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Title: The Piskey-Purse
Legends and Tales of North Cornwall
Author: Enys Tregarthen
Illustrator: J. Ley Pethybridge
Release Date: August 28, 2011 [EBook #37245]
Language: English
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THE PISKEY-PURSE
Legends and Tales of North Cornwall
By
ENYS TREGARTHEN
Illustrated by
J. LEY PETHYBRIDGE
London
Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., Ltd.
3, Paternoster Buildings, E.C.
And 44, Victoria Street, Westminster
INTRODUCTION
The tales given in this small volume, with one exception, are from
North Cornwall, where I have always lived.
The scene of 'The Piskey-Purse' is from Polzeath Bay (in maps called
Hayle Bay, which is not its local name), in St. Minver parish. This
charming spot was once much frequented by the Piskeys and other fairy
folk, and many a quaint story used to be told about them by the old
people of that place, which some of us still remember. The spot most
favoured by the Piskeys for dancing was Pentire Glaze cliffs, where,
alas! half a dozen lodging-houses now stand. But the marks of fairy
feet are not, they say, all obliterated, and the rings where Piskeys
danced may yet be seen on the great headland of Pentire, and tiny
paths called 'Piskey Walks' are still there on the edge of some of
the cliffs.
'The Magic Pail' is a West Cornwall story, the scene of which is
laid on a moorland between Carn Kenidzhek (the Hooting Carn) and
Carn Boswavas, and not a great distance from the once-celebrated Ding
Dong tin-mine.
The ancient town of Padstow provides the 'Witch in the Well'; lovely
Harlyn Bay, in the parish of St. Merryn, is the scene of 'Borrowed Eyes
and Ears'; and the 'Little White Hare' is from the Vale of Lanherne,
at St. Mawgan in Pydar.
Readers will gather from these tales that we have several kinds of
fairies in Cornwall--the Good Little People, the Merry Little People,
and the Bad Little People. To the latter belong the Spriggans, who are
spiteful and lovers of money, and who have all the hidden treasures
in their keeping. The Merry Little People are the Piskeys and the
Nightriders, and are the best known of all the Wee Folk. The Piskeys
are always dancing, laughing, and 'carrying on.' Their special delight
is in leading the traveller astray, and who is at their mercy till
he turns a garment inside out. The Nightriders take horses out of
the stable and ride them over the moors and downs when their owners
are in bed.
There are many quaint accounts as to the origin of the Cornish
fairies. According to one tradition they are the Druids, who, because
they opposed Christianity when it was first preached in Cornwall,
were made to dwindle in size till they became the Little People they
now are. The worst opposers of the Christian Faith dwindled to ants!
Another tradition says that the Wee Folk are the original inhabitants
of Cornwall, who lived here long centuries before the Birth Star of
the Babe of Bethlehem was seen in the East. In North Cornwall they
are still sometimes called the 'little Ancient People.'
Whoever the Cornish fairies are, and whatever their origin, they
are not without their interest from the folklore point of view, and
we hope that these stories about them will be pleasing, not only to
Cornish people themselves, but to those who come to visit 'the land
outside England.'
I am indebted to my kind publishers for their deep interest in these
folklore tales, and to Mr. J. Ley Pethybridge, a Cornishman, for so
faithfully depicting many of the scenes referred to.
ENYS TREGARTHEN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Piskey-Purse 1
II. The Magic Pail 59
III. The Witch in the Well 111
IV. Borrowed Eyes and Ears 168
V. The Little White Hare 191
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
'The ugly little creature sped away, followed by
three wee hares' Frontispiece
Polzeath Bay 1
'She opened wide her pinafore so that the tiny
Brown Man could take them out' 7
'"That is the wishtest news I've heard"' 22
'"See if they will fit you"' 35
'"Will you help me, dear little Mister Spriggan?"' 37
'The Shoes began to take her over that dreadful bog' 43
'She saw standing out in the semi-darkness a great Tolmên' 47
A Cornish Tin-mine 59
'A tiny old woman with a small costan, or bramble-basket,
on her back' 65
'"However did 'ee manage to lift the cheeld on to
your lap?"' 73
'It hovered over the uplifted Pail' 82
Carn Kenidzhek 110
'"Fly up!" cackled the old hag' 121
'The little white dog seemed to bend his head in thought' 125
'The stone was on the hearthstone, burning away
like a faggot' 145
'Over the moor and across the downs they all went' 161
Tamarisk Lane 168
'She put her shrimping-net under the whirling
brightness and caught it' 173
'Bowed like a courtier' 180
'The small White Hare suffered him to stroke its fur' 195
'Took up the Magic Horn and put it to his mouth' 204
'He had not expected to see her half so beautiful' 205
'In the glow of the setting sun' 207
THE PISKEY-PURSE
Under a hill, and facing Polzeath Bay, a wild, desolate but magnificent
porth on the north coast of Cornwall, stood a small stone cottage,
thatched with reed, and with tiny casement windows. It was enclosed
by a low hedge, also built of stone, which many generations of
orange-coloured lichens, pennycakes and moss, had made pleasant to
look at and soft to sit on.
The cottage and hedge thus confronting the porth, with its beach of
grey-gold sand, commanded the great headland that flanked it on its
north side, and leagues and leagues of shining water stretching away
to where the sun went down. Three people lived in this cottage--a
very old woman called Carnsew, and her two great-grandchildren--Gerna
and Gelert.
They were a lonely trio, for they were the only people living at the
bay at that time.
The children had nobody but themselves to play with, and nothing much
to do all day long save to pick limpets for their Great-Grannie's
ducks, and to help her a bit in the houseplace and in the garden,
which grew very little except potatoes, cabbages, herbs, and
gillyflowers. They never went to school, for there was no school for
them to go to, even if their great-grandmother could have afforded
to send them, which she could not; but in spite of that, they were
not ignorant children, and although they did not know A from B, they
knew a great deal about the Small People, or fairies, of which there
were many kinds in the Cornish land.
The Great-Grannie having lived ninety odd years in the world, was well
up in everything relating to the Small People, or she thought she was,
and it was she who told her great-grandchildren about them.
Gerna and Gelert cared most to hear about what they called their own
dear Wee Folk--the merry little Piskeys--who, Great-Grannie said,
lived in one of the googs or caverns down in their bay.
Piskey Goog, as their particular cavern was called, was half-way
down the beach in Great Pentire itself, and just beyond Pentire Glaze
Hawn. On the top of the cliff were large Rings, where the merry Little
People held their gammets, or games, and danced in the moonshine.
The children often sat on the hedge of their cottage to watch the
Piskeys dancing, and, as the hedge was in view of Pentire Glaze cliffs,
they could hear the Piskeys laughing, which they did so heartily that
sometimes Gerna and Gelert could not help laughing too. They could
also see their lights--Piskey-lights they called them--flashing on
the turf until they sometimes wondered if a hundred little dinky
[1]-fires were burning there.
One June evening, when the moon was getting near her full and making
everything beautiful, even the dark headland standing grimly out from
the soft sky, the Piskeys, as they thought, were again holding their
revels on the top of the cliff, and as they danced the Rings seemed
one blaze, and their laughter broke more frequently than ever on the
quiet of the evening. There was no other sound to be heard save the
far-off growl of the sea, for the tide was down.
Gerna and her brother were on the hedge as usual, and as they watched
the dark moving figures and the flashing of the little fires they
longed that they, too, could join the dancers.
When the fun seemed to be at its height, the Piskey-lights went
suddenly out, and a weird cry, like the cry of a sea-bird proclaiming
a storm, broke on the silence, which so startled the children that
they gripped each other's hands in trembling amazement. Then they saw
in the moonshine hundreds and hundreds of tiny dark figures, all in a
line, on the edge of the cliffs from Pentire Glaze Hawn to the cliff
above Piskey Goog, some of whom seemed to be bending over the cavern;
and then they disappeared.
The day following, Great-Grannie sent Gelert up to St. Hinver
Churchtown, a village three miles from Polzeath, on an errand, and
Gerna down to the bay to pick limpets. The little girl had picked half
a basketful when she saw a dozen or more Piskey-purses lying by the
side of a rock-pool. Leaving her basket near a seaweed-covered rock,
she went to get them.
Her Great-Grannie had told her and Gelert that these brown, skin-like
things so often found in this bay were used by the Piskeys to
keep their gold in, and if they were ever lucky enough to find
a Piskey-purse with their coins in it they would be rich as a
Spriggan. [2]
Gerna and her brother never forgot this: not that the dear little
maid loved money, or wanted to be rich, for she certainly did not;
but her Great-Grannie did, and so did her brother; and so, for their
sakes, whenever Gerna saw a Piskey-purse she stooped and picked it
up to see if it contained any golden pieces. But the only gold she
had ever found in them were grains of sand!
When the little girl had picked up all the brown bags she could see,
to look into at her leisure, her soft blue eyes were attracted
by a light-brown mottled thing half-hidden under a bunch of wet
seaweed. Taking it up, she found it was a Piskey-purse, at least in
shape, but it was of a much lighter colour, and all over it were tiny
golden rings, with a halo of silver round each, like rays shooting out
from a sun. Its skin was not flat like all the other Piskey-purses she
had ever seen. It was quite plump, and rather soft, like a half-ripe
gooseberry, and closed at both ends, which was also unusual.
As she was wondering if it were a Piskey-purse, a tiny voice,
no bigger than a wren's, only far sweeter, came out of the purse,
which so frightened the child that she nearly dropped it.
'Hide me quickly in your pocket,' it said. 'They are coming out on
the bar to look for this purse, but please don't let them find it.'
Gerna was too terrified to do other than she was asked, and lifting
the skirt of her tinker-blue frock, she dropped the mottled purse
into the depths of an unbleached pocket tied under her frock.
She had scarcely done so when she saw a tiny kiskey [3] of a man come
out of Piskey Goog, followed by a score of others much like himself.
They all had on three-cornered hats and knee-breeches, their tiny
sticks of legs were encased in black stockings, and on their feet
they wore low-heeled buckled shoes.
Apparently they did not see Gerna, who was standing on the edge of
the pool with her pinafore half-full of brown Piskey-purses.
Their little faces, which were not pleasant to look at, for
they were brown and withered--much more withered and brown than
the Great-Grannie's--were bent on the sand. It was easy to tell,
by the way they were turning over every bit of seaweed, that they
were searching for something.
As one of the wee Dark Men--it was the first who came out of the
goog--turned his face seaward, he caught sight of Gerna standing by
the pool.
Instead of his disappearing into the cavern, as Great-Grannie told
her the Small People would do when they saw anybody looking at them,
he took off his little three-cornered hat and came towards her,
and Gerna, poor little maid, was too frightened to run away.
'May I ask what you have got in your pinny' (pinafore), 'which you
are holding so tight?' he asked, with what was meant to be a most
fascinating smile, but which only terrified her the more.
'Only Piskey-purses, please, little mister,' she gasped, 'which I
was a-going to look into when I've got time.'
'What did you hope to find there, eh?'
'Some of the dear little Piskeys' golden money,' answered the child.
'Did you? You are a nice little girl' (she was a giantess compared
with him) 'to want the Small People's gold, and I hope one of the
purses has some. May I look into them for you and see?'
'Iss, if you like,' cried Gerna; and, sitting down on the sand, she
opened wide her pinafore, so that the tiny Brown Man could take them
out, which, however, he did not do.
'The Small People never put anything of value into these common brown
things,' he said disdainfully, just glancing at the purses in her
lap. 'The bags into which we put our golden money are much prettier,
and are painted all over with golden rings, with dashes of white, like
this,' making tiny strokes with his finger on the sand. 'If you ever
find such a purse you will indeed be a lucky little maid--that is,
if you take it into Piskey Goog and put it on a shelf of rock there,
which is what I want you to do. We value these ring-marked purses
more than I can tell you,' he continued, as Gerna did not speak,
'and are greatly troubled when we lose one of them; we have done so
now, and shall never be happy any more until we find it.'
'My dear life!' ejaculated the child.
'In return for your kindness, if you find the bag we have lost and
bring it to Piskey Goog, we will give you another something like it,
full of gold, and you will be quite rich, and be able to buy anything
you want.'
'My dear soul and body!' ejaculated Gerna again.
'I mean what I say,' continued the man, looking up into the little
maid's open face with a glitter in his twinkling black eyes, which
were no bigger than a robin's eyes, and not nearly so soft. 'But I
warn you that if you do find this purse, you must not tell anybody
of your great find, but bring it straight to Piskey Goog.'
Whilst he was impressing this upon Gerna, who was getting over her
fear of the little Brown Man, she remembered the mottled purse in
her pocket, and was on the point of telling him, when a great voice
roared out over the bay, and, on looking round, she saw a man called
Farmer Vivian coming across the bar.
The great voice, or Farmer Vivian himself, she did not know which,
so frightened the Brown Piskey Man that he took to his heels, and in
less than a minute he and all the other Little Men had vanished into
their cavern.
Gerna was on the point of following him thither, for she was almost
certain that the mottled purse she had found was the one they had
lost, when a great wave broke over the rock where she was standing,
and nearly knocked her down, and she had to run away from the cavern
to escape another wave.
As she turned to go back to her limpet-picking, she found the limpet
rocks were all covered with the incoming tide; her basket, poised
high on a breaker and upside down, was fortunately thrown in on the
sands at her feet.
'Great-Grannie will be terribly put out,' she told herself as she went
home, 'and the poor little ducklings will have to go without supper.'
The ancient dame was even more vexed than Gerna thought she would be,
and sent her at once to bed, and Gelert had to sit on the hedge alone
to watch the Piskeys dancing; but they never appeared on the headland,
for all his watching.
As Gerna was undressing, the pocket under her frock began to twitch
and shake as if it had St. Vitus's dance. As she hastened to untie
it, the little voice she had heard in the mottled purse before the
Wee Men came out of the cavern spoke to her again.
'Please take me out of your pocket; I want so much to talk to you.'
The child, though somewhat afraid, did so, and held the bag carefully
in her hand.
'I cannot tell you how thankful I feel that you did not take me to
Piskey Goog, as that little Brown Man asked you to do.'
'Did you hear what he said?' asked Gerna, greatly surprised.
'Every word; and I was so afraid you would tell him you had found
me. It would have been too dreadful if you had, especially after they
dropped me by accident over the cliff, as they did, and haven't been
able to find me since.'
'However did you get into this purse?' asked the child.
'Hager, the King of the Spriggans, put me in here and sealed me up,
so that I should not get out,' said the little voice.
'Whatever for?'
'Because I wouldn't marry him, and because he was afraid somebody
else I loved was going to marry me.'
'He can't be a very nice king,' said Gerna. 'I am glad I didn't take
the purse to the cavern, as you are inside. You know, don't you,
that the little brown kiskey of a man promised they would give me a
bag full of gold if I took this purse to their place. Will they?'
'It all depends,' answered the little voice. 'The Spriggans--all those
little Dark Men you saw on the sands were Spriggans--are dreadful
storytellers, and they never keep their word unless they are obliged
to. If they cannot get this purse without having to pay heavily for
it, they will give you what they offered. Do you want to be rich,
dear little maid?' it asked anxiously.
'I don't one bit,' returned the child truthfully; 'but my Great-Grannie
and my brother Gelert do. If they were to know that the little Brown
Man had promised to give me a bag of gold if I take this one to Piskey
Goog, Great-Grannie would make me take it. We are very poor--poor
as a coot, she says.' As the small voice in the purse was silent:
'If I don't take you to the goog, will you give me some of the dear
Little People's golden money?'
'I have no gold to give,' said the voice very sadly. 'And if I had,
I would not like to give it you, for it would not bring you real
happiness. But if you take me down to the cavern, as the Spriggan
suggested, you will break my heart. Hager, [4] who is even crueller
than his name, will never let me escape from him any more.'
'But I wasn't going to take you to the goog,' said Gerna. 'I should
let you out first, of course.'
'It is very kind of you to say so,' said the little voice, with a
tremble in it. 'But you would not be able to open this purse, which,
by the way, is not a purse at all, but a prison.'
'I guess I could,' cried the child. 'My hands are ever so strong,
and if they can get limpets off the rocks, they can open this tiny
little thing, I'm sure. I'll open it now, this very minute.'
Her strong young fingers began tugging at the end of the bag, but to
her surprise she could not open it.
After working for ten minutes or more, she gave up in despair.
'I told you so,' said the tiny voice sadly. 'Much stronger fingers
than yours could not open this prison-bag, and no knife, however sharp,
could cut its skin.'
'Why could it not?' asked the little maid.
'Because a spell has been worked upon it,' the wee voice answered.
'I don't know what you mean,' said Gerna.
'When Hager put me here,' explained the voice, 'he was so afraid the
dear Little People, and those who loved me, would discover where he had
put me, and find out a way to release me, that he made it impossible
by an evil spell that anybody--even himself--should be able to set me
free for ninety-nine years three hundred and sixty-five days, unless
a very poor little girl could be found who had no love of gold in
her soul, nor any greed for riches, and who, out of the deep pity of
a kind little heart, would be willing to carry me for love's sake,
in the dead of night, through a great bog haunted by hobgoblins,
over a lonely moor to where a Tolmên [5] stands, and pass me three
times through the Tolmên's hole before the sun rises, and then lay
me on its top, so that the first ray of the rising sun might smite
upon the bag. This will break the spell and set me free.'
'What a terrible lot for a little maid to do!' cried Gerna. 'I don't
believe one will ever be found to do all that, however kind she is.'
'That is just what Hager believed,' said the voice sadly. 'And yet
I was once hopeful that such a dear little child would be found,
or rather would find this purse with its helpless prisoner inside,
and take compassion on me. But as the long years dragged on, and no
such little maiden came to my help, hope died within me, and I was in
utter despair, until you discovered me half hidden under some seaweed,
picked me up, and brought me hither. And now hope has begun to revive
in my heart again.'
'Have you been in this prison-purse a long time?' asked Gerna, who
dimly felt that the poor little prisoner was appealing to her pity.
'A very long time,' sighed the little voice--'one hundred years all
but a few days.'
'My goodness gracious!' exclaimed the little Cornish maid in
great amazement. 'How terrible old you must be--older even than my
Great-Grannie, who is ever so much past ninety.'
'I suppose I am old, as you count age,' said the little voice, in
which Gerna detected a laugh.
'Have you really been in this bag ninety-nine years?' she asked,
not being able to get over her surprise.
'Yes; and I am grieved to say the hour for my release has almost
come. Before the birth of the new moon, which is on Friday next,
Hager will take me out, if no child before that time carries me over
the bog and moor, and passes me through the Tolmên.'
'Was it only 'cause you wouldn't marry that old Spriggan king you
got put into this prison?' asked Gerna.
'Yes, that was the only reason,' answered the little voice. 'I happened
to be beautiful, you see, and because of my beauty he stole me away
from my own dear little True Love, who was just going to marry me. If
it ends, as I fear it will, in his getting me into his power again,
I and my True Love will break our hearts.'
'But I shouldn't think anybody would want to marry you now, if you are
so old as you say you are,' cried Gerna, with all a child's candour,
thinking of her shrivelled, toothless old great-grandmother.
'And yet Hager, in spite of my age, is waiting impatiently for the
waning of the moon to marry me,' said the little voice, with another
sigh. 'I overheard him talking about it to some of his people, and
what grand doings they would have then, and how they would send an
invitation to all the dear Little People--my own True Love included--to
come to the wedding.'
'What a horrid person he must be!' cried Gerna indignantly. 'Why ever
didn't your little True Love come and take you away?'
'He can't, because of the spells Hager worked upon this bag.'
'Haven't you seen your little True Love all those long years?' asked
the child.
'Not once. But I thought I heard his voice when the little Brown Man
was telling you to bring the ring-marked purse to Piskey Goog.'
'There was nobody on the beach except those little Dark Men searching
for this purse and Farmer Vivian,' said Gerna. 'Farmer Vivian is a
great big man, and lives up at Pentire Glaze Farm. He is very kind,
and he do love all the Little People dearly.'
'How do you know he does?' asked the little voice eagerly.
'My Great-Grannie told me he did, and she do know. This little cottage
of ours belongs to him, and he al'ays talks to her about the Wee Folk
when she goes up to his house to pay the rent. There! Great-Gran
is calling up the stairs to ask if I'm in bed. I shall have to put
'ee back into my big pocket now. I hope you won't mind.'
'Not one bit. The only thing I do mind is being given into Hager's
power. You won't take me to Piskey Goog, whatever the little Brown
Man offers you, will you, dear?'
'Not unless Great-Grannie finds out I've got you an' makes me,'
said the child, putting the purse very carefully into the unbleached
pocket. 'I hope she won't go looking into it when she comes up to bed.'
'Can't you hide the pocket somewhere?' asked the little voice
anxiously.
'I can put it into the big chest here by the window,' said Gerna,
looking around the mean little chamber, which was very bare. 'A storm
washed it in on the bar last winter, and Great-Gran don't keep nothing
in it but her best clothes.'
'Then put me into the chest,' piped the little voice. 'And please
come and take me out to-morrow as soon as you can. It cheers me to
hear the voice of a friend, and I believe you are a true friend,
you dear little maid!'
The child dropped the pocket into the great sea-chest very quickly,
for the ancient dame again called up the stairs to ask if she were
in bed, and then came up to see if she were.
Great-Grannie did not get up until quite late the next day, and when
she did she sent Gerna to the beach to pick limpets for the ducks,
and Gelert to weed the small potato plot at the back of the cottage,
a work he hated doing.
When the little girl got to the bay the tide was only half-way down,
and it was ever so long before she could get near the limpet rocks. But
as soon as the tide let her she began her limpet-picking, and never
looked round once.
Her basket was half full when she heard a sharp little voice behind
her.
'Have you found the purse I told you of?'
'I haven't looked yet to-day,' said the child, without glancing
round. 'I lost all my limpets yesterday through picking up
Piskey-purses, an' my Great-Grannie was ever so cross. She sent me to
bed without any supper; an' the poor little ducks had to go without
their supper too.'
'I am so sorry,' said the little Brown Man, climbing the rock to be
on a level with her face; 'but I would not let such a small matter
as that prevent me from looking for that purse with its gold ring
markings. Your Great-Grannie will never be vexed with you any more
when you have found it, and receive another one full of the Small
People's gold in exchange.'
'How did you come to lose your purse?' asked the child, anxious to
hear what he would say.
'Unfortunately, I took it with me a night or two ago to the cliff
above our dwelling-place, where we have our games, and by a terrible
misfortune I dropped it over the cliff. I and my relations have been
looking for it ever since. I have come here to-day to renew the offer
I made yesterday. You would like to be rich, wouldn't you?'
'We are terrible poor!' said the child evasively--'the poorest people
in St. Minver parish, Great-Grannie said.'
'Are you really, you poor things?' said the little Brown Man
kindly. 'Then, in that case I will double my reward if you find the
purse. I will give you two purses full of the Small People's golden
money instead of only one. It must, however, be brought to Piskey
Goog before the next new moon, and as the present one is in her last
quarter, there is not much time to lose, is there?'
'No,' said the child, still going on with her limpet-picking.
'Won't you go and look for it now?' asked the little Brown Man, with a
hint of impatience in his voice. 'The tide will be on the flow again
soon, and your chance for to-day will be gone.'
'I must fill my basket with limpets first,' said Gerna; 'Grannie
raises ducks to sell to the gentry, and we can't afford for them to
lose a meal, she says.'
'You are like a limpet yourself; there is no moving you against your
will,' cried the little man, scowling, 'and----'
What else he would have said there was no knowing, for Farmer Vivian
appeared on the sands at that moment, and shouted across the gray-gold
bar, and this caused the little Piskey Man to take to his heels and
run into his cavern.
Gerna did not stay on the beach after the wee Brown Man had
disappeared--she felt afraid somehow--and she went home with only half
a basketful of limpets. This so put out Great-Grannie that she vowed
she would send her down to the porth again to find more, if one of
her precious ducklings hadn't taken it into its head to have a fit,
which so bewildered her that she sent Gelert instead!
What with the sick duckling to attend to, and other little chores the
child had to do for the ancient dame, she had not a minute to steal
up to the little chamber.
When at last she thought she was free, Gelert rushed into the cottage
all excitement.
'What do you think?' he cried, 'the dear little Piskey Men are out on
the sands looking for a Piskey-purse. They have lost one, they told
me, and whoever finds it and takes it into Piskey Goog shall have a
purse full of the Small People's golden money.'
'You don't mean for to say so?' exclaimed the old woman. 'To think
of it now! Go along, both of 'ee,' glancing at Gerna, 'an' search
for that purse until you do find it.'
'I've searched and searched till I'm tired,' said the boy, 'an' I would
have gone on searching if the old sea wasn't tearing in like mad.'
'Oh dear, what a pity!' cried the Great-Grannie. 'We must all go an'
look for that purse to-morrow. I wouldn't have us lose our chance
of being rich for anything. Now,' turning to Gerna, 'make haste an'
get our suppers, for the boy must be as hungry as a hedger after
such work.'
When the supper was ready, and as they were eating, Gelert remarked:
'I forgot to tell you, Great-Grannie, that the little Brown Men told
me it was noised about that Farmer Vivian is going to sell all his
land--this little cottage too--and that we are to be turned out.'
'That is the wishtest [6] news I've heard this longful time,' wailed
the old woman. 'There isn't another cottage down here, and all the
little houses up to Trebetherick an' Churchtown is more rent than I
could ever pay.'
'We shall be able to live in a great big house--the biggest house in
the parish--when we've found that purse and got the other with the
golden pennies, the little Piskey Man told me,' said the boy. 'The
money will come just when we most want it--won't it, Great-Gran dear?'
'It will,' chuckled the ancient dame; 'an' we must give ourselves no
rest till we find that purse.'
'I feared you had forgotten me,' said the sweet wee voice in the
Piskey-bag an hour later, when Gerna had taken it out of the chest.
'I hadn't forgotten you,' said the child a little sadly; 'but I
couldn't come before, 'cause----'
'Because what?' asked the little voice anxiously. 'You have not come
to give me into the power of the Spriggans, have you?'
'Not now, but I am afraid I shall have to,' said Gerna.
And she then told her how the little Brown Man had come to her again,
and how he had doubled his offer if she brought the lost purse to
the goog. She also told her all the news Gelert had brought up from
the beach, and of Farmer Vivian selling his cottage.
'There isn't a word of truth about his selling your cottage,' said the
little voice indignantly. 'He is far too kind to turn an old woman and
two little children like you out of your home. It is because he is good
that the Spriggans are afraid of him and speak of him so unkindly.'
'But if it should be true,' persisted Gerna, 'will you give me a
purseful of golden money if I don't take you to the goog?'
