NY PUBLIC LIBRARY THE BRANCH LIBRARIES
3 3333 01196 2491
3
^^4, Cxr\
y
0^i^V
^^o^ N'^\b
Q^^;V~v^V\ V^^^'t^ crwNcK >A^
^Vt=^^
READING ROOM
READING ROOM
KEEP THIS BOOK CLEAN
DO NOT TURN DOWN THE LEAVES
Borrowers finding this book pencil-mturked
written upon, mutilated or unwarrantably def^
are expected to report it to the librari^
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2007 with funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/britishfairyfolkOOglov
BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
OTHER BOOKS OF FAIRY TALES
WITH FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
Price 6s. net impost free, 6$. 6d. net)
jESOP'S FABLES
ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES
THE ARABIAN NIGHTS
THE BOOK OF CELTIC STORIES
A TALE OF BLACK CHILDREN
{African Fairy Tales)
GREEK WONDER TALES
GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
OTTOMAN WONDER TALES
RUSSIAN WONDER TALES
TALES FROM SCOTTISH BALLADS
WILLY WIND, AND JOCK AND THE CHEESES
WONDER TALES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
I TALES FROM THE EARTHLY PARADISE
AND C. BLACK LTD., 4, 5, AND 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. I
AGENTS
AMERICA . . . THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
AUSTRALASIA . OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
aos FLINDERS Lane, Melbourne
CANADA .... THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD.
ST. MARTIN'S HOUSE, 70 BOND STREET, TORONTO
INDIA .... MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.
MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
309 Bow BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA
Ill', SKNI ri' IN illK r.ASKF.r, IIKS], lliK 1HKI1-.
king's daughters."
BRITISH
FAIRY AND FOLK
TALES
EDITED BY
W. J. GLOVER
AUTHOR OF " TALES FROM THE EARTHLY PARADISE
AND " TALES FROM THE POEXS "
^^^
A. & C. BLACK LTD.
4, 5, AND 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON
Pub'.ished igzo
^3^^ Gr ft7o«3\-5\
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. The Fairies of the Downs and Commons (^English) 1
II. The Sea-Maiden (Scotch) . . . .30
III. A Legend of Tipperary (Irish) . . .51
IV. The Story of King Lludd (Welsh) . . 59
V. The Magic Mackerel (Ejiglish) . . .69
VI. The Battle of the Birds (Scotch) . . 92
VII. Legend of Bottle Hill (Irish) . . .112
VIII. Melilot (English). . . . .128
IX. The Smith and the Fairies (Scotch) . .151
X. Dreaming Tlm Jarvis (Irish) . . .157
XI. An Emperor's Dream (Welsh) . . . I69
XII. Silver Tasseks ,(jE«^fo^>) . . . .183
XIII. The Son of the SroTijislH^ Ysoman (Scotch) . 208
XIV, Rent Day (Irish) . \^ ..[..[- . . . 223
XV. The Chicken Market (English) . . . 229
XVI. The Inheritance (Scotch). . . . 255
XVII. The Giant's Stairs (Irish) . . . 259
XVIII. The King of Lochlin's Daughters (Scotch) . 269
XIX. The Tail (English) , , . .281
Tt:E NEW YORK PL'PLIC Lrnr^AHY
c;rcul
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
By CHARLES FOLKARD
"He sent up in the basket, first the three men,
AND THEN THE King's DAUGHTERS " . . Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
" Here she was sleeping, in form not a day older
THAN when she WAS LOST " . . . .20
"'Good luck and victory were following thee, lad,'
SAID the Princess" .... .40
"A GOOD-NATURED SIREN USED TO BRING HER HARP AND
SING WITH HIM " . . . . .74
"In the MOUTH OF DAY THE GiANt's DAUGHTER SAID
THAT HER FATHEr's BREATH WAS BURNING HER BACK " 104
"MeliLOT RECOVERED AND CLlJ'BED ON " . . .134
"'What! Splug,' she cried, 'and with a thimble on
your head '" . . . ^ _ 204
"Then Goody, take my arm, old woman, and come on" 248
crrv
BRITISH FAIRY AND
FOLK TALES
THE FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS
AND COMMONS
This is the tale of Teel the shoemaker, Whirlwig
the hatter, and Surmullet the tailor.
Teel was a shoemaker, about whom very-
few people knew how well he understood his
business. So one evening the poor fellow, slip-
ping dolefully out of the town in which he
starved, went for a walk on a neighbouring
common. It was a small rough piece of broken
ground, ragged with brier, fern, and furze,
scratched over with deep-rutted paths, drilled
into with rabbit-holes, here and there scooped
also into forgotten sandpits, and dabbled with
pools. At one end a sleep and jagged lump of
sand-rock cropped up through the brambles.
On the top of the bit of rock the shoemaker sat
2 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
down to think. From that height there was a
view over the meadows round about the common.
Behind him they sloped up into a hne of bare
downs, with the white chalk glimmering here and
there through their green banks. Before him
the rich landscape was warm with trees. Alders
and great willows were clustered near the river ;
oaks gathered in knolls about the slopes of the
deer park; pear, plum, and other fruit trees
overtopped the little country town, and all the
yellow roads that led out from Stavesacre into
the world at large were fringed with blackberry,
wild rose, and honeysuckle hedges, broken with
elms, and upon one side, beyond the bridge,
raised to the rank of an avenue with Hues of
poplar.
Trees gathered about the quiet town so
closely as to hide all but the great mossy church-
tower from the eyes of Teel, as he sat on the
sand-rock, with his feet danghng over its sides,
and looked about him. Already the mild evening
star was in the sky, the rooks were flocking to
their nests in a small wood that dipped over
the riverside, where the stream flowed between
the farther slopes of the smooth park. The
distant peal of the town bells told the shoemaker
that Hodge, Peter, and Jeff, cobblers and bell-
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS
ringers, had met for practice in the belfry before
spending a social evening together in the parlour
of the Sandhopper's Arms.
men the bell-ringing was over there were
niore stars in the darkening sky, and presently
the moon rose, large and red, from behind the
wood m which the rooks were sleeping. A bend
of the river was alight directly. All was so
still that Teel heard now and then the faint
creak of the insects stirring in the bushes of the
common, and the whirr of the night-moth as
she flew by.
" Heigho ! " he sighed. " I get nothing by
this thinking, so I will go home to my good dame.''
He was about to rise, when a young rabbit
leapt into his lap. The rabbit tamely suffered
him to pull its ears.
" Silly puss ! " said the shoemaker ; " when
you jump into the lap of a man who has an empty
cupboard, don't you know that you are good to
eat > But never fear, small creature. As you
trust me, you shall take no harm."
"Very well," said the rabbit-no longer a
rabbit; for, indeed, he was a curiously little
man m grey body-clothes, but without coat or
hat, and with his feet quite naked. He had a tiny
bundle m one hand, which he held up to Teel
4 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
" I hope, my good fellow, I may trust you.
Make me a pair of shoes out of the leather in
this bundle, and return me all the pieces. I
will pay you well, and bring you some more
custom if your fit is good."
" Fit good 1 " said the neglected artist.
" Those ignorant people of Stavesacre are content
to wear clumps on their feet. They fatten no
less than three cobblers with their custom, and
have suffered me, a proper shoemaker, to starve.
Yes, sir! I can fit a dainty foot Uke yours,
sir, in a way to show you something of my art.
Am I to send the shoes, or will your honour call
for them ? "
" I will call at your house for them," the Fairy
said. " Be ready, if you can, at this hour this
day week."
At the appointed hour Teel was quite ready ;
and Till, his good wife, had been so careful to
help him'in obeying the wish of his Fairy customer
that not a shred of leather or thread— though it
were but a shred no bigger than a morsel of a
fine of spider's web— was left on or below the
table at which Teel had worked. All was put,
with the shoes themselves, into the tiny bag.
Then as they sat— too poor to afford candle-
in the light that was half moonlight and half
<
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS 5
twilight, the old couple suddenly saw the little
grey Fairy busy about that bag. He weighed
it first in one hand, and then in the other. He
opened it, took out the shoes, turned out and
examined all the pieces. Then he put the pieces
back, and, sitting down upon Till's spectacle-
case, put on the shoes. Wlien they were on, he
got up and danced about in them to try their
fit. They fitted perfectly. Advancing at last
to the edge of the table, he said, " Brother Teel,
I am authorised to appoint you shoemaker-in-
ordinary to the Fairies of the Downs and Com-
mons. Remove, therefore, to your new house
on the sand-rock in Stavesacre Common, where
you will have plenty of custom and good pay as
long as we may trust j^ou."
"Oh, sir," said Till, " you may trust my old
man with shoes of gold ! "
" He will find shoes of gold that are his own
in his new house. I pay them to him in ex-
change for these. There is a piping hot supper
also waiting for you both in your new house, so
I advise you to move into it at once. You need
take nothing with you. Tools, furniture, and
even clothes, are there already."
Tools, furniture, and new clothes — yes. Buh
nevertheless, after the Fairy vanished, Teel and
6 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
Till, indulging themselves with the extravagance
of a candle, searched their house through, and
filled a large bundle with household treasure.
There was the Sacred Book, in which they had
read to each other ; there were the little clothes,
at which Till worked when she had been a
younger (but still not a young) wife ; and the
small shoes Teel made for the baby, that was
still the baby to their hearts as when it was
lost, a score of years ago.
Then Till had to wipe the dust from her
mother's Cookery Book, given to her on her
marriage. That edifying work had been neglected
of late, for want of the eggs and butter, without
which, in its opinion, nothing could be brought
into being. But there was the mother's name,
in her own hand, written across the title-page,
worth all the dainties that were ever fried. Till
had more relics, and the foolish shoemaker had
treasures put away in drawers — dead flowers,
faded ribbons. " Do you know. Till," he said,
" I must have you carry to the new house the
whole of your white wedding-dress that is in
yonder worm-eaten old press." So off they went
at last under the moonlight, he with a pack,
and she with a pack.
When they came to the skirt of the common
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS 7
they saw all the windows lighted in a neat little
white house on the top of the sand-rock. When
they had climbed the sand-rock the cottage-
door opened to them of its own accord, and a
delicate smell of boiled rabbit and onions kissed
their noses. In a dainty little parlour, that
dish, dear alike to Teel and Till, smoked ready
for them. There were hot mealy potatoes too,
boiled as few but the Fairies can succeed in
boiling them ; also, there were two bright glasses
set beside a foaming jug of ale.
" What a sweet perfume of meat ! " said Teel.
" And onion," added Till, who was so much
moved by the sight of a comfortable hot supper
and the smell of onion, that she wiped her eyes
as she sat down.
A half-open door was opposite Teel's seat,
and there was a lighted room beyond. " I must
just run and peep in," said the poor shoemaker.
So he ran across and peeped, and what he saw
was his new workshop. There were his counter
and his cases, and his shoemaker's bench, and
the tiniest httle tools, made with broad handles
to suit his grasp. But sitting all round the shop,
row behind row, were thousands of little Fairies
in grey body-clothes, without hats, coats, or
shoes, who cried as he peeped in, " Good evening
8 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
to you, gossip. We are all waiting for you to
measure us when you have supped ! "
Before Teel could answer them, there was a
clatter behind him that obliged him to turn round
It was caused by the falling of a large pair of
gold shoes through the ceiling to the floor fol-
lowed by a cry of " Shoes for you, shoemaker » "
Thereupon all the Fairies in the shop began to
sing :
" Shoes ! Wonderful Shoes I
Safe on the water, safe on the land,
Ready to run at the word of comm'and."
Whirlwig was a hatter, who had made felt
caps for the ploughmen of Stavesacre, though he
was clever enough to fit with the glossiest of hats
the head even of a crocodile. He had plenty of
custom for his caps; but he would have poured
his earnings out as easily as he poured beer into
his throat at the Sandhopper's Arms, if his wife
Willwit had not been careful and honest as she
was. A month after Teel had left the town and
gone to live in his new cottage on the sand-rock,
WTiirlwig was seeing a comrade home over the'
common after a supper at the club of Noisy
Dogs, at which he was vice-president. On the
other side of the common his friend left him,
and went on to his own village. Whirlwig turned
back to Stavesacre, but in the middle of the
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS 9
common he lay down (as he afterwards said) to
think a bit. " Dame Will wit," he thought to
himself, " will say there's little enough in my
pocket. Poor woman ! She doesn't know what
a famous supper I have had for my money.
I'll go home and tell her of it."
He was trying to rise, when a young rabbit
jumped into his lap, and tamely suffered him to
seize it by the ears. " Heigho ! " cried the hatter,
" here's a supper for the good dame too. I'll
take you home to her, trust me."
" Very well," said the rabbit — no longer a
rabbit, being indeed a curiously little man in
grey body-clothes, without coat or hat, but with
the neatest of small shoes upon his feet. " Very
well, my good fellow, I hope I may trust your
wife at least to see that you deal fairly." Then,
holding up a tiny bundle, he said, " Make me a
cap out of the felt in this bundle, and return
me all the pieces. I will pay you well, and bring
you some more custom, if your fit is good."
The hatter laughed with defiance. "Fit good ! "
he cried. " Though I have been making caps
for blockheads all my days, I know what I know ;
you shall wear, sir, what will make you feel the
real use of your head. Am I to send the hat, or
will your honour call for it ? "
10 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
The Fairy said he would call at that same hour
on that day week. The little cap was ready in
good time. Whirlwig had made a careless litter
of the pieces of felt cut off while he worked, but
Willwit, his prudent wife, not only had gathered
them all carefully into the tiny bag, together
with the new cap, she had also locked the door
of the house and put the key into her pocket,
so that her husband could not help being at home
to receive his customer. The Fairy came as he
had come to Teel, and being satisfied with what
he found, advanced to the edge of the table and
said, " Brother Whirlwig, I am authorised to
appoint you hatter-in-ordinary to the Fairies of
the Downs and Commons. Remove, therefore,
to your new house by the roadside on Stavesacre
Common, where you will have plenty of custom
and good pay as long as we may trust you."
" Oh, sir," said Willwit, " there's not a truer
soul than my old man's when he only gives
himself time to consider about what he does !
But I do wish he'd make himself a considering
cap — I do, indeed ! "
" He will find a considering cap in his new
house. I pay it to him in exchange for this.
Supper is laid there. Dame Willwit, for you and
your children ; so I advise you to remove at
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS il
once. As for your good man, he has supped
already. Everything you will want is there ;
you need take nothing."
The Fairy was gone, and Willwit at once
began to get her seven children out of bed.
When they were dressed, the whole family went
under the moonlight to the common, where there
was a new white house on the turf by the roadside.
The house door opened for them of its own accord.
In the snug kitchen there was a hot rabbit-pie
upon the table, large enough for all, and Whirlwig
was inclined to indulge in a second supper ; but
on peeping into a second room from which light
shone through the partly open door, he found in
his new shop thousands of tiny customers, all
eager to be measured without one moment's
delay. So he set to work while his wife and
children ate and drank, and the savoury steam
of the pie made his mouth water. Once he ran
back when he heard something fall to the floor
in the next room. It was a felt cap that had
tumbled through the ceiling, followed by a cry of
" A cap for you, hatter ! " Thereupon all the
Fairies in the shop began to sing :
" Cap ! Wonderful Cap I
Wear it for counsel ; and when you despair,
The advice of the Cap will relieve you of care."
12 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
Surmullet was a clever tailor, but a rascal,
and his wife, Smull, was no better than himself.
He had lost his trade by robbery of customers,
and lived by robbery upon the roads. He was
lurking at night in the bottom of one of the sand-
pits on Stavesacre Common to waylay a traveller,
when the rabbit jumped also upon his knee.
The rabbit would have had its neck wrung in
an instant if it had not changed in less than an
instant into the form of the little Fairy with grey
body-clothes, a neat little cap, and perfect shoes,
wanting only a coat to be completely dressed.
When Surmullet received from this tiny customer
the order for a coat, he said that he would rather
take a coat than make a coat, but for all that he
would fit the little gentleman so that he should
think he had two skins.
Surmullet also was to finish his work in a
week, and did finish it. The little man looked
grave when he came for his coat and missed the
pieces. But he, nevertheless, formally declared
Surmullet's appointment as tailor to the Fairies
of the Downs and Commons, and invited him to
his new place of business at the bottom of the
sandpit in Stavesacre Common. There he would
find plenty of custom and good pay as long as
he was to be trusted.
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS 13
" Trust ! " sneered his wife. " One man is
as safe as another, for the matter of that. There's
no man who wouldn't own himself thief if he had
on a coat of confession."
" You will find such a coat in your new house,"
the Fairy said. " I'll pay it in exchange for this."
Surmullet and his wife were eager to be gone.
The bottom of the sandpit was a newly-established
place of business for them ; but the advantage
of a house built there, in which they might be
always lurking, and from which they might at
any time pounce out upon a traveller, was to be
secured without an hour's delay. So they went
to the common, and found that there was really
a white house built at the bottom of the largest
sandpit. Going down into it they found no
supper, but a crowd of little men, angrily waiting
to be measured for their coats. As they looked
dangerous. Surmullet began measuring directly.
While he did so you may be sure that a coat fell
through the ceiling, followed by the cry of "A
coat for you, tailor ! " and the song of all the
little customers :
" Coat ! Wonderful Coat 1
WTiat you do wrongly, and what you do well,
The Coat of Confession will make you tell."
Now the shoemaker, the hatter, and the
14 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
tailor worked hard, each of them for a twelve-
month and a day, before they had finished making
shoes, and hats, and coats for all the Fairies
of the Downs and Commons. Teel worked hard
with honest will, and lived in luxury. Whirl wig
worked hard because his wife looked after him,
and while he worked the Fairies gave him famous
suppers ; Surmullet worked hard because the
Fairies frightened him, and every man who is
not true is a coward.
At the end of a twelvemonth and a day the
Fairies of the Downs and Commons were all
fitted with their new coats, caps, and shoes, and
as these articles were made of very durable
material, they would outlast the lives of the
tailor, hatter, and shoemaker who made them.
Teel was the first to finish. The house on the
sand-rock vanished when the last Fairy was
shod, and the tradesman to the Fairies went
back with his old wife to their cottage in the
town. They took with them nothing but what
they had brought thence, except the golden
Shoes of Safety. A month afterwards. Whirl-
wig, the hatter, came back with his wife and
seven children, richer for all his work only by
the Considering Cap ; and Surmullet returned
next, with the Coat of Confession on his arm.
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS 15
They had all been kept so closely to their
work that they had never been outside the white
houses, invisible to other eyes, in which the
Fairies had supplied their wants. They had
been completely and unaccountably lost out of
Stavesacre. Their houses remained vacant, be-
cause new people never came into that quiet
place, and the settled inhabitants were so entirely
settled that a Stavesacre man never so much as
thought of moving from one house into another.
When, as it rarely happened, anybody went
away from Stavesacre, somebody painted on a
window of the house he quitted that it was " To
Let." Then it remained empty until natural
increase of population in the place itself would
in the course, perhaps, of many generations,
cause another tenant to be reared. The process
was a very slow one. In the half-century before
the time of which this story tells, the increase
of the population had been only from two thou-
sand one hundred and five to two thousand one
hundred and eleven.
When Teel and Till came back into the town,
and said they had only been as far as the common,
where they had spent the year in shoemaking
for the Fairies, Stavesacre said that was a fine
tale, but no doubt they had their reasons for
i6 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
being secret ; and opinion was divided as to the
way in which Teel came by his gold shoes. A
month afterwards, Stavesacre looked out of the
window to see Whirlwig and Willwit, his wife,
tramping in again with their seven children. He,
too, said that he had been no farther than the
common, where he had been making caps for
the Fairies, and was only the richer by a Con-
sidering Cap for his pains. The only persons
who believed that story were Teel and Till, and
Dame Till lost no time in holding consultation
with Dame Willwit, and comparing their ex-
perience of Fairy patronage.
" I am told," said Till, " that those ne'er-do-
wells. Surmullet and his wife, were lost out of
town soon after you. Has he been in the same
employ, I wonder ? "
While the two women talked together, Whirl-
wig came downstairs in a rusty blue coat, a
stained and soiled red waistcoat, and high walls
of shirt-collar about his cheeks. " I am going ^o
sup at the club," he said to his wife as he went out.
" Ah ! " sighed Willwit, " the Fairies gave him
a Considering Cap, and he always has refused
to put it on. A poor man, with a wife and seven
children, needs to put on his Considering Cap
before he goes to sup at the club ; but he shall
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS 17
wear it after he comes home. I will put him
to bed in it to-night."
" A famous notion, gossip," said Dame Till.
" But what my man is to do with his shoes I
wish I could see. He hasn't a fault to be mended,
bless his old heart ! "
" Or a sorrow to be cured," said her friend,
" when you are by."
But Till looked into the empty air, and her
fingers strayed towards a lock of baby hair that
had lain folded in paper for a score of years upon
her bosom.
Willwit took her by the other hand, like a
kind gossip as she was, and said, " Yes, though
it be twenty years ago, it must be hard to miss
your little Clary. And you had but her ! "
"If we had but her grave to kneel over ! "
mourned the good Till. " She may be living
with the thieves who stole her, and they may
have made her one of them ! "
^ " If she be alive, there is still hope that
you may find her. Truly, dear friend, the man
would walk on shoes of gold who brought her
back to you."
" On shoes of gold ! " Till cried. And leaping
up, she clapped her hands for joy. " Oh, neigh-
bour, neighbour, let me go ! "
1 8 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
" Husband ! " she panted, when, out of breath
with the haste she had made, she got home to
her old man ; " put on those Fairy Shoes of
Safety, and go out to find our child. My heart
tells me they were given you for that."
" But whither shall I go ? "
" Put on the shoes and go — ' Safe on the water
and safe on the land, ready to run at the word of
command,' the Fairies said they were. Then
bid them carry you to Clary, if she be alive."
" You are right, and I am gone," said Teel.
^^Tiile he was gone, Till went to the old locker,
in which she treasured as a relic her white
wedding-dress.
At the word of command, the shoes carried
Teel swiftly, lightly, through the town. They
ran, without touching ground, down the slope
to the river, crossed the surface of the water
without wetting a sole, and sped over the sward
of the deer-park to the wood by the far slopes
of the winding stream. The autumn leaves were
falling on its sheltered paths, but the wonderful
shoes did not stir or tread upon a fallen leaf as
they sped on, causing their wearer to flit like
a shadow through the underwood, already damp
with night-dew. At last, Teel struck into the
thickness of a massive oak, and entering its
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS 19
substance, stood still, in the very heart-wood of
the mighty trunk, that clipped him about like
a cloud.
The brighter for that veil around it and
above it was the mossy nest over which Teel
now stood still. Here it was that the Fairies
of the Wood, who stole her, held his little Clary
cradled. Here she was sleeping happily, in form
not a day older than when she was lost, soothed
by singing from a choir of green Wood-Fairies,
who were her attendants. But when Teel
snatched her up, and fell to kissing her, the
Fairies sang :
" Playfellow Clary, nice to steal,
You must go home with Father Teel.
Clary will be our playfellow for good
If father don't leave his Gold Shoes in the wood."
Teel instantly stepped out of the shadow of
the oak, and took his shoes off. Their gold rose
in a mist that ran along the ground and spread
into the trees, until the autumn leaves dropped,
yellow and chnking, upon paths that had become
strewn with gold. The gnarled trunk of the oak
was sohd enough when Teel turned his back
upon it.
So, without stooping to pick up any of the
gold through which he walked, and without
20 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
flinching when his naked feet trod among thorns,
the old shoemaker went through the forest.
Slowly, and trembling with joy, he went through
the forest, bearing upon his arms the sleeping
infant. It was a long walk home, and there was
the bridge beyond the poplar avenue to be
crossed outside Stavesacre, for which reason his
way must be through the main street. But the
stars were all out when he reached it, and half
the town was already abed. Few saw the old
man limping with torn feet over the stones as
he went homeward by the light of the crescent
moon and of the stars, pressing, with shrivelled,
knotted hands, the tender sleeping child to his
warm heart.
Till saw him from afar, and ran to him through
the night shadows in her j^ellowish-white wedding-
dress. She had been holding solemn festival in
this attire, sitting alone in her poor room, and so
awaiting the return of Clary. If she thought of
an old time, she had not thought it would come
back to her so perfectly that Clary would be
Baby Clary still. She was a yearling child when
lost, and as a yearling child she was returned
into her mother's bosom. Age had not hardened
the true heart that welcomed her. It was a
dainty sight to see the old dame crooning with
HERE SHE WAS SLEEP! N(;, IN FOKM NOT
SHE WAS LOST.'
A UAV OLDEK THAN WHEN
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS 21
love as she wept fast tears over the child that
smiled up at her from the lap of muslin and old
lace and limp white satin bows. Till pressed
its nose into the wreck of the great true-love-
knot upon her bosom, and got her thin grey hair
into confusion with its golden curls as she sat
lip to lip with it in her agony of joy. Meanwhile,
her old man, kneeling before the newly-lighted
fire, stirred in their single pot a baby-mess with
one of his thin hands. His other hand moved
with a wandering touch about his wife and
child.
Presently the child was to be fed with a
wooden spoon, and grasped the spoon as it was
coming to its mouth. Immediately the wood
was gold. They were in no joy about that, but
in some concern lest there should be an objec-
tionable change made in the gruel. No, that
was excellent. And Clary throve like any other
child ; was healthy, happy, natural, except that
she would sometimes murmur a strange fairy
music in her sleep, and that, when touched by
her, wood became gold.
By noon next day so many planks, beams,
window-frames, and doorposts of the shoemaker's
cottage were changed into shining gold, that
gossip Willwit held her breath when she ran in
22 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
with something of interest to tell to gossip Till.
We know what there was to be told by Will wit.
W'hat she had to say to Till was that her good
man Whirlwig, waking up that morning with the
Considering Cap on his head, had sat up in his
bed, and poured out such a stream of wise re-
flections on the headache he had got, and on
the responsibilities he had got : on the necessity
of getting a new coat for the boy Daniel, and new
shoes for Heartsease, and a new gown for Willwit ;
on the devotion and prudence of his valuable
wife Willwit and his own past wastefulness ; on
the wisdom of instantly resigning his place as
Vice-President of Noisy Dogs ; of clearing out
his shop, and making a great stir, if possible, to
procure increase of custom ; on the possibility
of saving enough for the purchase of a small
pony-cart with which he could go in search of
customers to the svuTounding villages ; on the
cost of a cart and of a pony ; on his possible
week's earnings in Stavesacre, and on the average
weekly cost of a sufficiency of meal, of meat,
of butter, of eggs ; on the advantages and dis-
advantages of keeping a pig, and his own powers
of building a pigsty ; on the numbers of years
it would take to turn, by saving, a pig into a cow ;
on the best thing to be done for little Sorrel's
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS 23
cough, and the cause of that pain in the side his
wife had been complaining of ; and so on, and
so on, that he was another man. He had sold
ten caps that morning ; he was inventing, as
a speculation of his own, a grand official hat for
the next Mayor of Stavesacre. He had already
found her money enough to get a leg of pork
and stuffing for their dinner.
" I wouldn't have my good man lose this
industry," said Willwit, " no, not if he got, in-
stead of it, your child's wonderful power of
gold-making."
" I don't care for the gold-making," said
Till, " though I suppose it makes us very rich.
That old chair you sit on, now it's made of gold,
must be worth something. Take it home, gossip.
Nobody need be poor in Stavesacre if this is to
last with Clary ; but it's so like a disease, that
I shall be glad enough to see her cured."
When she said that, a green dwarf with a
very long nose peeped in at the door. " Oh,
good morning. Dame Till," he said. " If you
don't wish that child of yours to turn any more
wood into gold, let her walk round the room
three times in the gold Shoes of Safety. Here
they are. If you are in the mind to make that
use of them, keep them ; if not, let them be cast
24 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
back into the wood yonder, where your good
man left them." The dwarf threw the shoes
into the room and vanished.
Till put httle Clary's feet into the shoes
directly, and began to guide her tottering.
" Think what you do," said Willwit. " The
child's power will give you never-ending wealth."
" I want my own natural and healthy httle
Clary," Till rephed.
" But won't you wait till you have advised
with your husband ? "
"As to Clary, and all else, my Teel and I
are of one heart."
So Clary pattered three times round the room
in the gold shoes. After the first round there
was no sign of amendment, for all the wood in
the house not changed already became gold.
After the second round, everything that was
made of cotton, hemp, or flax, the child's clothes,
all the linen the two women wore, and their
poor cotton gowns, changed into cloth of gold.
" I fear to go round again," said Till. " The
disease grows stronger, and the dwarf may have
meant only to mock me. Yet I will have trust."
So she went round for the third time, and
after that there was no change, but there was
not a splinter of wood left in the house with
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS 2$
which to try whether the desired change in the
child really was effected. The women, dressed
as they were in gold from head to foot, dared
not go out of doors to fetch a stick. It was
lucky for them that at this moment the knave
Surmullet and Smull his wife stepped in.
They were then coming in from the common,
and as they passed Teel's cottage in the empty
country street were the first to notice the golden
window-frames and doorposts, and the brilliant
gold door of Teel's cottage. Inside, the room
was like a gold mine, with two golden women
in it and a golden child.
But a passing boy or two soon spread the
news, and all the town had presently turned
out to look at the shoemaker's cottage, with
golden beams and posts and doors, and golden
thatch. Surmullet and Smull had been hearing
wonders inside, while they looked greedily about
them, and Smull had fetched a fagot from the
yard to put in the child's hand. It remained
wood.
" A pretty game you have spoiled," she said.
" My worthy husband also had a fairy gift, and
who knows what may come of it. Put on your
coat, good man."
Surmullet put on the Coat of Confession
26 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
which he had brought in on his arm, and suddenly
began to tell of all his rogueries. Indoors and
out of doors, all Stavesacre was there to wonder
and listen. Surmullet seized upon every man
he had cheated or robbed, and made a thoroughly
clean breast of his offence ; but he was astonished
at the good nature with which all his confessions
were received.
When Teel came home with the shoe-leather
for which he had been to the tanyard two miles
down the river, he found himself suddenly
seized by the mob of townspeople before and
about his cottage, lifted upon men's shoulders,
and beset with a great shout of " Teel ! Teel !
Teel for the next Mayor ! " More astonishing
still were the shouts of " Bravo, Surmullet ! "
Though Surmullet was telling half the town that
he had robbed and cheated it, yet there he was,
speaking the truth. He who went out a year
and a day since, a sneak whom no man trusted,
and who trusted nobody, — he who was known
to be a thief when he used all his cunning to get
credit for honesty, — was now held to be honest
when he manfully confessed all that was in him,
though the all was bad.
