The dark island, p.28
The Dark Island, page 28
And when he could speak, he said falteringly, “Mother, it has been a terrible day! All the bees have been swarming!” And he had to say his words many times before his mother seemed to hear him. And when she looked up at him he could hardly recognise her face. But her voice was calm again now, and she even smiled at him when she spoke. “Yes, little Bryn,” she said. “Yes, they always do. That is because no one told them that the master of the house was dead.”
And as the little boy backed away from her, she said the same words over and over and over again, smiling all the time.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For Gwyndoc’s verse in Chapter Three, describing Ygeme, I am deeply indebted to the Chapter, Culhwch and Olwen, in the translation of The Mabinogion, by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones (Dent). I have adapted their words only slightly in this passage.
For the incident of the head, in Chapter Twenty-eight, I went back to the Scots story which tells how the forester, Drummond of Drummondemoch, suffered a similar fate at the hands of the Macdonalds, who left his head on a dish in the house of the dead man’s sister, Mrs. Stewart of Ardvorlich.
I have often taken liberties with those names which have a Roman version, usually by omitting the Latin termination, which gives these names a less musical, more barbaric sound — an effect which I felt justified in trying to obtain in view of the nature of this story.
H. T.
Henry Treece, The Dark Island
