A very unfunny thing happened to us around suppertime that night.
It wasn’t the meal as such. That was fine - an enormous baked-bean omelette cooked by Fraser. And it wasn’t the Swedish frying-pan either. That hopeless thing simply had to be abandoned. It’s all very well designing these ultra-lightweight utensils for the fast-moving camper, but when they can’t even take a playful impact with the seat of a man’s trousers without buckling up like a hub-cap it’s time to get back to the proper job. So as far as that was concerned we simply borrowed another one from a tent across the way where the woman was cooking stew and didn’t need it.
No. It was the Lurking Druid that got us. He was in fact the husband of the woman who lent us the frying-pan, but I don’t think it’s fair to blame the fellow on her.
You know how it is on camp-sites - or, if you don’t, I’ll tell you. In the main they are very decent places and they attract a very self-respecting cross-section of the community, who get on with their own business, and are polite and tolerant, and try not to get in each other’s way. That’s how most people are. But on every camp-site, however small, there is always one obsessional pest of a person who is there from ulterior motives. He is the man who wants to talk to you about something. Well, he doesn’t want to talk to you specifically. He wants to have a go at anybody he can back into a corner and get to listen. I suppose the reason why he frequents these spots is that he has so numbed and antagonised everybody back home that he has to go out and find a fresh audience in the most obvious place that comes to mind.
Now the obsession, of course, can vary, but the techniques for foisting it on you don’t change much. There is the man with the moan, and the man wants to show you the hand-made shelving in his caravan; and there is the man who has worked out a scheme for re-processing lobsters and feeding them to reindeer. But whatever his particular cause you can usually pick him out by the predatory way he hangs around your tent waiting for an opportunity to swoop in and bore you to tears. I say you can pick him out, but can you short of physical brutality, or downright abuse, actually fend him off?
Ah! That is the question. Usually there is some sort of tit-for-tat that you can organise.
In our case we knew we’d got a right one from the start, of course, by the brazen way he just walked across with his own camp stool and a ‘How’s the frying-pan doing?’, which was all he bothered himself with by way of an explanation for muscling in on us.
‘Strangers in these parts, I take it?’ he barged on, not that it would have mattered if we’d said No. In fact I think we probably did.
We looked him up and down: the loose mouth hanging open ready for action, the carefully arranged locks, the knobbly knees covered by a hide like a rhinoceros’s.
Then he began. He told us his name was Jackson, a London solicitor - ‘At least,’ he said, ‘I used to be, until I retired and fell in love with this place. Of course,’ he continued, ‘Daphne and I had been to Wales many times before I retired - don’t get me wrong. More and more as the years went by, as a matter of fact. And then one evening we were sitting at home and I said to her, “Daphne?” - “Yes, John?” - I said, “Daphne, do you know what’s going through my mind?” And she said “You’re going to tell me that you want to retire and go and live in Wales.” Just like that. Wasn’t that an extraordinary thing?’
‘It depends how often you’d tried it on her before,’ said Fraser.
‘- Oh, you may talk,’ went on the London solicitor, getting his voice into top form. ‘You may talk of France, or Spain, or the Alps, or the Grand Canyon for that matter. All very beautiful places in their way, I haven’t a doubt. But when you get to know a country, and a people, and a language, as I have done, I’ll tell you this, you may walk from the North Pole to the South and at the end of the day you’ll still come back here and say to yourself “This is my spot!” ‘
There was a pause. ‘D’you know much of history?’ he added suddenly, judging the throw-away delivery to perfection.
We gave this some serious thought - looking for a way out, so to speak.
Fraser said, ‘Plenty for the time being’, which wasn’t a had effort. I think both sides knew we were coming to some sort of crunch. Jackson had produced an enormous pipe - a good twenty-five minutes’ worth - and he was already beginning to fill it up, wearing a dreadful leer of triumph.
