woodcutter. Fearing she had hurt herself, he rushed over to help her. “Leave me alone,” said the fairy. He could see that she had damaged her wings and could not fly anymore.

“Alright then,” said the woodcutter, “I only wanted to help you.” With that he turned to walk away. Just then a massive hawk flew down from the sky with talons outstretched, and tried to capture the fairy. Quick as a flash, the woodcutter snatched the fairy into his fist and rescued her. “Better come home with me and rest up in a safe place” said the kindly woodcutter. He often helped injured animals when he found them in the forest. So he had a series of cages and boxes ready for emergencies. The little fairy had fainted when the hawk had tried to catch her, so she knew nothing of her rescue until the next morning when she awoke in a lovely little bed that the woodcutter had quickly made for her. It was made out of rosewood with a soft thistledown mattress with a comfrey leaf for her to lie on, which would heal up her torn wings. “What am I doing here?” she said. “I thought that I was going to be eaten by that monster with the big claws.”
“No,” said the woodcutter “I caught you just in time.”
The little fairy started to cry. “There, there,” said the woodcutter.
“I was so rude to you,” said the fairy, “please forgive me and thank you for helping me and saving my life.”
“Oh it is no trouble at all. I don’t often meet fairy folk,” said the good natured woodcutter. “It is usually little furry creatures who need my help.”

 

The little fairy slept all day on the comfrey leaf. When she awoke, she ate a big meal of bilberries and crushed hazelnuts. Thanks to the woodcutter’s knowledge of herbs, her wings had healed completely and she was so pleased that she immediately fluttered up to the ceiling. She thanked the woodcutter again as she flew out of his window and off to her fairy home.

That night the woodcutter slept well. He was happy that he had helped such a pretty little fairy. What he didn’t know was that she was the daughter of the fairy king who knew what had happened and wanted to repay the woodcutter’s kindness. In the morning he awoke to find his table full of nuts and berries, his workbench full of beautifully crafted furniture which he could sell for the highest prices, while all his clothes and shoes were newly mended. Every day when he got up after that, he found he had plenty of everything he needed; food, clothes and furniture to sell.

However, one day, since he now had time on his hands he started to feel that he would like to share his life with someone. In a week or two there came a knock on the door. A lovely lady stood there, who he thought that he recognized. She said to him that she was his lost childhood sweetheart and she had been hoping to find him again for a long time when a dainty little fairy had appeared to her and told her where the woodcutter was living. They were married at once and had two beautiful children, a handsome thoughtful boy, and a beautiful and clever girl. His life was complete, and they all lived happily in the forest together. The little girl grew up to be a herbalist, helping everyone in the area and the little boy, to be a magician at the King’s court. You may have heard of them. Some people say that a little bit of fairy goodness had rubbed off into them and from them into all the people around.

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Alice

   

 The view from Pen Morfa across the Conway estuary to the mountains of Snowdonia

Towards the end of the nineteenth century three little sisters called Alice, Lorina and Edith Liddell sat in the sitting room of their house on the West shore in Llandudno. They stayed in their house called Pen Morfa every summer with their parents. Alice had long straight blonde hair and her sea blue eyes gazed constantly out of the window as her two sisters played with their dolls. She was dreaming of an adventure on the sands of west shore or even behind their house on the Great Orme itself if only the rain would stop. Suddenly Edith interrupted Alice’s thought by announcing that a visitor was coming that very night, one of Daddy’s friends from Oxford. Their father, Mr Liddell, was the Dean of Christchurch Oxford and wrote about ancient Rome which was not at all interesting to any of the sisters.

“It is that funny man who blushes and stutters” said Edith “Oh good,” said Alice, “That must be Mr Dodgson, he tells wonderful stories. I’m sure that he will cheer us all up.”

"Oh we don’t like him so much” said the other sisters. “He knows about mathematics like arithmetic and algebra and is very shy.”
 

“He is quite wonderful,” said Alice in reply, “you have completely misunderstood him.”

When the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson arrived it was in the early evening and he was very quiet over dinner. Alice’s parents were very kind to him but it was difficult to make him relax and feel at home. After dinner they all sang a jolly song around the piano and then the girls went off to change into their night clothes with their nanny Martha. When they came back into the drawing room to kiss their parents goodnight, Mr Dodgson remarked how beautiful they looked and what little angels they must be. Mr and Mrs Liddell laughed at this and said little monkeys were more like it.

 

Next morning at breakfast Mr Dodgson produced presents for the three sisters of games, puzzles and chocolates. Edith and Lorina said that he was a nice man after all but they still wanted to go to town with their parents in the pony and trap. Alice said she would prefer to go out for a walk with Mr Dodgson. He suggested that they make their way up to the back of the house up the path that lead to the great Orme. Eventually, having walked quite a way, they stopped for a drink and an apple or two, when Alice asked Mr Dodgson to tell her a really interesting story.

“What about?” he asked.
“Oh, how about that rabbit over there,” said Alice.
Just then the rabbit disappeared down its rabbit hole and Mr Dodgson asked Alice if she knew what was down there.

“No, what is it like?” she asked.
“Well,” started Mr Dodgson “it would have to be a magical rabbit if you were going to follow it and find out, so it would have to be a white rabbit.”

He carried on telling a most wonderful story about the rabbit disappearing down the rabbit hole and so, when next day arrived and her sisters wanted to go to the beach to play in the sand, Alice once more went up the hill with Mr Dodgson. He proceeded to tell her the most wonderful stories and adventures about this rabbit and lots of other interesting characters. They laughed and joked and Alice sat mesmerised by the fantastic nature of the stories while he smoked on his pipe.

“I wish I could remember the stories,” said Alice, “so that I could tell my sisters.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Mr Dodgson, “I will write them down and then your sisters and other children will know what wonderful adventures you had this summer with the white rabbit and his friends – though I will have to change my name.”

In 1863, under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll, he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and then a little later, Through the Looking Glass. Nearly 150 years later the books are still firm favourites with children all over the world. In commemoration of his achievements a statue of Lewis Carroll was erected and unveiled by Lloyd George, the famous Welsh politician, who said,
“Lewis Carroll radiates happiness and the world today is a happier place because he passed through it. It is a great thing for you in Llandudno to know that he drew inspiration from your sea and your mountains and it was the hand of a child who led him.”

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