'How quickly you forget, child! I told you but yesterday that I
had no gold to give you,' said the little voice. 'Surely you do not
love money more than you do kindness and pity? And you are going to
commit an unkind deed--for it will be an unkind deed if you sell me
for gold. Woe is me!'
'But the purse belongs to the Spriggan King,' said Gerna, as if to
excuse herself. 'I shall be only giving him what belongs to him.'
'That is quite true. But I do not belong to him; I belong to my
Mammie and Daddy and my own little True Love, whom I shall never,
never see again if you take me to Piskey Goog. And I shall be dead
to them for ever and ever and ever!'
'Then I won't let those nasty little Dark People have 'ee, whatever
they do offer,' cried the child. 'I only wish I could take 'ee over
that bog an' moor you told me of to the Tolmên.'
'A wish is father to the deed,' said the little voice somewhat more
cheerfully. 'If you really desire to do that act of pity,' it added,
after a pause, 'you have not much time to lose, for the moon is on
the wane, and there are only three clear days to the birth of the
new moon.'
'I wish I wasn't afraid of being out alone in the dark,' said the
child, shuddering. 'I am a wisht coward when it is dark. So I'm
afraid I shall never be brave enough to take 'ee to the Tolmên,
though I want to, dreadful. But I'll never let the Spriggans have
'ee, dear,' she added, greatly distressed, as a groan terrible in its
despair came out of the bag. 'Don't 'ee make so wisht a sound. It do
make me sad to hear 'ee.'
'I can't help it,' said the wee voice, which was as full of tears as
ever a voice could be. 'Not even love can keep me from the Spriggans
after the moon is born. All power to resist them will be gone, and they
can come into this cottage unseen by human eyes and take me away. They
suspect where I am now, and are only afraid I have discovered a child
who is not only no lover of money, but who is kind enough to take me
to the Tolmên.'
'Whatever will 'ee do!' cried Gerna, tears welling to her eyes. 'I
don't believe I shall be happy any more if I know those ghastly little
Spriggans have 'ee.'
'I don't believe you would, you dear little maid.'
'I tell 'ee what,' cried the child, making a big resolve: 'I will
take---- There! Great-Grannie is coming up the stairs. Good-night
till to-morrow.'
The ancient dame was up with the sun the next day, and made Gerna
and Gelert get up too, that no time might be lost in looking for the
Piskey-purse. She would hardly give them time to eat their breakfast,
so greedy was she to have the Small People's golden money.
As she was taking down her sunbonnet, she knocked over a heavy piece
of wood, which fell on her big toe, and it hurt her so badly that,
much to her vexation, she had to let the children go without her.
The tide was in when they got down to the bay, and so smooth and still
was it that 'it couldn't wash up anything, even if it wanted to,'
said Gelert crossly.
He turned over all the seaweed at high-water mark, but saw nothing
except sea-fleas.
When the tide was far enough down, Gerna went all over the beach with
her brother; but as she had already found the lost purse, she picked
up shells instead.
'I don't b'lieve you want to find the Piskey-purse, Gerna Carnsew,'
growled Gelert, when he saw what she was doing. 'I don't b'lieve you
want to have the Small People's golden pieces one little bit.'
'I didn't say I did,' cried Gerna, which made the boy so angry that
he went off to the other side of the bar to look for the purse alone.
Gerna was stooping to pick up a shell, of which there were many on
the sands to-day, when the little Brown Man came up to her, doffed
his three-cornered hat, and grinned into her face.
'Have you found our lost purse yet?' he asked. 'The time for finding
it is up the day after to-morrow.'
'Whatever do you mean, little mister?'
'What I say, and that your chance of being wealthy will be gone. Are
you looking for the precious bag now?'
'My Great-Grannie sent me and Gelert down here to look for it,' said
the child evasively. 'Gelert is over there looking,' again sending
her glance across the bar, which was particularly beautiful to-day
with reflected clouds.
'I know he is, and he seems much more anxious to find the purse
than you are. Perhaps our offer, great as it was, is not sufficiently
tempting. If it isn't'--looking keenly into the child's sweet face--'we
will treble our reward. Three purses full of the Wee Folks' golden
money will we give you if you bring us the bag. It will be more than
enough to buy all the land in your parish, including your own dear
little cottage, should it ever be sold.'
'Will it really?' cried Gerna, deeply impressed, and for the first
time in her innocent young life the desire to be rich came into her
unselfish little soul.
'Yes; and you will be a very great lady indeed,' said the small Dark
Man, with an evil laugh, seeing he had gained a point--'greater even
than Lady Sandys, who lives up at St. Minver Churchtown.'
He might have said many more things to entice the poor little maid's
envy; but just then a great voice above their heads startled them,
and, looking up, Gerna saw Farmer Vivian on the top of Tristram,
a hill facing Pentire Glaze.
The Spriggan took to his heels at once, and there was a helter-skelter
amongst all the Little Men, whom she had not seen on the sands until
then, and one and all rushed into Piskey Goog, as if a regiment of
soldiers were after them.
Gelert continued his search for the purse until the sea flowed in
again, and Gerna sat on a rock picturing to herself what the Churchtown
folk would say to her when she bought all the land in the parish,
and became a person of even greater importance than Lady Sandys. As
she was enjoying all this wealth in anticipation, it suddenly rushed
upon her at what price she would buy her riches--the happiness of
a poor little helpless thing in a Spriggan's prison--and she felt
so ashamed of herself that the desire for gold died within her, and
such pity for her little friend came in its place that she was now
quite determined to take the bag over the bog country to the moor
where the Tolmên was, cost her what it might.
When the children came home, Great-Grannie was all eagerness to know
if the purse were found, and when Gelert told her it was not, and that
Gerna had been looking for shells instead of the lost Piskey-purse,
her anger knew no bounds, and she smacked the poor little maid,
and once more sent her supperless to bed.
'I wish all the Spriggans' gold would be swallowed up in the sea,' said
poor Gerna, as she went up to the little bed-chamber. 'Great-Grannie
was never vexed with me before that Dinky Man wanted to make me
rich with his golden pieces. 'Tis better to be poor an' contented,
I reckon, than to be rich and be miserable.'
The ancient dame, finding her toe getting worse, followed her small
great-granddaughter upstairs, and as she did not go down again that
night, Gerna had no chance of speaking to the little prisoner. Nor
had she the next morning, for she was kept so busy, what with bathing
Great-Grannie's injured toe, and all the other odds and ends of things
she had to do before going down to the bay, that she had not a minute
to herself until bedtime.
The old woman, in her desire for gold, no longer considered the
voracious appetites of her numerous ducks, and told the children
that, as the finding of that lost purse was of such great importance,
the limpet-picking must stand over until the purse was found.
Gelert was delighted to be relieved of an uncongenial task, and
went off to search for the purse with a light heart; but Gerna, not
wanting to go to the beach at all, begged to stay at home, which made
Great-Grannie so cross that she said she was not to come back until
she had found it.
Either the clock had gone wrong or the old woman's brain, for it was
much later than she thought, and when the children got down to the bay
the sea was rushing up the sands at such a terrible speed that the time
for searching was very short. It had surrounded the rocks where the
limpets clung when they got there, and was almost up to Piskey Goog.
Gelert went to the other side of the bay at once, leaving Pentire side
to Gerna. But as the little maid knew there was no other purse to find
than the one she had found, she began again to pick up shells. There
were very lovely shells on the sands to-day, all the colours of the
rainbow--in fact, they looked as they lay in the eye of the sun as
if they had fallen from the sky. As the child was stooping to pick
them up, out of the cavern came a troop of little Brown Men, with
the Wee Man who had always spoken to her at the head.
He made at once for the child.
'Picking up shells again!' he cried, 'and all those purses of gold
awaiting you there in the goog! Why, I am beginning to think you do
not want to be rich. Do you?'
'I did issterday, [7] but I don't one little bit now,' said the child,
turning her frank gaze full upon the little Dark Man's upturned face.
'What!' he cried, looking as black as a thundercloud, 'you don't
mean to tell me that you are going to miss the great chance of having
three purses full of the Wee Folks' golden money?'
'Iss, I do,' said the little maid. 'I don't want even one piece of
your old golden money, little Mister Spriggan!'
If the cliff towering above them had tumbled down upon him the little
Dark Man could not have looked more crushed. Then he scowled all over
his face, shook his scrap of a fist at her, and yelled:
'I know now that you found the purse we lost, and that the little
voice within it--it is nothing more than a voice, remember--has
bewitched you as it has others, and that it does not want you to be
rich, happy, and great as we do. You will be sorry all your days you
have lost your opportunity to be rich, and you will find you cannot
even keep the thing which you have found.'
There was a heavy ground sea that day, and the waves were so huge
that Gerna had to go farther up the beach out of their reach, and
when she turned to see what the Dinky Men were doing, she saw them
all slinking into Piskey Goog like whipped dogs.
Great-Grannie was in no better temper than she had been the previous
day at her great-grand-children's failure; and when she asked if Gerna
had been looking for the purse, and Gelert said 'No,' she was so vexed
and cross, she not only thumped the child, but sent her upstairs to
stay the rest of the day.
The poor little maid felt so miserable that she did not take out the
purse and talk to the prisoner for ever so long; but when she did
she told her all she had said to the wee Dark Man.
'Did you really say all that to his face--refuse his gold and call
him a Spriggan?' cried the little voice in amazement.
'I did,' said Gerna; 'an' he did look terrible, sure 'nough.'
'I don't wonder! I am sure now you are brave enough to take me through
the bog and over the moor to the Tolmên. Will you, dear little maid?'
'I want to, if I can,' said the child. 'But I don't know the way to
the Tolmên. There is no Tolmên anywhere near here that I know of.'
'There is one, though nobody seems to know of it, away towards the
sunrising, near where a great Tor rises up against the sky,' said the
little voice quite cheerfully. 'I do not know the way to it myself,
but there is a pair of Shoes which do, and they can take any person
on whose feet they are over the worst bog that ever was.'
'What wonderful shoes!' cried Gerna. 'Where are they?'
'Farmer Vivian has them,' said the little prisoner, with something
in her voice Gerna did not understand. 'They were given him by one
of the Small People. The next time you go down to the beach and see
him there, ask him for these shoes, and if they fit you I shall know
for certain that you are the little maid who can save me.'
'Hush!' whispered Gerna. 'Great-Gran is clopping up the stairs, an'
I must pop into bed afore she comes.'
'Take me into bed with you,' whispered back the little voice, 'and
hide me in the folds of your bed-gown.'
When Gerna was sound asleep, the ancient dame began to look into
every corner of the little chamber, as if she, too, were searching for
something. She turned out all the things, even the child's pockets,
took everything out of the great sea-chest, muttering to herself
as she did so; and then she went to the bed where Gerna slept, and
turned her over on her side, and felt under the clothes and the pillow.
'I was wrong; she ent a-got the purse,' she said aloud to herself,
'an' I thought she had. Aw, dear! I'm afraid we shall never have that
bag an' the Small People's money.'
And then she undressed and got into bed.
But the old woman could not sleep a wink that night, and only dozed
off when Gerna awoke.
The child had only time to drop her little friend into the chest
before Great-Grannie was wide awake again and getting up to dress.
At the flow of the tide the children were again hurried off to
the beach to search for the lost Piskey-purse, the old dame loudly
lamenting that she was not able to go with them, owing to the hurt
to her toe.
The tide was in, and whilst they waited for it to go down, Farmer
Vivian came across the bar, and Gelert, seeing him coming towards them,
made off.
'How is it you haven't been picking limpets lately?' asked the farmer,
with a kindly smile, looking down at Gerna.
'Great-Grannie ordered us to look for a Piskey-purse instead,' said
the little maid dolefully.
Then she remembered what the little voice had asked her to do if she
saw Farmer Vivian.
'Yes,' he said, in answer to her question, 'I have such a pair of
Shoes, and, odd to say, I have them in my pocket. What do you want
them for?'
'To see if they will fit me, please, sir. May I have them now and
try them on?'
'You may, certainly; but I am afraid they are far too small even for
your little feet.'
He dipped his hand into his coat-pocket, and, taking out a tiny pair
of moss-coloured Shoes, he gave them to the child.
'Why, they are dolly's shoes!' she cried; 'only big enough for the
Small People's feet. I am terribly disappointed.'
'Are you? Well, never mind; just see if they will fit you.'
'I will, just for fun,' laughed Gerna; and, putting one of them to
her bare foot, to her unspeakable amazement it began to stretch,
and in a minute it was on!
'Well, I never!' cried Farmer Vivian, and his great voice was so full
of delight that it roared out all over the bar, even louder than Giant
Tregeagle, whose roar of rage is still sometimes heard on St. Minver
sandhills. 'The Shoe has stretching powers, it seems. Try to get on
its fellow.'
Gerna quickly did so, and was as proud as a hen with a brood of chicks
as she stared at her feet.
'You will have to keep them now,' said the farmer, lowering his big
voice to such gentleness and sweetness that she would have thought it
was her own little friend at home in the sea-chest if she had not known
it wasn't. 'A dear little lady gave them to me to keep until I should
find somebody they would fit, and I have waited a very long time for
that somebody. With the Shoes she gave me a Lantern, which she said
must be given with the Shoes;' and once more diving into his pocket,
he fished out the tiniest lantern Gerna had ever seen. 'Just big
enough,' he said, 'to light home a benighted dumbledory' (bumblebee);
and he went away laughing towards the cliffs.
Gerna kept on the Shoes till the tide was down to Piskey Goog, when
she took them off and put them into her underskirt pocket with the
dinky Lantern.
The sands were strewn with Piskey-purses to-day instead of shells,
and as it gave her something to do, she picked up as many as she could
see; and when the tide had gone down to Pentire Hawn, she went near
there and sat on a rock.
So occupied was she with looking into the purses, and asking herself
whether she ever could take the poor little imprisoned fairy across
the bog country that night--for she knew it would have to be to-night
if she took her at all--that she forgot all about the tide, which by
this time had reached its lowest ebb, and was flowing in again.
The sea grew rough as it turned, and began to rush up the great beach
and beat on the outer rocks with a terrible roar.
When Gerna had glanced into the last of her purses she looked about
her, and found to her consternation that the sea was a long way
up the bar, and the rock on which she sat was almost surrounded by
angry water.
It was now quite impossible for her to get to the sands, and the only
place not cut off by the sea was a tiny cove--a mere gash in the cliff
midway between the two hawns, Pentire and Pentire Glaze. As it was,
it was her only place of safety--at least, for a time--and she went
to it at once, and sat down, white and frightened, under the cliff
that towered darkly above her.
After a few minutes she stood up and shouted with all her might for
someone to come to her help, but her shouts were drowned in the loud
thunder of the breakers. She shouted until she was hoarse--for she
did not want to be drowned, poor child, and she knew there was no way
out of the cove except by the cliff, which it was quite impossible
for her to climb--and then she again sat down and wept bitterly.
As she was crying and sobbing, a strange noise above her made her
look up, and there in a tiny hole in the face of the cliff a few feet
above her head she saw the grinning face of a little Dark Man!
'You are caught in a trap,' he said, with a cough, 'and you will
surely be drowned if we do not come to your help.'
'Will you help me, dear little Mister Spriggan?' cried Gerna, hope
dawning in her eyes.
'Yes, if you will bring back to our goog, when the sea goes out,
that precious purse which we know you have found.'
'I cannot do that, 'cause I promised I wouldn't, whatever happened,'
said the child, greatly distressed.
'Oh, then in that case we will leave you to the mercy of the sea! Of
course, it will drown you, and a good thing too, for it will prevent
your doing what the voice asked you to do. We shall have the bag and
it in our hands again to-morrow, whilst you will make a dainty dish
for the fishes' supper!' and the stone clicked and the ugly little
face disappeared.
'Hello! What are you doing down there, and the waves breaking all
around you?' cried a voice far up the cliff, and, turning her tearful
gaze upwards, Gerna saw kind Farmer Vivian--who looked almost as
small as one of the Wee Folk from that great height--looking down upon
her. 'A very good thing I gave you those dinky Shoes this morning. Put
them on quickly. There is not a moment to lose. In the cliff to your
right you will find some steps cut out of the rock. They are very
small indeed, but quite large enough for those little green Shoes to
climb up on.'
Gerna hastened to obey, and she saw on the face of the cliff a tiny
winding stairway. She put her feet on the first stair, and found
herself going up and up without fear, and she was soon at the top of
the cliff, standing by Farmer Vivian's side.
'There you are, as right as the Small People's change!' said he, with
a smile in his eyes, which were as blue as the sea itself, and oh! so
gentle and kind. 'Don't take off your Shoes until you have passed all
the Piskey Rings, or Spriggan Traps, or whatever they are,' he said,
as Gerna turned her face towards her cottage. 'Pentire is full of
them to-day--all made since last night, and all the colour of your
dear little Shoes.'
'You can't step anywhere without putting your feet on a Ring,' Gerna
said to herself, as she hurried home over the great headland. On every
Ring she stepped she felt she must stop to dance like a Piskey. And
she was not sure, but she thought she saw little dark faces grinning
horribly at her from every Ring she passed over.
Great-Grannie was much upset when she heard what dangers her little
great-granddaughter had been exposed to, for Gelert had come home
with the news a few minutes before that she was drowned, as he could
not see her anywhere!
The fright the old woman received showed her how wrong it was to
covet the Small People's money, and she gave Gerna a basinful of hot
bread-and-milk, and told her she could go to bed if she liked.
The child was worn out with all she had gone through, and went upstairs
quite early, as she wanted to rest before taking the little prisoner
to the Tolmên that night.
She did not undress before she had taken the ring-marked purse out of
the chest once more, and told her wee friend of all that had happened
and what she had gone through.
'I don't believe I should ever have got up that great cliff but
for those dinky Shoes,' she added when she had told all; 'nor over
Pentire Glaze.'
'I am certain you wouldn't,' said the wee voice. 'The Spriggans were
all about the cliffs and headland, but they were powerless to hinder
your going with those Shoes on your feet. You won't be afraid to take
me over the bog now, will you, dear little maid?'
'No, that I shan't,' said Gerna; 'an' I'm a-going to do it
to-night. But I must have a bit of sleep first. I hope I shall wake
in time, an' that Great-Grannie won't miss me till I get back.'
'She won't miss you,' assured the little voice. 'The excitement she
has suffered lately has exhausted her, and she will sleep until you
are back in your own little bed again. Take me into bed with you,
and put me close under your chin, and when the time is up for us to
start I will tickle until I wake you.'
The child was soon in a deep slumber, and it seemed to her she had
only just fallen asleep when she felt something tickling her neck.
'Dress quickly!' cried the little voice close to her ear. 'But before
you do, let me impress on you once more that I can never repay you for
your kindness, and that all you do for me you must do out of the purest
pity and love, and for nothing else. So if you have any hankering after
the Little People's gold, your journey is sure to end in failure. For
the Spriggans, in spite of the Shoes and the Lantern Farmer Vivian
gave you, will prevent your reaching the Tolmên, and will make you
give me back into their hands, and thrust upon you the golden pieces
they have so often offered you, but which will only bring you trouble.'
'I don't want anything for taking you to the place where you are to be
set free,' said Gerna simply. 'I am doing it 'cause I love you, an'
'cause I am terribly sorry for you and your little True Love, an'
I don't want that wicked Hager to make you marry him.'
'Then let us make haste and go,' said the little voice, trembling with
gladness. 'Put the Shoes on your feet before you leave the chamber,
and the Lantern and me into the bosom of your frock.'
There was no moon, and Gerna had to dress in the dark. It was soon
done, and, with the moss-green Shoes on her feet, the ring-printed
bag and the wee Lantern close to her heart, she went down the stairs
and out into the night.
There was not a sound to be heard save a weird cry somewhere away
on Pentire, which the little voice coming up from the bosom of her
frock said was Hager howling because his subjects were telling him
that he must now give up all hope of ever taking to wife his poor
little prisoner. 'You must not be afraid of whatever sounds you hear,'
continued the little voice.
'Are we going the right way?' asked Gerna. For the Shoes were taking
them up a rough, steep road behind their cottage.
'Yes, quite right; the Shoes know the way--trust them for that! Don't
worry about anything; only hold me as close as you can to your warm
little heart. We shall have to warm each other when we come to the
bog country. It is bitterly cold there.'
On and on Gerna went with her precious burden, through long lanes,
up and down steep hills, over sandy commons and furze-brakes, and so
fast that she could not have spoken even if she wanted to!
At last she drew near the bog lands, lying flat between two high Tors.
'It's terribly cold here,' she said, when the Shoes stuck in the ground
for a minute, 'and ever so dark, except where there are little lights
shining out of the dark like cats' eyes!' and she began to shiver
with cold and fear.
'Don't be afraid, dear child,' said the sweet little voice, in which
there was no sadness now. 'The hobgoblins are out in the bog, and as
they are near relations of the Spriggans, they are hand in glove with
them. The Spriggans feared you would pass over this bog to-night,
and have set their relations to watch. But they are not so clever
as they thought themselves. They know you have the Shoes, but they
don't dream you possess that wee Lantern too.'
'Is the Lantern any good?' asked Gerna in surprise. 'Farmer Vivian
said it was only big enough to light home a benighted dumbledory.'
'It was a joke about the dumbledory,' laughed the little voice. 'It
can do much more than that. It has the power of making you invisible,
and its light will, if you hold it on the little finger, shine in on
your heart and keep it warm.'
'What wonderful things there are nowadays!' exclaimed the child.
'Aren't there?' cried the little voice, with another happy laugh. 'The
Lantern will not only give warmth if so held, and cloak you from
the hobgoblins and wicked Spriggans, but will also give you courage,
which you will need crossing this bog country.'
It was well Gerna was told all this before the Shoes began to take her
over that dreadful bog. The mists rose thick and cold as she advanced,
and crept over her with such chilling power that she felt as cold as
a conkerbell, [8] she told herself. And the countless little lights,
or eyes, or whatever they were, were horrid, and seemed to glaze [9]
at her whichever way she looked. There were groans and sighs, too,
which filled her with a nameless terror, and but for the cheerful
little voice, which every now and again told her not to be afraid,
and the white, clear shining of the tiny Lantern, she would have
turned back.
By the time the bog was crossed, which she afterwards learned was by
a narrow causeway, just wide enough for two small feet to walk on,
she was chill to the very bone and terribly tired.
It was well on towards the sunrising by this time, and there was yet
that wild moor to cross before she reached the Tolmên, and she was
afraid she would never be able to reach it in time.
She was growing more and more weary every minute, and the Shoes,
although they could guide and take her over the most difficult places,
did not seem to be able to give her strength.
'Do you think we shall get to the Tolmên before the sun gets up?' asked
the little voice anxiously.
'I don't know,' Gerna answered in a low, weary voice. 'The moon is up,
I think--all there is left of it, I mean--and I can see another light
shining somewhere away in the east.'
'It must be later than I thought,' said the wee voice, and the little
creature within the bag began to tremble with apprehension. 'Do make
haste, dear little maid! It would be quite too dreadful to be too
late after all you have done to free me from Hager's power.'
'I am awfully tired,' was the child's answer. 'If I could only rest a
few minutes I could go faster afterwards. Shall I? I am ready to drop.'
'You must not sit down until you have reached the Tolmên. I am
certain the Spriggans are following in our wake. They are throwing
their Thunder-axes [10] over every moving thing they can see, and
over every motionless thing they can touch, and if they should happen
to knock against you and throw one over you, they have power to keep
you helpless to move until the sun has risen.'
'Why didn't they do that when I was in danger of being drowned?' asked
Gerna.
'The Thunder-axes are no good except just before the rising of the
sun, or the Spriggans would not be following us to use them now. You
won't give up now, whatever it costs, will you, dear?'
'Not if I can help it,' said the child wearily.
She kept going on until she reached higher ground, where she saw
standing out in the semi-darkness of the early morning a great Tolmên
on the brow of the moor, and over it hanging like a hunter's horn
the silver curve of the old moon.
A cry of gladness broke from Gerna's lips as she saw it, which must
have made all the bad little fairies, if any were about, slink away
in dismay, and the sight so cheered her that her weariness left her
for a time, and she sped on like a hare until she dropped down by
the big stone's side.
'We have reached the Tolmên, have we not?' asked the little voice,
all a-tremble with joy.
'Yes,' panted the child; 'and the sun isn't up. I am awful glad--aren't
you?'
'More glad than I dare say, dear little maid. But I am not out of
prison yet. Is there any hint of the sunrise?'
'There is a pinky light over one of the Tors,' answered Gerna.
'Ah! then you must pass me through the Tolmên's hole at once. Three
times, remember,' as Gerna put her hand in the bosom of her frock
and drew out the tiny bag.
The brambles had grown up around the gray stone's hole, and almost
blocked the way to it, and it was minutes before she could tear them
aside and get into the opening; but she did so at last, and passed
the prison-bag three times through the hole as she was bidden. As she
did so, the sky in the east grew brighter and brighter, and she knew
from that sign that the sun was about to rise.
'Now place the prison and me, its prisoner, on the top of the Tolmên,'
cried the little voice--'longways to the east it must lie; and when
you have done that, stand by the Holed Stone very quietly, then wait
and see what will happen.'
Gerna did as she was told, and stood on a high bank of fragrant thyme
at the head of the hoary old granite stone, with its great hole,
her face towards the sunrising.
She herself was very quiet, as was also the little prisoner, but all
the great wild moor was now full of music. The linnets were already
twittering in the bushes, and many larks were high in the sky,
singing to greet another dawn. As they sang, the east grew more and
more beautiful, and behind the great Tors the sky was a wonderful
rose on a background of delicate gold.
Gerna thought the sun would never show himself, and she was too
tired to appreciate all the wonder of the sunrise, though she was
glad enough to hear the birds singing, for it made her feel she was
not so very far from home, after all.
At last the sun, red-gold and very large, wheeled up behind the
shoulder of a Tor and flung out a great lance of flame across the
moorland, which smote the small ring-marked purse lying on the Tolmên.
Gerna, whose gaze was now riveted on the purse, saw its ends open
like a gasping fish, and then shrivel up, and in its black ashes sat
the most beautiful little creature it was possible to conceive. She
was so lovely and so dainty that the child could only stare at her
open-mouthed with wonder and amazement.
'How can I ever thank you, dear little Gerna, for all you have done
for me!' said the radiant creature, looking up into the child's amazed
eyes. 'All the Wee Folks' treasures will not be deemed reward enough
for the child who preferred to be compassionate than to be made rich
with fairies' gold. I should not be sitting here free from that,'
pointing to the shrivelled-up blackness which was once a Spriggan's
prison, 'but for you, dear. Are you not glad you are the means of
setting me free and bringing me unspeakable happiness?'
'Iss,' said Gerna, hardly knowing what she was saying, her eyes still
drinking in the beauty of the little fairy. 'Aw!' she exclaimed,
'you are a dear little lovely, sure 'nough--better than all the Small
People's golden pieces. You don't look a bit old, nuther.'
