Elidore

In the days of Henry Beauclerc of England there lived a little boy called Elidore, who was being trained to become a churchman. Every day he trudged from the house of his mother, who was a widow, up to the monks’ writing room to learn his ABC, to read it and to write it. Elidore struggled with the lessons. As fast as he learned to write one letter, he forgot another, so he made very little progress.

When the monks saw this, they remembered the saying, “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” and whenever Elidore forgot a letter they tried to beat it into his memory. At first they did it rarely and gently, but Elidore was not a boy who could be driven. The more they thrashed him, the less he learned, so the thrashings came more often and grew harder, until he could bear them no longer.

So one day, when he was twelve, he up and ran off into the great forest near St David’s. For two long days and two long nights he wandered there, eating nothing but rose hips and haws. At last he came to the mouth of a cave beside a river, and there he sank down, worn out.

Suddenly two tiny men appeared before him. “Come with us,” they said, “and we will lead you into a land full of games and sport.” So Elidore got up and went with them, first through a pitch-dark passage under the ground, and then out into a most beautiful country of rivers and meadows, woods and plains, as pleasant as could be. Only one thing was strange: the sun never shone there. Clouds always covered the sky, so there was no sun by day and no moon or stars by night.

The two little men brought Elidore before their king, who asked why he had come and where from. Elidore told him, and the king said, “You shall wait on my son,” and waved him away. So for a long time Elidore served the king’s son and joined in all the games and sports of the little people.

The fairy people were very small, with fair hair hanging to their shoulders. They had little horses about the size of greyhounds. They ate no meat, no birds and no fish, but lived on milk flavoured with saffron. Their ways were curious, and so were their beliefs. They never swore an oath, yet they never told a lie. They laughed at human beings for their quarrelling, their lying and their treachery. The narrator describes them as truthful without practicing a named religion, calling Truth their only object of worship.

After a while Elidore began to long to see boys and men of his own size, and he asked to visit his mother. The king allowed it, and the little men led him along the passage and guided him through the forest until he was near his mother’s cottage. How overjoyed she was to see her dear son! “Where have you been? What have you been doing?” she cried, and he had to tell her everything. She begged him to stay, but he had promised the king he would go back, and soon he did, after making his mother promise never to tell anyone where he was or with whom. From then on Elidore lived partly with the little people and partly with his mother.

One day, at home with his mother, he told her about the yellow balls the little people used in their games. She was sure they must be gold, and she begged him to bring one with him on his next visit. When the time came, he did not wait for the little men to guide him, since by now he knew the way. He seized one of the yellow balls he played with and hurried home through the passage.

As he drew near his mother’s house, he thought he heard tiny footsteps behind him, and he dashed for the door as fast as he could. Just as he reached it, his foot slipped and he fell, and the ball rolled from his hand right to his mother’s feet. At that moment two little men rushed up, snatched the ball and ran off, pulling faces and spitting at the boy as they passed.

Elidore stayed with his mother for a time, but he missed the games and play of the little people and decided to go to them. Yet when he came to the river where the cave and the underground passage had been, he could not find the entrance, and though he hunted for it for years, he never found his way into that fair country. So in the end he went to the monastery and in due course became a monk. People used to seek him out to ask what had happened to him in the Land of the Little Men, and he could never talk of that happy time without tears.

When Elidore was an old man, David, Bishop of St David’s, came to his monastery and questioned him about the habits and customs of the little people. Above all, the bishop wanted to know what language they spoke, and Elidore told him some of their words. When they asked for water they said Udor udorum, and when they wanted salt they said Hapru udorum.

From this the bishop, who was a learned man, worked out that they spoke a kind of Greek, using what he took to be resemblances to Greek words for water and salt. And from this, so the tale says, we know that the Britons came from Troy, being descended from Brito, son of Priam, King of Troy.

Where this tale comes from

Jacobs says he followed the Latin text “tolerably closely” for “Elidore,” which comes from Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis), whose Itinerarium Cambriae records a journey through Wales. Henry Beauclerc is King Henry I of England, and St David’s is in south-west Wales.

In his notes Jacobs explains that the little men spat at Elidore so that he could not see his way back to their land. He mentions another Welsh legend in which fairy hosts let visitors eat all they liked but take nothing away. The last lines about Greek and Troy reflect learned ideas of Gerald’s time, not modern history.

Read the original: Joseph Jacobs, More Celtic Fairy Tales (Gutenberg ebook #34453)

Reading guidance: older children with adult discussion. Includes repeated beating of a child by teachers, flight from home and a lasting loss. Difficulty learning does not justify humiliation or physical punishment.

Reading the story closely

Elidore leaves a school where punishment makes learning harder and finds a community that praises truth. The golden ball tests that welcome, but his mother’s request also shapes his decision; calling the episode merely his greed leaves out her influence. The later tears hold affection and regret together without returning the lost place.

Compare the two kinds of learning: letters under threat, and the language and customs of his hosts. Then separate what the older Elidore remembers from what the bishop concludes about Greek and Troy. The source’s learned speculation is part of its history, not proof of ancient ancestry.

Talk about it

• Why did Elidore run away from the monks?
• What was unusual about the land of the little people and the way they lived?
• Why do you think Elidore could never find the cave again?

Related stories

• Connla and the Fairy Maiden — another mortal drawn into an Otherworld
• How Cormac Mac Art Went to Faery — an Irish king’s visit to fairyland
• Beth Gellert — a Welsh legend in Jacobs’s Celtic collections