Faerie Thorn

Hawthorn tree on the Berkshire Downs.

 

This is nothing like the Welsh landscape in which the following song is set, but somehow these gorges in the chalk always strike me as the kind of places where the following might happen. The picture will do as an illustration of this poem until some day in the future when I might get to Llangollen...

 

THE DANCE OF GARETH MORGAN

 

My name is Gareth Morgan, I live in Llangollen,

The vale of St. David, the flow’r of North Wales;

My father and mother, too, live in Llangollen,

Good truth I was born in the sweetest of vales.

 

I pastured my sheep on the hills of Llangollen;

I played on my flute as I drove them along,

When a wee little man, never seen in Llangollen,

Stepped out and enchanted me with his sweet song.

 

His jerkin was brown as the soil of Llangollen,

His leggings of moss from the green, ferny streams,

In his hand was a fiddle, unheard in Llangollen,

And his voice was like faerie-song, heard in sweet dreams.

 

“I wish thee good evening, man from Llangollen!”

He bowed with a flourish, I wished him the same.

“Come and dance to a tune never played in Llangollen!”

When he played on his fiddle, the faeries all came.

 

And they danced such a jig on the road to Llangollen,

And the merry dwarf cried, “Come, lad, dance to our tune!”

And I danced like the children who live in Llangollen,

But the faeries turned devilish under the moon,

 

For the dwarf wore two horns like the kine of Llangollen,

He had cloven hooves, and a long, whip-like tail.

His eyes shone like coals from the hearths of Llangollen,

The faeries, weird creatures with skin black as shale.

 

Yet I danced to their tune on the slopes of Llangollen;

I cried out for mercy, yet still I danced on,

‘Till the morning time came, and the men of Llangollen

Found me exhausted, the devils all gone.

 

And my story was never believed in Llangollen,

For they thought I’d been touched by the light of the moon,

And yet in my dreams, like a breeze through Llangollen,

I dance to his fiddle, and hear his voice croon:

 

My name is unknown to ye, not heard in Llangollen,

My minions are born on the blustery gales;

With devilry, trickery, lad from Llangollen,

I bid you, come dance in the sweetest of vales.

 

Source material: Welsh folk tale, from Eirwen Jones, Folk Tales of Wales, London, 1947, pp. 18-21. The first verse is a quotation of a stanza at the end of that story.

 

Done