Now the end of the story is, that Surmullet,
finding comfort in his Coat of Confession, ceased
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS 27
to be the coward that he had been. By shifting
his coat slyly and whenever he could to other
men's backs, he found that other men, forced
to speak all the good and evil that was in them,
commonly turned out better than almost any-
body else expected. The sensation of being
trusted was to Surmullet himself very welcome ;
and even SmuU was content to stand with her
husband in the good books of her neighbours.
WTiirlwig became the most considerate and
painstaking man in the whole world.
Teel and his wife were the richest people in
or out of Stavesacre, after they had given gold
away to Whirlwig, to Surmullet, and to every
poor neighbour. There was built for them a fine
house in the deer park, where they loved, all
their days, the kindest and prettiest of daughters.
Teel wore the Mayor's cap that Whirlwig had
distinguished himself by inventing. In the
second year of his mayoralty he gave his wonder-
ful Shoes, and, in the same year, Whirlwig and
Surmullet, who no longer needed magic help,
gave also their Cap and Coat, to be held in
perpetual possession by the town council of
Stavesacre.
The Shoes, Coat, and Cap were kept in a
strong tower, and committed to the keeping of
28 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
six faithful warders. Whenever an offence was
committed in the town, an officer of justice,
putting on the Shoes, commanded them to bring
him face to face with the offender. Instantly
tracked and seized, the culprit was brought into
the presence of the Mayor. There all the wit-
nesses, and the offender himself, wore, when
they give evidence of what they knew, the
wonderful Coat of Confession. The whole truth
about everything that related to an offence
being thus presented to the Mayor, that Magis-
trate put on the wonderful Considering Cap, and
arrived at the wisest possible decision of the
case. There being no escape for any Stavesacre
criminal while the Cap, Coat, and Shoes were
there to secure his capture and conviction,
nobody played the rogue ; and the Stavesacre
men lived for a century with so little necessity
for keeping their eyes open that they became
sleepier than ever.
So it happened that one day all the six
warders who kept the apparatus of Stavesacre
justice were asleep together in the porch of the
tower. When they awoke. Cap, Coat, and Shoes
were gone, and half the houses in the town —
bolts and bars having long fallen out of use — ■
were robbed that night. The thieves were great-
FAIRIES OF THE DOWNS 29
grandchildren of Surmullet, and as they crossed
Stavesacre Common with a wagon-load of plunder
they threw into one of the pools a bundle, which
contained not only the Considering Cap and
Coat of Confession, but also the Golden Shoes of
Safety ; for, although these were of solid value,
there was great fear of their fairy power.
Whenever the pools are dragged on Stavesacre
Common, if that bundle should be found, let it
be forwarded immediately to the Lord Chief
Justice.
II
THE SEA-MAIDEN
There was ere now a poor old fisher, but on this
day he was not getting much fish. On a day of
days, and he fishing, there rose a sea-maiden
at the side of his boat, and she asked him if he
was getting fish. The old man answered and
said that he was not.
" What reward wouldst thou give me for
sending plenty of fish to thee ? "
" Ach ! " said the old man, " I have not much
to spare."
" Wilt thou give me the first son thou hast ? "
"It is I that would give thee that, if I were
to have a son ; there is not, and there will not
be a son of mine."
" Name all thou hast," said the maiden.
" I have but an old mare of a horse, an old
dog, myself, and my wife. There's for thee
all the creatures of the great world that are
mine."
Here, then, are three grains for thee that
THE SEA-MAIDEN 31
thou shalt give thy wife this very night, and three
others to the dog, and these three to the mare,
and these three hkewise thou shalt plant behind
thy house, and in time thy wife will have three
sons, the mare three foals, and the dog three
puppies, and there will grow three trees behind
thy house, and the trees will be a sign, when one
of the sons dies, one of the trees will wither.
Now, take thyself home, and remember me when
thy son is three years of age, and thou thyself
wilt get plenty of fish after this."
Everything happened as the sea-maiden said,
and he himself was getting plenty of fish ; but
when the end of the three years was nearing, the
old man was growing sorrowful, heavy-hearted,
while he failed each day as it came. On the
namesake of the day, he went to fish as he used,
but he did not take his son with him.
The sea-maiden rose at the side of the boat
and asked, " Didst thou bring thy son with thee
hither to me ? "
" Och ! I did not bring him. I forgot that
this was the day."
" Yes, yes ! then," said the sea-maiden,
" thou shalt get four other years of him, to try
if it be easier for thee to part from him. Here
thou hast his like age," and she lifted up a big
32 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
bouncing baby. " Is thy son as fine as this
one?"
He went home full of glee and delight, for
that he had got four other years of his son, and
he kept on fishing and getting plenty of fish,
but at the end of the next four years sorrow and
woe struck him, and he took not a meal, and
did not a turn, and his wife could not think
what was ailing him. This time he did not
know what to do, but he set it before him, that
he would not take his son with him this time
either.
He went to fish as at the former times, and
the sea-maiden rose at the side of the boat, and
asked him, " Didst thou bring thy son hither |
to me ? " j!
" Och ! I forgot him this time too."
" Go home then," said the sea-maiden, " and
at the end of seven years after this, thou art
sure to remember me, but then it will not be the
easier for thee to part with him, but thou shalt^
get fish as thou used to do." |
The old man went home full of joy ; he had !
got seven other years of his son, and before ,
seven years passed, the old man thought that he
himself would be dead, and that he would see
the sea-maiden no more.
THE SEA-MAIDEN 33
But no matter, the end of those seven years
was nearing also, and if it was, the old man was
not without care and trouble. He had rest
neither day nor night. The eldest son asked his
father one day if any one were troubling him ?
The old man said that some one was, but that
belonged neither to him nor to any one else. The
lad said he must know what it was. His father
told him at last, how the matter was between
him and the sea-maiden.
" Let not that put you in any trouble," said
the son ; " I will not oppose you."
" Thou shalt not ; thou shalt not go, my son,
though I should not get fish for ever."
" If you will not let me go with you, go to the
smithy, and let the smith make me a great strong
sword, and I will go to the end of fortune."
His father went to the smithy, and the smith
made a doughty sword for him. His father
came home with the sword. The lad grasped it
and gave it a shake or two, and it went in a
hundred sphnters. He asked his father to go
to the smithy and get him another sword in which
there should be twice as much weight ; and so
did his father, and so likewise it happened to
the next sword — it broke in two halves. Back
went the old man to the smithy ; and the smith
3
34 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
made a great sword, its like he never made
before .
" There's thy sword for thee," said the
smith, " and the fist must be good that plays
this blade."
The old man gave the sword to his son, who
gave it a shake or two. " This will do," said he,
" it's high time now to travel on my way."
On the next morning he put a saddle on the
black horse that the mare had, and he put the
world under his head,^ and his black dog was
by his side. Wlien he went on a bit, he fell in
with the carcass of a sheep beside the road. At
the carrion were a great dog, a falcon, and an
otter. He came down off the horse, and divided
the carcass amongst the three : three shares to
the dog, two shares to the otter, and one share
to the falcon.
" For this," said the dog, " if swiftness of
foot or sharpness of tooth will give thee aid,
mind me, and I will be at thy side."
Said the otter : " If the swimming of foot
on the ground of a pool will loose thee, mind me,
and I will be at thy side."
Said the falcon : "If hardship comes on thee,
where swiftness of wing or crook of a claw
1 Took the world for his pillow.
THE SEA-MAIDEN 35
will do good, mind me, and I will be at thy
side."
On this he went onward till he reached a
king's house, and he took service as a herd, and
his wages were to be according to the milk of the
cattle. He went away with the cattle, and the
grazing was but bare. When lateness came,
and when he took them home they had not much
milk, the place was so bare, and his meat and
drink was but spare this night.
On the next day he went on farther with them ;
and at last he came to a place exceedingly grassy,
in a green glen, of which he never saw the like.
But about the time when he should go behind
the cattle, for taking homewards, who is seen
coming but a great giant with his sword in his
hand.
" Hiu ! Haw ! ! Hogaraich ! ! ! " shouted
the giant. "It is long since my teeth tasted
flesh. The cattle are mine ; they are on my
march ; and a dead man art thou."
" That may be easier to say than to do,"
said the herdsman.
To grips they went, himself and the giant.
He saw that he was far from friend, and near
his foe. He drew the great clean-sweeping
sword and neared the giant. In the play of
36 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
the battle the black dog leaped on the giant's
back. The herdsman drew back his sword, and
the head was off the giant in a twinkling. He
leaped on the black horse and went to look for
the giant's house. He reached a door, and in
the haste that the giant made he had left each
gate and door open.
In went the herdsman, and found mag-
nificence and money in plenty, dresses of every
kind in the wardrobe, with gold and silver, and
each thing finer than the other. At the mouth
of night he took himself to the king's house, but
he took not a thing from the giant's house.
And when the cattle were milked this night there
was milk. He got good feeding this night,
meat and drink without stint, and the king was
hugely pleased that he had caught such a herds-
man. He went on for a time in this way, but
at last the glen grew bare of grass, and the
grazing was not so good.
He thought he would go a little farther for-
ward in on the giant's land, where he saw a
great park of grass. He returned for the cattle
and drove them in.
They were but a short time grazing in the
park when a great wild giant came full of rage
and madness.
THE SEA-MAIDEN 37
" Hiu ! Haw ! ! Hogaraich ! 1 ! " said the
giant. " It is a drink of thy blood that quenches
my thirst this night."
" There is no knowing," answered the herds-
man, " but that's easier to say than to do."
At each other went the men. There was the
shaking of blades !
At length and at last it seemed as if the giant
would get the victory. Then the herdsman
called for his dog, and with one spring the black
dog caught the giant by the neck, and swiftly
the herdsman struck off his head.
He went home very tired this night, but it's
a wonder if the king's cattle had not milk. The
whole family was delighted that they had got
such a herdsman.
He followed herding in this way for a time ;
but one night after he came home, instead of
getting " All hail " and " Good luck " from the
dairymaid, all were crying and full of woe.
He asked what cause of woe there was this
night. The dairymaid said that a great beast
with three heads was in the loch, which was to
devour some one every year, and the lot had
fallen this year on the king's daughter, " and in
the middle of to-morrow she is to meet the
beast at the upper end of the loch, but there is
38 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
a great suitor yonder who is going to rescue
her."
" What suitor is that ? " asked the herdsman.
*' Oh, he is a great General of arms," said the
dairymaid, " and when he kills the beast, he will
marry the king's daughter, for the king has
said that he who could save his daughter should
marry her."
On the morrow when the time was nearing,
the king's daughter and this hero of arms went
to give a meeting to the beast, and they reached
the black corrie at the upper end of the loch.
They were there but a short time when the beast
stirred in the midst of the loch ; but on the
General's seeing this terror of a beast with three
heads, he took fright, slunk away, and hid
himself, leaving the king's daughter fearful and
trembling, with no one at all to save her.
At a glance she saw a doughty handsome
youth, riding a black horse, coming where she was.
He was marvellously arrayed, and full armed,
and his black dog moving after him.
" There is gloom on thy face, lady," said the
youth. " What dost thou here ? "
" Oh, that's no matter," answered the prin-
cess. " It's not long I'll be here at all events."
" Not that," said he.
THE SEA-MAIDEN 39
" A worthy fled as likely as thou, and not
long since."
" He is a worthy who stands the war," an-
swered the youth. He lay down beside her and
said if he should fall asleep, she should rouse him
when she saw the beast making for shore.
" Whsit is rousing for thee ? " she asked.
" Rousing for me is to put the gold ring on
thy finger on my little finger."
It was not long before she saw the beast
making for shore. She took a ring off her finger
and put it on the lad's. He awoke and went
with his sword and his dog to meet the beast.
What spluttering and splashing between them !
The dog was doing all he might, and the king's
daughter was palsied with fear of the noise of
the beast. They would now be under, and now
above. At last he cut off one of the heads.
The dragon gave one roar, and the son of earth,
Echo of the rocks, called to his screech, and he
drove the loch into fury from end to end, then
in a twinkling went out of sight.
" Good luck and victory were following thee,
lad ! " said the princess. " I am safe for one
night, but the beast will come again, and for
ever, until the other two heads come off him."
He caught the beast's head and drew a withy
40 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
through it, and told her to bring it with her
there to-morrow. She went home with the head
on her shoulder, and the herdsman betook him-
self to the cows. She had not gone far when
this great General saw her, and he said to her that
he would kill her if she would not say that 'twas
he took the head off the beast.
" Oh, 'tis I will say it. Who else took the
head off, but thou ? "
They reached the king's house, and the head
was on the General's shoulder. But here was
rejoicing that she should come home alive and
whole, and this great captain with the beast's
head in his hand. On the morrow they went
away, and there was no question at all but that
this hero would save the king's daughter.
They reached the same place, and were not
long there when the fearful beast stirred in the
midst of the loch, and the hero slunk away as he
did on yesterday, but it was not long after this
when the man of the black horse came, with
another dress on. No matter, she knew that it
was the very same lad.
" It is I am pleased to see thee," said she.
" I am in hopes that thou wilt handle thy great
sword to-day as thou didst yesterday. Come
up and take breath."
"good'i.uck and victory were follovvin(; thee, r,AD,'
SAID THE PRINCESS.
THE SEA-MAIDEN 41
Soon they saw the beast steaming in the midst
of the loch.
The lad lay down to rest. " If I sleep before
the beast comes, rouse me."
" \Miat is rousing for thee ? "
" Rousing for me is to put the ear-ring that
is in thine ear in mine."
He had not well fallen asleep when the king's
daughter cried, " Rouse ! rouse ! " but wake he
would not. She took the ear-ring out of her ear
and put it in the ear of the lad. At once he woke
and went to meet the beast. What a spluttering,
splashing, raving, and roaring ! They kept on
thus for a long time, and about the mouth of
night he cut another head off. He put it on
the withy, leaped on the black horse, and betook
himself to the herding. The king's daughter
went home with the heads.
The General met her, and took the heads from
her, saying that she must tell that it was he who
took the head off the beast this time also.
'' Who else took the head off, but thou ? "
said she.
They reached the king's house with the heads.
Then there was joy and gladness. If the king
was hopeful the first night, he was now sure that
this great hero would save his daughter, and there
42 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
was no question at all but that the other head
would be off the beast on the morrow.
About the same time on the morrow the two
went away. The officer hid himself, as he usually
did. The king's daughter betook herself to the
bank of the loch. The hero of the black horse
came and lay by her side to rest. She woke the
lad, put another ear-ring in his other ear; and
at the beast he went.
But if the dragon roared and raved on the
days that were passed, this day it was horrible.
No matter, he took the third head off the beast,
but not without a struggle. He drew it through
the withy, and she went home with the heads.
When they reached the king's house, all were
full of smiles, and the General was to marry the
princess the next day.
The wedding was going on, and every one
about the castle longing till the priest should
come. But when he came, she would marry but
the one who could take the heads off the withy
without cutting the withy.
" Who should take the heads off the withy
but the man that put the heads on ? " said the
king.
The General tried, but he could not loose
them. At last there was no one about the house
THE SEA-MAIDEN 43
but had tried to take the heads off the withy,
but they could not. The king asked if there
were any one else about the house that would
try. They said that the herdsman had not tried
them yet. Word was sent to him, and he was
not long throwing them hither and thither.
" But stop a bit, my lad," said the king's
daughter, " the man that took the heads off the
beast has my ring and my two ear-rings."
The herdsman put his hand in his pocket and
threw them on the board.
" Thou art he," said the princess.
The king was not so pleased when he saw
that it was a herdsman who was to marry his
daughter, but he ordered that he should be put
in a better dress. His daughter spoke and said
that he had a dress as fine as any that ever was
in his castle, and thus it happened. The herds-
man put on the giant's golden dress and they
were married.
Everything went well for some time. One day
they were sauntering by the side of the loch
when there came a beast more wonderfully
terrible than the other, and took him away to
the loch without fear or asking. The king's
daughter was now mournful, tearful, sorrowful,
and was always looking at the loch. An old
44 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES —
smith met her and she told him what had be-
fallen her. He advised her to spread everything
that was finer than another in the very same
place where the beast took away her husband,
and so she did.
The beast put up his nose and said, " Fine
is thy jewellery, king's daughter."
"Finer than that is the jewel that thou
tookest from me. Give me one sight of my
husband, and thou shalt get any one thing of
all these thou seest."
The beast brought him up.
" Deliver him to me, and thou shalt get all
thou seest," said she.
The beast did so. He threw him ahve and
whole on the bank.
A short time after this, when they were
walking at the side of the loch, the same beast
took away the princess. Sorrowful was each
one that was in the town on this night. Her
husband was mournful, tearful, wandering down
and up about the banks of the loch, by day and
mght. The old smith met him. The smith
told him that there was no way of killing the
Beast but this one way : " In the island that
IS m the midst of the loch is the white-footed
hmd, of the slenderest legs, and the swiftest
THE SEA-MAIDEN 45
step, and though she should be caught, there
would spring a crow out of her, and though the
crow should be caught, there would spring a
trout out of her, but there is an egg in the mouth
of the trout, and the soul of the beast is in the
egg, and if the egg breaks, the beast is dead."
Now, there was no way of getting to this
island, for the beast would sink each boat and
raft that went on the loch. He thought he would
try to leap the strait with the black horse, and
even so he did. The black horse leaped the
strait, and the black dog with one bound after
him. He saw the hind, and he let the black
dog after her, but when the black dog would be
on one side of the island, the hind would be on
the other side.
" Oh, good were now the great dog of the car-
cass of flesh here ! "
No sooner spoke he the word than the gen-
erous dog was at his side and after the hind.
The worthies were not long in bringing her to
earth. But he no sooner caught her than a
crow sprang out of her.
" 'Tis now were good the falcon grey, of
sharpest eye and swiftest wing ! "
No sooner said he this than the falcon was
after the crow, and was not long putting her to
46 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
earth. As the crow fell on the bank of the loch,
out of her jumped the trout.
" Oh, that thou wert by me now, O otter ! "
No sooner said than the otter was at his side.
Out on the loch she leapt and brought the trout
from the midst of the loch; but no sooner was
the otter on shore with the trout than the egg
came from his mouth. He sprang and put his
foot on it. 'Twas then the beast let out a roar,
and said, " Break not the egg, and thou gettest
all thou askest."
" Deliver to me my wife."
In the wink of an eye she was by his side.
When he got hold of her hand in both his hands
he let his foot down on the egg, and the beast
died.
The dead thing was horrible to look upon.
The three heads were off it doubtless, but if they
were, there were heads under, and heads over
head on it, and eyes, and five hundred feet. But
no matter, they left it there and went home,
and there was delight and smiling in the king's
house that night. And till now he had not told
the king how he killed the giants. The king put
great honour on him, and he was a great man with
the king.
He and his wife were walking one day, when
THE SEA-MAIDEN 47
he noticed a little castle beside the loch in a
wood, and asked his wife who was dwelling in
it. She said that no one would go near that
castle, for that no one who had gone there had
yet come back to tell the tale.
" The matter must not be so," said he,
" this very night I will see who is dwelling in
it."
" Go not, go not," said his wife ; " there never
went man to this castle that returned."
" Be that as it pleases."
He went. When he reached the door, a
little flattering crone met him standing in the
door.
" All hail and good luck to thee, fisher's son ;
'tis I myself am pleased to see thee ; great is the
honour for this kingdom, thy like to be come
into it — ^thy coming in is fame for this little
dwelling ; go in first ; honour to the gentles ;
go on, and take breath."
In he went, but as he was going up, she smote
him a blow on the back of his head, and at once,
there he fell.
On this night there was woe in the king's
castle, and on the morrow there was a wail in
the fisher's house. The tree was seen withering,
and the fisher's second son said that his brother
48 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
was dead, and he made a vow that he would go
and find where the corpse of his brother was
lying. He put saddle on a black horse, and rode
after his black dog (for the three sons of the
fisher had a black horse and a black dog), and
without going hither or thither he followed on
his brother's steps till he reached the king's
house.
This one was so like his elder brother, that the
king's daughter thought it was her husband.
He stayed in the castle. They told him how it
befell his brother ; and to the little castle of the
crone, go he must — happen hard or soft as it might.
To the castle he went ; and just as befell the
eldest brother, so in each way it befell the middle
son, and with one blow the crone felled him
stretched beside his brother.
On 'seeing the second tree withering, the
fisher's youngest son said that now his two
brothers were dead, he must know what death
had come on them. On the black horse he went,
and followed the dog as his brothers did, and
came to the king's house. 'Twas the king who
was pleased to see him ; but to the black castle
they would not let him go. But to the castle
he must go, and he went.
" All hail and good luck to thyself, fisher's
THE SEA-MAIDEN 49
son ; 'tis I am pleased to see thee ; go in and
take breath," said the crone.
"In before me, thou crone; I don't Hke
flattery out of doors ; go in and let's hear thy
speech."
In went the crone, and when her back was
to him he drew his sword and whipped her head
off ; but the sword flew out of his hand. Swiftly
the crone gripped her head with both hands and
put it on her neck as it was before. The dog
sprang on the crone, but she struck the generous
dog with the club of magic ; and there he lay.
But this only maddened the youth the more
He got hold of the magic club, and with one
blow on the top of the head, she was on earth
m the wink of an eye. He went forward and
saw his two brothers lying side by side. He
gave a blow to each one with the magic club,
and on foot they were. And what spoil ! Gold
and silver, and each thing more precious than
another, in the crone's castle.
They came back to the king's house and there
was rejoicing !
The king was growing old. The eldest son
fof the fisherman was crowned king, and the
pair of brothers stayed a day and a year in the
king's house, and then the two went on their
50 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
iourney home, with the gold and silver of the
crone, and every other grand thing wh.ch
the king gave them ; and if they have not
died since then, they are alive to this very
day.
Ill
A LEGEND OF TIPPERARY
In Tipperary is one of the most singularly
shaped hills in the world. It has a peak at the
top hke a conical nightcap thrown carelessly
over your head as you awake in the morning.
On the very point is built a sort of lodge, where
m the summer the lady who built it and her
friends used to go on parties of pleasure ; but
that was long after the days of the fairies, and
it is, I believe, now deserted.
But before lodge was built, or acre sown
there was close to the head of this hill a large
pasturage, where a herdsman spent his days and
nights among the herd. The spot had been an
old fairy ground, and the good people were
angry that the scene of their light and airy
gambols should be trampled by the rude hoofs of
bulls and cows. The lowing of the cattle sounded
sad m their ears, and the chief of the fairies of the
hill determined in person to drive away the new-
comers, and the way she thought of was this.
52 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
A^Tien the harvest nights came on, and the
moon shone bright and brilHant over the hill,
and the cattle were l3^ing down hushed and quiet,
and the herdsman, wrapt in his mantle, was
musing with his heart gladdened by the glorious
company of the stars twinkling above him, she
would come and dance before him, now in one
shape, now in another, but all ugly and frightful
to behold. One time she would be a great
horse, with the wings of an eagle, and a tail
like a dragon, hissing loud and spitting fire.
Then in a moment she would change into a little
man lame of a leg, with a bull's head, and a
lambent flame playing round it. Then into a
great ape, with duck's feet and a turkey-cock's
tail. But I should be all day about it were I
to tell you all the shapes she took.
And then she would roar, or neigh, or hiss,
or bellow, or howl, or hoot, as never yet was
roaring, neighing, hissing, bellowing, howling, or
hooting, heard in this world before or since.
The poor herdsman would cover his face, and call
on all the saints for help, but it was no use.
With one puff of her breath she would blow
away the fold of his greatcoat, let him hold it
never so tightly over his eyes, and not a saint in
heaven paid him the slightest attention. And
A LEGEND OF TIPPERARY 53
to make matters worse, he never could stir ; no,
nor even shut his eyes, but there was obhged to
stay, held by what power he knew not, gazing
at these terrible sights until the hair of his head
would lift his hat half a foot over his crown,
and his teeth would be ready to fall out from
chattering. But the cattle would scamper about
mad, as if they were bitten by the fly ; and this
would last until the sun rose over the hill.
The poor cattle, from want of rest, were pining
away, and food did them no good ; besides, they
met with accidents without end. Never a night
passed that some of them did not fall into a
pit and get maimed, or maybe killed. Some
would tumble into a river and be drowned ; in
a word, there seemed never to be an end of the
accidents. But what made matters worse, there
could not be a herdsman got to tend the cattle
by night. One visit from the fairy drove the
stoutest-hearted almost mad.
The owner of the ground did not know what
to do. He offered double, treble, quadruple
wages, but not a man could be found for the
sake of money to go through the horror of facing
the fairy. She rejoiced at the successful issue
of her project, and continued her pranks. The
herd gradually thinning, and no man daring to
54 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
remain on the ground, the fairies came back in
numbers, and gambolled as merrily as before,
quaffing dewdrops from acorns, and spreading
their feast on the heads of capacious mushrooms.
What was to be done ? The puzzled farmer
thought in vain. He found that his substance
was daily diminishing, his people terrified, and
his rent-day coming round. It is no wonder
that he looked gloomy, and walked mournfully
down the road.
Now in that part of the world dwelt a man
of the name of Larry Hoolahan, who played on
the pipes better than any other player within
fifteen parishes. A roving, dashing blade was
Larry, and feared nothing. He would face a
mad bull, or fight single-handed against a fair.
In one of his gloomy walks the farmer met him,
and on Larry's asking the cause of his down
looks, he told him all his misfortunes.
" If that is all ails you," said Larry, " make
your mind easy. Were there as many fairies
on the peak as there are potato blossoms in
Tipperary, I would face them. It would be
a queer thing, indeed, if I, who never was afraid
of a proper man, should turn my back upon a
brat of a fairy not the bigness of one's thumb."
" Larry," said the farmer, " do not talk so
A LEGEND OF TIPPERARY 55
bold, for you know not who is hearing you ; but,
if you make your words good, and watch my herds
for a week on the top of the mountain, your hand
shall be free of my dish till the sun has burnt
itself down to the bigness of a farthing rushlight."
The bargain was struck, and Larry went to
the hilltop, when the moon began to peep over
the brow. He took his seat on a big stone under
a hollow of the hill, with his back to the wind,
and pulled out his pipes. He had not played
long when the voice of the fairies was heard
upon the blast, hke a slow stream of music.
Presently they burst out into a loud laugh, and
Larry could plainly hear one say, " What !
another man upon the fairies' ring ? Go to
him, queen, and make him repent his rashness,"
and they flew away.
Larry felt them pass by his face as they flew
like a swarm of midges ; and, looking up hastily,
he saw between the moon and him a great black
cat, standing on the very tip of its claws, with its
back up, and mewing with the voice of a water-
mill. Presently it swelled up towards the sky,
and, turning round on its left hind leg, whirled
till it fell to the ground, from which it started
up in the shape of a salmon, with a cravat round
its neck, and a pair of new top-boots.
56 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
" Go on, jewel," said Larry, " if you dance,
I'll pipe ; " and he struck up.
So she turned into this, and that, and the
other, but still Larry played on, as he well knew
how. At last she lost patience, as ladies will
do when you do not mind their scolding, and
changed herself into a calf, milk-white as the
cream of Cork, and with eyes as mild as those
of the girl I love. She came up gentle and
fawning, in hopes to throw him off his guard by
quietness, and then to work him some wrong.
But Larry was not so deceived ; for when she
came up, he, dropping his pipes, leaped upon
her back.
Now from the top of the mountain, as you
look westward to the broad Atlantic, you will
see the Shannon, queen of rivers, " spreading
like a sea," and running on in gentle course to
mingle with the ocean through the fair city of
Limerick. It on this night shone under the
moon and looked beautiful from the distant hill.
Fifty boats were gliding up and down on the
sweet current, and the song of the fishermen
rose gaily from the shore.
Larry, as I said before, leaped upon the back
of the fairy, and she, rejoiced at the opportunity,
sprang from the hilltop, and bounded clear, at
A LEGEND OF TIPPERARY 57
one jump, over the Shannon, flowing as it was
just ten miles from the mountain's base. It
was done in a second, and when she ahghted on
the distant bank, kicking up her heels, she flung
Larry on the soft turf. No sooner was he thus
planted, than he looked her straight in the face,
and scratching his head, cried out, " By my
word, well done ! That was not a bad leap for
a calfl''
She looked at him for a moment, and then
assumed her own shape.
" Laurence," said she, " you are a bold fellow ;
will you come back the way you went ? "
" And that's what I will," said he, " if you
let me."
So changing to a calf again, again Larry got
on her back, and at another bound they were
again upon the top of the peak. The fairy, once
more resuming her figure, addressed him : " You
have shown so much courage, Laurence, that
while you keep herds on this hill you never shall
be molested by me or mine. The day dawns,
go down to the farmer, and tell him this ; and
if anything I can do may be of service to you,
ask and you shall have it."
She vanished accordingly, and kept her word
in never visiting the hill during Larry's life ;
58 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
but he never troubled her with requests. He
piped and Hved at the farmer's expense, and
roosted in his chimney corner, occasionally casting
an eye to the flock. He died at last, and is
buried in a green valley of pleasant Tipperary ;
but whether the fairies returned to the hill after
his death is more than I can say.
Note. — The hill is Knocksheogowna, which signifies " The Hill
of the Fairy Calf."
IV
THE STORY OF KING LLUDD
Beli the Great had four sons, the eldest being
called Lludd ^ and the youngest Llevelys. After
the death of Beli, the kingdom of the Island of
Britain fell into the hands of Lludd his eldest
son, and Lludd ruled prosperously, and rebuilt
the walls of London, and encompassed it about
with numberless towers. After that he bade the
citizens build houses therein, such as no houses
in the kingdoms could equal. And, moreover,
he was a mighty warrior, and generous and liberal
in giving meat and drink to all that sought them.
And though he had many castles and cities,
this one loved he more than any. He dwelt
therein most part of the year, therefore was it
called Caer Lludd, and at last Caer London.
And after the stranger-race came there, it was
called London.
Lludd loved Llevelys best of all his brothers,
1 Lludd is the celebrated King Lud, brother to Caesar's op-
ponent, Cassivelaunus.
59
6o BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
because he was a wise and discreet man. Having
heai'd that the king of France had died, leaving
no heir except a daughter, and that he had left
all his possessions in her hands, he came to
Lludd his brother, to beseech his counsel and
aid. And that not so much for his own welfare,
as to seek to add to the glory and honour and
dignity of his kindred, if he might go to France
to woo the maiden for his wife. And forthwith
his brother conferred with him, and this counsel
was pleasing unto him.
So he prepared ships and filled them with
armed knights, and set forth towards France.
