The Giddy Heights II
More Tales I Love to Tell
Golden Threads Make Lovely Socks
Wisdom begins in wonder
- Socrates
Following hot on the tail of the last selection of stories I published, I’ve decided to present three(ish) more.
From a wonderful tale about an early Welsh saint to a beautifully tragic tale of two lovers in a cave, I hope you enjoy this glimpse into my research. Finding stories is like mining for gold - rewarding, but hard work. Hearing stories from other people is like being handed a nugget of the shiny stuff - incredible.
So here’s a pocket full of gold dust, on the house.
A Glimpse of the Future from Our Distant Past
The history of Christianity in Wales is, as with many places outside the Holy Land, born in a maelstrom of syncretism. The banishment of the ‘old ways’ is often how such tales are presented, but I’ve never fully bought that explanation. Rather, I think it’s truly syncretic - the villains in pre-Christian tales remain villains, with only some morally ambiguous figures become closer to a “black and white”, good vs evil reading.
We forget that many of the pre-congregational saints on the island of Britain would have converted, bringing with them a cultural outlook that now had to meld with a religious one. I think this tale highlights this perfectly.
(Plus, there’s an added bonus for history trivia buffs.)
Not Your Usual Saintly Tale
(from my notes - story guide document)
Benlli Gawr, the most fearsome giant of his day, heard a rumour that there was buried treasure at Y Wyddgrug (the town of Mold, North Wales). He amassed an army from the Old North, a horde of Pictish warriors, and marched southwards to claim the booty.
Not being able to travel inconspicuously, given his massive size, villagers panicked on hearing his booming steps, louder even than the combined thundering of the army at his tail. They devastated the countryside as they marched, but one thing travelled faster than the advancing army - news. Garmon, the holy man of Y Wyddgrug, heard tell of the army, headed by an ungodly giant, and started making preparations with the local men.
Saint Garmon arranged for the locals to hide in field next to the only road into the town. When he inspected his guerrilla force, Garmon realised that most of the men didn’t have a weapon, and those who did carried rusted old swords that had not seen battle in decades.
The saint ordered that all the ploughshares, threshers, lopping sickles, and billhooks be brought from the farms and distributed amongst the ambushers.
As the army reached the halfway point in the vast field, the locals lifted their tools and cried “Alleluia!”. The invading Pictish army, seeing themselves surrounded by a mass of long wooden shafts topped with sharp blades, broke and fled from whence they came. Benlli roared, returning to his own fortess atop the mountain Moel Fenlli. The ‘Alleluia Battle’, as it came to be known, was so celebrated locally that the field was renamed ‘Maes Garmon’, a name it bears to this day.
Now, a holy man cannot be expected to suffer the presence of a murderous giant nearby! So Garmon resolved to confront Benlli, hoping that he could convert him. As he approached the mountaintop fortress, the giant sought to mock and belittle the saint, sending out his lowliest slave to greet him - a swineherd named Cadell. The two men came face-to-face, with Garmon noting Cadell’s ragged attire and filthy hands. To his surprise, Garmon was not denied entry to the court, rather the serf invited him to dine at his humble shack. Cadell slaughtered his only calf to feed Saint Garmon, and allowed him to stay the night when the fog rolled over the mountains.
When morning came, Cadell walked from his shack, bleary eyed, to take in the morning air. He nearly died of shock when he saw, resting next to its mother in the pen, the calf the men had dined on the night before!
Amazed, Cadell returned to the shack to find Garmon at his devotions. He watched in awe until the saint stood up, thanking Garmon for his hospitality. Before making his leave, Garmon stopped at the threshold of the shack for a moment. He told Cadell that it’d be best he did not attend court that day.
Hours later, Cadell ran from his shack when a great roaring sound shook the calm. He looked over to the Castle where his giant master slept - it was now a pile of rubble. A great ball of flame had descended from the Heavens, destroying the fortress and all who dwelled within.
With nobody left at court, Cadell inherited the title, going on to be a just and noble ruler, earning the cognomen ‘Dyrnlwg’ - ‘the gleaming hilt’ - for his prowess in battling Irish pirates, and founding what became the powerful Kingdom of Powys.
