(Note–Not everything this month before we go public is a rerun; and today we bring you a fresh one by our friend, Michael Bloor–LA)

Andy and Davie were on their usual walk, along the banks of the Allanwater as far as the wooden footbridge, and then back again. They were discussing Scotland’s nail-biting victory last week over the Danes, sending the Scots to the World Cup Finals for the first time since 1998. Andy was English and had little interest in football, but he’d been deeply impressed by the tremendous, spontaneous upwelling of joy across the entire Scottish nation that the game had caused. Davie was trying to explain that it wasn’t just about the result, but the circumstances – the manner of the win. Three of the four goals were truly things of beauty. The match took place at Glasgow’s Hampden Park in front of a delirious home crowd, screened live and free-to-view in every home and every pub. It followed years and years of failure to qualify – some of the present team being unborn at the time Scotland had last qualified.

Andy nodded good-humouredly, but Davie could tell that he hadn’t yet got his point across. He tried again:

‘I was ten when I first started going to the football. In ‘The Boys Enclosure’ (admission: 9 pence – 5p. in new money). It was always packed solid, but you were always among friends, you roared, you booed, you sang, and when they scored you all swept forward like a mighty wave. Like I said, I was ten, and for the first time I felt a part of a whole. That was what Scotland felt when that lovely fourth goal hit the net in the last minute of extra time: it felt that we were part of a whole. It was a feeling of solidarity.’

‘OK, yeah, I’ve got it now, Davie. Solidarity: maybe I didn’t recognise it ’til you said it. Solidarity eh? I thought that had disappeared back in 1985.’

‘1985?? Ah, you mean Polmaise?’

[Polmaise Colliery, or the remains of it, lay just nine miles away. All through the year-long miners’ strike in 1984-85, the Polmaise miners never posted pickets at the mine gates to try to deter fellow miners from returning to work: they didn’t need to. They knew that Polmaise miners were all, to a man, solidly behind the strike. Polmaise was famous: they’d previously struck for 10 whole months back in 1938; they’d already been out on strike for a fortnight in 1984, before the national miners’ strike was declared. When the national strike was broken, a whole year later, and the union voted for a return to work, Polmaise, alone, stayed out for a further week.]

‘Yeah, I mean Polmaise. That was solidarity, Davie. I was there, you know, with the whole village at the gates to applaud the lads coming off the last shift, when the Thatcher government closed the pit two years later.’

‘Good for you, Andy. I understand: that was solidarity. So, instead, what would you call our nation of leaping hearts when the ref blew the final whistle at Hampden Park the other night?’

‘Maybe Communion? A transcendent thing, shared and remembered. ‘

‘Ah, like Archie Gemmill’s solo goal against the Dutch in the World Cup Finals in Argentina in 1978?’

‘Ha, if you like.’

‘OK, I’ll settle for communion over solidarity. By the way, do you know what William McIlvanney, your favourite Scots author, did when he got the publisher’s advance for his first novel?’

‘Beats me, Davie.’

‘He jacked in his teaching job in Kilmarnock and headed off to watch Scotland and Archie Gemmill in the 1978 World Cup Finals in Argentina.’

Andy smiled, but he was absorbed in watching a Dipper fossicking in the Allanwater shallows over at the opposite bank. Part of the attraction of Dippers is that, like Puffins, they are both comical in appearance and surprisingly successful in their daily tasks. Dippers are about the same size as a thrush, but black and definitely portly in appearance, with a big white bib under their chin. They are called ‘Dippers’ because they constantly bow and nod their heads up and down, like manic Victorian butlers. Yet these clown-like birds are surprisingly swift underwater swimmers and efficient finders of caddisfly larvae on the bottoms of rivers, lochs and burns.

Davie followed Andy’s gaze. ‘That Dipper looks perfectly happy on his own over there. Maybe we don’t really need communion with others?’

‘Ah, but he’s in communion with Nature.’

