Back in 1992, when I was about 5 years old, my great-grandmother (the last remaining one) died. My grandparents (then in their 40s) and my parents (then in their 20s) then had to make ready her house to sell. In the process they discovered a small box buried in the garden, not too deep, which contained a journal (with no mention of a year to date it), some drawings of flowers on cards labelled with their name, a copy of the Bible, and a ring. After some researching no-one could find the owner of these artefacts and we're 99% sure that they aren't from our family.
The journal and flower-cards, are all written in Welsh in a very old-fashioned cursive script - very beautiful but almost impossible to read (the Bible is in Welsh, too). Seeing as no-one in the family now spoke Welsh (the now deceased great-grandmother being the last family member to be L1 Welsh) the journal was indecipherable. My grandfather decided to go to an elderly woman in his street who was a Welsh-speaker and familiar with the handwriting style (indeed, she had been a Welsh medium teacher in her day). She dictated translations for him every day until the journal was done, which he hand-wrote because tablets weren't a thing in 1992. (It turns out that the journal wasn't anything of great interest, but they thought it may help to discover its author if they translated it.) The flower-cards are gorgeous, they're now framed and hang in my grandparents' house; they're roughly the size of tarot cards, with very delicate drawing of flowers in what I think is pencil with faint colouring.
Anyway – this story has inspired a project. The conceit is that I find a book buried in my own garden, an ancient looking thing covered in letters which look like nothing I've ever seen - certainly nothing which we could call "European". After being in possession of this book for a few days I find that I can read the strange script - and understand the language in which it is written. So I decide to translate it. It is a book written by a great lore-master of the ancient world - more ancient than Ancient Greece - from a world so old there's barely anything left of it. The book contains an account of the Earth's creation (as they held it to be) as well as legends involving gods and heroes, and documentation on customs, languages, calendars, etc. I have decided to translate this tome and present it, like the original, in a single volume. Whether I ever get time to actually realise this vision is another matter entirely. I've written many short stories over the years, one of my favourites is my own version of the tragedy of Gelert the hound, which could easily be turned to be included within the same world of connected mythic stories. How, exactly, I connect this "lost world" to the modern world I have not yet decided, that may be some years away yet. But now that I have an idea for a home for my conlangs I am more eager than ever to finish them.
Just thought I'd share the story.
