The Great Return

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter one of The Great Return by Arthur Makin. This
is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Read by Ben Tucker, Chapter one, The
Rumor of the Marvelous. There are strange things lost and

(00:21):
forgotten in obscure corners of the newspaper. I often think
that the most extraordinary item of intelligence that I have
read in print appeared a few years ago in the
London press. It came from a well known and most
respected news agency. I imagine it was in all the papers.
It was astounding. The circumstance is necessary not to the

(00:42):
understanding of this paragraph, for that is out of the question.
But we will say to the understanding of the events
which made it possible. Are these. We had invaded Tibet,
and there been trouble in the hierarchy of that country,
and a person known as the Tashi Lama had taken
refuge with us in India. He went on pilgrimage from
one Buddhist shrine to another, and came at last to

(01:03):
a holy mountain of Buddhism, the name of which I
have forgotten and thus the morning paper. His holiness the
Tashi Lama then ascended the mountain and was transfigured Reuter.
That was all, And from that day to this I
have never heard a word of explanation or comment on
this amazing statement. There was no more, it seemed to

(01:25):
be said. Reuter apparently thought he had made his simple
statement of the facts of the case, had thereby done
his duty, and so it all ended. Nobody, so far
as I know, ever wrote to any paper asking what
Ruter meant by it, or what the Tashi Lama meant
by it. I suppose the fact was that nobody cared
two pence about the matter, and so this strange event,

(01:45):
if there were any such event, was exhibited to us
for a moment, and the lantern show revolved to other spectacles.
This is an extreme instance of the manner in which
the marvelous is flashed out to us and then withdrawn
behind its black veils and concealments. But I have known
of other cases. Now and again, at intervals of a
few years, there appear in the newspapers strange stories of

(02:08):
the strange doings of what are technically called poltergeist's. Some house,
often a lonely farm is suddenly subjected to an infernal bombardment.
Great stones crashed through the windows, thundered down the chimneys,
impelled by no visible hand. The plates and cups and
saucers are whirled from the dresser into the middle of

(02:28):
the kitchen. No one can say how or by what agency. Upstairs,
the big bedstead and an old chester or two are
heard bounding on the floor, as if in a mad ballet.
Now and then, such doings as these excite a whole neighborhood.
Sometimes a London paper sends a man down to make
an investigation. He writes half a column of description on
the Monday, a couple of paragraphs on the Tuesday, and

(02:51):
then returns to town. Nothing has been explained. The matter
vanishes away, and nobody cares. The tale trickles for a
day or two through the press, and then instantly disappears,
like an Australian stream, into the bowels of darkness. It
is possible, I suppose, that this singular and curiousness as
to marvelous events and reports is not wholly unaccountable. It

(03:14):
may be that the events in question are, as it were,
psychic accidents and misadventures, they are not meant to happen,
or rather to be manifested. They belong to the world
on the other side of the dark curtain, and it
is only by some queer mischance that a corner of
that curtain is twitched aside for an instant. Then, for

(03:34):
an instant we see. But the personages whom mister Kipling
calls the lords of life and death, take care that
we do not see too much. Our business is with
things higher and things lower, with things different anyhow, and
on the whole we are not suffered to distract ourselves
with that which does not really concern us. The transfiguration

(03:55):
of the Lama and the tricks of the poltergeist are
evidently no affairs of ours. We raise an uninterested eyebrow
and pass on to poetry or to statistics. Be it
noted I am not professing any fervent personal belief in
the reports in which I have eluded. For all I know,
the Lama, in spite of Reuter, was not transfigured, and

(04:16):
the poultrygeist, in spite of the late mister Andrew Lang,
may in reality be only mischievous. Polly the servant girl
at the farm, and to go farther. I do not
know that I should be justified in putting either of
these cases of the marvelous in line with a chance
paragraph that caught my eye last summer. For this had not,
on the face of it, at all events, anything wildly

(04:38):
out of the common. Indeed, I dare say that I
should not have read it, should not have seen it,
if it had not contained the name of a place
which I had once visited, which had then moved me
in an odd manner that I could not understand. Indeed,
I am sure that this particular paragraph deserves to stand alone,
for even if the poltergeist be a real poultergeist, it

(04:58):
merely reveals the psychic whimsicality of some region that is
not our region. There were better things, and more relevant
things behind the few lines dealing with Lentrescant, little town
by the Sea, and Arthenshire. Not on the surface, I
must say for the cutting I have preserved, it reads
as follows, Lantracant, the season promises very favorably. Temperature of

(05:21):
the sea yesterday at noon sixty five degrees. Remarkable occurrences
are supposed to have taken place during the recent revival.
The lights have not been observed lately, the crown, the
fisherman's rest. The style was odd. Certainly, knowing a little
of newspapers, I could see that the figure called I
think tmesis or cutting had been generously employed. The exuberances

(05:45):
of the local correspondent had been pruned by a fleet
street expert. And these poor men are often hurried. But
what did those lights mean? What strange matters had the
vehement blue pencil blotted out and brought to naught? That
was my first and then thinking still of Lantrascant and
how I had first discovered it and found it strange,

(06:05):
I read the paragraph again and was saddened almost to see,
as I thought the obvious explanation I had forgotten for
the moment that it was war time, that scares and
rumors and terrors about traitorous signals and flashing lights were
current everywhere by land and sea. Someone no doubt, had
been watching innocent farmhouse windows and thoughtless fan lights of

(06:27):
lodging houses. These were the lights that had not been
observed lately. I found out afterwards that the lantrac And
correspondent had no such treasonous lights in his mind. But
something very different still what do we know. He may
have been mistaken. The great rows of fire that came
over the deep may have been the port light of

(06:47):
a coasting ship. Did it shine at last from the
old chapel on the headland? Possibly, or possibly it was
the doctor's lamp at Sarnaw, some miles away. I have
had wonderful opportunities lately of Anna, the marvels of lying
conscious and unconscious, and indeed almost incredible feats in this
way can be performed if I incline to the less

(07:09):
likely explanation of the lights at Lantracant. It is merely
because this explanation seems to me to be altogether congruous
with the remarkable occurrences of the newspaper paragraph. After all,
if rumor and gossip and hearsay are crazy things to
be utterly neglected and laid aside, on the other hand,
evidence is evidence. And when a couple of reputable surgeons assert,

(07:32):
as they do assert in the case of Olwin Phillips
Croswyn Lantracent, that there has been a kind of resurrection
of the body, it is merely foolish to say that
these things don't happen. The girl was a mass of tuberculosis.
She was within a few hours of death. She is
now full of life. And so I do not believe
that the rose of fire was merely a ship's light
magnified and transformed by dreaming Welsh sailors. But now I

(07:57):
am going forward too fast. I have not dated the paragraph,
so I cannot give the exact day of its appearance,
but I think it was somewhere between the second and
third week of June. I cut it out, partly because
it was about Lantracant, partly because of the remarkable occurrences.
I have an appetite for these matters, though I also
have this misfortune that I require evidence before I am

(08:17):
ready to credit them. And I have a sort of
lingering hope that some day I shall be able to
elaborate some scheme or theory of such things. But in
the meantime, as a temporary measure, I hold what I
call the doctrine of the jigsaw puzzle. That is, this
remarkable occurrence, and that and the other may be and
usually are of no significance. Coincidence and chance and unsearchable

(08:41):
causes will now and again make clouds that are undeniable.
Fiery dragons and potatoes that resemble imminent statesmen exactly and
minutely in every feature, and rocks that are like eagles
and lions. All this is nothing. It is when you
get your set of odd shapes and find that they
fit into one another, and at last that they are

(09:02):
but parts of a larger design. It is then that
research grows interesting and indeed amazing. It is then that
one queer form confirms the other, that the whole plan
displayed justifies, corroborates, explains each separate piece. So it was
within a week or ten days after I had read
the paragraph about Lantracant and had cut it out, that

(09:25):
I got a letter from a friend who was taking
an early holiday in those regions. You will be interested,
he wrote, to hear that they have taken to ritualistic
practices at Lantrasant. I went into the church the other day,
and instead of smelling like a damp vault as usual,
it was positively reeking with incense. I knew better than
that the old parson was a firm evangelical. He would