So, why did I sub-title this section ‘A glimpse of the future’? The answer, by the way, is testament to the richness of traditional tales: the depth of meaning, and wisdom, are evident of course, but so too are fascinating elements of trivia; the men that Saint Garmon rallies pick up farming implements to ‘do battle’. This became a common occurrence as the middle ages progressed, with a requirement for more soldiers in ever-growing battles. Farmers, pick up your tools! Isn’t it fascinating that an allusion to an ancient battle between villagers and a giant presages later conventions in warfare?
Anyways, I think it’s cool…
Teddy Roosevelt, Storyteller
Hold on to your socks for this one!
Alongside his trust-busting, national-parks-founding, rough-riding exploits, Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States of America and famed giant mountainside carving model, wrote this:
(from ‘The Wilderness Hunter’, by Theodore Roosevelt, 1893)
“...Frontiersmen are not, as a rule, apt to be superstitious. They lead lives too hard and practical, and have too little imagination in things spiritual and supernatural. I have heard but few ghost stories while living on the frontier, and those few were of a perfectly commonplace and conventional type.
“But I once listened to a goblin story, which rather impressed me. A grizzled, weather-beaten old mountain hunter, by the name of Bauman, who was born and had passed all his life on the frontier. He must have believed what he said, for he could hardly repress a shudder at a certain point of the tale; but he was of German ancestry, and in childhood had doubtless been saturated with all kinds of ghost and goblin lore, so that many fearsome superstitions were latent in his mind; besides, he knew well the stories told by the indian medicine-men in their winter camps, of the snow-walkers and the spectres, and the formless evil beings that haunt the forest depths, and then dog and waylay the lonely wanderer who after nightfall passes through the regions where they lurk; and it may be that when overcome by the horror of the fate that befell his friend, and when oppressed by the awful dread of the unknown, he grew to attribute, both at the time and still more in remembrance, weird elfin traits to what was merely some wicked and cunning wild beast; but whether this was so or not, no man can say.
“When the event occurred, Bauman was still a young man, and was trapping with a partner among the mountains dividing the forks of the salmon from the head of the Wisdom River. Having had not much luck, he and his partner determined to go up into a particularly wild and lonely pass through which ran a small stream said to contain many beavers. The pass had an evil reputation because the year before a solitary hunter who had wandered into it was slain, seemingly by a wild beast, the half eaten remains being afterwards found by some mining prospectors who had passed his camp only the night before.
“The memory of this event, however, weighed very lightly with the two trappers, who were as adventurous and hardy as others of their kind. They took their two lean mountain ponies to the foot of the pass where they left them in an open beaver meadow, the rocky timber-clad ground being from there onward impractical for horses. They then struck out on foot through the vast gloomy forest, and in about four hours reached a little open glade where they concluded to camp, as signs of game were plenty.
“There was still an hour or two of daylight left, and after building a brush lean-to and throwing down and opening their packs, they started up-stream. The country was very dense and hard to travel through, as there was much down timber, although here and there the sombre woodland was broken by small glades of mountain grass. At dusk they again reached camp. The glade in which it was pitched was not many yards wide, the tall, close-set pines and firs rising round it like a wall. On one side was a little stream, beyond which rose the steep mountain slope, covered with the unbroken growth of evergreen forest.
“They were surprised to find that during their absence something, apparently a bear, had visited camp, and had rummaged about among their things, scattering the contents of their packs, and in sheer wantonness destroying their lean-to. The footprints of the beast were quite plain, but at first they paid no particular heed to them, busying themselves with rebuilding the lean-to, laying out their beds and stores and lighting the fire.