(Note: I forgot to mention yesterday that this week features pieces Mick had published on sites that have since fallen into the ominous black hole that publishers do our best to avoid. Still, no longer is is not the same as never was; therfore this highly entertaining work was published by Occulum in 2017–Leila)

     They keep asking me why I did it. Then, as soon as I start to explain, D C Grainger butts in with: ‘Was this on the morning of June 11th?’ I deal with that and then D C Singh chimes in with: ‘Did you tell anyone that was where you were going?’ I struggle past that, and then as soon as I get to the bit about the Holy Spring, I see ‘em exchanging those ‘Has he escaped from the funny farm?’ looks. A dispiriting business for a university professor accustomed to a respectful audience. So I’m setting it all down on paper. And then I’m not telling the police another bloody word.

     I live in Scotland now, but most years I manage a visit to my mother’s country, the Welsh Borders. When I was a child, I used to spend every summer holiday in the Abergavenny house of my grandparents, Harry and Gladys Cecil. The little town is surrounded by seven hills, but for a child the hill that holds the greatest glamour is the Sugar Loaf (its Welsh name is Pen y Val), which looms over the north of the town. Every summer, I would pester Grandad Cecil to re-tell the story of how Buffalo Bill brought his Wild West Show to Abergavenny in the summer of 1903. Grandad had been one of the children in the audience when Buffalo Bill vowed to his audience that he would walk up the Sugar Loaf. And that’s just what he did the next morning, accompanied by half the adults and all the children of Abergavenny.

     Bear with me. I’m trying to explain that the mountain exerts a strange pull – even a hard-bitten old-timer like Buffalo Bill could feel it. It remains a big draw today and the most popular routes have carparks at the foot of them. For sentimental reasons I take a less travelled route, setting out from Deriside (where my grandparents lived), crossing the ford by Harris’s farm, round the foot of Rholben, and up St Mary’s Vale. Just like the Sugar Loaf/Pen y Val, St Mary’s Vale has both an English and a Welsh name. Granny Cecil said that the Normans conquered the broad lowlands, but the Welsh always held the hills, and the head of the Vale is known by its Welsh name Cwm Trosnant, which means the valley of the three springs. St Mary’s Vale starts out as a gentle valley covered in beech woods. In June, the leaves are a dizzying, iridescent green, squirrels dart up the towering grey tree boles and scold you – ridiculously – from the upper branches, the stream splashes over sandstone pebbles. Again, I’m telling you this because you need to understand the pull of the place.

     As you make your way up the Vale, it narrows and the great beeches give way to stunted oaks and thorn trees – you’ve crossed an invisible border into Cwm Trosnant. Near the head of the cwm, the path strikes off steeply to the right and the hidden summit of the mountain. Just a few metres onwards and upwards, the path passes by one of the three springs from which the cwm gets its name. It issues, cold as your fridge, from the roots of a thorn tree. As a child, sixty years ago, I often stopped to watch the mysterious welling of the waters out of the earth and into the light. I would dangle my hand in it, but I never drank from it, mindful of my mother’s frequent warnings of the dangers of polio – the great child killer of the 1950s. The springs of the Welsh hills were holy places, a source of wonder, even before the coming of Christianity. Hermit saints understood the mesmeric attraction of the springs and built their churches beside them. Even today, there’s an isolated, ancient church beside a spring a few miles from Abergavenny, where pilgrims still leave spring-side offerings. Sixty eight years old and no longer bound by my mother’s injunctions, on that June day I bent down and cupped my hands to drink.

     Bending down to the clear, bubbling water, tasting it on my parched tongue, I had a sensation of the world behind me being progressively suffused with brilliant light. As I lifted my head, I was entranced to see the cwm transformed. It was still a narrow upland valley, but instead of the bracken, thorns and stunted oaks, there was a miraculous pleasance. I say ‘pleasance’ rather than garden, because I knew instinctively that this was no modern landscape. There were roses, lupins and hollyhocks; the thorn above the spring had been replaced by an apple tree suffused with blossoms. It was as if I was in Tennyson’s ‘island valley of Avilion… fair with orchard lawns and bowery hollows’ where King Arthur was carried by barge after the Last Battle. Enchanted, I turned to see a woman in the middle distance, walking towards me. Her beech-green dress, which swayed about her body as she walked, was long and trailed among the daisies at her feet. Her red-gold hair was coifed above her brow but fell about her shoulders. Her face was solemn and ageless.

