Hot & Steamy!

The beat of Roman’s feet marching in cadence is heard

beating for half a league. Wildlife scurried, flew or fled from

hedge and field as the relentless soldier has poked sword or

spear everywhere questing to fulfill Maximus’ order to

recover his treasure. Houses and homes brutally ransacked;

blood spilled to paint floor and field in the name of Caesar.

The wrath of the Romans was upon the land, far and near to

the great stone circle called Stonehenge. However, no

traces, no hint of the foul hedge witch Cyhiraeth (kuh-HEE-

ryth) or the Serpentine Egg; is in sight.

Cyhiraeth was mad with frustration and furious, ‘a watched

pot never boils’ indeed. She stormed around her small hut

hidden on the edge of the village how can water never boil.

Cyhiraeth had been watching this pot (a caldron in fact) for

one hundred years, never once had it boiled. The water

would become scalding hot, throwing off clouds of steam but

never boiling. Cyhiraeth had felt so smug snatching away the

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Serpentium Egg from under the Centurion’s hooked nose.

Such a pretty thing, it cradled in her arms like a three stone

(forty-two pounds) babe, pearlescent shell with gold and

silver flecks between veins of black onyx across the surface.

Maximus sent two legions to scour the Stonehenge region up

to the Serne looking for the egg. The Romans never found

Cyhiraeth’s hut, inside and out covered in ‘Sod’s Law’ this

spell was of opposites. Whatever the soldiers wanted to see

they saw the opposite when near the old round hut.

Cyhiraeth’s fame spread but not for the good, no one wanted

the Romans’ to know where Cyhiraeth was for their own sake

not hers. A hedge witch now had the Druids treasure; but the

Wrynn Egg of the Princes of Dydvid was no longer in Roman

hands. Little did she realize that the spell itself kept the

water from boiling for that hundred-year period. Poor

Cyhiraeth never realized that casting the spell outside her

hut would have done what she wanted, instead the egg kept

comfortable for the hundred years.

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Cyhiraeth did not take part in the grove gatherings of the

Druids, or coven circles of the local Wicca. Cyhiraeth was a

witch of an odd sort, she began life as a street urchin never

knowing parents and scavenging in a small village, which

she never left. Some traveler from Dyfed named her Gwrach

y Rhibyn, meaning Hag of the Dribble or Hag of the Tattered

Vestments. In the Welsh language a nickname was used and

this is what stuck to Cyhiraeth. The folk tale: “She is often

described as having long black hair, black eyes, and a

swarthy countenance. Sometimes one of her eyes is grey

and the other black. Both are deeply sunken and piercing.

Her back was crooked, her figure was very thin and spare,

and her pigeon-breasted bust was concealed by a somber

scarf. Her trailing robes were black. She was sometimes

seen with long flapping wings that fell heavily at her sides,

and occasionally she went flying low down along

watercourses, or around hoary mansions. Frequently the

flapping of her leathern bat-like wings could be heard

against the windowpanes. (1)”

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As a girl, she began listening under the windows of the three

village witches to learn what she could. Every spell,

incantation and brew she stored in her head, it made her

feel more powerful. She spied on the field trips the witches

took to gather nature’s bounty for their art; herbs, plants

and charms collected to brew and chant over.

Then after ten years of collecting, practicing witches work,

she approached the village three. “Who is your mother?”

They asked. “I do not know who my mother is,” replied

Cyhiraeth. Cyhiraeth abandoned as a toddler on the path

through the village, lived wild and free. The witches of the

village turned her away from their huts without references

they would not teach her. Cyhiraeth had desired friendship,

companionship and even love but all was denied her. Any of

the youth of the village who got close enough to notice

Cyhiraeth were not on the downwind side of her. Well she

did go to the pond once or twice a year, why so fussy.

Bitterness boiled, envy raged and malice moldered in a once

healthy young heart.

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 Pliny the Elder

wrote in ‘Historia

Naturalis xxix’

about his fear of

Druid magic and

use of the eggs.

Cyhiraeth remembered sitting outside the village Inn in the

night and hearing tales of power, fortune, luck and love for

the possessor of the Serpentine Egg. The Romans were

fearful of the bearer of any dragon egg because any bearer

could influence the magistrate and no edict could be issued

unless the bearer of the egg wished it so. Druids with dragon

eggs were hunted down and slain by the Romans. Ah,

Cyhiraeth pictured herself in the finest of gowns, a

handsome druid on her arm to do her bidding. Of course, the

Druid would think her a beauty beyond measure. Druids had

become very secretive and blended into the peasant

population, as guardians of the eggs no one knew what

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would quicken an egg. Alas all the effort of stealing the egg,

keeping a day and night watch over it in the caldron left

Cyhiraeth without hope of ever seeing the water boil. The

dragon inside had never been quickened, Cyhiraeth had not

carried the egg close to her breast as she should have, plus

the Sod Law spell not letting the water boil.

