Prince Pwyll of Dyfed
Pwyll was Prince of Dyfed, in the southwest of Wales. One day in autumn, when the air was crisp and cool, his thoughts turned to hunting. With his men and hounds, he headed through the forested hills toward a glen on the River Cuch, where, he had heard, fine stags were to be found. The company rode all day to reach the region. That night, they camped, and before the sun rose the next morning Pwyll roused the men and hounds for the hunt. With the hounds snuffling and dancing around the horses' hoofs, the company set off into the depths of the forest, just at first light. In a short time, the hounds picked up a scent and charged off at great speed, baying and yelping as they tore through the underbrush.
Pwyll gave a shout and followed as close as he could, racing far ahead of his own men, heedless of the rough ground and the whipping branches. For a moment, the hounds disappeared from his view, but he soon caught up with them, they were clustered together and growling at the edge of a small clearing. Pwyll reined in his lathered horse and took stock. In the clearing was a pack of strange hounds piled upon the twitching body of a stag they had just brought down. These were like no hounds Pwyll had ever seen. They were glittering white, with ears and eyes of ruby red. He waited a moment, but no one was in sight and the forest was silent. He had no idea where he was. With a shrug, he spurred his horse into the clearing, drove off the strange hounds and set his own dogs to feeding on the body of the stag.
After a few moments, he looked up to find himself observed - with contempt - by a tall man, dressed in hunting clothes, who sat astride a fine dappled horse.
"I will not greet you, stranger," said the man. "It is a lout's discourtesy to take the prize of another man's kill."
Pwyll stiffened with chagrin. "What is your country, stranger?" he asked.
"Annwfn," said the gray-clad hunter. Annwfn meant 'not world.' Pwyll now knew that somewhere - when he lost his way as he coursed the stag, or when he entered the clearing - he had crossed the border into Faerie. "I am Arawn, King of Annwfn," said the huntsman.
Pwyll said, "Only tell me how I may clear my honor with you, Lord."
"This way," said Arawn. "Go in my shape to Annwfn, and reign there in my place for a year and a day. You shall have all my powers during that time, and the dearest woman in the world to warm your bed. I will be in your shape in your own lands, ruling in your place. At the end of the year, you will fight my enemy for me. He is Havgan, whose lands march with my own and who fights me for them every year. If you fight successfully, I will meet you in this place once more."
Pwyll agreed, and the two rode together to the far edge of the clearing. Arawn pointed to where a palace glimmered in the distance. "There is my country," he said. As the mortal spurred his mount, the Fairy King added, "If you would live, strike Havgan only one blow, and strike to kill. A second blow restores him."
Then Arawn rode away. But before he entered the forest, he turned and raised his hand. Pwyll gave a start, for the man who waved was himself. He looked at his hands on the reins. They were the narrow hands of Arawn.
Clothed in the stranger's skin, Pwyll rode forward into Annwfn, looking about him with great curiosity. The path wound through green fields laced by shining streams. At its end lay a castle with many turrets, their roof tiles glinting in the sunshine, their pennants snapping in the breeze. The castle gates were open, and as Pwyll entered, grooms came to draw off his boots and take his horse. Gold-clad knights, young and merry, clustered around him, chattering about the hunt as they walked into the hall. And Pwyll saw that Arawn was beloved in hos own world.
In the hall, fires crackled and long tables were laid for feasting, Arawn's wife awaited Pwyll there. The King had not lied: She was the loveliest lady Pwyll had ever seen. Her hair shone gold in the firelight, and her flesh was so translucent that when she drank wine from his cup, Pwyll imagined he could see the red liquid flowing down her throat. All during the evening of feasting she stayed by Pwyll's side, talking affectionately and smiling up at him. It was clear that Arawn's lady loved her husband, and Pwyll answered in kind. But when the courtiers at last withdrew and the couple went together to the bedchamber, Pwyll lay in bed with his face to the wall and made no sound or move, even when the lady curled against him. Although he was clothed in another man's skin, he would not take the man's wife.