     She spoke to me in what I took to be Old Welsh (as a child, I learned Welsh from my mother), but I could make little of it. She switched to English, spoken clearly but with the punctilious correctness of a foreigner:

     ‘Well met, Michael, son of Mary, daughter of Henry. Long have I waited for you here beside the great spring of Taliesin Ben Beirdd. We are kin, you and I, because I am Angharad, wife of Sitsyllt ap Dyfnawl.’

     I knew the name. The slaying of Sitsyllt is a well-known piece of Abergavenny local history. In 1177, William de Braose the new Norman Lord of Abergavenny, invited around seventy leading local Welshmen to a Christmas feast in his Great Hall. Among them was Sitsyllt of nearby Castell Arnallt, a formidable warrior. As was the custom of the time, the Welsh nobles, surrendered their weapons before entering the dining hall. Once the Welsh were all assembled, they were set upon by de Braose’s men-at-arms and slaughtered to a man. The men-at-arms were then dispatched to Sitsyllt’s Castell Arnallt, which they destroyed and took Sitsyllt’s wife, Angharad, back to Abergavenny as a prisoner. Sitsyllt’s kin eventually anglicised their name to Cecil, my mother’s maiden name.

     ‘Those of Sitsyllt’s kin who drink at Taliesin’s spring receive the gift of true sight, but they are also honour-bound to strive to remedy the dishonour done to Sitsyllt’s house and name. Do you accept the obligation I shall lay upon you?’

     I nodded. I could scarce do otherwise.

     ‘Very well. I know you are a scholar; I give you a scholar’s task. Among the booty from the sacking of Castell Arnallt, the Normans took away my Great Book. The court of my brother, the Lord Rhys of Deheubarth, was the greatest centre of learning in all Britain: bards and sages, harpists and holy men were all welcomed there and competed in the recitation of the laws, the lineages, the ancient wisdom and the holy truths. By the bidding of my brother, I wrote down all that was good and true, and I bore that book as a love-gift to my husband, Sitsyllt. The Great Book has passed through many foolish hands since the Norman theft. Finally, a drunken sot of a clergyman willed it to his old college, Dodson College, Oxford.’

     She saw my look of surprise. ‘Yes, it lies in the library of your old college, unexamined and uncatalogued, stored as the bequest of the late Reverend Pugh. You must right the wrong and return the book to me, here on Midsummer’s Eve. Take this ring: when you come back with the book, throw the ring into Taliesin’s spring and I will return to you, with my thanks and the thanks of all our kin.’

     The ring was of a curious, twisted, gold-filigree design. It was too small to fit on my finger. I slipped it into my pocket and went back to the pub where I was staying. I checked the Dodson College website on the internet. I was dismayed to find that the college librarian was an elderly, retired party who had been a don in the college when I was an undergraduate there fifty years ago. A colourless individual who had adopted a pipe in lieu of a personality, but nevertheless possessed a certain capacity for mischief and fussy cantankerousness: his nickname was Gollum (I know, I know: first a gold ring and now Gollum turns up – where have you read this before?). I realised then and there that there would be no sense in appealing to the college authorities to restore The Great Book to the Cecils: I would simply be alerting the college to the fact that they had overlooked a valuable asset which they could flog off. Instead, I’d have to steal it, albeit knowing that I had justice and history on my side. I checked out of the Black Bull pub that evening and before ten o’clock I’d checked into a bed-and-breakfast in a village outside Oxford.

     I went for a reconnaissance the following morning. I was amazed to discover how little the college had changed. The library was still housed in the same cramped quarters and contained the same out-of-date texts, translations and bound periodicals. There was no space to store uncatalogued volumes. I guessed that they would have been dumped in the cellars. There were two different sets of cellars: the wine cellars beneath the dining hall appeared to have a formidable door and lock; the other cellars, in the same bloc as the library, had a neglected appearance and a simple clasp lock on a fragile-looking door – child’s play, I thought.

     I bought a jemmy and a powerful torch and waited for dark. I confess that I was rather enjoying myself. The college gates were no longer locked in the late evening, but the porters’ lodge still housed a night porter, so I decided to climb in using the same route that I’d used fifty years ago, via the bike sheds. This proved more difficult than I’d anticipated: the spirit was willing, but the flesh had withered. I sustained a nasty graze, a sprained ankle and a ripped jacket, but I got over. In contrast, the hasp on the cellar door was a breeze and came away like cobwebs.

