The tale of "The Goat King of Beulah" serves as a potent illustration of ambition's perilous nature, chronicling the tragic downfall of Geifryn ap Meirion, a village headman whose aspirations lead to devastating consequences. As the narrative unfolds in the Late Bronze Age, we witness Geifryn's desperate measures to save his village from the ravages of ox-sickness through the rapid breeding of goats. This initial solution, however, spirals into a catastrophic obsession, as Geifryn envisions a future of power and dominion, disregarding the pleas of his wife and the well-being of his community. The consequences of his unchecked ambition manifest in ruin, as the once-thriving village of Beulah succumbs to desolation, serving as a cautionary tale passed down through generations. Ultimately, this fireside tale encapsulates the enduring wisdom that some desires, if left unchecked, can lead to one's own destruction, a lesson embodied in the legacy of the Goat King.

Takeaways:

• The tale of Geifryn ap Meirion illustrates the peril of unchecked ambition and desire for power.
• Geifryn's initial solution of fast-breeding goats spirals into a catastrophic crisis for Beulah.
• The story serves as a cautionary reminder of the consequences of ignoring wise counsel from loved ones.
• Beulah's legacy is encapsulated in the saying "stubborn as an old goat," reflecting Geifryn's tragic fate.

The Goat King of Beulah Written and narrated by Elwyn Davis Late bronze age circa 627 BC Beulah borderlands between Powys and Brycheniog we rarely choose what we are remembered for, and the dead hold no sway over how the living make use of their failings.

The land where Beulah stood smelled of goats.

Not the clean scent of cattle or the earthly smell of pigs rooting in autumn mast, but the sharp ammonia of goat pee soaked into the earth that couldn't drain fast enough, mixed with a musky stench of too many animals confined to too little space.

The sort of worn in odour that mercilessly conquers your clothes and hair and will not be rinsed out no matter how many times you stand in the stream scrubbing with sand and lye.

But that came later, after the success turned from gold to a bitter yellow.

At the beginning there were only five goats and a problem that needed solving.

Beulah sat in the gap between the chiefdoms, owing tribute to Powys in the north and Brachainiog in the south.

A young ox to each every autumn, which gave the village a strange sort of protection.

Neither chiefdom wanted the other to grow fat on Beulah's tribute, so both kept their spears pointed outwards and the village lived in that careful space between the tribute brought peace and peace.

Let 43 people grow barley and raise children and live quiet lives where two powers met and decided not to fight.

Then the ox sickness came.

It moved through the herd like how a flame swells in dry grass, spreading from beast to beast before anyone understood what was burning.

The animals went off their feed, stood with heads hanging low and died within days.

Beulah lost 11 oxen in a single month.

By spring, only three remained, and those too young to pull a plough or serve as tribute.

Geithryn AP Meyerion stood in the empty pen and churned the numbers in his head.

Two chiefdoms pressing from north and south, each expecting their due.

Three young oxen needing three more years to mature.

Without tribute there would be no protection, and exposed villagers will not see the fifth season.

He looked at the five goats his wife kept for milk and saw a solution.

Goats were hardy creatures.

They'd eat what even cattle wouldn't touch.

Thrive where softer beasts failed, endure winters that left oxen frozen in the fields.

They bred quickly, doubling their numbers within a year if the winter was kind, and the chiefdoms would accept goat tribute when oxen couldn't be had.

Four fine goats to each chiefdom would buy the same protection, and goats reach tribute age in a single season instead of three long years waiting for an ox to mature.

Branwyn stood at the pen one spring morning with a basket of grain under her hip, watching her husband count five goats yesterday, nine this morning, with four spring kids still damp from birth and already testing the fen stakes.

We'll keep 20, Gayfren said without looking up.

Four each for the tribute, the rest for breeding stock.

Another year and we'll be secure.

She had heard him speak this way before, voice gone smooth with vision, as though he could already see what did not yet exist and refused to imagine it might not come to pass.

His wife's hands were still on the basket rim.

20 goats is a lot of goats.

20 goats is safety, don't you see?