'You thought I should look as old as your Great-Grannie, didn't
you?' laughed the happy little creature. 'The Small People show their
age by looking younger and fairer--at least, the royal fairies do.'
She got on her feet as she spoke, and gazed over the great moor, and
as she gazed, her face, which had the delicate pink of a cowry-shell,
grew more beautiful, and a tender, happy light crept into her
speedwell-blue eyes.
'There is a friend of yours crossing the moor,' she said in her sweet
voice, which was more than ever like the note of a bird, only sweeter
and clearer.
'Why, 'tis Farmer Vivian!' cried the child. 'However did he get
here? I do hope he won't want to have you,' glancing at her lovely
little friend anxiously. 'I don't know what I shall do to hide 'ee
if he should. I couldn't put beautiful little you in my underskirt
pocket or into the bosom of my frock.'
'Why not?' asked the dainty little creature, smiling. 'I lay there
close to your heart all this night, and a warmer, truer little heart
I shall never rest against. But you need not fear Farmer Vivian on
my account. He, of all persons, would not hurt any of the Good Small
People for a king's crown, much less me.'
'He is getting smaller!' exclaimed Gerna. 'Why, he is a teeny, tiny
Farmer Vivian now! Ah, dear! how queer everything is! Everything is
queer an' funny since I picked up that purse with the rings 'pon it
an' dear little you inside.'
'Cannot you guess who he is?' asked the little fairy, her lovely wee
face more tender than the June sky over them.
'No,' returned the wondering child. 'Who is he?'
'My own little True Love!' answered the fairy, her eyes a blue
light. 'We are meeting each other after a century of black years. He
was my True Love all the time in the form of big Farmer Vivian! For
love of poor little me he kept in the neighbourhood of Piskey Goog
all that time.'
It was all so surprising that Gerna told herself she would never be
surprised any more whatever happened. And when the two Wee Lovers,
separated by cruel Fate for one hundred years, met and greeted
each other in lover fashion, all over the great moor broke the
sound of pealing bells, so tiny and so silvery and with such music
in their tones the like of which Gerna had never in all her life
heard before. And where the bells were rung from she never knew,
for there were no steeples or towers anywhere that she could see. As
the bells' music rang on, and all the little moorland birds sang more
entrancingly than before, she saw hundreds and hundreds of the Small
People, all more or less beautiful, come out from behind clumps of
Bog-myrtle, and banks of thyme, and beds of sweet-scented orchis,
[11] all laughing and singing as they came towards the Tolmên, where
the dear Little Lady and her True Love were standing hand in hand,
smiling and bowing and looking as happy as ever they could look.
The little prisoner, who was now a prisoner no longer, seemed to be
a very great personage indeed, the child thought, judging by the way
the Wee Men took off their caps and bowed to her, and the little
ladies made their curtseys; and in truth she was a real Princess,
the eldest daughter of the King and Queen of the Good Little People,
as Gerna was soon to learn.
There was great rejoicing when the Wee Folk heard how their Princess
Royal had been set free, and how much Gerna had done towards it. They
could not make enough of her, or do enough for her. They kissed
her hands, as if she too were a Royal Princess, instead of being
only a poor little Cornish peasant girl! They brought her fairy
mead--methéglin they called it--in cups so small yet so exquisite
('like Cornish diamonds, only more lovely,' Gerna said), and gave
her food to eat from dishes all iris-hued like the shells that she
had picked up on the sands in her own bay, only the Small People's
dishes were much thinner and more transparent than any shells she
had ever seen.
She was never 'treated so handsome before,' she told herself--scores
and scores of dear wee creatures to wait on her and to give her more
when she wanted!
When she could not eat 'a morsel more,' nor drink another cup of
the all-sweet mead, her own Little Lady and her True Love, who had
been sitting close to her all this time on a bed of yellow trefoil,
rose up and took her through a rock-door behind the Tolmên and down
into a most beautiful place--much more beautiful than she could ever
have pictured in her wildest dreams.
It was the country where the Good Little People lived, 'Farmer
Vivian' told her. She saw so much that she could take in nothing
until they came to the King's Palace, which was the most beautiful
palace in fairyland. Here she was taken into room after room--each
more beautiful than the last--until she came to a place called the
'Room of the Chair,' which was full of soft voices, fragrant smells,
and sweet music. This room was open to the blue dome of the sky,
and away at the end of it, on a Chair, sat two Wee People with eyes
the colour of her dear Little Lady's. They were not different from
the other Small People surrounding the Chair, save that they had
'things on their heads,' as Gerna expressed it (which, of course,
were crowns), that shone like the blue of the sea when the sun shines
on it, and that they looked even more gracious and more gentle and
kind than did her own Little Dear.
When the King and Queen of the Good Little People had lovingly
welcomed back their long-lost daughter, and complimented their child's
betrothed--who was also a very great personage in the Small People's
Kingdom--for his constancy and fidelity to their dear daughter,
Gerna, in her print sunbonnet and sun-faded tinker-blue frock, was
introduced to their gracious Majesties as the dear little Cornish
maid who preferred to be kind rather than be made rich with the Small
People's gold.
Pages could be filled with what the King and Queen said to the child,
who never felt so uncomfortable in her life as when they thanked her
and praised her for all she had done.
'I haven't done nothing much--nothing worth a thank'ee, I mean,'
she kept saying.
'Thou hast done more than thou wilt ever know,' said his tiny Majesty
solemnly, 'and we feel we can never repay thee. We could, of course,
reward thee with more gold than the Spriggans offered, but we are glad
to know thou would'st not value it if we gave it thee. But as we are
anxious to show we are not ungrateful, we will give thee the greatest
of all gifts--the eye to see all that is good and beautiful in human
hearts, and the power to bring it out, which alone will make thee
greatly beloved. We will also teach thee to love the lowly grass as we
ourselves love it, and the humble herbs, and all the gentle flowers,
which make all the common roadways, moors and downs, so fragrant
and beautiful. We will reveal to thee all their charms, virtues,
and healing properties, so that Gerna, the maid of Polzeath, may be a
blessing to her parish. And, moreover, the Good Small People shall love
thee as they have never loved a human being before--not only for the
sake of our beloved child, the Princess Royal of all the Good Little
People, but because thou art kind and good and could not be induced
to do an unkind deed even for a purseful of the Spriggans gold.'
Gerna had but dim recollections of what followed afterwards: she only
knew she was led in great state by 'Dinky Farmer Vivian' on the one
side, and her Wee Lady on the other, down a long lane of bowing and
curtseying Little Grandees, until she came out into gardens ablaze with
flowers. She was then taken through parks, where teeny, tiny deer and
cows were grazing, on and on until they came to a tiny door in a cliff,
when she felt the soft pressure of kisses on her face and heard the
sweet wee voice she knew so well whispering in her ear, 'Good-bye, dear
little maid, until we meet again--which shall be soon!' and the next
moment she found herself back in Great-Grannie's poor little chamber
in her own small bed, and Great-Grannie herself telling her to get up
and go down to the bay 'to once' to pick limpets for the ducklings,
which were nearly quacking the house down for want of their breakfast.
Gerna wondered as she dressed if all that had taken place that night
was a dream, and she searched for the ring-marked Piskey-purse to be
quite sure it wasn't. As it was nowhere to be found, nor the wee Shoes,
nor the dinky Lantern, she came to the conclusion that it must be true.
In passing Piskey Goog on her way back from her limpet-picking,
she saw a wee Brown Man with a laugh all over his merry little face,
which made it delightful to look at. He took off his cap as polite
as could be, and spoke to the child with the greatest respect.
'I am a real Piskey,' he said, introducing himself, 'and Farmer Vivian
told me it would interest you to know that the Spriggans who lived
in this goog were taken prisoners soon after their captive was set
free, and that they were at once taken before the Gorsedd (the Little
People's judgment-seat), and were tried and condemned to break iron
with wooden hammers in a dark cave until they repent, which I am afraid
they never will, for they are past all good feeling, poor things, and
will gradually grow smaller and smaller until they turn into emmets,
as all evil-minded fairies in the Small People's country do.'
'Aw dear! What a terrible punishment!' exclaimed Gerna.
'I must go back into our cavern,' said the Piskey. 'It was always
ours until the Spriggans turned us out about a year ago. They can
never turn us out any more now, our King says, thanks to a little
Cornish maid, who would rather be good than be rich. We are ordered
to play no pranks on the people of this parish for her sake, even if
they don't turn their coats or stockings inside out, nor to ride any
horses in the happy night-time, except the horses of those who have
an inordinate love of money.'
And the Little Man, who was a real Piskey, went off laughing and
disappeared into Piskey Goog.
Years passed on. Great-Grannie died, and Gerna grew into womanhood. She
was the best-loved person in St. Minver parish, as the King of the
Good Little People said she would be. Everybody loved her dearly;
they loved her because she saw the good that was in their hearts,
and was not slow to tell them of it, and because of her good opinion
of them, which although they did not always deserve, they tried their
hardest to live up to. They came to her with their heart-wounds as
well as the wounds of their bodies, and she, who had the gift of
healing with the herbs and flowers of the earth, somehow knew how to
salve the sores of the heart too.
Gerna never grew rich, and never wanted to, and as she would not
take a penny piece or anything greater, she had always plenty of
patients. People came to her from far as well as near, and brought,
not only themselves, but their poor suffering animals. If the truth
be told, she had a deeper compassion for the dumb beasts, who could
not tell out their sorrows, than she had for their masters, which
is saying a great deal, and she always applied her most soothing and
healing ointments to their bodies.
It was said that Gerna often saw her Little Lady and her True Love,
and that the dear Wee Folk flocked to see her when the moon was up;
that they were most kind to her, and even brought her herbs and
flowers, wet with fairy dew, for her simples, and helped her to make
eye-salves and other healing things, which the poor people declared
'made them such a power for good.'
It was also told that the merry little Piskey Men danced on the top
of Pentire Glaze cliffs for her special amusement, and that when they
knew she was watching them, their laughter rang out clear as bells
across the Polzeath beach of grey, gold sand.
THE MAGIC PAIL
On a lonely moor lying between Carn Kenidzhek [12] and Bosvavas Carn
lived one Tom Trebisken and Joan his wife. They had been married up
in the teens of years, and had no child, which was a disappointment
to them both, especially to Joan, who suffered from rheumatism,
which had crippled her feet.
Tom had long given up all hope of having a child, but Joan still
believed that one would come to them some day, and it cheered her
dreary hours, as she sat helpless in her armchair, to think of the
advent of the little one, who would gladden their life. Every six days
in seven she spent absolutely alone, for Tom worked as surface-man all
the year round at Ding Dong, a great tin-mine, or bal, at the other
end of their moor, and had to leave for his work early in the morning,
and did not return until late in the evening; so it was not surprising
that she wanted a child, and that she sometimes cried in her heart:
'Aw that I had a little maid of my own to do things for me an' keep
me company when my Tom is away all day at the bal!'
The part of the moor where the Trebiskens lived was three miles or
more from Ding Dong, and two miles from their nearest neighbour. It
was quite out of the beaten track, and a passer by their cottage was
as rare as blackberries in December. They would not have lived there
at all, but that the cottage was their own--or, rather, Joan's. It
had been left to her by will, with the condition that they should
live in it themselves.
The cottage was not an ordinary one; its walls were built of small
blocks of mica and porphyry--much of the porphyry being of that lovely
deep-pink kind, with blotchings of black hornblende, all of which
a long century or more of weather had polished to the smoothness of
glass. Joan said the weather had nothing whatever to do with it, and
that it was done by the dear Little People [13] who, she declared,
lived in the carn near where the cottage stood. But whoever polished
the walls--weather or fairies--the house was a pleasure to look at,
particularly when the sun began to sink behind the moors and shone
full upon its walls; for then all the richness of the porphyry's
rose, all the hornblende's soft blackness, and all the mica's
brilliancy, were brought out of the stone, and intensified until a
less imaginative person than Joan Trebisken would have believed it
was built by enchantment. Even its commonplace roof of brown thatch,
which overspread the small casement windows in shaggy raggedness,
did not take from the burning wonder of the walls. Perhaps it was
because a company of stone-crop had found a dwelling-place there,
and that on the ridge of the roof stood out in red distinctness half
a dozen Pysgy-pows [14]--curious little round-knobbed tiles placed
there by Joan's forebears for the Piskeys to dance on.
Joan, poor soul, seldom saw the outside splendour of their cottage,
as she was powerless to move from her chair without help, and when
her Tom came home, his face was the only thing she wanted to see,
she said. Fortunately, however, her doors and windows opened on to
the moor, and she could therefore command from where she sat a long
stretch of moorland, which, though wild, was none the less beautiful
at every season of the year, but especially in the springtime, when
the yellow broom and golden gorse were in flower.
In spite of its loneliness, Joan loved the moor with all her Celtic
nature, and spent most of her day looking out upon it until the days
shortened and Nisdhu, the Black Month, which the Cornish of our time
call November, drew near.
Nobody dreaded that dark month, with its damp clinging cold, its
fogs and mists, which often veiled the whole landscape, including
the great carns, more than Joan. She said she felt the chill of its
breath before it showed its nose over the head of Carn Kenidzhek, and
was careful to shut her door and hatch and her small casement-windows
before October was half through. She was sorry to do this, and would
not have done so but for the pain in her bones, which was always
worse when November was on its way; for she shut out, she said,
the music of the Small People's voices.
Tom told her it wasn't the voices of the Wee Folk she heard, but the
trickling of a little stream making its way down by the carn on its
way across the moor. But she declared she knew better, and had ears
to distinguish between the tinkle of water and the sweet voices of
the dear Little People, if he had not, and Tom, like a sensible man,
let her hold to her belief.
Joan was a great believer in the fairies, and often declared they were
very friendly towards her--perhaps because her forebears had put the
pysgy-pows on the roof of their cottage for them to dance on. It was
her regret that she had never seen any of the dear little creatures;
but she lived in hope of seeing them some day; perhaps when the
much-cried-for little maid came she should see them then, she said.
It was now towards the end of October and exceedingly cold, and her
door and window being shut, she felt very wisht; [15] and as the
days jogged on to dreary November she became terribly depressed,
so much so that Tom dreaded to leave her sitting all alone by the
chimney-corner with a face as long as a fiddle.
He was one of the kindest husbands in the world, and never went
to his work without doing all that lay in his power to make her
comfortable while he was away. She was generally very appreciative
and grateful for all he did for her; but to-day--the day on which
something happened to alter the whole circumstances of her life--she
grumbled at everything he did, even when he piled dry peat and furze
within her reach, filled the kettle and put it on the brandis, [16]
and placed her dinner on a small table by her side. She would not
even look at him, or say good-bye, when at last he had to go off to
the mine in the dark of the autumnal morning, which made her feel
more sad than ever when he was out of her sight.
A fog of depression hung over her spirits all that long day, and the
weather, as if to share her gloom, was foggy too. She could not see
a yard beyond her window most of the day; and when the mist did lift
for a little while, it took such fantastic forms she was glad when
it again hung down like a curtain.
When the hour for Tom's return at last drew near she grew more
cheerful. She put on the last of the furze he had placed within
reach of her hand, partly to boil the kettle and to light him down
the road leading to their cottage, but chiefly to make her kitchen
cheery-looking to make up for his cold send-off.
She was on the watch now for his step, and her face grew brighter as
she listened. The kettle was crooning on the fire and everything was
warm in cheerful welcome as a step was heard on the hard road outside,
and a hand fumbled at the door-latch.
Joan, being all impatience to see her man, cried out:
'What are 'ee so stupid about, an? Give the door a shove, soas! [17]
'Tis sticked by the damp.'
She had scarcely said this when the door and its hatch opened gently,
and in the doorway stood--not her husband, as she supposed, but the
bent figure of a tiny old woman with a small costan, or bramble-basket,
on her back. Her slight form was enveloped in a cloak the colour of
far-away hills, and her face hidden in the depths of a large bonnet,
such as the mine-maidens wear at their work in the mines.
Joan was too amazed to see a stranger at her door to ask what she
wanted, and before she could get over her surprise, the little
old woman had come into the cottage, stepped noiselessly to the
hearthplace, unslung the costan, and laid it at her feet, singing as
she did so a curious rhyme in a voice so wild and sweet, it reminded
Joan, as she listened, which she did as one in a dream, of moor-birds'
music and rippling streams, and the voices of the Small People who
lived among the carns. The rhyme was as follows:
'I bring thee and leave thee my little mudgeskerry! [18]
My dinky, [19] my dear!
Till the day of that year
When the spells shall be broken--
And this is the token--
By Magic and Pail
And the Skavarnak's [20] wail,
My ninnie, my dinnie, my little mudgeskerry!
'Then we to the carns will away, my pednpaley [21]
My deary, my tweet!
Where the Small People's feet
Tread out the Birth measure,
To give her a treasure
From out of the blue,
When she shall know too
'Tis better to give than to keep my pednpaley.'
The song and its music had hardly died away, when the tiny old
woman spread her hands over the bramble-basket, as if in blessing,
and then stole out of the cottage as noiselessly and mysteriously as
she had come.
Joan was all of a tremble quite five minutes after she had gone,
and when she had somewhat recovered herself, her glance fell on the
costan. At first she was afraid what it contained; but her woman's
curiosity got the better of her fears, and, bending over the rough
basket, she turned over the bracken, laid in careful order on its top,
and saw lying on a bed of dried moss and leaves something that brought
a cry of amazement, mingled with horror, to her lips.
It was a babe, but so tiny and so ugly that she shuddered as she
gazed upon it. It was in a deep sleep, or seemed to be, and its skinny
little face, crinkled all over like a poppy just out of its sheath,
was resting on its claw-like hand.
In all her dreams of a child coming to her home, Joan had never dreamt
of anything so uncanny as this babe, and she told herself that the
little creature in its costan cradle was sent to punish her for her
persistent desire for a child.
Tom arrived just then, and soon knew all that his wife could tell
of the mysterious coming and going of the little old woman in the
bal-bonnet, and of her strange song; and, like Joan, when he looked
into the bramble-basket and saw the bit of ugliness within, he gave
voice to a cry of horror that anything so uncanny should be left on
their hands. In fact, he was so angry that he wanted to take the
basket and all it held on to the moor, and let her who brought it
come and take it away, for have it in his house he would not--no,
not for all the crocks of gold the Little People were said to have
in their keeping.
The night was bitterly cold, and by little moans and sighs coming
from the direction of the Hooting Carn Joan could tell the wind was
about to rise, and would perhaps end in a great storm. And though she
was so much upset at having such an ugly little creature thrust on
them, she was too tender-hearted to wish it to be exposed even for an
hour on their moor on such a night. Besides, the child was helpless,
whosoever child it was, and therefore demanded compassion, and she
begged her husband to allow it to stay in their house until to-morrow.
Tom could seldom refuse his crippled wife anything when her heart was
set upon it, and, though much against his inclination, he yielded to
her entreaties; but he was careful to add that he could only suffer
it to stay until he was ready to start for the bal.
'Whatever the weather then, fair or foul, out it shall go on the
moor!' he cried. 'It is a changeling,' he added, with a solemn shake
of his head, 'and if we was to let it abide along o' we, we should
have nothing but bad luck all the rest of our days.'
Joan, having got her way, did not care to contradict her husband;
for she told herself the song the little old woman had sung pointed to
something quite different. Still, she would not keep the babe longer
than the morrow if he were against it.
When bedtime came, Tom and Joan had quite a dispute as to where the
strange cradle and its stranger occupant should be put for the night,
and as neither of them could decide, and Tom was against its being
taken up into the bed-chamber, Joan declared she would sit up with
it all night, and nothing Tom could say should prevent her. So he
went off to his bed in a huff, muttering loudly that the cheeld,
[22] or 'whatever it was,' had brought misery to them already.
Joan kept to her resolve, and sat in her armchair with the
bramble-basket at her feet until well on towards the dawn, when Tom
came down to see how she was faring, and found, to his surprise,
she was as fresh as a rose just gathered.
'An' I ent sleepy nuther!' she cried in triumph. 'I ent felt so well
since I was took with the rheumatics, and me hands don't look so
twisted, do they?' holding them up. ''Tis my belief 'tis all owing
to that little cheeld down there in the costan.'
As Tom could not gainsay this, he went off to do his morning's work,
and to get Joan's breakfast. By the time he had done this the sun was
rising, and the sky, away in the east, was a miracle of purple and
rose. The night had been wild, but the storm having exhausted itself,
the dawn was all the more beautiful.
The babe was still asleep, and had not moved all night, Joan said, and
Tom fervently hoped it would not until it was safe out on the moor. But
he hoped in vain, for when the sun began to wheel up behind the hills
in the east, and sent a beam of rosy light in at the casement window,
the little creature shuffled in the costan, and when Joan, willing
to give it air, pushed back its covering of bracken, it opened its
eyes and smiled, and that smile transformed its whole face.
'Why, Tom, my man,' she cried, 'the little dear isn't ugly one bit;
an' the little eyes of it are as soft as moor-pools! Do 'ee come and
have a squint at it.'
Tom came, and when he had stared at the babe a minute or more, he
said slowly, as if weighing his words:
'You be right, Joan; but it do make the mystery all the more queer. A
cheeld that can look as ugly as nettles one minute and as pretty as
flowers the next ent for we to keep.'
'Don't 'ee betray thy ignorance where babes is concerned!' cried Joan,
fearful of what his words implied. 'Some do look terrible plain in
their sleep--as this poor dear did--and some do look beautiful. 'Tis
as Nature made 'em--bless their hearts!'
The babe now turned her eyes on Tom, and was gazing on him as if she
wanted to look into his very soul, and then, as if she quite approved
of what she saw there, gave him a fascinating smile, which won his
heart at once.
'You won't take the cheeld out on the moors to-day, Tom, will
'ee?' asked Joan, who was quick to see the change in her man's face.
'We will keep it till I come home from the bal, at any rate,' he said
cautiously. And then the babe, as if to show its gratitude for the
concession, held up both its little arms to him to be taken out of
its costan cradle, whereupon Tom was so delighted at being preferred
before his wife that he could hardly conceal his pride.
'That infant do knaw a thing or two, whatever it be,' said Joan to
herself, with a chuckle. 'And 'tis a somebody, I can tell, by her
little shift and things, which do look as if they was spun out of
spiders' webs by the Small People, so fine an' silky they be!'
There was no question now about the little stranger staying; but,
all the same, Tom went off to the mine with many misgivings, and he
said to himself, as he walked quickly over the moor, that if Joan
were too helpless to do for herself, how was she going to tend a
babe? And that thought troubled him all the day.
But his fears were needless; for when he got home that evening
and looked in at the door, he saw a sight which surprised him, yet
gladdened his heart. Joan was sitting in her elbow-chair, with a face
as bright as a moon in a cloudless sky, cuddling the strange babe,
who was babbling to the kind face looking down into it as it lay in
her arms.
'However did 'ee manage to lift the cheeld on to your lap, Joan?' he
asked, when his wife saw him.
'Aw! we managed somehow or tuther between us,' she answered, with a
happy laugh. 'It was as light as a feather, it was,' chirping to the
babe, 'an' I do think the Small People gave it a hoist on to Mammie
Trebisken's lap! Eh, my handsome?' speaking to the babe. 'An' it
haven't a been a mite o' trouble nuther all this blessed day!' And
then, looking up at Tom with a look he never forgot: 'An' it have
a-lifted the latch of my loneliness, an' I am as happy as a queen!'
Tom was thankful to hear all this, and he thought it was no accident
that had brought such comfort to his poor lonely wife. He had still
greater cause for thankfulness as the days wore on; for as Joan now
had her thoughts taken from herself in having a babe--which, by the
way, was a maiden babe--to think for and to attend to as far as she
was able, she grew better in health, and before winter was over could
go about the house-place 'and do all her little chores her own self,'
she proudly declared. She even swept and sanded her kitchen floor,
and made figgy hoggans [23] for her husband's dinner, which she had
not been able to do since the early years of their marriage.
There were, however, a few things Joan could not do; but as they
were all done for her in some mysterious way, and much better than
she herself could have done, it was more a matter for rejoicing than
regret. Whenever she put her washing out in the backlet [24] to wait
till Tom had time to do it, somebody took it away, and brought it back
washed and dried and ironed--all looking as white as May-blossom and
smelling as sweet as moor-flowers!
She was never certain who did this kindness for her, but in her heart
she believed it was either done by the little old woman who brought
the babe or the Small People.
Several happy years passed away, and the little child--Ninnie-Dinnie,
as they called her--so strangely brought to the moorland cottage and
so strangely left, was now able to return some of her foster-parents'
kindness. This she did by helping in small household duties.
Joan, partly because it was right and partly because she feared the
rheumatism might some day make her helpless again, had brought her
up to be useful.
The child did not at all like work, and, but for Joan's insistence,
would have been a regular little do-nothing. Perhaps she would have
spared the little maid from many a small household duty if the Pail
had allowed it!
In shaking up the moss and leaves in the bramble-basket the evening the
mysterious little woman brought it to the cottage, Tom had found at
the feet of the babe a small dark Pail, which he said must have been
shaped out of a block of black tin left by the Old Men, or ancient
Jews, who, ages before the art of turning black tin into white was
discovered, worked the Cornish tin-mines. It was very crude, and had
nothing remarkable about it save for its look of age and some curious
characters cut under its rim, and which, of course, neither he nor
his wife could read.
They thought the Pail was put into the bramble-basket for the child
to play with, and telling themselves they would give her a better
plaything when she was old enough, they set it on the dresser.
They were soon to learn that the Pail was something more than a child's
toy, and had strange properties of making itself light or dark at will,
thrusting its characters out of the metal in strong relief from its
surface and withdrawing them again!
Tom declared it had in some mysterious way to do with the little
creature's welfare, and that it was a kind of conscience--a Small
People's conscience, perhaps. But Joan said she believed it was
something more than that, if there was any meaning in the words of
the song the dinky old woman in the bal-bonnet had sung.
But, whoever was right, there was no doubt that the Pail showed its
approval or disapproval of whatever Ninnie-Dinnie did! If the little
maid was especially helpful and kind, the Pail became a lovely shade of
silver and gray, and its letters stood out in glittering distinctness;
but if she was lazy, or spoke rudely to her foster-parents, it grew
darker than hornblende, and its characters were hardly visible.
This strange property of the Pail made Joan feel quite creepy when
she first discovered its peculiarity, which she happened to do one
day when Ninnie-Dinnie was very fractious and would do nothing she
was bidden. She got used to it in time, and was even glad it showed
its pleasure, or otherwise, in the manner it did.
She often told her husband that, when the little maid was particularly
kind to her when he was at the bal, the Pail would laugh all over
its sides.