(09:47):
rather burnt sulfur in his church than incense any day.
So I could not make out this report at all,
and went down to Arfhan a few weeks later determined
to investigate this and any other remarkable occurrence at lantract
end of chapter one, chapter two of The Great Return

(10:09):
by Arthur Mochin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Read by Bin Tucker, Chapter two, Odors of Paradise. I
went down to Arfon in the very heat and bloom
and fragrance of the wonderful summer that they were enjoying
there in London. There was no such weather. It rather
seemed as if the horror and fury of the war

(10:31):
had mounted to the very skies and were there raining.
In the mornings, the sun burnt down upon the city
with a heat that scorched and consumed. But then clouds
heavy and horrible would roll together from all quarters of
the heavens, and early in the afternoon the air would darken,
and a storm of thunder and lightning and furious, hissing
rain would fall upon the streets. Indeed, the torment of

(10:54):
the world was in the London weather. The city wore
a terrible vesture. Within our hearts was red without we
were clothed in black clouds and angry fire. It is
certain that I cannot show in any words, the utter
peace of that Welsh coast to which I came, one sees,
I think, in such a change of figure, of the
passage from the disquiets and the fears of earth to

(11:17):
the peace of paradise, a land that seemed to be
in a holy, happy dream, a sea that changed all
the while, from olivine to emerald, from emerald to sapphire,
from sapphire to amethyst, that washed in white foam at
the bases of the firm gray rocks, and about the
huge crimson bastions that hid the western bays and inlets

(11:39):
of the waters. To this land I came, and to
hollows that were purple and odorous, with wild thyme, wonderful,
with many tiny exquisite flowers. There was benediction in centaury, pardon,
and eyebright joy, and lady's slipper. And so the weary
eyes were refreshed, looking now at the little flowers and
the happy bees about them. Now on the magic mirror

(12:01):
of the deep, changing from marvel to marvel, with the
passing of the great white clouds, with the brightening of
the sun, and the ears torn with jangle and racket
and idle, empty noise, were soothed and comforted by the ineffable, unutterable,
unceasing murmur as the tide swam to and fro uttering

(12:22):
mighty hollow voices in the caverns of the rocks. For
three or four days I rested in the sun and
smelt the savor of the blossoms and of the salt water,
and then refreshed, I remembered that there was something queer
about Lantycot that I might as well investigate. It was
no great thing that I thought to find, for it
will be remembered. I had ruled out the apparent oddity

(12:45):
of the reporters or commissioners reference to lights, on the
ground that he must have been referring to some local
panic about signaling to the enemy, who had certainly torpedoed
a ship or two off Lundy in the Bristol Channel.
All that I had to go upon was the reference
to the remarkable occurrences at some revival. And then that

(13:05):
letter of Jackson's which spoke of Lantracant Church as reeking
with incense, a wholly incredible and impossible state of things.
Why old mister Evans the rector looked upon colored stoles
as the very robe of Satan and his angels, as
things dear to the heart of the Pope of Rome.
But as to incense, as I have already familiarly observed,

(13:27):
I knew better. But as a hard matter of fact,
this may be worth noting. When I went over to
Lantycant on Monday, August ninth, I visited the church, and
it was still fragrant and exquisite with the odor of
rare gums that had fumed there. Now I happened to
have a slight acquaintance with the rector. He was a
most courteous and delightful old man, and on my last

(13:48):
visit he had come across me in the churchyard as
I was admiring the very fine Celtic cross that stands there.
Besides the beauty of the interlaced ornament, there is an
inscription in ogum on one of the concerning which the
learned dispute. It is altogether one of the more famous
crosses of Celtdom. Mister Evans, I say, seeing me looking

(14:09):
at the cross, came up and began to give me
the stranger a resume, somewhat of a shaky and uncertain resume.
I found afterwards of the various debates and questions that
had arisen as to the exact meaning of the inscription,
and I was amused to detect an evident but underlying
belief of his own that these supposed ogum characters were

(14:30):
in fact due to Boy's mischief and whether in the
passing of the ages. But then I happened to put
a question as to the sort of stone of which
the cross was made, and the rector brightened amazingly. He
began to talk geology, and I think demonstrated that the cross,
or the material for it, must have been brought to
Lantract from the southwest coast of Island. This struck me

(14:50):
as interesting, because it was curious evidence of the migrations
of the Celtic saints, whom the Rector I was delighted
to find looked upon as good Protestants, though shaky on
the subject of cross houses. And so with concessions on
my part, we got on very well. Thus, with all
this to the good I was emboldened to call upon him.
I found him altered, not that he was aged, Indeed

(15:13):
he was rather made young, with a singular brightening upon
his face, and something of joy upon it that I
had not seen before that I have seen on very
few faces of men. We talked of the war, of course,
since that is not to be avoided, of the farming
prospects of the county, of general things, till I ventured
to remark that I had been in the church and

(15:33):
had been surprised to find it perfumed with incense. You
have made some alterations in the service since I was
here last. You use incense now? The old man looked
at me strangely and hesitated. No, he said, there has
been no change. I use no incense in the church.
I should not venture to do so, but I was beginning.

(15:57):
The whole church is as if High Mass had been
sung there. And he cut me short. And there is
a certain grave solemnity in his manner that struck me
almost with awe. I know you are a railer, he said,
and the phrase, coming from this mild old gentleman, astonished
me unutterably. You are a railer and a bitter railer.

(16:17):
I have read articles that you have written, and I
know your contempt and your hatred for those you call Protestants,
and your derision. Though your grandfather, the Vicar of carleon
on Usk called himself Protestant and was proud of it.
And your great grand uncle, Hezekiah Ferrit cork Ear Castleton,
the Red Priest of Castletown, was a great man with

(16:39):
the Methodists in his day, and the people flocked by
their thousands when he had ministered the sacrament. I was
born and brought up in Glamorganshire, and old men have
wept as they told me of the weeping and contrition
that there was when the Red Priest broke the bread
and raised the cup. But you are a railer and
see nothing but the outside in the show. You are

(17:00):
not worthy of this mystery that has been done here.
I went out from his presence, rebuked, indeed, and justly rebuked,
but rather amazed. It is curiously true that the Welsh
are still one people, one family, almost in a manner
that the English cannot understand. But I had never thought
that this old clergyman would have known anything of my

(17:21):
ancestry or their doings. And as for my articles and
such like, I knew that the country clergy sometimes read,
but I had fancied my pronouncements sufficiently obscure even in London,
much more and arpen. But so it happened, and so
I had no explanation from the rector of Lautrecant of
the strange circumstance that his church was full of incense

(17:42):
and odors of paradise. I went up and down the
ways of Lantracant, wondering, and came to the harbor, which
is a little place with little quays, where some small
coasting trade still lingers. A brigantine was at anchor here,
and very lazily in the sunshine. They were loading it
with anthracite. For it is one of the oddities of
Lent that there is a small colliery in the heart

(18:02):
of the wood. On the hillside, I crossed a causeway
which parts the outer harbor from the inner harbor, and
settled down on a rocky beach hidden under a leafy hill.
The tide was going out, and some children were playing
on the wet sand, while two ladies their mothers, I suppose,
talked together as they sat comfortably on their rugs, at
a little distance from me. At first they talked of

(18:24):
the war, and I made myself deaf, for of that
talk one gets enough and more than enough in London.
Then there was a period of silence, and the conversation.
It passed to quite a different topic. When I caught
the thread of it again. I was sitting on the
further side of a big rock, and I do not
think that the two ladies had noticed my approach. However,
though they spoke of strange things, they spoke of nothing

(18:46):
which made it necessary for me to announce my presence.
And after all, one of them was saying, what is
it all about? I can't make out what is come
to the people. The speaker was a Welsh woman. I
recognized the clear over emphasized connor and a faint suggestion
of an accent. Her friend came from the Midlands, and
it turned out that they had only known each other
for a few days. Theirs was a friendship of the

(19:09):
beach and of bathing. Such friendships are common at small
seaside places. There is certainly something odd about the people here.
I've never been to lantterct before, you know, indeed, this
is the first time we've been in Wales for our holidays,
and knowing nothing about the ways of the people, and
not being accustomed to hear Welsh spoken, I thought, perhaps
it must be my imagination, but you think there really

(19:30):
is something a little queer. I can tell you this
that I have been in two minds whether I should
not write to my husband and asked him to take
me and the children away. You know where I am
at missus Morgan's, and the Morgan's sitting room is just
the other side of the passage. And sometimes they leave
the door open so that I can hear what they
say quite plainly. And you see I understand the Welsh,

(19:52):
though they don't know it, and I hear them saying
the most alarming things, what sort of things? Well, indeed,
it sounds like some kind of a religious service, but
it's not Church of England. I know that Old Morgan
begins it, and the wife and children answer something like,
Blessed be God for the messengers of Paradise, Blessed be
His name for paradise, in the meat and in the drink,

(20:14):
Thanksgiving for the old offering, thanksgiving for the appearance of
the old altar, praise for the joy of the ancient garden,
prays for the return of those that have been long absent,
and all that sort of thing. It is nothing but madness.
Depend upon it, said the lady from the Midlands. There's
no real harm in it. There dissenters, some new sect.

