The Hidden Valley
The Hidden Valley contains a symbol of the desire to retreat to find our own true nature in some place remote from the demands of everyday life. It is therefore within us as well as being perceived as a place we can go to. We might think of it as womb-like. Or we might think of it as a place where things can happen that don’t happen in our everyday world. It can be an Otherworld, a place where different things are possible.
Melangell goes there to create her own world, a world that is passing in the world of men like Brochfael. Hunting is an activity that is part of his lordship, an expression of his right to rule his territory. But he recognizes older forms of lordship: the necessity to acknowledge a goddess of the land, which, however faintly in the legend we have, Melangell represents.
There should be a symbolic marriage between any ruler and this goddess to validate his rule. But instead Melangell’s virginity is emphasized, and Brochfael turns away from the hare beneath her skirts, leaving her in her wildness to her own nature. He acknowledges the old pact with the sovereignty goddess while at the same time refusing it. He rules now on his own terms. But she is left alone in her hidden valley. Allowed to develop a community with the wild things that live there and to gather others of like mind about her.
So the hidden valley now represents a passing world, allowed to remain out of the gaze of those who live and work in Brochfael’s world. In some versions of this mythological pattern the sovereignty goddess becomes and old crone, or in folklore a wise woman, even a witch. But here her youth remains to her, but so does her virginity. She remains her own self, wild and free, but also unfulfilled in the wider acknowledgement of her sovereignty.
For us today the hidden valley is retreating from our consciousness. Our lives are lived in the public gaze. Our most intimate details are posted on the Internet for all to see. The hidden valley might therefore be a place where we can have a secret life, a step sideways into an Otherworld where our deepest being can fulfil itself, where we can touch an elemental wildness, alone or in community with others. Invisible to the Brochfaels of our world who would not even hunt there, or acknowledge its existence. So unfulfilled and unexpressed in the world where we live our public lives, waiting for the time to come again when the hare can run free in the world of men.