Ninnie-Dinnie was now in her eighth year, counting the year she was
brought to the cottage, and a dear, useful little maid she was; and
no one to beat her anywhere for work, Tom declared, particularly when
her size was considered.
The child was very small, so small that she could still sleep in the
basket cradle she came in--and did too, for the simple reason that
she was wakeful all night if she slept anywhere else.
Both Tom and Joan were sometimes troubled at her size. For she never
seemed to grow bigger or fatter, whatever they gave her to eat,
and they feared she would always be a little Go-by-the-ground. [25]
Joan, however, consoled herself that perhaps she was an off relation
of the dear Little People.
Although Ninnie-Dinnie was exceedingly tiny, she was very sharp,
and asked more questions in a day than they could answer in a
year. She wanted to know the why and wherefore of everything--what
the moor-flowers were made of, and who lived inside the great grey
carns, and what made Carn Kenidzhek hoot--was it the giant who lived
inside it?--and much besides that neither Tom nor Joan could answer,
because they did not know themselves.
Tom said she was wise beyond her years, and all owing to her being
moped in the cottage so much, and that she ought to be out of doors
more. Joan quite agreed with him, and suggested that he should take
her with him sometimes over the moor, only stipulating that she was
not to go as far as the mine-works.
Tom considered this a splendid idea; and so, every now and then,
when Ninnie-Dinnie was willing, she accompanied him part of the way,
and as there was only one road leading back to the cottage, she easily
found her way home alone.
One day, when the child had reached the place where the miner generally
sent her back, she begged to go with him all the way to the bal;
and as he was rather weak where his womenfolk were concerned, he
willingly consented.
When they reached Ding Dong, with its hundreds of busy workers,
the little maid grew very frightened, and fled back across the moor,
in the direction of home, as fast as her legs could take her.
The miner, as he watched her running away, rather reproached himself
for bringing her so far; and he wondered, as he put the tin into the
furnace to be smelted, whether she got home all right.
'So you did take our Ninnie-Dinnie to the bal?' was his wife's
greeting when he got home that evening. 'I've been terribly wisht
[26] without her all day.'
'You don't mean to say the little dear haven't come back?' cried
Tom. 'That is terrible news, sure 'nough! She didn't stop a minute
at the bal, and tore off home like a skainer.' [27]
'I've never clapt eyes on her since she went out with 'ee this
morning!' cried Joan, greatly distressed. 'I do hope nothing has
happened to her. Perhaps she has been an' gone an' tumbled down into
one of the Old Men's workings [28] out there on the moor.'
Tom went as white as a sheet at the bare thought of the possibility,
and he started off at once to look for the child, leaving his poor
wife more troubled than she had ever been since Ninnie-Dinnie came.
He was gone a little over an hour, when, to Joan's thankfulness,
he returned with the child.
He found her, he said, not far from the beaten track, sitting at the
foot of a carn waiting for him to come for her.
She told him she had lost her way, and that as she was sitting on the
griglans, [29] an ugly little man with long ears like a Skavarnak [30]
came up to her, and because she was afraid of him and would not go into
his little house under the carn, he was very angry. She did not know
what would have happened to her if a little old woman in a sunbonnet
had not come along just then, and took her to the place where Tom
found her. She told her to sit where she was till Daddie Trebisken
came to fetch her, which he would be sure to do after sunset. In the
mean-time she was to say her own name backwards seven times if the
Long-Eared came near her again. She also told her that Ninnie-Dinnie,
if she cared to believe it, was her real name spelt backwards with an
'n' left out; and she said she must never go out on the lonely moors
without taking the Pail, made out of old Cornish tin, with her.
It was ever so long before Joan got over her fright about
Ninnie-Dinnie, and for weeks she would not hear of her going out
on the moors. But, as time deadens all things, she got over her
nervousness, and when April came, and the broom and the gorse were
in flower, making the great brown moor yellow-gold, and scenting all
the air with peach-like fragrance, she was willing that the little
maid should go with her husband once more. And Tom willingly took her.
As they were going out of the door, something fell on the Pail
standing on the dresser, and the child, remembering the injunction
of the little old woman about the Pail, turned back to get it.
'What shall I bring 'ee home, Mammie Trebisken?' she asked, looking
at her foster-mother; and Joan, hearing the lark singing faintly in
the distance, replied laughingly:
'You shall bring me home a pailful of lark's music, my dear.'
'You do knaw the little maid can't bring 'ee that,' cried Tom
impatiently. 'I should think she was all the music you wanted now.'
'So she is, bless her!' said his wife. 'I was only joking.'
'Nevertheless, I will bring you home this Pail full of lark's music,'
said Ninnie-Dinnie, with great seriousness; and putting her tiny
hand into Tom's big one, they started off, and Joan watched them out
of sight.
When the miner and the child got about half-way to the mine, scores of
larks were up in the blue air singing, and their little dark bodies
waving to and fro in the rapture of their song, till it seemed to
the miner as if their melody was trickling down all over him, and
Ninnie-Dinnie declared it was.
As they stood listening, one of the larks began to descend, singing
as it came.
'Now is the time if you want to catch the lark's music for Mammie
Trebisken,' laughed Tom, watching the bird's descent. 'There it is,
just over thy soft little head. Up with thy Pail, my dear!'
And Ninnie-Dinnie, with her face as grave as the great boulders
lying amongst the golden-blossomed furze and the feathery fronds of
the Osmunda, lifted the Pail above her head, and as she did so the
strange letters under its rim stood out and glowed like white fire.
'Little lark, little lark, give me thy music!' she chanted in a voice
as clear and sweet as linnets' fluting. 'Little lark, little lark,
give me thy song!' and the small bird twirled down towards her singing
wilder and sweeter as it came, until it hovered over the uplifted Pail.
'The dear little lark has given me its music and its song to make
Mammie Trebisken's heart glad,' said the child, as the lark dropped
on the thyme-scented turf at her feet.
'Pretending, are 'ee, an?' laughed Tom.
'No!' cried Ninnie-Dinnie. 'Listen!'
And the miner, putting his ear close to the Pail, heard, to his
unspeakable amazement, a lark singing quite distinctly, yet rather
faintly, as it were singing far away.
'Jimmerychry! [31] Can it be believed?' he exclaimed. ''Tis magic,
an' I don't half like it. An' I don't think the dear little bird do
nuther,' looking down at the lark, who was trailing its wings on the
ground in that distressful way birds have when their wee nestlings
are in danger. 'Give it back its own, that's a dear little maid.'
'I can't,' said Ninnie-Dinnie. 'Mammie Trebisken can only do that;
and I don't think she will want to, for the song in the Pail will
make all her heart sing.'
She covered the Pail with her pinafore as she spoke, and the little
lark disappeared into a brake of flaming gorse.
There was no time to bandy words, Tom told himself, as he was late for
his work, and he left the child to go back to their cottage without
any more protesting. But he did not feel very comfortable as he strode
on his way to the mine.
It was late in the morning when Ninnie-Dinnie got home, and Joan was
beginning to be troubled at her long absence when she came in.
'Have 'ee brought the lark's music along with 'ee?' she asked, as
the child set the Pail on the red-painted dresser.
'Yes,' said Ninnie-Dinnie; 'and at sundown you will hear it.'
Joan, thinking it was all make-believe, laughed, and said she would
keep her ears open to listen.
When the shadows of the great grey carns stretched over the heather
and the sun sunk over the moor, the Pail began to move slightly on
the dresser, and a sound came out like grass moved gently by the wind,
which at once drew Joan's attention to it. Then, to her amazement, it
shook all over, and there poured forth from it such a gush of melody
that almost took her breath away. It was like lark's music, she said,
with a strain of sweeter, wilder music added to it, and which, somehow,
reminded her of the flute-like voice of the little old woman in the
bal-bonnet, who sang that rude rhyme when she brought them their
dear little Ninnie-Dinnie. She sat in her elbow-chair entranced,
and the queer child sat at her feet, apparently entranced too!
The melody, which at first came from the depths of the Pail, or the
turfy ground, it was hard to say which, rose higher and higher, until
it sounded like a bird singing its heart out in the soft azure of an
evening sky.
Joan never knew how long she listened to that fetterless song;
she only knew she awoke to the fact that the sky's little songster,
the Pail, or whatever it was, had stopped singing, that daylight was
leaving the moor, and that a small dark shadow was slowly stealing
across her window.
'Why, it is a little bird, surely,' she said, speaking to the tiny
maid at her feet. 'The light of our fire have attracted it from its
sleeping-place--poor little thing!'
'P'r'aps it is the little lark come for its music and its song,'
suggested Ninnie-Dinnie, fixing her gaze on the bird, which was now
fluttering against the panes and uttering a tiny note of distress.
'I never thought of that,' said Joan. 'I hope it haven't. I couldn't
give it back its song and its music for the world!'
As she was speaking, the Pail on the dresser was again agitated, and
out of it rushed another entrancing melody, until all the cottage was
full of music, and Joan said it was raining down upon her head from
the oaken beams. But through the melody could be distinctly heard a
little voice, which was the lark's voice:
'Give me back my music! Give me back my song!'
'My Aunt Betsy!' cried Joan. 'Whoever heard of a bird talking before?'
'Are you going to give the little lark what it wants?' asked
Ninnie-Dinnie, watching the bird, which was still fluttering against
the bottle-green pane.
'No!' said Joan decidedly. 'I don't think I ought. It do make my
heart young an' happy again.'
'I was hoping you would like to give back the lark its music and its
song,' said Ninnie-Dinnie.
'Whatever for, cheeld-vean?' [32] Joan asked.
'Because,' answered the child, 'I have been wondering what the lark's
little mate will do if he hasn't his song to sing to her now she is
sitting on her pretty eggs out on the grass.'
'Why, make another song, of course, you foolish little
knaw-nothing!' cried Joan, laying her pain-twisted fingers on the
child's elfin locks.
'It has no music to make a song with; it gave it all to me to take
home to my dear Mammie Trebisken,' said the little maid.
Once more the lark's song came out of the Pail, and Joan said it was
sweeter and wilder and freer than even the second time. As she listened
intently she was carried to her courting days, when she and Tom took
their Sunday walks through the growing corn and flaming poppies to
hear the larks sing. Then as the songster came earthward again and
its music died away into the silence of the years, or into the Pail,
she was too bewildered to say which, there appeared on the threshold
of the door the little lark, which, as she looked at it, trailed its
wings and piped: 'Give me back my music! Give me back my song!' and
its sad cry went right down into her pitiful heart.
'I was a selfish body to want to keep what didn't belong to me,'
she cried, and she told Ninnie-Dinnie to give it back what it wanted.
'I can't give back: you only can do that,' said the little maid. 'I
can only bring you what you ask.'
The wee bird in the doorway again made itself heard: 'Give me back my
music! Give me back my song!' and so distressful was its pleading that
she clutched the child's shoulder and went at once to the dresser,
and, almost before she knew it, she was standing at the door with
the Pail in her hand.
'Take your music and your song, you poor little dear,' she said in
her tenderest voice to the bird; 'and go along home to your mate,
and make her as happy as you have made my heart this day.'
She turned the Pail over on its side as she spoke, and the lark flew
into it; and in a minute or less it was out again and away into the
semi-darkness, singing its own ecstatic song as it went!
Tom came up the road as it flew off; and as she waited there by the
door for him to help her back to her chair, the little old woman's
rhyme came back to her, the last line of which floated through
her brain:
'To give her a treasure
From out of the blue.
When she shall know too
'Tis better to give than to keep my pednpaley!'
A year and four months went by, and Joan was quite helpless again--as
helpless as when the babe was brought to her--and but for that babe,
now to childhood grown, she did not know what she would have done. Her
man was not so young as he was, and had a great deal more to do at the
mine, and therefore less time to devote to woman's work. But thanks
to Ninnie-Dinnie's careful training, his services in this respect
were not required. The little maid now did all the work of the small
cottage, and the cooking too--even to making the hoggans for Tom's
dinner. Besides which, she waited on her dear Mammie Trebisken hand
and foot, and made the poor sufferer's life as happy as possible under
the circumstances. Tom wondered how she did it all, 'and such a dinky
little soul too--not much bigger than a little pednpaley itself,'
he said.
Ninnie-Dinnie did not go out on the moor all this time, and nothing
Joan could say would make her. But when July came, and the blackberry
brambles were in flower, and the great moors began to look beautifully
purple with the bloom of the heather, she cast wistful glances out
of the window, and one bright morning she asked Tom to take her with
him a little way.
Her eye caught the darkening look of the Pail as she was putting on
her sunbonnet, and she thought the look meant she must take it with
her, and she did.
'What shall I bring you home?' she asked, looking over her shoulder
at Joan as she and Tom were going out of the door; and the invalid,
catching sight of a sunbeamed pool lying high on the heath, said,
with a laugh:
'You shall bring me home a pailful of sunbeams from the pool I can
see from my chair.'
'A pack of nonsense!' cried Tom. 'As well ask for the moon. I should
have thought that our Ninnie-Dinnie,' resting his huge hand on the
child's head, 'was all the sunbeam you wanted now.'
'So she is, Tom, when you ent here,' cried the woman, smiling tenderly
at both her dears.
'All the same,' said Ninnie-Dinnie, 'I will bring you home a pailful
of sunbeams if I can.'
When she and Tom reached the pool, they stopped and looked in,
or tried to, for they could not see its bottom for sunbeams, which
rippled all over its surface in tiny waves of light.
'Now is your chance to get that pailful of sunbeams thy foolish old
Mammie Trebisken axed 'ee to get,' said the miner.
'It is,' said Ninnie-Dinnie in her grave old woman's manner; and,
leaning over the pool, she held the Pail over the side and cried:
'Little brown pool, give me thy sunbeams! Little brown pool, give
me thy light!' and, to Tom's amazement (he ought not to have been
astonished at anything by this time), he saw the light leave the pool
and flow into the Pail!
When the moor-pool had given all its sunbeams, and the water was a
darker brown than a sparrow's back, Ninnie-Dinnie stood up and looked
into her Pail, and Tom looked too, and saw nothing.
'It is full of emptiness,' said he, laughing.
'It is full of the dear little Pool's sunbeams to make Mammie
Trebisken's eyes glad,' insisted the child; and covering the Pail
very carefully with her pinafore, she went down towards the cottage,
and Tom watched her until she was hidden behind a great boulder of
granite, and then he too went on his way.
Ninnie-Dinnie did not get home till quite late in the afternoon, and
when Joan asked her where she had been so long, she said a little
Skavarnak would not let her come before, and that he stood in the
path barring the way, till a dinky little woman in a bluish cloak
came over the moor, and then he sped away through a hole in a carn.
'What a funny thing!' said Joan; 'hares generally keep out of folks'
way. He must be different from other little hares.'
'I am sure he must be,' she said, setting the Pail on the dresser.
'Have 'ee brought the sunbeams?' asked Joan, turning her gaze to
the bucket.
'Yes; and by-and-by, when the sun begins to set, you will be able to
see them.'
Joan, thinking her Ninnie-Dinnie was pretending--for she saw when
the child came into the kitchen that the Pail contained nothing--only
laughed.
When the great round sun dropped down to his setting, the crippled
woman, happening to turn her face to the dresser, saw a tongue of
white flame rise out of the Pail, and on its tip burnt a ruby star!
It startled her almost out of her senses at first; but as it did
not grow bigger, but only increased in beauty, she gazed at it with
wondering delight.
As the evening darkened over the moor, and the Hooting Carn was dim
in the distance, the light in the Pail grew exceedingly beautiful,
and took all manner of shapes and colours, and made the room where
Joan sat as lovely as the dear Small People's Country, Ninnie-Dinnie
said--how she knew, it did not occur to her foster-mother to inquire.
''Tis magic!' cried the woman, looking round the room, 'an' I don't
understand it one bit.'
'P'r'aps,' said the child softly, 'it is the dear Little People's
way of showing how grateful they feel for your kindness to your
little Ninnie-Dinnie.'
'I haven't been kinder than I ought,' began Joan; 'and--'tis raining,
surely,' she broke off, as a trickle of water fell on her ear. ''Tis
queer, too! There's no sign of wet weather in the sky.'
The child went to the window and looked out.
'There is a tiny stream of water coming down the road,' she said. 'I
believe 'tis the little brown Pool coming for its sunbeams.'
'Don't be silly!' cried Joan.
'It is,' said the little maid, looking out again, 'and it has made
itself into a dark ring outside our door.'
As she was speaking, a rippling voice broke out:
'Give me back my light! give me back my sunbeams!'
'I won't,' said Joan irritably. 'Why should I, when it is making my
little place look handsome? I haven't seen anything like it in all
my born days!'
'I was hoping you would give back the poor little brown Pool its
shine,' said Ninnie-Dinnie, with a pleading look in her eyes. 'The
little flowers that live in the Pool will die without light, and the
dear little Sundews will have no silver beads to tip their red spikes.'
'Whatever did 'ee bring me home a pailful of sunbeams for, if you
want me to give it away again?' asked the woman still more irritably.
'You asked me to bring you the brown Pool's sunbeams,' said the child
gently. 'I did but do what you asked.'
The light in the Pail was redder and brighter than the red planet
Mars in his rising or the sun in his setting, and all in the room
was a lovely crimson glow, and Joan, as she gazed at the Pail again,
heard the rippling voice outside her door: 'Give me my light! give me
my sunbeams!' and it continued rippling its demand until the woman's
kind heart was troubled.
'Poor little Pool!' she said to herself at last. 'I expect it is
feeling as wisht without its light as I was before my Ninnie-Dinnie
came in the costan. 'Tis wrong to want to keep what will brighten
something else. I don't s'pose even a little moor-pool can be happy
and bear flowers on its bosom without sunbeams and light,' and she
told the child to give back the Pool its own.
'I can't,' said Ninnie-Dinnie. 'Only you can do that. Lean on me,'
offering her tiny arm, 'and I'll help you to get the Pail to give
the dear little Pool its sunbeams.'
Joan was greatly amused that a dinky little maid like her, scarcely
bigger than a large doll, could support a great helpless body like
herself to walk across the floor; and she laughed, and, as she laughed,
the Pool cried again in such a beseeching voice that she unwittingly
put her hand on the child's shoulder, and immediately found herself
at the door, with the Pail in her hand, before she knew!
'I give 'ee back your brightness, dear little Pool,' she said,
'and much obliged I am to 'ee for letting me have it here in
my little room. Now go along home to where you belong, amongst
the griglans.' [33] And the little Pool took its shine and left,
twisting and twirling its way back to its place, shining and rippling
as it went.
'The pool will shine all the more brightly to-morrow for having
given you its sunbeams,' said the child, as she helped Joan back to
her chair.
A few days after Ninnie-Dinnie had brought the pailful of sunbeams, she
again asked to go with Tom over the moors, and Tom willingly took her.
'What impossible thing is Mammie Trebisken going to ask you to bring
back to-day?' said the miner in joke as the child went to the dresser
for the Pail.
'The only thing I should like to have brought home to me to-day is
that nasty little Skavarnak which frightened my Ninnie-Dinnie,' said
Joan. 'If she do catch un an' bring un home in the Pail, I won't be
willing to let him get out of it again in a hurry!'
'Do you really want the Little Long-Eared?' asked the child, with a
curious look in her eyes.
'Of course I do. I s'pose he won't be so easy to get into the Pail
as the lark's music or the pool's sunbeams.'
'Not nearly so easy,' responded Ninnie-Dinnie. 'And even if I can get
him into the Pail, you won't like to keep him, and you must until----'
She did not finish what she was going to say, as Tom was in a hurry
to be off, and they left the invalid greatly wondering whatever the
little maid could mean.
The sun was rising when Tom and his little foster-child reached a
part of the great moor where a road turned towards Ding Dong, and
where they saw a hare sitting on his haunches cleaning his whiskers.
'There is Mister Long-Eared,' whispered Tom. 'Now is your chance
to catch him, my dear;' but the hare had heard the whisper, and he
vanished under the bracken.
'He will be very difficult to get into the Pail,' sighed
Ninnie-Dinnie. 'But he will have to go into it, or the spell won't
be broken.'
'What spell?' asked the miner.
'What! have you forgotten the rhyme the dinky woman sang when she
brought me to Mammie Trevisken--
'By magic and Pail,
And the Skavarnak's wail'?
'I had clean forgotten,' said Tom. 'But I don't s'pose it meant
anything. P'r'aps the little body in the bal-bonnet didn't know what
she was singing.'
The miner went on his way to Ding Dong, and Ninnie-Dinnie seated
herself on a bed of wild thyme close to where the hare had disappeared,
and began calling very gently, but with great persistence:
'Skavarnak! Skavarnak! come into the Magic
Pail! Long-Eared! Long-Eared! come into my Pail!'
But nothing stirred in the bracken.
Long the child called--hours it seemed--until at last there was a
movement under the great fronds of bracken, and out came a woebegone
little hare and went into the Pail!
'You are caught by the magic of the Old Men's Pail at last,' said
Ninnie-Dinnie, with a strange look in her eye; and covering the Pail
with her pinafore, she set her face homeward.
'Have 'ee got the hare?' was Joan's greeting, as the child appeared
in the doorway.
'I have,' she cried, with a ring of triumph in her voice.
'Aw, you poor little thing!' exclaimed Joan, eyeing the hare, who
was gazing at her from over the Pail with a most dejected look in
his dark eyes.
'Please don't pity him,' said Ninnie-Dinnie. 'He isn't really a hare:
he is a dreadful little hobgoblin who has been cruel to all the dear
Little People you love so much.'
'Who told 'ee all that, cheeld?' asked Joan, looking at the little
maid.
'P'r'aps the Wee Folk whispered it to me as I lay asleep in the
costan,' answered the child.
When evening came, a most terrible wail came from the dresser, like
the cry of a hurt child or an animal caught in a gin, which found
its way at once to Joan's feeling heart.
'I can't a-bear to hear that cry,' she said to Ninnie-Dinnie. 'Do
set the poor little creature free, that's a dear.'
'I can't, Mammie Trebisken, and I don't think I want you to, either. It
is good for him to be kept prisoner in the Magic Pail.'
The hare wailed on, and poor Joan had to put her fingers in her ears
to shut out the sound.
Tom came home just then, and, seeing there was a nice fat hare in the
Pail, said he would soon stop his music, and that he would have him
put into a hoggan for his dinner--a threat which so frightened the
poor creature that there was no wail left in him for all that evening,
and, leaning his head on the edge of the Pail, he looked exceedingly
miserable, as I am sure he was.
The hare was kept prisoner in the Pail all that night and all the
next day, and not even Joan gave him a look of pity, for even her
heart was hardened against him.
When evening came again, he once more lifted up his voice in a loud
and prolonged howl, which was almost more than the tender-hearted
woman could bear, and she was about to ask Ninnie-Dinnie to give him
his liberty, when a soft scamper of tiny feet made her turn her gaze
to the open door, and in a minute or less there appeared on the step
three small hares, who, when they saw her pitiful glance on them,
began to cry:
'Give us back our Daddy Skavarnak! Give us back our Daddy Long-Ears!'
'Hearken to that,' cried Joan, turning to Ninnie-Dinnie, who was
preparing Tom's supper. 'I wonder you, of all people, can bear to
hear it. Do 'ee give the little Skavarnaks their poor daddy.'
'You know I haven't the power,' said the little maid quietly, 'and
I am afraid I shouldn't be very willing if I had.'
'But you wanted me to give the lark his music and his song and the pool
its beams,' remonstrated Joan, as Ninnie-Dinnie shook her head. 'Why
ever don't 'ee want the hare to be given back to his children?'
'I told you the Long-Eared had been very cruel to the dear Wee
Folk. He was terribly cruel to one poor Little Skillywidden [34] in
particular, and its mammie, to save it from further cruelty, had to
hide it somewhere until he was caught in the Magic Pail. You see,' as
Joan lifted up her pain-twisted hands in amazement, 'when he was taken
prisoner by the Pail and brought into a good woman's cottage he became
powerless to do the dear Little People any more harm, and all the
spells that he threw over them became weak as money-spiders' threads.'
'What a wicked little creature he must have been!' cried Joan
indignantly, shaking her head at the hare, who looked thoroughly
ashamed of himself, and lolled his head over the edge of the Pail. 'But
who told 'ee about the wicked Skavarnak an' his doings?' turning to
the child, and giving her a searching look.
Ninnie-Dinnie did not answer, but a peculiar look came into her eyes
and a smile played about her lips.
'I'm beginning to think our Ninnie-Dinnie is one of the Wee Folk her
own self,' said Joan to herself, still gazing at the quaint little
figure, with its dark, unfathomable eyes, and its elfin locks framing
the gentle little face, 'an' that she is the Skillywidden its mammie
hid for safety in a cottage. She is a dear little soul, whoever she is,
an' I wouldn't part with her now--no, not for a bal full o' diamonds.'
As these thoughts travelled through her mind, the three little hares
on the doorstep wailed out their entreaty again: 'Give us back our
Daddy Skavarnak! Give us back our Daddy Long-Ears!' and the hare in
the Magic Pail lifted his head and looked beseechingly at the child,
who, however, took no notice of him.
The three little hares continued to cry on, and although it worried
Joan's kind heart to hear it, she steeled herself against them on
account of their daddy's cruelty, but into Ninnie-Dinnie's eyes there
stole a wondrous pity.
'Poor little things!' she whispered to herself; and then, looking up
at her foster-mother, she said softly: 'You may let the Long-Eared
free if you like.'
'But I don't like,' said Joan severely. 'Why should I, when he have
a-been so unkind to the dear Little People?'
'I would like you to give him his liberty if he will promise to go
away from our moor and never come back any more for five hundred
years,' continued the child, who apparently had not noticed the
interruption. 'If he does not keep his promise after he is set free,
he will run the terrible risk of again being taken prisoner in the
Magic Pail and having Daddy Trebisken's threat carried out upon him.'
'What threat?' asked Joan. 'Aw, I remember now--his being put into
a hoggan for my Tom's dinner. He is too bad for my good Tom to make
a meal of,' shaking her head at the hare in the Pail. 'He will have
to be made into a pasty, as a warning to all evil-intending Long-Ears.'
The poor animal in the Pail could not have looked more wretched if
he was to be made into a pasty there and then, and he cried in his
terror, and the three little hares on the doorstep lifted up their
small voices in sympathy.
The latter's wails were more than Joan's tender heart could stand.
'Poor little things!' she cried, looking first at the small Long-Ears
and then at Ninnie-Dinnie. 'If he will promise to do what you want him,
I'll set him free. 'Tis hard they should suffer for their wicked old
daddy's wrongdoing.'
'It is,' responded the child in her gravest manner. 'And it is for
their sakes more than his own that I am willing he should have his
liberty. Ask him if he will consent to do all I told you.'