Gayfren couldn't quite keep the excitement from his voice, though he tried to smooth it with patience, as if explaining something simple to someone who hadn't yet grasped it.

The chiefdoms get their tribute.

We keep 12 for breeding, and we're no longer one sickness away from ruin.

Branwyn opened her mouth to speak, then closed it and turned back inside.

The leather door covering swung shut with a point that would make itself clear in time.

The brown billy scrambled over the fence and headed for the hazel saplings.

Gayfrin watched it go, already seeing himself as the man who would save his village.

He'd catch it later.

The first year went, as Gefrin had foreseen, each season falling into place like stones in a wall.

The goats multiplied and thrived in the village of Beulah.

Nine became 18 by autumn, and that first tribute season Gayfrin selected eight fine billies, four for Powys, an equal share for Brycheniog.

The chiefdoms accepted the goat tribute without complaint, and the village was safe.

By the following spring, 18 had become 24.

Gaethrin culled the herd back to 20, keeping only the best breeding stock for another year of careful increase.

But the ease of it troubled him in ways he couldn't name.

He stood up the stream one evening, filling a bucket of water, and caught sight of his reflection in the still pool below the rocks.

He saw a man who'd solved what others couldn't, a leader who'd saved his village when the elders had wrung their hands and spoken of scattering to distant kin, a man who understood that the old ways were not the only ways, that cleverness could turn disaster into opportunity.

He saw himself as he would become, not a head man of a village squeezed between greater powers paying tribute for the privilege of being ignored.

Something more.

Beulah would rise from the gap between Powys and Brycheniog and a place of power in its own right.

His great mind turned to the next problem.

Every tribe of consequence has a Druid.

That's what made them real, what gave them weight and legitimacy.

Without one of the learned of Madhvai, you were merely villagers huddled around cooking fires with a druid wearing the woad blue and white of office, their voice carrying the authority of oak and sky.

You commanded respect.

Druids chose their own placements during their wandering, seeking tribes with wealth, stability, vision, settling only when they see a chief worthy of their time and wisdom.

Gayfren turned the problem over in his mind, counting now in goats rather than safety.

60 coats would make Beulah prosperous enough to draw a druid's eye.

60 meant tribute paid surplus to trade for spearhead, bow and bronze, wealth visible enough that a wandering druid might pause in his journey and find himself compelled to remain.

The numbers now turned and leaped in his mind.

60 goats to draw a druid's eye, then 80 to make neighbouring villages take notice.

A hundred to give lesser headmen cause to think where power truly laid and where their tribute might be better offered.

Gayfren looked into the water and saw himself as he would become the Goat King and the first chief of Beulah, ruler of the Gap, the man who would, in time, bring greater powers to heal.

The second year went as well as the first.

20 became 35 by spring, 52 by autumn's end.

The third year brought 68 goats, and Gayfarin's tally showed him nearly there.

The air grew heavier as summer turned.

Mothers began hanging, washing further from the pension.

Children came in from play wearing a smell that would follow them like a shadow at night.

The bleating never quite stopped.

Fence posts creaked under the weight of animals, testing them.

The goats had a way of appearing where they hadn't been moments before, on roof edges, across pathways, in doorways, chewing with slow, deliberate jaws, watching with beaded eyes that held still and revealed nothing.

Branwyn's hands were still when he spoke of goats now, her spindle hanging motionless.

Neighbours greeted Gayfren with the same words as before, but their gazes shifted to the pens and what showed was something else entirely.

He tallied 68 goats and saw 70 approaching.

Soon Gayfrin would await the learned of Mothutbai, stopping at Beulah's threshold with curiosity in their eyes.

It was now only a matter of time.

Is well?

The hazel saplings went first.

Bark stripped in spirals from root to tip, white wood showing like bone beneath the skin.

Cadoc the elder came to Gayfren's door on an evening where the moss were thick around the cooking fires.

He was 70 years old and his face, like a hardened root, left a season in sunlight and frost.

Your goats are destroying the commons.

It's time to bring an end to this madness and salvage what is left.

Gayfren looked up from the bronze he was polishing.

The goats make us wealthy Another season and we'll have our own druid.