As soon as they had landed, they sent messengers
to show the nobles of France the cause of the
embassy. By the joint counsel of the nobles of
France and of the princes, the maiden was given
to Llevelys, and the crown of the kingdom with
her. And thenceforth he ruled the land dis-
creetly, and wisely, and happily, as long as his
life lasted.
After a space of time had passed, three plagues
fell on the Island of Britain, such as none in the
islands had ever seen the like of. The first was
a certain race that came, and was called the
Coranians ; and so great was their knowledge,
that there was no discourse upon the face of the
THE STORY OF KING LLUDD 6i
Island, however low it might be spoken, but
what, if the wind met it, it was known to them.
And through this they could not be injured.
The second plague was a shriek which came
on every May-eve, over every hearth in the
Island of Britain. This went through people's
hearts, and so scared them, that the men lost
their hue and their strength, and the women
their children, and the young men and the
maidens lost their senses, and all the animals
and trees and the earth and the waters, were
left barren.
The third plague was, that however much
of provisions and food might be prepared in the
king's courts, were there even so much as a
year's provision of meat and drink, none of it
could ever be found, except what was consumed
in the first night. And two of these plagues,
no one ever knew their cause, therefore was
there better hope of being freed from the first
than from the second and third.
Thereupon King Lludd felt great sorrow and
care, because that he knew not how he might be
freed from these plagues. He called to him all
the nobles of his kingdom, and asked counsel
of them what they should do against these
afflictions. By the common counsel of the nobles.
62 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
Lludd, the son of Beli, went to Llevelys, his
brother, king of France, for he was a man
great of counsel and wisdom, to seek his
advice.
They made ready a fleet in secret and in
silence, lest that race should know the cause of
their errand, or any besides the king and his
counsellors. When they were made ready, they
went into their ships, Lludd and those whom
he chose with him. And they began to cleave
the seas towards France.
WTien these tidings came to Llevelys, seeing
that he knew not the cause of his brother's ships,
he came on the other side to meet him, and with
him was a fleet vast of size. When Lludd saw
this, he left all the ships out upon the sea except
one only ; and in that one he came to meet his
brother, and he likewise with a single ship came
to meet him. Wien they were come together,
each put his arms about the other's neck,
and they welcomed each other with brotherly
love.
After that Lludd had shown his brother the
cause of his errand, Llevelys said that he himself
knew the cause of the coming to those lands.
And they took counsel together to discourse on
the matter otherwise than thus, in order that
THE STORY OF KING LLUDD 63
the wind might not catch their words, nor the
Coranians know what they might say. Then
Llevelys caused a long horn to be made of brass,
and through this horn they discoursed. But
whatsoever words they spoke through this horn,
one to the other, neither of them could hear any
other but harsh and hostile words. And when
Llevelys saw this, and that there was a demon
thwarting them and disturbing through this
horn, he caused wine to be put therein to wash
it. Through the virtue of the wine the demon
was driven out of the horn. When their discourse
was unobstructed, Llevelys told his brother that
he would give him some insects whereof he should
keep some to breed, lest by chance the hke
affliction might come a second time. Other of
these insects he should take and bruise in water.
And he assured him that it would have power
to destroy the race of the Coranians. That is
to say, that when he came home to his kingdom
he should call together all the people, both of
his own race and of the race of the Coranians,
for a conference, as though with the intent of
making peace between them ; and that when
they were all together, he should take this
charmed water, and cast it over all alike. And
he assured him that the water would poison the
64 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
race of the Coranians, but that it would not
slay or harm those of his own race.
" And the second plague," said he, " that is
in thy dominion, behold it is a dragon. And
another dragon of a foreign race is fighting with
it, and striving to overcome it. Therefore does
your dragon make a fearful outcry. And on
this wise may est thou come to know this. After
thou hast returned home, cause the island to
be measured in its length and breadth, and in
the place where thoii dost find the exact central
point, there cause a pit to be dug, and cause a
cauldron full of the best mead that can be made
to be put in the pit, with a covering of satin over
the face of the cauldron. And then, in thine
own person, do thou remain there watching, and
thou wilt see the dragons fighting in the form of
terrific animals. At length they will take the
form of dragons in the air. Last of all, after
wearying themselves with fierce and furious
fighting, they will fall in the form of two pigs
upon the covering, and they will sink in, and the
covering with them, and they will draw it down
to the very bottom of the cauldron. They will
drink up the whole of the mead, and after that
they will sleep. Thereupon do thou immediately
fold the covering around them, and bury them
THE STORY OF KING LLUDD 65
in a kistvaen/ in the strongest place thou hast
in thy dominions, and hide them in the earth
And as long as they shall bide in that strong
place no plague shall come to the Island of
iiritam from elsewhere.
^^ " The cause of the third plague," said he,
IS a mighty man of magic, who takes thy meat
and thy drink and thy store. And he, through
Illusions and charms, causes every one to sleep.
Therefore it is needful for thee in thy own person
to watch thy food and thy provisions. And
lest he should overcome thee with sleep be
there a cauldron of cold water by thy side
and vvhen thou art oppressed with sleep, plunge
into the cauldron." '' f n
Then Lludd returned back unto his land
Immediately he summoned to him the whole
ot his own race and of the Coranians. And as
Llevelys had taught him, he bruised the insects
in water, the which he cast over them all together
and forthwith it destroyed the whole tribe of
the Coranians, without hurt to any of the Britons
Some time after this, Lludd caused the island
to be measured in its length and in its breadth
And in Oxford he found the central point, and
66 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
in that place he caused the earth to be dug, and
in that pit a cauldron to be set, full of the best
mead that could be made, and a covering of
satin over the face of it. He himself watched
that night. While he was there, he beheld the
dragons fighting. When they were weary they
fell, and came down upon the top of the satm,
and drew it with them to the bottom of the
cauldron. When they had drunk the mead they
slept. In their sleep, Lludd folded the covering
around them, and in the securest place he had
in Snowdon, he hid them in a kistvaen. After
that this spot was called Dinas Emreis.^ Thus
the fierce outcry ceased in his dominions.
When this was ended, King Lludd caused an
exceeding great banquet to be prepared. When
it was ready, he placed a vessel of cold water
by his side, and he in his own proper person
watched it. As he abode thus clad with arms,
about the third watch of the night, lo, he heard
many surpassing fascinations and various songs.
Drowsiness urged him to sleep. Upon this, lest
he should be hindered from his purpose and be
overcome by sleep, he went often into the water.
At last, behold, a man of vast size, clad in
strong, heavy armour, came in, bearing a hamper.
1 Dinas 5:mrys is a small hill in one of the valleys of Snowdon
THE STORY OF KING LLUDD 67
And, as he was wont, he put all the food and
provisions of meat and drink into the hamper
and proceeded to go with it forth. Nothing
was ever more wonderful to LIudd, than that
the hamper should hold so much.
Thereupon, King Lludd went after him and
spoke unto him thus : " Stop, stop ! " said he,
though thou hast done many insults and much
spoil erstwhile, thou shalt not do so any more
unless thy skill in arms and thy prowess be
greater than mine."
Then he instantly put down the hamper on
the floor, and awaited him. A fierce encounter
was between them, so that the glittering flre
flew out from their arras. At the last Lludd
grappled with him, and fate bestowed the victory
on Lludd. And he threw the plague to the
earth. After he had overcome him by strength
and might, he besought his mercy. " How can
I grant thee mercy," said the king, " after all
the many injuries and wrongs that thou hast
done me ? "
" AH the losses that ever I have caused thee "
said he " I will make thee atonement for, equal
to what I have taken. And I will never do the
hke from this time forth. But thy faithful vassal
will I be. And the king accepted this from him
68" BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
Thus Lludd freed the Island of Britain from
the three plagues. From thenceforth until the
end of his hfe/ in prosperous peace did Lludd,
the son of Beli, rule the Island of Britain. And
this tale is called the Story of Lludd and Llevelys.
And thus it ends.
^ Legend states that King Lud was buried in London, near the
gate still bearing his name — Ludgate.
V
THE MAGIC MACKEREL
The Mackerel discovers Something in
HIS Line
It is not every fish that knows how to give a
dancing-party. The Mackerel does not dance ;
he sings, and enjoys music of every sort except
a catch. Therefore he does not attend the
fancy balls of my Lord Shark, which are so fine
that they throw all the sea into commotion.
My Lord Shark fattens upon hospitality.
He asks his meat to dine with him ; introduces
affably the Whale to the Shrimp, and the Pike
to the Gudgeon ; heads the revels jovially, and
sends everybody home, who does get home, so
full of the good things of the sea, that the tide
rolls with his praises. Some there are who do
not get home, but they cannot complain.
Once upon a time, my Lord Shark gave one
of his fancy balls. The fishes, in preparing
69
70 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
themselves for the revel, had used up everything
they could find in their masquerade store, and
were still only half dressed. Gale & Whirl-
wind, therefore, were commissioned to send down
many more shiploads of frippery. The said firm,
which drives a roaring trade, busied itself to such
good purpose for its customers the fishes, that
this one particular ball was the grandest ever
given under water.
The small fry that were permitted to look
on made walls and roof to the great dining-hall.
Kept in square, head over head, by a detach-
ment of Sword-fishes, glittering eyes and golden
noses of seven hundred and seven million million
of Pilchards formed the lofty walls. Those eyes
and noses belonged only to fortunate possessors
of front places in the great mob eager to see the
feast. Many of the distinguished guests liked
to eat bits of the wall as much as any other
delicac}^ offered for refreshment, but holes made
by their nibbling were filled up instantly by the
exulting outsiders, for whom front places were
thus procured.
The roof of the ballroom was a floating
cloud of those small beings which sometimes
appear as fire upon the surface of the wave. It
was a joke of the Whale's every ten minutes to
THE MAGIC MACKEREL ^\
break from the dance into the outer sea, and
then come tum.bhng back into the bahroom
through the roof, with his great mouth o| en,
swallowing the candles ; for the myriads in the
roof served also as candles at the feast they
covered in. I know no more than that, in some
such fashion, a whole palace was made for the
occasion, of rooms scooped out of the crowd of
little fishes, miles broad and miles deep, that
thronged to see the fun. Except what he had
of Gale & Whirlwind, who are well-known
purveyors of meat to the fishes, besides being
establishers of the great frippery store under
the sea, my Lord Shark's feast came with the
crowd that admired it, and the guests who were
to entertain each other.
The costumes worn at this fancy ball displayed
numberless treasures of the deep. Lord Shark
had made himself a chain of state from the
skeleton hands of good men lost in a December
tempest. He had wrapped himself in a gay
coat, that was the three-coloured flag of their
wrecked vessel ; but as it did not keep him com-
fortable, he thought of enlarging it before his
next ball with some patches bitten out of other
flags. My Lord had covered his tail with an
odd red cap, much dirtied, and had wriggled till
72 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
his nose was set fast in a gilt brass crown, which
had in some way fallen among the fishes. Being
nearly stifled by this, he was obliged to gasp so
much that his teeth were constantly on view.
Still my Lord Shark he was, and the feast was
his.
Two Cuttlefish, who had covered themselves
with more slime than belonged to them by nature,
flaunted in goose feather. These creatures waited
near my Lord's jaws, and whenever they saw that
he was preparing for a snap, darkened the water
round about him with their ink. For the Shark
— to inspire confidence among his guests — de-
clared that he ate nothing, and wished none to
see him fixing his teeth in his prey. A circle
of Sprats surrounded this great creature, for he
was glad when he looked at them to know how
great he was. There were some Sprats who had
been present at the breaking of a barrel of pitch,
and being stained — for the pitch stuck — of the
colour of Whales, they believed themselves to
be a sort of Whale, and as they swam, half split
themselves with struggling to blow water-spouts
out of their noses.
Distinguished among the company there was
the Crab, who kept a stall or grotto of men's
bones, and who had filled his grotto with old nails
THE MAGIC MACKEREL 73
and chips of wood, crosses and whips, and chains
and curiosities in bottles. He had a sceptre
from the broken figure-head of an old war-
vessel fastened to one of his fore-legs, and this
he trailed behind him in the mud as he crawled
round and round his stall, in anything but a
straightforward way, begging of every fish who
seemed to be of consequence that he would
please to remember the grotto. A free kind of
Sword-fish fell into a passion with this Crab,
ran at him, and turned him over on his back,
at the same time knocking his grotto down.
Then there came swimming through the holes
they made in an old three-crowned hat, files
of Sardines, who ran away with the clog on the
Crab's leg, and so left the poor creature free to
scramble quickly out of sight.
But the Mackerel saw none of the gaiety,
and had part in none of the Shark's feast. He
stayed at home for a good many different-sized
reasons, and one great reason — that he was too
busy. For years he had devoted his whole
mind to a question of magic. He had been
occupied intensely with the study of that mysteri-
ous line which, till this day, wit of man or fish
never availed to decipher — ^the line written in
strange letters on the Mackerel's back. Clearly
;4 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
these are the varied letters of some words of
mystery. In a strange language writing is traced
on the back of the Mackerel, and it is even
underlined in evidence of its imrortance.
Now it happened that our Mackerel, who had
been studying his own back for a hundred years
in a glass borrowed from a Mermaid, read the
first letter of the magic line at a time when the
revel of the Shark's great fancy ball was shaking
all the water round his cave. And in the moment
when he knew what was the inter} retation of the
first le.ter, his tail-fins grew into legs having
feet each with a thousand toes, and his gill-fins
stretched themselves into arms having hands
each with a thousand fingers.
Music had been his sole refreshment in the
intervals of work. A good-natured Siren used
to bring her harp and sing with him. Some-
times, when she meant soon to come back, her
harp had been left in a corner of his cave. There
it was at that moment, ready to be touched, and
the exulting Mackerel, taking it between his feet,
swept his two thousand fingers through its many
strings. Then music such as no ten-fingered
creature ever made, brought all the Sirens to
his door. A magnificent Cod-fish, rolling by on
his way to the fancy ball, pushed through the
A GOOn-NATURKD SIREN USED TO BRING HER HARP AND SING WITH HIM.
THE MAGIC MACKEREL 7S
Sirens, and looking in as he passed, said, " Not
bad for a Mackerel ! " But all the little Pil-
chards, who, like the Herrings, have music in
their hearts, ran to the wonderful harper when
the sound of his song reached them. Off and
away went, therefore, the walls of the ballroom.
After the walls ran the guests, till, in a little
while, there remained only, in open water, my Lord
Shark and his black Sprats. My Lord, for want
of better meat, snapped at these creatures, made
a wry face as he crunched them, and then spat
them out. For Sprat and pitch sauce disagreed
even with him.
II
More in the Same Line
Although there may be more fish in the sea
than ever came out of it, there never was another
fish so bold as the Mackerel, who, popping his
head above water, hailed a fishing-boat to carry
him to shore.
"Is it a Mackerel," thought to himself
Filarete, the fisherman. " Can a Mackerel hold
up a long arm, stretch a finger, and 3ry ' Boat,
ahoy ' ? "
J6 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
Of course this fisherman did not know how
this fish was studying his letters with advantage
to himself. The first letter he learned gave him
a thousand fingers and a thousand toes. The
interpretation of the second letter on his back
having now flashed upon him, he was able to
speak in a thousand tongues. As most fishes
are mute, the greater number of these tongues
were those of men, and beasts, and birds. " My
talents are drowned in the sea," said Mackerel ;
" I care not for a fishy reputation. Why have
my tail-fins become legs, except that I may walk
upon the land ? To the land I will go, being on
fire to extend through earth and air the fame
that has already circled through the water."
So, as he meant, nevertheless, to go on studying
his back, he tucked under his arm the Mermaid's
glass, bought for a song. He took along his
new thousand-stringed harp. It was made for
him by the Sirens, of hair from their own tresses,
stretched over the shell of that crawling thing
of the deep which once put the chiefs of men
into its purple livery.
The Mackerel was looking for a boat to carry
him over the surf to the shore, when he hailed
the young fisherman Filarete with " Boat, ahoy ! "
" What do you want ? What are you ! "
THE MAGIC MACKEREL jj
" I am the famous Doctor Mackerel Pes-
cadillo, linguist and composer. Take me over
the breakers. I have business ashore." As he
spoke, Doctor Pescadillo reached the side of the
fishing-boat, and putting up an arm, seized, with
a many-fingered hand, the boatman's oar, and
jumped in cleverly.
" Legs too," said Filarete ; " and you stand
upright ! Business ashore ! I think you have."
Then he entangled him in eight or ten folds of
his fishing-net. " You and I will have business
together, my fine fish." And he began to amuse
himself, as he pulled eagerly to land, with crying,
" Walk up ! all alive ! " already fancying himself
the prince of showmen. " All alive ! the Mack-
erel is now upon his legs, and speaking ! Noam's
your time ! Be quick, for the miracle of nature
is engaged to marry the Randan of the Pacific
Ocean's Grandmother, and is going off directly
in a fly ! " While he spoke, the boat occupied
his attention, for he was backing her across the
breakers. Away darted the Mackerel when she
was safely beached, and scampered singing up
the shingle.
With a thousand fingers upon each hand,
knots are very soon unpicked. Pescadillo had
not only unpicked himself a way out of the net,
78 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
but had unpicked every knot in the whole mesh,
so that when he leapt out of the boat, Filarete's
nets were become a litter of loose string. The
Mackerel ran faster than a swallow flies, and yet
the fisherman gave chase ; for the mischievous
fish, instead of running out of sight, often sat
down or lay down, feigning sleep, and never
started off again until the hand, stretched out
to seize him, w^as within a scale's-breadth of his
body. For he was resolved that Filarete should
be his follower.
They ran till dusk, when they got to the top
of a mountain, which they had been climbing
all the afternoon ; for it had pleased the fish to
try his friend's wind to the utmost. On the
mountain-top were ragged points of granite, but
the central peak was a smooth table on which
twenty men could stand. The Mackerel then
slipped into a hole under a peak, while the
fisherman, distrusting his feet, sat down to use
his eyes. He was too hungry to sleep, and
watched well until morning, when he observed,
where he had lost sight of the Mackerel, a gleam
as of water in a cranny of the rock. He had
been drenched in the mists of evening, and had
seen the moon half the night through. He had
heard odd music after sunset, as if a thousand
THE MAGIC MACKEREL 79
or two of tiny fingers had been harping. The
ridiculous Mackerel had sung also sentimental
songs about the stars.
Then, as dawn approached, when the poor
fisherman was shivering with cold and hunger,
the Mackerel, still full of sentiment, as he was
empty of all other meat, was heard singing :
" Now, like the tender hope of fish, the doubtful morning breaks,
Scarce venturing to thrust a beam upon the sullen flakes
That stretch across the east, as though they gathered there
to bar
The passage of the coursers of the sun's triumphal car."
" Tooraloral la ! " said the fisherman, " but
I will venture a thrust on your flakes with some-
thing handier than a beam, my good friend."
The Mackerel was at the bottom of a deep cleft
in the rock, where he could not be reached by his
friend's arm, and he had turned his hole into a
fountain of sentiment, because that was the most
nauseous thing he could produce for the vexa-
tion of his adversary. But Filarete saw a bush
growing near the Mackerel's retreat, and felt
that he could produce what would be more
stirring than any nonsense verses. He tore off,
therefore, a long straight bough, rapidly stripped
it into a small pole, and began savagely to thrust
at Doctor Pescadillo. As he did so, he found
that the gleam from the cleft was not of water,
8o BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
but of looking-glass, in which the Mackerel
seemed to have been admiring himself while he
sang. The glass he smashed, but the owner of
it ran up his stick almost into his hand, leapt
over his head, and, with his music-shell tucked
under one of his arms, had climbed the sharpest
pinnacle of rock before the fisherman turned
round to look for him. The Mermaid's glass was
broken when he had almost made out the third
letter of his line.
" Well, said Filarete, " I'll starve you out,
though I can no more catch you up there than I
can reach yonder mackerel sky."
Mackerel sky ! Pescadillo stretched his legs
and spread his arms, and gazed up at the clouds
that wrote his line over and over again on
shadowy mackerel backs far overhead. His eye-
balls started forward ; he stood on the tips of
his two thousand toes, and spread abroad into
the air two thousand fingers, as if they were about
to clutch ; then read aloud with a low voice,
at which the mountain quaked, the third of the
letters in his mystic line.
In the same instant a thousand dishes of
choice food smoked on the table of the mountain-
top. Close to the right hand of Pescadillo there
was floating in the air the meat he liked best,
THE MAGIC MACKEREL 8i
in a shining dish. Filarete's favourite dish came
also to his hand.
" Now let us breakfast," said the Mackerel.
Filarete was already breakfasting. Fish and
fisherman stood where they were ; the right
thing came always at the right time from the
table to the hand of each. When they had
both eaten enough, the breakfast vanished ; but
the fisherman said to the fish, " My lord, I am
your servant. While you can command such a
table as that, I know how great and good you
are, and I will follow you about the world."
" I take you, man, into my service," said the
gracious Mackerel. " Now tell me what is yonder
city by the lake ? There is the sea behind us,
and the mountain-peaks are to the right and
left. I am not for the sea or for the mountains.
I shall go down into that city — what is it ? "
" The city, my Lord Doctor Pescadillo, is
the city of Picon, by the Lake Picuda. It is
there I sold my — may I say in your worshipful
presence — fish. The way from the sea is by
yonder ravine. The lake is always bubbhng,
and produces only bubbles. Little corn or fruit
will grow on the plains, and these wild mountains,
as you see, are barren. The people of the city
live, therefore, almost entirely on what we poor
82 BRIIISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
fellows get out of the sea. They seldom have
enough to eat; but you will feed them. Not in
your own worshipful person, no. Yet you run
risk until they find out what sort of a fish you
are."
"There is a king there, I hope," said the
Mackerel.
" My lord, there are a hundred kings, each
with ten daughters. The country, being barren,
is so hard to govern, that it takes a hundred kings
to make anything of it."
"Very good," said the Mackerel. "I will
go down to those kings, and offer marriage to
their thousand daughters."
Ill
The Last of his Line
The principles upon which Doctor Pescadillo
had established his first happy attempts to read
the writing on his back having helped him to
three letters, enabled him thereafter to make
quick and easy progress in research. When he
and his Squire reached the landward foot of the
mountains, they were hungry again; but the
Mackerel had only to repeat the discovered third
THE MAGIC MACKEREL 83
letter upon his back, and a new feast of a thousand
dishes smoked upon the ground before them.
Still, also the slightest freak of appetite in master
and man was so well studied, that each had under
his hand exactly what he wanted, at the moment
when the notion of it came into his head.
When they had eaten, being foot-weary with
yesterday's race and the morning's scramble
down the mountain's side, and furthermore, lazy
with fulness of meat, the wayfarers lay down on
their backs and looked up at the sky, wishing
for a coach to come and carry them into the
city. There was still Mackerel enough overhead
to engage the attention of the Doctor. Was it
possible that thus, when half asleep, he seized
the true reading of two letters at once ? The
tremendous possibility caused him to leap to his
feet. He tried one of them— the fourth of his
line— and instantly a thousand horses, harnessed
to a chariot, galloped by. They halted when the
chariot was abreast of Mackerel and man. Their
mouths were free ; there were no reins to guide
them ; and it was noticeable that when any of
the magic coursers put their heads to the dry
ground and opened their mouths, corn or hay
ran up between their teeth, and little water-
springs welled up where they were thirsty.
84 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
"The other letter," thought the Doctor,
" must be right since this is right ; but as I get
what I want by the thousand for each letter,
and don't yet know anything more that I want,
let me keep it by me for a little while."
It is in common kindness to be expected that
the person to whom this story is told should be
told also what is the sound of the letters that,
when spoken, will produce at once a dinner, or
an equipage on this liberal scale. But the
letters are those of a dead language that was
never living among ordinary men, and known
only to a most ancient race of sorcerers, whose
mouths were like the mouths of fishes. The last
survivor of that race — a thousand thousand years
ago — ^upon the day of his death caught a Mackerel,
the only kind of fish having a mouth exactly fit
for the pronouncing of his language. In dark
letters he wrote with his finger on the fish's back
a line of power as he died. The letters of this
line, and of course also the line itself, only
the mouth of a Mackerel can utter. It is for
that reason that they cannot be told in the
story.
Pescadillo understood already a thousand
tongues, among which tongues of horses were
included. He learnt, therefore, at once, from
THE MAGIC MACKEREL 85
conversation with his stud, that he might trust
them to do as he wished ; and by addressing them
all clearly in their own language before starting
upon any journey, he afterwards knew how to
save himself all trouble of explanation when
upon the road. As they galloped into the city
of Picon, by the Lake Picuda, there w^as a com-
motion on the pavement, and a rush of bright
eyes to the windows. The two eyes of a lovely
Princess looked out of each of the ten windows
of each of the hundred royal palaces.
As horse after horse galloped by in the same
traces, and still no coach, but still more harnessed
horses followed, first there was a cry of joy for
horse-riders, because clearly this was the troop
of a grand circus entering the town. Then, as
there came by still horses and horses, the people
cried there were too many horses, for the land
did not yield corn to feed them, and even if
these riders brought so much corn with them,
they should give it to the people, who were
hungry.
At last, when the streets were full of the
horses, there appeared the chariot they drew,
and in it was a common fisherman, with a small
fish.
" Yah ! " cried the mob. " Do you want
86 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
all those horses," cried the kings in chorus,
" to bring only one fish to market ? "
The Mackerel endeavoured with his harp and
song to still the uproar, but in vain. There was
no help for it ; he spoke his reserved fifth letter,
and cried " Silence ! "
There fell instantly upon the town a stillness
as of night in the great desert when no wind
stirs. Not even the rasp of a breath or the
scrape of a foot was heard, though men seemed
to be raving, shouting, and stamping quite as
much as before. Now, therefore, the wonderful
music was to be heard, and by it a few women
were soothed.
The horses, being at rest, began to feed heartily
upon the corn they got out of the stones on the
road, and a rush was made to their mouths.
But the wise Doctor spoke his third letter, and
there appeared the thousand dishes of hot meat,
dancing about without hands to carry them,
and thrusting themselves, ready carved, under
everybody's hand. While the people fed — every
one getting the dinner he liked best — the Mackerel
played music, and hoped within himself that the
same letter by which he had enforced silence
would have power to unloose from its own
spell. It had. By uttering that letter, the
THE MAGIC MACKEREL 87
most fortunate of fishes could stop any sound
at will, and let it go again when he thought
proper.
A creature that could give such dinners had
his own way entirely in the city and land of
Picon. The hundred kings deposed themselves
for love of him, declared him sole king, and
themselves his viceroys. He changed the next
letter he read into a thousand palaces of wonders,
and in each there was a study, walled with looking-
glass, so that he worked with comfort at the
writing on his back. Every new letter he learnt
to utter crowned with thousandfold fulfilment
the wish of the hour. The thousand Princesses
vied for his love ; but he began to see that
he could not be happy with a thousand wives.
His last letter, except the very last, he gave
to the wish that the one thousand dear Princesses
could be all rolled into one.
Then there was a sight to be seen ! Roj^al
Princesses tumbling out of windows and doors,
rolling about the streets like balls, every two
that came together lost in one another, till the
thousand had all rolled together into one colossal
damsel. Her the poor httle fish was very proud
to marry. He did not think himself small, and
yet, being small, a large wife was entirely to his
88 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
fancy. This couple was married in great state
— the fisherman being groomsman to the Mack-
erel, and all her hundred fathers standing by to
give away the bride.
The wedding ball was so magnificent beyond
belief that King Pescadillo, in his brilliant
court, surrounded by his hundred kingly fathers-
in-law, could not help thinking of the old days
under water, where so much was thought of the
Shark's ball, and when the friends of his youth
laughed at him for staying at home to learn his
letters. As he thought this, he looked at himself
in the great mirrors on the wall. There was the
one last le'ter nearest to his legs. His flush
of triumph so quickened his wit that he could
read it at a glance, and whiskered it uncon-
sciously while he was wishing my Lord Shark
were there to see what a state ball Lord Mackerel
was giving. He looked up, and saw the ball-
room walled with glass, behind which there were
a thousand sharks in sea- water glaring upon
the company. The company was in extreme
delight at this clever addition to its entertain-
ment.
Then the little Mackerel's heart beat with
exultation. " Something," he said to him-
self, " I know not what, is near. This is my
THE MAGIC MACKEREL 89
wedding-day, and on this day of all days I have
finished reading the inscription on my back,
letter by letl^r. If the power of the single letters
be so great as to fulfil wish after wish, and tempt
me on till I learn all, now that I know all, what
will be the strength of the whole charm? "
Ah, cunning sorcerer, last of 3 our line, you
fellow who died a thousand thousand years ago,
and on your last day wrote upon a fish's back
the word that would give you life again when it
was spoken, you had reason for being liberal in
your rewards to the fish that would spell out that
word for you !
The Royal Pescadillo stood upon the stool
before his throne, and spoke the letter that
compelled strict silence. Then, with panting
sides, dread at the great unknown issue of his
adventure tempering his triumph, he gasped
out the entire magic word ; and at the word the
giant sorcerer, with a great hairy face, of which
the beard trailed behind his feet, entered the
ballroom door. This might be right, thought
Pescadillo, though his little knees knocked at
each other, and the thousand fingers of each
hand twitched nervously. The cruel sorcerer
advanced to the poor little fish, seized him,
and thrust him into his great mouth as the
90 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
first morsel to be eaten in his second course of
life.
The first and last. He should not have
been so cruel. With his two thousand little
fingers Pescadillo fastened to the hair about the
monster's lips, and as he hung there he dug
with his two thousand little toes into the
monster's throat, so that he could not bite. He
could do nothing but cough and choke. And
the wise Mackerel held tight. He would not
be coughed up, though he was almost blown off
his legs by the tremendous coughing. All the
company had run away ; nobody had stayed
to see how the brave little Mackerel fought out
his battle in the sorcerer's mouth, till the great
wretch, in a fit of choking, tripped over his own
beard, reeled heavily against the glass walls,
and broke through into the tank where all the
Sharks were swimming.
The Sharks soon finished the battle, and with
a large sorcerer to eat had no eyes for the little
morsel of a Mackerel, who seized his opportunity
to slip away, and ran back with the stream of
water to the sea from which it had been raised
by magic channels.
And so Mackerel got safely home again. In
all his life he never read another line, and he
THE MAGIC MACKEREL 91
warned all his relations to get through their lives
as merrily as they were able, without ever in-
quiring what they carried on their backs. " Not
for thousands," he said, " would he himself have
been so curious had he known everything when
he began his studies ! "
VI
THE BATTLE OF THE BIRDS
Theee was once a time when every creature and
bird was gathering to battle. The son of the
king of Tethertown said that he would go to
see the battle, and that he would bring sure word
home to his father, the king, who would be king
of the creatures this year. The battle was over
before he arrived all but one fight, between a
great black raven and a snake, and it seemed
as if the snake would get the victory over the
raven. When the king's son saw this, he helped
the raven, and with one blow took the head off
the snake. When the raven had taken breath,
and saw that the snake was dead, he said, " For
thy kindness to me this day, I will give thee a
sight. Come up now on the root of my two
wings." The king's son mounted upon the raven,
and before he stopped, he took him over seven
Bens, and seven Glens, and seven Mountain
Moors.
