In a day when the skies were more blue than they are now, and the rivers deep and strong, an old man came walking down the river, his great strides barely breaching the mighty flow, nor being moved by it. Some in the tribe saw beneath his feet the mighty trout that lived in the river then, bigger than the boars of the hills are today, swimming beneath his every step.
The tribes were small and did not yet bear the names of the spirits of beasts, and all things were like they are now, but unlike. The brenin, hearing of this man, came out of her home and walked to meet him. She was old, her long silver hair trailing in the dust behind her, and her smile had melted the hearts of a thousand men; but he did not see her.
He walked onto shore as if it were as fluid as the river had been for him, past her as if she were merely a light breeze. He spoke no words, yet the trees bowed to him, the birds sang to him, and the dust rose up to dance before and behind him. He strode across the tribe's home towards the great yew whose leaves sheltered them all.
Stung, the brenin strode back to her hut, ordering the tribe to ignore this false spirit sent to deceive them, and the tribe averted their gaze, returning to scratching in the dust for worms and ground-fruit. All save one orphan girl of six summers, who knew yet no words, and so gazed at him as he took from the yew one branch, as easily as if it were an over-ripe fruit.
Raptly she watched as he dipped the branch into the river, and the mighty trout took its tip in his mouth. The man lifted the trout and tore it open, and within was succulent meat, more than all the scratchings the tribe gathered in a year. He ate a mighty feast, then cast the scraps back into the river, where they became a thousand small trout, swimming upstream.
The man strode back whence he came, and was never seen again. When the girl had seen twenty more summers, and twenty more yet, and in her time became the brenin, she took the yew branch she'd hidden that day and caught a trout, and ever since the tribe has fished for trout, and grown strong and mighty from its tender flesh.