A druid?

Cadoc's voice was flat as creekstones.

You think a wandering druid will choose a village that stinks like a foul pen and has stripped its land bare?

They are learned men.

They will see prosperity and power.

Sixty goats represent more wealth than most chiefdoms have.

Most have druids already because they're actual chiefdoms, not villages where the resident idiot carries out dreams and delusions.

Caddok leaned against the door frame.

My grandfather told me about a settlement north of here.

Rich land, ambitious headmen.

He wanted fields.

More fields, more grain to trade, ploughed up the grazing meadows.

Three years of good crops.

Then a summer came along that scorched earth and soil until it gave out.

There was no harvest, no grass left for the oxen.

The beasts starved first, then the people.

He paused.

The headman's name was forgotten, but the warning should hold true today.

Your grandfather's village was not Beulah.

No.

It was a village led by a man who mistook ambition for wisdom.

Caddok straightened and his joints cracked like green wood in fire.

Three years of this madness, Gaeprin, and you remain as stubborn as an old goat.

Araun judges us all.

That name fell between them like a stone into still water.

Arawn judges those who put themselves before their people, caddok said quietly, who refuse good counsel.

He turns his face from the weak, unwilling to protect what they hold, those who reach for what they cannot grasp.

The land was gifted by those above, and those of Annwn still guard it.

Arawn does not look kindly on men who destroy his gifts for their own glory.

Gayfren's hand tightened on the bronze, but he said nothing.

Cadoc left.

The door stayed open, letting in night air that smelled of goats and smoke and distant rain.

After Caddok left, Branwyn came to her husband with worry drawn across her face, no longer able to hide what she feared.

Build better fences, she said.

Stronger pens.

The goats are getting out, destroying everything.

We need to halt this and regroup, Gayfrin.

Build what will hold them.

Protect what we already have before we lose it all.

We don't need stronger fences.

We need more goats.

The village is asking you to stop.

I am begging you to consider this, if only for one season.

Let us straighten what we have before we reach further.

The village doesn't understand.

His voice was sharp now, the reasonableness gone.

I'm building something here, something that matters.

They want to stay small and afraid.

I want us to be great.

They want us to survive.

But Gaitherin had already turned away, back to his counting, his planning, his vision of chiefdom and power and a reflection that would never speak the truth.

There once was a man from Beulahwe who thought himself quite grand.

He counted goats by moonlit day and dreamt of ruling all the land.

When the goats reached 71, Mabon the Smith came to Gayfren's door.

His hands bore the permanent scars of working hot bronze, and his face wore the expression of a man past arguing.

Taking my family to Garth.

We'll be gone before the moon turns.

You have a good forge here.

I had customers.

Three families have already left.

The ones who stay spend their bronze repairing what your goats destroy.

Mabin's voice carried no anger, just the flatness of stated fact.

There's no work here anymore, just a cycle of undoing what shouldn't have been done.

You're being hasty.

Another season and we'll have our Druid.

We'll be a proper chiefdom.

Maban looked at the pile of hides, the bronze goods stacked against the wall at Gayfrin's side.

You built yourself a chiefdom on goat droppings and ambition.

I pray it keeps you warm.

Four families left that autumn, 16 people who took their remaining cattle and their children and their skills to Garth, where the ox masters still had work and the air didn't reek.

They didn't look back.

27 people remained in Beulah, surrounded by 71 goats and a village that began to smell like a goat's pen, thick with pee and droppings.

Winter came early that year.

The leaves heralded the frost as they fell from the trees.

A thin white blanket settled into the valley, smothering the churned soil.

The chill arrived and it intended to stay.

The harvest had been poor, as all save Gayfren had foreseen, with the goats getting into the grain pits and fouling what they didn't eat.

The autumn foraging that should have supplemented stores didn't happen because there was nothing left to forage, no hazelnuts from the grove, for the branches were stripped and the trees died.

No sloes from the destroyed thickets or wild apples from the trees.

The goats had killed.

Even without the marauding goats, this would have been a hard winter.

Neighbouring villages had stores unfouled by these wretched creatures.