(20:35):
I dare say, you know, some dissenters are very queer
in their ways. All that is like no dissenters that
I have ever known in all my life. Whatever, replied
the Welsh lady, somewhat vehemently, with a very distinct intonation
of the land. And have you heard them speak of
the bright light that shone at midnight from the church?
End of chapter two chapter three of The Great Return

(21:04):
by Arthur mackin this LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Read by Ben Tucker, Chapter three, A secret in a
secret place. Now here was I altogether at a loss
and quite bewildered. The children broke into the conversation of
the two ladies and cut it all short, just as
the midnight lights from the church came on the field.

(21:27):
And when the little girls and boys went back again
to the sands whooping, the tide of talk had turned,
and Missus Harland and Missus Williams were quite safe and
at home with Janey's measles and a wonderful treatment for
infantile earache, as exemplified in the case of Trevor, there
was no more to be got out of them evidently.
So I left the beach, crossed the harbor causeway, and

(21:48):
drank beer at the Fisherman's Rest till it was time
to climb up two miles of deep lane and catch
the train for Penvroe, where I was staying. And I
went up the lane, as I say, in a kind
of amazement, not so much, I think, because of evidences
and hints of things strange to the senses, such as
the savor of incense where no incense had smoked for

(22:08):
three hundred and fifty years and more, or the story
of bright light shining from the dark closed church at
dead of night, as because of that sentence of thanksgiving
for paradise in meat and in drink. For the sun
went down and the evening fell. As I climbed the
long hill through the deep woods and the high meadows,
and the scent of all the green things rose from

(22:30):
the earth and from the heart of the wood. And
at a turn of the lane far below was the
misty glimmer of the still sea, and from far below
its deep murmur sounded as it washed on the hidden
inclosed bay where Lantracent stands, And I thought, if there
be paradise in meat and in drink. So much the
more as there paradise in the scent of the green

(22:51):
leaves at evening, and in the appearance of the sea,
and in the redness of the sky. And there came
to me a certain vision of a real world about us,
all the while of a language that was only secret
because we would not take the trouble to listen to
it and discern it. It was almost dark when I
got to the station, and here were the few feeble
oil lamps lit glimmering in that lonely land were the

(23:13):
way is long from farm to farm. The train came
on its way, and I got into it, and just
as we moved from the station, I noticed a group
under one of those dim lamps. A woman and her
child had got out, and they were being welcomed by
a man who had been waiting for them. I had
not noticed his face as I stood on the platform,
but now I saw it as he pointed down the

(23:33):
hill towards Lantersunt, and I think I was almost frightened.
He was a young man, a farmer's son, I would say,
dressed in rough brown clothes, and as different from old
mister Evans, the rector as one might be from another.
But on his face, as I saw it in the
lamp light, there was the like brightening that I had
seen on the face of the rector. It was an
illuminated face, glowing with an ineffable joy, and I thought

(23:57):
it rather gave light to the platform lamp than received
light from it. The woman and her child, I inferred,
were strangers to the place, and had come to pay
a visit to the young man's family. They looked about
them in bewilderment, half alarmed, before they saw him, and
then his face was radiant in their sight, and it
was easy to see that all their troubles were ended
and over a wayside station in a darkening country, and

(24:19):
it was as if they were welcomed by shining immortal gladness,
even into paradise. But though there seemed in a sense
light all about my ways, I was myself still quite bewildered.
I could see, indeed, that something strange had happened, or
was happening, in the little town hidden under the hill.
But there was so far no clue to the mystery,

(24:41):
or rather the clue had been offered to me, and
I had not taken it. I had not even known
that it was there, since we do not so much
as see what we have determined without judging to be incredible,
even though it be held up before our eyes. The
dialog that the Welsh Missus Williams had reported to her
English friend might have set me on the right way.
But the right way was outside all my limits of possibility,

(25:03):
outside the circle of my thought. The paleontologist might see monstrous,
significant marks in the slime of a river bank, but
he would never draw the conclusions that his own peculiar
science would seem to suggest to him. He would choose
any explanation rather than the obvious, since the obvious would
also be the outrageous, according to our established habit of thought,

(25:24):
which we deem final. The next day I took all
these strange things with me for consideration to a certain
place that I knew of, not far from Penfroe. I
was now in the early stages of the jigsaw process,
or rather, I had only a few pieces before me,
and to continue the figure. My difficulty was this that
though the markings on each piece seemed to have design

(25:45):
and significance, yet I could not make the wildest guess
as to the nature of the whole picture, of which
these were the parts. I had clearly seen that there
was a great secret. I had seen that on the
face of the young farmer on the platform of Lantract Station.
And in my mind there was all the while the
picture of him going down the dark, steep, winding lane

(26:05):
that led to the town and the sea, going down
through the heart of the wood, with light about him.
But there was bewilderment in the thought of this, and
in the endeavor to match it with the perfumed church
and the scraps of talk that I had heard in
the rumor of midnight brightness. And though Penvrose was by
no means populous, I thought I would go to a
certain solitary place called the Old camp Head, which looks

(26:29):
toward Cornwall and to the great deeps that roll beyond
Cornwall to the far ends of the world, a place
where fragments of dreams, they seemed such then, might perhaps
be gathered into the clearness of vision. It was some
years since I had been to the Head, and I
had gone on that last time, and on a former
visit by the cliffs, a rough and difficult path. Now

(26:51):
I chose a landward way which the county map seemed
to justify, though doubtfully as regarded the last part of
the journey. So I went inland and climbed the hot
summer broads till I came at last to a lane
which gradually turned turfy and grass grown, and then on
high ground ceased to be. It left me at a
gate and a hedge of old thorns, and across the

(27:11):
field beyond there seemed to be some faint indications of
a track. One would judge that sometimes men did pass
by that way, but not often. It was high ground,
but not within sight of the sea. But the breath
of the sea blew about the hedge of thorns and
came with a keen savor to the nostrils. The ground
sloped gently from the gate and then rose again to

(27:32):
a ridge where a white farmhouse stood all alone. I
passed by this farmhouse, threading an uncertain way, followed a
hedgerow doubtfully, and saw suddenly before me the old camp,
and beyond it the sapphire plain of waters in the mist,
where sea and sky met steep from my feet the
hill fell away a land of gorse, blossom, red gold,

(27:54):
and mellow of glorious purple heather. It fell into a
hollow that went down, shining with rich green bracken, to
the glimmering sea. And before me and beyond the hollow,
rose a height of turf, bastioned at the summit with
the awful age old walls of the old camp, green
rounded circumvallations, wall within wall tremendous with their myriad years

(28:15):
upon them. Within these smooth green mounds, looking across the
shining and changing of the waters in the happy sunlight,
I took out the bread and cheese and beer that
I had carried in a bag, and ate and drank
and lit my pipe, and set myself to think over
the enigmas of lantrascent. And I had scarcely done so,
when a good deal to my annoyance, a man came