'" Now," said the raven, " seest thou that
98
THE BATTLE OF THE BIRDS 93
house yonder ? Go to it. It is a sister of mine
that makes her dwelhng there; and I will go
bail that thou art welcome. And if she asks thee,
\^rt thou at the battle of the birds ? say thou
that thou wert. And if she asks, Didst thou see
my hkeness ? say that thou sawest it. But be
sure that thou meetest me to-morrow morning
here, in this place." The king's son got good
and right good treatment this night. Meat of
each meat, drink of each drink, warm water to
his feet, and a soft bed for his hmbs.
On the next day the raven gave him the same
sight over seven Bens, and seven Glens, and
seven Mountain Moors. They saw a dwelling
far off, but, though far off, they were soon there.
He got good treatment this night, as before,—
plenty of meat and drink, and warm water to
his feet, and a soft bed to his hmbs,— and on the
next day it was the same thing.
On the third morning, instead of seeing the
raven as at the other times, who should meet
him but the handsomest lad he ever saw, with a
bundle in his hand. The king's son asked this
lad if he had seen a big black raven. Said the
lad to him, " Thou wilt never see the raven
again, for I am that raven. I was put under
spells ; it was meeting thee that loosed me, *and
94 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
for that thou art getting this bundle. Now,"
said the lad, " thou wilt turn back on the self-
same steps, and thou wilt lie a night in each house,
as thou wert before ; but thy lot is not to lose
the bundle which I gave thee, till thou art in
the place where thou wouldst most wish to dwell."
The king's son turned his back to the lad,
and his face to his father's house ; and he got
lodging from the raven's sisters, just as he got
it when going forward. When he was nearing
his father's house he was going through a close
wood. It seemed to him that the bundle was
growing heavy, and he thought he would look
what was in it.
When he loosed the bundle, it was not
without astonishing himself. In a twinkling he
sees the very grandest place he ever saw. A great
castle, and an orchard about the castle, in which
was every kind of fruit and herb. He stood full of
wonder and regret for having loosed the bundle
it was not in his power to put it back agam —
and he would have wished this pretty place to
be in the pretty little green hollow that was
opposite his father's house ; but, at one glance,
he sees a great giant coming towards him.
" Bad's the place where thou hast built thy
house, king's son," says the giant.
THE BATTLE OF THE BIRDS 95
" Yes, but it is not here I would wish it to
be, though it happened to be here by mishap,"
says the king's son.
" What's the reward thou wouldst give me for
putting it back in the bundle as it was before ? "
" What's the reward thou wouldst ask ? "
" Give me the first son thou hast when he is
seven years of age," says the giant.
" Thou wilt get that if I have a son," said
the king's son.
In a twinkling the giant put each garden,
and orchard, and castle in the bundle as they
were before. "Now," says the giant, "take
thou thine own road, and I will take my road ;
but mind thy promise, and though thou shouldst
forget, I will remember."
The king's son took to the road, and at the
end of a few days he reached the place he was
fondest of. He loosed the bundle, and the same
place was just as it was before. And when he
opened the castle door he sees the handsomest
maiden he ever cast e}e upon.
" Advance, king's son," said the pretty maid;
" everything is in order for thee, if thou wilt
marry me."
" It's I am the man that is willing," said the
king's son. And they were married.
96 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
But at the end of a day and seven years,
what great man is seen coming to the castle
but the giant. The king's son minded his promise
to the giant, and till now he had not told his
promise to the queen. " Leave thou the matter
between me and the giant," says the queen.
" Turn out thy son," says the giant ; " mind
your promise."
" Thou wilt get that," says the king, " when
his mother puts him in order for his journey."
The queen arrayed the cook's son, and she gave
him to the giant by the hand. The giant went
away with him ; but he had not gone far when he
put a rod in the hand of the little laddie. The
giant asked him, " If thy father had that rod
what would he do with it ? "
" If my father had that rod he would beat
the dogs and the cats, if they would be going
near the king's meat," said the little laddie.
" Thou' rt the cook's son," said the giant, and
he turned back to the castle in rage and mad-
ness. He told them that if they did not turn
out the king's son to him, the highest stone of
the castle would be the lowest.
Said the queen to the king, " We'll try it yet ;
the butler's son is of the same age as our own."
She arrayed the butler's son and gave him
THE BATTLE OF THE BIRDS 97
to the giant by the hand. The giant had not
gone far when he put the rod in his hand. " If
thy father had that rod," says the giant, " what
would he do with it ? "
"He would beat the dogs and the cats when
they would be coming near the king's bottles
and glasses."
" Thou art the son of the butler," says the
giant, and returned in very great rage and anger.
The earth shook under the sole of his feet, and
the castle shook and all that was in it. "' Out
HERE THY SON," says the giant, " or in a twinkling
the stone that is highest in thy dwelling will be
the lowest." So needs must, they had to give
the kmg's son to the giant.
The giant took him to his own house, and he
reared him as his own son. On a day of days
when the giant was from home, the lad heard
the sweetest music he ever heard in a room at
the top of the giant's house. At a glance he saw
the finest face he had ever seen. She beckoned
to him to come a bit nearer to her, and she
told him to go this time, but to be sure to be at
the same place about midnight.
And, as he promised, he did. The giant's
daughter was at his side in a twinkling, and she
ffT^^.si'^''-"'^™^ '^hou wilt get the choice of
7
98 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
my two sisters to marry ; but say thou that thou
wilt not take either, but me. My father wants
me to marry the son of the king of the Green
City, but I don't hke him."
On the morrow the giant took out his three
daughters, and said, " Now, son of the king of
Tethertown, thou hast not lost by living with me
so long. Thou wilt marry one of the two eldest
of my daughters, and with her leave to go
home with her the day after the wedding."
" If thou wilt give me this pretty little one,"
says the king's son, " I will take thee at thy
word."
The giant's wrath kindled, and he said,
" Before thou gett'st her thou must do the three
things that I ask thee to do." j
" Say on," says the king's son.
The giant took him to the byre. " Now," ,
says the giant, " a hundred cattle Hve here, and I
the stable has not been cleansed for seven years.
I am going from home to-day, and if this byre I
is not cleaned before night comes, so clean that
a golden apple will run from end to end of it, ,
not only shalt thou not get my daughter, but j
'tis a drink of thy blood that will quench my ^
thirst this night." :
He began cleaning the byre, but it was just as )
THE BATTLE OF THE BIRDS 99
well to keep baling the great ocean. After mid-
day, when sweat was blinding him, the giant's
young daughter came where he was and said to
him, " Thou art being punished, king's son."
" I am that," says he.
" Come over, and lay down thy weariness."
" I will do that," says he ; " there is but death
awaiting me, at any rate."
He sat down near her, and was so tired that
he fell asleep. When he awoke, the giant's
daughter was not to be seen, but the byre was
so well cleaned that a golden apple would run
from end to end of it.
In came the giant. " Thou hast cleaned the
byre, king's son ? "
" I have cleaned it."
" Somebody cleaned it," says the giant.
" Thou didst not clean it, at all events," said
the king's son.
" Yes, yes ! Since thou wert so active to-day,
thou wilt get to this time to-morrow to thatch
this byre with birds'-down— birds with no two
feathers of one colour."
The king's son was on foot before the sun ;
he caught up his bow and his quiver of arrows'
to kill the birds. He took to the moors, but the
birds were not so easy to take. He was running
100 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
after them till the sweat was blinding him.
About midday who should come but the giant s
daughter. ^ ^ „
" Thou art exhausting thyself, kmg s son.
" I am," said he. " There fell but these two
blackbirds, and both of one colour."
" Come over and lay down thy wearmess on
this pretty hillock."
" It's I am wiUing." He thought she would
aid him this time too, and he sat down near her,
and he was not long before he fell asleep.
When he awoke, the giant's daughter was
gone. He thought he would go back to the
house, where he saw the byre thatched with
feathers. When the giant came home, he said,
" Thou hast thatched the byre, king's son ?
" I thatched it."
" Somebody thatched it," said the giant.
" Thou didst not thatch it."
" Yes, yes I " said the giant. " Now, there
is a fir tree beside that loch down there, and
there is a magpie's nest in its top. The eggs
thou wilt find in the nest. I must have them for
my first meal. Not one must be burst or broken,
and there are five in the nest."
Early in the morning the king's son went
where the tree was, and that tree was not hard
THE BATTLE OF THE BIRDS
lOI
to hit upon. Its match was not in the whole
wood. From the foot to the first branch was
five hundred feet. The king's son was going
all round the tree. She came who was always
bringing help to him.
" Thou art losing the skin of thy hands and
feet."
" Ach ! I am ; I am no sooner up than down."
"This is no time for stopping," says the
giant's daughter. She thrust finger after finger
into the tree, till she made a ladder for the king's
son to go up to the magpie's nest. When he
was at the nest, she said, " Make haste now with
the eggs, for my father's breath is burning my
back." In her hurry she had broken her little
finger and left it in the top of the tree.
" Now," said she, " thou wilt go home with
the eggs quickly, and thou wilt marry me if
thou canst know me. I and my two sisters
will be arrayed in the same garments, and made
like each other, but look at me when my father
says, ' Go, choose thy wife, king's son ' ; and thou
wilt see a hand without a little finger."
He gave the eggs to the giant. "Yes,
yes ! " said the giant, "be making ready for
thy marriage."
Then indeed there was a wedding, and it was
102 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
a wedding— giants and gentlemen, and the son
of the king of the Green City was in the midst
of them. The dancing began, and the giant's
house was shaking from top to bottom.
" It is time for thee to depart, son of the king
of Tethertown," said the giant, " take thy bride
from amidst those,"
She put out the hand off which the little
finger was, and he caught her by the hand.
" Thou hast aimed well this time too ; but
there is no knowing but we may meet thee another
way," said the giant.
"We must fly quick, quick, or for certam
my father will kill thee," said the giant's daughter.
Out they went, and mounted the blue-grey
filly in the stable.
" Stop a while," said she, " and I will play a
trick to the old hero." She jumped in, and cut
an apple into nine shares ; she put two shares at
the head of the bed, two shares at the foot, two
shares at the door of the kitchen, two shares
at the big door, and one outside the house.
The giant awoke and called, "Are you asleep ?
" We are not yet," said the apple that was at
the head of the bed. At the end of a while he
called again. " We are not yet," said the apple
that was at the foot of the bed. A while after
THE BATTLE OF THE BIRDS 103
this he called again. " We are not yet," said
the apple at the kitchen door. The giant called
again. The apple that was at the big door
answered. " You are now going far from me,"
said the giant. " We are not yet," answered
the apple that was outside the house. " You are
flying," called the giant. The giant jumped
on his feet, and to the bed he went, but it was
empty.
" My own daughter's tricks are trying me,"
said the giant. " Here's after them."
In the mouth of day, the giant's daughter
said that her father's breath was burning her
back. " Put thy hand, quick," said she, " in
the ear of the grey filly, and whatever thou
findest in it, throw it behind thee."
" There is a twig of a sloe tree," said he.
" Throw it behind thee."
No sooner did he that, than there were twenty
miles of blackthorn wood, so^ thick that scarce
a weasel could go through it. The giant came
headlong, and there he is fleecing his head and
neck in the thorns.
" My own daughter's tricks are here as before,"
said the giant ; " but if I had my own big axe
and wood-knife here, I would not be long making
a way through this." He went home for the
104 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
big axe and the wood-knife, and sure he was
not long on his journey and in making a way
through the blackthorn.
" I will leave the axe and the wood-knife
here till I return."
" If thou leave them," said a rook that was
in a tree, " we will steal them."
" You will do that," said the giant ; " then I
will take them home." He returned and left
them at the house.
At the heat of day the giant's daughter felt
her father's breath burning her back.
" Put thy finger in the filly's ear, and throw
behind thee whatever thou findest in it."
He got a splinter of grey stone, and in a twink-
ling there were twenty miles, by breadth and
height, of great grey rock behind them. The
giant came full pelt, but past the rock he could
not go.
" The tricks of my own daughter are the
hardest things that ever met me," said the
giant ; " but if I had my lever and my mighty
mattock, I would not be long making my way
through this rock also." There was no help
for it, but to turn the chase for them, and he was
the boy to split the stones. He was not long
making a road through the rock.
THE BATTLE OF THE BIRDS 105
" I will leave the tools here, and I will return
no more."
" If thou leave them," said the rook, " we
will steal them."
" Do that if thou wilt ; there is no time to go
back."
At the time of breaking the watch, the giant's
daughter said that she was feeling her father's
breath burning her back.
" Look in the filly's ear, king's son, or else
we are lost."
He did so, and it was a bladder of water that
was in her ear this time. He threw it behind
him, and there was a fresh-water loch, twenty
miles in length and breadth, behind them.
The giant came on, but with the speed he
had on him, he was in the middle of the loch,
and he went under, and rose no more.
On the next day the young companions were
come in sight of his father's house. " Now,"
said she, " my father is drowned, and he won't
trouble us any more ; but before we go farther,
go thou to thy father's house, and tell that thou
hast brought me ; but this is thy lot, let neither
man nor creature kiss thee, for if thou dost thou
wilt not remember that thou hast ever seen
me."
io6 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
Every one he met was giving him welcome
and luck, and he charged his father and
mother not to kiss him ; but as mishap was
to be, an old greyhound was in, and she
knew him, and jumped up to his mouth, and
after that he did not remember the giant's
daughter.
She was sitting at the well's side as he left
her, but the king's son did not return. As
evening came on she climbed up into a tree of
oak that was beside the well, and lay in the
fork of the tree all that night. A shoemaker
had a house near the well, and about midday
on the morrow, the shoemaker asked his wife
to go for a drink for him out of the well. When
she reached the well, and when she saw the shadow
of her that was in the tree, thinking it was her
own shadow — and she never thought till now
she was so handsome — she gave a cast to the
dish that was in her hand and it was broken on
the ground, and she took herself to the house
without vessel or water.
" Where is the water, wife ? " said the shoe-
maker.
" Thou shambhng, contemptible old carle,
without grace, I have stayed too long thy water
and wood slave."
THE BATTLE OF THE BIRDS 107
" I am thinking, wife, that thou hast turned
crazy. Go thou, daughter, quickly, and fetch
a drink for thy father."
His daughter went, and in the same way so
it happened to her. She never thought till now
that she was so lovable, and she took herself
home.
" Up with the drink," said her father.
" Thou home-spun shoe carle, dost thou think
that I am fit to be thy slave ? "
The poor shoemaker thought that they had
taken a turn in their understandings, and he
went himself to the well. He saw the shadow
of the maiden in the well, and he looked up to
the tree, and saw the finest woman he ever
saw.
" Thy seat is wavering; but thy face is
fair," sa'd the shoemaker. " Come down, for
there is need of thee for a short while at my
house."
The shoemaker understood that this was the
shadow that had driven his people mad. He
took her to his house, and said that he had but
a poor cottage, but that she should get a share
of all that was in it.
At the end of a day or two came a company
of gentlemen lads to the shoemaker's house for
io8 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
shoes to be made them, for the king had come
home, and was going to marry. The lads gave
a glance at the giant's daughter. " 'Tis thou
hast the pretty daughter here," said they to the
shoemaker.
" She is pretty, indeed, but she is no daughter
of mine."
" St. Nail ! " said one, " I would give a hun-
dred pounds to marry her."
The two others said the very same. The poor
shoemaker said that he had nothing to do with
her.
" But," said they, " ask her to-night, and
send us word to-morrow."
When the gentles went away, she asked the
shoemaker, " What was that they were saying
about me ? "
The shoemaker told her.
" Go thou after them," said she, " I will
marry one of them, and let him bring his purse
with him."
The youth returned, and gave the shoemaker
the hundred pounds he promised.
When she saw him she asked the lad for a
drink of water from a tumbler that was on the
board on the farther side of the room. He went,
but back again he could not come, but stood
THE BATTLE OF THE BIRDS 109
holding the vessel of water the whole night.
On the morrow she asked the shoemaker to take
the lubberly boy away.
This wooer went and betook himself to his
home, but he did not tell the other two how
it happened to him. Next came the second
youth.
" Look," she said to him, " if the latch is on
the door." The latch laid hold of his hands, and
kept him standing there the whole of one night.
On the morrow he went, under shame and dis-
grace. No matter, he did not tell the other
how it had happened, and on the third day he
came. As it happened to the two others, so it
happened to him. One foot stuck to the floor ;
he could neither come nor go. On the morrow
he took his soles out and fled, never looking
behind him.
" Now," said the girl to the shoemaker,
" thine is the sporran of gold ; I have no need
of it. It will better thee, and I am no worse
for thy kindness to me."
The shoemaker had the shoes ready, and on
that very day the king was to be married. He
was going to the castle with them when the
girl said, " I would like to get a sight of the
king's son before he marries."
no BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
" Come with me," said the shoemaker, " I
am well acquainted with the servants at the
castle, and thou shalt get a sight of the king's
son and all the company."
When the gentles saw the pretty woman
they took her to the guest-room and filled for
her a glass of wine. When she was going to
drink, a flame went up out of the glass, and a
golden pigeon and a silver pigeon sprang out of
it. They were flying about when three grains
of barley fell on the floor. The silver pigeon
sprang and ate it. Said the golden pigeon to
him, " If thou hadst mind when I cleared the
byre, thou wouldst not eat that without giving
me a share."
Again fell three other grains of barley, and
the silver pigeon sprang and ate that, as before.
" If thou hadst mind when I thatched the
byre, thou wouldst not eat that without giving
me my share," said the golden pigeon.
Three other grains fell, and the silver pigeon
sprang and ate that.
" If thou hadst mind when I harried the
magpie's nest, thou wouldst not eat that without
giving me my share," said the golden pigeon.
" I lost my little finger bringing it down, and I
want it still,"
THE BATTLE OF THE BIRDS in
The king's son remembered, and he knew
who it was. He sprang where she was and
kissed her. When the priest came they
married a second time. And there I left
them.
VII
LEGEND OF BOTTLE HILL
It was in the good days, when the little people
most impudently called fairies were more
frequently seen than they are in these unbe-
lieving times, that a farmer named Mick Purcell
rented a few acres of barren ground in the neigh-
bourhood of the once- celebrated monastery of
Mourne, situated about three miles from Mallow
and thirteen from " the beautiful city called
Cork."
Mick had a wife and family ; they all did what
they could, and that was but little, for the poor
man had no child grown up big enough to help
him in his work ; and all the poor woman could
do was to mind the children, and to milk the
one cow, and to boil the potatoes, and carry the
eggs to market to Mallow ; but with all they
could do, 'twas hard enough on them to pay the
rent. Well, they did manage it for a good while,
but at last came a bad year, and the little grain
of oats was all spoiled, and the chickens died of
LEGEND OF BOTTLE HILL 113
the pip, and the pig got the mesisles—she was
sold in Mallow and brought almost nothing ;
and poor Mick found that he hadn't enough to
half pay his rent, and two gales were due.
" Why then, Molly," says he, " what'll we
do?"
" Wisha, then, mavourneen, what would you
do but take the cow to the fair of Cork and sell
her. Monday is fair day, and so you must go
to-morrow, that the poor beast may be rested
again the fair."
" And what'll we do when she's gone ? "
says Mick sorrowfully.
" Never a know I know, Mick, but sure
God won't leave us without Him, Mick ; and you
know how good He was to us when poor Httle
Billy was sick, and we had nothing at all for him
to take, that good doctor gentleman at Bally-
dahin come riding and asking for a drink of
milk ; and how he gave us two shilhngs ; and
how he sent the things and bottles for the child,
and gave me my breakfast when I went over to
ask a question, so he did ; and how he came to
see Billy, and never left off his goodness till he
was quite well ? "
" Oh, you are always that way, Molly, and
I beheve you are right after all, so I won't be
114 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
sorry for selling the cow ; but I'll go to-morrow,
and you must put a needle and thread through
my coat, for you know 'tis ripped under the
arm."
Molly told him he should have everything
right, and about twelve o'clock next day he left
her, getting a charge not to sell his cow except
for the highest penny. Mick promised to mind
it, and went his way along the road. He drove
his cow slowly through the Uttle stream which
crosses it, and runs by the old walls of Mourne.
As he passed he glanced his eye upon the towers
and one of the old elder trees, which were only
then little bits of switches.
" Oh, then, if I only had half the money
that's buried in you, 'tisn't driving this poor cow
I'd be now ! Why, then, isn't it too bad that it
should be there covered over with earth, and
many a one besides me wanting ? Well, if it's
God's will, I'll have some money myself coming
back."
So saying, he moved on after his beast.
'Twas a fine day, and the sun shone brightly on
the walls of the old abbey as he passed under
them. He then crossed an extensive mountain
tract, and after six long miles he came to the top
of that hill — Bottle Hill 'tis called now, but that
LEGEND OF BOTTLE HILL 115
was not the name of it then, and just there a
man overtook him.
" Good-morrow," says he.
" Good-morrow, kindly," says Mick, looking
at the stranger, who was a htfcle man, you'd
almost call him a dwarf, only he wasn't quite so
little. He had a bit of an old, wrinkled, yellow
face, for all the world like a dried cauhflower,
only he had a sharp little nose, and red eyes^
and white hair, and his lips were not red, but all
his face was one colour, and his eyes never were
quiet, but looking at everything, and although
they were red, they made Mick feel quite cold
when he looked at them. In truth, he did not
much Hke the little man's company; and he
couldn't see one bit of his legs, nor his body,
for, though the day was warm, he was all wrapped
up in a big greatcoat.
Mick drove his cow something faster, but the
little man kept up with him. Mick didn't know
how he walked, for he was almost afraid to look
at him, for fear the old man would be angry.
Yet he thought his fellow-traveller did not seem
to walk hke other men, nor to put one foot before
the other, but to ghde over the rough road—
and rough enough it was— hke a shadow, without
noise and without effort. Mick's heart trembled
ii6 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
within him, and he said a prayer to himself,
wishing he hadn't come out that day, or that he
was on Fair-Hill, or that he hadn't the cow to
mind, that he might run away from the bad
thing-when, in the midst of his fears, he was
again addressed by his companion.
- Where are you going with the cow, honest
T^^^^ • ,,1 TIT- 1
"To the fair of Cork, then," said Mick,
trembhng at the shrill and piercing tones of the
voice. ^ ,, 11.1
" Are you going to sell her ? " asked the
stranger. . ^ ^ .
» Why, then, what else am I going for but
to sell her ? "
" Will you sell her to me ? "
Mick started— he was afraid to have anything
to do with the little man, and he was more
afraid to say no.
" What'll you give for her ? "
" I'll tell you what, I'll give you this bottle,
said the little one, pulhng a bottle from under
his coat. .
Mick looked at him and the bottle, and, in
spite of his terror, he could not help bursting
into a loud fit of laughter.
" Laugh if you will," said the little man,
LEGEND OF BOTTLE HILL 117
" but I tell you this bottle is better for you than
all the money you will get for the cow in Cork —
ay, than ten thousand times as much."
Mick laughed again. " Why, then, do you
think I am such a fool as to give my good cow
for a bottle — and an empty one, too ? Indeed,
then, I won't."
" You had better give me the cow, and take
the bottle — ^you'll not be sorry for it."
" Why, then, and what would Molly say ?
I'd never hear the end of it ; and how would I
pay the rent ? And what would we all do
without a penny of money ? "
" I tell you this bottle is better to you than
money ; take it, and give me the cow. I ask
you for the last time, Mick Purcell."
Mick started.
" How does he know my name ? " thought he.
The stranger proceeded : " Mick Purcell, I
know you, and I have a regard for you ; there-
fore do as I warn you, or you may be sorry for
it. How do you know but your cow will die
before you get to Cork ? "
Mick was going to say " God forbid ! " but
the little man went on. " And how do you
know but there will be much cattle at the fair,
and you will get a bad price, or maybe you
Ii8 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
might be robbed when you are coming home ?
But what need I talk more to you, when you
are determined to throw away your luck, Mick
Purcell."
" Oh, no, I would not throw away my luck,
sir," said Mick, " and if I was sure the bottle
was as good as you say, though I never liked
an empty bottle, I'd give you the cow in the
name "
" Never mind names," said the stranger,
" but give me the cow ; I would not tell you a
lie. Here, take the bottle, and when you go
home, do what I direct exactly."
Mick hesitated.
" Well, then, good-bye, I can stay no longer :
once more, take it, and be rich ; refuse it and
beg for your life, and see your children in poverty,
and your wife dying for want. That will happen
to you, Mick Purcell I " said the little man with
a malicious grin, which made him look ten times
more ugly than ever.
" Maybe 'tis true," said Mick, still hesitating ;
he did not know what to do — he could hardly
help believing the old man, and at length in a
fit of desperation he seized the bottle. " Take
the cow," said he, " and if you are telling a lie,
the curse of the poor will be on you."
LEGEND OF BOTTLE HILL 119
" I care neither for your curses nor your
blessings, but I have spoken truth, Mick Purcell,
and that you will find to-night, if you do what I
tell you."
" And what's that ? " says Mick.
" When you go home, never mind if your wife
is angry, but be quiet yourself, and make her
sweep the room clean, set the table out right,
and spread a clean cloth over it ; then put the
bottle on the ground, saying these words :
' Bottle, do your duty,' and you will see the end
of it."
" And is this all ? " says Mick.
" No more," said the stranger. " Good-bye,
Mick Purcell — ^you are a rich man."
*' God grant it ! " said Mick, as the old man
moved after the cow, and Mick retraced the road
towards his cabin ; but he could not help turning
back his head, to look after the purchaser of his
cow, who was nowhere to be seen.
" Lord between us and harm ! " said Mick.
" Re can't belong to this earth ; but where is
the cow ? " She too was gone, and Mick went
homeward muttering prayers, and holding fast
the bottle.
" And what would I do if it broke ? " thought
he. " Oh, but I'll take care of that." So he
120 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
put it into his bosom, and went on anxious to
prove his bottle, and doubting of the reception
he should meet from his wife. Balancing his
anxieties with his expectation, his fears with his
hopes, he reached home in the evening, and sur-
prised his wife, sitting over the turf fire in the
big chimney.
" Oh, Mick, are you come back ? Sure you
weren't at Cork all the way ? What has hap-
pened to you ? Where is the cow ? Did you
sell her ? How much money did you get for
her ? What news have you ? Tell us every-
thing about it."
" Why then, Molly, if you'll give me time, I'll
tell you all about it. If you want to know where
the cow is, 'tisn't Mick can tell you, for the
never a know does he know where she is now."
" Oh, then, you sold her ; and where's the
money ? "
" Arrah ! stop awhile, Molly, and I'll tell you
all about it."
" But what is that bottle under your waist-
coat ? " said Molly, spying its neck sticking out.
" Why, then, be easy now, can't you," said
Mick, " till I tell it to you ; " and putting the bottle
on the table, " That's all I got for the cow."
His poor wife was thunderstruck. " All you
LEGEND OF BOTTLE HILL 121
got ! And what good is that, Mick ? Oh, I
never thought you were such a fool ; and what'U
we do for the rent, and what "
" Now, Molly, can't you hearken to reason ?
Didn't I tell you how the old man, or what-
somever he was, met me — no, he did not meet
me either, but he was there with me — on the
big hill, and how he made me sell him the cow,
and told me the bottle was the only thing for
me ? "
" Yes, indeed, the only thing for you, you
fool ! " said Molly, seizing the bottle to hurl it
at her poor husband's head ; but Mick caught
it, and quietly loosened his wife's grasp, and
placed the bottle again in his bosom. Poor
Molly sat down crying, while Mick told her his
story, with many a crossing and blessing between
him and harm. His wife could not help beHev-
ing him, particularly as she had as much faith in
fairies as she had in the priest, who indeed never
discouraged her belief in the fairies ; maybe he
didn't know she believed in them, and maybe
he beheved in them himself. She got up, how-
ever, without saying one word, and began to
sweep the earthen floor with a bunch of heath ;
then she tidied up everything, and put out the
long table, and spread the clean cloth, for she
122 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
had only one, upon it, and Mick, placing the
bottle on the ground, looked at it, and said,
" Bottle, do your duty."
" Look there ! look there, mammy ! " said his
chubby eldest boy, a boy about five years old.
" Look there ! look there ! " And he sprang to his
mother's side, as two tiny little fellows rose like
light from the bottle, and in an instant covered
the table with dishes and plates of gold and
silver, full of the finest food that ever was seen,
and when all was done went into the bottle again.
Mick and his wife looked at everything with
astonishment ; they had never seen such plates
and dishes before, and didn't think they could
ever admire them enough ; the very sight almost
took away their appetites. But at length Molly
said, " Come and sit down, Mick, and try and
eat a bit ; sure you ought to be hungry after
such a good day's work."
" Why, then, the man told no lie about the
bottle."
Mick sat down, after putting the children to
the table ; and they made a hearty meal, though
they couldn't taste half the dishes.
" Now," said Molly, " I wonder will those
two good little gentlemen carry away these fine
things again ? " They waited, but no one came ;
LEGEND OF BOTTLE HILL 123
so Molly put up the dishes and plates very
carefully, saying, " Why, then, Mick, that was
no lie sure enough ; but you'll be a rich man
yet, Mick Purcell."
Mick and his wife and children went to their
bed, not to sleep, but to settle about selling the
fine things they did not want, and to take more
land. Mick went to Cork and sold his plate,
and bought a horse and cart, and began to show
that he was making money ; and they did all
they could to keep the bottle a secret. But
for all that, their landlord found it out, for he
came to Mick one day and asked him where he
got all his money — sure it was not by the farm ;
and he bothered him so much, that at last Mick
told him of the bottle. His landlord offered
him a deal of money for it, but Mick would not
give it, till at last he offered to give him all his
farm for ever ; so Mick, who was very rich,
thought he'd never want any more money, and
gave him the bottle. But Mick was mistaken ;
he and his family spent money as if there was
no end of it, and, to make the story short, they
became poorer and poorer, till at last they had
nothing left but one cow, and Mick once more
drove his cow before him to sell her at Cork
fair, hoping to meet the old man and get another
124 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
bottle. It was hardly daybreak when he left
home, and he walked on at a good pace till he
reached the big hill. The mists were sleeping
in the valleys and curling like smoke-wreaths
upon the brown heath around him ; the sun
rose on his left, and just at his feet a lark sprang
from its grassy couch and poured forth its joyous
matin song, ascending into the clear blue sky.