Matters continued thus for the appointed year. Each day was spent in hunting and feasting and making merry with the Queen of Annwfn, and each night, Pwyll turned his body to the wall beside the bed and spoke not a word.
At the end of the year, Pwyll armed himself and went forth to do battle with Havgan. Arawn's knights rode with him to the place, which was a ford that bridged a stream separating the two fairy territories.
Across the stream waited Havgan, a heavy, pale-eyed man surrounded by his followers. When Havgan saw his enemy, he raised the lance he bore and cried:
"All who hear, listen well. This is single combat between two Kings to decide who rules these lands. Let none but us meet in battle."
His followers and Arawn's drew back, and the two Kings wheeled their chargers into position. Then Havgan nodded and lowered his lance, and the warriors charged directly at each other, meeting with a might crash at the center of the ford. Havgan cried out, and shouts rose from the stream banks. Pwyll's lance had struck the boss of his foe's shield, splitting it and piercing the enemy's armor.
The Fairy King slumped forward on his horse's neck, then fell, his lifeblood staining the waters of the ford. The light began to dwindle in his eyes as he regarded the man in Arawn's place. At that moment, he seemed to recognize Pwyll through the veil of Arawn's flesh.
"I had no quarrel with you," he said. "Since you have begun to kill, however, finish my pain and give me death."
But Pwyll heeded Arawn's final words. "Let him who wishes strike another blow," he replied, "for I will not do it."
Then Havgan cried to his men, "I can no longer maintain you!" The blood ran red from his mouth, and he died in the shallow waters of the ford. Pwyll looked across the fallen King to the warriors on the opposite bank and said, "Decide among yourself now who will follow me and end this struggle." And one by one, Havgan's warriors came to him and did him homage.
Thus the fairy kingdoms were united under Arawn's rule by Pwyll. The next day, the mortal left the palace and the lady behind and rode alone to the clearing as he and Arawn had agreed. The Fairy King in the mortal's shape was there before him.
"I have ruled your lands and Dyfed well," said he.
"I have cleansed the stain of my honor," Pwyll replied.
The two crossed the clearing and saluted each other. Then each rode toward his own lands, and as they passed the verges of the clearing, each returned to his own flesh.
When Arawn reached his palace, his household greeted him as always, for they had never been aware of his absence. But his lady - though she bantered him with gaily as she always had, and drank wine from his cup - seemed withdrawn. After the revelries, Arawn went to their chamber; he drew her into his arms at once, for he had missed her sorely, but she stiffened and turned her head away in silence.
"What is this?" said Arawn.
"Why do you caress me now, when for a year you would not touch me?" she said with sadness.
"Of course I have touched you," answered Arawn the King.
She shook her head. Arawn was silent, pondering the fidelity of the mortal who had taken his place. At last he said gently, "Forgive me, Lady, but I have been far from you for this year past." And he told her all that had happened. When he had done so, the lady said;
"That was a faithful friend you had, who denied himself for you."
"So I think," Arawn replied.
"And well you might," his lady said, but she laughed as she spoke, and all was well.
That was how a fairy and a mortal became faithful friends for all their lives. They hunted together in the mortal world and in Annwfn; they sent eachother gifts of hawks and hounds and horses. When Pwyll's valor became known, he often was called Head of Annwfn, rather than Prince of Dyfed, and he found a fairy wife of his own, whose name was Rhiannon.
Such bridging friendships are easy traffic between the mortal and the fairy realms were rare even the world's young age, and they would become rarer still as the centuries wore away. As the realm of humankind expanded and that of nature receded, Faerie receded as well, to become something rich and strange that was glimpsed only on infrequent occasions or from far away.