(28:36):
climbing up over the green ridges and took up his
stand close by, and stared out to sea. He nodded
to me and began with fine weather for the harvest
in the approved manner, and so sat down and engaged
me in a net of talk. He was of whales,
it seemed, but from a different part of the country,
and was staying for a few days with relations at

(28:57):
the white farm house, which I had passed on my way.
His tale of nothing flowed on to his pleasure in
my pain, till he fell suddenly on Lantracant and its doings.
I listened then with wonder, and here as his tale condensed.
Though it must be clearly understood that the man's evidence
was only second hand. He had heard it from his cousin,
the farmer. So to be brief, it appeared that there

(29:19):
had been a long feud at Lantracent between a local solicitor,
Lewis Protheroe, we will say, and a farmer named James.
There had been a quarrel about some trifle, which had
grown more and more bitter as the two parties forgot
the merits of their original dispute, And by some means
or other which I could not well understand, the lawyer
had got the small freeholder under his thumb. James, I think,

(29:42):
had given a bill of sale in a bad season,
and Prothee had bought it up. And the end was
that the farmer was turned out of the old house
and was lodging in a cottage. People said he would
have to take a place on his own farm as
a laborer. He went about in dreadful misery, piteous to see.
It was thought by some that he might very well
murder the lawyer if he met him. They did meet

(30:03):
in the middle of the market place at Lantrasant one
Saturday in June. The farmer was a little black man,
and he gave a shout of rage, and the people
were rushing at him to keep him off prothero And
then said, my informant, I will tell you what happened
this lawyer, as they tell me. He is a great, big,
brawny fellow, with a big jaw in a wide mouth,
and a red face and red whiskers. And there he

(30:26):
was in his black coat and his high hard hat,
and all his money at his back, as you may say.
And indeed he did fall down on his knees in
the dust there in the street in front of Philip James,
and everyone could see that terror was upon him. And
he did beg Philip James's pardon and beg of him
to have mercy, and he did implore him by God

(30:46):
and Man and the saints of Paradise, and my cousin
John Jenkins Pinmar he do tell me that the tears
were fallen from Lewis Protheroe's eyes like the rain, and
he put his hand into his pocket and drew out
the deed of Panterrios, Philip James's old farm that was,
and did give him the farm back, and a hundred
pounds for the stock that was on it, and two

(31:07):
hundred pounds all in notes of the bank, for amendment
and consolation. And then from what they do tell me,
all the people did go mad, crying and weeping, and
calling out all manner of things at the top of
their voices. And at last nothing would do, but they
must all go up to the churchyard, and there Philip
James and Lewis Protheroe, they swear friendship to one another

(31:28):
for a long age before the old cross, and every
one sings praises. And my cousin, he do declare to
me that there were men standing in that crowd that
he did never see before in lantracentt and all his life,
and his heart was shaking within him as if it
had been in a whirlwind. I had listened to all
this in silence. I said, then, what does your cousin

(31:49):
mean by that men that he had never seen in Lantracent,
What men the people, he said, very slowly, call them
the fishermen. And suddenly there came into mine the rich fisherman, who,
in the old legend guards the holy mystery of the Gail.

(32:10):
End of chapter three, Chapter four of The Great Return
by Arthur Makin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Read by Ben Tucker, Chapter four, the Ringing of the Bell.
So far I have not told the story of the

(32:31):
things of Lntrescant, but rather the story of how I
stumbled upon them and among them, perplexed and holy astray seeking,
but yet not knowing at all what I sought, bewildered
now and again by circumstances which seemed to me wholly inexplicable,
devoid not so much of the key to the enigma,
but of the key to the nature of the enigma.

(32:52):
You cannot begin to solve a puzzle till you know
what the puzzle is about. Yards divided by minutes, said
the mathematical master to me long ago, will give neither pigs,
sheep nor oxen. He was right, though his manner on
this and on all other occasions, was highly offensive. This
is enough of the personal process, as I may call it,
And here follows the story of what happened at Lantract

(33:14):
last summer, the story as I pieced it together at last.
It all began and appears on a hot day early
in last June, so far as I can make out,
on the first Saturday in the month, there was a
deaf old woman, a Missus Perry, who lived by herself
in a lonely cottage a mile or so from the town.
She came into the market place early on Saturday morning

(33:36):
in a state of some excitement, and as soon as
she had taken up her usual place on the pavement
by the churchyard with her ducks and eggs and a
few very early potatoes, she began to tell her neighbors
about her having heard the sound of a great bell.
The good women on each side smiled at one another
behind Missus Perry's back, for one had to bawl into
her ear before she could make out what one meant,

(33:58):
and Missus Williams Penny cohed bent over and yelled, what
bell should that be? Missus Perry? There's no church near
you up near Penry, Do ye hear what nonsense she talks?
Said Missus Williams in a low voice to Missus Morgan
as if she could hear any bell. Whatever what makes
you talk nonsense yourself? Said missus Perry, to the amazement

(34:19):
of the two women. I can hear a bell as
well as you, missus Williams, and as well as your
whispers either. And there's the fact which is not to
be disputed, though the deductions from it may be open
to endless disputations. This old woman, who had been all
but stone deaf for twenty years the defect had always
been in her family, could suddenly hear on this June morning,
as well as anybody else. And her two old friends

(34:42):
stared at her, and it was some time before they
had appeased her indignation and induced her to talk about
the bell. It had happened in the early morning, which
was very misty. She had been gathering sage in her garden,
high on a round hill, looking over the sea, and
there came in her ears a sort of throbbing and
singing and trembling, as if there were music coming out

(35:03):
of the earth. And then something seemed to break in
her head, and all the birds began to sing and
make melody together, and the leaves of the poplars round
the garden fluttered in the breeze that rose from the sea,
and the cock crowed far off at Twin, and the
dog barked down in Kimys's valley. But above all these
sounds unheard for so many years, there thrilled the deep

(35:25):
and chanting note of the bell, like a bell and
a man's voice singing. At once. They stared again at
her and at one another. Where did it sound from?
Asked one. It came sailing across the sea, answered Missus Perry,
quite composedly. And I did hear it coming nearer and
nearer to the land. Well, indeed, said missus Morgan. It

(35:47):
was a ship's bell, then, though I can't make out
why they would be ringing like that. It was not
ringing on any ship, Missus Morgan, said Missus Perry. Then
where do you think it was ringings? Replied Missus Perry.
Now that means in paradise. And the two others changed
the conversation quickly. They thought that Missus Perry had got

(36:10):
back her hearing suddenly such things did happen now and then,
and that the shock had made her a bit queer.
And this explanation would no doubt have stood its ground
if it had not been for other experiences. Indeed, the
local doctor who had treated Missus Perry for a dozen years,
not for her deafness, which he took to be hopeless
and beyond cure, but for a tiresome and recurrent winter cough,

(36:33):
sent an account of the case to a colleague at Bristol, suppressing,
naturally enough, the reference to paradise. The Bristol physician gave
it as his opinion that the symptoms were absolutely what
might have been expected. You have here in all probability.
He wrote, the sudden breaking down of an old obstruction
in the oral passage, and I should quite expect this

(36:54):
process to be accompanied by tenitis of a pronounced and
even violent character. But for the other experiences, As the
morning wore on and drew to noon, high Market, and
to the utmost brightness of that summer day, all the
stalls in the streets were full of rumors and of
awed faces. Now from one lonely farm, now from another.

