THE

TALE I.

ELIDOR, OR THE GOLDEN BALL.

HERE befell in the parts of Gower and Swansey, in Wales, a thing not unworthy to be remembered, which Elidor, the priest, most firmly related to have happened to him. For when he already reckoned the twelfth year of puerile innocence, (because, as Solomon saith, the root of learning is bitter and the fruit sweet,) the boy, addicted to letters, that he might avoid discipline, and the frequent stripes of his preceptor, hid himself, a fugitive in the hollow bank of a certain river: and, when he had now lurked there two days, continually fasting, there appeared to him two little men, as it were of pygmy stature, saying: If thou wilt come with us, we will lead thee into a land full of sports and delights: he assenting, and rising up followed them, leading the way, through a road at first subterraneous and

dark, into a most beautiful country, very much embellished with rivers and meads, woods and plains, nevertheless obscure, and not brightened with the open light of the sun. All the days there were as if cloudy, and the nights most hideous by the absence of moon and stars. The boy was brought to the king and presented to him before the court of the realm, and when he had a long time beheld him, with the admiration of all, he, at length, recommending, assigned him to his son, a boy he had. Now the men were of very small stature, but, for their size, very well shaped: all yellow-haired, and with luxuriant locks flowing down their shoulders in the manner of a woman. They had horses fit for their own height, with greyhounds conformable in size. They ate neither flesh nor fish, using, for the most part milky food, and things made with saffron in the manner of a pudding. There were no oaths among them; for they detested nothing so much as lies. As often as they returned from the upper hemisphere, they reproached our ambitions, infidelities, and inconstancies. There was no religious worship among them openly; being only, it seemed, chief lovers and worshippers of truth. Now the boy was wont frequently to ascend to our hemisphere, sometimes by the way in which he had come, sometimes by another; at first with others, and afterward by himself. He only committed himself to his mother, declaring to her the mode of the country, and the nature and condition of the people. Admonished therefore, by his mother, that he would sometimes bring to her a present of the gold with which that country abounded, the golden ball with which the king's son had been accustomed to play, snatching it from him in the game, he, speedily hastening, carried to his mother, by the usual way; and when he had now come to his father's house, yet not without a train

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of that people, he hastened to enter, his foot stuck in the threshold, and so, falling within the house, where his mother was sitting, two pygmies following his footstep, seized the ball which had fallen out of his hand, and, in going out, threw spit, contempt and derision upon the boy. He, verily, rising, and come to himself, was confounded with the wonderful shame of the deed, and, when, very much cursing and detesting the counsels of his mother, he prepared to return by the road he had been accustomed to, he came to the descent of the river, and subterraneous passage, no entrance appeared to him.1

TALE II.

THE SILVER CUP.

THERE is a village a few miles distant from the eastern sea, near which those famous waters, they vulgarly call Gipse, burst out of the earth with a numerous sprinkling. From this village a certain rustic, having gone to salute a friend dwelling in a neighbouring place, returned, late at night, not perfectly sober: and, behold! from the next hill, which I have very often seen, and is two or three furlongs from the village, he heard the voices of persons singing, and, as it were, festively banqueting. Wondering who, in that place, should break the silence of the unseasonable night, he was willing to inspect this matter more curiously, and seeing, in the side of the hill, a gate open, he approached and looked within, and saw a house, spacious and lightsome, and filled with people sitting, as well men as women, as it were at a solemn feast.

1 Girald Barry, Itinerarium Cambriæ, à Pouelo, Londini, 1585, 8vo, p. 129,

Now one of those ministering beholding a man standing at the door, offered to him the cup: which he, having accepted, would not, discreetly, drink of; but, pouring out the contents, and retaining the cup, hastily departed; and a tumult being made in the feast, for the taking away of the vessel, and the guests pursuing him, he escaped by the fleetness of the horse on which he was carried, and betook himself into his village with his notable booty. Finally, this vessel, of unknown material, and unusual form, was offered to Henry king of the English for a great reward, and, afterward being delivered to the queen's brother, David, that is, king of the Scots, was preserved for a great many years in the treasury of Scotland; and before some years (as we know from veracious relation) was resigned by William king of the Scots to Henry the second, who desired to see it.1

TALE III.

THE ANTIPODES.

IN Great Britain is a castle situate among certain mountains to which the people have given the name of Bech. Its wall is hardly assailable, and in the mountain the cavern of a hole, which as a pipe of the winds, most powerfully belches for the time. Whence so great a wind proceeds, people are astonished; and among a great many things, which are carried about there with admiration, I received from the most religious man, Robert prior of Renildewlt, thence sprung, that when a certain noble man William Peverell, possessed the aforesaid castle,

1 W. of Newbury, Historia rerum Anglicarum, edit. Hearne, p. 95. See Tam o' Shanter, in Burns's Poems.

with the adjacent barony, a man, truly, brave and powerful, and abounding in divers animals: upon a certain day his swineherd, as he was negligent about the service committed to him, lost a pregnant sow, of the kind of those which bring forth pigs, rather fruitful. Fearing, therefore, by reason of the loss the bitter words of the lord's vicar, he thought within himself, if, perchance, by any accident that sow had entered the famous hole of Bech, but until those times inscrutable. He questioned, in his mind, how he should make himself the thorough-searcher of the secret place. He entered the cavern in a time then tranquil from all wind, and when he had proceeded a long way, at length he came by chance from darkness into a lucid place, opening into a spacious plain of fields. Having entered the land widely cultivated, he found persons collecting mature fruits, and, among the standing corn, he recognized the sow, which had multiplied from herself sucking pigs. Then the swineherd, being astonished, and rejoicing at his "recovered" loss, received the sow, and dismissed with joy, led her to the herd of swine.1

TALE IV.

THE CUP-BEARER.

THERE was in the county of Gloucester a hunting forest plentiful in boars, harts, and all venison according to the manner of the English. In this woody forest was a hillock, rising into a top to the stature of a man, into which knights and other hun

1 Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia, apud Scriptores rerum Brunsvicensium, à Leibnitz, I. 975.