This is my updated version of an old Welsh folk tale. I've put a 2016 spin on it.
Ianto had had a fantastic evening. Beer, friends and
laughter, what more can a man want? But now it was time to go home. In times
past Ianto would have stayed out and maybe turned a good night into one to
forget or even one to regret. But those days were gone. These days he was a
good boy; he’d learnt his lesson. He recognised that the laughter was less
regular and the conversation less boisterous and the room was about to spin. It
was time to say his goodbyes and take his leave.
A fine rain blew into Ianto’s face as he walked along the
embankment, and the wind was nearly knocking him off his feet. He pulled his
collar up and sunk his hands deep into his pockets feeling his new iPhone safely
nestled there. That phone was his pride and joy. He took it out and glanced at
the screen; not for any particular reason but just because he had one and he
could.
As he switched the screen on a gust of wind far mightier
than any before, knocked the phone clean out of Ianto’s hand and sent it
tumbling down the bank towards the river.
Ianto looked into the dark abyss; his phone was somewhere
down there, he had to get down and get it. He slid and slipped down the grassy
knoll, his loafers giving him no grip in the wet mud. He lost balance and fell
onto his arse with a crack. He screamed with pain. His phone was now forgotten
as his leg throbbed.
“Help!” he yelled but no one passed by, no one came. The
pain was getting worse, the cold biting in. Ianto was shivering so hard the
movement was hurting his leg even more.
“Help!” He cried again, but still no one came.
Then out of the mist came a figure; only slight, almost
childlike.
“Call the police, I’m hurt.” Ianto managed to moan.
“No need for the police,” the little man said, and despite
his small stature picked Ianto up carried him up the bank with ease. Once at
the top the man took Ianto into a nearby house and through to the kitchen.
Ianto thought he could hear music and laughter, but that might have been his
imagination.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” the man said. “Meleri!” he
called.
The door opened and the music grew louder and then faded
again. In came a woman the same size as the man who took one look at the
muddied and injured Ianto and started clucking around him. Within minutes he
was dressed in clean clothes and was drinking a soup the like of which he’d
never tasted before. Gone were the shivers, gone was the pain; he felt good as
new.
“Join us,” the man said. “For we are celebrating my
daughter’s birthday.”
Ianto was led through the house and introduced to all sorts
of little people, no one was an inch over four foot six inches. Except for the
last person he met, the man’s daughter, Olwen.
Olwen wasn’t tall but she was taller than those around her
and she was by far the most beautiful woman Ianto had ever set eyes on. In his
smart new clothes Olwen thought Ianto was pretty dapper too.
They drank and danced and laughed and nearly kissed. Her
smile would light up the darkest of days and was certainly burning a hole in
Ianto’s heart. Ianto had never been so happy; the only cloud was the loss of
his iPhone, lost somewhere down that damn muddy bank.
“Stay the night,” Meleri said. He was disappointed when she
offered him what looked like an awfully lumpy sofa bed and not a chance to
share Olwen’s but at least he didn’t have to go back out into the storm. Looks
can be deceptive, the makeshift bed was the most comfortable bed he’d ever
slept it. He dreamt of Olwen and tasting those lips.
The next morning he was woken up not by a kiss from the
wonderful Olwen but by a the stray dogs licking his face. He looked around and
wondered where he was. Gone were his clean clothes, the sofa bed, the warm
hospitable house. Instead he was in the doorway of the local branch of HSBC. His
clothes muddied and only one loafer on his feet. He shooed the dog away and
staggered to his feet. Despite the disappointment of not seeing Olwen, was
chuffed to bits to see his phone lying next to him, caked in dirt but still
working.
An Adventure in the Big Bog
A young harper of Bala was asked to play at a wedding in a farmhouse near Yspytty Ifan. When the joyous company broke up late at night he set off for home like the rest, but he had a much longer way to go than anyone else. When he was crossing the mountain a dense fog came on, and he lost his way. He was wandering about trying to find the path again, when he suddenly stepped into the Gors Fawr, "the big bog." The treacherous crust swayed for an instant under his tread, and then it broke. The soft mud oozed round his ankles, and he felt himself going further and further down. He tried to raise himself on his harp, but the only result of this was to plunge the beloved instrument into the bog, and he himself sank lower and lower. At last, with a desperate effort, he hurled himself full length upon the surface. The yielding crust caved under his body, and he clutched at the surface grass, but he only plucked the tufts from their roots. They gave him no hold. With every fresh effort to save himself he sank deeper. The gurgling slime sucked him down, down, down, and in the anguish of his soul he threw his head back in one last wild scream.
His cry was just dying away when the fog suddenly cleared, and a little man appeared on the brink of the bog. He threw a rope to the harper, who, after a great struggle, fastened it round his body under the arms. The little man pulled and pulled and gradually drew the harper out of the mire. He took him to a house blazing with light hard by, where there was singing and dancing and much revelry. The harper was given fine clean clothes, and after drinking a flagon of delicious mead he recovered sufficiently from the fright which the fall into the bog had given him to join in the festivity which was going on. There was a little lady there whom the company addressed as Olwen. She was the most beautiful little lady that the harper had ever seen and the best dancer. With her he danced hour after hour, and the only bitter in his cup of sweet was the thought that his beloved harp was in the slimy blackness of the Gors. When the whole company retired to rest he was put in a bed as soft as the softest down, and he thought he had reached a very heaven of delight.
But next morning he was awakened, not by a kiss from Olwen, but by the Plas Drain shepherd's dog licking his lips: he found himself lying by the wall of a sheepfold, and there was no trace of the house in which he had spent such a happy night. His clothes were all caked with bog mud, and his harp, which was in a clump of rushes at his feet, was black with the same defilement.
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