     There was lighting in the cellar, but it wasn’t working: I hunted for a mains switch in vain. In the torchlight, the crowded cellar contents looked as a chaotic as an earthquake in Legoland: there were piles and piles of discarded furniture, tea chests filled with the abandoned possessions of past generations, some old lead piping, tied bundles of papers, ancient chemical apparatus, a battered croquet mallet… It seemed that, unless I was very lucky, the search would take more than one night. My dust allergy kicked in right away, but I stuck to the task. After an hour or so, I did come across an open tea chest full of books, but they proved to be the abandoned private library of past undergraduate, seemingly someone of my generation – I recognised ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ and RD Laing’s ‘Divided Self’. Underneath it, was a closed tea chest, which I assumed contained more of the same, but when I jemmied it open I saw it contained hardback books from an older period. I flicked open the topmost book – a collection of sermons – and on the flyleaf I read ‘Ex Libris Reverend Augustus Pugh.’ Oh Joy.

     The Great Book of Angharad was right at the bottom of the chest. It was a massive thing that looked to have been re-bound at some point, with metal-edged leather covers and a clasp. I heaved it out the chest and opened it up at random – a foolish thing to do, because the eight-hundred-year-old pages were very brittle. Part of a page broke off as it was opened. I shut the book and closed the clasp, but not before I’d satisfied myself that the writing seemed to be in Old Welsh.

     ‘Well, well, if it isn’t Guy Fawkes!’ Two torches snapped on. In surprise, I dropped The Great Book back in the tea chest. I then dodged behind some derelict desks, deeper in the cellars, but the two police patrolmen quickly picked me out again. It seemed I’d been betrayed by my dust allergy: the night porter on his rounds had heard the sneezes, found the broken lock on the cellar door, and called the cops.

     The charges I was facing were ‘breaking and entering’ and ‘criminal damage’ – the college authorities claimed I’d destroyed the roof of the bike sheds. At first, I refused to say anything, beyond giving my name and address. But the duty solicitor at the station persuaded me to explain what I’d been doing in the cellar, saying it would look better in the magistrates’ court. So I told him. A few hours later, I told the same story to the two detective constables in the interview room. They plainly thought I’d lost a marble or two when I fell off the bike sheds, but they sent a constable round to the cellars to see whether there was indeed a big book in the bottom of the tea chest. He found Gollum, the librarian, there ‘checking whether there was anything missing or damaged.’ The tea chest was empty.

     Well, maybe I have lost a marble or two, DC Grainger and DC Singh. But how would you explain Angharad’s celtic ring, safely hidden in my washbag at the B&B? And it’s plain to me who has snaffled The Great Book. I sense a second family connection here: Gollum’s surname is ‘Pugh.’ I suggest you get a search warrant.

Michael Bloor lives in Dunblane, Scotland, where he has discovered the exhilaration of short fiction, with more than a hundred pieces published in Literally Stories, Everyday Fiction, The Copperfield Review, Litro Online, Firewords, The Drabble, The Cabinet of Heed, Moonpark Review and elsewhere (see https://michaelbloor.com).

(This week Michael Bloor returns to the Springs. We are always pleased to run stuff by Mick. This one shows his wonderful ear for language-LA)

As I crested the ridge, I saw the figure in the middle distance, staring out eastward. I thought at first he was watching the hang gliders: Hatterall Hill, on the eastern edge of the Black Mountains of South Wales, is a favourite weekend haunt for these enthusiasts, if the winds are favourable. And the hang gliders cater for two kinds of spectators – those who admire the graceful and those who love the comic. I’m afraid I used to belong in the latter category, happy to eat my lunch watching these masochistic individuals launch themselves and their wings off the ridge and into the wind, only for the iron law of gravity to assert itself, so that man and machine would tumble into the bracken and scrub on the lower slopes of the hill. I never witnessed any of these poor souls coming to serious harm. Instead, they would laboriously disentangle themselves from their machines and the scrub, drag themselves back up the slope, lurch momentarily into space again, and then plunge earthwards once more, for my further entertainment. I would find myself wishing that my old Dad could have seen the show: slapstick was his favourite form of comedy.