They had autumn nuts and sloes put by.

They had coppice wood for fires and wild game that had not been driven away by the bleating that never ceased.

They had a land that no goat destroyed, soil not trampled to mud and stone.

Beulah counted 71 goats against 27 souls and stores that might feed half of them through to spring.

If they were fortunate.

They slaughtered goats as the cold deepened.

Lean meat almost without fat, the sort that fills a belly but leaves bones.

Cold winter has teeth, and bodies need fat to weather them.

There was no fat left.

The goats themselves began to fall, hunger and frost taking them.

Before the knife could land.

They froze where they dropped.

By the time the day ceased their shortening, the goats had thinned to a single pen's worth and and the people to barely more than a dozen.

The snow came just past midwinter, heavy and deliberate, wrapping the world in a crisp silence.

Smoke from the roundhouses rose thin and pale, thinning further each day as the wood piles shrank to nothing.

Kadok passed from this world in the cold month between winter's grip and spring's promise.

He died in the roundhouse with his eyes opening, looking at nothing, or perhaps looking at everything.

They left him where he fell, as no one had the strength to dig into the frozen earth.

The children went next, too young to understand why the food had stopped.

Some of them cried at first, but their voices soon went quiet as they lay still in the cold and their mothers wrapped them in cloaks already taken from the dead and laid down beside them.

There was no reason to keep standing on the coldest night of that winter, when the wind came down from the hills with a menace no invading tribe could muster.

Those still alive.

He heard the goats screaming.

Not bleating, but screaming in voices that sounded almost human, as if the animals themselves had finally understood their fate.

Dwynwyn Verh Idual was 16 when her husband died.

With frost on his beard from his last breath freezing in the air.

She wrapped him in their cloak and left him there, because what else was there to do?

By the time green shoots pushed through the frozen earth and the world remembered how to grow again, most of Beulah lay dead.

Five people remained and enough goats to begin the cycle again.

If anyone had been Foolish enough to let them.

The survivors gathered in what remained of the commons.

Branwyn, Duynwyn, and three others whose names the story doesn't preserve.

They spoke of walking to Garth, of leaving before they were too weak to make the journey.

Gaifryn stood in the doorway of his roundhouse and watched them.

He'd grown thin over the winter, his face all angles and hollows, his eyes bright with something that wasn't quite hunger and wasn't quite madness, but lived somewhere in between the two.

You're leaving, he said, and it was not a question.

There's nothing left here.

Branwyn's voice was quiet.

The goats have eaten everything.

Come with us, Gayfren.

Please.

Come with you?

He laughed, and it sounded like a goat's bleat.

Leave my chieftain.

Leave my goats.

I'm Chief Abulah, and what you see is mine.

All of it.

Gayfren.

Please go then.

His voice was quiet, but it carried an edge it hadn't held before, as though something in his throat had changed.

Saliva gathered in the corners of his mouth and dripped onto his beard, thin and pointed now, each drop freezing white against the matted grey before it could fall.

Leave now, before the sun sets and I can no longer hold my hunger at bay.

I've been eating the goats, you see.

He paused, working his jaw as though still chewing.

But the ache never leaves.

It gnaws and gnaws, and I'm forever hungry.

Always.

Something shifted in Gayfren's gaunt face.

His eyes sharpened and fixed on Branwyn with a new intensity.

I often find myself thinking, perhaps I've had enough of goat.

Branwyn took a step back in horror and realization.

She turned to flee, and the others were already moving nervously towards the path.

Run to Garth, gaifrin said, snapping out of the moment.

This time he smiled wide enough to show all of his teeth.

Tell them about the Goat King of Beulah.

Let them know I am still here, standing straight.

When all others fell.

His eyes flickered back to his wife.

Tell them the Lords of Annunciation see what you cannot.

And I have found strength where weakness would have meant death.

The stars shine on what I've become, even if your eyes are too dim to witness it.

They will sing of how I saved Beulah.

He turned back into his roundhouse, and they heard him laughing.

It sounded like a goat's bleat at first, then something else entirely.

And when the snow came down instead, the goats began to sing.

