There was a time when the spring called Barenton was the most renowned thing in the Kingdom of Brocéliande—more renowned than the court, than any of its queens, than Vivien who imprisoned Merlin in her spells; more renowned and better thought of. Its water was cold, even in the sweltering days of late summer, the spring jetted in a quiet twirl of silver from the sandy bottom of the pool, filled it always to the same level, and flowed away unseen through a bed of reeds. It was as though it had a life of its own, apart from the rest of the world. There was nothing striking about it, except itself. The peasant women who resorted to it sometimes found a lady there, bathing or sitting thoughtfully beside it. She was tall, stately as a queen, and always very pleasant, talking to them in the patois. It was as if she too had a life of her own, apart from the world of Faery; for she was visible to any mortal, familiar as a neighbour, and helpful in their mortal misfortunes. But as time went on and religion spread through the district, they came to mistrust her and be of two minds about her character; when they resorted to the spring, they did so secretly, and if she happened to be there they crossed themselves and drew back. And so by degrees it became a sin to go to the spring, and also a waste of time, since one had only to go to the new church to find Our Lady of Brocéliande and the stoup of holy water, with no sin about them and always available.

Dando the Cosmographer, the Court Archivist, who wrote the standard work on Elfindom, maintained that Barenton was coeval with the stones of Carnac, and that the Kingdom of Brocéliande was formed around it, probably about the time when the forest, overthrown by the Great Gale, had put up enough second growth to afford shelter to the vagrant tribe of Fairies, or Peris, driven out of Persia by the magicians Aaron and Moses. He held that the first settlement consisted of simple reed huts round about the spring, and that it was not till much later that the court was established in another part of the forest, over two miles away. Be this as it may (Dando’s conclusions were questioned by some later scholars), the court of Brocéliande paid a respectful lip service to Barenton—such as the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury might pay to Stonehenge. It figured in sonnets (ladies as pure, and even colder). Its water was an ingredient in the famous Eau de Brocéliande. A ceremonial picnic took place beside it every twenty-five years, and if a visitor happened to be of the party Queen Melior would tell the legend of the beautiful lady who bathed there at midnight on Midsummer’s Eve—to which an ambassador from the Scottish Kingdom of Elfhame had replied by telling her of a kraken in Loch Ness. Apart from these polite acknowledgements, Barenton fell into disesteem. It was in an uncouth part of the forest, all midges and brambles, and had regrettable associations with poaching mortals, who soused their scabby children in it and threw in farthings for luck. True, it was a very long time since any poaching had gone on; only peasants desperate for firewood or acorns ventured so deep into the forest. But its reputation was dubious—not to speak of that bathing person, whoever she was. Dando had no doubt who she was: one of those indigenous fairies of Brittany, contemporary with the Nine Maidens of miraculous power mentioned by Pomponius Mela, whom common speech referred to as ‘the Old Lot’. Dando, invisibly frequenting alehouses and the company of midwives, learned that the indigenous fairies were still remembered by mortals. It was from two old women scalding a pig that he heard about the fairy who pulled a drowning boy from the pool of Barenton and took such pity on him that she followed him into the mortal world to be his nurse.