The Faerie Bride
The story of Eadric Wild, so named from his bodily activity, and his rollicking talk and deeds, a man of great prowess, Lord of Lydbury North: he when returning late from hunting through wild country, uncertain of this path, till midnight, was accompanied only by one page, and came upon a large building at the edge of the forest, such a one as the English have as drinking-houses, one in each parish, called in English ghildhus, and when he was near it, seeing the light inside, he looked in and saw great dance of numbers of noble ladies. They were most comely to look upon, and finely clad in fair habits of linen only, and were greater and taller than our women. The knight remarked one among all the rest as excelling in form and face, desirable beyond any favourite of a king. They were circling with airy motion and gay gesture, and from their subdued voices singing in solemn harmony a delicate sound came to his ears; but their words he could not understand. At the sight the knight received a wound to the very heart, and ill could bear the fires driven in by Cupid’s bow; the whole of him kindled and blazed up, and from the fever of that fairest of plagues, that golden peril, he drew courage. He had heard tell of the fables of the heathen, the nightly squadrons of devils and the deadly vision of them, of Dictynna and the bands of Dryads and Lares, had learnt of the vengeance of the gods when offended, and how they inflict sudden punishments on those who suddenly catch sight of them, how they will keep themselves strictly apart, and dwell unknown, secretly and remote, how they dislike those who try to surprise and detect their assemblies, to search after them to make them public, with what care they shut themselves from view lest, if seen, they be contemned; those vengeances in the examples of the sufferers he had heard; but as Cupid is rightly painted blind, he forgets it all; thinks it no illusion, sees no avenger, and recklessly stumbles because he has no light. He goes round the building, finds the entrance, rushes in, catches her by whom he has been caught, and is instantly set upon by the rest; for a time he is delayed by a fierce struggle, but at last extricated by the utmost efforts of himself and his page, yet not quite undamaged – hurting feet and legs by all that the nails and teeth of women could inflict. He took her with him and for three days and nights used her as he would, yet could not ring a word from her. She yielded quietly to his will. On the fourth day she spoke to him in these terms: “Hail to you, my dearest! And whole shall you be, and enjoy prosperity in body and affairs, until you reproach me either with the sisters from whom you snatched me, or the place or would or anything thereabouts, from which I come; but from that day you will fall away from happiness, and anticipate your day of doom by your own impatience.” He vowed by every assurance possible to be firm and faithful in his love. So he called together the nobles near and far, and in a great concourse joined her to him solemnly in marriage. At that time William the Bastard, then newly king of England, was on the throne; he, hearing of this prodigy, and desirous to prove it and know plainly if it were true, summoned the pair to come together to London, and with them there came many witnesses and much evidence from those who could not come. A great proof of her fairy nature was the beauty of the woman, the like of which had never been seen or heard of; and amid the amazement of all they were sent home again. It happened later, after the lapse of many years, that Eadric, coming back from hunting about the third hour of the night and not finding her, called her and bade her be summoned, and because she was slow to come said, with an angry look: “Was it your sisters that kept you so long?” The rest of his abuse was addressed to the air, for when her sisters were named she vanished. Bitterly did the youth repent his perverse and disastrous outbreak, and he sought the spot where he had made her captive, but by no tears nor outcries could he regain her. Day and night he kept calling for her, but we all turned to his own confusion, for his life came to an end in that place in unceasing sorrow. He left, however, an heir – his son, borne by her for whose sake he died – Alnoth, a man of great holiness and wisdom, who went somewhat advanced in age fell into a palsy and shaking of the head and limbs, and he, appearing to all physicians incurable, was told by discrete persons that he ought by all means to manage to hasten to the apostles Peter and Paul, and would certainly recover health in the place where their bodies are buried, namely Rome. He replied that he could go nowhere in despite of Saint Ethelbert, king and martyr, whose parishioner he was, before presenting himself to him, and had himself conveyed to Hereford, where on the first night before the altar of that martyr he was restored to his former health and with Thanksgiving presented in perpetual alms to God and the Blessed Virgin and St Ethelbert the King, his manner of Lydbury, which is in the wild country, with all its appurtenances, and it is to this day in the lordship of the Bishop of Hereford, and it is said to yield its Lord’s £30 a year. We have heard of demons that are incubi and succubi, and of the dangers of union with them; but rarely or never do we read in the old stories of heirs or offspring, of them, who ended their days prosperously, as did this Alnoth, who paid over his whole inheritance to Christ in recompense for his cure and passed to the rest of his life as a pilgrim in his service. Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium (Courtier's Trifles), edited and translated by MR James (Oxford, 1914), revised by CNL Brooke and RAB Mynors (Oxford, 1983).
Historical Basis
Eadric Wild was a landholder named in Domesday Book who led a rebellion against the Normans c. 1067-1070, after which he submitted and fought for King William.
Variations & Mutation
According to some versions, Eadric’s surrender and support for the Normans greatly displeased his own people. They imprisoned him along with his wife, Lady Godda, and his fighters in lead mines in a rocky hill in Shropshire called Stiperstones and placed a curse upon them.
Under this malediction — at times of threat to England — Wild Eadric, Lady Godda and the host must ride out and fight the enemy. Then they must return to their underground prison to await further threats. They cannot die until England is returned to how it was before the Norman conquest and all wrongs have been made right.
Other variants of the story connect Eadric Wild with the Wild Hunt.
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