Sina brought the basket to the common room where Iolo ap Hugh, the wandering minstrel, told jokes by the fire. The local farmers howled with laughter.
When she set the basket on the table next to his violin, he gave her a merry grin.
"Bread and cheese, sir," Sina said. "Enough to last a good long journey."
"Thank you, lass. But I'm not traveling far. Do you have candles?"
"Indeed. I'll fetch you a couple."
"I need seven pounds of candles. Will this do?" He laid several coins down.
"Seven pounds?" Sina cocked her head. "This Hallowe'en isn't as black as all that! Where are you going?"
Ap Hugh sat back. "I'm going to prove the stories false. I mean to stay a few nights in the cave."
The farmers laughed.
Ap Hugh stood and faced them. "I indeed plan to do just that."
"But it's haunted!" one man said.
"Bewitched!" said another.
"The devil himself lurks down that chasm!"
No matter how the locals repeated the warning, Ap Hugh would not be swayed.
Sina brought the candles, nestled them into the basket. "Good sir—" she began.
"Call me Ned. Ned Pugh, that's how the English say it. Short for Edward, since they can't pronounce a good Welsh name like Iorweth."
"Sir. Ned, then. Listen. My father was houndsmaster on the hunt a year ago. He saw the fox go to ground, down that hole. He saw it come shooting out again, eyes wild, ears laid back, hair all bristled and fretted like frostwork with such terror it ran straight into the hound pack. And the dogs all cringed back, whining at the smell of brimstone! It's truly a perilous place!"
"How sweet, your concern. But don't worry. I'll return with tales to tell." Ned Pugh shouldered his fiddle case, took up the basket, and tipped his hat to the folks in the silent room.
He never returned.
On Hallowe'en many years later, a local shepherd stumbled into the inn, shaking all over, throat clamped mute with dread. Sina sent for the parson, then settled the poor man by the fire with a pint of ale.
At last he found his voice. "I heard a burst of wild music. On a fiddle. There, in the mouth of the cave! And then I saw him. Iolo. Fiddling and dancing like mad. But his head lolled. His knees knocked. His arms worked the bow and fiddle like a puppet. And his face— Such agony! He tried to dance toward the open, but something snatched him back, like a kerchief on a string. And that tune, that tune, still wailing from the depths—"
The shepherd began humming an odd refrain, over and over, and his feet took to shuffling in time. He lurched up. "Make it stop!" he screamed.
The parson scribbled notes on paper, and held it up. "Here, I've caught the tune. I've taken it from you."
The shepherd collapsed into a huddle, silent but for his weeping.
That was the last anyone saw of Iolo ap Hugh.
* * *
folktale from Morda, North Wales
- British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions, by Wirt Sikes, 1880, p. 102
- Folk-lore and Folk-stories of Wales, by Marie Trevelyan, 1909, p. 139
the melody lives on in the Welsh air entitled "Ffarwel Ned Pugh"
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