Elidor and the Golden Ball

Giraldus Cambrensis in ITINERARIUM CAMBRIAE, the account of his journey through Wales in 1188, gives a remarkable narrative of a boy’s visit to Fairyland. It contains so mush information in so short a space that it deserves to be included in full. It is one of the best of the early fairy anecdotes:

” Some time ago I heard about a priest called Elidor, who had had a strange event, when he was a boy. 12-years old Elidor, who wanted to avoid his severe teachers hard discipline and beating, that continued on an on, ran away one day, and hide in river´s cliff. He had been there for 2 days, when 2 dwarf´s size men came to him and said: 
” If you want to come with us, we´ll take you into a kingdom, wich is full of joy and fun.” Elidor consented the men´s suggestion and left with them. 

The road was narrow and it went straight under the ground. There was a dark, but very beautiful world. The rivers traversed trough meadows, forests and plains, but everywhere it was dark. Days were gray, because sun never shone. Nights were complete dark, because not even one star, or the moon, would light the sky. The boy was taken to a king. The whole court was there, when Elidor was introduced to the fairyking. The king made questions and examined the boy a long time. When he had noticed that the man was a good boy, he called for his own son to keep company to him. The fairypeople was small, but beautiful and graceful. Everyone-men and women, had fair hair, that flew to their shoulders. The fairies had well-trained, greyhound-size horses too. The courtpeople didn´t eat meat or fish, but milkpaste, spiced with saffron. The fairies didn´t make vals, because they hated lying. Always, when they returned from upside world, they judged our ambition and disloyalty to each other. They didn´t make any religious services, they contented in respecting the thruth and loving it. Elidor got an invitation to visit in their kingdom as often as he liked, and he took the invitation. At first, he used the path that the fairies had made for him, but he learned to know other paths and he told about his travels and the life of the fairies only to his mother. His mother was enchanted about it, and specially she remembered the stories about fairies treasures. She started to ask his son to bring her some gold- and so he did-pleasing her, he stole a golden ball, that he liked. Elidor had a hurry to get the ball home and when he reached his house, he stumbled and the ball dropped from his hands. Suddenly two faeries appeared in the room, catched the ball and went away spitting on the boy. When Elidor calmed down, he damned his mothers requests, that had caused all the trouble. He wanted to go back to the fairies world, but when he searched for the path he had used many times, it was gone. One year Elidor went looking for a path to the faeries every day, but he didn’t find any of them. Time released Elidors pain. Mother and friends made him to get interested about school and literature, and he stopped missing to the underground world. Finally he became a priest. But when he sometimes talked with the bishop about life, and when then they spoke about his childhood, he remembered the times that he was a friend to the faeries, and started to cry. He remembered some words and sentences of the faerie language and sometimes he told them to the bishop. The language was like greek. When the faeries wanted water, they said: ” Udor Udorum”, that means “Bring water”. The word Udor means water in faerie language and when the faeries wanted salt, they said: “Halgein udorum” that means “Bring salt”.