(37:16):
Men and women came and told the story of how
they had listened in the early morning with thrilling hearts
to the thrilling music of a bell that was like
no bell ever heard before, And it seemed that many
people in the town had been roused. They knew not
how from sleep waking up, as one of them said,
as if bells were ringing in the organ playing, and

(37:36):
the choir of sweet voices singing. All together, there were
such melodies and songs that my heart was full of joy.
And a little past noon some fisherman who had been
out all night returned and brought a wonderful story into
the town of what they had heard in the mist.
And one of them said he had seen something go
by at a little distance from his boat. It was

(37:57):
all golden and bright, he said, and there was glory
wry about it. Another fisherman declared, there was a song
upon the water that was like heaven. And here I
would say in parenthesis that on returning to town, I
sought out a very old friend of mine, a man
who has devoted a lifetime to strange and esoteric studies.
I thought that I had a tale that would interest

(38:17):
him profoundly. But I found that he heard me with
a good deal of indifference. And at this point of
the sailor's stories, I remember saying, now, what do you
make of that? Don't you think it's extremely curious, he replied,
I hardly think so. Possibly the sailors were lying. Possibly
it happened as they say, Well, that sort of thing
has always been happening. I give my friend's opinion. I

(38:39):
make no comment on it. Let it be noted that
there was something remarkable as to the manner in which
the sound of the bell was heard, or supposed to
be heard. There are no doubt mysteries and sounds in
all else. Indeed, I am informed that during one of
the horrible outrages that have been perpetrated on London during
this autumn, there was an instance of a great block

(38:59):
of workmen dwellings in which the only person who heard
the crash of a particular bomb falling was an old,
deaf woman who had been fast asleep till the moment
of the explosion. This is strange enough of a sound
that it was entirely in the natural and horrible order.
And so it was at Lantracant, where the sound was
either a collective auditory hallucination or a manifestation of what

(39:20):
is conveniently, if inaccurately, called the supernatural order. For the
thrill of the bell did not reach to all ears
or hearts, deaf Missus Perry heard it in her lonely
cottage garden high above the misty sea. But then in
a farm on the other or western side of Lantracant,
a little child scarcely three years old, was the only
one out of a household of ten people who heard anything.

(39:43):
He called out, in stammering baby Welsh, something that sounded
like clkai valre, clkai valre, the great bells, the great bells,
And his mother wondered what he was talking about. Of
the crews of half a dozen trawlers that were swinging
from side to side in the mist, not more than
four men had any tale to tell. And so it

(40:05):
was that for an hour or two, the man who
had heard nothing suspected his neighbor, who had heard marvels,
of lying. And it was some time before the mass
of evidence, coming from all manner of diverse and remote quarters,
convinced the people that there was a true story. Here.
A might suspect b his neighbor of making up a tale.
But when c from some place on the hills five

(40:26):
miles away, and d the fishermen on the waters each
had a like report, then it was clear that something
had happened. And even then, as they told me, the
signs to be seen upon the people were stranger than
the tales told by them and among them. It has
struck me that many people, in reading some of the
phrases that I have reported, will dismiss them with laughter

(40:46):
as very poor and fantastic inventions. Fishermen, they will say,
do not speak of a song like heaven, or of
a glory about it. And I dare say this would
be a just enough criticism if I were reporting English fishermen.
But odd though it may be, Wales has not yet
lost the last shreds of the grand manner. And let
it be remembered also that in most cases such phrases

(41:09):
are translated from another language, that is, from the Welsh.
So the come trailing, let us say fragments of the
cloud of glory in their common speech. And so on
this Saturday they began to display, uneasily enough, in many cases,
their consciousness that the things that were reported were of
their ancient right and former custom. The comparison is not

(41:30):
quite fair, But conceive hardies, old Durbeyfield suddenly waking up
from long slumber to find himself in a noble thirteenth
century hall waited on by kneeling pages, smiled on by
sweet ladies and silken quoteties. So by evening time there
had come to the old people the recollection of stories
that their fathers had told them as they sat round

(41:51):
the hearth of winter nights fifty sixty seventy years ago.
Stories of the wonderful Belle of Tilo Sant that had
sailed across the glassy seas from Syon, that was called
a portion of paradise, and the sound of its ringing
was like the perpetual choir of the angels. Such things
were remembered by the old and told to the young
that evening in the streets of the town, and in

(42:12):
the deep lanes that climbed far hills, the sun went
down to the mountain red with fire, like a burnt offering.
The sky turned violet, the sea was purple, as one
told another of the wonder that had returned to the
land after long ages. End of chapter four, Chapter five

(42:37):
of The Great Return by Arthur Makin. This LibriVox recording
is in the public domain. Read by Ben Tucker, Chapter five,
the Rose of Fire. It was during the next nine
days counting from that Saturday early in June, the first
Saturday in June. As I believe that Luntressant in all
the regions about became possessed either by an extraordinary set

(42:59):
of halloos or by a visitation of great marvels, this
is not a place to strike the balance between the
two possibilities. The evidence is no doubt readily available. The
matter is open to systematic investigation. But this may be said.
The ordinary man, in the ordinary passages of his life, accepts,

(43:19):
in the may in the evidence of his senses, and
is entirely right in doing so. He says that he
sees a cow, that he sees a stone wall, and
that the cow and the stone wall are there. This
is very well for all the practical purposes of life.
But I believe that the metaphysicians are by no means
so easily satisfied as to the reality of the stone

(43:40):
wall and the cow. Perhaps they might allow that both
objects are there in the sense that one's reflection is
in a glass. There is an actuality, But is there
a reality external to one's self? In any event, it
is solidly agreed that supposing a real existence, this much
is certain. It is not in the least like our

(44:01):
conception of it. The ant and the microscope will quickly
convince us that we do not see things as they
really are, even supposing that we see them at all.
If we could see the real cow, she would appear
utterly incredible. As incredible as the things I am to
relate now, there is nothing that I know much more
unconvincing than the stories of the red light on the sea.

(44:23):
Several sailors, men on small coasting ships, who were working
up or down the channel on that Saturday night, spoke
of seeing the red light, and it must be said
that there is a very tolerable agreement in their tales.
I'll make the time as between midnight of the Saturday
and one o'clock on the Sunday morning. Two of those
sailormen are precise as to the time of the apparition.

(44:45):
They fix it by elaborate calculations of their own as
occurring at twelve twenty a m. And the story a
red light, a burning spark seen far away in the darkness,
taken at the first moment of seeing for a signal,
probably an enemy signal. Then it approached at a tremendous speed,
and one man said he took it to be the

(45:06):
port light of some new kind of navy motor boat,
which was developing a rate hitherto unheard of a hundred
or one hundred and fifty knots an hour. And then
in the third instant of sight it was clear that
this was no earthly speed. At first a red spark
in the farthest distance, then a rushing lamp, and then,
as if in an incredible point of time, it swelled

(45:28):
into a vast rose of fire that filled all the
sea and all the sky, and hid the stars and
possessed the land. I thought the end of the world
had come, one of the sailors said. And then an
instant more and it was gone from them. And four
of them say that there was a red spark on
chapel head, where the old gray chapel of Saint Telo

(45:50):
stands high above the water, in a cleft of the
limestone rocks. And thus the sailors and thus their tails
are incredible. But they are not incredible. I believe that
men of the highest eminence in physical evidence have testified
to the occurrence of phenomena every wit as marvelous to things,
as absolutely opposed to all natural order as we conceive it.

(46:13):
And it may be said that nobody minds them. That
sort of thing has always been happening, as my friend
remarked to me. But the men, whether or no the
fire had ever been without them, there was no doubt
that it was now within them, for it burned in
their eyes. They were purged, as if they had passed
through the furnace of the sages, governed with wisdom that

(46:34):
the alchemists know. They spoke without much difficulty of what
they had seen, or had seemed to see with their eyes,
but hardly at all of what their hearts had known,
when for a moment the glory of the fiery rose
had been about them. For some weeks afterwards, they were still,
as it were, amazed, almost, I would say incredulous. If
there had been nothing more than the splendid and fiery

(46:56):
appearance showing and vanishing. I do believe that they themselves
would have discredited their own senses and denied the truth
of their own tales. And one does not dare to
say whether they would not have been right. Men like
Sir William Crooks and Sir Oliver Lodge are certainly to
be heard with respect, and they bear witness to all
manner of apparent eversions of laws which we or most

(47:18):
of us consider far more deeply founded than the ancient hills.
They may be justified, but in our hearts we doubt
we cannot wholly believe in inner sincerity that the solid
table did rise without mechanical reason or cause into the air,
and so defy that which we name the law of gravitation.
I know what may be said on the other side.

