Yuletide 2008: The Kindly King of Hummings and Strummings
Oh, and by the way, I wrote a story for Yuletide in 2008! The snow day reminded me. It was a very last-minute, very exhilarating pinch-hit for foxtwin.
Did you read Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles when you were young?
I did!
Did you adore them?
I did!
Have a little Fflewddur Fflam:
The Kindly King of Hummings and Strummings
by KB
"Dear me," said Fflewddur Fflam, son of Godo, when the girl started to cry. "Not another one?" He slipped his feet out of his boots and hurried barefoot to the center of his great hall, affecting the mincing gait one adopts to protect tender soles from sharp pebbles, hot sands, or--as the case may be--chilly flagstone. The young woman's tears splashed next to his toes as she rocked on her knees, wracked with sobs. He backed up a few paces, bent at the waist, and craned his neck to get a look at her face. Tesni, his housekeeper and childhood nurse, coughed. "Sire, she's the eighth this week."
"Well, she ought to be in bed," Fflewddur suggested feebly. "There now. Ceinwen, is it? Shush, don't cry, my girl." He struggled for an encouraging phrase. "Surely you'll have another in no time."
At that, Ceinwen's wails redoubled. Shooting Fflewddur a disapproving glance, Tesni herded Ceinwen away and up the stairs to the private chambers, stroking her dark head and murmuring all the way.
Fflewddur returned to his throne, quite shaken, and thrust his toes back into the toasty fur-lined confines of his boots. The barefoot thing was Tesni's doing.
He had returned to his kingdom after parting ways with Taran and Gurgi, determined to really have a go at this kingship business. The lukewarm reception and poorly attended banquet hadn't swayed his resolve. Still, within a fortnight's span, he had found himself slinging his harp over his shoulder and taking a longer walk every day.
One night he had wandered too far, and had had to spend the night in a hayloft. Tesni had caught him sneaking in through the kitchens at dawn. She had picked a telltale piece of straw from his hair, and shaken it at his nose, exclaiming, "I ought to nail your shoes to the floor, Sire, that I ought!"
It had struck Fflewddur as a rather clever notion. He had ordered it done, and in her pleasure and zeal at receiving a direct order from her often-absent liege, Tesni pounded nails into his formal boots, where they had been abandoned in front of his throne; his fuzzy slippers, next to his bed; and even his comfortable cracked-leather barding shoes, still in the kitchen doorway.
Fflewddur's castle was notoriously damp and drafty. He sat in his throne for hours at a stretch, to keep his feet warm in stationary boots, and you would not catch him traipsing about outside, not with winter coming on. It was certainly for the best, now that his subjects were beset by all manner of plague and trouble--even if, as just now with Ceinwen, it meant he received their appeals unshod.
Dreadful business, this, he thought. In a tiny realm renowned for its dreariness, its sturdy, self-reliant subjects, and its utter lack of notable events: eight miscarriages in one week, and the blacksmith losing all the strength in his arm, and an unseasonable outbreak of pox. And one mustn't forget the widespread harvest failure.
Most perplexing of all, two dragons fought nightly above Fflewddur's drafty castle, and their furious shrieks and eerie howls kept everyone awake. Why, the situation simply begged for wise governance and sound leadership.
A Fflam never shirks. Fflewddur resolved to write to Princess Eilonwy immediately.
Four days later, Fflewddur stood in three pairs of socks on the battlement above his gate, peering at the horizon and waiting for the dragons to loom up from whichever mountain caves they snored away the days. A hushed twilight settled a gentle blue gleam over the stone outcroppings and defiantly bright-berried yew trees of the northern cantrev of the Fflams.
The dragons might once have been white and red, but now they both looked as though they had been scrubbed together in the same hot-water basin, and the dye had bled: the bigger dragon was a bit pink, and the smaller dragon was a faded maroon.
Fflewddur had no idea why they had chosen the air above his castle for their brawls. They were not the largest dragons in living memory, and they seemed to have no interest in hunting down people, let alone maidens--but their tails, snapping wild, had knocked his crenellations about, and a heart beat uneasily, to say the least, when great jagged hunks of stone fell from such a height.
A courier on a fine bay galloped up. The colors of Mona signaled that he held Eilonwy's response. Fflewddur hurried to the ground, and sent the courier to the kitchen for a hot meal, after warning him to stay inside and loaning him some wool to plug up his ears against the dragons' ruckus.