Mick crossed himself, listening as he advanced
to the sweet song of the lark, but thinking, not-
withstanding, all the time of the little old man,
when, just as he reached the summit of the hill,
and cast his eyes over the extensive prospect
before and around him, he was startled and
rejoiced by the same well-known voice : " Well,
Mick Purcell, I told you you would be a rich
man."
" Indeed, then, sure enough I was ; that's no
lie for you, sir. Good morning to you, but it
is not rich I am now — but have you another
bottle, for I want it now as much as I did long
ago ? so if you have it, sir, here is the cow for it."
" And here is the bottle," said the old man,
smiling ; " you know what to do with it."
" Oh, then, sure I do, as good right I have."
" Well, farewell for ever, Mick Purcell ; I
told you you would be a rich man."
LEGEND OF BOTTLE HILL 125
" And good-bye to you, sir," said Mick, as
he turned back, " and good luck to you, and
good luck to the big hill — it wants a name —
Bottle Hill. Good-bye, sir, good-bye."
So Mick walked back as fast as he could, never
looking after the white-faced little gentleman
and the cow, so anxious was he to bring home
the bottle. Well, he arrived with it safely enough
and called out, as soon as he saw Molly, " Oh,
sure, I've another bottle ! "
'' Arrah ! then, have you ? why, then, you're
a lucky man, Mick Purcell, that's what you
are."
In an instant she put everything right, and
Mick, looking at his bottle, exultingly cried out,
" Bottle, do your duty."
In a twinkling, two great stout men with big
cudgels issued from the bottle (I do not know
how they got room in it) and belaboured poor
Mick and his wife and all the family, till they lay
on the floor, when in they went again.
Mick, as soon as he recovered, got up and
looked about him. He thought and thought, and
at last he took up his wife and his children ; and,
leaving them to recover as well as they could, he
took the bottle under his coat, and went to his
landlord, who had a great company. He got a
126 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
servant to tell him he wanted to speak to him,
and at last he came out to Mick.
" Well, what do you want now ? "
" Nothing, sir, only I have another bottle."
" Oh, ho ! is it as good as the first ? "
" Yes, sir, and better ; if you like, I will show
it to you before all the ladies and gentlemen."
" Come along then."
So saying, Mick was brought into the great
hall, where he saw his old bottle standing high
up on a shelf. " Ah, ha ! " said he to himself,
" maybe I won't have you by and by."
" Now," said the landlord, " show us your
bottle."
Mick set it on the floor, and uttered the
words. In a moment the landlord was tumbled
on the floor ; ladies and gentlemen, servants and
all, were running and roaring, and sprawhng and
kicking, and shrieking. Wine cups and salvers
were knocked about in every direction, until the
landlord called out, " Stop them, Mick Purcell,
or I'll have you hanged I "
" They never shall stop," said Mick, " till I
get my own bottle that I see up there at top of
that shelf."
" Give it down to him, give it down to him,
before we are all killed ! " said the landlord.
LEGEND OF BOTTLE HILL 127
Mick put his bottle in his bosom ; in jumped
the two men into the new bottle, and he carried
the bottles home.
I need not lengthen my story by telling how
he got richer than ever, how his son married his
landlord's only daughter, how he and his wife
died when they were very old, and how some of
the servants, fighting at their wake, broke the
bottles ; but still the hill has the name upon it —
ay, and so 'twill be always Bottle Hill to the
end of the world, and so it ought, for it is a strange
story.
VIII
MELILOT
I
The Three Neighbours of Melilot
It had been raining for ten months, and every-
body felt as if it had been raining for ten years.
In the driest part of the country, in the driest
corners of the driest houses, there was damp.
Whoever came near a fire began to steam;
whoever left the fire began to moisten as the
damp entered the clothes. There was a, breath
of wet on everything indoors, and Melilot was
wet through when she came to the door of a
broken-roofed cottage that stood in a marsh
between two lakes.
Melilot was a pretty girl of twelve, who had
lived in a cottage up the mountains, as the only
child of hard-working parents, who taught her
all that was good, and whose one worldly good
she was ; for they had nothing to eat but what
they could force to grow out of a stony patch of
(
MELILOT 129
ground upon the mountain-side. They had loved
Mehlot, and they loved each other. To feed their
little one they had deprived themselves, till
when the rain running down the mountain-side
had washed away their little garden crops, first
the mother died — ^for she it was who had denied
herself the most — and then the father also died
in a long passion of weeping. The nearest neigh-
bours occupied the cotttage in the valley on the
marsh between the lakes. In hunger and grief,
therefore, Melilot went down to them to ask for
human help.
From Melilot's home it was a long way up
to the peak of the mountains, and a long way
down to the marshy valley in which lay the two
lakes with a narrow spit of earth between them
and a black rocky mountain overhanging them
upon the other side. A gloomy defile, between
high rocks, led out of the valley on the one side,
and on the other it opened uf>on a waste of bog,
over which the thick mist brooded, and the rain
now fell with never-ending plash.
The runlets on the mountain formed a water-
fall that, dashing over a smooth wall of rock
broke into foam on the ragged floor of a great
rocky basin near Melilot's cottage door. Then
after a short rush, seething and foaming down
9
I30 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
a slope rugged with granite boulders, the great
cataract fell with a mighty roar over another
precipice upon the stream that, swollen by the
rains almost into a river, carried its flood into one
of the lakes. It was partly by this waterfall
that the path down into the valley ran.
Melilot knew that her father, when alive, had
avoided the people in the lake cottage, and had
forbidden her, although they were the only
neighbours, to go near their dwelling. But her
father now was dead, and her mother was dead,
and there was need of human help if she would
bury them. Her father, too, had told her that
when she was left helpless she would have to go
out and serve others for her daily bread. To
what others than these could the child look ?
So by the stony side of the stream, and by the
edge of the lake, her only path in the marsh,
Melilot came down shivering and weeping through
the pitiless rain, and knocked at the door of the
lake cottage.
" Who's that ? " asked a hoarse voice inside.
" That's Melilot from up above us," said a
hoarser voice.
" Come in, then, little Melilot," another voice
said, that was the hoarsest of the three.
The child flinched before opening the door,
MELILOT 131
but she did open it, and set one foot over the
threshold ; then she stopped. There was nothing
in the cottage but a muddy puddle on the floor,
into which rain ran from the broken roof. Three
men sat together in the puddle, squatted like
frogs. They had broad noses and spotted
faces, and the brightest of bright eyes, which
were all turned to look at Melilot when she
came in.
" We are glad to see you, Melilot," said the
one who sat in the middle, holding out a hand
that had all its fingers webbed together. He
was the one who had the hoarsest voice. " My
friend on the right is Dock, Dodder sits on my
left, and I am Squill. Come in and shut the door
behind you."
Melilot had to choose between the dreary,
empty world outside, and trust in these three
creatures — who were more horrible to look at
than I care to tell. She hesitated only for an
instant, then went in and shut the door behind
her.
" A long time ago your father came to us,
and he went out and shut the door upon us.
You are wiser than your father, little girl."
" My father, oh, my dear father ! " began
Melilot, and fell to weeping bitterly.
132 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
" Her father is dead," said Dock, who was the
least hoarse.
*' And her mother too," said Dodder, who
was hoarser.
" And she wants us to help her to bury them,"
croaked Squill.
" She is fainting with hunger," said Dock.
" She is dying of hunger and grief," said
Dodder.
" And we have nothing to offer her but
tadpoles, which she cannot eat," said Squill.
" Dear neighbours, I am nothing," said the
child. " I do not know that I am hungry. But
if you would come with me and help me."
" She asks us to her house," said Dock.
" We may go," said Dodder, "if we are
invited."
" Little Melilot," said Squill then, in his
hoarsest tone of all, " we will all follow you to
the mountain hut." Then the three ugly creatures
splashed out of their pool, and moved, web-
footed too, about their cottage with ungainly
hopping. Melilot all the while only thanked
them, frankly looking up into their bright eyes,
that were eager, very eager, but not cruel.
MELILOT ' 133
II
The Mountain Hut
Melilot, with her three wonderful neighbours,
Dock, Dodder, and Squill, hopping arm in arm
behind her, and getting a good hold on the stones
with their web feet, began to chmb the mountain.
Rain still poured out of the sky ; runlets flooded
their path, and the great cataract roared by their
side. The faint and hungry child had climbed
but half the way to her desolate home when she
swooned, and was caught in the arms of Squill.
" Sprinkle water," said Dock.
" No need of that," said Dodder.
" It will not be right for us to carry her,"
said Squill.
Either because there was more than a sprink-
ling of water, or because of her own stout young
heart, Melilot recovered and climbed on. They
reached the hut, and when there, the three
neighbours at once bestirred themselves. Be-
cause of the flood outside, they dug the graves
under the roof, one on each side of the hearth,
for Mehlot's dead father and mother, and so
buried them. Then the child made her friends
sit down to rest ; one in her father's chair, one in
134 BRmSH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
her mother's, and one on her own Httle stool.
She raked the embers of the fire and put on fresh
wood until a blaze leapt up that was strong
enough to warm them before she would turn
aside. Then standing in a corner by the morsel
of window that looked out towards the waterfall,
she gave way to her sobbing. But again— brave
little heart — conquering herself, she came forward
to where the monsters were sitting, with their
legs crossed, basking in the firelight, and said,
" I am sorry, dear, kind neighbours, that I have
no supper to offer you."
" Nay, but you have," said Dock.
The child followed the glance of his eyes, and
saw that on her father's grave there stood a loaf
of bread, and on her mother's grave a cup of
milk.
" They are for you, from the good angels."
" Oh, I am thankful ! " Then Melilot broke
the bread into three pieces, and gave a piece to
each, and held the milk for them when they
would drink.
" She is famished herself," said Dodder.
" We must eat all of it up," said Squill.
So they ate all of it up ; and while they ate,
there was no thought in the child's heart but of
pleasure that she had this bread to give.
^^^. .id/ ^./f^ 1''"
" MEMTOT RECOVKRF.D AND CT.IMBED ON."
MELILOT 135
When they had eaten all, there was another
loaf upon the father's grave, and on the mother's
grave another and a larger cup of milk.
" See there ! " Dock said.
" Whose supper is that ? " asked Dodder.
" It must be for the pious little daughter
Melilot, and no one else," said Squill.
The three neighbours refused to take another
crumb ; they had eaten so much tadpole, they
said, for their dinners . Melilot, therefore, supped,
but left much bread and milk, secretly thinking
that her friends would require breakfast if they
should consent to stay with her throughout the
night. It was long since the sun set, reddening
the mists of the plain, and now the mountain
path beside the torrent was all dark and very
perilous. The monsters eagerly watched their
little hostess with their brilliant eyes, and assented,
as it seemed, with exultation, to her wish that
they would sleep in the hut. There were but
two beds under its roof — Melilot's own little
straw pallet, and that on which her parents were
to sleep no more, on which she was no more to
kneel beside them in the humble morning prayer.
With sacred thoughts of hospitality the child
gave up to the use of those who had smoothed
for her dear parents a new bed, the bed that was
136 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
no longer theirs, and the three monsters, after
looking at her gratefully, lay down on it together
and went to sleep on it, with their arms twisted
about each other's necks. The child looked
down upon them, clinging together in their sleep
as in their talk, and saw a weariness of pain
defined in many a kindly-turned line of their half
frog-like faces. If one stirred in sleep, it was to
nestle closer to the other two. " How strange,"
she said to herself, " that I should at first have
thought them ugly ! " Then she knelt in prayer
by her little nest of straw, and did not forget
them in her prayers. There was a blessing on
them in her heart as she lay down to sleep.
But when Melilot lay down with her face
towards the hearth, the dying embers shone with
a red light on the two solemn graves. She
turned her face to the wall, and the rush of the
torrent on the other side was louder than the
passion of her weeping. But the noise of the
waterfall first soothed her, and then, fixing her
attention, drew her from her bed towards the
little window, from which she was able to look
out into the black night through which it roared.
A night not altogether black, for there was a
short lull in the rain, though the wind howled
round the mountain, and through a chance
MELILOT 137
break in the scurrying night- clouds the full
moon now and then flashed, lighting the lakes in
the valley far below, and causing the torrent
outside the window to gleam through the night
shadows of the great rocks among which it fell.
Could it be the song of busy Fairies that came
thence to the child's ear ?
"Up to the moon and cut down that ray !
In and out the foam-wreaths plaiting ;
Spin the froth and weave the sprajr !
Melilot is watching ! MeUlot is waiting !
Pick the moonbeam into shreds,
Twist itj twist it into threads !
Threads of the moonUght, yarn of the bubble,
Weave into muslin, double and double J
Fold all and carry it, tarry ye not,
To the chamber of gentle and true^Melilot."
Almost at the same moment the door of the
hut opened, and Mehlot, turning round, saw two
beautiful youths enter, bright as the moonlight,
who laid a white bale at her feet, and said that
it came from the Fairy Muslin Works. Having
done that, they flew out in the shape of fire-flies,
and Melilot herself closed the door after them.
It was her first act to shut the door, because she
was bred to be a careful little housewife, and she
thought the night air would not be good for the
sleepers.
Then the child looked again at the three
138 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
monsters cuddled together on her father's and
mother's bed. " The Fairies have done this for
me," she considered to herself, " that I might
not have to send away kind helpers without a
gift. White muslin is not quite the dress that
will suit lodging such as theirs, but it is all I
have ! If I could make them, by the time they
wake, three dresses, they would see, at any rate,
that I was glad to work for them as they had
worked for me."
So Melilot began measuring her neighbours
with the string of her poor little apron ; and
when she had measured them all, shrank, with
her scissors and thread, and the bale of fairy
muslin, into the farthest corner of her hut. and
set to work by the light of a pine-stick, shaded
from the eyes of her guests with a screen made
of her own ragged old frock.
While the child stitched, the Fairies sang,
and it was a marvel to her that her needle
never wanted threading. Keeping time with her
fingers to the fairy song, she worked with a
speed that almost surpassed her desire, and
altogether surpassed understanding. One needle-
ful of thread made the three coats, and the
thread, when the coats were made, was as long
as it had been when they were begun.
MELILOT 139
Very soon after dawn the white dresses were
made, and all the muslin had been used in
making them, except what was left in the small
litter of fragments round the stool upon which
Melilot had been at work. Three coats of white
muslin, daintily folded, were laid by the bed of
the three guests, and each was folded with that
corner uppermost on which there had been written
in thread its owner's name. Dock was worked
in the corner of one. Dodder in the corner of
another, and in the corner of the third coat,
Squill.
Then Melilot lay down for an hour's sleep,
and, weary with grief as with toil, slept heavily.
Dock, Dodder, and Squill were awake before her,
and the first thing that each of them did upon
waking was to look upon his new coat. The next
thing that each of them did was to put on his
new coat ; and after this the next thing they all
did was to change into three beautiful Fairy
youths — Dick with yellow hair. Dodder with
brown, and Squill with black. Thus they stood
hand in hand by the little girl's bed.
" She has freed us, the dear child! " said Dock.
" She," said Dodder, " she, our darling, and
our brothers of the waterfall."
" She has saved nothing for herself," said
140 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
Squill. " Did not the child once wish to tear
muslm m place of these poor rags ? I kiss them
brothers, for her sake." But Squill's kiss on the
girl's ragged frock made it a treasure for an
empire.
" And I kiss the walls that sheltered us "
said Dodder. But Dodder's kiss upon the walls
changed them into a close network of fragrant
blossoms.
" And I kiss the lips that bade us hither "
Bock said ; and at his kiss the child smiled, and
her eyes opened upon the three Fairies in the
mushn dresses she had made.
"Ah, Fairies," she said, "those are the
dresses I made for my three dear neighbours.
Do not take back your gift, although the muslin
is indeed yours, and the thread too, I know, and
—and the work too, for surely it was you' who
made the needle run. I have done nothing, and
am but a poor little child ; only I thought you
meant to give me something to be grateful with."
" We did not give you your good heart, dear
httle Mehlot," the Fairies said, and now their
speaking was in softest unison. " That has done
more for us than all our love and service will
repay. We were your neighbours, but we are
your servants now."
MELILOT ■ 141
" No, no, no," said the child. " I was afraid
to ask to be your servant, because I thought
last night you were too poor to feed me, as I am
too poor and weak to feed myself. The angels
themselves gave me bread yesterday, and I have
some yet. But all is changed about me. Why
do the walls flower, and why is my dress covered
with ghttering stones ? Ah, yes, I am at home,"
she said, for her eyes fell on the two graves.
Then, as she rose to her knees, with quivering
lips, the three Fairies went out into the sun,
and stood at the door to see how all the rains
were gone, and the bright morning beams played
in the spray of the cataract.
" Do you see anything between us and the
sun ? " Dock asked of the other two.
" A speck," said Dodder.
" Frogbit herself," said Squill.
Ill
Sir Crucifer
Presently Melilot bade the three Fairies come
in to share her breakfast. She had saved bread
from last night, and while she took it from its
place among the blossoms that last night were
142 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
mud, again the loaf of bread stood on her father's,
and the cup of milk upon her mother's grave.
" The angels of my father and mother feed me
still," she said. " I must abide under the shelter
of their wings."
The Fairies came at her bidding to eat with
her ; but Squill, excusing himself, went to the
stool about which were the chips and shreds of
Fairy muslin. There, joining each to each with
a stroke of his finger, he was shaping them into
a little net, when Melilot, who had been sent
out to feel the sunshine, came in, saying that
there was a chill wind, and though it was foolish-
ness to think so, it did really seem to have come
with a black raven that was sitting on the roof.
" You had better strike through the roof,
Frogbit," Squill cried, looking up. The bird
croaked as if in defiance, and at once began to
beat a way in through the flowers. As it did
so, the leaves of the bower withered, and the
blossoms all began to fade.
But Squill leapt up, and holding the net he
had made under the hole Frogbit was making,
caught her as she fell through, and held her
captured in the folds of Fairy muslin that
seemed to stand like iron against the beating of
her wings.
MELILOT 143
" Poor bird ! " said Melilot.
" Our enemy, who came on a bad errand, is
our prisoner," said Dock.
" Cleverly done," said Dodder. " Very
cleverly done, brother Squill."
But Melilot, who loved man, beast, and bird,
bent over the fluttering raven, and was not
hindered from taking it, net and all, to her
bosom, though it struck at her fiercely with its
great bill that, strong as it was, could not tear
through the muslin net.
" Poor bird ! " said the child ; " how can a
raven be your enemy ? "
" Theirs and yours ! " the raven herself
shrieked. " Theirs and yours ! "
" And mine, bird ? I would do you no hurt.
See, I kiss you." When Melilot stooped to kiss
through the thin muslin the raven's head, the
bird struggled to escape from the kiss with an
agony of terror.
" Nay," said the gentle child, " no evil can
come of a true kiss."
Good came of it ; for at the touch of her kiss,
the wicked Fairy Frogbit dropped out of the form
of a raven into a black, shapeless lump of earth.
" What have I done ? " the child cried,
weeping.
144 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
Then the three Fairies threw the lump of
earth into the waterfall, and told her all that she
had done. They told her how of old they had
lived with their brother Fairies of the Torrent
till the wicked Frogbit came and turned the land
below into a marshy wilderness, in which she
ruled over her own evil race. One day she and
her people had contrived to seize Titania herself
as she flew over the marsh on the way to her
subjects of the mountain. They could not change
her beauty, or stain her bright nature, but they
held her prisoner for a time among their stagnant
pools, till she was rescued in a moonlight attack
by the Fairies of the Waterfall, who left three
prisoners, Dock, Dodder, and Squill, in the hands
of the enemy. Those prisoners Frogbit had shut
up in loathsome frog-like bodies, and set in the
cottage between the lakes, while she brought
down never-ending rain over the whole district,
to make their prison more gloomy. The Fairies
of the bright running and leaping water were
condemned to sit in stagnant puddle and eat
tadpoles, having their own bright natures shut
up in forms so detestable that Frogbit hoped to
make their case more wretched by a mockery of
hope.
" Live there," she said, " till a mortal child
MELILOT 145
can look at you without being afraid ; till there
is a little girl in the world bold enough to seek
you out, and trust you with all that she holds
most sacred ; to shut herself up with you, and
believe in you entirely ; to give u]3 to you her
own supper, and of her own free thought make
white muslin dresses to your filthy shapes."
She spoke mockingly of white muslin, because
she knew of the old Fairy trade that had been
carried on for ages on the mountains. There
the Fairies weave after their own fashion into
muslin the white sheets of foam ; and when the
three prisoners had heard their doom they were
not in despair. For although Frogbit, who had
never been up the mountain, knew nothing of
the one little hut there was upon it, yet all the
Fairies knew it, and they knew well the little
Melilot.
" Then I have really been a friend to you ? "
the child said.
" Ay," they replied, " and to Frogbit a friend.
An innocent kiss is the charm that breaks all
evil spells, and you have with a kiss broken the
spell that raised in her a clod of earth into a
creature of mischief. We of the torrent will
direct the waters that they wash that clod of
earth from which evil is banned to a place where
10
146 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
it may yield lilies and violets, of which good
Fairies shall be born."
The three Fairies, returning to their own race,
were still Melilot's neighbours and friends, and
the child grew up to womanhood, the favourite
of all the Fairies of the waterfall. Her bower
blossomed, and the ground about it was made
into a delicious garden. Her dress of precious
stones was thrown into a corner, and she was
arrayed by the Fairies in their shining muslin
that would take no soil. But still she found,
morning and night, the only bread she ate upon
her father's grave, and upon her mother's grave
the milk that nourished her.
Whether the bad Fairies over whom Frogbit
had ruled left the marsh, Melilot did not know,
but the marsh dried and became a great plain,
which men tilled, and upon which at last men
fought.
Sobbing and panting, Melilot ran down the
hillside when she saw men cased in iron galloping
to and fro, and falling wounded to lie bleeding
and uncared for on the quaking ground. Every
fear was mastered by her sacred pity, and her
Fairy muslin was unstained, though she knelt
on the red mud of the battlefield and laid the
wounded soldier's head upon her lap. None,
MELILOT 147
even in the direst madness of the strife, could
strike upon the frail white girl, who saw only the
suffering about her, and thought only of wounds
that she might bind. Had any struck, her muslin
was an armour finer than all steel ; and there
was no rent in her dress, as she tore from it strip
after strip, to bind rents in the flesh of men who
lay in their death-agonies about her.
In the tumult of flight, the defeated host
parted before her and sped on, still leaving her
untrampled and untouched. But once, reaching
a white arm into the crowd, she caught from it a
wounded soldier as he fell, and with the other
hand seized the shaft of the spear that a fierce
youth, hot in pursuit, thrust on his falling
enemy. She fainted as she did so, and the
youth, letting his spear drop, knelt beside her
and looked down into her face. His tears
presently were falling on her lifeless cheek. The
flight and the pursuit rushed by, and he was
still kneeling beside her, when the moon rose,
and three youths, dressed in white, stood near.
" Are you her brothers ? " he asked. " Who
is this, with a dress that has passed unstained
through blood and mire, and with a face so holy ?"
" Take her up in your arms," they said, " and
we will show you where to carry her."
148 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
The young soldier lifted her with reverence,
and took her up the mountain to the bower by
the waterfall. The scent of the flowers, when
they came into its garden, gave fresh life to her.
The soldier gently laid her down upon a bank of
wild thyme, and looked up for the three youths,
but they were gone. He went into the bower,
and saw therein scanty furniture, a dress of
jewels worth an empire thrown into a corner,
and two graves, on one of which stood bread,
and on the other milk. He brought the food
out to the girl, and, at her bidding, broke bread
with her.
Now Dock, Dodder, and Squill were match-
makers. They had made up their minds that
Melilot should be to Sir Crucifer— that was the
soldier's name— as near in trust and in love as
her mother had been to her father. So they
put the cottage between the two lakes into repair,
and made him a home out of the place in which
they had been imprisoned. There he dreamt,
all the night through, sacred dreams of her by
whose side he spent all his days.
Much the girl heard, as she sat with the
soldier by the waterfall, of the high struggle for
all that makes man good and glorious, that bred
the strife out of which she had drawn him for
MELILOT 149
a little time. Much the soldier learnt as he sat
with the girl, from a companion whose thoughts
purified his zeal, and made his aspirations happier
and more unbounded. One day there were
words said that made the girl a woman, and when
she awoke on the next morning, her father's
grave was overgrown with laurel bushes, and
her mother's grave was lost under a wealth of
flowering myrtle.
But there was no food provided.
When Sir Crucifer came to her that sunny
morning, " I have a sign," she said. " It is time
that I also take my part in the struggle of which
you have told me. Let us go down together to
the plains."
She gathered for him a branch of laurel,
and she plucked a sprig of myrtle for herself.
These never faded ; they remained green as the
daughter's memory of those two dear ones from
whose graves they came. But in all their long
after-lives of love and labour, neither of them
remembered the worth of an empire in stone
that they left unguarded in a corner of the hut.
The spray was radiant, and the foam was
white as her bright Fairy muslin, as it floated
over the strength of the waterfall, when Melilot
and her soldier, hand in hand, went down the
ISO BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
mountain. They passed out of her bower, she
in the full flood of sunshine, with an arm raised
upward and a calm face turned towards him,
as he, walking in her shadow, pointed to the plains
below.
IX
THE SMITH AND THE FAIRIES'
Years ago there lived in Crossbrigg a smith of
the name of MacEachern. This man had an
only child, a boy of about thirteen or fourteen
years of age, cheerful, strong, and healthy. All
of a sudden he fell ill ; took to his bed and moped
whole days away. No one could tell what was
the matter with him, and the boy himself could
not, or would not, tell how he felt. He was
wasting away fast, getting thin, old, and yellow,
and his father and all his friends were afraid
that he would die.
At last one day, after the boy had been lying
in this condition for a long time, getting neither
better nor worse, always confined to bed, but
with an extraordinary appetite — one day, while
sadly revolving these things, and standing idly
at his forge, with no heart to work, the smith
was agreeably surprised to see an old man,
well known to him for his sagacity and know-
ledge of out-of-the-way things, walk into his
151
152 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
workshop. Forthwith he told him the occurrence
which had clouded his life.
The old man looked grave as he listened
and after sitting a long time pondering over all
he had heard, gave his opinion thus : " It is
not your son you have got. The boy has been
carried away by the Fairies, and they have left
an elf m his place."
" Alas ! and what then am I to do *? " said
the smith. " How am I ever to see my own
son again ? "
" I will tell you how," answered the old man.
" But first, to make sure that it is not your own
son you have got, take as many empty egg-shells
as you can get, go with them into the room
spread them out carefully before his sight, then
proceed to draw water with them, carrying them
two and two in your hands as if they were a
great weight, and arrange, when full, with every
sort of earnestness round the fire."
The smith accordingly gathered as many
broken egg-shells as he could get, went into the
room, and proceeded to carry out all his in-
structions.
He had not been long at work before there
arose from the bed a shout of laughter, and the
voice of the seeming sick boy exclaimed, " I am
THE SMITH AND THE FAIRIES 153
now eight hundred years of age, and I have
never seen the Uke of that before."
The smith returned and told the old man.
" Well, now," said the sage to him, " did I not
tell you that it was not your son you had ; your
son is in Borra-cheill in a digh there (that is, a
round green hill frequented by Fairies). Get
rid as soon as possible of this intruder, and I
think I may promise you your son."
" You must light a very large and bright fire
before the bed on which this stranger is lying.
He will ask you, ' What is the use of such a fire
as that ? ' Answer him at once, ' You will see
that presently.' And then seize him, and throw
him into the middle of it. If it is your own son
you have got, he will call out to save him, but if
not, he will fly through the roof."
The smith again followed the old man's advice,
kindled a large fire, answered the question put
to him as he had been directed to do, and seizing
the child flung him in without hesitation. The
elf gave an awful yell, and sprang through the
roof, where a hole was left to let the smoke out.
On a certain night the old man told him the
green round hill, where the Fairies kept the boy,
would be open. And on that night the smith,
having provided himself with a bible, a dirk,
I 54 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
and a crowing cock, was to proceed to the hilL
He would hear singing and dancing and much
merriment going on, but he was to advance
boldly ; the bible he carried would be a certain
safeguard to him against any danger from the
Fairies. On entering the hill he was to stick
the dirk in the threshold, to prevent the hill
from closing upon him ; " and then," continued
the old man, " on entering you will see a spacious
apartment before you, beautifully clean, and
there, standing far within, working at a forge,
you will also see your own son. When you are
questioned, say you come to seek him, and will
not go without him."
Not long after this, the time came round,
and the smith sallied forth, prepared as in-
structed. Sure enough, as he approached the
hill there was a light where light was seldom seen
before. Soon after a sound of piping, dancing,
and joyous merriment reached the anxious father
on the night wind.
Overcoming every impulse to fear, the smith
approached the threshold steadily, stuck the dirk
into it as directed, and entered. Protected by
the bible he carried on his breast, the Fairies
could not touch him, but they asked him, with
a good deal of displeasure, what he wanted there.
THE SMITH AND THE FAIRIES 155
He answered, " I want my son, whom I see down
there, and I will not go without him."
Upon hearing this, the whole company before
him gave a loud laugh, which wakened up the
cock he carried dozing in his arms, who at once
leaped up on his shoulders, clapped his wings
lustily, and crowed loud and long.
The Fairies, incensed, seized the smith and
his son, and throwing them out of the hill, flung
the dirk after them, and in an instant all was
dark.
For a year and a day the boy never did a
turn of work, and hardly ever spoke a word.
But at last one day, sitting by his father and
watching him finishing a sword he was making
for some chief, and which he was very particular
about, he suddenly exclaimed, " That is not the
way to do it," and taking the tools from his
father's hands he set to work himself in his place,
and soon fashioned a sword, the like of which
was never seen in the country before.
From that day the young man wrought
constantly with his father, and became the in-
ventor of a peculiarly fine and well-tempered
weapon, the making of which kept the two-
smiths, father and son, in constant employment,
spread their fame far and wide, and gave them
156 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
the means in abundance, as they before had the
disposition to Uve content with all the world
and very happily with one another.
The walls of the house where this celebrated
smith lived and wrought are standing to this
day (1860), not far from the parish church of
Kilchoman, Islay.
X
DREAMING TIM JARVIS
Timothy Jarvis was a decent, honest, quiet,
hard-working man, as everybody knows that
knows Balledehob.
