Star of Mercia

Historical Tales of Wales and the
Marches by Blanche Devereux

With an Introduction by
Ernest Rhys

Jonathan Cape
Eleven Gower Street, London

First published 1922
All rights reserved

Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London

INTRODUCTION

There are three reading-publics to which a tale-writer who attempts the uncertain business of writing about Wales may appeal. One is the homebred Welsh public that asks for a tale in the old tongue, yr hen iaith, and has never been quite satisfied, I believe, by any novel or short story about its life, or its real or romantic concerns, written in English. The second is the quasi-Celtic public, which may or may not know the Mabinogion or Borrow's Wild Wales, and is glad of anything that gets the romance atmosphere. The third is the ordinary fiction-loving English public, which asks for a good story, rather likes a Welsh background as in Blackmore's Maid of Sker (a much better book than Lorna Doone to my mind), and does not trouble about the fidelity of the local colour in the reality of the setting. It is from the second and third of these audiences that Miss Devereux can look to gain her "creel-full of listeners," as the story of The Yellow Hag has it.

She has, to begin with, the genuine tale-teller's power of using a motive, a bit of legend, or a proverbial and stated episode, and giving it fresh life and something original out of her own fantasy. In her way of narrative, she does not adopt any rigorous ancientry. She has a sporting sense in dealing with an archaic character like Mogneid, and is satisfied to see him hammer at a door with the butt of his riding-whip. She will make Gildas and St. David or Dewi Sant, collogue as they never did in the old time before us; and devise a comedy and a drunkard's tragedy of her own for a wicked old sinner like King Gwrthyrn, just as she mixes chalk and charcoal freely in the Saxon cartoons that follow the Welsh. The important thing is, she makes her people live, and by the bold infusion of the same old human nature with prehistoric Welsh and old chronicler's English, she succeeds in creating a region of her own. It is not literally Cymric or Saxon; but it is instinct with the fears, loves, hopes and appetites that never decay, and realizes alike the drunkard's glut and the saint's mixed piety and shrewd sense.

In her story of Saint David she has gone to the old "Lives" and the documents for some of her colour. There are passages that may terrify the modern reader, who has no Welsh and does not know how to pronounce Amherawdwr (the Welsh form of imperator or emperor), Dyfnwal, Llywel or Cynyr. The average English reader who is brought up on soft and sibilant C's and i-sounding Y's will probably end by turning the last name into "sinner" in vain compromise. And possibly Miss Devereux is too hard on the average un-Celtic reader; for though she turns Gwy into Wye, she retains Dyfi for Dovey. But these are the pleasant little inconsistencies that exist in every English writer, from Shakespeare and Ben Jonson to Sir Walter Scott and George Meredith, who has attacked the impregnable old fortress of the British tongue.

It is interesting to compare the two tales of wilder Wales with those of Mercia and Saxondom that succeed them in this mixed story-book. The first are realized almost entirely, you will discover, from the man's point of view. The Saxon tales are more intimately felt, and realized from the woman's dramatic angle. It is avowedly so in the chronicle of Winifred, Ebba's daughter, telling the grim love-story of Earl Sweyn the Nithing and Algive. This is in texture, and reality of presentment, maintaining the pseudo-archaic mode with just the faintest reminder of the modern tale-teller pulling the puppet-strings, on the whole the completest of all these new-old tales. In the portrait of Algive, tenderly and joyously painted, there is a faint reminiscence of a Celtic romance-heroine like Olwen (in the Mabinogion), which adds to the charm. And in other ways it will be found by the story-loving and unprejudiced reader, who reads for the pleasure of the thing, and not for criticism or edification, that these Tales of Two Regions gain by carrying over at times the atmosphere of the one—never so lightly indicated—into the actual presentment of the other.

ERNEST RHYS.

1922.

CONTENTS

Gwrtheyrn the Drunkard

Mogneid son of Votecori tapped upon the lintel of the open doorway and called "Ho, there! Is there refreshment for wayfarers?" From within came a luxurious sound of snoring. Mogneid muttered a curse, and began to hammer impatiently with the butt of his riding-whip. The father of the household coughed, rolled heavily from his bed of rushes, and appeared at the door—an old man, blinking with sleep, but collected and courteous.

"What, lord?" said he. "There is tired you are now! How may I serve you? Please you share the shelter of my roof till evening!"

"Nay, not so," Mogneid replied, "I am in haste to reach my journey's end. Give us to drink, sir, I pray you—beer, milk, or water—what you will—anything! We are dried up with this dust! And tell me, if you can, how far hence dwells Gwrtheyrn the King?"

Without waiting to answer, the old man hobbled away, and returned a few minutes later with a big stone pitcher and two little cups of horn.

"Alack, my friend," he grumbled, "they have taken all the beer. They are all gone to mow the hay, look you, my son and the women! and I am left to milk the cows and tend the livestock. Sore thing it is that old age comes so soon! Well, lord,