Then, ‘Did you ever hear the story,’ he said, leaning forward confidentially and putting his hand on his knee. ‘Did you ever hear the story of Blodwedd, Princess of Powys?’
Fraser said, ‘No, thank God’, and Jackson said he wanted to tell it to us now. He said it was one of the most moving little stories we would ever hear in our lives. Fraser said in that case if he could let him have it in writing together with a stamped addressed envelope he’d promise him a full opinion within a fortnight. Jackson laughed in a battle-scarred sort of way, and said that the Welsh bardic tradition was entirely by word of mouth and that a story could vary sometimes quite fantastically at the whim of the teller. Fraser said could he give us a timescale for this particular whim, and Jackson said that once he got into it time wouldn’t seem to make any difference at all. He said that we would have to forgive him if he occasionally used the odd phrase in Welsh - he was so used to thinking of this charming tale in Welsh that he would inadvertently let it slip into its natural language from time to time - it was a curious trait of his that he didn’t seem to be able to throw off.
Fraser said, ‘Get on with it.’
Of all the daughters of Maerdrach, King of Powys [Jackson said], none was more fair than the Princess Blodwedd. The King had seven daughters and five sons, and each of them he loved as dearly as himself, but if there was one who captivated his heart more than all the others then Blodwedd the youngest was surely she. Sometimes he would call her his pwentll riant, his little daughter of the morning rose. At other times, when the tawny rays of the dying sun would touch her cheeks with its glowing embers as she ran skipping over the hillsides, he would give her the nickname myrla myn, elf of the firelight. But most of all he called her tantynas, that is to say ‘joy at the last’. ‘For,’ said the King, ‘whatever woes shall furrow this fair brow, she shall at the last find joy and contentment.’ Thus they lived [Jackson pressed on grimly] in peace and happiness for many years.
Now it happened one day that Princess Blodwedd rose early when it was just light and left her father’s castle, and tripped like the haze upon the dew down to the river’s edge to bathe herself in the clear waters. And there upon a rock -
‘Bathe herself?’ queried Fraser.
‘Yes,’ Jackson said.
In the clear waters. And there upon a r -
‘Lack of facilities back at the motte and bailey?’
‘If you care to put it that way.’
‘And there upon a r –’
‘This seems odd,’ said Fraser. ‘We know, of course that hygiene arrangements in former centuries had not developed to the pitch of mania that we suffer from today. None the less a castle without water inside its walls is a castle which is going to prove distinctly vulnerable in time of siege.’
‘No doubt,’ Jackson said. ‘But I’m not suggesting that the castle didn’t have a well. I merely made it clear that the princess preferred the privacy and seclusion of the running stream.’
‘Privacy? I wouldn’t call larking starkers within a bowshot of the battlements privacy exactly.’
‘With you around it wouldn’t be,’ said Jackson nastily. ‘But in that age of beauty and innocence things were different.’
‘The sentries didn’t look, you mean?’
‘Precisely.’
‘I merely asked for information,’ said Fraser. ‘Please continue.’
And there upon a rock where she would often sit on summer mornings, she gazed into the crystal stream and combed her hair and braided it with the white lilies that bounce and bobble in the swirling flood. And as she reached out to pluck, the whitest lily of them all, it chanced that her foot slipped and the foaming tide received her and carried her away, as though to sweep her to the nethermost part of the stream the end of which is known to no man.
But, as good fortune would have it, scarcely the length of a swallow’s flight from the rock, two woodcutters were battening their fire beside the river’s brim. And the elder woodcutter said to his son: ‘Son, my eyes are old, and moreover it is not yet clear day. Tell me, what see you that floats towards us, so silvery white along the stream?’ And the son shaded his eyes against the morning ray and said, ‘Father, it is a milk-white swan, the whitest you have ever seen. Shall I swim out and fetch it, Father?’ And his father said, ‘No. No son of mine shall dare that stream, though it be for the whitest swan that swims upon water.’