Now Balledehob is a small place, about forty
miles west of Cork. It is situated on the summit
of a hill, and yet it is in a deep valley, for on all
sides there are lofty mountains that rise one
above another in barren grandeur, and seem
to look down with scorn upon the little busy
village which they surround with their idle and
unproductive magnificence. Man and beast have
alike deserted them to the dominion of the eagle,
who soars majestically over them. On the high-
est of these mountains there is a small, and as
is commonly believed, unfathomable lake, the
only inhabitant of which is a huge serpent, who
has been sometimes seen to stretch its enormous
head above the waters, and frequently is heard
to utter a noise which shakes the very rocks to
their foundation.
'57
158 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
But, as I was saying, everybody knew Tim
Jarvis to be a decent, honest, quiet, hard-working
man, who was thriving enough to be able to give
his daughter Nelly a fortune of ten pounds, and
Tim himself was snug enough besides. He was
seldom backward on rent day. His ground was
never distrained but twice, and both times
through a small bit of a mistake, and his landlord
had never but once to say to him, " Tim Jarvis,
you're all behind, Tim, like the cow's tail."
Now it so happened that Tim took to sleeping
heavily, and the sleep set Tim dreaming, and he
dreamed all night, and night after night, about
crocks full of gold and other precious stones.
The grey dawn of the morning would see Tim
digging away in a bog-hole, maybe, or rooting
under some old stone walls. At last he dreamt
that he found a mighty great ci'ock of gold and
silver — and where do you think ? Every step
of the way upon London Bridge itself ! Twice
Tim dreamt it, and three times Tim dreamt the
same thing, and at last he made up his mind to
transport himself, and go over to London in Pat
Mahoney's coaster — and so he did !
Well, he got there, and found the bridge
without much difficulty. Every day he walked
up and down looking for the crock of gold, but
DREAMING TIM JARVIS 159
never the find did he find it. One day, however,
as he was looking over the bridge into the water,
a man, or something like a man, with great black
whiskers, like a Hessian, and a black cloak that
reached down to the ground, tapped him on the
shoulder, and said, " Tim Jarvis, do you see
me?"
" Surely I do, sir," said Tim; wondering that
anybody should know him in the strange place.
" Tim, what is it brings you here in foreign
parts, so far away from your own cabin by the
mine of grey copper at Balledehob ? "
" Please your honour, I'm come to seek my
fortune."
" You're a fool for your pains, Tim, if that's
all," remarked the stranger in the black cloak ;
" this is a big place to seek one's fortune in, to
be sure, but it's not easy to find it."
Now Tim, after debating a long time with
himself, and considering, in the first place, that
it might be the stranger who was to find the
crock of gold for him, and in the next, that the
stranger might direct him where to find it, came
to the resolution of telling him all.
" There's many a one like me comes here
seeking their fortunes," said Tim.
" True," said the stranger.
i6o BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
"But," continued Tim, looking up, "the
cause for myself leaving the wife, and Nelly, and
the boys, and travelling so far, is to look for a
crock of gold that I'm told is lying somewhere
hereabouts."
" And who told you that, Tim ? "
" Why, then, sir, that's what I can't tell
myself rightly — only I dreamt it."
" Ho, ho ! is that all, Tim ? " said the
stranger, laughing. " I had a dream myself,
and I dreamed that I found a crock of gold in
the Fort field, on Jerry DriscoU's ground at
Balledehob, and by the same token, the pit
where it lay was close to a large furze bush all
full of yellow blossom."
Tim knew Jerry DriscoU's ground well, and,
moreover, he knew the Fort field as well as he
knew his own potato garden ; he was certain,
too, of the very furze bush at the north end of
it.
" By all the crosses in a yard of check, I
always thought there was money in that same
field ! " he exclaimed.
The moment he had spoken this the stranger
disappeared, and Tim Jarvis, wondering at all
that had happened to him, made the best of his
way back to Ireland. Norah, as may well be
DREAMING TIM JARVIS i6i
supposed, had no very warm welcome for her
runaway husband— the dreaming rascal, as she
called him— and so soon as she set eyes upon
him, all the blood of her body in one minute was
into her knuckles to be at him ; but Tim, after
his long journey, looked so cheerful and so
happy-like, that she could not find it in her heart
to give him the first blow. He managed to pacify
his wife by two or three broad hints about a
new cloak and a pair of shoes, and decent clothes
for Nelly, and brogues for the boys, and some
corduroy for himself. " It wasn't for nothing I
went to foreign parts," he said, " and you'll see
what'll come out of it— mind my words."
A few days afterwards Tim sold his cabin
and his garden, and bought the Fort field of Jerry
Driscoll, that had nothing in it, but was full of
thistles, and old stones, and blackberry bushes ;
and all the neighbours— as well they might-^
thought he was cracked !
The first night that Tim could summon
courage to begin his work, he walked off to the
field with his spade upon his shoulder, and away
he dug all night by the side of the furze bush,
till he came to a big stone. He struck his
spade against it, and he heard a hollow sound,
but as the morning had begun to dawn, and the
T T
1 62 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
neighbcurs would be going out to their work, Tim,
not wishing to have the thing talked about, went
home to the little hovel, where Norah and the
children were huddled together under a heap
of straw ; for he had sold everything he had in the
world to purchase Driscoll's field.
It is impossible to describe the epithets and
re roaches bestowed by the poor woman on her
unlucky husband for bringing her into such a
way. Epithets and reproaches which Tim had
but one mode of answering, as thus : " Norah,
did ' ou see e'er a cow you'd like ? " or, " Norah,
dear, hasn't Poll Deasy a feather-bed to sell ? "
or, " Norah, honey, wouldn't you like your silver
buckles as big as Mrs. Doyle's ? "
As soon as night came, Tim stood beside the
furze bush, spade in hand. The moment he
jumped down into the pit he heard a strange
rumbling noise under him, and so, putting his
ear against the great stone, he listened, and
overheard a discourse that made the hair on his
head stand up like bulrushes, and every limb
tremble.
" How shall we bother Tim ? " said one
voice.
" Take him to the mountain, to be sure, and
make him a toothful for the old serpent " ; " 'tis
DREAMING TIM JARVIS 163
long since he has had a good meal," said another
voice.
Tim shook like a potato-blossom in a storm.
" No," said a third voice, " plunge him in the
bog, neck and heels."
Tim was a dead man, barring the breath.
" Stop I " said a fourth ; but Tim heard no
more, for Tim was dead entirely. In about an
hour, however, the life came back into him, and
he crept home to Norah.
\^Tien the next night arrived, the hopes of
the crock of gold got the better of his fears, and
away he went to the field. Jumping into the
pit, with desperate wrench he wrenched up the
stone. All at once up rushed a blast of wind,
wild and fierce, and down fell Tim — down, down,
and down he went — until he thumped upon what
seemed to be, for all the world, like a floor of
sharp pins, which made him bellow out in
earnest. Then he heard a whisk and a hurra,
and instantly voices beyond number cried out :
" Welcome, Tim Jarvis, dear !
Welcome down here ! "
Though Tim's teeth chattered like magpies
with the fright, he continued to make answer,
" I'm he— he— har— ti— ly ob— ob— Hged to— to
you all, gen— gen—tlemen, fo— for your civility to
I64 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
-to a poor stranger like myself." But though he
had heard all the voices about him, he could see
nothing, the place was so dark and so lonesome m
itself for want of the Ught. Then somethmg pulled
Tim by the hair of his head, and dragged him,
he did not know how far, but he knew he was
going faster than the wind, for he heard it behind
him, trying to keep up with him. and it could
not On, on, on he went, till all at once, and
suddenly, he was stopped, and somebody came
up to him and said, " Well, Tim Jarvis, and how
do you like your ride ? " ^^
" Mitrhty well ! I thank your honour, said
Tim- "°and 'twas a good beast I rode, surely ! "
There was a great laugh at Tim's answer
and then there was a whispering, and a great
cugger-mugger and coshering; and at last a
prftty little bit of a voice said, " Shut your eyes,
and vou'll see, Tim."
"By my word, then," said Tim, "that is
the queer way of seeing ; but I'm not the man
to gainsay you, so I'll do as you bid me, anyhow
Presently he felt a small warm hand rubbed over
his eyes with an ointment, and in the next nunute
he saw himself in the middle of thousands of
little men and women, not half so high as his
brogue, that were pelting one another with golden
DREAMING TIM JARVIS 165
guineas and lily-white thirteens/ as if they were
so much dirt. The finest dressed and the biggest
of them all went up to Tim and said, " Tim Jarvis,
because you are a decent, honest, quiet, civil,
well-spoken man, and know how to behave
yourself in strange company, we've altered our
minds about you, and will find a neighbour of
yours that will do just as well to give to the old
serpent."
" Oh, then, long life to you, sir ? " said Tim,
" and there's no doubt of that."
" But what will you say, Tim," inquired the
little fellow, " if we fill your pockets with these
yellow boys ? What will you say, Tim, and what
will you do with them ? "
" Your honour's honour, and your honour's
glory," answered Tim, " I'll not be able to say
anything for a month with thanking you — and
indeed I've enough to do with them. I'd make
a grand lady, you see, at once of Norah — she has
been a good wife to me. We'll have a nice bit
of pork for dinner, and I'd build a new cabin,
and I'd have a fresh egg every morning myself
for my breakfast, and I'd snap my fingers at
the squire, and beat his hounds, if they'd come
coursing through my fields, and I'd have a new
^ An English shilling was thirteen pence, Irish currency.
1 66 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
plough, and Norah, your honour, would have a
new cloak, and the boys would have shoes and
stockings as well as Biddy Leary's children —
that's my sister — and Nelly would marry Bill
Long of Affadown; and, your honour, I'd have
some corduroy for myself to make breeches, and
a cow, and a beautiful coat with shining buttons,
and a horse to ride, or maybe two. I'd have
everything," said Tim, " in life, good or bad,
that is to be got for love or money — hurra-
whoop ! — and that's what I'd do."
" Take care, Tim," said the little fellow, " that
your money does not go faster than it came,
with your hurra- whoop."
But Tim heeded not this speech ; heaps of
gold were around him, and he filled and filled
away as hard as he could, his coat and his waist-
coat and his breeches pockets ; and he thought
himself very clever, moreover, because he stuffed
some of the guineas inside his clothes. When
the little people perceived this, they cried out,
" Go home, Tim Jarvis, go home, and think
yourself a lucky man."
" I hope, gentlemen," said he, " we won't
part forever, but maybe ye'll ask me to see you
again, and to give you a fair and square account
of what I've done with your money."
DREAMING TIM JAR VIS 167
To this there was no answer, only another
shout, " Go home, Tim Jarvis, go home, fair
play is a jewel ; but shut your eyes, or ye'U
never see the light of day again."
Tim shut his eyes, knowing now that was the
way to see clearty, and away he was whisked as
before — away, away he went till he again stopped
all of a sudden.
He rubbed his eyes with his two thumbs —
and where was he ? Where, but in the very pit
in the field that was Jerry Driscoll's, and his wife
Norah above with a big stick ready to beat " her
dreaming husband." Tim roared out to the
woman to leave the life in him, and put his
hands in his pockets to show her the gold ; but
he pulled out nothing, only a handful of small
stones mixed with yellow furze blossoms. The
bush was under him, and the great flagstone
that he had wrenched up, as he thought, was
lying, as if it was never stirred, by his side,
and the pit was just as his spade had made it.
Tim Jarvis, vexed, disappointed, and almost
heart-broken, followed his wife home ; and,
strange to say, from that night he left off dreaming
and delving in bog-holes and rooting in old caves.
He took again to his hard-working habits, and
was soon able to buy back his little cabin and
i68 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
former potato-garden, and to get all the enjoy- i
ment he anticipated from the fairy gold. |
Give Tim one or, at most, two glasses of punch
(and neither friend, acquaintance, nor gossip can
make him take more), and he will relate the
story to you much better than you have it here.
Indeed, it is worth going to Balledehob to hear
him tell it. He always pledges himself to the
truth of every word with his forefingers crossed ;
and when he comes to speak of the loss of his
guineas, he never fails to console himself by
adding, " If they stayed with me I wouldn't
have luck with them, sir, and Father O'Shea
told me 'twas as well for me they were changed,
for if they hadn't, they'd have burned holes in
my pocket, and got out that way."
I shall never forget his solemn countenance,
and the deep tones of his warning voice, when
he concluded his tale, by telling me that the
next day after his ride with the Fairies, Mick
Dowling was missing, and he beheved him to
be given to the sarpint in his place, as he had never
been heard of since.
XI
AN EMPEROR'S DREAM
Maxen Wledig was Emperor of Rome, and he
was a comelier man, and a better and a wiser
than any emperor that had been before him.
One day he held a council of kings, and he said to
his friends, " I desire to go to-morrow to hunt."
The next day in the morning he set forth with
his retinue and came to the valley of the river
that flowed towards Rome. He hunted through
the valley until midday. With him were two-
and-thirty crowned kings, that were his vassals ;
not for the delight of hunting went the emperor
with them, but to put himself on equal terms
with those kings. _
The sun was high in the sky over their heads,
and the heat was great. Sleep came upon
Maxen Wledig. His attendants stood and set
up their shields around him upon the shafts of
their spears to protect him from the sun, and
placed a gold enamelled shield under his head ;
so Maxen slept.
169
I/O BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
And he saw a dream. This is the dream that
he saw. He was journeying along the valley of
the river towards its source, and he came to the
highest mountain in the world. He thought
that the mountain was as high as the sky, and
when he came over the mountain, it seemed to
him that he went through the fairest and most
level regions that man ever yet beheld, on the
other side of the mountain. He saw large and
mighty rivers descending from the mountain to
the sea, and towards the mouths of the rivers
he proceeded. As he journeyed thus, he came
to the mouth of the largest river ever seen. He
beheld a great city at the entrance of the river,
and a vast castle in the city, and saw many high
towers of various colours in the castle. At the
mouth of the river was a fleet, the largest ever
seen. And he saw one ship among the fleet,
larger was it by far, and fairer than all the others.
Of such part of the ship as he could see above
the water, one plank was gilded and the other
silvered over. He saw a bridge of the bone of a
whale from the ship to the land, and he thought
that he went along the bridge and came into the
ship.
A sail was hoisted on the ship, and along the
sea and the ocean was it borne. Then it seemed
AN EMPEROR'S DREAM 171
that he came to the fairest island in the whole
world, and he traversed the island from sea to
sea, even to the farthest shore of the island.
Valleys he saw, and steeps, and rocks of won-
drous height, and rugged precipices. Never yet
saw he the like. And thence he beheld an island
in the sea, facing this rugged land. Between
him and this island was a country of which the
plain was as large as the sea, the mountain as
vast as the wood. And from the mountain he
saw a river that flowed through the land and
fell into the sea. At the mouth of the river he
beheld a castle, the fairest that man ever saw,
and the gate of the castle was open, and he went
into the castle. In it he saw a fair hall, of which
the roof seemed to be all gold, the walls of the hall
seemed to be entirely of glittering precious gems,
the doors all seemed to be of gold. Golden seats
were in the hall, and silver tables. And on a
seat opposite to him he beheld two auburn-
haired youths playing at chess. He saw a silver
board for the chess, and golden pieces thereon.
The garments of the youths were of jet-black
satin, and chaplets of ruddy gold bound their
hair, whereon were sparkling jewels of great
price, rubies and gems, alternately with imperial
stones. Buskins of new Cordovan leather
172 BRITISH FAIR\^ AND FOLK TALES
were on their feet, fastened by slides of red
gold.
Beside a pillar in the hall he saw a hoary-
headed man in a chair of ivory, with the figures
of two eagles of ruddy gold thereon. Bracelets
of gold were upon his arms, and many rings
were on his hands, and a golden torque about
his neck, and his hair was bound with a golden
diadem. He was of powerful aspect. A chess-
board of gold was before him, and a rod of gold,
and a steel file in his hand. He was carving out
chessmen.
He saw a maiden sitting before him in a
chair of ruddy gold. Not more easy than to
gaze upon the sun when brightest, was it to look
upon her by reason of her beauty. A vest of
white silk was upon the maiden, with clasps of
red gold at the breast ; and a surcoat of gold
tissue upon her, and a frontlet of red gold upon
her head, and rubies and gems were in the
frontlet, alternating with pearls and imperial
stones. A girdle of ruddy gold was around her.
She was the fairest sight that man ever beheld.
The maiden arose from her chair before him,
and he threw his arms about the neck of the
maiden, and they two sat together in the chair
of gold ; and the chair was not less roomy for
AN EMPEROR'S DREAM 173
them both, than for the maiden alone. As he
had his arms about the maiden's neck, behold,
through the chafing of the dogs at their leashing,
and the clashing of the shields as they struck
against each other, and the beating together of
I the shafts of the spears, and the neighing of the
horses and their prancing, the emperor awoke.
When he awoke, nor spirit nor existence was
left him, because of the maiden he had seen in
his sleep. Then his household spoke to him,
" Lord," said they, "is it not past the time for
thee to take thy food ? " Thereupon the em-
peror mounted his palfrey, the saddest man that
mortal ever saw, and went forth towards Rome.
Thus he was during the space of a week.
When they of the household went to drink wine
and mead out of golden vessels, he went not
with any of them. When they went to listen
to songs and tales, he went not with them there ;
neither could he be persuaded to do anything
but sleep. And as often as he slept, he beheld
in his dreams the maiden he loved best ; but
except when he slept he saw nothing of her,
for he knew not where in the world she was.
One day the page of the chamber spake unto
him ; now, although he was page of the chamber,
he was king of the Romans. " Lord," said he,
174 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
" all the people revile thee." " Wherefore do
they revile me ? " asked the emperor. " Because
they can get neither message nor answer from
thee as men should have from their lord. This is
the cause why thou art spoken evil of . " " Youth, ' '
said the emperor, " do thou bring unto me the
wise men of Rome, and I will tell them wherefore
I am sorrowful."
Then the wise men of Rome were brought to
the emperor, and he spake to them. " Sages of
Rome," said he, " I have seen a dream. And
in the dream I beheld a maiden, and because of
the maiden is there neither life, nor spirit, nor
existence within me."
" Lord," they answered, " since thou judgest
us worthy to counsel thee, we will give thee
counsel. This is it ; that thou send messengers
for three years to the three parts of the world
to seek for thy dream. And as thou knowest
not what day or what night good news may
come to thee, the hope thereof will support
thee."
So the messengers journeyed for the space
of a year, wandering about the world and seeking
tidings concerning his dream. But when they
came back at the end of the year, the}^ knew not
one word more than they did the day they set
AN EMPEROR'S DREAM 175
forth. Then was the emperor exceeding sorrow-
ful, for he thought that he should never have
tidings of her whom he best loved.
Then spoke the king of the Romans unto the
emperor. " Lord," said he, " go forth to hunt
by the way thou didst seem to go, whether it
were to the east or to the west." So the em-
peror went forth to the hunt, and he came to
the bank of the river. " Behold," said he, " this
is where I was when I saw the dream, and I
went towards the source of the river westward."
Thereupon thirteen messengers of the em-
peror's set forth, and before them they saw a
high mountain, which seemed to them to touch
the sky. Now this was the guise in which the
messengers journeyed ; one sleeve was on the
cap of each of them in front, as a sign that they
were messengers, in order that through what
hostile land soever they might pass no harm
might be done them. When they were come
over this mountain, they beheld vast plains,
and large rivers flowing there through.
" Behold," said they, " the land which our
master saw."
They went along the mouths of the rivers,
until they came to the mighty river which they
saw flowing to the sea, and the vast city, and the
176 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
many-coloured high towers in the castle. They
saw the largest fleet in the world, in the harbour
of the river, and one ship that was larger than
any of the others. " Behold again," said they,
" the dream that our master saw." And in the
great ship they crossed the sea, and came to
the Island of Britain. They traversed the island
until they came to Snowdon.
" Behold," said they, " the rugged land that
our master saw."
And they went forward until they saw
Anglesey before them, and until they saw Arvon
likewise. " Behold," said they, " the land our
master saw in his sleep." And they saw Aber
Sain, and a castle at the mouth of the river.
The portal of the castle saw they open, and into
it they went, and they saw a hall in the castle.
Then said they, " Behold, the hall which he saw
in his sleep." They went into the hall, and they
beheld two youths playing at chess on the golden
bench. Beside a pillar was a hoary-headed man,
in the ivory chair, carving chessmen. And they
beheld the maiden sitting on a chair of ruddy
gold.
The messengers bent down upon their knees.
" Empress of Rome, all hail ! "
" Ha, gentles," said the maiden, " ye bear
AN EMPEROR'S DREAM 177
the seeming of honourable men, and the badge
of envoys. What mockery is this ye do to
me?"
" We mock thee not, lady ; but the Emperor
of Rome hath seen thee in his sleep, and he has
neither life nor spirit left because of thee. Thou
shalt have of us therefore the choice, lady,
whether thou wilt go with us and be made
Empress of Rome, or that the emperor come
hither and take thee for his wife."
" Ha, lords," said the maiden, " I will not
deny what ye say, neither will I believe it too
well. If the emperor love me, let him come here
to seek me."
By day and night the messengers hied them
back. When their horses failed, they bought
other fresh ones. When thej^ came to Rome,
they saluted the emperor, and asked their boon,
which was given to them according as they
named it. " We will be thy guides, Lord," said
they, " over sea and land, to the place where
is the woman whom best thou lovest, for we
know her name, her kindred, and her race."
Immediately the emperor set forth with his
army, and these men were his guides. Toward
the Island of Britain they went over the sea and
the deep. He conquered the Island from Bell
12
178 BRI I I>H FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
and his sons, and drove them to the sea, and
went forward even to Arvon. And the emperor
knew the land when he saw it. When he beheld
the castle of Aber Sain, " Look yonder," said he,
" there is the castle wherein I saw the damsel
whom I best love." He went forward into the
castle and into the hall, and there he saw the
two brothers playing at chess. Their old father
was sitting on a chair of ivory carving chessmen.
The maiden whom he had beheld in his sleep
he saw sitting on a chair of gold.
" Empress of Rome," said he, " all hail ! "
and that day she became his bride.
On the morrow, the damsel asked her maiden
portion. He told her to name what she would.
She asked to have the Island of Britain for her
father, from the Channel to the Irish Sea, together
with the three adjacent Islands, to hold under
the Empress of Rome, and to have three chief
castles made for her, in whatever places she
might choose in the Island of Britain. She chose
to have the highest castle made at Arvon. And
they brought thither earth from Rome, that it
might be more healthful for the emperor to
sleep, and sit, and walk upon. After that the
two other castles were made for her, which
were Caerllen and Caermarthen.
AN EMPEROR^S DREAM 179
One day the emperor went to hunt at Caer-
marthen, and he came so far as the top of Brevi
Vawr, and there the emperor pitched his tent.
That encamping place is called Cadeir Maxen,
even to this day. Then Helen, his wife, be-
thought her to make high roads from one castle
to another throughout the Island of Britain.
And the roads were made.
Seven years did the emperor tarry in this
Island. Now, at that time the men of Rome
had a custom that whatsoever emperor should
remain in other lands more than seven years
should remain to his own overthrow, and should
never return to Rome again.
So they made a new emperor. This one wrote
a letter of threat to Maxen. There was nought
in the letter but only this : "If thou comest,
and if thou ever comest to Rome." Even unto
Caerlleon came this letter to Maxen, and these
tidings. Then sent he a letter to the man who
styled himself emperor in Rome. There was
nought in this letter also but only this : '' If I
come to Rome, and if I come."
Thereupon Maxen set forth towards Rome
with his army, and vanquished France and
every land on the way, and sat down before the
city of Rome.
1 80 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
A year was the emperor before the city, and
he was no nearer taking it than the first day.
After him came the brothers of Helen from the
Island of Britain, and a small host with them,
and better warriors were in that small host than
twice as many Romans. The emperor was told
that a host was seen, halting close to his army
and encamping, and no man ever saw a fairer
or better appointed host for its size, nor more
handsome standards.
Helen went to see the hosts, and she knew
the standards of her brothers. Then came the
brothers to meet the emperor. And the emperor
was glad because of them, and embraced them.
Then they looked at the Romans as they
attacked the city. Said one brother to the
other, "We will try to attack the city more
expertly than this." So they measured by night
the height of the wall, and they sent their car-
penters to the wood, and a ladder was made for
every four men of their number. Now when
these were ready, every day at midday the
emperors went to meat, and they ceased to fight
on both sides till all had finished eating. In
the morning the men of Britain took their food,
and while the two emperors were at meat, the
Britons came to the city, placed their ladders
AN EMPEROR'S DREAM i8i
against it, and forthwith came in through the
city.
The new emperor had no time to arm himself
when they fell upon him, and slew him, and many
others with him. Three nights and three days
were they subduing the men that were in the
city and taking the castle. Others of them
kept the city, lest any of the host of Maxen
should come therein, until they had subjected
all to their will.
Then spake Maxen to Helen, " I marvel,
lady, that thy brothers have not conquered this
city for me."
" Lord, emperor," she answered, " the wisest
youths in the world are my brothers. Go thou
thither and ask the city of them, and if it be in
their possession, thou shalt have it gladly."
So the emperor and Helen went and demanded
the city. They told the emperor that none had
taken the city, and that none could give it him,
but the men of the Island of Britain. Then the
gates of the city of Rome were opened, and the
emperor sat on the throne, and all the men of
Rome submitted themselves unto him.
The emperor then said unto the brothers,
" Lords, I have now had possession of the whole
of my empire. This host give I unto you to
1 82 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
vanquish whatever region ye may desire in the
world."
So they set forth and conquered lands, and
castles, and cities. They slew all the men, but
the women they kept alive. Thus they continued
until the young men that had come with them
were grown grey-headed, from the length of
time they were upon this conquest.
Then spoke one brother to the other, " Whether
wilt thou rather tarry in this land or go back
into the land whence thou didst come forth ? "
Now the younger chose to go back to his own
land, and many with him, but the elder tarried
there with the other part and dwelt there.
And this dream is called the Dream of Maxen
Wledig, Emperor of Rome. And here it ends.
XII
SILVER TASSELS
The only ailment to which good Fairies are
subject is an affection of the fancy, whereby
they grow mad for mischief. A Fairy so altered
is called a Rogue Fairy, and the Rogue Fairy,
usually a male, will often separate himself from
his own circle, and, looking for a solitary den of
his own, fix himself, perhaps, as the Rogue
Splug did, in a chimney. The Rogue hkes a
nest in a chimney. He can drop smut into the
pot, or blow the smoke into the house, as often
as he pleases, and has all the household at his
mercy.
Splug lost his temper over the doings of his
friend the little Fairy Teasel, who had forgotten
herself so far as to go as companion to the
Queen Cockatoo. He might have gone to the
same magnificent Court with her, and distin-
guished himself in the service of King Cockatoo
— a brilliant sovereign, though not so powerful
as his forefathers had been — but he was cross,
X83
1 84 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
and chose rather to go and live in a chimney.
He was so very cross that there was no hving for
human creatures in the sweet little cottage of
which the chimney was in his possession. Soot
always fell at the times when a fall of soot would
do most mischief ; the cottages were made to
look like sweeps ; and when the sweep himself
came up the chimney, he was tickled till he
sneezed the soot-flakes about like the leaves in
an autumn whirlwind. Long pots, short pots,
crooked pots, cowls of all sorts, were fixed upon
the chimney-top, but always tumbled and tore
through the roof, where they could clatter down
on something choice. At last the cottage was
deserted, and the owner of it, my Lord Hemp,
the hardest and the richest man in the whole
realm of Gossamer, never went near it. For in
the blackening of Hemp's face Splug took a
particular delight.
The cottage haunted by this Rogue Fairy was
on the outskirts of Feathergrass, the capital of
Gossamer. My Lord Hemp, who occupied a
house in the city nearly as fine as the Queen's
Palace, was so grand a man, and in his own
opinion so choice a man, that he was not without
hope of marrying his sovereign. Queen Sappodilla.
Now it happened that when the cottage had
SILVER TASSELS 185
been for a long time empty, and when anybody
might have Hved in it for nothing who would
undertake to make the smoke go up the chimney,
there came into those parts a poor widow, whose
name was Neroli. She brought with her all her
goods in a small bundle, and ten gold pieces —
all that her poor husband had been able to lay
by for her before he died. She came on foot
into the city of Feathergrass, with her bundle
in one hand and her little seven-year-old daugh-
ter, Silver Tassels, holding by the other. Mother
and child were dressed in old clothes so well
mended that you hardly might observe how
many times they had been torn, and all their
finery was on the child in form of an old girdle
of silver thread, with a small pair of silver tassels
that a godmother had given her.
Neroli and little Silver Tassels walked up and
down for some time through the scented groves
and among the palaces of Feathergrass, in vain
search for a place that they could make into a
pleasant home. At last they sat down in a
large public garden to eat their dry bread among
the lilies which grew under the shadow of some
blossoming orange-trees. As they sat a tall
gentleman came by, sharp-eyed, sharp-nosed,
and thin-lipped, with powdered hair, and a great
1 86 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
deal of white muslin frill about his neck. It was
my Lord Hemp going to Court, magnificently
dressed in blue and white satin, trimmed with
flowers, and with thick gold fringe on all the
borders of his clothes. Neroli was very beautiful.
She had, like her child, a wealth of sunny brown
hair falling about her white forehead, and they
both had faithful blue eyes that no living creature
could mistrust. The child had the rounder
cheeks, but child and mother were alike weary
and white when my Lord Hemp stood still
before them.
" A little girl that can wear silver tassels
should eat cake," he said. Neroli supposed,
therefore, that he was about to pull a cake out
of his pocket. But he only added in a harsh
voice, " Why do you give dry bread to such a
child as that, and let her eat it here ? Eating is
not permitted in these gardens ! "
" We have no home yet," Neroli faltered.
" We have been looking for a room this morning.
As for the dry bread, sir, we have but ten gold
crowns in the world, and must not eat them."
" My dear woman, pardon me," said Hemp.
" You have ten gold crowns, and you want a
lodging. I am interested in you ; and as I
happen to have empty at this moment a very
SILVER TASSELS 187
pretty cottage just outside the town, I will let
you live in it. Pay me only the worth of one
room as a little weekly rent. You will be punc-
tual ; I see that in your face. The payment is
only a form, which it will be a pleasure to you
to observe. You can earn money ? "
" I hope to live by my needle. Therefore
we have come to Feathergrass."
" My recommendation at Court you may rely
upon. Allow my steward to show you the
premises. If you were to pay in advance four
gold pieces, the cottage would be your own for
the first half-year, and we should be simply
neighbours and friends. Afterwards the small
rent might be paid weekly, for I know that way
will suit you best, my dear young friend. Oxslip,"
he said, turning to the steward, who was fol-
lowing at the head of a troop of gilt servants in
attendance upon the great lord, " conduct this
lady and her charming daughter to the cottage
of mine now so fortunately empty. If she will
accept that as her home, and me as her friend,
say for the next seven or fourteen years, see
that there is a little writing drawn up for our
mutual assurance. Madam, I kiss your hand.