The survivors reached Garth by nightfall.

The oxmasters fed them, gave them places by the fire, and listened to what had befallen Beulah, with faces that grew grave and still.

They spoke in low voices as the fire burned down.

What remained of Beulah could not be left as it was.

To leave what Gayfrin had become still breathing amongst the ashes of his ambition, would be an offence against the land itself.

Arawn guards what is sacred, and those who defile his gifts do not go unnoticed.

Better to put a flame to what remained and let it return to earth than invite the gaze of Anu.

Branwyn spoke then, her voice breaking.

She spoke of her husband as he had been before the counting and the visions and the hunger that would not be satisfied.

If they razed the village, she said, if they took away the last remnants of what he tried to build, perhaps whatever held him would release its grip, like waking from dark dreams into daylight.

He would see clearly again and remember his name.

The oxmasters listened, and there was sorrow in their silence.

But they did not waver.

At first light, six men rode to Beulah.

They found the roundhouses already burning, not by chance, but by busy hands in the night, the thatch torn down and heaped into pyres that sent columns of smoke rising straight into the windless sky.

Among the flames moved a figure that might once have been a man, dragging what remained and feeding it to the fires.

The goats lay scattered across the commons in the postures of death, some clearly slaughtered with purpose, others bearing marks that suggested different implements had been used.

Gayfren himself crouched near one of the fallen animals.

The men of Garth saw enough to understand what he was doing, and their hands moved to the charms they wore against evil.

He saw them and lifted his head, not as a man greets visitors, but as a beast lifts its muzzle when interrupted at feeding.

His features held nothing but appetite.

His eyes, gone small and hard as pebbles, fixed on the strangers with an intensity that made their horses shift and stamp.

His jaw worked, always working.

The Goat King greets his neighbours, he said.

The words came out crackled and strange, half bleat, half speech.

He rose to his feet, unsteady, swaying.

You've come at an auspicious time.

I am building something magnificent here, something that will eclipse Powys and Brychainiog.

Both the men from Garth said nothing.

Each village must bring tribute.

Five goats to join my realm, to be part of what rises from these ashes.

His voice gained fervor, spittle freezing on the ground as he spoke.

But we must act in haste.

The wandering druids of Maddfai will come.

Not to some chiefdom squabbling over scraps, but to witness the crowning of the first king of Middle Wales.

The Goat King.

Me?

One of the oxmasters reached slowly for the blade at his belt.

Another followed, not with the intent to strike, but with the weary resignation of men who understood what must be done.

Gayfrin saw the movement and his eyes went wide.

Treason.

The word came out as a shriek, an animal sound.

Arawn will see this.

Arawn will feed you to his hounds for this betrayal.

You dare drawn steel against your king?

Then he did something that froze them all where they stood.

He dropped forward onto his hands, but not to his knees.

His fingers curled like hooves, knuckles pressing into the frozen ground.

And he launched himself away on all fours, not running as a man who might crawl in desperation, moving with a fluid, terrible grace that belonged to no human creature.

His body low to the earth, limbs churning, covering ground with impossible speed.

For a heartbeat, the men sat stunned.

Then three of them spurred their horses forward, shouting, trying to follow.

But Gayfrin was already disappearing into the grey distance beyond the burned roundhouses and the hills beyond, a shape that seemed to blur and shimmer in the smoke.

Hazed deer.

By the time they reached the edge of the settlement, there was nothing.

No tracks that made sense, no sign of which direction he'd gone.

Just the wind coming down from the hills and the smell of burning thatch and the certainty that some things once lost to hunger and madness do not come back.

They searched until the sun reached its height, then rode back to Garth in silence broken only by the creak of leather and the sound of hooves on frozen ground.

They told the story exactly as it happened, because some truths are too strange for embellishment.

And they warned everyone who would listen.

Never build in Beulah again.

Never linger there in winter.

Never stay past sundown, because on certain nights, when the wind is right and the moon hidden, you can still hear something moving through those ruins.

Duynwyn lived another 63 years in Garth.

She married again, bore children, watched them have little ones of their own until she lost count.