(47:40):
I know that there is no true question of law
in the case that the law of gravitation really means
just this, that I have never seen a table rising
without mechanical aid, or an apple detached from the bough
soaring to the skies instead of falling to the ground.
The so called law is just the sum of common observation,
and nothing more. Yet, I say, in our hearts we

(48:02):
do not believe that the tables rise, much less do
we believe in the rows of fire that for a
moment swallowed up the skies and seas and shores of
the Welsh coast last June, and the men who saw
it would have invented fairy tales to account for it.
I say again, if it had not been for that
which was within them, they said, all of them, And
it was certain now that they spoke the truth, that

(48:24):
in the moment of the vision, every pain and ache
and malady in their bodies had passed away. One man
had been vilely drunk on venomous spirit procured at Jobson's
hole down by the Cardiff Docks. He was horribly ill.
He had crawled up from his bunk for a little
fresh air, and in an instant his horrors and his
deadly nausea had left him. Another man was almost desperate

(48:46):
with the raging, hammering pain of an abscess on a tooth.
He says that when the red flame came near, he
felt as if a dull, heavy blow had fallen on
his jaw, and then the pain was quite gone. He
could scarcely believe that there had been any pain there.
And they all bear witness to an extraordinary exaltation of
the senses. It is indescribable this, for they cannot describe it.

(49:08):
They are amazed. Again. They do not, in the least
profess to know what happened. But there is no more
possibility of shaking their evidence than there is a possibility
of shaking the evidence of a man who says that
water is wet and fire hot. I've felt a bit
queer afterwards, said one of them. And I studied myself
by the mast, and I can't tell how I felt

(49:28):
as I touched it. I didn't know that touching a
thing like a mast could be better than a big
drink when you are thirsty, or a soft pillow when
you're sleepy. I heard other instances of this state of things,
as I must vaguely call it, since I do not
know what else to call it. But I suppose we
can all agree that to the man in average health,

(49:49):
the average impact of the external world on his senses
is a matter of indifference. The average impact a harsh scream,
the bursting of a motor tire, any violent assault on
the oral nerves will annoy him, and he may say damn. Then,
on the other hand, the man who is not fit
will easily be annoyed and irritated by some one pushing
past him in a crowd, by the ringing of a bell,

(50:09):
by the sharp closing of a book. But so far
as I could judge from the talk of these sailors,
the average impact of the external world had become to
them a fountain of pleasure. Their nerves were on edge,
but an edge to receive exquisite, sensuous impressions. The touch
of the rough mast, for example, that was a joy
far greater than as the joy of fine silk to

(50:31):
some luxurious skins. They drank water and stared as if
they had been finn gourmet tasting an amazing wine. The
creek and whine of their ship on its slow way
were as exquisite as the rhythm and song of a
bach fugue to an amateur of music. And then within
these rough fellows have their quarrels and stripes, and variances
and envyings like the rest of us. But that was

(50:53):
all over. Between them that had seen the rosy light.
Old enemies shook hands heartily and roared with laughters. They
confessed one to another what fools they had been. I
can't exactly say how it has happened, or what has
happened at all, said one. But if you have all
the world in the glory of it, how can you
fight for fivepence? The Church of Lantracant is a typical

(51:14):
example of a Welsh parish church before the evil and
horrible period of restoration. This lower world is a palace
of lies, and of all foolish lies, there is none
more insane than a certain vague fable about the medieval freemasons,
a fable which somehow imposed itself upon the cold intellect
of Hallam the historian. The story is in brief that

(51:35):
throughout the Gothic period, at any rate, the art and
craft of church building were executed by wandering guilds of freemasons,
possessed of various secrets of building and adornment, which they
employed wherever they went. If this nonsense were true, the
Gothic of Cologne would be as the Gothic of Colne,
and the Gothic of arwis like the Gothic of Abingdon.
It is so grotesquely untrue that almost every county, let

(51:57):
alone every country, has a distinctive style in Gothic architecture.
Arvon is in the West of Wales. Its churches have
marks and features which distinguished them from the churches in
the East of Wales. The Lautrecint church has that primitive
division between nave and chancel, which only very foolish people
declined to recognize as equivalent to the Oriental iconostasis. And

(52:19):
as the origin of the western rude screen. A solid
wall divided the church into two portions. In the center
was a narrow opening with a round arch, through which
those who sat toward the middle of the church could
see the small red carpeted altar and the three roughly
shaped lancet windows above it. The reading pew was on
the outer side of this wall of partition, and here

(52:39):
the rector did his service, the choir being grouped in
seats about him. On the inner side were the pews
of certain privileged houses of the town and district. On
the Sunday morning, the people were all in their accustomed places,
not without a certain exultation in their eyes, not without
a certain expectation of they knew not what. The bells
stopped ringing. The rector, in his old fashioned ample surplice,

(53:02):
entered the reading desk and gave out the hymn My God,
and is Thy Table spread, And as the singing began,
all the people who were in the pews within the
wall came out of them and streamed through the archway
into the nave. They took what places they could find
up and down the church, and the rest of the
congregation looked at them in amazement. Nobody knew what had happened.

(53:24):
Those whose seats were next to the aisle tried to
peer into the chancel to see what had happened or
what was going on there. But somehow the light flamed
so brightly from the windows above the altar, those being
the only windows in the chancel. One small lancet in
the south wall, excepted that no one could see anything
at all. It was as if a veil of gold
adorned with jewels was hanging there. One man said, And

(53:47):
indeed there are a few odds and scraps of old
painted glass left in the eastern lancets. But there were
few in the church who did not hear now and
again voices speaking beyond the veil. End of chapter five,
chapter six of The Great Return by Arthur mockin this

(54:11):
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Ben Tucker.
Chapter six Olwen's Dream. The well to do and dignified
personages who left their pews in the chancel of Lantycant
Church and came hurrying into the nave could give no
explanation of what they had done. They felt. They said
that they had to go and to go quickly. They

(54:34):
were driven out, as it were, by a secret, irresistible command.
But all who were present in the church that morning
were amazed, though all exalted in their hearts, for they,
like the sailors who saw the rows of fire on
the waters, were filled with a joy that was literally ineffable,
since they could not utter it or interpret it to themselves.

(54:54):
And they, too, like the sailors, were transmuted, or the
world was transmuted for them. They experienced what the doctors
call a sense of bien etre, but a bien ehra
raised to the highest power. Old men felt young again.
Eyes that had been growing dim now saw clearly, and
saw a world that was like paradise, the same world,

(55:14):
it is true, but a world rectified in glowing, as
if an inner flame shone in all things and behind
all things. And the difficulty in recording this state is
this that it is so rare an experience that no
set language to express it is in existence. A shadow
of its raptures and ecstasies is found in the highest poetry.

(55:36):
There are phrases in ancient books telling of the Celtic
saints that dimly hint at it. Some of the old
Italian masters of painting had known it, for the light
of it shines in their skies, and about the battlements
of their cities that are founded on magic hills. But
these are but broken hints. It is not poetic to
go to Apothecary's hall for similes. But for many years

(55:59):
I kept to buy me an article from the Lancet
or the British Medical Journal, I forget, which in which
a doctor gave an account of certain experiments he had
conducted with a drug called the mescal button or anhelonium lavini.
He said that while under the influence of the drug,
he had to but shut his eyes, and immediately before
him there would rise incredible Gothic cathedrals of such majesty

(56:22):
and splendor and glory that no heart had ever conceived.
They seemed to surge from the depths to the very
heights of heaven. Their spires swayed amongst the clouds and
the stars. They were fretted with admirable imagery, And as
he gazed, he would presently become aware that all the
stones were living stones, that they were quickening and palpitating,

(56:43):
and then that they were glowing. Jewels, say emeralds, sapphires, rubies, opals,
but of hughes that the mortal eye had never seen.
That description gives, I think some faint notion of the
nature of the transmuted world into which these people by
the sea had entered. The world quickened and glorified, and
full of pleasures, Joy and wonder were on all faces.