Dear Fflewddur (wrote Princess Eilonwy of the red-gold hair, daughter of Angharad, daughter of Regat of the Royal House of Llyr):
How perfectly dreadful! Having dragons conducting their private disputes over your head is like having a tea party on a battlefield. I think you are absolutely right that the losing of babies and strength and crops is their fault entirely.
But--and I hope you won't take offence, I think it's very good of you to ask my advice--isn't being a king the sort of job where you learn all about dragons? Simply everybody knows that dragons can't bear humiliation. You need only to get the dragons to do something really silly--something they could never live down--and they'll leave you be as fast as ever they can, just to escape the shame of it.
I will leave it to your bardic ingenuity to devise a proper humiliation for your unwelcome reptilian guests.
I am doing very well here, but King Rhuddlum is doing poorly, with shakings and achings, as Gurgi would have it. I think it must be the weather, which changes every hour. It is like attending a masquerade that is also a funeral.
I've been learning to embroider. I embroidered the pink dragon (enclosed) for you.
Thank you for the news of Gurgi and Doli (and Taran, but I'm not speaking to him just at the moment). Good luck with your dragon infestation. Queen Teleria offers to send one of our blacksmiths north on loan, if necessary.
--Eilonwy
Fflewddur folded the letter into his belt pouch, and examined the scrap of fabric Eilonwy had sent along with it. Pink threads straggled across a field of blue. He could just make out the shape of stubbly wings and disproportionately large teeth.
What would humiliate a dragon?
An immense wing shadowed the windows, and a gust of wind rushed through every crack, setting the candles to flickering. With no more warning, the two beasts were at it, one with a prating, piercing wail like a baby's, one with a bellow like a thousand hounds of Annuvin baying.
Fflewddur retreated to the old stables-old because the horses panicked in close quarters with Llyan, and had to be put up in new stalls of their own-with his harp. When he was at home, he only played to Llyan. A king was a king, and a bard was a bard, after all. He tucked his feet under the great cat's warm flank and strummed chords in her favorite key, idly singing the words to a song by Taliesin himself:
I have been a drop in a shower
I have been a sword in the fist
I have been a shield in battle.
I have been a string in a harp,
Disguised for nine years,
In water, in foam.
Once Llyan's purring slowed into the deep rumble of sleep, Fflewddur pulled out the letter, and Eilonwy's gift, once again. The embroidery threads meandered drunkenly across the cloth, like the clumsy footsteps of a warrior in his cups: the path would get him home eventually, but not before his missteps provoked the mockery of his friends...Hold up a moment!
Wherever was Fflewddur to find enough mead to souse two dragons?
"No, no! Loyal, wise, brave Gurgi does not fear the flying beasts! Never mind his quakings and shakings! Never mind their roarings and snorings!"
"Humph!"
Fflewddur did not know whether to laugh with delight or pinch himself. Those two beloved voices, unless he was very much mistaken, or dreaming, belonged to his steadfast companions Gurgi and Doli--and the voices were coming from beneath his feet, from beneath the very stones of his hall.
"I say! Great Belin! Good old Doli! Is that you?"
Tesni, Lord Llew, and Lady Nesta all stared at him.
Fflewddur leapt off his throne and knelt, pressing his ear to the ground. Silence swept the table, as all his guests, from the lords and ladies at his own table to the stablehands at the far end near the fireplace, took in the spectacle of their King conducting an ebullient conversation with his own floor.
"Of course it's me, you great lump!"
"And it is Gurgi! Gurgi begs kindly king of hummings and strummings to free his friends from darksome smelly tunnel!"
Fflewddur shoved at the banquet table, ale and stew slopping every which way. Lord Llew's chair toppled over, and Lady Nesta and the Master of Horse came round to help Fflewddur lift the curiously light flagstone and haul Doli and Gurgi up to safe ground. Both were soaking: Doli's beard was positively dripping, and Gurgi's tangled and matted shaggy coat was plastered down like a seal's. Fflewddur pulled his friends into an embrace, from which Doli extricated himself with all haste. After a change of clothes, Fflewddur introduced his companions to his court, and explanations tumbled from every mouth.