And the father looked at the river a second time, and said to his son: ‘Son, my eyes are old, and moreover it still lacks something of a true light. Look again, I pray you, and tell me what it is that floats towards us so silvery white along the stream.’ And the son stood beneath the bough of a great oak to shield his eyes against the morning ray and said: ‘Father, it is a milk-white ewe, the whitest you have ever seen. Shall I swim out and fetch it, Father?’ And his father said: ‘No. No son of mine shall dare that stream, though it be for the whitest ewe that ever gave suck.’
And the father looked at the river a third time and said to his son: ‘Son, my eyes are old, and though it be clear day look once more, I pray you, and tell me what it is that floats so silvery white along the stream.’ And the son lay down beneath the leaves of the great laurel which gives more shade than all the trees of the wood, and he said: ‘Father, it is a milk-white maiden, the whitest and the fairest you have ever seen. Shall I swim out and fetch her, Father?’ And the father said: ‘Swim, and the blessings of my heart be upon you. For he is no son of mine who shall not dare that stream for such a maiden.’
‘Yes,’ said Jackson, ‘What is it now?’
‘Who, me?’ Fraser said.
‘Yes. You said something.’
‘N ... o. I just breathed heavily.’
‘Emotion probably,’ I said.
‘Call it that,’ said Fraser, ‘For want of a better word.’
Jackson cleared his throat, with the sound of a metal worker rasping off a rough edge, and battered on.
So the boy swam out, and he clasped the Princess Blodwedd by her hand whiter than lilies, and he guided her to the farther bank and laid her down upon the soft grass of the meadow. And presently she opened her eyes, and she saw the comely face of the youth gazing down upon her own. And she said to him: ‘Good youth, you who have saved me from the turbulent stream, tell me what recompense I can give you, and I shall go to my father and ask it of him, and surely he will grant it you though it were half his kingdom.’
And the youth replied: ‘As for kingdoms and as for half-kingdoms I know nothing of these things. But if your father should find it in his heart to give me your hand, that would be more recompense to me than any treasure I could name.’
Now when she heard these words the heart of the Princess Blodwedd gave a bound within her, for in all Powys she had not seen a youth so brave of stature or so fair of complexion. And she said: ‘Gladly will I ask this thing, and as my father loves me he will not refuse it.’
‘Go then,’ said the youth. ‘Only remember this. Today I must go on a long journey into a distant kingdom where I must reside for seven long years until I may return again. Wait patiently therefore against my coming back, and when I return, then shall you give me your hand in marriage.’
So it was agreed. And Blodwedd returned to her father’s castle, and she told her father all that had happened and how she had pledged her hand to the young woodcutter who had saved her from the turbulent stream. And her father said: ‘You have well done. But I wish it not that my tantynas, my joy, should be separated from her love these seven long years. Come, I will send messengers out to find the youth, and whatever journey it may be that he goes upon I will send others in his stead so that he may dwell here and be as a son to me.’
So the King sent messengers out that very hour. And they scoured the kingdom from the high hills of the West to the great plains of the East. But no sign of him could they find, for he had already taken his journey. And the King sent messengers out again to all the kingdoms that bordered upon the land of Powys, but no sign of the lad could those kings find, for he had passed through their lands on his way into a far country whose end is known to no man. So after much searching, the King said to himself: ‘I have searched and I have found him not. May it please the gods to keep the boy safe so that my tantynas, my Blodwedd, shall not wait in vain.’ Phwlli ap mynath pant bolwyn nach y glasbech –
‘Oh I’m sorry,’ said Jackson. ‘That’s Welsh, of course. I was forgetting that you don’t understand.’
Fraser opened his eyes and said: ‘It doesn’t matter a damn.’
