Golden Pelydryn

The Golden Pelydryn is a fictional magical object in Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain fantasy series. It is owned by the young enchantress Princess Eilonwy and is used by her to light her way through darkness. It resembles a sphere of pure gold and is referred to as her "bauble." It also reveals things which ordinary lights cannot.

Appearances

The Novels

The Golden Pelydryn is first seen in The Book of Three, when Taran is being held prisoner by the evil queen Achren in her fortress, Spiral Castle. When Eilonwy is playing on the battlements of the castle, she drops the bauble (as she calls it) through a crack in the ceiling and it falls into Taran's cell.^[1] She breaks into the dungeon and uses the magic of the Pelydryn to light up the room. She never parts with it and it accompanies her through the entire series from then on.

The Golden Pelydryn plays very little role in The Black Cauldron, other than Eilonwy willing to barter it with the Three Sisters, Orddu, Orwen and Orgoch, in exchange for the cauldron.^[2] They turn her offer down. It is in The Castle of Llyr that we find out how powerful the bauble really is. Its true name is the Golden Pelydryn, and it is in fact an ancient heirloom of the Royal House of Llyr, handed down from mother to daughter among the Princesses of Llyr. Before Eilonwy, the last owner of the Pelydryn was her mother, the Princess Angharad. But when Angharad fled the royal household to marry against her mother's wishes, she took the Pelydryn with her and passed it down to her infant daughter Eilonwy.

The remainder of Eilonwy's story, and that of the Golden Pelydryn, is revealed to Taran and the reader during the course of the third and fourth books in the series, The Castle of Llyr and Taran Wanderer. The fate of Geraint, Eilonwy's commoner father, is unknown, but sometime following his death, the sorceress Achren abducted the infant Eilonwy (and her magic bauble) and took her to Spiral Castle. Eilonwy, as the last Princess of Llyr, is the sole heir to the magic of Llyr, most of which is contained in the ancient family stronghold at Caer Colur, and the only person who can make use of the spells contained in a book that the light of the Golden Pelydryn will allow her to read. Achren raised Eilonwy as her own niece, giving her a basic training in magic, but Eilonwy suspected Achren was not really her aunt and knew that she did not belong in Spiral Castle. At the time of the events of The Book of Three, she was too young to have gotten very far with her magical education, so her powers lay mostly dormant throughout the series.

In The Castle of Llyr, Eilonwy is again seized by Achren and taken to the family home at Caer Colur, where she is kept under an enchantment that prevents her from recognizing her friends or attempting to escape.^[3] The spells in the spellbook of Llyr, as Prince Gwydion explains to a bewildered Taran, can only be used by a Princess of Llyr and only once she has reached the threshold of womanhood; Eilonwy, he says, is at that point in her life, suggesting that she is approximately fourteen or fifteen years old in this book. Whilst trapped in a dark cave with the Pelydryn, Taran attempts to work it by tapping it, shaking it etc. but when it fails to light, he gives up hope and instead thinks fondly of Eilonwy, thinking of how happy she makes him and the good times they have spent together, and unintentionally causes the Pelydryn to light. He then realises that this is the enchantment which works the Pelydryn: a person's most cherished memories. Instead of obeying Achren, however, and using the spells to help her conquer Prydain, Eilonwy musters the strength to break the enchantment which imprisons her; she casts the spellbook to the flagstones, where it bursts into flames, and all of Caer Colur is destroyed. As a surprising side effect, Achren's own magical powers are stripped from her, and she accompanies the group back to the mainland and joins the household of Taran's foster father, the enchanter Dallben.

In Taran Wanderer, Taran learns that Eilonwy's mother, Angharad, sought the aid of an evil sorcerer, Morda, in finding her abducted daughter.^[4] She attempted to pay him for his aid with a magic pendant which had been given to the House of Llyr by the Fair Folk; but as she was already very ill when she reached Morda's abode, she died during the night and he kept everything she carried on her person, including the pendant and the book of Llyrian spells. He later sold the (seemingly blank) spellbook to a would-be enchanter called Glew, which is how it was eventually restored to Eilonwy in the previous book.

In The High King, the final book of the series, the Golden Pelydryn is brought into play twice. At one point, Eilonwy has been separated from her companions, but from a distance witnesses them being very nearly trapped by the evil warriors of Arawn. Calling to Taran, and lifting the bauble high, she summons enough light to turn the darkened valley "as bright as noon." At the end of the book, Eilonwy is asked to choose—will she journey to the Summer Country with all the other magic users left in Prydain, or will she stay behind and marry the newly crowned High King Taran? Choosing a mortal life of love over an immortal life in the magic realm, she asks her enchantments to be removed from her, and the light of the Golden Pelydryn is darkened forever.^[5]

The Film

In the animated version of The Black Cauldron, Eilonwy's bauble is never identified by its proper name; this is understandable, as the name of the Golden Pelydryn was not known to the cast until the third book. However, the film depicts the bauble as semi-sentient, able to move under its own power and seeming to possess a degree of intelligence. As in the books, the Golden Pelydryn is rather small, roughly the size of a baseball or similar, but is incapable of moving on its own; Eilonwy carries it at all times. It is also unable to light on its own, as the movie indicates it can do.

References