It would happen, say, that a sailor would glance idly over his ship's side and see, as in a rock pool, mountains mantled with tall trees and crowned by turreted palaces. In the green depths he might spy shepherds tending their flocks or horsemen riding to the hunt. His ship's shadow would cross the landscape as cloud shadows cross earthly fields and hills, and the creatures below would turn curious faces up to look, and perhaps they would meet his gaze. Off the coast of Scotland, it was said, there was such a kingdom, sometimes called Lochlann, and sometimes Sorcha. (The Scots said that the children of its King were seals - or selkies - when in the sea and human when they came on land. Their fate was always to be lonely. They could not be content in either place, because
it is given to them that their sea-longing shall be land-longing, and their land-longing shall be sea-longing.
On the wild western coast of Ireland and Norway, people who paused to observe the crimson path of the setting sun might see misty islands rising from the waves. They knew these belonged to Faerie, for they could see the sun make fiery lights on the windows of the castles there. But the islands always disappeared into the sea agaon. The Irish called them the Isles of the Blest and gave them many names. Tir na n'Og, or the Land of the Young, was one; Tirn Aill, or the Other World, was another. Off the Welsh coast was Ynis Gwydrin, or the Island of Glass, so called because the palaces there were made of glass and shone like crystal.
And on the land, fairy kingdoms were hidden in grassy mounds that on Allhallows Eve might open or even rise into the air on pillars to reveal the glittering palaces within; the mounds existed both in Ireland and in Scotland. If these elusive places could be reached, a wistful traveler remarked, they would be proved to be filled with luminous intensity, their sun more golden and moon more silver than those of the mortal world, their flowers more fragrant and their fruit more sweet. He said:
"Everything in Faerie is better by this one wonderful degree, and it is by this betterness that you will know that you are there."
It was no wonder that some adventurers among the world's youth forsook their own realm and chose to stay within the boundaries of Faerie. A man named Loegaire, the son of King of Connacht, did that. Loegaire had fought in battle beside a Fairy King named Fiachna and loved that King's country so well that he severed every human tie to stay within it, thereby breaking his own father's heart.
Another such adventurer was the Irish chieftain O'Donoghue, a warrior so valiant that even the Tuatha sang his praises. O'Donoghue left his stronghold one May Day morning and walked into the waters of Lake Killarney. He sank into the lake and never was seen alive again. Each May Day morning for centuries after, however, O'Donoghue visited his earthly home. Just as the sun touched Mount Glenaa near the lake, the waters would begin to churn, and in a shower of glittering spray, O'Donoghue, riding a white charger, would burst through the surface. Trailing behind him were crowds of youths and maidens who danced to the music of silver bells and followed the chieftain across the water, disappearing with him in the mists around the lake.
The time was coming, however, when mortals who crossed the border into Faerie - if they could cross at all - had no choice about returning. They were lost to their own world and their own kind forever, unless another mortal rescued them, which sometimes happened. The borders between the world would begin to close, and mortals would no longer be able to touch fairy gold or eat fairy food in safety. They would long for fairy lovers - and sometimes take them - but those loves would be the source of endless sorrow.
It was said, too, that as the centuries passed, the Tuatha and their kind dwindled in size. When they were glimpsed riding in procession or dancing in the night, they were not tall kings and queens, but creatures no bigger than the length of a man's hand - and no louder than a chorus of insects twittering in the grass. The women were perfect in figure and feature, and resplendent in gowns of gauze and gold. As for the tiny knights, they wore cunningly fashioned armor that glittered like faceted gems. The air all around them twinkled with fairy lights, and it was deliciously clean and sweet, charged with a wild scent that lingered long after they disappeared.
It was said that eventually the princes of fairyland became smaller still - so small that they rode saddled grasshoppers instead of horses and sported armor made of fish scales. They lived no longer beneath hill and sea, but in the hollows of oak trees, or in the cowslip's bell or under the leaves of alder and birch.
The heroic fairies thus gradually disappeared as a separate species. They were absorbed into the teeming population of earth fairies that had thronged forest and field and stream and lake ever since the world was shaped.
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