Harp's have voices

Once upon a time there lived a beautiful girl called Llio who could play the harp beautifully. It was said that she could make the harp speak, that when she played you heard the true voice of the harp. And so she was much in demand as a harper in her own village and beyond. She would play at funerals and weddings, at dances and at fairs; she played in the church on Sundays and she played at christenings and would rock the baby to sleep with the gentleness of her playing. She was a beautiful girl, was Llio ... tall and white-skinned, with thick curls of shining black hair and deep, solemn blue eyes and a mouth that looked as though a rosebud was just beginning to open. She gave her life to her harp-playing, and she gave it all her love and her energy and spirit. And the harp would speak, and its tone was seductive and bewitching, and it held Llio in its thrall.

One day, when Llio was almost twenty, she was walking to the village with her harp on her back, ready to play at a wedding for two of the young folk she knew well. Oh, what a wedding it was to be! And Llio was to provide the music for the dancing and romancing. The day was clear and bright, and Llio walked with a small skip in her step. She was joined as she walked by a young man called Gerwyn. 'I love to hear you playing,' said Gerwyn kindly. 'Thank you,' said Llio. "I love to play.' 'What else do you do?' he asked. 'Do you sew or cook, or create furniture with your hands, or mind the sheep or milk the cows?' 'None of those things,' said Llio. 'I just play the harp.' 'Do you learn about other people and places, about the other lands across the sea?' 'No,' said Llio. 'I just play my harp.' 'What about the cries of children and the joys of motherhood, do you know about these? Or the joys of learning old stories, and who the bards are?' persisted Gerwyn. 'No,' said Llio, 'I just play the harp.' 'Then how can you play,' said Gerwyn, 'when you have no knowledge of the world?' 'I don't need knowledge or experiences of any kind,' said Llio. 'The harp speaks in its own voice.' 'Then you are slave, not master,' said Gerwyn, and disappeared. Llio stood looking after him for a long time. But he had just vanished into thin air as it were -- gone. There was just Llio and her harp. So, she resumed her journey.

Well, she played for that wedding as she had never played before, letting the harp have its head, as it were, playing in its own voice and making magic of the sounds. They laughed and cried and danced and hugged, the people who heard it, and Llio sat aside by herself, the music pouring from her fingers. Yet she realised that what Gerwyn said was true. This was the harp's voice, not her own. And she realised that she knew little of love, little of sadness and joy, little of what it was to be real. The harp sang, not she; perhaps one day she would make it sing because she had claimed her own voice and her own song. On her way home, Gerwyn appeared to her again. 'Have you thought about what I said?' 'Oh, yes,' said Llio. 'Then marry me,' said Gerwyn. 'Not until I find my own voice,' said Llio.

So she went home, and from that day she spent time listening to her mother and her sisters and her brothers, to her father and the neighbours; to the people in her village and the children. She didn't play the harp quite so much. Then came a dreadful day when sickness struck the village, and Llio spent her days nursing her father, who recovered, and her mother, who didn't. She helped the others bury their dead. And she brought out her harp and played of her sadness. And she realised that at last, she was telling the harp what to do ... the sounds to make, the expression to create. She told of sadness and love, of self-scarifice and of dying in peace, of loneliness and longing. And as she walked home, Gerwyn appeared and asked her again to marry him. 'Now I can do so,' said Llio, 'For I have found my voice and the harp plays the songs in my heart.' 'Then,' said Gerwyn, his eyes shining, 'Let us give it and you new songs to sing. Of gladness. Of children. Of learning and growing.' And he kissed her. And Llio played the kiss in notes she chose, and she played the love and the safety she felt with Gerwyn. She played the traditional songs of her country, but now the harp spoke with her voice. And when at last, white-haired and old, Llio was laid to rest, her harp was eventually placed in her grave with her. 'It was her voice,' they said. 'It cannot be separated from her.'

And in death as in life, the harp hung mute, because it had no longer any voice of its own. It had the voice of Llio the Harpist, and the depths of a lifetime accounted for in the trembling of its strings. 'It spoke for her,' said the villagers. 'It was her voice.' And, at the end, authentically, it was her voice ... the voice now stilled but living on in the person of her sons. And in the llais (voice) there was awen (inspiration), and in both was all that she was and could be. Gerwyn kept her harp for a while, but then he decided to bury it with her, for it had been part of her life for so long ... And so he carefully placed it on her coffin, and as he did so, a cacophany of sound enveloped him. It was Llio, speaking through her harp. Bells and trumpets sounded from the litle modest instrument ... and above all, comfort and blessing. The harp would always sing from the heart of the harpist ... from the spirit and the soul of the one who played. Gerwyn stood, watching the harp as it was covered with the soil. And in his ears that were still full of love and grief, he stood, watching the burial, and hearing in his mind's ear the voice of the woman he had loved. It was her voice, he murmured. Nothing would change that. It was now and would be eternally her voice, the sacrifice she was making for him. The sacrifice she had always made ... the giving of her own voice for the inspiration of others