From Wales comes this tale of young Huw, whose lilting harp music enchants Tylwyth Teg, the magic people of Bearded Lake.From the depths of the black lake comes the gift of a beautiful silver cow; and the cow is magic, for its milk is three times as rich as the milk of an ordinary cow, and she gives three times as much.Huw's father is a selfish and greedy man, and his wealth makes him greedier than ever. Huw tries to make his father see the magic, but he scoffs at Tylwyth Teg...until they seek their revenge.Told with a rhythm that evokes the Welsh language, Susan Cooper has brought new life to this ancient tale. Warwick Hutton's evocative illustrations capture the magic of this fateful story.

SUSAN COOPER is best known for her acclaimed sequence of fantasy novels known as The Dark Is Rising which includes OVER SEA, UNDER STONE; THE DARK IS RISING (1974 Newbery Honor book); GREENWITCH; THE GREY KING (1976 Newbery Award book); and SILVER ON THE TREE. Her novels for young readers also include SEAWARD and DAWN OF FEAR. She has written three books for younger children as well: THE SILVER COW, THE SELKIE GIRL, and TAM LIN, all illustrated by Warwick Hutton. In collaboration with actor Hume Cronyn, she wrote the Broadway play Foxfire and -- for Jane Fonda -- the television film The Dollmaker, for which they received the Humanitas Prize in 1985. Born in Buckinghamshire, England, Susan Cooper moved to the United States in 1963 and now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Once upon a time, high in the green hills of Wales, there lived a farmer named Gwilym Hughes. His small stone farmhouse was bleak and lonely, and his black cattle wandered the mountain.

Not far from his farm was a lake, up on a ledge of the mountain where you would not expect a lake to be. Today it is called Llyn Barfog in English, "the bearded lake" because of the starry white waterlilies that fringe its dark water. But the water-lilies were not there then.

Gwilym Hughes was a man with a heart as small and mean as his beady black eyes. Every day of the year he sent his small son Huw out to look after the cattle. Huw would rather have gone to school, like the boys in the village below the mountain, but Gwilym Hughes would have none of that. "I am a poor man," he said. "My son must work."

He would not even let Huw take his harp to the pasture, to make music while he watched the cows. "Do you want the cows dancing off the mountain?" he said. "I'm a poor man. It is milk for the market we need, not music in the empty air."

But every now and again, when his father was not looking, Huw would take his harp with him under his arm. Bronwen his mother noticed, but she said nothing. She only shook her head and smiled sadly, and gave him a hug.

Up on the mountain alone, Huw played his harp beside the lake, while the black Welsh cattle chewed away at the grass and paid him no attention. But suddenly one day he knew that somebody was listening, and he looked up from his music and saw a strange shining cow, looking at him from deep brown eyes.

Copyright © 1983 by Susan Cooper

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Excerpted from The Silver Cow: A Welsh Tale by Susan Cooper
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.