and polished all his statues I fell into his smile
and I smiled too
and all the world smiled and all the universe smiled and all the people of Annwn.
I can’t rememer how long ago I forgot how to smile
but here it is –
this sign upon my lips,
not just for me but for you the Wise Lad’s gift.
When I drew this image it was supposed to represent the unburying of a multitude of meditating Wise Lad statues being unburied from the earth from where they’d lain for eons. On completing it I realised that looked at from another perspective they appear to be hovering over drop down toilets! One of His jokes I think!
Many years ago, in early spring at sunset, the Wise Lad was wandering the Frog Song Marsh, watching the frogs and toads emerge from their places of hibernation, forming long slippery lines as they headed to the many ponds.
As darkness fell the mating calls of the male frogs and toads were deafening – a thousand thousand voices raising their caphony throughout the marshland.
Thus the Wise Lad was surprised to find a solitary frog sitting apart on a stone.
“What are you doing?” He enquired. “Why aren’t you seeking a mate with the rest?”
“I’m meditating,” the frog’s legs were crossed and his pads rested on his shins.
The Wise Lad knew a little of meditation from sitting still with his father, Nodens, staring into the waters as they waited together for a fish to take the hook.
“I’ve never known a frog to meditate before,” the Wise Lad was stunned.
The frog frowned. “Can you not see these legs were made perfectly not only for jumping and swimming but for sitting in meditation? These pads not only for catching prey and clinging onto mates but for holding hand gestures? These lungs and gills for breathing deeply both in and out of water?”
“You can meditate under water too?” the Wise Lad asked in admiration.
The frog nodded glibly and demonstrated by hopping into a nearby pool, sinking down to the bottom and once again taking up his meditating posture.
On getting out, “And don’t you believe the lies of the other frogs who will tell you I’m not a frog at all, that I’m the son of a chieftain who the Hag of Marsh Pond put a spell upon, that I’m avoiding the mating rites because I don’t want to be kissed by a frog or a woman and turned back into a human again.”
“I wouldn’t believe such lies at all,” the Wise Lad reassured him.
“Good,” said the frog as he continued meditating through the nocturnal frog-song.
This story was received as taking place near Marsh Way Pond in Penwortham.
Many years ago the Wise Lad was wandering the Broad Oak Woodland when he came across a boy sitting beneath the boughs of an old oak tree.
He’s holding a wooden bowl, the lad noticed, sniffed up, but it’s empty.
He saw the boy was staring in trance into the bowl and recognised a sitting quest.
For three days and three nights he watched in approval as the boy slipped in and out of his trance, moved not, slept not, ate not. Wondered, what does he see?
As the third night reached its end the Wise Lad foraged for him the tastiest of hazelnuts, the juiciest of blackberries, caught, strangled, cooked a tasty hare.
At dawn the boy fell into an exhausted sleep and the Wise Lad padded up silent as the mist and slipped his gifts just as silently into the empty bowl.
“You,” the boy reached out, grasped his arm, caught him in his dark gaze, “you were watching all along from the sidelines and with me in my visions.”
“Tell me about them,” the Wise Lad spoke curiously and encouragingly.
The boy picked a hazelnut from the bowl. “You took me into one of these, right into the kernel, taught me of its wisdom, from flower and catkin, to nut, of its journey in the belly of squirrel, of jay, of salmon, its growth into a hazel tree.”
The boy picked a blackberry from the bowl. “You took me to the stars to visit a planet as black as one of these, frosty, taught me of how ice can flow as rivers, volcanoes, how the coldest of planets tastes sweet as blackberries.”
The boy picked out a morsel of hare’s flesh. “I followed a hare to her form and she led into the ground and through to another land where I saw you playing, hunting with other boys, with the dead boys of my tribe and others. They had faces like clouds and mist and smiles like the otherworld’s sun.”
“But there is no sun in Annwn,” the Wise Lad spoke confused.
“I know,” said the boy, “yet still they smiled like it.”
The Wise Lad smiled. “You have completed your sitting quest and one day amongst your people you will be an Inspired One, a Soothsayer, a Wise One.”
I received this story as taking place here in Penwortham in the remainder of the oak wood on Hurst Grange Park. A little closer to me is an area known as Broad Oak. A Damp Oak Forest covered much of Lancashire from the Neolithic Period until the late Bronze Age when much of it was replaced by bogs.
Many years ago the Wise Lad was wandering through Ribblesdale. In the limestones crags he espied a cave and was immediately drawn into its darkness.
What drew him was not so much the dark, for there would soon be much of that with winter on its way, but the smell of a delicious stew cooking. Inside he found a skin cauldron boiling over a fire and around it three wooden bowls.
In each bowl was a mixture of berries, nuts and meat that made his mouth water. He tried the first bowl, “Agh!” He dropped the wooden spoon. “Too hot!” He tried the second bowl. “Ugh!” He spat it out. Too cold!” He tried the third bowl. “Just right.” He grinned, wolfed it down, only slightly disconcerted when he found a golden hair at the bottom.
Full up, rubbing his belly, he collapsed into one of the three wooden chairs. “Too small.” It barely fit his arse. He tried the second. “Too big – enough room for two of me and my dogs on here.” When he sat on the third chair it wobbled because it was already missing a leg then collapsed beneath him. “Someone else has been here before me and broken the chair that is just right!”
Moving into the next cave he was relieved to see three beds lined with mosses and twigs. He tried the first. “Too hard.” The sticks dug in his ribs. Then the second. “Too soft.” He sunk into the moss. Finally he lay down in third. “Just right.” As he curled up he realised he was lying in the sleeping shape of someone else who had slept there before and caught a girl scent.
“Hmm…” Something told him it would be unwise to fall asleep in that bed.
The Wise Lad got up and made his way into the next cave where he found the skeleton of the girl who the bears had stripped of flesh and put in their stew. By the remnants of her skull and golden hair she had been pretty.
“No wonder the stew was so tasty,” he picked a piece of meat from his teeth.
“You ate me,” her golden-haired ghost appeared and spoke accusingly.
“You ate the third bowl too,” shrugged the Wise Lad.
The ghost-girl glanced at the other skeletons piled up in the cave.
“Once again,” he heard the voices of the Old Three Bears, “someone’s eaten my stew,” “someone’s broken my chair,” “someone’s been sleeping in my bed.”
“It’s time to go,” said the Wise Lad to the golden-haired ghost, “take my hand and we’ll go and share your story with the people who need to know the risks of having their stew, their chairs, their beds, everything in their world just right.”
Over the Twelve Days of Devotion to Gwyn ap Nudd (25th Dec – 5th Jan) I focused on Gwyn’s boyhood. In all honesty at first I wasn’t looking forward to spending twelve days with Gwyn as a boy on the basis of my experiences with the boys at my primary school who were loud, boisterous, rude and bullying.
Thankfully, following my writing of ‘Vindos and the Salmon of Wisdom’, Gwyn reassured me that I wouldn’t be spending my time with Him ‘as a stupid boy’ but ‘as the Wise Lad’.
What will follow over the next few days is the best of the inspiration He gifted to me during this period. Beneath is an image of the Wise Lad with the Salmon of Wisdom and nine hazel nuts looking pixie-like and slightly sinister. I have been led to believe that, like the term ‘the Fair Folk’, ‘the Wise Lad’ is a euphemism for something darker.
The Sanctuary of Vindos 