Somewhere past the 15th grandchildren she died, old and warm and surrounded by people who loved her.

Branwyn survived longer still, though something in her had broken that winter and never mended.

Dwynwyn cared for her through the years that followed.

But on certain nights, when sleep would not come, Branwyn would cry out towards the west, where Beulah lay in ruins, just his name, over and over, as though calling him home from whatever darkness held him.

Some claimed that if you listened with care on those nights, you could Hear something answering from the hills, a sound like bleating, tortured and faint, as though whatever Gaythrin had become was calling back to her across the distance.

Others said it was the wind, or goats from the neighbouring villages.

Or the grief of a broken woman who could not let go.

Duynwyn never forgot Beulah, and she told the story to all who would hear it.

The tales spread as such tales do.

Within a generation, every village in the borderlands knew what had befallen Beulah when the goats multiplied beyond wisdom's counsel.

Within two generations, it had become the manner of story told on winter nights when the wind rose and the fire burned low.

The lore that emerged was plain enough for any to understand.

One goat for every five people.

Never more.

Those who spoke of increasing their herds were met with two chilling words.

Remember Beulah?

That was the Beulah lore.

As for the saying stubborn as an old goat, that too had its roots in Gefrin's tale.

In his refusal to heed Branwyn's plea, in his dismissal of Cadoc's warning, in his choosing to grasp after visions while all he held crumbled to nothing in his hands, Gayfren received what he sought.

In the end, he is remembered not as the first chief of Beulah, but as the Goat King who laid waste to his own village, chasing a reflection upon still water.

The stars sang to him, though their song was not what he believed it to be.

We rarely choose what we are remembered for, and the dead hold no sway over how the living make use of their failings.

So count your goats with care, my friend, and never count too high, for be such an end.

His echo fills the sky.

One go milk two goats, cheese.

Three's plenty for the pair, but four or more?

The wind will tease and draw out the goat kings wail.

Seven generations later, a boy named Ervon ap llea stood in his father's dooryard at Garth, watching three brown goats test a fence.

Why so few?

They give milk.

We could have more.

His father llir checked the lashing where the biggest goat had been working it loose.

Beulah's law.

One goat for every five people.

Your grandmother's grandmother knew duanemann, the woman who survived Beulah's winter.

He told the story that had been told across generations.

The oxicness that had emptied the pens.

The goats multiplied beyond counting.

The refusal to heed counsel, the winter that killed a village and the Goat King among the ruins lost to hunger and madness.

But that was a long time ago, Cirvon said Not so long that we'd forgotten why, when the wind rises and the darkness falls something that was once a man.

Still wondering, still hungry.

Clea's voice carried the matter of fact tone of one speaking of things widely known but seldom discussed.

We ox masters don't linger there in winter, and we don't stay past sundown.

Some sounds are better left in darkness.

The boy watched the goats a moment longer, then went to help his father.

Because some wisdom is bought with other people's suffering, and only a fool refuses such a gift.

The land where Beulah stood remains in the borderlands between Powys and Brycheniog, where the valleys run green and the hills rise grey with stone.

Fine grazing land, the sort that seems blessed by those above.

Yet as of today, no one has built there since the burning.

The ox masters of Garth graze the cattle there still, but never for long.

And never in numbers that might take too much.

Never in winter, never past sundown.

Because on certain nights when the wind comes from the west and the air grows heavy, you can hear it.

A sound that might be a goat screaming or a chilling cry that might be something else entire.

Sam Beneath the hills where two kings meet the fires of Beulah burn Five small goats in fields of peace and no one yet had lost alert he counts them still when frost winds blow from hollow to the hill Fight for power.

He's four for brain and one to feed his will.

The oxen fell the fields when fair the hazel roots grew cold.

He built his crown from horn and ha there and dreamed of days of gold.

He counts them still when frost wings flow from hollow to the hill Fight for power.

He's four for Bren and one to feed his win the the stars turn pale with fear and all who stay in Beulah smoke still hear his voice draw near for Brian One to feed his will.

Thank you for listening to this fireside tale from the Book of the Western vale.