Gwilan reflects.

Gwilan got up from her chair and went into the hearth room. The rest of the household were asleep. In the light of her candle she saw the two harps hung against the wall, the three-heifers harp and the gilded Southern harp, the dull music and the false music.

She thought, “I’ll take them down at last and smash them on the hearthstone, crush them till they’re only bits of wood and tangles of wire, like my harp.” But she did not. She could not play them at all any more, her hands were far too stiff. It is silly to smash an instrument you cannot even play.

“There’s no instrument left I can play,” Gwilan thought, and the thought hung in her mind like a long chord, till she knew the notes that made it I thought the harp was myself. But it was not. It was destroyed, I was not. I thought Torm’s wife was myself, but she was not.  He is dead, I am not. I have nothing left at all now but myself. The wind blows from the valley, and there’s a voice on the wind, a bit of a tune. Then the wind falls or changes. The work has to be done, and we did the work. It’s their turn now for that, the children. There’s nothing left for me to do but sing. I could never sing. But you play the instrument you have.”

So she stood by the cold hearth and played the melody of Orioth’s Lament. The people in the household wakened in their beds and heard her singing, all but Torm; but he knew that tune already.

The untuned strings of the harps hung on the wall wakened and answered softly, voice to voice, like eyes that shine among the leaves when the wind is blowing.

—

Thought to ponder: The false self is made up of what we do, what other people say about us, and what we have.

—

Next time: “The Magic Brocade.”

When Torm died, Gwilan looked back over her life with him.

Thirty years, how can you say how long that is, and yet no longer than the saying of it: thirty years. How can you say how heavy the weight of thirty years is, and yet you can hold all of them together in your hand lighter than a bit of ash, briefer than a laugh in the dark.

The thirty years began in pain; they passed in peace, contentment. But they did not end there. They ended where they began.

—

Next time: “You Play the Instrument You Have.”

As the years passed Gwilan’s life succumbed to the unrelenting march of time and change.

Her wrist that had been broken grew a little stiff as the years went on; then the arthritis came into her hands. The work she did in house and farm was not easy work. But then who, looking at a hand, would say it was made to do easy work? You can see from the look of it that it is meant to do difficult things, that it is the noble, willing servant of the heart and mind.

But the best servants get clumsy as the years go on. Gwilan could still play the harp, but not as well as she had played, and she did not much like half measures. So the two harps hung on the wall, though she kept them tuned.

About that time the younger son went wandering off to see what things looked like in the North, and the elder married and brought his bride to Torm. Old Keth was found dead up on the mountain in the spring rain, his dog crouched silent beside him and the sheep nearby.

And the drought came, and the good year, and the poor year, and there was food to eat and to be cooked and clothes to wear and to be washed, poor year or good year.

In the depth of a winter Torm took ill. He went from a cough to a high fever to quietness, and died while Gwilan sat beside him.

—

Question to ponder: How has the unrelenting march of time and change affected your life?

—

Next time: “How Long is Thirty Years?”

With her two new harps Gwilan made all sorts of music.

She played at all festivities and funerals in the neighborhood, and with the musician’s fees she bought good strings; not Uliad’s strings, though. for Uliad was in his grave before her second child was born. If there was a music day nearby she went to it with Torm. She would not play in the competitions, not for fear of losing, but because she was not a harper now, and if they did not know it, she did. So they had her judge the competitions, which she did well and mercilessly.

Often in the early years musicians would stop by on thier travels and stay two or three nights at Torm; with them she would play the Hunts of Orioth, the Dances of Cail, the difficult and learned music of the North, and learn from them the new songs.

Even in winter evenings there was music in the house of Torm; she playing the harp–usually the three-heifers one, sometimes the fretful Southerner–and Torm’s good tenor voice, and the boys singing, first in sweet treble, later on in husky unreliable baritone; and one of the farm’s men was a lively fiddler; and the shepherd Keth, when he was there, played on the pipes, though he could never tune them to anyone else’s note.

“It’s our own music day tonight,” Gwilan would say. Put another log on the fire, Torm, and sing ‘The Green Leaves’ with me, and the boys will take the descant.”

—

Question to Ponder: Have you ever given up on a dream? What was it? Why did you let it go?

—

Next time: “The Unrelenting March of Time and Change”

Her wrist healed, Gwilan receives two new harps. Which one does she play?

Gwilan never spoke of wanting another harp. But about the time her wrist was healed, old Uliad had a traveling musician bring hyer one on loan; when he had an offer to buy it back at its worth, he sent for it back again.

At that time Torm would have it that there was money from selling three good heifers to the landowner of Comin High Farm, and the money should buy a harp, which it did. A year or two later an old friend, a flute player still on his travels and rambles, brought her a harp from the South as a present.

The three-heifersharp was a common intrument, plain and heavy; the Southern harp was delicately carved and gilt, but cranky to tune and thin of voice.

Gwilan could draw sweetness from the one and strength from the other. When she picked up a harp, or spoke to a child it obeyed her.

—

Next time: Music!

Gwilan and Torm began their life together.

What began in pain, in tears, was never free from the fear of pain. The two of them were gentle to each other. Not that they lived together thirty years without some quarrelling. Two rocks sitting side by side would get sick of each other in thirty years, and who knows what they say now and then when no one is listening.

But if people trust each other they can grumble, and a good bit of grumbling takes the fuel from wrath. Their quarrels went up and burnt out like bits of paper, leaving nothing but a feather of ash, a laugh in bed in the dark.

Torm’s land never gave more than enough, and there was no money saved. But it was a good house, and the sunlight was sweet on those high stony fields.

There were two sons, who grew up into cheerful sensible men. One had a taste for roving, and the other was a farmer born; but neither had any gift of music.