"...so that's that," Doli finished. “Gurgi ought to be with Taran in the Free Commots--"
"Gurgi never deserted great kindly lord! Only Gurgi is swept away with much splashings and crashings!"
"--yes, he simply stumbled onto one of our underground waterways, and finally washed up close to King Eiddileg's court. I had a time of it, convincing Eiddileg to let him go yet again. I'll see him back to the east Commots, never fear, but Eiddileg heard tell of your dragon problem, and thought we might pay a visit. It would never do for the trouble to spread, would it? Humph."
"I'd no idea that the Fair Folk had their own private door into my castle," said Fflewddur.
"Of course you didn't," Doli snorted. "Great galumphing lumbering bard like you--"
Fflewddur changed the subject. "Hear that? Those are the dragons."
Gurgi gulped, then gnashed his teeth ferociously. "Slashings and mashings?"
"Yes. This is your domain." Doli listened to the howls for a moment, and fondled the handle of his axe. "What is your plan to rid yourself of these fractious lizards?"
Fflewddur paused, and ran his hands through his hair. Suddenly his plan seemed, well, unkingly, rather.
"Do we trace them to their lairs and attack at dawn? We are at your disposal."
"No, er," said Fflewddur. "Of course, I've already tried to slay them--" His harp jangled as three strings snapped. Fflewddur rather thought that his harp was getting even stricter these days, disgusted, he fancied, with the sweet-sounding and purely nonjudgmental and unresponsive string bequeathed him by Prince Gwydion. Doli managed to keep a straight face. "Actually! I was planning to get them, well, I thought I'd try getting the dragons drunk."
Doli engineered the hole. It was in the middle of the courtyard, but that couldn't be helped: there was no use in trying to lure the dragons into a convenient quarry when they already met at the castle promptly at dusk every night.
Gurgi showed remarkable patience in holding his wallet, his own priceless gift from Gwydion, upside-down over the hole. An unending stream of mead flowed from the wallet, and after several hours, the enormous hole was filled to the brim.
All that was left was to convince the dragons to drink the potent stuff. On the first night they quarreled more fiercely than ever, and ignored the golden pool altogether. On the second night, the light pink dragon skimmed the surface on a low dive, stirring up waves, but did not deign to sip. On the third night, Llyan set up such a yowling that she would not be calmed until Fflewddur sat beside the hole and played his harp for the dragons. He sang Taliesin's "Song to Mead"--a song he could not remember having studied, but that the harp seemed to know anyway.
From the foaming mead-horns,
With the choicest pure honey:
What the bees collect, they do not enjoy.
Overhead, the dragons, pink and maroon, their mouths foaming in a manner distinctly unlike mead-horns, circled and glided. Fflewddur, fixed his gaze on his fingers, his heart in his throat, and played on.
Pink and maroon, they drank up all the mead with great gulps, and began to laugh. Fflewddur had never heard a dragon laugh. Indeed, as Dallben told him much later, no man or woman had heard a dragon laugh since before Arawn stole those precious treasures (for Arawn stole from men and dragons alike). The sound was a delight, a delicate, tripping shock that awoke sympathetic trembling and harmony in Fflewddur's harp.
The dragons laughed, and bumped into one another for a time, and when the pool was drained of mead, the dragons slept curled around one another like puppies. The maroon woke first, and after an initial hiss, slunk away with its eyes screwed up against the dawn light. The pink fled soon after, in the opposite direction. Fflewddur, who had not dared to stir all night as he kept vigil over the dreaming dragons, noticed that his feet were numb.
Everyone in the town crowded into the hall that night. When it became clear that the beasts were not returning, Fflewddur, Doli, and Gurgi turned to the serious business of drinking as much mead as their vanquished foes had.
The next morning, the smithy rang and sparked once again. Doli pried Fflewddur's boots from the floor; Gurgi passed around crunchings and munchings. Fflewddur stepped outside.
"This is unsettling," he said.
His friends waited.
"The blacksmith has his strength again. There will be babies born in the spring. The pox has run its course. I always rather thought my subjects could get along perfectly well without me. But now…"
"Great king is done with pinings and whinings? With hummings and strummings? He turns to royal judgings and nudgings?"