However, familiarity has lately dulled my own appreciation of the hang glider spectacle and so I pressed on, past the Iron Age ditch and rampart, towards the summit of the ridge and its solitary occupant. The nearer I approached him, the more attractive he became: a sturdy guy of medium height, with a longish grey beard and tousled grey hair, a great cloak, negligently worn – he reminded me of photos of that eminent Victorian poet, designer, and revolutionary, William Morris.

Quickly, I confirmed my impression that he wasn’t studying the varying fortunes of the hang gliders. He was looking way out to the eastward, taking in a view of a verdant landscape that familiarity can never dull: the mile-after-mile-after-mile of patchwork, rolling, Monmouthshire and Herefordshire countryside – fields and woods and wandering streams, all miniaturised for a Giant’s delight.

He turned at my approach. I nodded. ‘A fine day and a fine view.’

He nodded in turn. I asked if it was his first visit to Hatterall Hill. The ridge attracts quite a few holiday walkers, being on a well-known, long-distance footpath, The Offa’s Dyke Path.

‘No sir, I am not a visitor to the hill. I dwell in its shadow, though I call it “Pisgah”, not Hatterall.’

The slightly formal speech and his clear enunciation made me think that English was not his first language: he was a native Welsh-speaker, a minority in this part of South East Wales. I recognised his Biblical reference too, having been raised as a Chapel-going Methodist, and I responded: ‘I understand. We are standing at Pisgah, and like Moses, I take it that you’re privileged to gaze upon The Promised Land, but you’ll never have it for your own?’

‘Correct, my friend. But perhaps you think my claim would be extravagant. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Owain Glyndwr, the last native Prince of Wales. The English know me as Owen Glendower. At one time, with my battle-hardened archers and men-at-arms beside me, I thought I could win back all those fair lands – fields, orchards, and pastures – snatched from us by the hordes of Saxons, Danes and Normans that bore down on my ancestors like plagues.’

I imagine that you will find it pretty odd that I didn’t, for one minute, think I’d met a mad man. On the contrary, I was attracted: he had far more than a famous name, he had bearing of a great man.

I knew a fair amount of the six-hundred-yearold Glyndwr backstory: after some very considerable early success, in battles and sieges, Owain’s revolt against English overlordship had eventually petered out. Despite a large reward being offered, he was never betrayed and Owain’s death was never announced. He simply disappeared and he has no known grave. Some authorities, I understand, have suggested that Owain, in defeat, went to stay quietly in his daughter’s and son-in-law’s house, a successor of which is still visible from this very hill.

I also knew that Owain was widely believed by his enemies to be a Mage, with esoteric knowledge and strange powers. I’m afraid that all I can truthfully repeat is that I didn’t take him to be mad. From the very first, I found him utterly believable, albeit six hundred odd years old.

He did not ask me to pledge my silence. And I feel a duty now to set down what I can remember of our conversation…

Glyndwr: ‘There was a time when all the land you see below us seemed about to fall to my arms. We had driven King Henry’s invasion force from the field at Stalling Down, nearly all Wales was under my control. I was crowned Prince of Wales as a direct descendent of Llewelyn the Great. I convened a Parliament at Machynlleth: we re-established traditional Welsh Law, and declared an independent Welsh Church. We drew up the Tripartite Indenture with Henry Percy (‘Harry Hotspur’), Earl of Northumberland, and Edmund Mortimer, claimant to the English throne. Percy and Mortimer would divide England between them. And all these Welsh Marches at our feet, all the lands west of the River Severn and the River Mersey would revert to the Principality.

‘If only Hotspur had brought his forces to join with mine outside Shrewsbury, instead of attempting (and failing) to defeat King Henry independently, then it might have all ended very differently.

‘So the chance, and the land, was lost. I was already long in years when the thieving and treachery of the occupying Norman overlords drove me at last, against my will, into revolt. So I was weary indeed, like Moses, when I came at last here to Pisgah.

‘But I am being discourteous, sir. I have seen you on Pisgah, more than once. Is your house nearby?’

I nodded: ‘I live down the valley in Abergavenny, Prince.’

Glyndwr: ‘Ah, Abergavenny. You will know that I seized Abergavenny castle and burnt the town to the ground. I burnt all the towns of the merchants that had grown up in the shadow of the castles of the Norman overlords. My own people counted their wealth in cattle, not in coin.’