—

Question to ponder: As you think back over your life how does it seem to you?

—

Next time:

Her broken wrist healed, Torm asked Gwilan to marry him.

Gwilan brought to the mariage a gold piece, which had been the prize last year at Four Valley’s music day; she had it sewn to her bodice as a brooch, because where on earth could you spend a gold piece. She also had two silver pieces, five coppers, and a good winter cloak. Torm contributed house and household, fields and forests, four tenant farmers even poorer than himself, twenty hens, five cows, and forty sheep.

They married in the old way, by themselves, over the spring where the stream began, and came back and told the household. Torm had never suggested a wedding, with singing and harp-playing, never a word of all that. He was a man you could trust, Torm was.

—

Next time:  “A Good House”

An accident on the way to the yearly music day at Comin had smashed Gwilan’s harp.

It was six months without playing after that, since her arm had broken at the wrist. The wrist healed well enough, but there was no mending the harp; and by then the landowner of Torm had asked her if she would marry him, and she had said yes.

Sometimes she wondered why she had said yes, having never thought much of marriage before, but if she looked steadily into her own mind she saw the reason why. She saw Torm on the road in the sunlight kneeling by the broken harp, his face all blood and dust, and he was weeping. When she looked at that she saw that the time for rambling and roving was over and gone. One day is the day for moving on, and overnight, the next day, there is no more good in moving on, because you have come where you were going to.

Next time: A Musician’s Marriage

Gwilan’s travels to play her harp took her from town to town.

So she was going one day to the yearly music day at Comin, and the landowner of Torm Vale was giving her a lift, a man who so loved music that he had traded a good cow for a bad horse, since the cow would not take him to where he could hear music played. It was he and Gwilan in a rickety cart, and the lean-necked roan stepping out down the steep, sunlit road from Torm.

A bear in the forest by the road, or a bear’s ghost, or the shadow of a hawk; the horse shied half across the road. Torm had been been discussing music deeply with Gwilan, waving his hands to conduct a choir of voices, and the reins went flipping out of those startled hands.

The horse jumped like a cat, and ran. At the sharp curve of the road the cart swung round and smashed against the rocky cutting. A wheel leapt free and rolled, rocking like a top, for a few yards. The roan went plunging and sliding down the road with half the wrecked cart dragging behind, and was gone, and the road lay silent in the sunlight between the forest trees.

Torm had been thrown from the cart, and lay stunned for a minute or two.

Gwilan had clutched the harp to her when the horse shied, but had lost hold of it in the crash. The cart had tipped over and dragged on it. It was in its case of leather and embroidered silk, but when, one-handed, she got the case out from under the wheel and opened it, she did not take out a harp, but a piece of wood, and another piece, and a tangle of strings, and a sliver of ivory, and a twisted shell of silver chased with lines and leaves and eyes, held by a silver nail to a fragment of the frame.

—

Thought to Ponder: Looking back over your life, can you identify an event that was a turning point for you? How did you respond to the changes the event brought into your life?

—

Next time: “The Time for Rambling and Roving Was Over”

Gwilan’s harp was her music, her joy, her life.

She was young; she traveled from town to town; she played “A Fine Long Life” at weddings, and “The Green Leaves” at festivals. There were funerals, with the burial feast, the singing of elegies, and Gwilan to play the Lament of Orioth, the music that crashes and cries out like the sea and the seabirds, bringing relief and a burst of tears to the grief-dried heart.

There were music days, with a rivalry of harpers and a shrilling of fiddlers and a mighty outshouting of tenors. She went from town to town in sun and rain, the harp on her back or in her hands.

—

Next: “A Tangle of Strings and a Sliver of Ivory”

Gwilan was a harpist in demand.

She was young; her hands were iron and her touch was silk; she could play all night and the next day too. She traveled from valley to valley, from town to town, stopping here and staying there and moving on again with other musicians on their wanderings. They walked, or a wagon was sent for them, or they got a lift on a farmer’s cart.

However they went, Gwilan carried her harp in its silk and leather case on her back or in her hands. When she rode she rode with he harp and when she walked she walked with the harp and when she slept, no, she didn’t sleep with the harp, but it was there where she could reach out and touch it. She was not jealous of it, and would change instruments with another harper gladly; it was a great pleasure to her when at last they gave her back her own, saying with sober envy, “I never played so fine an instrument.”

She kept it clean, the mountings polished, and strung it with the harp strings made by old Uliad, which cost as much apiece as a whole set of common harp strings.

In the heat of summer she carried it in the shade of her body, in the bitter winder it shared her cloak. In a fire lit hall she did not sit with it very near the fire, nor yet too far away, for changes of heat and cold would change the voice of it, and perhaps harm the frame.

She did not look after herself with half the care. Indeed she saw no need to. She knew there were other harpers, and would be other harpers; most not as good, some better. But the harp was the best. There had not been and there would not be a better. Delight and service were due and fitting to it. She was not its owner but its player. It was her music, her joy, her life, the noble instrument.

—

Question to ponder: Is there a possession that is the center of your world?

—

Next time: “From Town to Town”

Gwilan’s harp was a princely and most incredible instrument, and Gwilan a master harpist.

Gwilan played the harp wherever they wanted her. Her singing was voice true but had no sweetness, so when songs and ballads were wanted she accompanied the singers. Weak voices were born up by her playing, fine voice gained a glory from it; the loudest, proudest singers might keep still a verse to hear her play alone.

She played along with the flute and reed flute and tambour, and the music made for the harp to play alone, and the music that sprang up of itself when her fingers touched the strings. At weddings and festivals it was, “Gwilan will be here to play,” and at music day competitions, “When will Gwilan play?”

—

Thought to Ponder: What ability distinguishes you from all others?

—

Next time: “Her Music, Her Joy, Her Life”