Joan, looking at the prisoner, repeated what Ninnie-Dinnie had said,
and asked him whether he would have his freedom under those conditions.
The Long-Eared muttered something--what, she did not know, but the
little maid seemed to understand, and she told her foster-mother that
though the conditions were hard, he had promised to keep them if she
would set him free from the Magic Pail.
'Then let us do it at once,' cried Joan, for the appealing eyes of
those three little hares on the doorstep were more than she could
endure.
The child came to her side, and offered her shoulder to enable the
crippled woman to do her kind deed, and almost before Joan knew it
she was at the door, with the Magic Pail gripped firmly in her hand,
and found herself saying:
'I command thee, in the name of my little Ninnie-Dinnie an' the
Magic Pail, never to come on our moors till the five hundred years
are up. Remember, if you do, or try to hurt any of the dear Little
People, they will compel thee to come into this here Pail, an' hand
'ee over to somebody who loves the Wee Folk as much as I do, an'
who will cut 'ee all to bits, an' put 'ee into a great lashing [35]
pasty for a miner's dinner.' [36]
The Skavarnak uttered a terrified howl, and Joan, looking down into
the Pail, saw, not a hare, but a dreadful little hobgoblin, with ears
as long as his ugly little body.
She dropped the Pail in her fright, and the ugly little creature sped
away into the darkness, followed by the three wee hares, or hobgoblins,
as no doubt they were.
Ninnie-Dinnie looked very happy when they had gone, and the Pail
evidently shared her joy, for it was nearly white, and its embossed
characters looked almost as beautiful as the little Pool's sunbeams.
The child would not go out on the moor for a long time after the Daddy
Long-Ears was set free. She said she must stop at home and look after
her Mammie Trebisken. But when October came, and the purple heath-bells
had changed to tawny brown, and the bracken's green into orange and
bronze, she began once more to give little wistful glances out over
the great stretch of moorland.
One day--the very day of the same month she was brought to the cottage
in the bramble-basket ten years before--Tom, noticing the longing
glances, begged her to go with him a little way, and Ninnie-Dinnie,
after asking the crippled woman if she could spare her, got ready
to go.
'I thought you wouldn't want to take the Pail along with you now the
Long-Eared can't hurt 'ee any more,' said Joan, as the child went to
the dresser for the Pail.
'And yet I must take it,' she replied. 'What shall I bring you home?'
'Thyself, my beauty!' cried the woman. 'I'm safe, I reckon, in wanting
to have only my Ninnie-Dinnie brought back to me. She is better than
all the lark's music an' the Pool's shine, isn't she?' appealing to
Tom, who nodded his head. 'An' we don't want no Daddy Skavarnak here
no more, do we?'
'I should think not,' cried the miner.
'Mammie Trebisken's request was a downright sensible one this time,
wasn't it?' he remarked to the little maid as they walked away from
the cottage.
Ninnie-Dinnie did not answer, which somehow troubled him, and he
looked at her curiously.
When the miner and the child had reached the place where she had
caught the hare, they stopped and looked about them.
The sun had risen, and was making everything beautiful on the moor--the
little pools and all. It was a perfect morning for so late in the
autumn. The dwarf furze, now in blossom, was burning like gorse in
springtime round the bases of the great grey carns; the bramble-vines
were more beautiful than jewels, as they trailed in all their richness
of colour over the boulders, and the gossamers lay thick on the turf
and brown heather, and shone softly, as only gossamer can. Everything
was very still, and there was not wind enough to stir even the blades
of grass, nor was there anything on the wing save a seagull floating
along on the blue air, and a few gorgeous Red Admirals hovering over
their beloved nettles.
For ever so long Tom and the quaint little maid stood still, taking
in all the wild, yet soft, beauty of the moors, until the latter
broke the silence:
'I must hasten on to the bal now, my dear. You can stay here or go
back to Mammie Trebisken, jest as thee hast a mind to.'
'Yes,' she said, with a start.
He glanced over his shoulder as he turned to go on his way, and,
to his consternation, saw her put the Pail to her feet, and begin
to speak in the same flute-like voice she had spoken to the Lark,
the Pool, and the Hare, and the words were spoken to herself!
'Ninnie-Dinnie, give me thyself! Ninnie-Dinnie, give me thyself!' and
the next minute he saw the little figure disappear into the Pail,
which started at a rapid speed down towards his cottage.
He was too upset to go on to Ding Ding after that, and trembling like
an aspen leaf, he followed in the track of the Pail; but whether he
was Piskey-led, or what, he could not get home until dark, and when
he got there, he found his wife sitting alone.
Three or four hours after Tom and Ninnie-Dinnie had left, Joan heard
a little noise outside the cottage, so she told her husband when
she related to him this strange story, and, looking up, saw, to her
unspeakable amazement, the Pail a-walking down the road all by itself,
as if it had legs, to the step of her door; and in another moment it
had crossed the threshold and come to the fireplace where she was
sitting gazing with all the eyes in her head at it coming! When it
reached her feet it stopped, and looking into it she saw a very tiny
Ninnie-Dinnie looking up at her with eyes full of love and pleading.
'Please, Mammie Trebisken, give me back myself!' she piped. 'Please,
Mammie Trebisken, give me back myself!' and Joan took up the Pail in
her crooked hands, and turning it over on its side, she cried:
'Ninnie-Dinnie, I give thee back thyself; an' come out of the Pail at
once!' And Ninnie-Dinnie came out and stood before her, looking just
as she had looked when she set out with Tom in the dawn. 'Whatever
did 'ee let the Pail get hold of 'ee for?' asked Joan, when the child
set the Pail in its place.
'Because you asked me to bring me back myself,' she said. 'And now
I will sit at your feet and kiss your dear hands straight.'
Ninnie-Dinnie was very quiet the rest of the day, and when it drew
towards evening and Tom's return, she asked if she might bring the
costan to the hearthplace, as she felt so tired and sleepy.
Joan said she might, but was afraid it was too heavy for a dinky
little maid like her to carry.
The child said she would manage to bring it somehow, and she did;
and when she had shaken up the moss and leaves in the costan she got
into it, lay down, and was soon in a deep slumber.
Joan kept very quiet, so as not to disturb the poor little thing,
and when she looked into the bramble-basket half an hour later, she
saw something lying there that made her rub her eyes to see if she
were dreaming.
In the place where Ninnie-Dinnie had lain down there was the most
beautiful little creature it was possible to conceive. 'Its face,' as
Joan afterwards told her husband, 'was ever so much sweeter to look at
than a wild-rose, and its hair was softer and more silky than anything
she had ever seen, even the head of the tom-tit; and as for its mouth,
it was far too tender and lovely even for her kissing. It had different
clothes on, too, from what their little dear wore.' Joan said she could
not tell what they were, only they were all goldy, like furze blossom.
Before she could get over her surprise at this little tiny thing in
the bramble-basket, she heard a step outside, and thinking it was
Tom come back from the mine, she looked up, and there in the doorway
stood the same little bent old woman, her face hidden in a bal-bonnet,
who had brought the child ten years before.
Before she could ask her what she wanted, the dinky woman had glided
like moor-mist over to the hearthplace, and was bending over the
basket and singing:
'Give me my Ninnie, my dear little mudgeskerry;
The time is now up
For sweet-mead and cup,
For the Small People's dance
And the Nightrider's prance,
The flute and the song,
The horn and the dong,
To welcome my dinnie, my little mudgeskerry!
'Give back my own dinky, my little pednpaley;
The music's begun,
The frolic and fun,
The big stars are alight,
The full moon shines bright,
The fairy lamps gleam,
The Wee Folk all sing,
"Come away to the feast, dear little pednpaley."'
'I can't give back my dear little Ninnie-Dinnie!' cried Joan, breaking
in on the song, as it suddenly dawned upon her for what purpose the
little old woman had come. 'Please don't ask me to do that. I have
given back whatever else was asked of me gladly; but I can't--aw,
I can't--part with that dear little thing down there in the costan.'
The strange little body took no notice of the interruption, but went
on singing; and as she sang, the beautiful little creature in the
bramble-basket opened its eyes and looked up at Joan with tender
entreaty in them. That they were Ninnie-Dinnie's own little eyes
looking up at her Joan did not for a moment doubt; and she could but
see they grew more wistful as the queer little woman sang on:
'Oh, seek not to hinder my own little Ninnie,
For Magic and Pail,
And the Long-Eared's wail,
The free song of the Lark,
And the light in the dark,
The dinky herself--
The wee little elf!--
Have broken the spell o'er the dear little Ninnie!'
The Ninnie-Dinnie in the bramble-basket gave the crippled woman
another look of entreaty as the voice of the singer died away. She
understood that look so well, for she had appealed to her heart in
that very same way when she had asked her to give back the Lark his
music, the Pool its beams, and it made her feel now, as she felt
then, that it was exceedingly selfish of her to want to keep what
was not really her own, however desirable. And when the child, or
whatever it was, met her gaze again she conquered her selfishness and
resolved to give her back, whatever it cost her--'even,' she said,
'if it breaks my heart-strings.' And as the odd little woman in the
mine-maiden's bonnet paused for a moment as if awaiting her will,
in all the impetuosity of her generous nature she cried out:
'I give 'ee back your dinky, your little Mudgeskerry, your little
Pednpaley, and whatever else you do call the little dear that you
brought me ten years ago. I feel I've no mortal right to keep what
don't belong to me, though I thought she did by this time. Take her
if you must, an' thank 'ee kindly for the loan of her all these years.'
Joan's voice trembled as she uttered the last word, and the eyes of
the lovely little Ninnie-Dinnie spoke their sympathy as she kept her
gaze on her, and the funny little woman who had the voice of youth and
the figure of old age showed hers in her voice, for she sang sweeter
than before. It was an unfettered song, as unfettered as a lark's in
the golden dawn:
'To the carns we will hasten, my little pednpaley.
Then let us away
That a birdie may
Fly down from th' Sky's Blue Nest
Above the shining West,
To the heart that's true,
To the heart that knew
'Twas better to give than to keep my pednpaley.'
As she was singing, Joan saw her glance over her shoulder at the Pail,
which was all one shine on the dresser, and which, as she looked, left
the dresser and came towards the fireplace and hopped into the costan!
As the last words of the song died away into the silence of the
fire-lighted room, the little old woman in the bal-bonnet lifted the
bramble-basket on to her back and glided out of the cottage as she
had entered it; and the crippled woman, as she followed her with her
eyes, saw hundreds and hundreds of dear Little People coming down
the moor to meet her, singing and dancing as they came, and waving
little white lights tipped with red stars, very much like the one
that had shone from the Pail. When they came to where she stood they
formed a ring around the quaint bent little figure with the costan
on her back; and then she disappeared, and Joan saw in the centre of
the ring, as the Wee Folk twirled in their dance, two tiny Little
People more beautiful than all the rest--one of which she was sure
was her Ninnie-Dinnie and the other the fairy who, in the form of a
little old woman in a blue-grey cloak and a mine-maiden's bonnet, had
brought her to her cottage that never-to-be-forgotten autumn evening.
Joan missed Ninnie-Dinnie dreadfully at first; but from the evening
she gave her back, the rheumatism left her, and she was as well and
strong as she was in the first years of her married life. And when
autumn came round again, a dear little soft head of her own came to
nestle close to her heart, and to make Tom and herself glad the rest
of their days. But dear as this little Ninnie-Dinnie was, lovely as
they thought her, they did not love her one bit more than that other
Ninnie-Dinnie, the Skillywidden of the dear Little People, who were
her friends for ever after.
THE WITCH IN THE WELL
Once upon a time seven little maids of Padstow Town met together in
Beck Lane to play a game called 'The Witch in the Well.' As they stood
waiting for the child who was to act the witch, an old woman dressed
in a steeple-hat and chintz petticoat came down the lane towards them.
'What are you doing here, my pretty maids?' she asked.
'Waiting for our witch,' answered the children, wondering who this
strange-looking, oddly-dressed old woman could be. 'We are going to
play "Witch in the Well."'
'Are you?' said the queer old body. 'I used to play that nice game
when I was young like you, and should love to play it once again
before I die. The little maid who was to have been your witch tumbled
down on the cobble-stones in the market-place and hurt herself as she
was coming hither,' she added, as they stared at her in amazement,
'and won't be able to play with you to-day. Will you let me be your
witch instead of your little friend?'
'If you like, ma'am,' answered one of the children, after a hasty
glance at her companions for consent.
'Thank you,' cried the old woman. 'It will be the most exciting game
you ever played in all your life;' and, lifting her petticoats as
if to display her high-heeled shoes and red stockings, she hobbled
across the road to a well under a Gothic arch.
When the old crone had taken her seat inside the ancient well--and
which was called the Witch's Well--Betty, the child who was to play the
Mother in the game, took the other six little maids to a tumble-down
cottage opposite the well, and the game began.
The Little Mother told her children--who were called after the six
working days of the week--that she was going down to Padstow Town
to sell her eggs, and that they must not leave the cottage, as the
Witch o' the Well was about.
'Mind the old witch doesn't come and carry you away,' the wee maids
said one to another when the Little Mother had gone.
As they were saying this, the old woman in the chintz petticoat and
steeple-hat came to the door, and looked over the hatch.
'May I come in and light my pipe?' she asked.
'Iss, ma'am,' said Tuesday, unfastening the hatch; and when the old
crone had come in and lighted her pipe, she crooked her lean old arm
round Monday and took her away.
'Where is Monday?' asked the Little Mother when she had come back to
her cottage, quick to see that one of her children was gone.
'An old woman came to light her pipe and took her away,' said Tuesday.
'It was the old Witch o' the Well,' cried the Little Mother. 'I'll
go and see what she has done with her.'
And across the road to the well she went, and, stooping down and
looking in, she saw an old woman sitting in the back of the well
smoking a pipe.
'Where is my little maid Monday?' she demanded sternly.
'I gave her a piece of thunder-and-lightning [37] and sent her to
Chapel Stile to see if the waves were breaking on the Doombar,'
answered the witch, knocking the ashes out of her pipe.
'I am off to Chapel Stile to look for Monday,' said the Little Mother,
returning to the cottage. 'Be sure you don't let the old witch come
in whilst I am away.'
Betty's back was no sooner turned than the same old woman came to
the door.
'May I come in and light my pipe?' she asked.
'Iss, if you please, ma'am,' said Tuesday, forgetting her mother's
injunction.
The old crone came in, lighted her pipe, and took away Tuesday!
'Mind the old Witch o' the Well don't come and take you away like she
did Monday and Tuesday,' the children were saying to each other when
Betty came back from her fruitless search for Monday.
'What! has the bad old witch come and taken away Tuesday?' cried the
Little Mother. 'Dear! what ever shall I do now? I can't find Monday,
and now my poor little Tuesday is gone!'
She rushed across the road to the well where the old witch was sitting,
as before, calmly smoking her pipe.
'What have you done with Tuesday?' she demanded.
'I gave her a piece of saffron cake and sent her out to Lelizzick to
ask Farmer Chapman to sell me a bag of sheep's wool for spinning,'
the witch made answer.
'I am going out to Lelizzick to look for Tuesday,' said the Little
Mother, rushing back to her children. 'Be sure you don't let the old
witch come in. If you do, she will take you all away, and then what
shall I do without my dear little maids?'
Betty was scarcely out of sight when a steeple-hat was seen at the
window, and a pair of eerie eyes looked in.
Before the children could shut the door and its hatch, the old witch
had come into the cottage.
'A puff of wind blew out my pipe,' she said. 'May I light it with a
twig from your fire?'
'Iss,' answered Wednesday somewhat doubtfully. 'But Mother told us
we were not to let you come in, because, if we did, you would take
us away as you did Monday and Tuesday.'
'Did she?' cackled the witch, taking a bit of stick from the fire
and thrusting it into her pipe. 'Well, I only want one of you now,'
and looking round the room, her glance fell on Wednesday, and crooking
her arm round her, she carried her off to the well.
'I have been out to Lelizzick and can't find Tuesday,' cried the Little
Mother, coming into the cottage as the witch, with Wednesday under
her arm, disappeared into the well. 'Oh! where is Wednesday?' looking
round the room and seeing another of her children missing.
'The old witch came in before we could shut the door, and took our
little sister away,' said the children.
'This is wisht news, sure 'nough,' wailed the Little Mother, and off
she rushed to the well, where the witch was sitting smoking.
'What have you been and done with Wednesday?' she asked angrily.
'I gave her a bit of figgy-pudding, and sent her to Place House to
ask if Squire Prideaux's housekeeper would kindly give an old body
a bottle of their good physic to cure her rheumatics.'
'I'm going up to Place House to see if Wednesday is there,' said
the Little Mother, looking in at the window of the cottage. 'If the
witch should come to the door whilst I am away, don't let her come in,
whatever you do!'
When she had gone to Place House, an old mansion standing above Padstow
Town, the old witch left the well, and before the children saw her,
she had pushed open the door, and stood in the doorway, looking in.
'May I come in and light my pipe?' she asked.
'No,' answered Thursday.
But she came in, nevertheless, and having lighted her pipe, she caught
up Thursday and took her across to the well.
'What! has the witch been here again, and taken away
Thursday?' exclaimed the Little Mother when she came back from Place
House without finding Wednesday, discovering that another of her
children was gone.
'Iss,' sighed Friday. 'She came over the doorsill before we saw her.'
'This is too dreadful!' cried the poor Little Mother. 'I shall soon
have no little maids left to call my own!' and wringing her hands,
she went across the lane to the well.
'What have you been and done with Thursday, you bad old witch?' she
demanded.
'I gave her a piece of limpet-pie, and sent her to London Churchtown
to buy me a steeple-hat and a broom,' the witch made answer, rudely
puffing her pipe in Betty's face. 'If you go there in Marrowbone Stage,
[38] you will perhaps find her.'
'I am off to London Churchtown in Marrowbone Stage to look for
Thursday,' cried the Little Mother, returning to her cottage in great
haste and excitement. 'Keep the door and hatch locked and barred
till I come back, and then, if you are good children and do as I bid,
I will bring you home each a gold ring.'
When the Little Mother had driven away in Marrowbone Stage to London
Churchtown in search of Thursday, Friday saw the witch leave the well
and cross the road to their cottage.
'Shut the door quickly and bar it,' she cried to Little Saturday.
And Saturday had but slipped the bolt into its socket when the old
hag was at the door, knocking loudly to be let in.
'My pipe has gone out again,' she shrilled through the keyhole. 'May
I come in and light it?'
'No!' answered Friday. 'Mother said you would take us away as you
did poor Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, if we let you in.'
'I must come in and light my pipe,' insisted the witch. 'And if
you don't open the door, I'll come through the keyhole;' and as the
children would not open the door, through the keyhole she came!
Having lighted her pipe and unbolted the door, she caught up both
children and carried them away, and when the tired Little Mother
returned from London Churchtown in a fruitless search for Thursday,
she found to her dismay not only Friday gone, but dear Little Saturday!
She hurried to the well in an agony of despair.
'Where is Friday and Little Saturday?' she cried.
'I gave them each a herby pasty, [39] and sent them to Windmill with
grist to grind for to-morrow's baking,' answered the witch, spreading
her petticoats over the dark water of the well.
'Tired as I am, I must go to Windmill to look for my dear children,'
said the poor Little Mother, with a sigh. 'P'r'aps I shall meet them
coming back; and up the lane she went on her way out to Windmill.
When she came back to the well the old witch had smoked her pipe,
and was sound asleep and snoring.
'I have been all the way out to Windmill, and I could not see Friday
and Little Saturday anywhere,' cried the Little Mother, shaking the old
hag roughly by the shoulder. 'Where are they, you wicked old witch?'
'Friday and Little Saturday came back soon after you had gone to look
for them,' said the witch, opening her eyes and yawning.
'Where are they?' demanded the Little Mother.
'With Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday,' answered the witch,
knocking the ashes out of her pipe.
'And where is Monday and the others?'
'Upstairs,' answered the witch.
'Whose stairs?' asked Betty.
'My stairs,' returned the witch.
'Shall I go up your stairs and bring them?' asked the Little Mother
eagerly.
'Your shoes are too dirty,' cried the witch.
'I will take off my shoes,' said Betty.
'Your stockings are too dirty,' protested the witch.
'I will take off my stockings.'
'Your feet are too dirty,' protested the old hag.
'I will wash my feet,' said the Little Mother.
'No water would wash them clean enough to climb up my stairs,' cried
the witch.
'I'll cut off my feet,' persisted Betty, determined that no excuse
should stop her from getting to her children.
'The blood would drop and stain my stairs,' said the witch.
'I'll tie up my stumps,' cried the Little Mother.
'The blood would come through,' howled the witch.
'Then, what shall I do to get up your stairs?' said the Little Mother,
with a cry of despair.
'Fly up!' cackled the old hag.
'But I can't fly without wings,' wailed Betty.
'Get wings,' cried the witch, with a sneer.
'How can I?' asked the poor Little Mother helplessly.
'I leave that to your clever wits to find out!' snapped the witch. 'And
let me tell you that until you can fly you will never see Monday and
your five other children again, nor get them out of my clutches!' And
with a 'Ha! ha!' and a 'He! he!' the witch pulled her petticoats
round her and disappeared under the dark waters of the well.
'My dear life!' ejaculated Betty, now really frightened. 'I believe
that old woman who played the game with us was a real witch, and wasn't
pretending at all, and has really and truly taken Monday, Tuesday,
and all the others away.' And she sped away down to the quay where
she lived with her terrible news.
There was a great to-do when the children's friends learned what had
happened, and there was bitter woe and lamentation when, after days
and days of searching, the poor little souls could not be found.
A year went by, and all this time Betty, the child who had acted the
'Mother' in the game, never forgot her six little friends. They were
seldom out of her thoughts, and she longed for a pair of wings to
fly up the witch's stairs; and the more she wanted wings, the more
impossible they seemed to get.
One evening in the beginning of June--the very same day, as it
happened, that she and her little companions had met together at the
Witch's Well to play the game--she was passing the well, when a little
white dog ran out of a garden close by, and came and licked her shoes.
She was fond of dogs, and, as she patted it, to her amazement it
began to talk to her just like a human being, which almost scared
her out of her wits.
'Please don't be afraid of me,' he said, wagging his stump of a tail
as Betty backed into the hedge. 'I am only a dog in shape. I was a
little boy before the dreadful old Witch o' the Well turned me into
a dog, or what looks like a dog.'
'Were you really a boy once? And do you know the Witch o' the
Well?' asked Betty, trying to get over her fears in her interest in
what he told her.
'Alas, I do!' answered the dog. 'She is my mistress, and I have to
follow her about all day long, and am never free of her except at
night, when she is riding about on her broom. Then I have to haunt
certain lanes to make silly superstitious people believe I am a
ghost. The old Witch sent me to this lane a few days ago, and very
glad I was, because I hoped to see you.'
'Whatever for?' asked Betty, still very much afraid of this strange
dog, with his human-like voice.
'Because I know your little friends Monday and the others.'
'Do you really?' cried the child. 'I am glad!--Where are they?'
'In the witch's house, away on a dark moor, in her upstairs chamber,'
answered the little white dog, with a wag of his tail, 'and where they
will have to stay--so the witch says--until the little maid who played
"Mother" in the game is able to fly upstairs after them.'
'Then, I'm afraid they will have to stay there always,' said Betty,
her eyes filling with tears. 'Can't you get up the witch's stairs
and bring them down?'
'The stairs are almost as steep as a tower,' answered the dog; 'and
even if I could climb them, the door of the chamber where they are
shut up is locked, and a spell worked upon the lock that nothing can
open save a pair of wings and music.'
'What kind of music?' asked Betty.
'I haven't the smallest idea,' answered the dog. 'I only know that
it has to do with you.'
'Are my dear little friends happy?' asked Betty, hardly noticing the
dog's last remark.
'They are most unhappy,' said the dog. 'They have nothing to cheer
them, poor little souls, save the forlorn hope that perhaps one day
their dear Little Mother Betty will be able to fly and get them out
of the witch's power.'
'If I only knew how to fly, how quickly I would get up those
stairs!' said Betty. 'There is nothing I can do, is there, to get a
pair of wings?' she asked wistfully. 'Nobody who can help me to get
wings?' she added, as the little white dog seemed to bend his head
in thought.
'Nobody but the Wise Woman of Bogee Down,' he answered, after
considering a few minutes.
'I have heard of that strange old body,' said Betty. 'My mother often
told me about her. She is very clever and wise, she said, and used
to make simples for sick folks. She is terribly old now--a hundred
and twenty, I think she told me.'
'That or more,' said the dog. 'But aged as she is, she is not too
aged to work a kindness for anybody that asks her, particularly if
it be against the Witch o' the Well.'
'Will she help me to get wings, do you think?' asked Betty eagerly.
'If it is within her power, I am certain she will,' returned the little
white dog. 'Why don't you go and see her, and tell her the old Witch
o' the Well has shut up six dear little maids, who were unfortunate
enough to play the game with her a year ago, and that they cannot be
set free until you, who acted the "Mother" in the game, can fly up
to their rescue?'
''Tis a long way to Bogee Down,' answered Betty, 'but I'll go there
to-morrow, all the same, if I can.'
'That is well,' cried the little white dog. 'You will not seek her
help in vain, I am sure, especially if you tell her the witch's little
white dog Pincher sent you. Now I must be off, for the old witch is
up on her broom, and if she should happen to see us talking together,
her horrid old cat would sclow [40] our eyes out. Good-bye, dear
little Betty, and give thee favour in the sight of the Wise Woman';
and with another wag of his tail he vanished.
Betty hardly slept a wink that night, thinking of her six little
friends shut up in the witch's tower, and so ardently did she desire
wings to fly up to their help that she got up and dressed before
the sun was risen. He was just rising over the golden towans on the
east side of the river as she left her mother's house for Bogee Down,
a wild, picturesque, but lonely tableland about four miles from the
ancient town.
It was so early that nobody was up except herself, and the doors of
the Crown and Anchor were still closed as she walked over the quay,
down the slip, and across the beach to the south quay.
The child went out of the town the nearest way to the downs, up
through a side road called the Drang, and up Sander's Hill.
When she got up to Three Turnings, which commanded a view of the river
and Padstow low in the hollow of the hills, she climbed a stile and
looked down to see if she could see the quay.
The river was now very beautiful with reflections of the dawn, and
its pale-blue water was flushed with tenderest rose and gold. There
was a flush on the rounded hills, and a gleam of light on the distant
tors--Rough Tor and Brown Willy. There was a ship in full sail coming
up the harbour, followed by a company of white-breasted gulls, which
also caught the light.