‘I understand. You wished to return Wales to the world celebrated in the old songs of the bards. And you almost succeeded, Prince. Your skills as a commander were legendary. Your enemies called you a wizard, able to control the elements on the battlefield…’

He laughed deeply: ‘That was foolish talk of men who knew nothing of the weather lore in the Welsh mountains. But it is true that I had a fine library of many strange subjects before my enemies burnt it down. And the bards, like my old friend Iolo Goch, were welcome at my home with their tales of the old wisdom. In the old stories, did not the wizard, Gwydyon, fashion a living bride out of flowers for his nephew, Lleu? Summoning storms would have been a small matter to Gwydyon. The same old wisdom told that the greatest of the old heroes, Arthur among them, did not die. They are only sleeping. But, alas, much of that old wisdom was lost long before the Normans came to Wales.’

He was silent then, I hoped to draw him out a little further: ‘Much of it was lost, you say. But perhaps not all of it, Prince?’

Glyndwr: ‘Perhaps…’

He smiled, nodded, and turned to descend from the ridge. A sudden breeze ruffled his hair and beard. I knew better than to try to follow him.

Michael Bloor lives in Dunblane, Scotland, where he has discovered the exhilaration of short fiction, with more than a hundred pieces published in Literally Stories, Everyday Fiction, The Copperfield Review, Litro Online, Firewords, The Drabble, The Cabinet of Heed, Moonpark Review and elsewhere (see https://michaelbloor.com).

(first published in Potato Soup Journal, July 5th, 2021)

(Ed Note–We hope you have enjoyed Michael’s return this week. We always do ourselves!–LA)

At first when I died, it was rather predictable. Beginning with that out-of-body-experience thing: I’m hovering, up near the ceiling, in the local Accident & Emergency Department, looking down on a rather battered and splattered me, plus an attendant nurse and junior doctor. Then it’s the dark-tunnel thingy, with a wee pin-prick of light that’s starting to get bigger and brighter, and bigger and brighter.

And then…. Pop! I’m in a largish, empty room with white walls. Now it starts to get different…

The white door opens and Leonard Cohen comes in. He consults his clipboard: ‘Hello, erm, Malcolm Barnstable? Welcome to the First Circle; I’m your guide. My name’s Cohen, Leonard Cohen. According to my records here, you were run over by a herd of dairy cows. We don’t get many of those.’

It took me a second or two to gather my wits. ‘Got you now: it’s Dante’s First Circle of Hell, for all those nice pagans. And you’re the stand-in guide for Virgil, as a fellow poet?’

‘That’s pretty much it, Malcolm. Call me Leonard, why dontcha? Virgil’s still knocking about. But, with the numbers coming in these days, he’s needing a helping hand. So Percy and I now do the English speakers.

‘Percy?’

‘Yeah, Percy Shelley. “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,” and all that.’

‘I see. Er, you’re not wearing laurel leaves on your brow?’

‘Nope, no leaves. They were offered, but I prefer the fedora – it’s kind of a trademark. But Percy wears the old laurel leaves. He said it was either that or some seaweed. You’re stuck with me because you’re down in the records as “agnostic.” If you’d been signed up as “atheist,” you’d ‘ve got Percy. You want your tour just now? Or would you like a spot of nectar first?’

I settled for the nectar, which I could definitely develop a taste for. As tactfully as I could, I asked about Leonard’s co-habitation of the Agnostic First Circle.

‘Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s true that, strictly speaking, I’m a Jewish Zen Buddhist, but that’s a pretty small constituency. And you might say that agnosticism is a central tenet of Zen Buddhist practice. Though if you had the inclination, I could nit-pick that one with you. After all, you’ll find you have plenty of time here for long discussions of abstract…’

And then: Woah! Oooff! Ouch! Suddenly, I’m back in Accident & Emergency.

Biography:

Michael Bloor lives in Dunblane, Scotland, where he has discovered the exhilaration of short fiction, with more than a hundred pieces published in Literally Stories, Everyday Fiction, The Copperfield Review, Litro Online, Firewords, The Drabble, The Cabinet of Heed, Moonpark Review and elsewhere (see https://michaelbloor.com).