Reader, shall we take this natural break for a bit of swift commentary? The trouble about the Welsh Bardic Tradition - you may have spotted it already - is that it’s not particularly hot on precis. Fine, no doubt, for belting it out in the flambeaux-lit halls - not quite so handy when you’ve got a five-minute spot before the curtain goes up on the main attraction. So without wishing to give too much of a raspberry to the fair Blodwedd, I think we’ll sketch in the next half-a-decade or so in a brisk and fairly straight-from-the shoulder style, and then those of us who, unlike Fraser, are still awake can rejoin the main narrative as it grinds to a close. Okay?
Okay.
Briefly, then, what happened was this. Old Maerdrach had been a lifelong sufferer from Prattwinkle’s disease, and round about the age of sixty he got a particularly nasty twinge and put the word about that he was going to turn it in. To mark the occasion he dished around among his sons and daughters some pretty ropey-looking presents - a sword, a beer mug, a cow’s horn, a tenor banjo - that sort of thing. And, of course, Blodwedd being the youngest didn’t qualify for anything better than a small iron box without a key, which on the face of it was pretty bad news as presents go. It was an unexciting box, and as for the contents they were anybody’s guess from a cycle-repair outfit to Granny’s ashes. However, Maerdrach may have been gaga but he wasn’t shtoopid, and he told the fair Blod that if her woodcutter heart-throb didn’t put in an appearance she was going to have to shack up with anyone who could answer three rather arch little riddles and open the lid. Blodwedd said, ‘Suits me’, and, so the King told her the riddles and Blodwedd said, ‘You’re not serious’, and the King said, ‘Why, what’s wrong with them?’, and Blodwedd was just telling him when he suddenly keeled over and died.
Now, when your king died in those days the form was that all the other kings jumped on top of you and tried to hack off a slice of the ancestral lands for themselves. Unsettling perhaps, but then that’s how the cookie crumbled. And, frankly, from the other kings’ point of view they couldn’t have chosen a better time because the sons and daughters of the late Maerdrach hadn’t got their act together at all and the upshot was that over the next few years the sons and daughters mostly found themselves being rubbed out. The last to go was the eldest brother who had the rather miffing experience of defeating all his enemies but getting himself so carved up in the process that he couldn’t make it back to the chateau. This left Blodwedd in charge.
Life, as we have just seen, was rough for the ruling classes. But don’t let’s run away with the idea that the lower orders were rolling around in clover. Far from it. Take for example that young woodcutter laddie. No sooner had he completed his seven-year stretch in foreign parts and set out home to claim the hand of the fabulous Blodwedd than he found himself caught up in the general hostilities and - bingo - he was clapped in the clink of some neighbouring baron, thus failing to put in an appearance at his own wedding. This was hard cheese for Blod, and moreover the iron box idea turned out to be a complete frost. No fewer than four handsome princes turned up at the castle to press their suit, but quite honestly - though they scored well on commitment - it was zero out of ten for riddle-solving, and the end product was that Blodwedd went off and started making table-mats in the East Wing while her lover-boy was about fifty miles down the road tunnelling his way out of durance vile.
That’s it folks, so we can now rejoin the mainstream of Jackson’s story at the point when the woodcutter finally pops up into the sunlight and hands in his visiting card four or five years too late at the castle lodge:
Now when the young woodcutter asked to be shewn into the presence of Blodwedd, he was so weary and tattered by his travels, that the porter of the castle would not so much as let him into her sight but went to her himself, and said: ‘Your Majesty, there is a ragamuffin fellow at the gate who has come to seek your hand in marriage. Let me now take him the casket so that you may not be troubled by him, and I shall ask him the three questions which your father gave you. Then he may go.’ And Blodwedd said: ‘Do so.’
So the porter took the casket down to the gate and he placed it in the woodcutter’s hands and he asked him the three questions that King Maerdrach had commanded.
And the first question was: What shines brighter than the sun?
And the youth replied: ‘The honour of a true man, for that is a light that no curtain can ever hide.’
And the second question was: What runs faster than the stag?
And the youth replied: ‘The prayers of a true man. For them no hill nor stream can ever stay.’