The Queen awaits me."
So Neroli and Silver Tassels came to the
1 88 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
cottage, which was not far from the town, and
as pretty a place as one might wish to look at.
A grove of date-palms rose behind its garden,
which was edged with scarlet cactus blossoms
and sweet flowering myrtle. The road opposite
its door crossed by a mossy wooden bridge a river
of the clearest water, in which water-lilies opened
their great blossoms and spread their floating
leaves. On the other side of the river was a
strip of flat ground at the foot of round hills
covered with rose gardens. These belonged to
the merchants who owned a great factory higher
up by the waterside, where perfume of roses
was extracted for the markets of the world.
The runnings from the factory made rose-water
of all the streams. The cottage itself was thatched
with sweet flag, and, Hke most of the huts in
the realms of Gossamer, was built of rough blocks
of a fragrant wood that grows large in those
parts. Only the hearth-place and the chimney
were not of wood, but of sand, burnt, according
to the custom of the country, into rough plates
of a sort of fire-proof glass.
Here, then, NeroH gladly enough agreed to
live for seven years to come, paying at once
for the first half-year's possession, four of her
gold pieces, and bound to pay thereafter weekly
SILVER TASSELS 189
rent at the same rate. Little was spent for
furniture. She and her daughter slept on the
waste rose-leaves that cost only the trouble of
fetching from the factory. She had little to
buy beyond a table and two chairs, a tub and a
basket, a pot and a kettle. The few clothes
they had, and some small household necessaries,
brought from the home lost by death of the
house father, were in the bundle that Neroli
had with her, and among the necessaries was a
well-stored workbox, the poor woman's stock-
in-trade.
Her plan might have been changed, and she
might have found work at the neighbouring
factory, but that was manned (if I may say
manned) by slaves. The needlework she got
was very poor. Lord Hemp, though it might
have been worth his while to support the tenant
he had caught, struck her off his mind for the
next six months on receipt of four of her gold
crowns. He knew that he could not advise the
grand ladies of Queen Sappodilla's Court, which
is the most handsomely dressed Court in the
world, to send their rich stuffs to be made up
in a chimney ; for the cottage all the world of
Feathergrass knew to be no better than a chimney
when a fire was lighted in it. But the poor
I90 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
traders, who could afford Neroli very little pay,
did, for love of her gentle face, and out of pity
that Lord Hemp should have so cruelly entrapped
her, give her what work they could ; only in
doing so they begged, with a puzzling earnestness,
that she would bring it home to them clean, if
possible.
This puzzled Neroli, because Splug was not
in his chimney when she took possession of the
house, and all about her was clean as a lily-bud.
Splug, finding himself left without amusement,
had gone off to try whether he could not break
one of the tail-feathers of Queen Cockatoo, but
had been seized on the way by an old Parrot,
supernaturally gifted, who fastened a claw upon
one of his little buttons, and talked to him for
six months, till his head span round and round ;
at least, it span round and round so swiftly that
the Parrot was made giddy by looking at what
he had done, and his claw lost hold upon Splug's
button, although with his beak he still was able
to hold forth.
Splug flew off, but his head continued to spin
for another twelvemonth, so that he was too
confused to understand whither he went, because,
though he might be journeying straight on,
what was before him in one instant was behind
SILVER TASSELS 191
him in the next. At last he was recovered suffi-
ciently from the punishment inflicted on him by
the Parrot to discover his way back into his own
chimney. When he entered it, smoke was as-
cending, and at once he eased his mind by
kicking all the soot down to the fire, and blowing
the smoke back into the house. Then he listened
mischievously for the noise of scolding that had
usually followed, but heard only two soft voices.
So he peeped down, and saw a fair woman, with
rich brown hair falling about her shoulders, and
a poor old dress, sooted in front, who was pouring
into a dish a few cooked roots out of a saucepan
into which the soot had fallen. A pale little
girl, who had also brown hair and wistful blue
eyes, sat before an empty plate on the other
side of the table and said, " I am not hungry,
mother." With the faintest little quiver of the
face, the woman shook her head over the sooty
mess. " This does not look nice, does it. Silver
Tassels ? But you had no dinner yesterday.
You must not say you are not hungry."
" I mean, mother, I am not hungrier than I
can bear." The woman and child kissed each
other, and no more was said.
" Odd people these I " Splug thought to
himself, and came down, himself very much like
192 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
a lump of soot, to sit unobserved among the
crickets, watching them. He could see that the
child would have cried had she been alone, and
so would the mother ; but being together, one
pair of blue eyes smiled into the other, and fond
little words were said while the fallen soot was
being cleared away. Then the poor mother took
off her soiled dress, and sat down by her work-
box with some coarse stuff, upon which she began
to sew and sew for the dear bread, while the
child lighted the fire again, stooping as she did
so till her silver tassels almost came upon Splug's
nose. The Fairy looked up curiously. " Cer-
tainly," he thought, " that girdle was made at
Titania's Court. I have seen Teasel, ages ago,
working upon those tassels. Pretty thing, truly,
to wear them and want a dinner ! "
When the fire was lighted. Silver Tassels
made some water hot, and pouring it into a little
tub, quietly began to wash her mother's only
dress, while still the mother, sitting in her petti-
coat, with her brown hair about her shoulders,
and her blue eyes as they were bent down filming
with tears, sewed and sewed for the dear bread.
Splug ran up the chimney again, and came
down on the other side as a poor wooden-legged
soldier, who tapped at the door and asked for
SILVER TASSELS 193
charity. " I have not eaten for two days " he
said. '
" Ah, friend," said Neroh, " neither has my
child." '^
" Nor you ? "
"Nor I; but that is httle. I had my golden
childhood, and may bear some sorrow now. But
she — look at her ! "
Silver Tassels, standing on a little stool with
cheeks not so round as they had been, was rubbing
at the sooty dress, trying to wash it well with a
thumb's-end of soap. TVhen her mother pointed
to her, she began a cheery little song, learnt in
her babyhood.
" Well," said the soldier, " we are all three
hungry, and the dates are ripe in the wood
outside. I will go, pick up some of the fallen
dates, and we will make a feast together."
The child stopped in her song, opened her
blue eyes to their utmost width as she looked at
him, and said, wonderingly, "They are not
ours."
" They belong to Lord Hemp, who owns the
land, and to whom we owe to-day a week's rent
for the cottage we are in," the mother explained ;
and It was clear to her that there was no more
to be said.
13
194 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
" Oh, well," said the soldier, " Lord Hemp is
the richest man in Feathergrass, and eats of the
daintiest. He can spare a handful of dates to
the starving."
" No doubt," NeroU said. " Perhaps I shall
have to ask him for so much."
" I cannot wait to ask," said Splug. " Do
as you will. I am off to the wood for my
dinner."
As he was going away, " Ah, little daughter,"
said Neroh, " he must be hungrier than we are,
or he would not think of that. He would not
do it if we had anything to give." So she took
her silver thimble from her finger, and following
the lame soldier, pressed it into his hand. " The
worth of it," she said, " will buy at least a piece
of bread, and then help may come before you are
again tempted to steal."
The soldier thanked her, and went off towards
the town.
" Dearest mother," said poor little Silver
Tassels, when she came in again, " you work all
the day long with needles, and without your
thimble you will be so hurt ! "
" Without my thimble he would have been
more hurt than at the finger-tip. Ah, darling,
it is hard for us, but think how very terrible his
SILVER TASSELS jp^
hunger must have been ! " Now, Splug heard
all this as he sat in the chimney, cross-legged,
with the thimble on his head.
A little later in the afternoon, there was a
great rout of gilt servants on horseback scamper-
ing over the bridge, followed at full speed by a
gilt coach drawn by six cream-coloured horses
behind which more gilt servants, all of them'
blackamoors, followed on foot. This was my
Lord Hemp coming in full dress from his countrv
house to dine with Queen Sappodilla.
When he came by the door of the cottage,
" Halt ! " he cried, for he remembered that a
week's rent was just due ; and as he had been
told that the chimney had not smoked since the
new tenants went in, he was net afraid to go in
himself and get the small morsel of money that
was owing.
When Splug saw his old enemy come in
dressed in white and blue satin pranked with
flowers, and wearing over his neatly-powdered
head a crimson velvet hat with a whole peacock's
tail in It, he chuckled to himself, but waited to
hear what might pass before he began anv
mischief. ^
" Quick, my two florins ! " said my lord not
taking his hat off in the widow's presence.
196 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
- Quick, my good lady ! The Queen waits for
me ! "
" Alas, sir, if you would wait "
" Wait I " he cried. " Is not the money due
to-day ? Not got it ? Very well, that need not
trouble you. What shall I take instead? I
cannot put your pots and pans into my carriage,
but see now, there's that silver girdle of your
child's."
" Oh no, sir," the mother said, " not that I—
at least, not yet ! "
" Well, there's your -workbox."
'' Mother cannot live without that," said the
child. " Please take my tassels."
" They will do for next week," said my lord,
as he directed two big footmen to put the widow's
workbox into his carriage, first gathering up
into it the scissors that had dropped from her
lap when she rose to receive him, and the needles
and threads that were lying on the table. And
she, when starving with her child, would not have
robbed him of a fallen date !
But Splug, in the form of a cricket, jumped
into the workbox and jumped out again, leaving
a charm behind. \^%ile my lord rolled home m
his great coach, with the box that was the poor
woman's hope of daily bread by his side, he was
SILVER TASSELS 197
thinking of the elegant things he would say to
Queen Sappodilla, for on that evening he intended
openly to ask her hand. But, at a word from
Splug, all the needles and pins were alive, and the
needles, when they had all threaded themselves
quietly, were slipping out of the box to busy
themselves with his lordship. One stitched the
back of his fine hat to the back of his coat-collar ;
another sewed up his pockets ; another fastened
the legs of his trousers to his boots. Whatever
was hooked, tied, or buttoned of the clothes he
wore the busy needles sewed up with the neatest
of invisible stitches, but so strongly that not
even a knife could cut them through. That done,
all that had been in the workbox, flying and
ghding softly up and down, disposed itself in
folds of my lord's clothes so that he carried
everything with him but the box itself when he
went into Her Majesty's presence.
But in what state did he appear before his
sovereign ? He had not been able to pull his
gloves off, and the utmost that he had been able
to do with his hat was to thrust it from the front
of his head, so that the great peacock's tail
streamed down over his back.
" My lord is ill ! " said the Queen.
" Pardon me, great Sappodilla, that I do not
ipS BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
come with naked hands into your presence. I
have stained my fingers to-day with so much
ink in your service that I dare not have them
seen."
" But your hat, my lord "
" Is a part of my coat ; a new fashion. I
hope you admire it. Ow ! ow ! whew ! " My
Lord danced briskly, lifting up, as fast and as
high as he could, first one leg and then the other.
The Queen, who did not know that her favourite's
legs were then being attacked by five large needles
— two darners and three tailors' betweens —
smiled and said, " A new fashion in deportment
also, I perceive."
" Emotion, august mistress ! Emotion caused
by your graciousness." Then he clapped both
his hands upon his back, and cried out one long
" Ow ! " louder than before. Queen Sappodilla
really thought that love for her had turned his
lordship's brain, so, as she meant soon to make
him happy, she at once asked him to take her
in to dinner.
Feeling for needles as he went, but finding
none, because they nimbly slipped from fold to
fold as he pursued them, my Lord Hemp led her
Majesty to dinner. He dined alone with the
Queen that day, and was expected, after the cheese,
SILVER TASSELS i99
to prefer his suit. But when he sat down to
table, he jumped up again with a wild cry,
flinging his arms out, and knocking down a
massive footman who stood near. " Poor man !
he evidently suffers much on my account," said
to herself Sappodilla.
But the needles and pins suffered my lord to
sit down and rest until his fish was placed before
him. Then, as he bent over it he saw a whole
skein of cotton entangled with it. As the skein
was undivided, and would not be pulled away, it
was necessary (in order to escape observation)
that my lord should eat his bit of fish in one
lump, when her Majesty happened to look another
way. The effort to do this was boldly made, but
it was unsuccessful. My lord managed to get
all his bit of fish into his mouth at once, but
then the threads hindered the swallowing. He
turned black in the face, and three doctors had
been sent for before he got it down. Neverthe-
less, on such a momentous occasion, he did not
choose to be invalided. Happen what might, he
must fight through his dinner, and secure the
prize of a Queen's promise to be his wife before
he slept that night.
The next dish served was pickled pork and
parsnips. He was not well, certainly, but surely
200 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
he could eat a bit of that. And as the Queen
condoled with him, and he talked courteously to
her, with a bit of parsnip on the end of his fork,
the lump of wax out of the workbox saw his
opportunity, seized the position on the fork,
went into my lord's mouth, and when my lord's
teeth closed on him, never did wax hold so tight.
Lord Hemp could not open his mouth any more
that evening to swallow or to speak, because he
could not draw his teeth out of the wax, and
the Queen took him for a maniac with a piece
of parsnip in his mouth. He was obliged to quit
the half-finished dinner and forego the golden
opportunity, that never came again ; for, on the
day following, Sappodilla heard what changed
her mind.
Lord Hemp was taken home in his great
coach. The widow's workbox was still on the
seat ; he opened it and found it empty, though
still heavy, for it was made of stout wood.
When he dropped the lid, the box itself started
up and flew at his face, so that when he got home
his eyes were black and his nose was swollen
with the thrashing it had given him.
Lord Hemp having reached home, was taken
to bed. The seal of wax then dropped out of
his mouth, and he began storming frightfully.
SILVER TASSELS 201
That was because he was sewn up so firmly in his
satin clothes that all his ten valets could not pull
them off. The seams refusing to be ripped, he
had to be peeled out of his white and blue satin
with a knife, in such a way that the whole suit
was destroyed. Then all the pins and needles
went to bed with him, and the scissors sat up
all night to cut his bedclothes into strips.
It is impossible in less than a day to tell all
that Lord Hemp suffered from the enemies that
the Rogue Fairy had raised up against him.
But we may be sorry that he was of a temper
to grow worse instead of wiser for his griefs.
He felt that he was punished by some Fairy for
his cruelty in carrying away what was the slender
prop of the poor widow's house. But he said,
" I will not be bullied, even by a Fairy. If I do
not have my rent next week, let her look out !
I go myself, and I will bring away the silver
tassels ! "
About these silver tassels the Rogue Splug
was worrying his brains. " I am sure," he said
to himself, " I ought to remember something
about them. Teasel worked on them, I know.
If I could see Teasel ! If ! But then there's
that Parrot. Well, well, I will visit another week,
and though I am a Rogue and Lord Hemp is
202 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
another, this woman and girl are not to starve.
I will go and scratch in their garden."
" Mother," said Silver Tassels, when Neroli
woke from the sleep into which she had wept and
prayed herself, after losing all her means of
livelihood, " there is a date-tree in our garden —
within the hedge ! And it is full of fruit, too ! "
The mother saw that this was true, and feared
lest some false friend, perhaps even the old
soldier, had brought in the night one of the
Lord Hemp's trees into her garden. But no ;
the tree had brighter leaves, and larger fruit of
a more golden colour than any of those in the
date-grove behind the house. The child ran
gaily out and filled her apron. Dates ! These
were too delicious to be dates.
Yet they had stones, as my Lord Hemp
discovered, for he came, harder than ever, when
another week was over, and because there was
no money little Silver Tassels meekly put her
girdle in his hand. As the great lord went away
with it the tree caught his attention. He looked
up, and instantly every date spat down into his
face a stone as hard as his own heart. " I
should like," said his lordship as he got into his
coach, " I should like to get rid of this piece of
property."
SILVER TASSELS 203
But Splug, when the Lord Hemp was gone,
and had carried away with him the silver girdle,
thought to himself, " I will risk that Parrot !
It was all very well for an innocent child to have
the tassels, but now — I am off."
Flying half round the world to escape being
again waylaid and engaged in conversation for
the rest of his life, Splug travelled in half a
day to the Court of the Cockatoos, and stood
before Teasel as she was combing out the Queen
Cockatoo's crest.
" What, Splug ! " she cried, " and with a
thimble on your head ! "
" Never mind that. Answer me quickly.
Did you not work once at a girdle with two silver
tassels ? "
The Queen Cockatoo gave a wild scream that
brought King Cockatoo and half his army to her
rescue. He was holding a review.
" The Silver Tassels, my own dear Splug,"
Teasel whispered ; " have you found them ? I
can leave the Cockatoo to-morrow if you
have."
" I know where they are," Splug answered.
" But before I tell you, tell me what they are."
" They are the two ends of the power of the
Cockatoos. These birds were a grand people
204 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
while that Fairy girdle was worn by their Queen,
for it kept off a race of magicians that became
their enemies. It was lost ages ago, and then
the magicians had power to change their enemies
to birds. My friend the Queen Cockatoo has
lost three of her sons who have gone out into the
world to seek the girdle, and I came to comfort
my dear friend, perhaps to help her. Now,
Splug, where is it ? "
" In evil hands," said the Rogue, " from which
the Cockatoos themselves must go and take it.
I will be their guide ; but save me, somebody,
from being clutched on the way by that Parrot,
who has already once had me by the button for
a six months' talk."
" Lead on ! " said the King Cockatoo, " my
armies follow." Scaring the clouds with their
wild war-scream, a flight of myriads of cockatoos
swept over the realm of Gossamer, eclipsed the
sun over the city of Feathergrass, and stormed
the palace of Lord Hemp. Cockatoos broke all
his windows, cockatoos flew screeching in masses
through his halls and chambers, screeching cock-
atoos seized him by the hair, arms, body, and legs
with a thousand claws and beaks, while their
King found the girdle with the silver tassels, and
straightway flew with it homeward.
" WHAT, SPLUCJ, " SHE CRIED, "AND WITH A THIMBLE ON YOUR HEAD.
SILVER TASSELS 205
" What shall we do with the prisoner ? "
screeched all the cockatoos. The King being
gone, Splug took on himself to answer. " Carry
him to the Parrot 1 Let the Parrot claw him by
the button. Let the Parrot talk to him till he
can talk no more ! " So it was done, and the
Parrot, who can talk for , ever, still has my Lord
Hemp by the button somewhere in space, and
is still talking to him about things that he cannot
understand, because for the last thousand years
my lord's head has been spinning round and round
and he knows only that the Parrot's claw is
fastened on his coat, and that the Parrot's beak
wags up and down, pouring out endless monotony
of sounds, from which there is no hope of his
escaping.
But the Queen Cockatoo, who had been
following the army, was met very near Feather-
grass by her victorious lord, who had the girdle
in his grasp. She put it on, and instantly she
and the King, with all their host, came to the
ground in their true shapes. He was the most
splendid of emperors and she of empresses, heading
a Court and army of lords, ladies, and soldiers,
so gorgeously dressed that Queen Sappodilla, to
whom they went to pay their respects, saw the
glory of her magnificently decorated courtiers
2o6 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
pale before that of the rich strangers in scarlet,
gold, and azure blue.
The surface of the earth round about Neroh's
cottage, when the host of the cockatoos gathered
about her, blazed with more than the glory of
the richest sunset in the sky. There was a
tapping at the door, and the child hfted the
latch to a beautiful boy wearing a silver crown.
He stepped in, and was followed by a shining
Emperor and Empress, very fine to see, and
handsome people, though they had hooked noses,
and looked yellower than usual round the eyes.
The Empress wore the girdle with the silver
tassels, which has since that day once more been
lost, so that in our time the cockatoos are birds
again.
"Good Mother Neroh," said the beautiful
youth — and this was Splug himself, for Teasel's
sake no longer a rogue. Slipping from behind
the Empress in scarlet, yellow, and azure blue,
the Fairy Teasel put her little arm round the
waist of her friend Splug, as he took from his
head the silver crown, and said, " Dear Mother
Neroli, I have worn your silver thimble on my
head till it has grown into a silver crown. Never
ask how I came by it. Wear it ! " It was on
her head before she could answer, and in the
SILVER TASSELS 207
same moment she was robed in pure silver from
top to toe.
" Ah, beautiful mother ! " then cried little
Silver Tassels.
" Not more beautiful than in her old worn
clothes, my child ! Never more beautiful than
when she gave that thimble to the rogue who
tempted her."
" Oh, mother, always beautiful ! " said the
child, sobbing happily upon her breast.
" For your silver tassels, little maid, you
shall have all that can be given by the Emperor
and Empress of the Cockatoos. Teasel here and
I give nothing, you are richer far than we. So,
darling, we are beggars to you for a wee bit of
your heart. Be our own sister, and let us live
with you in this house with our good Mother
Neroli — in this house that can never again want
bread for those in it, and for the poor who shall
come to its door, while there is power in the
throne of Oberon, and while there remains the
nation of the Cockatoos."
XIII
THE SON OF THE SCOTTISH YEOMAN
WHO STOLE THE BISHOP'S HORSE
AND DAUGHTER, AND THE BISHOP
HIMSELF
There was once a Scottish yeoman who had
three sons. When the youngest of them came to
be of age to follow a profession, he set apart
three hundred marks for each of them. The
youngest son asked that his portion might be
given to himself, as he was going away to seek
his fortune. He went to the great city of
London. He was for a time there, and what was
he doing but learning to be a gentleman's ser-
vant ? He at last set about finding a master.
He heard that the chief magistrate of London
wanted a servant. He applied to him, they
agreed, and he entered his service. The chief
magistrate was in the habit of going every day
in the week to meet the Archbishop of London
in a particular place. The servant attended his
master, for he always went out with him. When
THE SON OF THE SCOTTISH YEOMAN 209
they had broken up their meeting on one occasion,
they retuf-ned homewards, and the servant said
to the master by the way :
" That is a good brown horse of the bishop's,
with your leave, master."
" Yes, my man, he has the best horse in
London."
" What think you," said the servant, " would
he take for the horse, if he were to sell it ? "
" Oh, you fool ! " said his master, " I thought
you were a sensible fellow ; many a man has
tried to buy that horse, and it has defied them as
yet."
" I'll return and try," said he.
His master returned with him to see what
would happen. This was on a Thursday. The
young man asked the bishop, would he " sell
the horse " ? The bishop became amazed and
angry, and said he did not expect that he could
buy it.
" But what beast could you, or any man
have," said the young man, " that might not
be bought ? "
" Senseless fellow," said the bishop, " how
foohsh you are ! Go away home, you shan't
buy my horse."
" \^Tiat will you wager," said the young man,
14
2IO BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
" that I won't have the horse by this time
to-morrow ? "
" Is it my horse you mean ? " said the bishop.
" Yes, your horse. What will you wager that
I don't steal it ? "
" I'll wager five hundred marks that you
don't."
" Then," said the young man, " I have only
one pound, but I'll wager that, and my head
besides, that I do."
" Agreed."
" Observe," said the young man, " that I
have wagered my head and the pound with you,
and if I steal the horse he will be my own
property."
" That he will, assuredly," said the chief
magistrate.
" I agree to that," said the bishop.
They returned home that night.
" Poor fellow," said the chief magistrate to
his servant by the way. " I am very well
satisfied with you since I got you. I am not
willing to lose you now. You are foolish. The
bishop will take care that neither you nor any
other man will steal the horse. He'll have him
watched."
When night came, the young man started,
THE SON OF THE SCOTTISH YEOMAN 211
and set to work. He went to the bishop's house.
What did he find out there, but that they had
the horse in a room, and men along with it,
who were busy eating and drinking. He looked
about him, and soon saw that he would require
another clever fellow with him. In looking
about, whom does he find but one of the lazy
fellows about the town.
" If you go with me for a little time," said
he, "I will give you something for your pains."
" I'll do that," said the other.
He set off, and at the first start, both he and
his man reached the hangman of the city.
" Can you tell me," said he to the hangman,
" where I can get a dead man ? "
" Yes," said the hangman, " there was a
man hanged this very day, after midday."
" If you go and get him for me," said the
young man, " I'll give you something for your
pains."
The hangman agreed, and went away with
him to where the body was.
" Do you know now," said the young man,
" where I can get a long, stout rope ? "
"Yes," said the hangman, "the rope that
hanged the man is here quite convenient ; you'll
get it."
212 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
They set off with the body, both himself and
his man. They reached the bishop's house.
" Stay you here and take charge of this,
until I get up on the top of the house," said he.
He put both his mouth and his ear to the
chimney in order to discover where the men were,
and to hear what they were saying as they were
now talking loudly from having drunk too much.
" Place the end of the rope," said he to the
man, " round the dead man's neck, and throw
the other up to me."
He dragged the dead man up to the top of
the chimney. The men in the room began to
hear the rubbish in the chimney falling down.
He let the body down by degrees, until at last
he saw the bright light of the watchmen falling
on the dead man's feet.
" See," said they, " what is this ? Oh, the
Scottish thief ! He preferred dying in this way
to losing his head. He has destroyed himself."
Down from the chimney came the young
man in haste. In he went into the very middle
of the men, and as the horse was led out by the
door, his hand was the first to seize the bridle.
He went with the horse to the stable, and said
to them that they might now go and sleep, that
they were safe enough.
THE SON OF THE SCOTTISH YEOMAN 213
" Now," said he to the other man, " I believe
you to be a clever fellow ; be at hand here
to-morrow evening, and I will see you again."
He paid him at the same time, and the man
was much pleased. He, himself, returned to
his master's stable with the bishop's brown
horse. He went to rest, and though the daylight
came early, earlier than that did his master
come to his door.
" I wouldn't grudge my pains," said he, " if
my poor Scotsman were here before me to-day."
" I am here, good master, and the bishop's
brown horse beside me."
" Well done, my man, you're a clever fellow.
I had a high opinion of you before ; I think much
more of you now."
They prepared this day, too, to go and visit
the bishop. It was Friday.
" Now," said the servant, " I left home
without a horse yesterday, but I won't leave in
the same way to-day."
" Well, my man," said his master, " as you
have got the horse, I'll give you a saddle."
So they set off this day again to meet the
bishop, his master and himself riding their horses.
They saw the bishop coming to meet them,
apparently mad. When they came close to-
214 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
gether they observed that the bishop rode another
horse, by no means so good as his own. The
bishop and chief magistrate met with salutations,
then turning to the magistrate's servant :
" Scoundrel," said he, " and thorough thief ! "
" You can't call me worse," said the other.
*' I don't know that you can call me that justly,
for, you know, I told you what I was to do.
Without more words, pay me my five hundred
marks."
This had to be done, though not very
willingly.
" What would you now say," said the lad,
" if I were to steal your daughter to-night ? "
" My daughter, you worthless fellow, you
shan't steal my daughter."
" I'll wager five hundred marks and the
brown horse," said the lad, " that I'll steal her."
" I'll wager five hundred marks that you
don't," said the bishop.
The wager was laid. The lad and his master
went home. " Young man," said the master,
" I thought well of you at one time, but you
have done a foolish thing now, just when you
had made yourself all right."
" Never mind, good master, I'll make the
attempt at any rate."
THE SON OF THE SCOTTISH YEOMAN 215
When night came, the chief magistrate's
servant set off for the bishop's house. When he
reached it, he saw a gentleman coming out at
the door.
" Oh," said he to the gentleman, " what is
this going on at the bishop's house to-night ? "
" A great and important matter," said the
gentleman, " a rascally Scotsman who is threaten-
ing to steal the bishop's daughter, but I can tell
you neither he nor any other man will steal her,
she is well guarded.
" Oh, I'm sure of that," said the lad, and
turned away. " There is a man in England,
however," said he to himself, " who must try
it."
He set off to the king's tailors, and asked
them whether they had any dresses ready for
great people.
" No," said the tailor, " but a dress I have
for the king's daughter, and one for her maid-
of-honour."
" What will you take for the use of these for
a couple of hours ? "
" Oh," said the tailor, " I fear I dare not
give them to you."
" Don't be in the least afraid," said the lad,
" I'll pay you, and I'll return the two dresses
2i6 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
without any injury or loss. You'll get a hundred
marks."
The tailor coveted so large a sum, so he gave
them to him. He returned and found his man
of the former night. They went to a private
place, and got themselves fitted out in the
dresses. When this was done as well as they
could, they came to the bishop's door. Before
he arrived at the door he found out that when
any of the royal family came to the bishop's
house they didn't knock, but rubbed Uie bottom
of the door with the point of the foot. He came
to the door and rubbed. There was a doorkeeper
at the door that night, and he ran and told the
bishop.
" There is some one of the royal family at the
door," said he.
" No," said the bishop, '' there is not. It's
the thief of a Scotsman that is there."
The doorkeeper looked through the keyhole,
and saw the appearance of two ladies who stood
there. He went to his master and told them so.
His master went to the door that he might see
for himself. He who was outside would give
another and another rub to the door, at the
same time abusing the bishop for his folly. The
bishop listened, and^recognised the voice of the
THE SON OF THE SCOTTISH YEOMAN 217
king's daughter. The door was quickly opened,
and the bishop bowed low to the lady. She
began immediately to chide him for laying any
wager respecting his daughter, saying that he
was much blamed for what he had done.
" It was very wrong of you," said she, " to
have done it without my knowledge, and you
would not have required to have made such a
stir or been so foolish as all this."
" You will excuse me," said the bishop.
" I can't excuse you," she said.
Into the room he led the king's daughter,
in which his own daughter was, and persons
watching her. She was in the middle of the
room, sitting on a chair, and the others sitting
all around.
Said the king's daughter to her, '' My dear,
your father is a very foolish man to place you in
such great danger ; for if he had given me notice,
and placed you under my care, any man who
might venture to approach you would assuredly
not only be hanged, but burned ahve. Go,"
said she to the bishop, " to bed, and dismiss this
large company, lest men laugh at you."
He told the company that they might now
go to rest, that the queen's daughter and her
maid-of-honour would take charge of his daughter.
2i8 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
When they had all gone away the queen's
daughter said, " Come with me, my dear, to the
palace," and led her out to where the brown
horse stood all ready.
As soon as the Scotsman got her there, he
threw off the dress he wore in a dark place and
put a different one on above his own, and mounted
the horse. The other man was sent home with
the dresses to the tailor after he had been paid,
and told to meet there again the next night.
Early as daylight came, earlier came his
master to the stable.
" I wouldn't grudge my pains, if my poor
Scotsman were here before me to-day."
" Eh, and so I am," said the lad, " and the
bishop's daughter is with me."
" Oh," said the magistrate, " I always thought
well of you, but now I think more of you than
ever."