“While Bauman was making ready supper, it being already dark, his companion began to examine the tracks more closely, and soon took a brand from the fire to follow them up, where the intruder had walked along a game trail after leaving the camp. When the brand flickered out, he returned and took another, repeating his inspection of the footprints very closely. Coming back to the fire, he stood by a minute or two, peering out into the darkness, and suddenly remarked, “Bauman, that bear has been walking on two legs.” Bauman laughed at this, but his partner insisted that he was right, and upon again examining the tracks with a torch, they certainly did seem to be made by but two paws or feet. However, it was too dark to make sure. After discussing whether the footprints could possibly be those of a human being, and coming to the conclusion that they could not be, the two men rolled up in their blankets, and went to sleep under the lean-to.
“At midnight Bauman was awakened by some noise, and sat up in his blankets. As he did so his nostrils were struck by a strong, wild-beast odour, and he caught the loom of a great body in the darkness at the mouth of the lean-to. Grasping his rifle, he fired at the vague threatening shadow, but must have missed, for immediately afterwards he heard the smashing of the under-wood as the thing, whatever it was, rushed off into the impenetrable blackness of the forest and the night.
“After this the men slept but little, sitting up by the rekindled fire, but they heard nothing more. In the morning they started out to look at the few traps they had set the previous evening and put out new ones. By an unspoken agreement they kept together all day, and returned to camp towards evening.
“On nearing it they saw, hardly to their astonishment, that the lean-to had again been torn down. The visitor of the preceding day had returned, and in wanton malice had tossed about their camp kit and bedding, and destroyed the shanty. The ground was marked up by its tracks, and on leaving the camp it had gone along the soft earth by the brook. The footprints were as plain as if on snow, and, after a careful scrutineer of the trail, it certainly did seem as if, whatever the thing was, it had walked off on but two legs.
“The men, thoroughly uneasy, gathered a great heap of dead logs and kept up a roaring fire throughout the night, one or the other sitting on guard most of the time. About midnight the thing came down through the forest opposite, across the brook, and stayed there on the hillside for nearly an hour. They could hear the branches crackle as it moved about, and several times it uttered a harsh, grating, long-drawn moan, a peculiar sinister sound. Yet it did not venture near the fire.
“In the morning the two trappers, after discussing the strange events of the last 36 hours, decided that they should shoulder their packs and leave the valley that afternoon. They were more ready to do this because in spite of seeing good game sign they had caught very little fur. However, it was necessary first to go along the line of their traps and gather them, and this they started out to do. All the morning they kept together, picking up trap after trap, each one empty. On first leaving camp they had the disagreeable sensation of being followed. In the dense spruce thickets they occasionally heard a branch snap after they had passed; and now and then there were slight rustling noises among the small pines to one side of them.
“At noon they were back within a couple miles of camp. In the high, bright sunlight their fears seemed absurd to the two armed men, accustomed as they were, through long years of lonely wandering in the wilderness, to face every kind of danger from man, brute, or element. There were still three beaver traps to collect from a little pond in a wide ravine nearby. Bauman volunteered to gather these and bring them in, while his companion went ahead to camp and made ready the packs.
“On reaching the pond, Bauman found three beavers in the traps, one of which had been pulled loose and carried into the beaver house. He took several hours securing and preparing the beaver, and when he started homewards he marked, with some uneasiness, how low the sun was getting. As he hurried toward camp, under the tall trees, the silence and desolation of the forest weighted upon him. His feet made no sound on the pine needles and the slanting sunrays, striking through among the straight trunks, made a gray twilight in which objects at a distance glimmered indistinctly. There was nothing to break the gloomy stillness which, when there is no breeze, always broods over these sombre primeval forests.
“At last he came to the edge of the little glade where the camp lay and shouted as he approached it, but got no answer. The campfire had gone out, though thin blue smoke was still curling upwards.
“Near it lay the packs wrapped and arranged. At first Bauman could see nobody; nor did he receive an answer to his call. Stepping forward he again shouted, and as he did so his eye fell on the body of his friend, stretched beside the trunk of a great fallen spruce. Rushing towards it the horrified trapper found that the body was still warm, but that the neck was broken, while there were four great fang marks at the throat.
“The footprints of the unknown beast-creature, printed deep in the soft soil, told the whole story.