Fflewddur caught himself. "Certainly not! But--" he paused. "I think I shall look into heating the castle floors! Some people live here all the year long, and it is a dreadfully drafty and dreary place! A Fflam never skimps!"
Did you read Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles when you were young?
I did!
Did you adore them?
I did!
Have a little Fflewddur Fflam:
The Kindly King of Hummings and Strummings
by KB
"Dear me," said Fflewddur Fflam, son of Godo, when the girl started to cry. "Not another one?" He slipped his feet out of his boots and hurried barefoot to the center of his great hall, affecting the mincing gait one adopts to protect tender soles from sharp pebbles, hot sands, or--as the case may be--chilly flagstone. The young woman's tears splashed next to his toes as she rocked on her knees, wracked with sobs. He backed up a few paces, bent at the waist, and craned his neck to get a look at her face. Tesni, his housekeeper and childhood nurse, coughed. "Sire, she's the eighth this week."
"Well, she ought to be in bed," Fflewddur suggested feebly. "There now. Ceinwen, is it? Shush, don't cry, my girl." He struggled for an encouraging phrase. "Surely you'll have another in no time."
At that, Ceinwen's wails redoubled. Shooting Fflewddur a disapproving glance, Tesni herded Ceinwen away and up the stairs to the private chambers, stroking her dark head and murmuring all the way.
Fflewddur returned to his throne, quite shaken, and thrust his toes back into the toasty fur-lined confines of his boots. The barefoot thing was Tesni's doing.
He had returned to his kingdom after parting ways with Taran and Gurgi, determined to really have a go at this kingship business. The lukewarm reception and poorly attended banquet hadn't swayed his resolve. Still, within a fortnight's span, he had found himself slinging his harp over his shoulder and taking a longer walk every day.
One night he had wandered too far, and had had to spend the night in a hayloft. Tesni had caught him sneaking in through the kitchens at dawn. She had picked a telltale piece of straw from his hair, and shaken it at his nose, exclaiming, "I ought to nail your shoes to the floor, Sire, that I ought!"
It had struck Fflewddur as a rather clever notion. He had ordered it done, and in her pleasure and zeal at receiving a direct order from her often-absent liege, Tesni pounded nails into his formal boots, where they had been abandoned in front of his throne; his fuzzy slippers, next to his bed; and even his comfortable cracked-leather barding shoes, still in the kitchen doorway.
Fflewddur's castle was notoriously damp and drafty. He sat in his throne for hours at a stretch, to keep his feet warm in stationary boots, and you would not catch him traipsing about outside, not with winter coming on. It was certainly for the best, now that his subjects were beset by all manner of plague and trouble--even if, as just now with Ceinwen, it meant he received their appeals unshod.
Dreadful business, this, he thought. In a tiny realm renowned for its dreariness, its sturdy, self-reliant subjects, and its utter lack of notable events: eight miscarriages in one week, and the blacksmith losing all the strength in his arm, and an unseasonable outbreak of pox. And one mustn't forget the widespread harvest failure.
Most perplexing of all, two dragons fought nightly above Fflewddur's drafty castle, and their furious shrieks and eerie howls kept everyone awake. Why, the situation simply begged for wise governance and sound leadership.
A Fflam never shirks. Fflewddur resolved to write to Princess Eilonwy immediately.
Four days later, Fflewddur stood in three pairs of socks on the battlement above his gate, peering at the horizon and waiting for the dragons to loom up from whichever mountain caves they snored away the days. A hushed twilight settled a gentle blue gleam over the stone outcroppings and defiantly bright-berried yew trees of the northern cantrev of the Fflams.
The dragons might once have been white and red, but now they both looked as though they had been scrubbed together in the same hot-water basin, and the dye had bled: the bigger dragon was a bit pink, and the smaller dragon was a faded maroon.
Fflewddur had no idea why they had chosen the air above his castle for their brawls. They were not the largest dragons in living memory, and they seemed to have no interest in hunting down people, let alone maidens--but their tails, snapping wild, had knocked his crenellations about, and a heart beat uneasily, to say the least, when great jagged hunks of stone fell from such a height.
A courier on a fine bay galloped up. The colors of Mona signaled that he held Eilonwy's response. Fflewddur hurried to the ground, and sent the courier to the kitchen for a hot meal, after warning him to stay inside and loaning him some wool to plug up his ears against the dragons' ruckus.
