iv
in an old notebook kept by ambrose meyrick in those long-past days there are some curious entries which throw light on the extraordinary experiences that befell him during the period which poor palmer has done his best to illustrate. the following is interesting:
“i told her she must not come again for a long time. she was astonished and asked me why — was i not fond of her? i said it was because i was so fond of her, that i was afraid that if i saw her often i could not live. i should pass away in delight because our bodies are not meant to live for long in the middle of white fire. i was lying on my bed and she stood beside it. i looked up at her. the room was very dark and still. i could only just see her faintly, though she was so close to me that i could hear her breathing quite well. i thought of the white flowers that grew in the dark corners of the old garden at the wern, by the great ilex tree. i used to go out on summer nights when the air was still and all the sky cloudy. one could hear the brook just a little, down beyond the watery meadow, and all the woods and hills were dim. one could not see the mountain at all. but i liked to stand by the wall and look into the darkest place, and in a little time those flowers would seem to grow out of the shadow. i could just see the white glimmer of them. she looked like the flowers to me, as i lay on the bed in my dark room.
“sometimes i dream of wonderful things. it is just at the moment when one wakes up; one cannot say where one has been or what was so wonderful, but you know that you have lost everything in waking. for just that moment you knew everything and understood the stars and the hills and night and day and the woods and the old songs. they were all within you, and you were all light. but the light was music, and the music was violet wine in a great cup of gold, and the wine in the golden cup was the scent of a june night. i understood all this as she stood beside my bed in the dark and stretched out her hand and touched me on the breast.
“i knew a pool in an old, old grey wood a few miles from the wern. i called it the grey wood because the trees were ancient oaks that they say must have grown there for a thousand years, and they have grown bare and terrible. most of them are all hollow inside and some have only a few boughs left, and every year, they say, one leaf less grows on every bough. in the books they are called the foresters’ oaks. if you stay under them you feel as if the old times must have come again. among these trees there was a great yew, far older than the oaks, and beneath it a dark and shadowy pool. i had been for a long walk, nearly to the sea, and as i came back i passed this place and, looking into the pool, there was the glint of the stars in the water.
“she knelt by my bed in the dark, and i could just see the glinting of her eyes as she looked at me — the stars in the shadowy waterpool!
“i had never dreamed that there could be anything so wonderful in the whole world. my father had told me of many beautiful and holy and glorious things, of all the heavenly mysteries by which those who know live for ever, all the things which the doctor and my uncle and the other silly clergymen in the chapel . . . 1 because they don’t really know anything at all about them, only their names, so they are like dogs and pigs and asses who have somehow found their way into a beautiful room, full of precious and delicate treasures. these things my father told me of long ago, of the great mystery of the offering.
1 a highly rabelaisian phrase is omitted.
“and i have learned the wonders of the old venerable saints that once were marvels in our land, as the welch poem says, and of all the great works that shone around their feet as they went upon the mountains and sought the deserts of ocean. i have seen their marks and writings cut on the edges of the rocks. i know where sagramnus lies buried in wlad morgan. and i shall not forget how i saw the blessed cup of teilo agyos drawn out from golden veils on mynydd mawr, when the stars poured out of the jewel, and i saw the sea of the saints and the spiritual things in cor-arbennic. my father read out to me all the histories of teilo, dewi, and iltyd, of their marvellous chalices and altars of paradise from which they made the books of the graal afterwards; and all these things are beautiful to me. but, as the anointed bard said: ‘with the bodily lips i receive the drink of mortal vineyards; with spiritual understanding wine from the garths of the undying. may mihangel intercede for me that these may be mingled in one cup; let the door between body and soul be thrown open. for in that day earth will have become paradise, and the secret sayings of the bards shall be verified.’ i always knew what this meant, though my father told me that many people thought it obscure or, rather, nonsense. but it is just the same really as another poem by the same bard, where he says:
“‘my sin was found out, and when the old women on the bridge pointed at me i was ashamed;
i was deeply grieved when the boys shouted rebukes as i went from caer–newydd.
how is it that i was not ashamed before the finger of the almighty?
i did not suffer agony at the rebuke of the most high.
the fist of rhys fawr is more dreadful to me than the hand of god.’
“he means, i think, that our great loss is that we separate what is one and make it two; and then, having done so, we make the less real into the more real, as if we thought the glass made to hold wine more important than the wine it holds. and this is what i had felt, for it was only twice that i had known wonders in my body, when i saw the cup of teilo sant and when the mountains appeared in vision, and so, as the bard says, the door is shut. the life of bodily things is hard, just as the wineglass is hard. we can touch it and feel it and see it always before us. the wine is drunk and forgotten; it cannot be held. i believe the air about us is just as substantial as a mountain or a cathedral, but unless we remind ourselves we think of the air as nothing. it is not hard. but now i was in paradise, for body and soul were molten in one fire and went up in one flame. the mortal and the immortal vines were made one. through the joy of the body i possessed the joy of the spirit. and it was so strange to think that all this was through a woman — through a woman i had seen dozens of times and had thought nothing of, except that she was pleasant-looking and that the colour of her hair, like copper, was very beautiful.