As Cyhiraeth stomped down the dirt path from the village to

her hut a most magical wagon rumbled up to her. Big, bright

yellow with red trim and covered by a pink canvas hooped to

cover the wagon was pulled by two giant draft horses. The

leathery and rangy man on the seat wore a cap on his head

of bright yellow with black bands around it like a bumble

bee. A big ball of material hung on the end of the tail and

bounced at his waist. With a grin as wide as his face, the

apparent tinker spoke to Cyhiraeth.

“Good fair lady” called the tinker. “Have need of anything to

buy or barter?” The corners of the tinker’s eyes were like

crow’s feet and added to his merry appearance, and his

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voice was kindly. Cyhiraeth was tired after sleeping under

the window of the Inn the night before. Instead of biting off

his head as was her wont with strangers she simply replied.

“I have no coin and know not what I have to barter.” The

tinker looked down at her with the same smile and replied.

“Cyhiraeth do you not still have that old ‘Serpentium Egg?”

The moment he spoke to Cyhiraeth, she begun tingling from

head to toe. Even so Cyhiraeth’s blood froze, how did he

know what she had? Could he have her arrested for having a

stolen object? But today all Cyhiraeth could squeak was “and

if I do?”

“Well I can offer this barter then” replied the tinker. I have

here a parchment which grants the holder full living

accommodations at the Wick Inn near Aquae Sulis the old

Roman Bath resort (Now Bath). Tis a small circle of witches

living in rest and retirement.” The tinker gave a broad grin

and seemed all the merrier as he made his offer.

Cyhiraeth was befuddled and bewitched by this generous

offer. A place to call home, companionship, cooked meals;

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was she really being offered this? She reached into the folds

of her worn cape and produced the egg without even

thinking about it. The tinker took and placed the egg in an

ash colored bag and placed it under his seat on the wagon.

As his hand returned from under the seat, he in turn handed

Cyhiraeth the parchment scroll banded in colorful ribbons.

The tinker also gave her a large pouch of gold coins and

said. “A wagon with two wheels and a driver shall pick you

and your possessions up within the hour; take with you what

you will.”

The tinker further informed Cyhiraeth that she would have a

room on the third floor facing the Avon River, and two meals

a day in the dinning room for all the residents. With that the

tinker gave a cluck to the horses and rumbled on down the

path past the hut.

Cyhiraeth stood in the middle of the path watching the tinker

as he pulled out of sight. “What just happened to me?” she

thought. Then before she could even answer herself, she

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heard the clop, clop, clop of a horse drawn wagon coming

right up behind her. The driver was a large kindly woman in

a midnight blue cape with stars sprinkled all over it. The

large well-padded woman beamed at Cyhiraeth, “if you be

Cyhiraeth you had best get up here on the seat dear, we

have no time to waste the Wick Inn is 175 leagues from

here. Cyhiraeth head spinning as she climbed onto the

wagon seat was welcomed by Moresentia (the driver: Witch

Queen of Wick Inn) who asked if she had anything she

wanted to take with her. So a short time later Cyhiraeth saw

the last of her hut as she stowed her sack under the seat of

the wagon.

The other seventeen witches occupying the old mansion

welcomed Cyhiraeth into the Inn and her room. The next

night she met Gladius the retired Roman soldier in charge of

the Temple and the Baths. Much work had been done by the

coven to restore the baths after the Romans left. So Gladius

keep the gate open to the friends to use late at night all by

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themselves. Cyhiraeth was encouraged to go almost nightly

for the first few months she was there.

And so Cyhiraeth lived out her days in peace and comfort

with the companionship of the coven at the Wick Inn. ‘Wait a

minute you say, what happened to the egg?” Well there are

many tales about the Serpentine Egg and this wee tale was

but one. The end of Cyhiraeth’s story was that after a

hundred years of being hard steamed the heart within the

egg was warmed by her attention. The dragon within the egg

communicated with the Druids of Stonehenge and made the

arrangements himself.

Moral of this Serpentine tale “a Hot & Steamy relationship of

one hundred years can produce a happy ending.”

(1) Nemeton The Sacred Grove, Copyright © 2005–2008, Dyfed Lloyd Evans

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