(57:05):
But the deepest joy and the greatest wonder were on
the face of the rector. For he had heard through
the veil the Greek word for holly three times repeated,
And he who had once been a horrified assistant at
high mass and a foreign church, recognized the perfume of
incense that filled the place from end to end. It
was on that Sunday night that Olwen Phillips of Crusven

(57:27):
dreamed her wonderful dream. She was a girl of sixteen,
the daughter of small farming people, and for many months
she had been doomed to certain death consumption which flourishes,
and that damp, warm climate had laid hold of her.
Not only her lungs, but her whole system was a
mass of tuberculosis. As is common enough, she had enjoyed

(57:47):
many fallacious, brief recoveries in the early stages of the disease,
but all hope had long been over, and now for
the last few weeks she had seemed to rush vehemently
to death. The doctor had come on the Saturday morning,
bringing with him a colleague. They had both agreed that
the girl's case was in its last stages. She could
not possibly last more than a day or two, said

(58:09):
the local doctor to her mother. He came again on
the Sunday morning and found his patient perceptibly worse, and
soon afterwards she sank into a heavy sleep, and her
mother thought that she would never wake from it. The
girl slept in an inner room, communicating with the room
occupied by her father and mother. The door between was
kept open so that Missus Phillips could hear her daughter

(58:30):
if she called to her in the night, and Olwin
called to her mother that night, just as the dawn
was breaking. It was no faint summons from a dying
bed that came to the mother's ears, but a loud
cry that rang through the house, a cry of great gladness.
Missus Phillips started up from sleep in wild amazement, wondering
what could have happened. And then she saw Olwen, who

(58:51):
had not been able to rise from her bed for
many weeks past. Standing in the doorway in the faint
light of the growing day, the girl called to her mother,
mam ma'm it is all over. I am quite well again.
Missus Phillips roused her husband, and they sat up in bed, staring,
not knowing on earth, as they said afterwards, what had
been done with the world. Here was their poor girl,

(59:12):
wasted to a shadow, lying on her death bed, and
the life sighing from her with every breath, and her
voice when she last uttered, it so weak that one
had to put one's ear to her mouth. And here
in a few hours she stood up before them, and
even in that faint light, they could see that she
was changed, almost beyond knowing. Indeed, missus Phillips said that

(59:32):
for a moment or two she fancied that the Germans
must have come and killed them in their sleep, and
so they were all dead together. But Olwen called out again,
So the mother lit a candle and got up and
went tottering across the room, and there was Olwe, all
gay and plump again, smiling with shining eyes. Her mother
led her into her own room and set down the candle.
There and felt her daughter's flesh, and burst into prayers

(59:54):
and tears of wonder and delight and thanksgivings, and held
the girl again to be sure that she was not deceived.
And then Olwen told her dream, though she thought it
was not a dream, she said, she woke up in
the deep darkness, and she knew the life was fast
going from her. She could not move so much as
a finger. She tried to cry out, but no sound

(01:00:15):
came from her lips. She felt that in another instant
the whole world would fall from her. Her heart was
full of agony, and as the last breath was passing
her lips, she heard a very faint, sweet sound, like
the tinkling of a silver bell. It came from far away,
from over by te Nuvid. She forgot her agony and listened,
and even then, she says, she felt the swirl of

(01:00:37):
the world as it came back to her. And the
sound of the bell swelled and grew louder, and it
thrilled all through her body, and the life was in it.
And as the bell rang and trembled in her ears,
a faint light touched the wall of her room and
reddened till the whole room was full of rosy fire.
And then she saw standing before her bed three men
in blood colored robes with shining faces, and one man

(01:00:59):
held a golden bell in his hand, and the second
man held up something shaped like the top of a table.
It was like a great jewel, and it was of
blue color, and there were rivers of silver and of
gold running through it and flowing as quick streams flow.
There were pools in it, as if violets had been
poured out into water. And then it was green as
the sea near the shore. And then it was the

(01:01:20):
sky at night, with all the stars shining. And then
the sun and the moon came down and washed in it.
And the third man held up high above this a
cup that was like a rose on fire. There was
a great burning in it, and a drop of blood
in it, and a red cloud above it. And I
saw a great secret, and I heard a voice that
sang nine times glory and praised to the conqueror of death,

(01:01:43):
to the fountain of life immortal. Then the red light
went from the wall, and it was all darkness, and
the bell rang faint again by capel tillou. And then
I got up and called to you The doctor came
on the Monday morning with a death certificate in his
pocket book, and Owen ran out to meet him. I
have quoted his phrase in the first chapter of this record,

(01:02:03):
a kind of resurrection of the body. He made a
most careful examination of the girl. He had stated that
he found that every trace of disease had disappeared. He
left on the Sunday morning, a patient entering into the
coma that precedes death, a body condemned utterly and ready
for the grave. He met at the garden gate on
the Monday morning, a young woman in whom life sprang

(01:02:23):
up like a fountain, and whose body life laughed and
rejoiced as if it had been a river flowing from
an unending well. Now this is the place to ask
one of those questions. There are many such which cannot
be answered. The question is as to the continuance of tradition,
more especially as to the continuance of tradition among the

(01:02:45):
Welsh Celts of to day. On the one hand, such
waves and storms have gone over them. The wave of
the Heathen Saxons went over them, then the wave of
Latin medievalism, then the waters of Anglicanism. Last of all,
the flood of their queer Calvinistic methodism, half Puritan, half Pagan.
It may well be asked whether any memory can possibly

(01:03:06):
have survived such a series of deluges. I have said
that the old people of Lantrascant had their tales of
the Belle of Tilo Sant, but these were but vague
and broken recollections. And then there is the name by
which the strangers who were seen in the market place
were known. That is more precise. Students of the Grail

(01:03:26):
legend know that the keeper of the grail in the
romances is the king Fisherman or the rich Fisherman. Students
of Celtic hageology know that it was prophesied before the
birth of Dewi or David, that he should be a
man of aquatic life. That another legend tells how a
little child destined to be a saint was discovered on
a stone in the river, how through his childhood of

(01:03:49):
fish for his nourishment was found on that stone every day,
while another saint, elar If I remember, was expressly known
as the Fisherman. But as the memory of all this
persisted in the church going and chapel going people of Wales,
at the present day, it is difficult to say there
is the affair of the healing Cup of nant Eos,
or Tregaron healing Cup, as it is also called. It

(01:04:11):
is only a few years ago since it was shown
to a wandering harper, who treated it lightly, and then
spent a wretched night, as he said, and came back penitently,
and was left alone with the sacred vessel to pray
over it till his mind was at rest. That was
in eighteen eighty seven. Then, for my part, I only
know modern whales on the surface, I am sorry to say,

(01:04:32):
I remember three or four years ago speaking to my
temporary landlord of certain relics of Saint Telo, which are
supposed to be in the keeping of a particular family
in that country. The landlord is a very jovial, merry fellow,
and I observed with some astonishment that his ordinary easy
manner was completely altered, as he said gravely, that will
be over there up by the mountain, pointing vaguely to

(01:04:54):
the north, and he changed the subject as a freemason
changes the subject. There the matter lies, and its appositeness
to the story of Lantresant as this that the dream
of Olwen Phillips was in fact the vision of the
Holy Grail end of chapter six, Chapter seven of the

(01:05:18):
Great Return by Arthur Makin. This LibriVox recording is in
the public domain, read by Bin Tucker. Chapter seven, the
mass of the San Grail feryodver mechizidek veriver mechisidec shouted
the old Calvinistic Methodist deacon with the gray beard priesthood
of Melchizedek, Priesthood of Melchizedek, and he went on the

(01:05:42):
bell that is like iglus ir angel im vordvus. The
joy of the angels in Paradise is returned. The altar
that is of a color that no men can discern
is returned. The cup that came from Scion is returned,
The ancient offering is restored. The three saints have come
back to the Church of the Treysant. The three Holy

(01:06:04):
Fishermen are amongst us, and their net is full gogoniant,
gogonyeant glory, glory. Then another Methodist began to recite in
Welsh averse from Wesley's hymn. God still respects thy sacrifice,
its savor, Sweet doth always please. The offering smokes through
earth and skies, diffusing life and joy and peace. To

(01:06:27):
these thy lower courts, it comes and fills them with
divine perfumes. The whole church was full, as the old
books tell of the odor of the Rarest's spiceries. There
were lights shining within the sanctuary through the narrow archway.
This was the beginning of the end of what befell
at Lantrassant. For it was the Sunday after that night

