Star of Mercia: Historical Tales of Wales and the Marches

Fiction > Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology

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by Blanche Devereux

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.

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