Dear Fflewddur (wrote Princess Eilonwy of the red-gold hair, daughter of Angharad, daughter of Regat of the Royal House of Llyr):
How perfectly dreadful! Having dragons conducting their private disputes over your head is like having a tea party on a battlefield. I think you are absolutely right that the losing of babies and strength and crops is their fault entirely.
But--and I hope you won't take offence, I think it's very good of you to ask my advice--isn't being a king the sort of job where you learn all about dragons? Simply everybody knows that dragons can't bear humiliation. You need only to get the dragons to do something really silly--something they could never live down--and they'll leave you be as fast as ever they can, just to escape the shame of it.
I will leave it to your bardic ingenuity to devise a proper humiliation for your unwelcome reptilian guests.
I am doing very well here, but King Rhuddlum is doing poorly, with shakings and achings, as Gurgi would have it. I think it must be the weather, which changes every hour. It is like attending a masquerade that is also a funeral.
I've been learning to embroider. I embroidered the pink dragon (enclosed) for you.
Thank you for the news of Gurgi and Doli (and Taran, but I'm not speaking to him just at the moment). Good luck with your dragon infestation. Queen Teleria offers to send one of our blacksmiths north on loan, if necessary.
--Eilonwy
Fflewddur folded the letter into his belt pouch, and examined the scrap of fabric Eilonwy had sent along with it. Pink threads straggled across a field of blue. He could just make out the shape of stubbly wings and disproportionately large teeth.
What would humiliate a dragon?
An immense wing shadowed the windows, and a gust of wind rushed through every crack, setting the candles to flickering. With no more warning, the two beasts were at it, one with a prating, piercing wail like a baby's, one with a bellow like a thousand hounds of Annuvin baying.
Fflewddur retreated to the old stables-old because the horses panicked in close quarters with Llyan, and had to be put up in new stalls of their own-with his harp. When he was at home, he only played to Llyan. A king was a king, and a bard was a bard, after all. He tucked his feet under the great cat's warm flank and strummed chords in her favorite key, idly singing the words to a song by Taliesin himself:
I have been a drop in a shower
I have been a sword in the fist
I have been a shield in battle.
I have been a string in a harp,
Disguised for nine years,
In water, in foam.
Once Llyan's purring slowed into the deep rumble of sleep, Fflewddur pulled out the letter, and Eilonwy's gift, once again. The embroidery threads meandered drunkenly across the cloth, like the clumsy footsteps of a warrior in his cups: the path would get him home eventually, but not before his missteps provoked the mockery of his friends...Hold up a moment!
Wherever was Fflewddur to find enough mead to souse two dragons?
"No, no! Loyal, wise, brave Gurgi does not fear the flying beasts! Never mind his quakings and shakings! Never mind their roarings and snorings!"
"Humph!"
Fflewddur did not know whether to laugh with delight or pinch himself. Those two beloved voices, unless he was very much mistaken, or dreaming, belonged to his steadfast companions Gurgi and Doli--and the voices were coming from beneath his feet, from beneath the very stones of his hall.
"I say! Great Belin! Good old Doli! Is that you?"
Tesni, Lord Llew, and Lady Nesta all stared at him.
Fflewddur leapt off his throne and knelt, pressing his ear to the ground. Silence swept the table, as all his guests, from the lords and ladies at his own table to the stablehands at the far end near the fireplace, took in the spectacle of their King conducting an ebullient conversation with his own floor.
"Of course it's me, you great lump!"
"And it is Gurgi! Gurgi begs kindly king of hummings and strummings to free his friends from darksome smelly tunnel!"
Fflewddur shoved at the banquet table, ale and stew slopping every which way. Lord Llew's chair toppled over, and Lady Nesta and the Master of Horse came round to help Fflewddur lift the curiously light flagstone and haul Doli and Gurgi up to safe ground. Both were soaking: Doli's beard was positively dripping, and Gurgi's tangled and matted shaggy coat was plastered down like a seal's. Fflewddur pulled his friends into an embrace, from which Doli extricated himself with all haste. After a change of clothes, Fflewddur introduced his companions to his court, and explanations tumbled from every mouth.
"...so that's that," Doli finished. “Gurgi ought to be with Taran in the Free Commots--"
"Gurgi never deserted great kindly lord! Only Gurgi is swept away with much splashings and crashings!"