The sun was high in the sky when Betty reached Bogee Down. Now she
had got there she did not know in what part of it the Wise Woman
lived. As she sent her glance over the wild down, gorgeous with yellow
broom and other down flowers, she thought she saw blue smoke rising
from a hedge a short distance up from Music Water, a delightful spot
where Sweet-Gales, Butterfly Orchises, Bog-Asphodels grew, and where
a clear brown musical stream ran down between the fragrant flowers,
which made the place that June morning very beautiful.
The child went up over the down where she had seen the smoke rising,
and found a hut huddled under a high blackberry hedge.
She knocked at the door, which was half open, and a thin cracked
voice called out:
'Come in and tell me what has brought thee to this lonely down.'
Betty obeyed, but not without fear; and as she pushed the door open,
she saw sitting in front of a peat fire on the hearthstone the bent
form of an old woman with her back to the door. She was quaintly
dressed, after the manner of ancient dames of the sixteenth century,
and on her head she wore a cap as white as sloe blossom.
The old dame did not look round as Betty entered, but when the child
had said all that Pincher the little white dog had told her to say,
and had asked if she would kindly help her to get wings to fly up
the witch's stairs, she suddenly glanced at her over her shoulder,
with the brightest, keenest eyes the girl had ever seen, and which
seemed to look into her pure young soul.
Evidently Betty's earnest little face pleased her, for she smiled
and said kindly:
'Pincher was a wise dog to send you to me. But, let me tell you, you
have asked me to do an almost impossible thing. Yet, fortunately for
those poor shut-up little maids, it is not quite impossible; but it
will depend on yourself, whether your love and pity for your little
friends is strong enough to do all that is required of you.'
'I'll do anything if I can only get wings to fly with, and see Monday,
Tuesday, and the others again,' broke in Betty, with all a child's
eagerness.
'Alas! the will that is strong and eager to do is often weakened by
the flesh that is frail,' said the Wise Woman, with a shake of her
head; 'but the question now is, Are you willing to live with me,
an old woman, in this out-of-the-way place, for a year and a day,
if 'tis required, and do all I bid you willingly, without asking a
single question?'
'A year and a day is a long time to be away from home,' said Betty
honestly. 'Still, I am willing to stay with you all that time and do
your bidding if my mother will let me.'
'That is well!' cried the Wise Woman. 'Now go back to Padstow Town and
get your mother's consent, and return to me to-morrow about this time.'
Betty's mother was very glad to let her little girl go and live with
the Wise Woman, for she was very poor, and had twelve children.
The next day, when Betty was returning to Bogee Down, which she did by
the same road as before, with her clothes done up in a bundle under
her arm, who should she see, leaning over a gate, at a place called
Uncle Kit's Corner, but the old Witch o' the Well, smoking her pipe!
'Whither away, my little dear?' cried the witch, as the child drew
near the gate.
'To get a pair of wings to fly up your stairs to see Monday and the
others,' answered Betty promptly.
'Ha! ha! That's too funny!' cried the witch. 'As well try to cut
a piece from the blue of yon sky to make yourself a gown as to get
wings to fly up my stairs.' And she laughed and laughed until she
nearly choked herself.
'The witch may crow like an evil bird now,' cried the Wise Woman when
Betty told her what the witch had said; 'but I shall hope to live to
hear her screech like a whitnick [41] before that time has passed.'
When the little maid had undone her bundle, and put away her small
belongings, the old woman told her to go to the settle, which stood
by the fireplace, and take out from its seat a little bag of feathers,
and separate one from the other and lay them on the table.
'That will be an easy thing to do,' said Betty to herself; and
lifting the seat, she found a dinky bag stuffed full of feathers,
rainbow-coloured, but so matted together that they were nothing but
a soft ball.
'P'r'aps this is to make me a pair of wings,' said Betty; and seating
herself on the settle, she set to work with a will.
But the feathers were not easily disentangled, as she soon found,
and when evening came she had only succeeded in disentangling one
tiny feather from the matted mass.
The Wise Woman neither looked nor spoke to her until the sun sank
down behind the downs, when she told her to return the bag to its
place in the settle, and then get her supper and her own and go to bed.
'I have only got one little feather to put on the table,' said poor
little Betty, when she had put the bag back into its place.
'You have done better than I feared,' said the Wise Woman quietly. 'It
is something to have untangled even one feather from its companions. It
is a sign that it is quite possible that you may be able to fly.'
When they had had their supper, which consisted of black bread and
goat's milk, Betty lay down in a bed made of dried grass and bracken,
in the corner of the room, and slept the sleep of well-doing.
'It will take me a whole year to untangle all these feathers,' said
the little maid to herself the next day, when she again sat down to
her task, which she did when she had got her own and the Wise Woman's
breakfast, and had swept and sanded the hut. ''Tis dreary work, sure
'nough!'
'Pity, love, and patience will do wonders,' said the Wise Woman,
who seemed to have the gift of thought-reading, and what she said
comforted the child not a little.
Every day for six long months Betty sat in the settle most of the
day separating feather from feather, and it was not until the end
of that time that the last feather was laid upon the table, and so
bright and beautiful did they look that she said they looked as if
they had been dipped in a rainbow.
The Wise Woman did not tell her what they were for, but she was sure
they were to make her a pair of wings. 'And how beautiful they will
be when they are made--brighter than a sunset!' she whispered to
herself as she lay down to sleep that night.
When Betty awoke the following morning, she looked at the table to
see if the feathers were safe, and saw, to her dismay, the Wise Woman
sweep them into the skirt of her gown and take them to the door and
shake them out on the down.
'Aw, my beautiful feathers!' ejaculated the child, springing up in
her bed, when as she did so the ancient dame broke into a chant,
and all she could make out of it was that now the spell was broken
they must go with all speed to the Queen of the Little People and
get her permission to help in the undoing of another spell.
When the chant had ceased, Betty, still more amazed, saw a great cloud,
that looked more like winged flowers than feathers, float away over
the downs towards the sea.
'I don't believe they were feathers at all!' cried Betty to
herself. 'And, aw dear! how am I to get my wings now?'
She longed to ask the Wise Woman to tell her why she had flung the
feathers away, but remembering what the old body had said, that she
was to ask no questions, whatever she saw or heard, she kept back
the words on her lips.
She was very cast down when her work of many days was gone--she knew
not whither.
When she had had her breakfast and had done all her little chores, the
Wise Woman bade her search in the seat of the settle for a black stone,
which, she told her, she must rub till it was the colour of life.
After much searching, she found the stone of curious shape wrapped
in soft leather, which her old friend said she could use to rub the
stone with.
Betty again set to work with a will, but rub as hard as she could,
no rubbing seemed to affect the blackness of the stone, and at the end
of a week it seemed blacker than ever. She was much troubled at this,
and the Wise Woman, who read her thoughts, told her not to despair,
as its blacker blackness was a sign that all would be well, and that
she was in a fair way of getting wings to fly up the witch's stairs.
'How?' was on Betty's lips, but a warning look from the Wise Woman's
wonderful bright eyes made the question die unspoken.
For many a week longer the girl rubbed the sable stone--patiently
and quietly most of the time, but there were days when she felt like
throwing the stone out of the window and running away home to her
mother. But pity for her poor little friends shut up in the witch's
chamber made her persevere with her task.
One day, when she was almost worn out with rubbing, she saw a faint
glow come into the stone, which, as she rubbed harder and quicker
than ever, grew brighter and brighter, until it lay in her hand as
red as a poppy.
'The stone is all afire!' she cried, taking it to the Wise Woman.
'It is the colour of life at last,' said the ancient dame, gazing at
it with her wonderful bright eyes; 'and another spell loosened to the
witch's undoing,' she muttered, half to herself. And noticing that
Betty was listening with all her ears, she told the child to look
in the settle for a box, and when she had found it to put it on the
table and lay the stone within it.
There was only one box in the settle, which, though small, was most
exquisitely carved all over with wings--wing interlacing wing--and
as Betty set it on the table and put the stone into it, she thought
she had never seen such a lovely box.
The next morning, when she awoke, she saw the Wise Woman at the door
of the hut with the stone in her hand, and she heard her chanting:
'Go the way thy sisters went--the way of the west wind, and ask the
King of the Wee Folk to give thee permission to help in the undoing
of an evil wrought by the Witch o' the Well;' and Betty, staring with
all her eyes, saw the ancient dame fling the stone out on to the down,
along which it rolled at a rapid rate, burning as it went with a rosy
splendour. It went the way the feathers had gone.
Betty dressed quickly, and busied herself about the hut, to keep
herself from asking if the stone was really a stone, for she did not
believe it was, and she ached to know.
When they had had breakfast, and the hut was cleaned with fresh
scouring-sand, the Wise Woman asked her, if she had the chance of
being made into a bird, what little bird would she like to be.
'A thrush,' said Betty. 'I should love to be a little thrush, because
it sings so sweetly in the dawn.'
'It is a good choice,' cried the Wise Woman--'the best you could have
made. Now go down to Trevillador Wood, and every thrush you see in it,
ask him to give you a feather for Love's sake.'
'I do not know where Trevillador Wood is,' said the child, 'nor the
way thither.'
'It is in a valley in Little Petherick,' returned the Wise Woman. 'It
is not a great way from here, and easy to find if you follow a
little brown stream from Crackrattle, that runs down through the
valley to the wood. Crackrattle is away there, on Trevibban Down,'
pointing to the opposite down, which was only separated from Bogee
by a narrow road. 'By going up across Trevibban you will soon get to
Crackrattle. Now go, my dear, and go quickly.' And Betty went.
The child was ever so thankful to be out of doors again, after having
been cooped up in the hut for so many months, particularly as it
was the birds' singing-time. Birds were singing everywhere on the
downs, and their music gushed from furze-brake, from thorn-bush and
alder; and when she came to Music Water she heard linnets fluting,
and sweet wild notes came from budding willows by the side of the
rippling stream. Larks were also singing--lark answering lark with
such wonderful melody in the blue upper air that she told herself
she had never heard such lovely sounds before.
The downs, in spite of all the bird-music, were not so beautiful nor
so full of colour as when she came to stay with the Wise Woman. They
were now as brown as Piskey-purses, she said, and only lightened here
and there by granite boulders, where they caught the rays of the sun,
by yellow gorse, and splashes of silver lichen.
It did not take the girl very long to cross Music Water's full stream
to reach the road that parted the two downs; but it took her some time
to get to Crackrattle, as the way up to it was thick with brambles
and furze.
When she drew near that part of the down which commanded a grand view
of the country and sea as far up as Tintagel, she turned her gaze
towards Padstow Town, and saw the river twisting in and out of the
hills on its way out to the open sea. She also saw the two great
headlands, Stepper Point and Pentire, that guarded the entrance
to Padstow harbour in that far-away sixteenth century, as they do
to-day, and her glimpse of them and the blue river seemed to bring
her home quite close to her; and when she reached Crackrattle stream,
she followed it down the long, deep valley with a happy heart.
When she came to a wood, which she was sure in her mind was Trevillador
Wood, she heard the thrushes singing and filling the place with
music. Every cock thrush was doing his very best to out-sing his
brother thrush. It was mating-time, and each little songster in
speckled grey was trying to win a little mate by his song.
The first thrush that Betty saw--and he was a master singer and
made the wood ring--was on the uppermost branch of a horse-chestnut
just beginning to bud, and when he had finished his entrancing song,
she lifted up her voice and said:
'Dear little grey thrush, please give me one of your feathers, for
Love's sake.'
She wondered as she begged if the bird would understand her language;
but he did quite well, and, what she thought was still more wonderful,
she understood his!
'I will give you a feather gladly,' he piped in his own delicious
thrush way. 'It is the beautiful spring-time, and the thrushes'
courting-time; and because you beg a feather for Love's sake, I will
pluck one that lies over my heart.' And the dear little bird did
so, and flung it down into Betty's outstretched hands; and when she
had caught it, he burst out into exquisite melody, and he was still
singing, as she went down the wood lovely with budding trees.
From every thrush she saw she asked a feather for Love's sake, and
she was not refused once, and by the time she had gone the length
of the wood her apron was full of thrushes' feathers, plucked from
breast and wing, tail and back!
'Were the song-thrushes willing to give their feathers?' asked the
Wise Woman when Betty got back to the hut.
'Ever so willing!' cried the little maid, opening her apron to show
what a lot she had got.
'It is more than enough,' she said. 'Put them into the box where the
stone lay.'
The following morning when the child awoke there was a mournful sound
coming up from the sea, which they could command from the door of
the hut, and the Wise Woman said it was a sign that a great storm was
being brewed by the Master of the Winds, and that before the day was
over he would send the great North-Easter across the land.
'I am sorry,' she said, 'as it will hinder our work, and perhaps I
shall die of the cold before we can help you to fly.'
Betty wanted terribly to ask the Wise Woman who beside herself would
help her to get wings, but she dared not ask a single question,
and felt it was very hard she could not.
Before the day had closed in, the bitter north wind, which was
accompanied by snow, had come. It broke over the downs in great fury,
and made the poor old woman shiver over her fire with the misery of
it. The next day and the next it blew, and the more it blew, and the
faster it snowed, the more the ancient dame shivered and shook; and
all day long she kept Betty busy piling up dry furze on the hearth,
till there was none left to put.
When she realized that all her winter store of peat and firewood was
burnt, she moaned, and said she was sure she should die of the cold.
'And if I die,' she added sadly, 'the witch, like the north wind,
will have it all her own way, and you will never be able to fly up
her terrible stairs.'
This distressed the poor little maid very much; for she had become
quite fond of the Wise Woman, and wanted her to live for her own sake
as well as for Monday's, Tuesday's, and the others'.
When the fuel was all burnt, and the Wise Woman too cold even to
shiver, Betty said that when it stopped snowing she would go out on
the downs and look for something to burn; and when it stopped she went.
The downs were many feet deep under the snow, and there was not a
furze-brake nor a hillock to be seen anywhere; and the down opposite
was as smooth as a sheet spread out on grass to dry.
As Betty was searching for wood, and could not find even a stick, a
hare came speeding over the snow from Crackrattle. She watched it till
it crossed over to Bogee, and saw, to her surprise, that it was making
straight for her. When it drew near it stopped, with eyes that made
her think of the witch's eyes, and as it gazed, the hare disappeared,
and in its place stood the old witch herself, steeple-hat and all!
Betty was dreadfully frightened, and before she could rush back to
the hut, the witch had come quite close to her, and asked her what
she was doing out there in the cold.
'Looking for firewood for the poor old Wise Woman's fire,' answered
Betty. 'And I can't see any,' she added sadly.
'Of course you can't,' laughed the witch. 'Sticks under three feet
of snow are as difficult to find as a furze-needle in a wainload of
hay. It will comfort you to know that you won't find even a stick,
and that before the north wind has turned his back on the downs,
the Wise Woman will have died of the cold, and you will cry your
eyes out for wings to fly up my stairs!' And cackling and jeering,
she disappeared, and Betty saw a gray hare running away over the snow
down to Music Water, now as silent as the downs themselves.
The little maid was returning to the hut with an icicle of despair
at her heart, when a white dog ran across her path, and looking down,
she saw it was Pincher, the witch's dog.
'Don't let what my bad old mistress said distress you,' he cried,
licking Betty's cold little hand. 'She does not want you to look
for sticks, and came here on purpose to prevent you. She is quite as
anxious that the Wise Woman should die as you and I are for her to
live. She is as clever as she is vile, and she knows that a woman
over a hundred could not possibly live long in awful weather like
this unless she has a good fire to keep her warm.'
'But why does she want the Wise Woman to die?' asked the little maid.
'Because she fears the wisdom of her long years can help you to fly
up her stairs. And this fear brought her to Bogee Down to-day. She
made me come with her, which is fortunate; for poking about whilst
she was talking to you, I discovered a great faggot of wood dry as
a bone, and under it a pile of peat.'
'Where?' Betty asked eagerly.
'Close to the hut under a hedge,' answered the dog. 'And if you will
allow me I'll come and help you to get it out. The witch is so happy
in her belief that she has discouraged you from looking for sticks
that she won't miss me yet.'
And he led the way to the side of the hut, where, under a tangle of
brambles, Betty saw a huge bundle of sticks, dry and brown.
They set to work with a will--she with her eager young hands, he with
his strong white teeth--and soon got it out from under the hedge and
into the hut, where, to their distress, they found the Wise Woman
lying face down on the hearthstone, apparently lifeless.
Betty, girl-like, began to sob, believing the poor old woman was dead,
which made Pincher quite angry, and he told her with a growl to put
off her weeping till a more convenient time, and see if she could
not kindle a fire with the sticks they had brought, whilst he tried
to lick life back into her poor old body.
It was just the stimulus the child wanted. She mopped away her tears,
and piled wood on the fire and set it alight; and Pincher, the dog,
licked the poor old woman's face and hands with his warm, moist tongue.
Their efforts were not in vain, and they soon had the joy of seeing
her open her eyes and stretch out her hands to the blaze.
'Thank you for all your kindness, dear Pincher,' said Betty, when
the dog said he must go. 'If I can ever do you a kindness in return,
just ask me and I'll do it if I can.'
'Remember me when you can fly up the witch's stairs,' said the dog,
with an appealing look in his eyes that Betty never forgot.
'Then you really believe I shall be able to fly up those stairs some
day?' she asked.
'I am almost certain you will, and so is the witch. You cannot
live with people for generations without being able to read their
faces. The witch's face is an open book to me now, and it tells me
that she is not only afraid you will fly, but that it will happen
soon. So fearful is she of this that a few days ago she actually wove
another spell on the door leading up to the tower where the little
maids who played the game are kept.'
'Do you ever get mouth-speech with the poor little dears?' asked
Betty wistfully.
'Never. But I sometimes see them at the barred window of their
chamber. It isn't often they have time even for that, for the old
witch keeps them spinning all day long. Farewell, dear! I must go. If
the faggot of sticks is all burnt and the turf before the cold goes,
don't go out again in search of more firewood. There is danger
abroad. If the Wise Woman is in danger of sinking under the cold,
just lay your warm heart against her heart, and all will be well.'
The dreadful weather still continued, and when the faggot was all
burnt, the dame again began to shiver and shake with cold, and said she
should die this time, as there was no warmth left to keep life in her.
Betty was once more greatly distressed on her old friend's account,
and declared she would go out on the downs to look for firewood in
spite of what might happen to herself; but as she was going, the Wise
Woman again tumbled, face down, on the fireless hearth.
As the girl picked her up (she was not the weight of a witch) and laid
her on the settle, she remembered what the dog had advised her to do
if the cold overcame the old woman again, and, lying down beside her,
she pressed her warm young body against her aged body, and soon she had
the joy of knowing that life was creeping back to the feeble old frame.
When the Wise Woman opened her eyes and saw the child's face close
to hers, and felt her kind young arms about her, she said, with a
tremble in her voice:
'Thou art a dear little maid. Thou hast rekindled the feeble flame
of my life, proving to me that Good is greater than Evil, and Love
stronger than Hate. I shall not die now before thou hast gotten thy
wings. Get up, open the door, and call across the snow three times,
"Little Prince Fire, come away from the Small People's Country and
keep the Wise Woman warm till the cold goes!"'
Betty made haste to obey, and when she had opened the hut-door wide
she called three times, as she was told, and then waited to see what
would happen.
In a minute or less there appeared on the edge of the down a bright-red
glow like a poppy in the eye of the sun. After burning there a minute
or so it came like a flash over the snow towards the hut. As it came
close, she saw it was the very same stone that she had rubbed for so
many, many weeks.
It flashed like a ruby into the hut, and as it did so she thought
she saw, through the soft rosy haze that seemed to envelope it,
a tiny laughing face.
When she turned to see where the stone had gone, behold it was on the
hearthstone, burning away like a tiny faggot, and the Wise Woman was
sitting beside it with her withered old hands held out to the blaze!
It was so remarkable and queer that Betty could not at first believe
the evidence of her own eyes, and rubbed them to make sure she was
not dreaming. But it was no dream, for the miserable little hut, which
a few minutes before was cold as Greenland, was now as warm as a zam
[42] oven, and there was a soft glow all over it.
She sat down on the settle to enjoy the comfort of this wonderful fire,
and she felt so warm and lovely after the terrible cold that it made
her drowsy, and in a little while she was in a sound sleep. She never
knew how long she slept, she only knew that when she awoke the wind
and the snow had all gone, and the down birds were chanting a morning
song outside the window. The stone was also gone, and the Wise Woman
nowhere to be seen.
As she was wondering what had become of the latter, the old woman
came into the hut with her apron full of green furze, and seeing the
child wide awake, she cried:
'Get up, sleepy-head! The cold has left the downs this longful time,
and the thrushes in Trevillador Wood have built their nests and are
beginning to lay. Haste to the wood and get a bottleful of bird-music.'
'Where is the bottle?' asked Betty, getting up and looking about her.
'You will find one in the settle made of the Small People's crystal,
into which you must ask every thrush you hear singing to his mate to
drop a note to make a song with. Ask him to give it you for Gratitude's
sake. When the bottle is full to its neck make your way back to the
hut, and the first living thing you see after you have left the wood
ask it to return with you to the Wise Woman. Ask it also to come for
Gratitude's sake.'
After the child had eaten some food and had found the bottle, which
was ever so tiny, and clear and bright as diamonds, she started for
Trevillador Wood.
The cold had indeed all gone, as the Wise Woman had said, and the
downs were all the better for the great storm that had swept over
them. The snow had kept the earth warm, and had been a soft warm
blanket to all the downflowers, and now the furze blossom was all
manner of lovely shades of gold, and the soft spring air full of its
fragrance. Music Water was all alight with marsh-marigolds, and the
catkins of the grey-green willows were dusted with gold.
The snow had also been kind to the trees in Trevillador Wood (the
Thrushes' Wood, Betty called it), and had wrapped all the baby buds
and tender leaves in dainty white furs, and when the little maid
entered the wood she saw, to her surprise, that most of the trees
were dreams of beauty, with glistering leaves, and some of them were
almost as brightly coloured as that strange stone, Little Prince Fire,
as the Wise Woman had called it.
So delighted was she with all she saw that she forgot what she had
been sent there for, until a thrush near startled the wood with a
burst of melody. He was singing to his mate, for, drawing nearer,
she saw, low down in a bush, a little hen thrush on her nest.
'Please, little grey-bird, [43] will you drop a note of your song
into this bottle for Gratitude's sake?' she asked, holding up the
bottle to the singing thrush.
'Gladly,' piped he, 'especially as you ask it for Gratitude's sake. We
have just received our first great blessing, which I may tell you is
a tiny blue egg.'
'Give the child two notes,' piped a happy little voice from the
nest. 'My heart is brimming over with joy for the warm wee thing
under me.'
'Thank you for your kindness,' said Betty. 'But, if you please, little
thrushes, the Wise Woman who lives on Bogee Down above Music Water,
who sent me to this wood, said I must only ask for one note from each
thrush I heard singing.'
'That is right,' chirped the little cock thrush. 'Always obey those
older and wiser than yourself.'
'Ask the child what she wants thrushes' notes for,' chirped the voice
from the nest. 'She didn't say, did she?'
'I forgot to tell you that,' struck in Betty. 'It is to make a
song with.'
'I thought so,' piped the little cock thrush, and flying down, he
put one of his most delicious notes into the tiny bottle, and in
another second he was up on his bush again, singing deeper and more
entrancingly than before, gratitude being the keynote and the chief
utterance of his song.
Betty went down the wood with that music in her soul, and begged
every thrush she heard singing to give her a note of his song.
Whether every bird's heart was also full of gladness for the freckled
blue eggs in its dear little nest we cannot say, but they all gave
willingly of their best, and before the child had gone through
Trevillador Wood, the bottle of Small People's crystal was full to
the neck with thrush-music.
Coming back, she saw two red squirrels sitting on their haunches at
the foot of an oak-tree, eating nuts.
Said one squirrel to the other squirrel:
'There is a dear little maid from Padstow Town here in the wood
collecting music from the thrushes. It is the same child who, unknown
to herself, undid a cruel spell which the Witch o' the Well cast over
Prince Fire, a near relative of the King of the Little People. She
turned him into a black stone, and a stone he had to be till somebody
could rub it the colour of flame.'
'You don't mean to say so?' cried the other squirrel. 'This is news.'
'I thought it would be,' said the squirrel that spoke, arching his
handsome tail with importance. 'Perhaps it will also be news to you
to hear that this same little maid has actually untangled the dear
Little Lady Soft Winds from that great Skein of Entanglement into
which the wicked old witch tangled them, and from which nobody,
not even the Wee Folk themselves, was able to free them.'
'However did she manage to do it?' asked the second squirrel.
'Only the Wise Woman of Bogee Down could answer that question. But the
thrushes believe, and so do I, that love and pity for six little maids
whom the witch has shut up somewhere gave patience to her fingers to do
what the Wise Woman bade her do; and because her heart was full of love
for these poor little maids, whom she hoped by her obedience to get out
of the witch's power, she unwittingly set free the other poor little
prisoners--the Lady Soft Winds and Prince Fire, the King's cousin.'
'And has she got her own little friends out of the power of the witch
after all her love and patience?' asked the squirrel.
'Alas! not yet; but we all hope she will soon. The Small People are
her friends now, especially those she set free. And it is told that
they are going to turn her into a flying creature of some sort. Some
say a bird, but nobody knows for certain. We are all on the alert
to see what will happen. They say the Lady Soft Winds whispered to
the daffodowndillies last evening that Prince Fire had already begun
to make a pair of wings for her to fly up the witch's stairs. But it
may be only talk. And yet--there! the dear little maid is coming. Not
another word, remember. She understands our language, and bird language
too. The Wise Woman, it is said, put something on her tongue when she
was asleep one day, when Little Prince Fire came from the Wee Folk's
country to keep the Wise Woman's hut warm;' and then, catching sight
of Betty's eyes bent upon him, he rushed up the trunk of the oak,
followed by his companion.
'Well, those little funny things have told news, sure 'nough,'
laughed the child to herself when the pretty little squirrels had
vanished, 'and have told me all I ached to know without asking a
single question. To think that the little feathers were the dear
Little People; and that queer black stone was one too, and that they
are going to help me fly up to Monday and the rest!'
And she danced with delight as she thought of it, and the wonder was
she did not dance the thrushes' notes out of the bottle.
When she was out of the wood, and walking up to Crackrattle, she
remembered what the Wise Woman had told her, that the first thing she
saw with wings she must ask it to return with her to the hut; but the
only winged creature that she noticed as she went up the valley was a
large butterfly--or what she thought was a butterfly--on a great stone.
'The Wise Woman cannot want a butterfly to go back with me to her
house,' said Betty to herself. 'But perhaps I had better ask it to
come;' and speaking gently, so as not to frighten away the lovely
thing on the stone, she said: 'Little butterfly, please will you,
for Gratitude's sake, come with me to the Wise Woman's hut?' and to
her amazement the tiny creature answered back:
'Gladly will I go with you. But, excuse me, I am not a butterfly. I
am one of the Lady Soft Winds whom you freed from the tangle into
which the old witch threw us.'
