by Andrew Mercer

Created on: March 06, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

In my younger days I used to visit Snowdonia mountains in North Wales quite a lot to go climbing and walking. Its an area rich in ancient myths and legends, and tales abound on magical beings and creatures. The Welsh have a much older history than the English and their national emblem is the mythical dragon. The area is also famous for producing the worlds first serious rock climbers, tough young lads from Manchester and Liverpool who went on to conquer the worlds highest peaks and laid the foundation for the modern sport of rock climbing. The lads we climbed with were all tough and street wise and not your average "new age-rs" if you understand.

One stormy night after closing time we walked down the valley between the high mountains after a night in the pub, the great British climbers of the '50's and '60s have all signed the walls in the pub, we spent an evening studying them.. ;) On returning to our tent we found the wind had snapped our ridge pole and the tent was basically a right off.

We were camped near an area known as "the boulders" which are huge lumps of rock as big as a house which had long ago fallen off the famous climbing crags on either side of the steep glacial valley. So we climbed in under one of these massive boulders, there was enough room for maybe four or five to slide in and you could get deep enough under the boulder for wind and rain not to get at you. It was quite comfortable really. We didn't really care too much about being out in the mountains without much shelter, we were young and strong and probably numbed by the effects of alcohol. Not long after I fell asleep.

At some point during the night I was woken by a clear distant beautiful singing. It wasn't loud or especially strong, the nearest thing I could say it sounded like to me would be a young child singing or possibly a female singing. At first I thought I was dreaming because I didn't realise were I was or anything. And then I thought it must be coming from outside but then as I came more to my senses I soon realised it was still raining and quite windy and the likelihood of any sound coming to us from revellers returning rather late from the pub or a nearby tent was pretty remote because the wind would simply carry the sound away. There were only one or two other people camped in the valley, it wasn't really allowed. And I knew the sound of other people returning to their tents it was quite familiar to me and this wasn't anything like it. On a windy night the voices are sometimes

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