“i cannot understand it. i cannot feel that she is really nelly foran who opens the door and waits at table, for she is a miracle. how i should have wondered once if i had seen a stone by the roadside become a jewel of fire and glory! but if that were to happen, it would not be so strange as what happened to me. i cannot see now the black dress and the servant’s cap and apron. i see the wonderful, beautiful body shining through the darkness of my room, the glimmering of the white flower in the dark, the stars in the forest pool.
“‘o gift of the everlasting!
o wonderful and hidden mystery!
many secrets have been vouchsafed to me.
i have been long acquainted with the wisdom of the trees;
ash and oak and elm have communicated to me from my boyhood,
the birch and the hazel and all the trees of the green wood have not been dumb.
there is a caldron rimmed with pearls of whose gifts i am not ignorant.
i will speak little of it; its treasures are known to bards.
many went on the search of caer–pedryfan,
seven alone returned with arthur, but my spirit was present.
seven are the apple trees in a beautiful orchard.
i have eaten of their fruit, which is not bestowed on saxons.
i am not ignorant of a head which is glorious and venerable.
it made perpetual entertainment for the warriors; their joys would have been immortal.
if they had not opened the door of the south, they could have feasted for ever,
listening to the song of the fairy birds of rhiannon.
let not anyone instruct me concerning the glassy isle,
in the garments of the saints who returned from it were rich odours of paradise.
all this i knew and yet my knowledge was ignorance,
for one day, as i walked by caer-rhiu in the principal forest of gwent,
i saw golden myfanwy, as she bathed in the brook tarógi.
her hair flowed about her. arthur’s crown had dissolved into a shining mist.
i gazed into her blue eyes as it were into twin heavens.
all the parts of her body were adornments and miracles.
o gift of the everlasting!
o wonderful and hidden mystery!
when i embraced myfanwy a moment became immortality!’2
2 translated from the welsh verses quoted in the notebook.
“and yet i daresay this ‘golden myfanwy’ was what people call ‘a common girl,’ and perhaps she did rough, hard work, and nobody thought anything of her till the bard found her bathing in the brook of tarógi. the birds in the wood said, when they saw the nightingale: ‘this is a contemptible stranger!’
“june 24. since i wrote last in this book the summer has come. this morning i woke up very early, and even in this horrible place the air was pure and bright as the sun rose up and the long beams shone on the cedar outside the window. she came to me by the way they think is locked and fastened, and, just as the world is white and gold at the dawn, so was she. a blackbird began to sing beneath the window. i think it came from far, for it sang to me of morning on the mountain, and the woods all still, and a little bright brook rushing down the hillside between dark green alders, and air that must be blown from heaven.
there is a bird that sings in the valley of the soar.
dewi and tegfeth and cybi preside over that region;
sweet is the valley, sweet the sound of its waters.
there is a bird that sings in the valley of the soar;
its voice is golden, like the ringing of the saints’ bells;
sweet is the valley, echoing with melodies.
there is a bird that sings in the valley of the soar;
tegfeth in the south won red martyrdom.
her song is heard in the perpetual choirs of heaven.
there is a bird that sings in the valley of the soar;
dewi in the west had an altar from paradise.
he taught the valleys of britain to resound with alleluia.
there is a bird that sings in the valley of the soar;
cybi in the north was the teacher of princes.
through him edlogan sings praise to heaven.
there is a bird that sings in the valley of the soar
when shall i hear again the notes of its melody?
when shall i behold once more gwladys in that valley?’3
3 the following translation of these verses appeared in poems from the old bards, by taliesin, bristol, 1812:
“in soar’s sweet valley, where the sound
of holy anthems once was heard
from many a saint, the hills prolong
only the music of the bird.
in soar’s sweet valley, where the brook
with many a ripple flows along,
delicious prospects meet the eye,
the ear is charmed with phil’mel’s song.
in soar’s sweet valley once a maid,
despising worldly prospects gay,
resigned her note in earthly choirs
which now in heaven must sound alway.
in soar’s sweet valley david preached;
his gospel accents so beguiled
the savage britons, that they turned
their fiercest cries to music mild.
in soar’s sweet valley cybi taught
to haughty prince the holy law,
the way to heaven he showed, and then
the subject tribes inspired with awe.
in soar’s sweet valley still the song
of phil’mel sounds and checks alarms.
but when shall i once more renew
those heavenly hours in gladys’ arms?”
“taliesin” was the pseudonym of an amiable clergyman, the reverend owen thomas, for many years curate of llantrisant. he died in 1820, at the great age of eighty-four. his original poetry in welsh was reputed as far superior to his translations, and he made a very valuable and curious collection of “cymric antiquities,” which remains in manuscript in the keeping of his descendants.