It began to rise on its azure wings as it spoke, and as it rose Betty
saw it was indeed a fairy. It had the dearest little face she had ever
seen, and as for its eyes, they were bluer than its own wings, and
its soft, round cheeks were a more delicate pink than the cross-leaved
heath that flowered on the downs early in the summer.
It flew on beside her, and Betty was so taken up with watching it
that she did not notice when she got up to Crackrattle that a dozen
other fairy-like creatures were flying over the downs towards her,
until they were quite close.
'We are the Lady Soft Wind's sisters,' they said, 'and out of deep
gratitude to you we have come to go with you to the Wise Woman's hut.'
'Have you really, you little dears?' was all Betty could find words
to say. 'Come along, then.'
And they came, and were a rhythm of colour as they flew beside her,
or, as the child expressed it, 'a little flying garland of flowers.'
Thus accompanied, Betty came to the hut, where, in the doorway,
stood the Wise Woman, leaning on her stick, evidently awaiting her
and her companions' arrival.
'We have come,' said one of the little creatures.
'I felt certain you would,' said the Wise Woman, making a curtsey,
'and a thousand welcomes. If the child has brought the thrushes'
notes everything is ready.'
'She has brought them,' put in another tiny voice, 'and they are
impatient to sing.'
'Then please follow me,' said the Wise Woman, going into the hut;
and in flew all the lovely little creatures, with gentle fanning of
wings, which made a soft breeze as they came.
'Prince Fire is already at work,' said the Wise Woman, pointing to
the box, and Betty, who had followed the Little Lady Soft Winds, saw,
sitting in the box amongst the thrushes' feathers, a small person
dressed in red, busy making wings! He was Little Prince Fire, and a
very great person in the Small People's World.
'My dear life! aw, my dear life! What shall I see next?' cried the
little Padstow maid to herself; and what more she would have said is
not known, for at that moment the Wise Woman took the tiny crystal
bottle out of her hand and put it into the box beside the dinky
person within.
'The Lady Soft Winds have arrived, your Royal Highness,' she said,
'and Betty, the little Padstow maid, is also here.'
'Good!' piped the tiny man. 'Bid them sing the Making Song.'
'We require no bidding, Prince Fire,' said a little Lady Soft Wind,
with gentle dignity, as she and the others alighted on the table. 'Out
of gratitude and love we have come from afar to sing this song, knowing
well, unless we sang it, you would never complete the wings. We,
as well as you, can never repay the little maid of Padstow Town for
releasing us from the witch's spell.'
The voice had hardly died away when all the radiant fairies began
to wave their wings, at first slowly, and then rapidly, in a kind of
rhythm, and sang very softly as they waved them.
Betty watched them with all her eyes, and whether it was the movement
of their wings or the curious song they sang, with its hush-a-by
kind of tune, she felt ever so drowsy, just as she had felt when
Little Prince Fire blazed away like a faggot on the hearthstone,
and sitting down on the settle, she fell asleep with the two first
verses of the song in her ears:
'We Wee Folk together
With music and feather
The gift of the birds--
The little grey-birds--
Do make her a thrush
All sweetness and gush.
Lallaby! Gallady!
'And the Little Prince Fire
Her sweet song will inspire,
That she may fly high
Where little maids sigh,
And undo the spell
Of the Witch o' the Well.
Lallaby! Gallady!'
The next thing she heard was the Wise Woman telling her to rise up
and move her wings, and Betty, nothing loth, lifted herself from the
settle and found she was all air and lightness, like the Little Lady
Soft Winds themselves, and could fly about the hut with the greatest
ease; the feeling of flying was altogether delightful!
The Lady Soft Winds watched her flight with the deepest interest, and
Prince Fire, who was sitting on the edge of the carved box, watched
too; that he approved of her flying powers it was plain to see,
for his bright eyes never left her wings.
'What am I now?' asked Betty at last, perching on a beam, and looking
down sideways bird fashion on the Wise Woman.
'You are a little grey thrush,' said the Wise Woman, her withered
face a big smile.
'And now, little grey thrush, away to the east, where the witch's
house looms out dark and strong against the gold of the morning sky,'
said the Lady Soft Winds, 'and fly up her terrible stairs and set
your six little children free, as you did us.'
'Yes; away to Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday,' cried Little Prince
Fire.
'And Thursday, Friday, and Little Saturday,' struck in the Wise Woman.
'Away, away, little grey thrush!' cried they all, singing as they
cried. 'The sun is rising behind the Tors, and the time is come for
our little thrush to fly and sing. Then, away, away!'
Their little thrush wanted no further urging, and with one full,
clear, melodious note, which filled all the small fairies with delight,
it flew out of the hut, followed by the gentle winnowing of the Lady
Soft Winds' wings.
So glad was Betty, the little grey thrush, at being on her way to
see those dear little maids that she flew faster than ever thrush
flew before, and the sun was not yet over the Tors when she reached
a grim old house standing all alone on a brown and desolate moor,
with its back to the golden sunrise.
Instinct told the little grey thrush that it was the witch's house,
and alighting on a blasted tree, close to its spell-bound door, she
began to sing with all her might; and so joyous and so triumphant
was her song that it seemed to bring gladness and hope even to that
desolate spot.
As Betty, in her bird form, sang on, the old witch came round the
corner of her house, dragging her unwilling feet as she came. When
she lifted her bad old eyes and saw a grey thrush high on the tree,
singing with all its cheerful heart, she turned green, and hearing
the door of the tower leading up the stairs--where Monday and all the
other little maids were shut up--groaning as if in pain, she sank in
a heap on the ground, and began to groan and moan too.
The bird sang on, and its whole body was one shake with its music,
and the more thrilling was its song, the more the witch moaned and
groaned. Then, when its last triumphant note rang out, the great door
opened, as if pushed back by some magic power, and revealed a flight
of very steep stairs. The witch gave a piercing howl when she saw the
door open wide, for she knew that the small grey thrush's music had
broken her spells, and that she was completely in the power of that
little singing bird.
When the door of the tower was as wide open as it could go, the thrush
gave three flaps of its wings, and then it flew out of the tree, and
in through the doorway of the tower, up and up the witch's stairs. And
at the top of the stairs was a small room, where six little maids
sat spinning.
They were so busy, and the hum of the wheels was so loud, that none
of them noticed the entrance of the grey-bird until it broke into a
song from the window-sill.
'Why, it is a dear little thrush!' cried Friday, who was the first
to notice it. 'How ever did it get up here? It must be the bird we
heard singing so beautifully outside just now;' and all the children
stopped their spinning-wheels to look at it.
'Did it really fly up the witch's stairs?' asked Thursday, resting
her sad, soft eyes on the thrush, whose heart was beating so against
its speckled breast at the sight of those dear little maids that it
couldn't tell them at first who it was.
'It did,' answered Monday, 'and its flying up here makes me think of
our Little Mother Betty, who played the game with us. Will she ever
be able to fly up the witch's stairs, I wonder?'
'I am afraid not,' said one of the other children, with a sigh. 'I
have given up all hope of her ever doing that now.'
'You are wrong, my dears,' cried the thrush, finding its voice at
last. 'I am Mother Betty, turned into a dinky bird for your sakes,
and have flown up the witch's stairs!'
And it flapped its wings, jerked its tail, and behaved altogether in
a most extraordinary manner, for the children's faces of amazement and
hope nearly sent it mad with joy. And then, as if it must relieve its
feelings still more, it burst into a most enchanting song, which was
answered outside the tower by a series of joyful barks from Pincher,
the witch's dog.
'It must be Little Mother Betty,' said Monday, leaving her
spinning-wheel. 'I can hear her own voice in the song.'
Then all the other little maids left their wheels to gaze at the bird.
'Are you really Betty who played the "Witch in the Well" with us that
terrible day?' they asked.
'Indeed I am,' sang the thrush. 'I have come to take you away from
here. Now follow me down the stairs and out of the house.'
'The stairs are so steep,' began Saturday, with frightened eyes.
'Don't be afraid, dear little Saturday,' sang the bird. 'It will be
as easy as thinking. Come along, all of you.'
The six little maids followed the bird out of the room and down those
wall-like stairs, and in a minute or less were outside the witch's
house, where they found the old hag in the act of mounting her broom.
They were met at the door by Pincher the dog, who welcomed them with
joyful barks and wagging of tail; and then, finding his mistress had
fled, he looked up at the little grey thrush, who was wheeling round
and round the children's heads out of sheer gladness, and begged her
to give chase to the witch. 'For,' said he, 'if she goes out of your
sight before you have commanded her to do something, you are in danger
of having to retain your thrush-shape.'
'I am glad you told me,' said the thrush, and it was about to fly after
the witch, when it recalled to mind what the dog had said the day he
helped to drag the faggot of wood into the hut: 'Remember me when you
have flown up the witch's stairs.' 'I have been up the witch's stairs
and down again,' it said, alighting on the ground beside him. 'Is
there anything I can do for you, Pincher? I am here to do it if I can.'
'I long to be set free from the power of the witch,' said the little
dog, fixing his gentle eyes on the bird, 'and to be restored to my
own shape. If you bid the witch do this, though it will be vinegar
and gall to her, she is bound to obey you by the merit of your wings
and your song. I long exceedingly to be myself again.'
'You shall,' sang the little grey thrush.
And then, telling the children to mount Footman's Horse [44] and
follow hard after her and the witch, it flapped its wings again,
and flew after the old hag on her broom, and Pincher the dog and the
six little maids sped after them.
Over the moor and across the downs they all went like the wind, the
witch keeping well in advance. Uphill and downhill and through the
lanes they flew, and never once did they stop till they came to Place
Hill, where the great stone gateway of Place House stood greyly out
from a background of beech-trees and oaks. Here the six little maids
stopped to get breath, but the old hag, though ready to drop from
her broom with fatigue, paused not a second, and went on down the
hill with little Thrush Betty, and Pincher the dog close behind her.
'The witch is out of sight!' cried Monday, as the old hag and the
little grey-bird disappeared round a corner.
'So she is!' said Friday.
And they all whipped up their tired little steeds, and away they
sped down the steep hill in pursuit of the witch; but they did not
overtake her until she got to the well, when they stood watching to
see what would happen.
The old hag slid off her broom, and, looking cunningly about her,
as if in search of the thrush, which was on top of the wall above the
well, she made a quick step to the well, and put her foot on its ledge.
'Sing, sing, dear Thrush Betty!' cried the small white dog in great
distress, or the witch will disappear into the well before you can
command her to do what you said.'
And Betty, the little grey-bird, flew into a tree, and began to sing
with all its might once more. And as it sang, the old hag crept back
from the well, and stood in the middle of the road, with a terrible
look on her face.
Now, being a witch, and one of the worst of her kind, she could not
endure anything so pure and sweet as the small bird's song; every note
it sang was an agony to listen to, and, knowing in her wicked soul
that its music had crushed all her evil power, she begged permission
in a humble voice to be allowed to go into the well.
'You may go,' sang little Thrush Betty; 'with one condition, which
is that you turn Pincher back into a boy!'
'Please ask me something less hard!' pleaded the witch, cringing before
the little bird. 'Pincher will be mine no longer if I do that, and I
cannot do without my faithful little dog. Where I go, he must also go.'
'That he shall not!' sang the thrush. 'I command you, by the merit
of my wings and the power of my song, to remove your spell from this
poor little boy!'
'To lose my little white dog is worse than having the Lady Soft Winds
and Prince Fire set free from my spells!' muttered the witch. 'Worse
even than losing the six little maids who played the game with me
and did all my spinning.'
'Give him back his own self this very minute,' sang the little grey
thrush, 'or else----'
If a threat was implied in the sentence, the witch understood it, for,
with a howl of rage, she made a pass with her broom over the dog. As
she did so, the dog vanished, and in its place stood a young boy,
dark and very handsome, dressed in clothes of a bygone age!
The six little maids stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment, and
as they stared as only little maids can, the witch made for the well.
'Please sing once more, little Thrush Betty,' cried the boy in a voice
it knew so well. 'This last song will quite end the power of the bad
old witch, and keep her down in the bottom of the Witch's Well until
she repents of all she has done.'
'That will be never!' snarled the witch; and with a horrible cry,
which even the victorious song of the little grey thrush could not
drown, she splashed into the well. And when Monday, Tuesday, and the
other little maids could get that cry out of their ears, the well
and its quaint old arch were no longer to be seen, and near where
it had stood was dear little Betty, their friend, who had played the
'Mother' in the game, looking very little altered, only a few inches
taller, and standing beside her, holding her hand, was the boy, who,
in his dog-shape, had done so much for them all.
'Now let us go home to our mothers,' cried Friday.
'I have no mother to go to,' said the boy sadly, as he hesitated to
go with the happy children. 'Mine died long ago, and I have no home.'
'Our mothers shall be your mother,' cried the little maids, 'and you
will never lack anything if you come with us.'
So they all came down through Padstow Town, the boy in their midst.
Nobody noticed them till they reached Middle Street, a straight cobbled
street with quaint houses on either side, when a 'Granfer man' [45]
spied them, and shouted the news that the long-lost children had come
back, and the whole street rushed out to welcome them.
Thursday lived at the bottom of this street, and Betty thought she
ought to see her safely home; but the child's mother had already
heard of their arrival, and came out to meet them and to clasp her
own little maid to her heart.
Monday's home was in a narrow street called Lanedwell, and when she
was safe within her parents' house and arms, the other five little
maids and the handsome boy, accompanied by a great crowd, went on
their way to the market, where Saturday lived.
As they came out of Lanedwell Street, a house across the market stood
full in view. It was one of the quaintest of buildings, of Tudor
date, with an outside flight of stone stairs leading up to its side
entrance under the eaves. Little Saturday's eyes glistened when she
caught sight of this house, for it was her own dear home. Her father
happened to be at the top of the stairs looking over the wooden rail
as the children drew near, and he nearly fell over into the street
below when he saw his own long-lost little maid.
Through a narrow passage, called the Blind Entry, the children and
crowd of people poured, and they only got through when Saturday's
father was down the steps and over to the Entry to greet them.
'There is the "George and the Dragon"!' cried Thursday, pointing to
an inn at the bottom of a street as they crossed the market.
'Iss,' said Betty, with a smile; 'and St. George is still slaying
the Dragon!' gazing up at the sign hanging above the door.
'Perhaps the Dragon is even more difficult to conquer than the Witch
o' the Well,' put in the boy, eyeing with great interest the inn's
sign, on which was painted in glowing colours England's patron saint,
with uplifted sword to slay the Dragon.
'Ever so much more, I reckon,' responded Betty.
Another small street brought them to the quay, where the other four
little maids' homes were, as well as Betty's, and to their exceeding
joy they saw their fathers and mothers and all their relations and
friends coming to meet them. And what a meeting it was, and what a
welcome they had!
Never since the day when the two ships, which the people of this
ancient town sent fully equipped to help in the siege of Calais
in Edward III.'s reign, came safely back was there such rejoicing,
so the old 'granfer men' said.
Every vessel in the harbour hoisted its flag in honour of the
children's return and the overcoming of that wicked old witch.
The boy, when Betty told how she had got her wings that enabled her to
fly up the witch's stairs, was made much of by the people of Padstow
Town, and the friends of those seven little maids almost fought who
should have him for their own.
How it was settled there is no need to tell, save only that he lived
on Padstow quay, and that he and Betty were always friends and loved
each other dearly; and when they grew up they married, and were as
happy as the summer is long.
BORROWED EYES AND EARS
In a lane where red-stemmed tamarisks grew lived another Wise
Woman. She was a nice old body, as many of her kind were, and, like
them, was well acquainted with the healing properties of herbs and
blossoms--revealed to them, it was said, by the fairies. But this Wise
Woman was not at all liked; nobody seemed to know why, except that
she could do many wonderful things her neighbours could not, and was,
moreover, very ugly. People were even afraid of her, and never went
near her cottage unless they wanted to buy her herb physic, ointments,
and that sort of thing. But there was one who was not afraid of her
at all, and that was a dear little girl called Bessie Jane Rosewarne,
the only child of a farmer who lived near Tamarisk Lane.
This little maid had a kind heart, especially for those who were
lonely or sad; and when she knew how lonely the poor old Wise Woman
was, she often went to see her, and took her little presents in the
shape of fruit and flowers.
Annis, as the old woman was called, soon got to be very fond of the
kind-hearted child; and to show how she appreciated her kindness she
used to tell her stories about the Small People and the dear little
brown, winking Piskeys, whom she seemed to know very intimately.
Bessie Jane was always interested in the Wee Folk, particularly
the cliff ones and the sea-fairies, and expressed a great desire to
see them.
Early one afternoon the child brought her old friend a basket of red
currants and a cup of cream; and when she had set her gifts on the
table, the Wise Woman went to her dresser and took from it a very
small shrimping-net, or what looked like a shrimping-net.
'It is a present I have made for you, dear little maid,' she said.
'What is it for?' asked the child, when she had thanked Old Annis
for her gift. 'It looks like a shrimping-net, only its meshes are
so fine--as fine as gossamer--that I am afraid it will not bear even
the weight of a baby-shrimp!'
'It is stronger than it looks,' said the Wise Woman, with a curious
look in her sloe-black eyes. 'Its meshes are made out of Piskey-wool,
which the Small People spun on their own little spinning-wheels,
and which they gave me to mesh into a net. Its hoop and handle I cut
from an ash-tree, where the Wee Folk gather to hold their gammets
[46] in the moonshine.'
'Did you really?' cried little Bessie Jane. 'How very interesting! I
shall go down to Harlyn Bay at once and catch shrimps in the great
pool under the shadow of the cliffs there.'
'It will catch something nicer than shrimps, I hope,' said Old Annis,
following the child to the door. 'Whatever you catch in it, my dear,
don't let it get out of the net until it promises to lend you its
eyes and its ears for a night and a day.'
'I don't think I want anyone's eyes and ears but my own,' laughed the
little maid as she went down Tamarisk Lane, which led to Harlyn Bay,
swinging the shrimping-net as if it were a common net, and not spun
from Piskey-wool by the Small People and made by a Wise Woman.
The bay, with its great beach of golden sand, its many
hillocks--silvery-blue in places with sea-holly, and green with
clumps of feathery tamarisk--lay open before her as she came out
of the lane. There were many gulls on the wing to-day, white as
the waves that broke gently over the rocks and against the sides of
the cliffs. She looked about her, as was her wont, when she reached
the beach, but there was nobody on the bar save an old man with his
donkey, its panniers full of sand, coming up the beach on the way
back to Higher Harlyn, where he lived.
Bessie Jane made straight for the pool of which she had spoken. It was
a very deep pool, full of sea-anemones, shrimps, and lovely seaweed,
and in the centre of the pool was a rock, in the shape of an arch,
covered with mussels.
As the child was about to dip her net into the pool, she saw a streak
of silver dancing up and down in the clear water.
She watched it for a minute, and then she thought she would try and
catch it, and leaning over the pool, she put her shrimping-net under
the whirling brightness and caught it. Looking into the net to see if
it were a fish, to her great delight she saw it was like one of the
tiny sea-fairies Old Annis had told her about. It was a most beautiful
little creature; its eyes were the colour of the Cornish sea at its
bluest, and its hair, which was a pale shade of gold, was sprinkled
all over with sunbeams. It had no clothes on save a little green shift!
'Oh, you dear little darling!' cried Bessie Jane, after gazing at the
lovely atom sitting in her shrimping-net. 'I came down here to this bay
to catch shrimps, and I do believe I've caught a sea-fairy instead!'
'You have,' piped the little creature in the most silvery of voices;
'and woe is me that I am the first of the sea-fairies to be caught
in a net!'
'I hope you don't mind very much,' said Bessie Jane, looking
uncomfortable. 'I have never seen a fairy before of any sort, and
I have been longing to see a little sea-fairy like you. The Wise
Woman who lives in Tamarisk Lane, near our farm, told me about the
sea-fairies. It was she who made me the net, which she meshed her
own self out of Piskey-wool spun by the dear Little People.'
'That explains my being caught in a net!' cried the little creature,
with a sigh of relief. 'I do not mind so much now--that is, if
you will put me back into the pool. You will do me that kindness,
won't you? I and my little companions were playing Buck and Hide Away
here in the bay when the tide was in, and as I was hiding under the
rock in the pool where you netted me, the tide went out and left me
behind. You see that great bar of sand'--pointing at it with her tiny
pink finger, which was even a more delicate pink than the beautiful
tamarisk blossom that makes Tamarisk Lane and all the other lanes
near Harlyn Bay so pretty in the summer and autumn months--'it is a
terrible thing to us little sea-fairies,' as Bessie Jane nodded. 'We
have not the power to get over sand-bars. My companions are in a wisht
[47] way about me, knowing all the dangers that beset us when we are
cut off from the sea.'
'You must not be afraid of me,' Bessie Jane hastened to assure her,
thinking the little sea-fairy's words were meant for her. 'I wouldn't
hurt a hair of your bright little head. And if I can't do what you
ask me, it is because I love you so much, and want to take you home
to our farm. We live in such a dear old house! I would be ever so
kind to you, and you should be my own dear little sister. It would
be lovely to have you to play with!'
'I am sure you are very kind,' said the sea-fairy in a voice that
trembled. 'But, dear little maid, I couldn't be happy anywhere away
from my relations and friends, and I couldn't live out of the sea
very long, and if you were to take me to your house and keep me there
I should fade away and vanish with fretting.'
'Would you really?' cried Bessie Jane. 'Then I won't take you to my
home. If you like, I'll carry you down the sand and put you back into
the sea.'
'Oh, will you, dear little girl?' cried the tiny creature joyfully,
her eyes growing as bright as her hair. 'I will be always grateful
to you if you will. My little brothers and sisters and crowds of my
friends are in the sea close to the shore watching me.'
'I can't see them,' said Bessie Jane, turning her gaze seaward. 'I
can only see sun-sparks on the edges of the waves.'
'They are sea-fairies,' said the wee creature. 'You can't see their
forms, of course, and you would not have seen me if I had not been
caught in a net made out of Piskey-wool spun by the Small People
and meshed by a Wise Woman. Will you please take me down to the sea
now? It seems ages since the tide cut me off from my dear ones.'
'I will this very minute, if you will lend me your eyes and your
ears for a night and a day,' answered Bessie Jane, remembering Old
Annis's injunction.
'I will do what you ask gladly,' said the little sea-fairy, 'for I
am very grateful for your kindness in offering to take me back to
my friends. When you have put me into the sea a wave will bring to
your feet a little red ball, which will contain my ears and my eyes,
and which you must take to the Wise Woman, who will keep them until
sunrise to-morrow.'
Bessie Jane carried the little sea-fairy very carefully down the sandy
beach in the shrimping-net, and when she had put her into the sea,
the water all around her broke into white fire, and a soft, sweet
sound, like the coos of young pigeons, filled the air; and then,
as the brightness enclosed the tiny creature, she disappeared--ears,
eyes, and all!
'Oh, the sea-fairy has forgotten her promise,' cried Bessie Jane,
gazing dolefully at the spot where she had sunk.
As she was speaking, a wavelet broke at her feet, and looking down,
she saw a round ball of airy lightness and brightness lying on the
sand. It was red as pools when the sun sets, and the child picked it
up and looked at it, and through its almost transparent skin she saw
a shadow of ears and a glimmer of something blue; and she took it to
the Wise Woman, as the fairy had bidden her.
Old Annis smiled when the little girl told her what she had caught
in the shrimping-net.
'It was what I had expected,' she said. 'Now, dear little maid, you
must get up with the larks to-morrow and come here, and you shall
then see what you will see.'
Bessie Jane got out of bed the minute she awoke the next day, which
was just as the little skybirds were beginning to sing; and when she
was dressed she hurried off to Tamarisk Lane.
Early though it was, the Wise Woman was also up, and when she saw
her little friend coming, she went and opened her door.
The first thing the child saw as she came into the cottage were two
tiny ears--smaller even than a harvest-mouse's ears--on the table, and
near them two round eyeballs, with a sapphire spark in each of them.
As her glance rested on the wee eyes and ears, Old Annis called her to
her side, and taking up the ears, she dropped them into the child's
ears; then she took up the eyes, and putting some Wee Folk's glue
on their back, she put them into Bessie Jane's pretty brown ones,
and told her to look round her cottage.
The child did so, and saw to her amazement that it was full of Small
People, including little Brown Piskey-men. They were all amusing
themselves in various ways: some were running about the sanded floor;
some were looking into the depths of a Toby jug full of milk; and
some tickling Old Annis's large grey cat. The Piskeys were astride
her fiddle-backed chairs and her settle, and winked at the sweet
little maid whenever she turned her gaze their way, and they winked
so funnily she could not have helped laughing to save her life. As
she was looking at them, the Wise Woman told her if she wished to
see the sea-fairies in Harlyn Bay she must go at once.
She did not at all want to go, for the Small People were most
fascinating, she told the old woman, particularly the little brown
winking Piskeys; but she went all the same.
As she walked down the lane to the bay, she looked through the
tamarisk hedge into the common, and saw that somehow or other it looked
different. There was a soft green light hanging over it, and where the
sand was only the day before there was a multitude of most beautiful
flowers of every colour and shade, the like of which she had never seen
before. Amongst the flowers cows were feeding. The cows were ever so
small, not bigger than rats. There were teeny tiny goats there, too,
and dear little men in queer hats and coats looking after them. The
cows and goats belonged to the Wee Folk, she supposed. It was all so
delightfully different and odd, and she couldn't think how she had
never noticed all this on the common before, till she remembered she
was seeing through a sea-fairy's eyes.
As she climbed the cliffs overlooking the bay a sound of sweetest
music stole upon her borrowed ears, and glancing to where the sound
came, she saw that the edge of the low cliff was crowded with Small
People, who were singing away like a choir of song-birds. Some of them
were sitting on Piskey-stools, [48] some on the edge of the cliff,
others were standing. In the background were a score or more of
tiny musicians, with reeds, flutes, and other instruments of music
in their hands. These last were quaintly dressed in poppy-coloured
coats and speedwell-blue breeches, and on their dear little heads
were blue three-cornered hats turned up with the same rich colour as
their coats. The whole company of Wee Folk were delightful to look at
as they were to listen to; and as for the tiny ladies of the party,
they were, Bessie Jane told herself, little nosegays of wild-flowers,
and if they had not been trilling and piping as she came upon them,
she would have mistaken them for cliff-blossoms, so bright they
looked in their lovely gowns of trefoil-gold and reds, thrift-pink,
squill-blue, and all those exquisite colours that make the Cornish
cliffs so beautiful in the late spring and early summer-time.