"--yes, he simply stumbled onto one of our underground waterways, and finally washed up close to King Eiddileg's court. I had a time of it, convincing Eiddileg to let him go yet again. I'll see him back to the east Commots, never fear, but Eiddileg heard tell of your dragon problem, and thought we might pay a visit. It would never do for the trouble to spread, would it? Humph."
"I'd no idea that the Fair Folk had their own private door into my castle," said Fflewddur.
"Of course you didn't," Doli snorted. "Great galumphing lumbering bard like you--"
Fflewddur changed the subject. "Hear that? Those are the dragons."
Gurgi gulped, then gnashed his teeth ferociously. "Slashings and mashings?"
"Yes. This is your domain." Doli listened to the howls for a moment, and fondled the handle of his axe. "What is your plan to rid yourself of these fractious lizards?"
Fflewddur paused, and ran his hands through his hair. Suddenly his plan seemed, well, unkingly, rather.
"Do we trace them to their lairs and attack at dawn? We are at your disposal."
"No, er," said Fflewddur. "Of course, I've already tried to slay them--" His harp jangled as three strings snapped. Fflewddur rather thought that his harp was getting even stricter these days, disgusted, he fancied, with the sweet-sounding and purely nonjudgmental and unresponsive string bequeathed him by Prince Gwydion. Doli managed to keep a straight face. "Actually! I was planning to get them, well, I thought I'd try getting the dragons drunk."
Doli engineered the hole. It was in the middle of the courtyard, but that couldn't be helped: there was no use in trying to lure the dragons into a convenient quarry when they already met at the castle promptly at dusk every night.
Gurgi showed remarkable patience in holding his wallet, his own priceless gift from Gwydion, upside-down over the hole. An unending stream of mead flowed from the wallet, and after several hours, the enormous hole was filled to the brim.
All that was left was to convince the dragons to drink the potent stuff. On the first night they quarreled more fiercely than ever, and ignored the golden pool altogether. On the second night, the light pink dragon skimmed the surface on a low dive, stirring up waves, but did not deign to sip. On the third night, Llyan set up such a yowling that she would not be calmed until Fflewddur sat beside the hole and played his harp for the dragons. He sang Taliesin's "Song to Mead"--a song he could not remember having studied, but that the harp seemed to know anyway.
From the foaming mead-horns,
With the choicest pure honey:
What the bees collect, they do not enjoy.
Overhead, the dragons, pink and maroon, their mouths foaming in a manner distinctly unlike mead-horns, circled and glided. Fflewddur, fixed his gaze on his fingers, his heart in his throat, and played on.
Pink and maroon, they drank up all the mead with great gulps, and began to laugh. Fflewddur had never heard a dragon laugh. Indeed, as Dallben told him much later, no man or woman had heard a dragon laugh since before Arawn stole those precious treasures (for Arawn stole from men and dragons alike). The sound was a delight, a delicate, tripping shock that awoke sympathetic trembling and harmony in Fflewddur's harp.
The dragons laughed, and bumped into one another for a time, and when the pool was drained of mead, the dragons slept curled around one another like puppies. The maroon woke first, and after an initial hiss, slunk away with its eyes screwed up against the dawn light. The pink fled soon after, in the opposite direction. Fflewddur, who had not dared to stir all night as he kept vigil over the dreaming dragons, noticed that his feet were numb.
Everyone in the town crowded into the hall that night. When it became clear that the beasts were not returning, Fflewddur, Doli, and Gurgi turned to the serious business of drinking as much mead as their vanquished foes had.
The next morning, the smithy rang and sparked once again. Doli pried Fflewddur's boots from the floor; Gurgi passed around crunchings and munchings. Fflewddur stepped outside.
"This is unsettling," he said.
His friends waited.
"The blacksmith has his strength again. There will be babies born in the spring. The pox has run its course. I always rather thought my subjects could get along perfectly well without me. But now…"
"Great king is done with pinings and whinings? With hummings and strummings? He turns to royal judgings and nudgings?"
Fflewddur caught himself. "Certainly not! But--" he paused. "I think I shall look into heating the castle floors! Some people live here all the year long, and it is a dreadfully drafty and dreary place! A Fflam never skimps!"