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Mythology and Rites of the British druids - The gardens of the Tylwyth Teg
Identifier
004443
Type of Spiritual Experience
None
Background
This is a Celtic myth, but it embodies a huge amount of symbolism and may well have described genuine spiritual experiences.
A description of the experience
From Mythology and Rites of the British druids – Davies
In ancient times a door in a rock near a lake was found open upon a certain day every year. I think it was Mayday.
Those who had the curiosity and resolution to enter were conducted by a secret passage, which terminated in a small island in the centre of the lake. Here the visitors were surprised with the prospect of the most enchanting garden stored with the choicest fruits and flowers, and inhabited by the Tylwyth Teg or Fair Family, a kind of fairies, whose beauty could be equalled only by the courtesy and affability which they exhibited to those who pleased them.
They gathered fruit and flowers for each of their guests, entertained them with the most exquisite music, disclosed to them many secrets of futurity and invited them to stay as long as they should find their situation agreeable. But the island was secret and nothing of its produce must be carried away. The whole of the scene was invisible to those who stood without the margin of the lake. Only an indistinct mass was seen in the middle and it was observed that no bird would fly over the water, and that a soft strain of music at times breathed with rapturous sweetness in the breeze of the morning.
It happened upon one of these annual visits that a sacrilegious wretch, when he was about to leave the garden, put a flower, with which he had been presented, in his pocket; but the theft boded him no good. As soon as he touched unhallowed ground the flower vanished and he lost his senses. Of this injury the Fair Family took no notice at the time. They dismissed their guests with their accustomed courtesy, and the door was closed as usual. But their resentment ran high. For though, as the tale goes, the Tylwyth Teg and their garden undoubtedly occupy the spot to this day, though the birds still keep at a respectful distance from the lake and some broken strains of music are still to be heard at times, yet the door which led to the island has never been reopened …