The Vale of Neath.
BRONWEN AND THE STARLING.
This is the story of the sad fate that befell a sister of a British King who lived at Twr Bronwen, which stood where Harlech Castle now stands, and who married Matholwch, an Irish King, and sailed with him across the seas. Bronwen was her name, and they say that she was the most beautiful woman in all the land.
When Matholwch came across to Harlech to court her, he and Bronwen’s step-brother Evnyssien had a fierce quarrel, and so deeply insulted was the Irishman that the match was nearly broken off. However, Bronwen’s brother Bran, the King, managed to placate the angry suitor by giving him a staff of silver as tall as himself and a plate of purest gold as wide as his face, and presently the marriage was celebrated with greatest festivity, and the happy pair sailed away for Erin.
But though their King might forget this quarrel, wild subjects would not. They nursed a grievance against their new queen and stirred up so much trouble that at last Matholwch himself turned against his bride, putting slight after slight upon her, until in the end he degraded the beautiful princess to be cook in the palace where once she had reigned.
Bronwen tried to send word of her sad plight to her brother at Harlech, just across the Irish Sea, but the vengeful Irish circumvented all her efforts, destroyed her letters and killed her messengers.
At last, in despair, poor Bronwen hit upon a plan. A Welsh starling, blown across the sea by an easterly gale, fluttered into her kitchen one day, and the Princess fed it and tended it, hiding it in the great kneading trough where she was forced to make bread for the whole household. When the bird recovered she wrote a letter to Bran, tied it to the starling’s leg, and released it.