Adapted from Welsh Folk-Lore by Owain Elias
A SHORT TIME BEFORE OUR DAYS, a circumstance worthy of note occurred in these parts, which Elidorus, a priest, most strenuously affirmed had befallen to himself.
When a youth of twelve years, and learning his letters, since, as Solomon says, ‘The root of learning is bitter, although the fruit is sweet,’ in order to avoid the discipline and frequent stripes inflicted on him by his preceptor, he ran away and concealed himself under the hollow bank of the river.
After fasting in that situation for two days, two little men of pigmy stature appeared to him, saying, “If you will come with us, we will lead you into a country full of delights and sports.”
Assenting and rising up, he followed his guides through a path, at first subterraneous and dark, into a most beautiful country, adorned with rivers and meadows, woods and plains, but obscure, and not illuminated with the full light of the sun. All the days were cloudy, and the nights extremely dark, on account of the absence of the moon and stars.
The boy was brought before the King and introduced to him in the presence of the court; who, having examined him for a long time, delivered him to his own son, who was then also still a boy. These men were of the smallest stature, but very well proportioned in their make; they were all of a fair complexion, with luxuriant hair falling over their shoulders like that of women. They had horses and greyhounds adapted to their size. They neither ate flesh nor fish, but lived on milk diet, made up into messes with saffron. They never took an oath, for they detested nothing so much as lies. As often as they returned from our upper hemisphere, they reprobated our ambition, infidelities, and inconstancies; they had no form of public worship, being strict lovers and reverers, as it seemed, of truth.
The boy in question frequently returned to our hemisphere, sometimes by the way he had first gone, sometimes by another; at first in company with other persons, and afterwards alone, and made himself known only to his mother, declaring to her the manners, nature, and state of the people he now lived with.
Being desired by her to bring a present of gold, with which that region abounded, he stole, while at play with the king’s son, the golden ball with which he used to divert himself and brought it to his mother in great haste. When he reached the door of his father’s house and was entering it in a great hurry as he was being pursued, his foot stumbled on the threshold and the boy fell down into the room where his mother was sitting. At that moment the two fairies appeared and seized the ball which had dropped from his hand and departed, showing the boy every mark of contempt and derision.
On recovering from his fall, confounded with shame, and execrating the evil counsel of his mother, he returned by the usual track to the subterraneous road, but found no appearance of any passage, though he searched for it on the banks of the river for nearly the space of a year. But since those calamities are often alleviated by time, which reason cannot mitigate, and length of time alone blunts the edge of our afflictions and puts an end to many evils, the youth, having been brought back by his friends and mother, and restored to his right way of thinking, and to his learning, in process of time attained the rank of priesthood.
Whenever David, Bishop of St. David’s, talked to him in his advanced state of life concerning this event, the one-time fairy boy could never relate the particulars without shedding tears. He had made himself acquainted with the language of that nation, the words of which, in his younger days, he used to recite, which the bishop considered very similar to the Greek idiom.
When they asked for water, they said “Ydor ydorum,” which meant “Bring water,” for Ydor in their language, as well as in the Greek, signifies water, whence vessels for water are called Ãdriai. Dwr, also in the British language, signifies water. When they wanted salt they said “Halgein ydorum,” “Bring salt.” Salt is called al in Greek, and Halen in old British, because the Britons (then called Trojans and afterwards Britons, from Brito, their leader) remained in Greece after the destruction of Troy, and so became, in many instances, similar to the Greek.