Rhys and the Dance Among the Fairies

A Welsh farm hand named Rhys fell victim to the yearning shortly after he was rescued from a fairy ring. This is how Rhys came to dance with the fairies: One evening, he and his friend Llevellyn were trudging home from a distant field they had been plowing. Rhys turned to Llewellyn and said that he heard the tinkle of harps. The melody was so faint, he told his friend, that it might have been no more than the memory of a song - although he could not say where he had heard it before. It drew him, however, and he left the track for a meadow nearby, telling Llewellyn to go on without him.

Rhys did not return to his village that night or for long afterward, and searches found no trace of him. A murmur rose in the village that Llewellyn had murdered him and hidden the body. Llewellyn sturdily protested that he was innocent, and finally a villager asked the man to lead him to the spot where Rhys had heard the strange music.

Searching for landmarks in the meadow, Llewellyn discovered among the blackberry bushes a flattened patch of grass. Gingerly he placed one foot on the spot, and at once he found himself on the fringe of a brilliant whirl of fairies, dancing in a cocoon of light. In the center of the ring was Rhys, loose-jointed as a scare-crow, twitching and flailing to the frenzied beat. Keeping one foot planted firmly outside the circle, Llwellyn snagged Rhys's coattails and hauled him from the revels. His village companion was astonished: All he had seen was Llewellyn's curious stance, Rhys seemed to have been pulled out of the air.

Rhys, who believed that he had danced no longer than five minutes, and who heartily resented the interruption, could not resume his old life. He quarreled with friends. He did not work in the fields but wandered alone on the wind-swept uplands, thirsting for the wild music and hearing only the moan of the wind. Weeks passed this way. Rhys grew gaunt and listless, and one day his solitary figure was no longer seen ranging the hills. At last, a hunter found him dead.