At the start of the story Catrin has left to her by her mother some precious notes on medicines passed on from a family of healers who lived on the far side of the mountains. I found my first copy of The Herbal Remedies of the Physicians of Myddfai in a bookshop in Hay back in the early 1980s. It is described as a collection of ancient and Celtic remedies associated with a legend of the Lady of the Lake. The book had everything that I love. History, herbs and folklore. Myddfai is a small village in Carmarthenshire on the far side of the Brecon Beacons. Nearby there is a hidden lake, called Llyn-y-Fan-Fach and local legend has it that in the late 12th or early 13th century a mysterious Lady of the Lake (yes, possibly that one) passed on to a local family the secrets of the – mostly herbal – remedies. It is a complicated, Druidic story and may just hide the fact that generations of a family of physicians were the first to write down what had up to then been an oral tradition. The legend was first collected in 1841 and published by the Welsh Manuscript Society in the 1860s with an English translation. The ‘recipes’ are wonderful and sometimes truly awful to read! The herbs are good and usually tally with a double check in a modern herbal. Some of the other ingredients are formidable though; the brain of a red cock, verdegris, dung of mice, ‘some newts, by some called lizards, and those nasty beetles which are found in ferns during summer time, calcine them in an iron pot and make powder thereof …’. I am sure Catrin exercised due caution!
Re-enactors are a wonderful source of information on the period in which they specialise; they do masses of research and put their findings into practice. It was at a medieval fair at Hay Castle that I first came across the form of knitting called nalbinding. ‘Proper’ knitting came from Islamic roots probably entering Europe through Spain in the 13th century and made its way only slowly into popular use, but the ancient Viking form of nalbinding had been around for thousands of years and was universally used. The wool is pulled into shorter lengths (not the ‘ball’ used in knitting) and is threaded through a bone needle which is used with the thumbs in a form of crochet which is worked in the round for stockings, caps etc. The lengths of wool are joined together by felting.
Hence the origins of the ‘Monmouth Cap’, a warm and practical head covering worn by sailors, by soldiers under their helmets, by men and women, by all classes. It was usually brown (white for women) and sometimes red. The felting process makes them waterproof. Very few have survived from the early period but they are often seen illustrated in medieval manuscripts.
Weather magic, was, like all magic, above all practical. Rain was needed for crops; sunshine at the right moment for ripening. There were two parts to magic (say my books): the spell, which involved a formula of secret words; and the rite, a set of actions by which the spell conveyed to the object the desired effect. For example, to get rain, sprinkle water on the ground; to make corn grow, jump up and down in a field. There are dozens of ways to divert bad weather – one of the commonest, planting stonecrop on your roof to ward off lightning. It is harder to attract bad weather and then direct it towards someone else. That would be classed as black magic if used for malicious purposes, but perhaps not if you are using it to fight against your enemy! Weather witching was one of the most commonly used forms of magic – and still is! Even I have whistled for the wind when out sailing. I found two books especially helpful with this part of my research. Ella Mary Leather’s Folklore and Witchcraft of Herefordshire and The Silver Bough by F. Marian McNeill, the first volume of which deals with folklore and folk belief in Scotland. Not Welsh, admittedly, but Celtic all the same.
The ending of Glyndŵr’s story is full of mystery and that of his surviving family is also uncertain. After the fall of Harlech Castle, his wife and two of his daughters, one of which was Catrin (in the novel I called her Catherine to differentiate her from my heroine) were captured, together with Catrin’s son Lionel and her daughters, and taken to the Tower of London. There is a record in the Exchequer Rolls:
To John Weele, Esq. In money paid to his own hands, for the expenses of the wife of Owen Glendourdi, the wife of Edmund Mortimer, and others, their sons and daughters, in his custody in the city of London, at the King’s charge, by his command – £30
This record is dated 27th June 1413. By December they were all dead. What happened is unknown, and deemed in some quarters then and now to be suspicious, though one view seems to be that they succumbed to the plague. We don’t know where Margaret was buried, but we do know what happened to Catrin. After she and her daughters died in 1413 there was an entry in the Exchequer rolls of a payment made to the valet of the Earl of Arundel:
‘for expenses and other charges incurred for the burial and exequies of the wife of Edmund Mortimer and her daughters, buried within St Swithin’s Church London – £1’.
There is no mention there of poor Lionel. St Swithin’s church was in Candlewick (better known, later, as Cannon) Street in the City of London. There is a poignant coda to their story. St Swithin’s was bombed in the Blitz of 1940 and not rebuilt at the end of the war, but its churchyard has been turned into a tiny garden, dwarfed by the enormous steel and glass buildings that now surround it. There, a memorial to Catrin, the daughter of Owain Glyndŵr has been erected. This was also dedicated to the suffering of all women and children in war.
Let time stand still.
Discover even more of the magic.
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About the Author
Barbara Erskine is the Sunday Times bestselling author of over a dozen novels. Her first book, Lady of Hay, has sold more than three million copies worldwide and has never been out of print since it was first published thirty years ago. Her books have been translated into over twenty-five languages and are international bestsellers. Barbara lives near Hay-on-Wye in the Welsh borders.
To find out more about Barbara and her books visit her website, find her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter.
www.barbara-erskine.co.uk
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Also by Barbara Erskine
LADY OF HAY
KINGDOM OF SHADOWS
ENCOUNTERS (SHORT STORIES)
CHILD OF THE PHOENIX
MIDNIGHT IS A LONELY PLACE
HOUSE OF ECHOES
DISTANT VOICES (SHORT STORIES)
ON THE EDGE OF DARKNESS
WHISPERS IN THE SAND
HIDING FROM THE LIGHT
SANDS OF TIME (SHORT STORIES)
DAUGHTERS OF FIRE
THE WARRIOR’S PRINCESS
TIME’S LEGACY
RIVER OF DESTINY
THE DARKEST HOUR
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Barbara Erskine, Sleeper’s Castle
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