Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact - Above Top Secret

ecorded about 1825 in the Vale of Neath, Wales. Rhys and Llewellyn were servants to a farmer. Asthey went home one night, Rhys told his friend to stop and listen to the music. Llewellyn heard nomusic. But Rhys had to dance to the tune he had heard a hundred times. He begged Llewellyn to goahead with the horses, saying that he would soon overtake him, but Llewellyn arrived home alone.The next day, he was suspected of murdering Rhys and was jailed. But a farmer "who was skilled infairy matters" guessed the truth. Several men gathered – among them the narrator of the story – andtook Llewellyn to the spot where he said his companion had vanished. Suddenly, "Hush!" criedLlewellyn. "I hear music, I hear sweet harps."All listened but could hear nothing. Llewellyn's foot was on the outer edge of the fairy ring. He toldthe narrator to place his foot on his, and then he too heard the sounds of many harps and saw anumber of Little People dancing in a circle twenty feet or so in diameter. After him, each of theparty did the same and observed the same thing. Among the dancing Little Folk was Rhys.Llewellyn caught him by his frock as he passed close to them and pulled him out of the circle. Atonce Rhys asked, "Where are the horses?" and asked them to let him finish the dance, which hadnot lasted more than five minutes. And he could never be persuaded of the time that had elapsed.He became melancholy, fell ill, and soon after died.Such stories can be found in Keightley's The Fairy Mythology and other books. The story of Rhysand Llewellyn is remarkable because it dates from the nineteenth century, thus providing continuitybetween fairy and UFO lore. In tales of this type, several modes of recovery of the persons taken areoffered. One of them consists in touching the abducted man with a piece of iron, and the objectionof supernatural beings to this metal is one of the themes of fairy lore.Near Bridgend, Wales is a place where it is reported that a woman who had been taken by the fairiescame back ten years later and thought she had not been away more than ten days. Hartland givesanother charming story on the same theme, concerning a boy named Gitto Bach, or Little Griffith, afarmer's son who disappeared:During two whole years nothing was heard of him; but at lenght one morning when hismother, who had long and bitterly mourned for him as dead, opened the door, whom shouldshe sitting on the threshold but Gitto with a bundle under his arm. He was dressed andlooked exactly as when she last saw him, for he had not grown a bit. "Where have you beenall this time?" asked his mother. "Why, it was only yesterday I went away," he replied; andopening the bundle he showed her a dress the "little children" as he called them, had givenhim for dancing with them. The dress was of white paper without seam. With maternalcaution she put it into the fire.The best-known stories where time relativity is the main theme are of course of the "Rip vanWinkle" type, patterned after numerous folk tales that allegedly concern actual events. Strangelyenough, we again find the identical theme in ages-old Chinese folklore. Witness the story of WangChih, one of the holy men of the Taoists.One day, as Wang Chih wandered through the mountains of Ku Chow gathering firewood,he saw a grotto where some old men were playing chess. He came in to watch their gameand laid down his ax. One of the old men gave him something like a date-stone andinstructed him to place it in his mouth. "No sooner had he done so than hunger and thirstpassed away." Some time later, one of the aged players told him, "It is long since you camehere; you should go home now." But as he turned to pick up his ax, Wang Chih found that hehandle had turned into dust. He reached the valley, but found not hours or days but centurieshad passed, and nothing remained of the world as he had known it.A similar tradition exists in Denmark. In a tale which is typical of the pattern, a bride thoughtlesslywalked through the fields during the festivities of her wedding day and passed a mound "where theelves were making merry." (Again, we have here a description of the Little People close to the