“The unfortunate man, having finished his packing, had sat down on the spruce log with his face to the fire, and his back to the dense woods, to wait for his companion. While thus waiting, his monstrous assailant, which must have been lurking in the woods, waiting for a chance to catch one of the adventurers unprepared, came silently up from behind, walking with long, noiseless steps and seemingly still on two legs. Evidently unheard, it reached the man, and broke his neck by wrenching his head back with its forepaws, while it buried its teeth in his throat. It had not eaten the body, but apparently had romped and gambolled around it in uncouth, ferocious glee, occasionally rolling over it; it had then fled back into the soundless depth of the woods.
“Bauman, utterly unnerved and believing the creature with which he had to deal was something either half-human or half-devil, some great goblin-beast, abandoned everything but his rifle and struck off at speed down the pass, not halting until he reached the beaver meadows where the hobbled ponies were still grazing. Mounting, he rode onwards through the night, until beyond reach of pursuit.”
So… there’s that.
Enigmatic Allusions
One of the great joys in researching narratives from beyond one’s own culture is that you discover fragments that set your imagination ablaze. I recently came across one such snippet whilst reading Native American Myths: Collected 1636 - 1919 by Rosalind Kerven. It’s a short quotation she collected from Folklore of the Menomini Indians (1915):
There is a little man three or four feet high who has a body like a human being, yet is invisible.
He exists on this island, however, and is a shadow of something that has power, or perhaps he himself is a spirit.
Anyway, he does only one kind of work.
He is the Master of Night and drives sleep into every human being.
❦
When dusk approaches, he is already about his business.
His magic is unavailing, with some, why we do not know, but a great many are easily overcome by his sleep. He stares at the person he has selected and wills that he or she shall fall asleep. He motions or waves with his hand a few times and the person is stunned or numbed with slumber, his head nods, his eyes are heavy.
He goes to some who have sought their beds a second time, and knocks them on their heads with something very soft like a pillow.
Some know it, hear it, feel it but others don not even sense it, and some flinch or jerk away at the blow.
Babies and children he visits first and so on up to the old people.
It is said that those who surmise they are struck by the Master of Night live to a very old age.
- An unnamed Menominee informant
Allusions to ancient tradition such as these are some of my very favourite things to find during research. Sure, a nice hefty myth is awesome, but I also enjoy a good game of join-the-dots. What kind of tales could this character be in? That questions doesn’t so much beg for an answer as it immediately forces my mind to create one. It reminds me of the sad fate of the Brenin Llwyd (‘The Grey King’), a bogeyman from my own culture. We’ve lost his tales, but can still wonder how they’d go. I hope you can too, with the Master of Night.
Nothing is never totally lost, it would seem.
Right, I can’t leave you with such a short fragmentary tale.
Here’s a bonus, because you’ve all been so patient, without a single paper plane thrown at my head.
It’s the legend found in a place I’d dearly like to visit some day. As with many Amerindian legends, I feel I should go there to research more directly - there’s scant references to be found online, at least - plus… y’know… Aruba looks pretty sweet.
Enjoy.
The Lovers in the Cave
(from an article on arubatoday.com)
“…The most well-known legend behind the cave could be considered as Aruba’s first love story, as it tells the tale of the undying love between the chief’s daughter and her beloved. As legend would have it, the chief disapproved of his daughter’s choice of lover, as he thought him unworthy. Stubborn and filled with anger, the daughter refused to turn away her beloved.
So, the chief decided to lock her up in the Quadirikiri Cave, in hopes that she would soon calm down and turn away her lover. Her beloved, in turn, was locked away in the Tunnel of Love (Now known as the Huliba Cave).
Through the pathways underneath the Tunnel of Love running up to the Quadiriki cave, the two love bird found each other, and refused to let each other go. Because of their stubbornness, they both died in the Quadiriki Cave, their ascending spirits burning two holes in the ceiling of the cave. This is why the cave has two holes through which sunlight passes through to illuminate the chamber.
Though there have been discoveries of Amerindian drawing on the wall, these have mostly been ruined by vandalism. However, the Fontein Cave further up north, provides a better glimpse in prehistoric Amerindian paintings.”