And the third question was: What is fairer than the lily flower?
And the youth replied: ‘There is one thing only in this world that is fairer than the lily flower, and that is the hand of Blodwedd, Queen of all the lands of Powys.’
And as he finished speaking the casket sprang open. And inside upon a bed of satin there lay a ring of the purest gold. And straight away the woodcutter took the ring and carried it up to Blodwedd’s chamber and put it upon her finger and kissed her. And she immediately recognised her beloved. And she ordered her chamberlain and her trumpeters to proclaim a feast. And that very evening the two lovers were married amid great celebration. And they ruled together over the land of Powys for many a happy year.
At long last Jackson seemed to have come to a full stop, and I must say the event was greeted by a pretty stunned silence from Henry and Fraser and me. How a man could go around the country - as he obviously did - reciting this twaddle and trying to pass it off as entertainment beats me. Apart from which, the whole thing was as leaky as a sieve. What about the woodcutter’s father for a start? Where had he got himself to when all these messengers were flying around taking statements and checking identikits? If he’d only come across with a forwarding address when King Whatsisname was asking people to help the force with their enquiries, he could have saved most of the camp-sites in modern Wales a pretty good slice of wasted time from the likes of Jackson.
Jackson said Wasn’t it a lovely thing? And Fraser said Delightful. He said that as he listened to it he had been reminded of an old Scottish ballad which he sometimes liked to recite to discriminating people who were attuned to the nuances of ancient song and story. And Jackson said that that would be lovely but really he must be getting along for his supper. And then Henry put his hand on his shoulder and said No but this was a chance he wouldn’t want to miss.
That’s the brass neck of a man like Jackson. I suppose that having bored the pants off everybody for the last half-hour or so he imagined he could just slope away and get down to his boeuf stroganoff and leave us to take it lying down. Now that he could see some of the solids starting to fly back at him off the fan he didn’t like it a bit.
Fraser said, by way of whetting Jackson’s appetite so to speak, that this particular ballad called for quite a lot of Scottish dialect which he (Fraser) couldn’t really do very well. In fact he could scarcely do it at all, but that wasn’t going to prevent him having a good crack at it.
Henry said would Jackson like to know what the ballad was called, and Jackson said Yes, though I must say he sounded low on sincerity.
Fraser said it was called the Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, whereupon quite suddenly Jackson brightened up and announced that he knew it already.
‘Oh, that old one!’ he exclaimed patronisingly. ‘Sorry, old boy, but I know it already. Know it pretty well, as a matter of fact.’
‘Do you now?’ said Fraser. ‘Tell me, how does your version go?’
‘Well, you know,’ Jackson said, ‘it goes, let me see ... er ...
The King sits in Dunfermline town
Drinking the blood-red wine:
‘O where’ll I find me a skeelie skipper
To sail this new brig o’ mine?’
‘Then it goes on ... um ... aha ...
Then up and spake a counsellor hoar
Sat at the King’s right knee,
Sir...’
‘As I thought,’ Fraser said. ‘The old textbook version. No, the Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens that I’m going to give you is the real thing.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘The genuine article. You don’t find this sort of thing in print.’
‘Too sad, you see,’ Henry explained. ‘People can’t take it.’
Jackson said gloomily, ‘Oh, get on.’ We’d got him cornered and he knew it.
Fraser then recited in a lingering and plaintive voice his own version of the Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens:
The king sits in Dunfermline toun
The Queen sits i’ Pitlochrie,
An’ the mists an’ the rain between the twain
Mak’ the A324 a mockrie.
The King sits in Dunfermline toun
And a’ his thanes are coming,
Random and rare the laughter there
An’ the same goes for the plumbing.
The King sits in Dunfermline toun
Mid his gay but watchful court,
Over mony a year they have learned to fear
The effects of Australian port.
The King sits in Dunfermline toun
Drinking the blude-red wine
‘O where’ll I find me a skeelie skipper
To sail this new brig o’ mine?’
