Week 12 Reading Diary: Welsh Fairy Book Unit (Thomas)

So I did a full reading of the Welsh Fairy Book unit by W. Jenkyn Thomas and pretty much got what I expected: Many somewhat strange but thoroughly entertaining stories featuring names and places that I have a hard time remembering by nature of Welsh’s unique letter combinations (“Rhad Duw ar y da” for instance). Since there is no one protagonist to follow throughout all twenty-one of the stories in this unit, I found myself forgetting a lot of the characters that I read about, but I don’t get the feeling that the actors in the narratives are really so much important as the plot. The most enjoyable thing about these stories to me is the magical world that is created in them. In the world of Thomas’s book, fairies and magic are very real and very much in contact with the everyday, mundane world of shepherds and farmers. This makes for some very neat and compelling tales about the interaction between the worlds of the natural and the supernatural.

The first story in the unit—“Arthur in the Cave”—is among the most memorable since it deals with the legacy of King Arthur and the Round Table. This story presents a different fate for Arthur since it places the Once and Future King not in Avalon, but in a underground cave in Wales. In addition, Arthur is portrayed as being the future savior of Wales who will at the appointed time arise from his subterranean sleep and, together with the rest of his knights, take back Britain for the Welsh. It’s intriguing to see how the Welsh took the story of King Arthur and made it their own, transforming the British mythological icon into a messianic figure for Wales.

“Einion and the Lady of Greenwood” was among my favorite of the stories in this unit. It features the protagonist Einion, who falls under the spell of a goblin trickster known as the Lady of the Greenwood. This story was fun since when you think things are going Einion’s way as he is freed from the goblin’s charm, a twist comes in when the Lady decides to take the form of a handsome nobleman and casts the same love spell over Einion’s own wife. Fortunately Einion manages to win the day and win his wife back even as he exposes the goblin’s true nature.

“March’s Ears” was one of the most out there tales in the unit. The whole concept of a king having a horse’s ears and somehow managing to keep it concealed from everyone but his barber is pretty weird in itself, but the series of events that leads to the creation of a pipe that, when played, exposes the monarch’s secret marks this story as bizarre in the most hilarious sense of the word. Thomas definitely takes to a somewhat odd style in this story as well. I can safely say that this is the first fairy tale I’ve read in which a character refers to his neck with the scientific term cervical vertebrae.

The theme of normal people benefiting from faeries is recurring throughout several of the stories in the unit, including “The Stray Cow” (although the beneficiary in this story ultimately ends up the worse by the end of the story because he had the misfortune of looking a fairy cow in the mouth so to speak), “The Fairy Reward,” (again the main character doesn’t end up better off by the conclusion since fairies aren’t very beneficent once their beneficence becomes known to too many people), “The Bride from the Red Lake” (another unhappy ending, this one seemingly arbitrary:  Are fairies allergic to clay or something?), “Einion and the Fair Family” (actually has a happy ending too!), and “Dick the Fiddler’s Money” (which teaches us that playing a mean fiddle can really pay off at times).

My favorite story in the unit was “The Men of Ardudwy.” This story is absolutely epic in how it focuses on the fiercely fought battle between the Men of Vale and the Men of Ardudwy, who have made off with the maidens of Vale since Ardudwy has been suffering from a shortage of women of late. Many of the stories in this unit focus on how a certain geographical location came to be, or how it came to called a specific name, but among these types of stories this one stood out to me since the lake that comes to be called Llyn y Morwynion—the Maidens’ Lake—has such a memorable and tragic story behind it. The language in the story is also quite lovely at times, with the description of the women of Vale jumping to their deaths being particularly poignant and evocative:

“When the last of the men of Ardudwy fell, and the desperate fight was done, they plunged into the waters red with the blood of their lovers and kindred, like some great flight of white birds sweeping down from a wave-washed cliff down to the sea. The still waters leapt in foam: one loud shriek woke the air, and then silence reigned over all.”

“The Martyred Hound” is also a good story, but as you might expect from a tale titled as such, it’s a pretty sad narrative. I’d recommend not reading it if you’re in a depressed mood.

The Battle of Llyn y Morwynion (Un-textbook)