(01:06:48):
on which Olwen Phillips had been restored from death to life.
There was not a single chapel of the dissenters open
in the town that day. The Methodists, with their minister
and their deacons in all the non Conformists, had returned
on this Sunday to the old Hive. One would have
said a church of the Middle Ages, a church in Ireland.
To day, Every seat save those in the chancel was full,

(01:07:11):
All the isles were full, the church yard was full,
every one on his knees, and the old rector kneeling
before the door into the holy place. Yet they can
say but very little of what was done beyond the veil.
There was no attempt to perform the usual service. When
the bells had stopped. The old deacon raised his cry,
and priests and people fell down on their knees as

(01:07:32):
they thought they heard a choir within, singing Alleluya, Alleluya, alleluyah.
And as the bells in the tower ceased ringing, there
sounded the thrill of the bell from Sion, and the
golden veil of sunlight fell across the door into the altar,
and the heavenly voices began their melodies. A voice like
a trumpet cried from within the brightness Agius, Agius, Agius,

(01:07:55):
and the people, as if an age old memory stirred
in them, replied, Agius ir tod agios ir mob agios
ir espurd glan, Saint Saint Sant Drindod Saint vinde gid
Sanctus arglud diu sabot Dominus Deus. There was a voice

(01:08:17):
that cried and sang from within the altar. Most of
the people had heard some faint echo of it in
the chapels, a voice rising and falling and soaring in
awful modulations that rang like the trumpet of the last Angel.
The people beat upon their breasts. The tears were like
rain of the mountains on their cheeks. Those that were able,
fell down flat on their faces before the glory of
the veil. They said afterwards that men of the hills

(01:08:40):
twenty miles away heard that cry and that singing roaring
upon them on the wind, and they fell down on
their faces and cried, the offering is accomplished. Knowing nothing
of what they said, there were a few who saw
three come out of the door of the sanctuary and
stand for a moment on the pace before the door.
These three were in eyed vesture, red as blood. One

(01:09:02):
stood before too, looking to the west, and he rang
the bell. And they say that all the birds of
the wood, and all the waters of the sea, and
all the leaves of the trees, and all the winds
of the high rocks uttered their voices with the ringing
of the bell. And the second and the third they
turned their faces one to another. The second held up
the lost altar that they once called Sephiras, which was

(01:09:24):
like the changing of the sea and of the sky,
and like the a mixture of gold and silver. And
the third heaved up high over the altar a cup
that was red with burning and the blood of the offering.
And the old rector cried aloud. Then before the entrance
bind the good eer ofrin in us Ousud blessed be
the offering unto the age of ages. And then the

(01:09:48):
mass of the Sangraal was ended, and then began the
passing out of that land of the holy persons and
holy things that had returned to it after the long years.
It seemed, indeed to many that the thrilling sound of
the bell was in their ears for days, even for
weeks after that Sunday morning. But thenceforth neither bell, nor

(01:10:08):
altar nor cup was seen by anyone, not openly, that is,
but only in dreams by day and by night. Nor
did the people see strangers again in the market of Latressant,
nor in the lonely places where certain persons oppressed by
great affliction and sorrow had once or twice encountered them.
But that time of visitation will never be forgotten by

(01:10:29):
the people. Many things happened in the nine days that
have not been set down in this record or legend.
Some of them were trifling matters, though strange enough in
other times. Thus, a man in the town who had
a fierce dog that was always kept chained up, found
one day that the beast had become mild and gentle,
and this is otter. Edward Davies of Lanavan, a farmer

(01:10:53):
was roused from sleep one night by a queer yelping
and barking in his yard. He looked out of the
window and saw his sheep dog playing with the big fox.
They were chasing each other by turns, rolling over and
over one another, cutting such capers as I did never
see the like, as the astonished farmer put it, and
some of the people said that during this season of
wonder the corn shot up, and the grass thickened, and

(01:11:15):
the fruit was multiplied on the trees in a very
marvelous manner. More important, it seemed, was the case of
Williams the Grocer, though this may have been a purely
natural deliverance. Mister Williams was to marry his daughter Mary
to a smart young fellow from Carmarthen, and he was
in great distress over it. Not over the marriage itself,
but because things had been going very badly with him

(01:11:35):
for some time, and he could not see his way
to giving anything like the wedding entertainment that would be
expected of him. The wedding was to be on the
Saturday that was the day on which the lawyer Lewis
Protheroe and the farmer Philip James were reconciled. And this
John Williams, without money or credit, could not think how
shame would not be on him for the meagerness and

(01:11:55):
poverty of the wedding feast. And then on the Tuesday
came a letter from his brother, David Williams Australia, from
whom he had not heard for fifteen years. And David,
it seemed, had been making a great deal of money
and was a bachelor. And here was with his letter
a paper good for a thousand pounds. You may as
well enjoy it now as wait till I'm dead. This

(01:12:16):
was enough, indeed, one might say. But hardly an hour
after the letter had come, the lady from the Big House,
plas Mare, drove up in all her grandeur, and went
into the shop and said, mister Williams, your daughter Mary
has always been a very good girl, and my husband
and I feel that we must give her some little
thing on her wedding, and we hope she'll be very happy.
It was a gold watch worth fifteen pounds. And after

(01:12:40):
Lady Watson advances the old doctor with a dozen of
port forty years upon it, and a long sermon on
how to decant it. And the old rector's old wife
brings to the beautiful dark girl two yards of creamy
lace like an enchantment for her wedding veil, and tells
Mary how she wore it for her own wedding fifty
years ago. And the squire Sir Watson, as if his
wife had not been already with a fine gift, calls

(01:13:02):
from his horse and brings out Williams and barks like
a dog at him, going to have a weddin, Eh, Williams,
can't have a weddin without champagne. You know, wouldn't be legal,
don't you know? So look out for a couple of cases.
So Williams tells the story of the gifts, And certainly
there was never so famous a wedding in lantrescant before. All. This,
of course, may have been altogether in the natural order.

(01:13:23):
The glow, as they call it, seems more difficult to explain,
for they say that all through the nine days, and
indeed after the time had ended, there never was a
man weary or sick at heart in Lantrasoant or in
the country round it. For if a man felt that
his work of the body or the mind was going
to be too much for his strength, then there would
come to him of a sudden, a warm glow and

(01:13:45):
a thrilling all over him, and he felt as strong
as a giant, and happier than he had ever been
in his life before. So that Lawyer and Hedger each
rejoiced in the task that was before him as if
it were sport and play. And much more wonderful than
this or any other wonders was forgiveness with love to
follow it. There were meetings of old enemies in the
market place and in the street that made the people

(01:14:07):
lift up their hands and declare that it was as
if one walked the miraculous streets of Scion. But as
to the phenomena, the occurrences for which an ordinary talk
we should reserve the word miraculous, well, what do we know?
The question that I have already stated comes up again
as to the possible survival of old tradition in a
kind of dormant or torpid semi conscious state. In other words,

(01:14:31):
did the people see and hear what they expected to
see and hear? This point, or one similar to it
occurred In a debate between Andrew Laying and Anatole France
as to the visions of Joan of Arc, Monsieur France
stated that when Joan saw Saint Michael, she saw the
traditional archangel of the religious art of her day. But
to the best of my belief, Andrew lang proved that

(01:14:53):
the visionary figure Joan described was not in the least
like the fifteenth century conception of Saint Michael. So in
the case Latressant, I have stated that there was a
sort of tradition about the Holy Belle of Tilo Sant.
And it is of course barely possible that some vague
notion of the graal Cup may have reached even Welsh
country folks through Tennyson's idols. But so far I see

(01:15:15):
no reason to suppose that these people had ever heard
of the portable altar called Sepherus in William of Malmesbury,
or of its changing colors that no man could discern.
And then there are the other questions of the distinction
between hallucination and vision, of the average duration of one
and the other, and of the possibility of collective hallucination

(01:15:38):
if a number of people all see or think they
see the same appearances. Can this be merely hallucination? I
believe there is a leading case on the matter, which
concerns a number of people seeing the same appearance on
a church wall in Ireland. But there is, of course
this difficulty. That one may be hallucinated and communicate his
impression to the other's telepathicca But at the last what

(01:16:03):
do we know? End of chapter seven End of The
Great Return by Arthur Mockin