Then up and spak’ a counsellor hoar
Wi’ a face like a freak October,
‘Sir Patrick Spens is the skeeliest skipper
Provided you catch him sober.’
The King has written a broad letter
An’ sealed it wi’ his hand,
An’ sent a man doun the A324
Wi’ instructions to hug the land.
The King has written a broad letter
An’ sent a man i’ the cause,
An’ sent him to Sir Patrick Spens
Was walkin’ on all fours.
The first word that Sir Patrick read
Sae loud, loud laugh’d he;
The next word that Sir Patrick read
He collapsed in a heap on the quay.
‘To Noroway, to Noroway,
To Noroway o’er the faem,
So we’ll take a trip to Noroway, lads,
An’ be back by opening taem.’
‘But it’s opening taem already,
An’ we’re perfectly happy here.’
‘Then we’ll run on the spot, it’ll mak’ us hot
And work up a thirst for beer.’
They got him aboard on Thursday,
On Friday they wrang him dry,
On Saturday noon he escaped down the toun
So they had another try.
They finally sailed the next Wednesday
At six o’clock i’ the morn,
An’ the wave boomed high ‘neath a sullen sky
As the mizzen bent i’ the storm.
Sir Pat from the bridge looked for’ard
(They had pointed him round that way)
An’ the spume flew from his grizzled beard
All the lang, lang day.
Sir Patrick hadna had a drink,
A drink but barely nine,
When he saw three strange shapes
Rising out o’ the brine.
Sir Patrick hadna had a drink,
A drink but barely ten,
When he saw three strange shapes
Rising out o’ the brine again.
‘O bo’sun, bo’sun, I dinna ken
How long ye’ve been in the navy,
But hae ye ere seen such strange shapes
Risin’ out o’ the gravy?
‘For ane is like my father,
Ane’s like my mother dear,
And ane would be like my ain true love
If they’d wean her off the beer.’
‘O Captain, tho’ the visibility
‘s particularly murk,
On my aith they be the three grey towers
Of auld Pitlochrie Kirk.
‘For this isn’t the way to Noroway
An’ it isn’t the way back hame,
But this is the way up the auld 324
Which is roughly the way we came.’
Now the Queen sat i’ Pitlochrie,
An’ Sir Patrick he moored by the Grand,
An’ he raised himself to his courtly knee
As he kissed her muscular hand.
‘O lady, the King has commanded
To bring him a fair young maid,
So by any normal standards
Ye’d be disqualifaid.
‘But we live in a time o’ crisis
An’ ye’re goin’ to have to do,
So put on your gown, for Dunfermline town
Has been allocated you.’
An’ that’s how the royals reunited;
The King he threw a ball
For as he explained to the counsellor hoar
‘You just can’t win ‘em all.’
We didn’t exchange words after that. Jackson just upped with his stool and went off and skulked in his tent. By the time we’d finished supper he and his wife had put their lamp out and gone to bed. Fraser suggested as we climbed into our sleeping-bags that I should be sent across to sing Cwm Rhondda to him through the canvas, but Henry said he had suffered enough.
Henry seemed to have a gloomy spell generally as we lay awake and talked. He said the air was oppressive, and Fraser said that was a bit rich considering it was his socks that were doing it. Henry complained that we were nearly out of food and he was at his wits’ end to think what we could have for breakfast.
I suggested another omelette. ‘We can get the eggs from Mrs Evans at the farm,’ I said.
Henry said: ‘Yes, but it’s what we’re going to put inside it that’s worrying me.’
‘Digestive biscuits,’ Fraser said. ‘We’ve got some of those left unless you’ve scoffed them.’ ‘Apricot jam,’ I said.
‘Ugh. Just keep quiet for a moment and let me think.’ Five minutes later I said: ‘How’s the thinking going, Henry?’ But all the answer we got was a loud snore.