The Small People saw the child, and seemed quite pleased to see her,
for they smiled most graciously, and one of the little musicians took
off his three-cornered hat and bowed like a courtier, and said he
hoped she did not mind their singing, as it was their custom to sing
a little impromptu song to their cousins--the sea-fairies--every
beautiful morning in May, that being, he told her, the month of
flowers and music.
Bessie Jane did not mind in the least. Indeed, she was delighted to
think she had come in time to hear one of their little songs, only
she was far too shy to say so.
She sat on the cliff where she could see the Wee Folk and Harlyn Bay
at the same time. The sea was coming in, and was already under the
cliff where she was sitting; as she looked down into the water she
saw it was full of lovely little creatures, who were gazing up at her
with all the eyes in their heads. They were sea-fairies, she could
tell, by their resemblance to the dear little thing she had caught
in her shrimping-net. They all wore little green shifts or shirts,
through which their tiny pink bodies glowed like a rose, and all had
sun-beamed hair and deep-blue eyes. Some of the sea-fairies were riding
on the backs of the waves and tossing tiny spray-balls when she first
saw them; others were darting in and out the sea-ripples as quick as
sun-flashes, and playing over the inner bay in waves of light. A short
distance out were a hundred or more little female sea-fairies dancing,
and as they danced and held each other's hands they looked like tiny
garlands of sunbeams. They were dancing to a sweet tune of their own,
or perhaps to the music of the sea, which was full of lovely sounds
to-day, and colour too--that wonderful ethereal blue which is only
seen in a summer's dawn.
Whilst Bessie Jane was watching the sea-fairies, and wondering if the
little friend she had put back into the sea were amongst them, and
if she could see her without eyes, the Wee Folk on the cliff suddenly
broke into music and song. The song was so wild and free and the music
so sweet that the sea-fairies far out in the bay came close under the
cliff and listened with the utmost joy, their tiny faces shining with
pleasure, and their small bodies swaying in time to the rhythm of the
song. As for the child, she thought it was the loveliest music she
had ever heard. The song, which was accompanied by lutes, flutes,
and reeds, and by the tapping of tiny feet and clapping of hands,
was as follows:
'Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!
For the dark has fled
At the dawn's soft tread;
And the moon grows cold
In the sun's warm gold.
Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!
'Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!
For the sky's dear bird
O'er the waves is heard;
And the linnet's flute
Like a fairy's lute.
Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!
'Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!
For sandpipers play
By the pools to-day;
And kittiwakes laugh
As the light they quaff.
Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!
'Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!
For gulls are afloat
Like a silver boat;
And the curlews call
As their weird cries fall.
Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!
'Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!
For the waves clap hands
On the yellow sands;
And the sea-sprites dance
Where the sunbeams glance.
Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!
'Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!
For each little sprite
Is a rhythm of light;
And sweet are their lips
Like honey-bee's sips!
Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!
'Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!
For day has begun,
And high is the sun;
Now hasten away
To your dears and play!
Sing, sing, sea-fairies, sing!'
Bessie Jane held her breath until the music died away in the silver
cadence of the morning sea, and the song was still in her ears, so that
she was hardly conscious it was finished until she noticed the Small
People had risen from the Piskey-stools and were leaving the cliff.
'You aren't going, are you, dear Little People?' she cried, forgetting
her shyness in her dismay at their going so soon.
'Yes,' answered one of them. 'I hope you liked our song.'
'I did a terrible lot,' responded Bessie Jane, flushing to the roots
of her pretty brown hair; 'your singing was lovely, and I should like
to hear you sing every morning of my life! It was sweeter even than
the thrush's song at sunset, I think.'
The Wee Folk were delighted at the child's praise; the small musicians
beamed upon her, and the tiny ladies made her a deep curtsey, and
then they all disappeared into the cliff.
She waited ever so long, hoping they would appear again and sing
another song, but as they did not, she went down the cliff-path to
the beach. At the ending of the song, all the sea-fairies had gone
out into the bay to join the merry dancers, who were dancing away
like a Bobby Griglan, [49] she told herself as she sent her glance
over the sunlit waters to where they were. When she stood close to
the waves all these little whirligigs came dancing shorewards, until
they stopped only a few feet away and gazed at her curiously.
When they found their tongues, which they quickly did, to her great
delight they began talking to her. They thanked her for being so kind
to their little companion in giving her back to them the day before,
and said how glad they were she had repaid the little girl's kindness
in lending Bessie Jane her eyes and ears for a night and a day,
as they heard she had so much wanted to see the sea-fairies.
'Yes, I did,' replied Bessie Jane, 'and I am awfully grateful to that
pretty little dear for the loan of her ears and eyes, but I am afraid
it was very selfish of me to get her to lend them.'
'She was very glad to lend them for the time you asked,' the
sea-fairies reassured her--'not only because you did her all that
kindness, but because you have been so very good to the poor old
Wise Woman, who loves all the Little People, sea-fairies and all,'
they said.
It was a great surprise to Bessie Jane that the fairies should know
about her kindness to poor Old Annis; and as she did not like being
praised, she turned the conversation, and asked the dear little
sea-sprites to tell her all about themselves, and what they did all
day long, where they lived, and a hundred and one other questions
which the sweet-voiced, sun-beamed little creatures seemed only too
pleased to answer.
Amongst other interesting things, they told the child about their
work. They said their chief happiness was to do good, and that their
special work was to seek out all wounded things and take them down to
the bottom of the sea, where they had a Place of Healing, and where
they tended with gentle care all the poor, hurt creatures they found,
until they were all healed and happy again. Another mission of theirs
was to sing requiems over the poor drowned human beings, and to plant
sea-lilies and other sea-flowers on their graves.
They were always busy, they told her, and when there was no special
work for them to do they busied themselves with games, singing and
dancing, and flashing in and out of the sea to make it beautiful with
light. Their special time for merry-making and dancing was at sunset
and sunrise, particularly sunset, for then the great sun went down
into the sea to shine upon their lovely gardens, parks, and meadows
under the sea where they lived, and where dear little fishes sang
instead of birds!
It would fill pages to tell all those little sea-fairies told Bessie
Jane, and which they told in such entrancing way that time flew. The
tide came in and went out, and was again coming in, and the entranced
child did not even notice it, or that the big white sun was wheeling
down towards his setting.
A great lane of crimson fire stretched away on the blue-grey water
from the outer bay to the horizon, and just as the sea-fairies had
finished telling her all the wonders of their life and doings she
saw coming towards her down this lane of rich light a tiny carriage
in the shape of a scallop-shell, drawn by four little horses, two
abreast, and white as sea-spray. As the tiny steeds sped onward and
drew near, Bessie Jane saw leaning back in the carriage a sea-fairy
with a bandage of red seaweed across her eyes and ears.
When the horses stopped, all the sea-fairies formed themselves in
a circle round the carriage, and looked intently at the child on
the shore.
As Bessie Jane noted all this, telling herself what handsome horses
they were and what an elegant little carriage, and how beautiful it
looked on the sun's pathway, a silvery voice, like the twitter of a
baby lark low in its nest amongst the heather, piped from the carriage:
'Please give me back my eyes and my ears.'
'What eyes and ears?' asked the child, bewildered, for she had quite
forgotten that she had got the sea-fairy's eyes and ears.
'Why, my own dear little eyes and ears that I lent you for a night
and a day,' piped the sweet voice again.
'Must I give them back?' asked Bessie Jane.
'Indeed you must,' said the fairy. 'I have missed them oh so much! No
beautiful vision have I seen, no lovely sounds have I heard, since
I lent them to you yesterday afternoon. I waited until the sun had
put on his flame-coloured robe before coming for them.'
'How can I give you back your eyes and your ears?' asked the child
helplessly. 'The Wise Woman put them in, and she isn't here to take
them out.'
'Say, "Little Blue Eyes, go back to your homes," and, "Little Pink
Ears, return to your places," and they will do as you tell them,'
answered the little fairy.
Bessie Jane, though very reluctant to give back what had given her
so much pleasure, knew she would be dreadfully selfish if she did
not do as she was told, and after gazing full five minutes on the
wonderful sight--the circle of sea-fairies, the wee white horses,
and scallop-shaped carriage, the like of which she might never see
again--and letting her last gaze rest on her first friend waiting so
patiently for the return of her eyes and ears, her clear young voice
rang out:
'Dear Little Blue Eyes, go back to your homes; dear Little Pink Ears,
go back to your holes.'
As she spoke a blue spark leapt out of her eyes, followed by a
whizzing of something pink, and when she opened her eyes again, the
radiant circle of sea-fairies round the mother-of-pearl carriage,
the dazzling white steeds with flowing manes and tails, were all gone,
and she only saw the usual sights of eventide on the beach: the gulls
flying over the hillocks and across the sands to their sleeping-places
in the cliffs; a man driving the cows up the bay to be milked;
the stems of the tamarisk on the hedges, scarlet in the sun-glow;
and the vast luminous sky over it all. Beautiful as everything was,
it was not nearly so beautiful, Bessie Jane thought, as were those
little sea-fairies and horses on the pathway of crimson fire!
She stood close to the edge of the water till the line of light was
gone, and then she turned away from the sea and went up the beach
towards Tamarisk Lane, to tell Old Annis what she had heard and seen.
As she was going up, she met the same old man and his donkeys she
had seen the day before. He was coming down for his last pannier
of sand. He stopped and spoke to her, and asked why she was looking
so happy.
'I have seen the Small People,' answered the child, 'and the dear
little fairies that live in the sea.'
'You don't mean to say so?' cried the old man. 'You are a lucky little
maid to have seen all they little dears!' as Bessie Jane nodded. ''Tis
not often folks do see 'em nowadays; but they did backalong, my mother
told me. What was 'em like, Miss Bessie Jane?'
'I cannot stop to tell you now,' said the child. 'It is rather late,
and I want to go and see the Wise Woman in Tamarisk Lane. You are
late getting sand, arn't you?'
'Iss fy, I be. 'Tis for your father--Maister Rosewarne--and I must
make haste and get it. My donkey do want his supper, and so do I.'
Old Annis was at her cottage gate watching for her little friend's
return, and when the child came up she listened with the greatest
interest to all she had to tell her, and said how pleased she was
that she had seen and heard so much.
'It is a reward,' she added, 'for being so kind to a poor lonely
old woman.'
Bessie Jane never saw any more of the Little People, and never went
shrimping again with the shrimping-net made by a Wise Woman out of
Piskey-wool spun by the Small People, for the simple reason she lost
the net the day after she saw the dear Wee Folk and the sea-fairies
with her borrowed eyes. How she lost it, or where, she did not know,
and the Wise Woman, wise as she was, could not tell her. But she
was ever afterwards grateful for having seen them, especially the
sea-fairies, and she showed her gratitude by being kinder than ever
to her poor, lonely old friend.
THE LITTLE WHITE HARE
When our great-great-grandmothers were young, a small lad called
William John Pendarvey went on a visit to his Great-Aunt Ann, a very
silent, austere old maid, who lived by herself in the Vale beautiful
of Lanherne.
Great-Aunt Ann being old and very quiet, was the last person in the
world that a tender-hearted, sensitive little chap as William John
was should have gone to stay with.
The house where she lived was rather small and very gloomy, and had
nothing nice about it, but it possessed a large and beautiful orchard,
protected from the rough and cutting winds by the escarpment of the
downs that rose above it and the valley.
But delightful as this orchard was, nobody except Great-Aunt Ann--and
she not often--ever went into it, because it was known to be haunted
by something, in the shape of a little White Hare which had been
seen there from time unknown, wandering like a shadow over the grass,
and in and out amongst the trees, or sitting motionless at the foot
of a blasted apple-tree.
Who or what this apparition was nobody could tell, but not a man,
woman or child in the Vale, except Great-Aunt Ann, would have gone
into that orchard for all they were worth.
Little William John might never have known there was an orchard
belonging to the gloomy old house if he had not wandered into a bedroom
at the back of the house overlooking the entrance to the orchard and
peeped out of the window.
He asked to be allowed to go and play there, as it looked so bright
and sunny in its open spaces, but Great-Aunt Ann said: 'Not to-day.'
It was always 'Not to-day' whenever he asked to go into that orchard,
and probably he would never have gone into it at all if the old maid
had not occasion one day to go to St. Columb, a small market town
three miles from where she lived.
She could not take the boy with her, she said, and so she left him
at home to take care of the house.
Looking after a house was not in little William John's line, and
Great-Aunt Ann had not been gone more than an hour before he found
himself at the small wicket-gate opening into the orchard, where to
his joy he saw a great multitude of golden-headed daffadillies rising
out of the lowly grass, and a light that was softer than silver moving
mysteriously in and out amongst the trees.
The temptation to go into that sun-lighted, fascinating spot was
irresistible, and finding the gate unlocked, little William John
opened it and went in.
It was the spring of the year, and the spring was late, and there were
as yet no carmine buds on the apple trees, but their upper branches
were misty with the silvery green of budding leaves. And the pear trees
were in virgin whiteness, and so were the plum and cherry trees, which
made a shining background to all the yellow lilies in blossom there.
'It makes me feel happy only to be here,' whispered little William
John to himself; 'and oh! the daffies are making golden dawns under
the trees!'
He wandered about to his heart's content, staying his young feet now
and then to listen to a blackbird's liquid pipe, and to touch with
reverent hand a daffadilly's drooping head, or to watch with puzzled
eyes that thing of brightness moving on in front of him amongst the
trees and blossoms.
He lost sight of this wandering light when he had gone the length
of the orchard; but he saw it again as he turned across to its top,
and when he got close he saw, to his astonishment, it was a little
Hare of silvery whiteness.
It was sitting on its haunches under the blasted tree, and did not
move away as the boy drew near.
A thrill of gladness filled William John's kind young heart at so
fair and strange a vision, and his delight was even greater when the
small White Hare suffered him to stroke its fur.
'Oh, you dear little soft thing!' he cried. 'I am so glad you are not
afraid of me; I love all animals, and would not hurt any of them for
worlds, nor a hair of your beautiful white coat.'
'I knew you would not,' answered the little White Hare. 'I was sure
your heart was gentle and good the moment I saw you.'
'What! Can you talk?' asked little William John in amazement. 'I never
knew animals could speak like human beings before. I am so glad you
can. It is so nice to have someone to talk to. Nobody hardly ever
speaks to me here, and I have felt so lonely.'
'Poor boy!' said the little White Hare; 'I can sympathize with you,
for I know what it is to be lonely and have nobody to speak to. You
are the first human being who has spoken to me since a wicked Witch
turned me into the shape of a hare.'
'What! Are you not really a hare?' asked little William John, more
and more amazed.
'No,' answered the little creature sadly; 'I am a maiden in the shape
of a hare, and I have had to bear the hare-shape ever since the Witch
worked a spell upon me, which was back in the days of the "giants."'
'What a shame!' cried the boy. 'Whatever made her turn you into
a hare?'
'She had a spite against me because I would not be wicked like
herself.'
'How dreadful of her!' cried little William John indignantly. 'Will
you never be able to get back your real shape, you poor little thing?'
'I am afraid not,' said the little White Hare sadly, 'unless somebody
who is really sorry for me, and is not afraid of me, can find the
Magic Horn--by the blast of which Jack the Giant-Killer overthrew
the Giant Galligantus and Hocus-Pocus the Conjurer--and blow over me
three strong, clear blasts.'
'Where is the Magic Horn?' asked little William John.
'I do not know the exact spot, but it is buried somewhere in the
ruins of an old castle called the Castle of Porthmeor, which is on
a cliff above Porthmeor Cove.'
'Why, that old castle is mine, or will be, I am told, when I am of
age!' cried little William John. 'It is not a great way from where I
live, and often I go there to play. I wish I wasn't only a little boy,
and could look for the Magic Horn,' he added, after a moment's silence.
'Age is no barrier to your seeking it,' said the little White
Hare. 'All that is needed to loosen the wicked old Witch's spell is
what I have now told you.'
'Then I will look for the Magic Horn directly I get home,' cried
little William John, 'and if I can find it I'll come back and blow
it over you, if you think I can.'
'I am sure you can,' answered the little White Hare. 'You must go
now, for your Great-Aunt is coming into the valley. It is not wrong
to come into this orchard, since she has not forbidden you; but she
knows it is haunted by a little White Hare, and is afraid if you see
it it will work you harm. So you must be patient with her.'
The Hare vanished as it spoke, and little William John found himself
alone with the yellow-headed daffadillies, and the trees and dear
little birds, and he soon went back to the house.
'Have you been out anywhere?' asked Great-Aunt Ann, when she had come
in and taken off her bonnet.
'Yes, into the orchard,' said the boy truthfully. 'It is a lovely
place, full of song-birds and flowers.'
'Was that all you saw there?' she asked anxiously.
'No,' answered little William John again, lifting his clear child-eyes
to the stern old maid's. 'I saw trees with snow on them, and a dear
little Hare with fur as white as milk.'
The old lady shook all over like a wind-tossed leaf when he said that,
but she did not scold him or say he ought not to have gone into her
orchard, but the next day she sent him home.
At the end of three years William John came again to stay with his
Great-Aunt Ann--not that she wanted him, but because his guardian
thought the balmy air of the lovely Vale would do him good.
The spring was very early this year, and when William John arrived the
daffadillies had gone, and the pear and cherry trees had scattered
all their snow-white blossoms on the grass; but the apple flowers
were out in rosy splendour on the gnarled old trees, and where the
daffadillies had made 'golden dawns' there were blue-grey periwinkles
trying to lift themselves to the heavenly blue shining down upon them.
William John was anxious to go out into the orchard directly he came,
but Great-Aunt Ann said the grass was too wet.
The grass was always 'too wet,' according to the old maid, and the
boy was afraid she would not allow him to go into the orchard at all.
When he had been there two weeks and a day, Great-Aunt Ann had again
occasion to go to St. Columb town, and as there was only room in the
gig for the driver and herself, she was obliged to leave him at home.
The moment the gig was out of sight William John made his way to the
orchard, where he found the grass as green and beautiful as spring
grass could be, and his little friend the Hare sitting under the
blasted tree, whiter and smaller than ever.
'I began to fear you would never come into this orchard again,'
said the White Hare plaintively.
'I began to fear so myself,' responded William John, stroking very
gently the little White Hare. 'This is my first opportunity of
coming here.'
'Have you found the Magic Horn?' the small creature asked anxiously.
'Not yet, and I have never stopped looking for it since I was last
here. I have searched all over the old castle, and every stone has
been lifted on the place, and the ground dug up both outside the
ruins and inside, and I am afraid the Magic Horn was not hidden away
in that old castle, as you said.'
'It was hidden there, and is there now,' insisted the little White
Hare, 'and I do hope you aren't going to give up looking for it.'
'I won't, for your sake, you dear little soft thing!' cried the boy,
and again he stroked her gently and tenderly; 'and as you are sure
it is there somewhere, I'll search until I find it.'
'Have you looked in the cave under the castle?' asked the little
White Hare.
'No,' returned William John; 'the entrance to it is not known, and
even if it were, the passage leading down to the cave is so foul with
bad air, my guardian said, that it would be death to anybody who went
through it.'
'If you are not afraid to go down into the cave, I can give you a
plant that will purify all the foul air you pass through.'
'I will not be afraid for your sake, dear little White Hare,' said
the boy.
The Hare vanished, and in a little while became visible again, and
in her mouth she held a strange-looking weed, the like of which he
had never seen before.
'It is called the little All-Pure,' said the White Hare, as William
John took it in his hand. 'Keep it close to your heart until you have
discovered the passage to the cave, and when it is foul hold it in
your hand until its brightness shines on the Magic Horn.'
Again she disappeared, and the boy, after waiting some time to see
if she would appear again, went back to the house, where he found
his Great-Aunt Ann limping in at the front-door.
The old lady had hurt her leg in getting out of the gig, and when he
told her he had been in the orchard, she made her slight accident an
excuse to send him back to his home, which she did that same day.
William John did not have the chance of paying another visit to his
Great-Aunt Ann until he was a youth of nineteen, and he would not
have come then if he had waited to be invited.
The old maid was now terribly old and feeble, and had to keep a
servant. Unhappily for William John, the servant was quite as crabbed
and silent as her mistress, and even more opposed to his going into
the old orchard. She even locked the orchard-gate and kept the key
in her pocket.
But William John, being now no longer a child, but a handsome youth
with a strong will of his own, was determined to get into the orchard
with or without permission, for he had found the Magic Horn.
He watched his opportunity, and one day when the servant was out
he went to the wicket gate and sprang over it, and quickly made his
way to the blasted tree, where he found, as he had expected to find,
the little White Hare sitting on her haunches under it.
She was very white and ever so small--so small, in fact, that she
did not look much bigger than a baby hare.
'You have come at last,' she said, as the tall handsome lad knelt on
the grass and caressed her. 'Have you found the Magic Horn?'
'I have found it,' he answered gladly.
'When did you find it?'
'Only yesterday,' returned the youth. 'Every day since I last saw
you I have searched for the entrance to the cave, and at last,
when I was in despair of ever finding it, I came upon it under my
bedroom window. I discovered it quite by accident, as I was planting
maiden-blush rose-trees. I never knew till then that our house was
built on the old castle grounds. The passage opened on to steps,
which led down and down till they ended at the door of the cave.'
'Were you not afraid?' asked the little White Hare very softly.
'I was a little bit,' confessed the youth, 'for I did not know where
it would lead me. But love and pity for poor little you made me go
on. And I had the little All-Pure to cheer me; for it not only made
the foul air through which I passed pure and sweet, but gave out a
soft clear light. I found the Magic Horn on a slab of stone in the
corner of the cave. I took it up quickly and returned the way I came,
and started the earliest moment to pay a visit to my Great-Aunt Ann.'
'Have you brought the Magic Horn with you?' asked the little White
Hare, with deep anxiety in her voice.
'Yes,' he said, with shining eyes, 'and here it is;' and he laid a
black thing in the shape of a horn on the grass beside her.
'It is the Magic Horn!' cried the little White Hare joyfully. 'Will
you blow over me three strong, clear blasts, dear William John? If
you are as pure-hearted as you are kind-hearted, as I am sure you are,
the last blast will break the Witch's spell, and give me back my own
shape. The Horn should be blown at sunset.'
'It is sundown now,' said William John, looking westward, where
between the trees he could see a splendour of rose and gold painted
on the lower sky.
'Then blow it now!' cried the little White Hare; and stiffening
herself on her form, she crossed her paws on her breast and waited.
William John took up the Magic Horn in his strong young hands and put
it to his mouth, and in a minute or less there sounded out through
the orchard, all gay with apple-blossom and melody of birds, and
over the Vale of Lanherne, a great blast, so rich in sound that the
thrushes stopped their singing, and the people in St. Mawgan village
came rushing to their doors to know whatever it was. It was quickly
followed by two more blasts, richer and louder than the first. When
the last blast had died away, William John, looking down at the foot
of the blasted tree, saw in the place of the little White Hare the
most beautiful maiden he had ever seen.
The Magic Horn fell from his hand at so lovely a sight, and he
blushed red as the buds clinging in rosy infancy to the apple-trees,
and stammered something out that he had not expected to see her half
so beautiful.
'I am myself now, thanks to you,' laughed the maiden; and William John
thought it was the sweetest laugh he had ever heard in all his life. 'I
can never be sufficiently grateful for all you have done for me.'
'Mine is the gratitude for having been allowed to find the Magic Horn
and loosen you from the wicked spell,' said the lad, still stammering
and blushing.
'You are very good to say so,' said the lovely maid, blushing in her
turn as she felt the gaze of the handsome youth upon her. 'Now the
evil spell has been undone I must go my way.'
'What way?' asked William John eagerly, drinking in the beauty of
her face.
'To a country beyond the sun-setting, where all who love me are,'
she said gently.
'If you go, I must also go,' said William John in a masterful way,
still keeping his eyes on her face. 'I learnt to love you in your
hare-shape, dear, but I love you a thousand times more now I see you
as you are. I could not live without you now.'
'If you love me as you say you do, and cannot live without me, you
may come,' said the lovely maid, lifting her shy eyes to his. 'You
have the right to come with me by the good you have wrought. It is
a fair land whither I am going, where there are always buds and
blossoms on the trees, where the happy birds are always in song,
and where the Foot of Evil dare not enter. It is time I was away. The
sun is setting, and his path of glory is narrowing on the sea. Come,
if you will. I love you, too, dear.'
And giving him her little hand, which he gladly took, they went both
of them together out of the old orchard in the glow of the setting
sun; and as they climbed a slope above the place of blossoming trees,
an old man crossing the downs wondered who that handsome youth and
lovely maid were making their way with locked hands and steadfast
faces towards the sunset. But he never knew.
From that day onwards the little White Hare was never again seen in
the old beautiful orchard, and nobody ever knew what had become of
William John.
NOTES
[1] Tiny.
[2] Spriggan, a low kind of fairy.
[3] Brown, withered like a twig.
[4] Hager is Celtic-Cornish for cruel, foul, ugly, etc.
[5] A Tolmên, or Holed Stone, is one of the antiquities of Cornwall,
and many superstitions have been connected with it, such as passing
weakly children through its hole, in the belief they will get stronger.
[6] Saddest.
[7] Yesterday.
[8] Icicle.
[9] To stare hard.
[10] A stone or metal instrument found in tin-mines, and in barrows
of the ancient Celts.
[11] Gymnadénia conópæa.
[12] Pronounced Kenidjack.
[13] Fairies.
[14] Ridge-tiles with knobs, which people in West Cornwall put on
their houses for the Piskeys to dance on.
[15] Sad.
[16] An iron stool.
[17] A coaxing expression, such as 'Do ee dear.'
[18] Mudgeskerry, or skerrymudge, anything grotesque in human shape,
such as a doll.
[19] Dinky, very small.
[20] Skavarnak, long-eared; also a hare.
[21] Pednpaley, a blue-tit; also anything very soft and beautiful,
such as velvet. Literally, a soft-head. The 'd' in this word is silent.
[22] Child.
[23] Miners' pasties.
[24] Back-kitchen.
[25] A very short person.
[26] Lonely.
[27] One who runs very fast.
[28] Disused mines.
[29] Heath.
[30] A hare.
[31] A note of exclamation.
[32] Little child.
[33] Heath.
[34] A fairy's baby.
[35] Very large.
[36] Once upon a time the Cornish believed that his Dark Majesty
was afraid to come into the Cornish land for fear of being put into
a pasty.
[37] Bread and cream sprinkled with treacle.
[38] Legs.
[39] A pasty made of herbs.
[40] Scratch.
[41] Weasel.
[42] A hot oven that has been left to cool a little.
[43] The song-thrush is called the grey-bird in Cornwall.
[44] Their legs.
[45] A very old man.
[46] Games.
[47] Sad.
[48] Mushrooms.
[49] A fairy.
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