“when i think of what i know, of the wonders of darkness and the wonders of dawn, i cannot help believing that i have found something which all the world has lost. i have heard some of the fellows talking about women. their words and their stories are filthy, and nonsense, too. one would think that if monkeys and pigs could talk about their she-monkeys and sows, it would be just like that. i might have thought that, being only boys, they knew nothing about it, and were only making up nasty, silly tales out of their nasty, silly minds. but i have heard the poor women in the town screaming and scolding at their men, and the men swearing back; and when they think they are making love, it is the most horrible of all.
“and it is not only the boys and the poor people. there are the masters and their wives. everybody knows that the challises and the redburns ‘fight like cats,’ as they say, and that the head’s daughter was ‘put up for auction’ and bought by the rich manufacturer from birmingham — a horrible, fat beast, more than twice her age, with eyes like pig’s. they called it a splendid match.
“so i began to wonder whether perhaps there are very few people in the world who know; whether the real secret is lost like the great city that was drowned in the sea and only seen by one or two. perhaps it is more like those shining isles that the saints sought for, where the deep apple orchards are, and all the delights of paradise. but you had to give up everything and get into a boat without oar or sails if you wanted to find avalon or the glassy isle. and sometimes the saints could stand on the rocks and see those islands far away in the midst of the sea, and smell the sweet odours and hear the bells ringing for the feast, when other people could see and hear nothing at all.
“i often think now how strange it would be if it were found out that nearly everybody is like those who stood on the rocks and could only see the waves tossing and stretching far away, and the blue sky and the mist in the distance. i mean, if it turned out that we have all been in the wrong about everything; that we live in a world of the most wonderful treasures which we see all about us, but we don’t understand, and kick the jewels into the dirt, and use the chalices for slop-pails and make the holy vestments into dish-cloths, while we worship a great beast — a monster, with the head of a monkey, the body of a pig and the hind legs of a goat, with swarming lice crawling all over it. suppose that the people that they speak of now as ‘superstitious’ and ‘half-savages’ should turn out to be in the right, and very wise, while we are all wrong and great fools! it would be something like the man who lived in the bright palace. the palace had a hundred and one doors. a hundred of them opened into gardens of delight, pleasure-houses, beautiful bowers, wonderful countries, fairy seas, caves of gold and hills of diamonds, into all the most splendid places. but one door led into a cesspool, and that was the only door that the man ever opened. it may be that his sons and his grandsons have been opening that one door ever since, till they have forgotten that there are any others, so if anyone dares to speak of the ways to the garden of delight or the hills of gold he is called a madman, or a very wicked person.
“july 15. the other day a very strange thing happened. i had gone for a short walk out of the town before dinner on the dunham road and came as far as the four ways where the roads cross. it is rather pretty for lupton just there; there is a plot of grass with a big old elm tree in the middle of it, and round the tree is a rough sort of seat, where tramps and such people are often resting. as i came along i heard some sort of music coming from the direction of the tree; it was like fairies dancing, and then there were strange solemn notes like the priests’ singing, and a choir answered in a deep, rolling swell of sound, and the fairies danced again; and i thought somehow of a grey church high on the cliff above a singing sea, and the fair people outside dancing on the close turf, while the service was going on all the while. as i came nearer i heard the sea waves and the wind and the cry of the seagulls, and again the high, wonderful chanting, as if the fairies and the rocks and the waves and the wild birds were all subject to that which was being done within the church. i wondered what it could be, and then i saw there was an old ragged man sitting on the seat under the tree, playing the fiddle all to himself, and rocking from side to side. he stopped directly he saw me, and said:
“‘ah, now, would your young honour do yourself the pleasure of giving the poor old fiddler a penny or maybe two: for lupton is the very hell of a town altogether, and when i play to dirty rogues the reel of the warriors, they ask for something about two obadiahs — the devil’s black curse be on them! and it’s but dry work playing to the leaf and the green sod — the blessing of the holy saints be on your honour now, this day, and for ever! ’tis but a scarcity of beer that i have tasted for a long day, i assure your honour.’
“i had given him a shilling because i thought his music so wonderful. he looked at me steadily as he finished talking, and his face changed. i thought he was frightened, he stared so oddly. i asked him if he was ill.
“‘may i be forgiven,’ he said, speaking quite gravely, without that wheedling way he had when he first spoke. ‘may i be forgiven for talking so to one like yourself; for this day i have begged money from one that is to gain red martyrdom; and indeed that is yourself.’
“he took off his old battered hat and crossed himself, and i stared at him, i was so amazed at what he said. he picked up his fiddle, and saying ‘may you remember me in the time of your glory,’ he walked quickly off, going away from lupton, and i lost sight of him at the turn of the road. i suppose he was half crazy, but he played wonderfully.”