This was Saturday. He and his master had
to go and meet the bishop this day also. If the
bishop looked angry the former day, he looked
much angrier this one. The chief magistrate's
servant rode on his horse and saddle behind his
master. When he came near the bishop, he
could only call him " thief " and " scoundrel."
" You cannot say that to me with justice,"
THE SON OF THE SCOTTISH YEOMAN 219
said the lad. " Send across here my five hundred
marks."
The bishop paid the money, abusing the other
all the time.
" Oh, man, give up your abus3. I'll wager
you the ten hundred marks that I'll steal yourself
to-night."
" That you steal me, you worthless fellow !
You shan't be allowed," and he wagered the ten
hundred marks.
" I'll get these ten hundred marks back again,"
said the bishop, " but I will wager you fifteen
hundred marks that you don't steal me."
The chief magistrate fixed the bargain for
them, and the lad and his master went home.
" My man," said the master, " I have always
thought well of you till now ; you will now lose
the money you gained, for you can't steal the
man."
" I have no fear of that," said the servant.
When night came he set off to the bishop's
house. Then he thought he would go where he
could find the fishermen of the city. When he
reached them he asked whether they had
" any fresh killed salmon " ? They said they
had.
" If you skin so many of them for me, I will
220 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
give you such and such a sum of money, or as
much as will be just and right."
The fishermen said they would do as he wished.
They gave him as many fish skins as he thought
would make him a cloak of the length and breadth
he wished. He then went to the tailors, and
asked would they make him a dress of the fish
skins by twelve o'clock to-night, and they would
be paid for it. They told him what sum they
would take, and took the young man's measure
and began the dress. By twelve o'clock it was
ready.
The lad left with the dress, and when he found
himself a short way from the bishop's church he
put it on. He had found a key to open the church
and he went in. He at once went to the pul-
pit. The doorkeeper, casting an eye in on an
occasion, while a great watch was kept over
the bishop, saw a light in the church, and went
and reported it.
" A light," said the master. " Go and see
what light it is." It was past twelve o'clock by
this time.
" Oh," said the doorkeeper, coming back,
" there is a man preaching in it."
The bishop drew out his timepiece and saw
it was the beginning of Sunday. He went
THE SON OF THE SCOTTISH YEOMAN 221
running to the church. When he saw the bright-
ness inside, and all the movements of the man
who was preaching, he was seized with fear. He
opened the door a little, and put in his head that
he might see what he was like. There was not
a language under the stars that the man in the
pulpit was not talking. When he came to the
languages which the bishop understood, he began
to denounce him as a man who had lost his
senses. In the bishop ran, and went down on his
knees before the pulpit. There he began to pray,
and when he saw the brightness that was about
the pulpit he took to heart the things that were
said to him. At length the preacher said if he
would promise sincere repentance and go with
him, he would grant him forgiveness. The
bishop promised that he would.
" Come with me, that I may have a little
more time with you," said he.
" I will," said the bishop, " though thou
shouldst ask me to leave the world."
He went, and the young man walked before
him. They reached the stable of the chief
magistrate. He got a seat for the bishop and then
sat down himself. They required no light, for
the servant's clothes were shining bright. He
then expounded to the bishop in some languages
222 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
which he could understand, and in others which
he could not. He went on in that way until it
was time for his master to come in the morning.
When the time drew near, he threw off the dress,
bent down and hid it, for it was near daylight.
The bishop was now silent, and the chief magis-
trate came.
" I wouldn't grudge my pains," said he, " if
I had my poor Scotsman here before me to-day."
" Eh, so I am here, and the bishop with me."
" Hey, my man," said his master. " You
have done well."
" Oh, you infamous scoundrel," said the
bishop, "is it thus you have got the better of
me?"
" I'll tell 3^ou what it is," said the chief
magistrate. " You had better be civil to him.
Don't abuse him. He has got your daughter,
your horse, and your money, and as for yourself,
you know that he cannot support you, so it is
best for you to support him. Take him back
with you."
The young man left and went home with the
bishop. He and the bishop's daughter were
married, and the father showed him much
kindness. I left them there.
XIV
RENT DAY
" Oh ullagone, uUagone ! this is a wideTworld,
but what will we do in it, or where will we go ? "
muttered Bill Doody, as he sat on a rock by the
Lake of Killarney. " What will we do ? To-
morrow's rent day, and Tim the Driver swears
if we don't pay up our rent, he'll take every-
thing we have ; and then, sure enough there's
Judy and myself, and the poor httle children
will be turned out to starve on the high
road, for the never a halfpenny of rent have
I ! — Oh, that ever I should live to see this
day ! "
Thus did Bill Doody bemoan his hard fate,
pouring his sorrows to the reckless waves of the
most beautiful of lakes, which seemed to mock
his misery as they rejoiced beneath the cloudless
sky of a May morning. That lake, glittering
in sunshine, sprinkled with fairy isles of rock
and verdure, and bounded by giant hills of
ever-varying hues, might, with its magic
224 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
beauty, charm all sadness but despair; for,
alas :
" How ill the scene that offers rest,
And heart that cannot rest agree ! "
Yet Bill Doody was not so desolate as he
supposed; there was one listening to him he
little thought of, and help was at hand from a
quarter he could not have expected.
" What's the matter with you, my poor man?"
said a tall, portly looking gentleman, at the same
time stepping out of a furze-brake. Now Bill
was seated on a rock that commanded the view
of a large field. Nothing in the field could be
concealed from him, except this furze-brake,
which grew in a hollow near the margin of the
lake. He was, therefore, not a little surprised
at the gentleman's sudden appearance, and began
to question whether the personage before him
belonged to this world or not. He, however,
soon mustered courage sufficient to tell him how
his crops had failed, how some bad member had
charmed away his butter, and how Tim the
Driver threatened to turn him out of the farm if
he didn't pay up every penny of the rent by
twelve o'clock next day.
"A sad story, indeed," said the stranger,
"but surely, if you represented the case to your
RENT DAY 225
landlord's agent, he won't have the heart to turn
you out."
"Heart, your honour! Where would an
agent get a heart ? " exclaimed Bill. " I see
your honour does not know him ; besides, he
has an eye on the farm this long time for a friend
of his own, so I expect no mercy at all at all, only
to be turned out."
" Take this, my poor fellow, take this," said
the stranger, pouring a purse full of gold into
Bill's old hat, which in his grief he had flung on
the ground. " Pay the fellow your rent, but I'll
take care it shall do him no good. I remember
the time when things went otherwise in this
country, when I would have hung up such a
fellow m the twinkling of an eye ! "
These words were lost upon Bill, who was
insensible to everything but the sight of the
gold, and before he could unfix his gaze, and lift
up his head to pour out his hundred thousand
blessings the stranger was gone. The bewildered
peasant looked around in search of his benefactor
and at last he thought he saw him riding on a
white horse a long way off on the lake.
" O'Donoghue, O'Donoghue ! " shouted Bill .
" the good, the blessed O'Donoghue ! " and he
ran capering like a madman to show Judy the
226 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
gold, and to rejoice her heart with the prospect
of wealth and happiness.
The next day Bill proceeded to the agent's ;
not sneakingly, with his hat in his hand, his eyes
fixed on the ground, and his knees bending under
him, but bold and upright, like a man conscious
of his independence.
" Why don't you take off your hat, fellow ;
don't you know you are speaking to a magis-
trate ? " said the agent. ^^
" I know I'm not speaking to the king, sir,
said Bill " and I never take off my hat but to
them I can respect and love. The Eye that sees
all knows I've no right either to respect or love
an agent I "
'' You scoundrel ! " retorted the man m office,
biting his lips with rage at such an unusual and
unexpected opposition, 'Til teach you how
to be insolent again— I have the power, re-
member."
" To the cost of the country, I know you
have," said Bill, who still remained with his head
as firmly covered as if he was the lord Kingsale
himself. ^
"But come," said the magistrate. "Have
you got the money for me ? This is rent day.
if there's one penny of it wanting, prepare to
RENT DAY 227
turn out before night, for you shall not remain
another hour in possession."'
" There is your rent," said Bill, with an un-
moved expression of tone and countenance ;
" you'd better count it, and give me a receipt in
full."
The agent gave a look of amazement at the
gold, for it was gold— real guineas ! and not bits
of dirty, ragged small notes, that are only fit
to light one's pipe with. However willing the
agent may have been to ruin, as he thought, the
unfortunate tenant, he took up the gold, and
handed the receipt to Bill, who strutted off with
it as proud as a cat of her whiskers.
The agent, going to his desk shortly after,
was confounded at beholding a heap of ginger-
bread cakes instead of the money he had placed
there. He raved and swore, but all to no pur-
pose ; the gold had become gingerbread cakes,
just marked hke the guineas, with the king's
head, and Bill had the receipt in his pocket, so
he saw there was no use in saying anything
about the affair, as he would only get laughed
at for his pains.
From that hour Bill Doody grew rich ; all
his undertakings prospered, and he often blesses
the day that he met with O'Donoghue, the
22 8 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
great prince that lives down under the lake of
Killarney.
Like the butterfly, the spirit of O'Donoghue
closely hovers over the perfume of the hills and
flowers it loves ; while, as the reflection of a star
in the waters of a pure lake, to those who look
not above, that glorious spirit is beheved to dwell
beneath.
XV
THE CHICKEN MARKET
Ben Ody is resolved on carrying his
Chickens to a Pretty Market
Once upon a time there was a rustic whose name
was Ben Ody, and he knew more of what is in an
egg than that it is something good to eat. He
understood how one thing comes out of another.
Ben Ody, when he had no more sense than the
rest of the world, kept fowls ; and when he grew
to be so wise, he had been carrying his chickens
to a pretty market.
There is a woody wilderness in Dulmansland,
and few reach to the heart of it ; but there is
open market held by Fairies in the middle of
that wilderness, and any man who gets to it
may talk and traffic with the market-people to
his own great gain. Ben Ody knew that there
was such a market, and resolved to carry thither
a large basketful of chickens.
230 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
Goody Madge Ody cried down his design.
Chickens, she said, were worth three shilhngs
a couple in their own good town of Peniworth,
and that was their just price all the world over.
He might grind down his legs from under him in
travelling to the strange market, and find, she
would answer for it, nobody but a fool to pay a
shilling more. Ben Ody made answer to his
wife that she talked like a woman, and then set
out like a man upon his journey.
He had not gone ten steps from his door before
he met somebody who offered him four shillings
a pair for all his chickens. But Goodman Ben
refused the money, saying to himself one has not
to go far to find a fool. He had not gone ten
miles before he met somebody who offered for his
chickens four shillings apiece. Should he halt
on his way to Fairyland because he was tempted
by so great a certainty of present gain ? Ody
covered up the basket with his pocket-handker-
chief, and travelled on. The very chickens
cried " cheap ! cheap 1 " to one another when the
bargain was proposed. " I hope for better luck
than that," said Ody, as he went his way.
A forward young hen who was of the company
in the basket, getting her head, after a little
perseverance, through one of the holes in her
THE CHICKEN MARKET 231
master's handkerchief, turned one eye up to him,
and clucked, " Luck ! luck ! luck ! Ha ! " He
could not tell whether she spoke in sympathy
or in derision. For, to the last, wise as he became,
Ben Ody could not arrive at the whole and exact
mind even of a hen.
On the first night of his journey Goodman
Ben, when he came to an inn, supped upon juicy
steak with oyster sauce, and bought wheat for
his poultry. On the second night he had cold
shoulder, and fed the chickens upon bran. On
the third night he had sour milk for supper, and
a very little bread, of which he gave all to his
birds. Should he halt on his way to Fairyland
because he was repelled by so great a certainty
of present hunger ? On the fourth night he
supped at a pig-trough, and slept in a barn, upon
the floor of which his hens found pickings. On
the fifth night he came to the seacoast, where a
keen wind, blustering from the east, cruelly
threatened to cut off his nose and ears. The
wild waves champed on the restraining bit of
shore, tossing abroad white flakes of foam.
Behind the flying foam-flakes the wind raced,
like a starved hound, whining. There was
rough water stirring eagerly, flashing white lin^s,
reflecting from the tempestuous sky, just quitted
232 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
by the sun, a ghastly yellow light. But in the
west, water and air were heavy with the purple
gloom that buried all, and was not to be cloven
even by the stroke of all the lightnings in it.
Who could tell when it was from the wind,
when from the wave, when from the cloud, that
thunder came ? In that fierce tumult a man's
ears were stuffed with the incessant roar, his eyes
filled with the rising of great waters, and the
rising also of their own small flood, under pinch
of the wind that had grip on every nerve. The
tongue within the mouth was salted, and all juices
of the flesh seemed to be brine. A driving rain
began to whip the Goodman in the face. No
shelter was to be had in the low red crags behind
him, or on the flat, treeless land above. Beyond
a gap in the chffs, far away by a white sea-mark,
a boat-house could be seen. But there was
between the drenched man and that mockery of
shelter a wide wet bog and the estuary of a
river.
Then fell upon his mind's ear the voice of his
Goody, who talked like a woman, and upon
his mind's eye a vision of the market-place at
Peniworth that was now left, a five days' journey,
behind his back. The chickens all were become
cheerless — cold fowls without tongue. Ben Ody
THE CHICKEN MARKET 233
had their basket by this time under his gaberdine,
that dripped and flapped over them, a dismal
substitute for the warm mother's wing, under
which they still could remember how they once
were nursed.
Suddenly, through the splashing of the rain,
light shone from their owner's countenance.
Sore hunger, prompter of his wit, reminded him
that he knew, as every man may know, one
sentence, at least, of the speech of hens. The
hint given him from the basket at the outset of
his journey, which it had then suited his humour
to consider English, belonged naturally to one of
the languages of the great Poultry Stock, and
was, in fact, Hennish for "I am about to lay an
egg:' " Where," he cried, " is that egg ? For
eggs are good to eat, and I am desperately
hungry."
There was a flutter in the basket, followed by
a delicate rap on his elbow. Was that a mouse
running down his sleeve ? The egg was in his
hand.
" Pah ! " said the countryman, " the egg's
ahve ! It can't be eatable." But Ben Ody put
the two ends of the egg to his lips, and found one
cold, the other hot. Right enough ! he thought.
So he made for himself a hole in the small end,
234 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
sucked thereat, and was nearly choked before
he knew that what he had swallowed was tobacco-
smoke. What wonder ? Again and again had he
prophesied to Goody, and said, " Goody, we shall
have the poultry copying the puppies, and the
chickens will soon learn to smoke before they
break the shell." How this young embryo came
by his cigars was only one out of a thousand
mysteries of the tobacco trade.
Ben Ody peeped into the egg-shell, and the
smoke immediately stung him in the eye. He
might as well hope to look down a chimney
when fresh wood has been laid on the fire below.
Meantime, the wind howled and the sea roared
in his ears, the rain lashed his face, and the salt
spray leapt into his mouth as his teeth chattered
with cold. The tobacco-smoke curled up from
the egg like the smoke of a fusee that has burnt
close to another sort of shell. " Next only to
food comes tobacco," sighed the weary man.
" After you, therefore, if you please, my little
chicken ! "
A wisp of dead herbage was blowing by, and
a bit of stout reed in it caught Ben's attention.
" I will have you," he thought, " for a pipe-stem,
and accordingly he thrust one end of it through
a convenient part of the shell. Immediately
THE CHICKEN MARKET 23s
a venerable head, as big as an old pea, as yellow
and as wrinkled, but having as much white
beard as a dozen dandelion seeds, thrust itself
from inside through a hole of its own breaking,
and cried, " How many more draughts are you
going to expose me to, young man ? "
" I beg your pardon, sir," Ben Ody said.
" You are no chicken ! "
" Why are you standing out there in the
rain ? " said the little man, still in a rage. " How
much damp are you going to bring in with you ?
Now then, the supper will get cold, as well as
you ! "
Whether he himself had become smaller, or
the egg had become larger, Ben could not then
tell, for he had no point of comparison as he stood
there in the tempest, with his face towards the
boundless sea. Moreover, he was a man on such
terms with himself that in the most reduced
condition he could not feel small. He could not,
indeed, fail to perceive that his chicken-basket
towered high above his head, its wicker sides
rising like columns of a temple, in which there
were enshrined sublime hens and a cock holding
his head higher than any weather-cock in Dul-
mansland. But ah ! what a fine lime-white
hermitage, tapestried inside from dome to floor
236 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
with the most exquisite of tissues, was the vaulted
chamber he had taken for an egg. Therein sat
the yellow man, and by no means a little man,
beside a fire hot enough to have parched his
pea of a head (which now seemed to be as big as
a ripe pumpkin), and there he knocked out the
dead ashes from his pipe before he turned his chair
round to the supper-table.
The rain splashed and the wind howled out-
side, while the wide dome that sheltered them
rocked like a great ship in the storm. For
supper there was a bee's thigh stewed in its own
burden of honey ; and Ben Ody was so hungry
that he ate slice after slice, and feasted on the
honey till his clothes began to feel too tight for
him.
" Now," said the yellow hermit, " my name's
Yolk. You are my guest, sir, and I am your
servant. What dew do you take ? "
Here he produced two round bottles from a
cupboard, each warranted to hold an exact un-
broken dewdrop. " This," he said, " is Thistle-
dew, and this has been distilled on Woodbine
Blossom."
Then Yolk broke the seal of one bottle care-
fully, produced a couple of cups, and shared
with his guest a drop of Thistledew, at which
THE CHICKEN MARKET 237
they drank and drank till prudence counselled
them to leave a little in the bottle. Ody hardly
knew what he had been talking about, so much
had the dew risen to his head, when at last his
servant became angry, and began to beat the
table, shouting again and again, " Shut your
hand firmly upon what you want, and there you
have it ! "
Then Ben Ody shut his hand, and there were
barleycorns forcing their way out between his
fingers. He shut both his hands firmly, opened
them side by side, so that he made a scoop of
his two palms, and the scoop was at once full to
overflowing of good barley. Then he knew that
what he had been arguing about was supper for
his fowls, and he went out to feed them.
II
Over the Sea
The storm was over, though the sea raged still
against the land, but no star shone. The moon^
breaking for an instant through a rift in the
clouds, made the wet, glistening shore so light
that one of his colossal chickens, having spied
the Goodman as he clambered up the side of a
238 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
great pebble, mistook him for a grub, and being
peckish, made a snap at him.
" You would not," said Yolk, laughing at
Ben's escape, " have been the first man eaten
up by his own chickens when travelling this way
to market. You have held to your mind with
them, and they are your own. Treasure them.
Golden eggs are a mere goose's business to the
eggs they lay. But they may eat you up, never-
theless. We are yours, yet have a care. Master
Ben Ody. You are ours."
" Dear Mr. Yolk, what must I do ? "
" Go on."
" Through the sea, I suppose ? "
" Certainly, through the sea. This is the
Sea of Trouble, through which you must go,
unless you will return to Peni worth."
" But here is every hen as large as a par-
sonage, and a cock bigger than our parish church.
I might well leave them alone to find their suppers.
If they grow up at this rate, nothing smaller than
a sea-serpent will be the worm that any one of
them will scratch for. What ship is to carry
them ? "
" There is no ship to carry them," said
Yolk.
" Ah, very well. To fowls of that size the sea
THE CHICKEN MARKET 239
is a puddle. But, for myself, where am I to find
a little skiff — a mere cock-boat — what if it were
but an egg-shell ? " And Ben cast a wistful
look upon the hermitage.
" Go on," said Yolk. " I only stay behind
to let the fowls out of the basket. You may
trust us all to follow."
" The night is pitch-dark, Mr. Yolk. The
sea and the wind are buffeting and tearing at
each other. Here is the tide rising, and a wave
at its first innings has almost bowled me down."
For a minute there escaped a ray of moon-
light from the storm above ; it fled like a white^
spirit, and vanished suddenly across the waste
of surging waters. Under its touch there had
flashed into sight, pale and still, the tall figure of
Yolk, with one arm raised, and a long finger
pointing seaward.
" Courage, Ben Ody ! Dare and overcome !
Turn neither to the right nor to the left. Go on
resolved, and you will reach the Fairy Market."
The rustic put faith in the exhortation, and
his heart enlarged within him. " Shut your
hand firmly upon what you want, and there you
have it ! "
" Courage ! " Ben Ody cried, with both fists
clenched, beating the waves back as they struck
240 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
him on the brow. He was among them, and his
large tread became heavy on the corals of the
sea-bottom as his frame grew to the measure of
his grand audacity.
Sharks leaping about him, worried him as
flies worry a dog. Great whales gathered in
shoals and joined their forces in wild rushes at
his legs. As well might earwigs hope to trip the
heels of a prize-fighter.
" Mr. Yolk," said Ody, when they were half-
way across, " it seems to me that this is pretty
night- work for a man whose supper was but a
few slices out of a bee's leg and half a dewdrop."
"It is getting to be all spirit with you, Mr.
Ody," said the man out of the egg. " Your
courage is not of the sort they cut up with a knife
and fork. Starvation strengthens it. There is
meat enough in a bee's leg to give metal to the
man who is resolved. So here we are, safe out
of deep water, and sure-footed among the shallows.
This rain is but the earth's morning wash, for
there, you see, rises the sun over the sandhills."
" Well," said Ody, " I have had my wash,
and now, if I could only polish myself with a
towel, give my hair a handsome combing, and
brush my old smock and boots and gaiters into
something fit to be looked at "
THE CHICKEN MARKET 241
"Look! look! look! here!" clucked a
voice behind him.
"That's the voice of the speckled hen, I
know," said Ben, turning upon her. " Speckled !
Why, Yolk, are these my chickens ? Was that
sea a beauty bath ? "
Though a humming bird grew to the size of
an ostrich, and increased as much in beauty as
m size, it would be no match for one of Ben Ody's
chickens as those chickens now shone down the
dawn. They had crossed the water, and stood
ghttering among the dull sandhills hke hillocks
of rainbow in the morning rain.
"Three shilhngs a couple, did you say,
Madge ? And that glorious being yonder,"
whispered the rustic, " is my speckled hen, for
it is she who has demeaned herself to lay me
an egg for my breakfast. Here it is." But as
Goodman took it up, the shell broke in his hand,
and there fell out of it a small clothes-brush,'
a comb, and a large towel. When Ben Ody
rubbed his face dry with this towel, soft and
delicate as any spider's web, though stronger
than chain-cable, the wrinkles and the freckles
and the stubble of his beard came away with the
water. His crooked nose, kneaded up in it for
a moment, became as the nose of an Apollo
16 ^
242 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
and his old mouth blossomed again with its
early roses. He dug the comb into his hair,
and shook out exquisite odours while he pulled
the grizzled mat into brown silken tresses. He
brushed at his smock, his boots, and his gaiters,
clearing away all that was rustic as he rubbed.
The smock brushed out into a purple velvet
robe, enriched with a fine gold embroidery and
fringed with amethysts. The gaiters, when their
shell of dirt had been cleared off, displayed an
inner crust of diamonds, and the old hobnailed
boots, which, with the feet inside, were filed down
by one minute's brushing to a dainty size and
shape, cleaned into easy slippers of rich orange
morocco with red heels. At the same time
there came a sensation of silk and fine linen
over the entire body and legs of Mr. Ody.
" Now, Master, that you have done polishing
yourself," said Yolk, " will you oblige me with
the brush and towel ? "
Yolk cleaned himself into the figure of a
black-haired page, in a full suit of amber satin,
Still there was a touch of bile in his complexion,
but his face was smooth, and the long white
bristles of his beard had shrunk into a tender
down upon the chin. Upon his upper lip the
towel left only a slender black moustache of hair
THE CHICKEN MARKET 243
that might be in the very first month of its
crispness.
" There's nothing," he said, " so refreshing
as a good rub with a towel, when one has been
hard at work all night."
" Except breakfast," observed my Lord Ben.
" Towels and combs and yellow pages are all very
well, but my intention was to eat that egg.''
" Shut your hand firmly upon what you
want, and there you have it ! Call for what
breakfast you please. Master."
" Oh, certainly. A pint of old ale and a
muffin ! There, Yellow Page ! The muffin is
for you — the ale for me."
" May I be permitted to suggest that if I
had as much might in my hands as you in yours,
I should know how to choose myself a better
breakfast."
" Throw the muffin to the fowls, if you don't
like it. Stay, I beg your pardon for remembering
old ways. At Peniworth I had my morning
draught, and Madge she had her muffin. Hold
that muffin for a minute, and keep it as hot as
you can, while I shut my hand upon my Goody.
There, I have her ! " With her mob-cap and her
false red wig; her tortoiseshell spectacles, her
turn-up nose, and the one front-tooth in her
244 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
mouth ; with her old flowered gown tucked up
about her waist, and a black petticoat flapping
over the wrinkles in her grey worsted stockings ;
with her feet raised upon pattens, her bare
shrivelled arms still wet to the elbows with
soapsuds, and a dripping lump of mottled soap
in her right hand, while her left hand slipped
greasily out of her husband's grasp — ^there stood
Goody Madge.
" Let me give you a rub, Goody, with this
towel."
" I'll have no spiders' webs thrust in my mouth.
Keep off, I say ! None of your play-acting
with me."
" After only a week's parting, do you not
remember Ben again ? Have I not been fighting
alone through my trouble, and do I not give you
my hand now I am fairly through that sea, and
safe to find my way into the Fairy Chicken
Market ? "
" My Ben certainly left Peniworth on a fool's
errand with a basketful of chickens. But if you
are he, you've altered greatly for the worse.
\^Tiat other sign am I to know you by ? "
" The morning muffin ! "
" And that morning draught, I see ! But
who's the boy ? "
THE CHICKEN MARKET 245
"He is the yellow boy who waits upon
me."
" What have you done with the hens ? "
" Look yonder. What do you think of them ?
Three shillings a couple in our market-place,
and if I take them farther, I shall only find a
fool to pay a shilling more ? "
" Nonsense, Ben. Fine feathers don't make
fine fowl. How will they roast ? "
" They glorify me, they give power to my
hands, they give me back more than my youth,
they grow without food, they are the delight of
my eyes ; and am I, because in our old market-
place nothing but bread and meat is bartered for,
to wring their necks and sell them for the pot ? "
" Alack ! alack ! alack ! Yah ! " cried a
voice from the sand-heaps.
" That is the black hen's voice," said Mrs.
Margery. " I'll go and look for her egg,'^
111
Through Waste and Wilderness
The light rain had passed away, and mist was
rolling from the earth as the sun rose. Yolk
laid a hand on Ody's wrist, and drawing close to
246 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
him, looked with an awed face landward. On
the verge of the land, where the last blades of
coarse grass were waving in the sea-wind, the
outline visible against the sky was indistinctly
broken by the gleam of some white ruined
gravestones and the swelling up of graves. A
heavy mist was rolling upward from that unde-
fended graveyard on the border of the sea.
Within the mist, and part of it, were solemn
shapes that spread themselves abroad — the shapes
of ghostly gravediggers, each with a black
mattock in his hand.
" They are gone. Master. I saw them sitting
on the shore watching for us."
" For us ? "
" Go up, Master, and see those graves. They
are all marked with plain stones ; not a name
ever was carved on one of them. Here the storm
beats and the lichens grow. This headstone
was beaten down upon its grave when the blast
of the night-wind shrieked over the forgotten
dead. They were all wrecked men whom the
ghosts have buried, working silently, and leaving
not a trace beyond the hillock and a headstone
such as these."
Goodman Ody shivered. " This hole in the
sand was made for me, no doubt, and I ob-
THE CHICKEN MARKET 247
serve now that the shore is hned with heaps of
chicken-bone."
" Many a man," said Yolk, " carrying his
chickens to the Fairy Market, has been taken
dead out of this Sea of Trouble. When the
resolve falters in the midst of peril, all is lost.
Every man cannot shut his hand firmly upon
what he wants."
Then there came upon Ben Ody's ear the voice
of his Goody, crying, " Come down, man !
Here's the black hen's egg ; only she isn't black,
and a pretty egg it is for your fine feathers to
lay. It's empty ! "
" Stop," answered the Goodman ; " stop
till I come. Now crack that egg, and you shall
see what you shall see come out of it. Well,
Goody, what is it ? "
" My wedding-ring," said the old dame,
" and that is curious. When you were three
days away, I was vexed at you, and took it off,
and put it away in a teapot. How it came here
— how I came here — how you come to be so
foolish — what has come to the chickens — who
that young man is — and what's coming to us
all, who knows ? "
" Never mind, Margery ; put out your finger,'
and on goes the ring again. Is there any spell
248 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
in it, I wonder, Mr. Yolk ? How do you feel
now, Madge ? "
" I feel like sticking by you, Ben."
" Then may the black hen lay nothing but
wedding-rings, and may I be the jeweller that
sells them. On we go. My love's as old as yours
Goody, although the matter of the chickens puts
a difference between us. You'd shine hke a
queen if you would only scrub your face well
with this towel."
" I'm Goody Madge, and I don't wish to be
transmogrified."
" Then, Goody, you shall not even put your
pattens off. So take my arm, old woman, and
come on."
The forward road lay through a vast sandy
plain, filled with rabbit holes. The fowls glit-
tering with all colours that play in the diamond
led the way, and were as a rainbow of hope
moving before them. Ben Ody, beautiful in his
new youth, walked lovingly with his old wife,
who, having shaken down her flounced gown'
had wiped her arms upon her apron, put the bit
of mottled soap into her pocket, and was carrying
her pattens in her hand. She did not care about
the splendour of his newly-gotten youth; he
did not care about her wrinkles and grey hairs.
'THEN, GOODY, TAKE MY ARM, OLD WOMAN, AND COME ON.
THE CHICKEN MARKET 249
The bells had rung for them both, years ago,
from Peni worth church -steeple. There was one
memory, one heart between them. Yolk de-
scribed the road. " These," he said, " were the
famous warrens of Mockery on the confines of
Dulmansland." Ben was pleased with the ways
of the little rabbits that ran out of their holes to
nibble and make mouths at him. They were so
free with Goody's heel that she put on her
pattens again to protect her toes from their in-
cessant nibbling. They were thus bold because
the}^ saw her dread of them. Ben Ody's slippers
were proof against all their bites. Shrubs be-
came numerous, in which venomous snakes
hissed as they passed. Trees multiplied, and,
following their chickens, the wayfarers soon were
buried in the great Forest or Wilderness of Doubt.
" By the straight path, on and be resolved,"
Yolk whispered. Everywhere there was to be
heard the roaring of a lion round the corner, but
none ever leapt out to dispute the forward way.
As the forest darkened and the night set in, and
the moon threw only a stray spear-shaft of light
among the trees. Goody said, under her breath : "I
go where you go, Ben, but I have heard laughter
at men who took their chickens to a pretty market,
and I have some fear of what it means."
250 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
Ben answered with a brave word, crushed
the bunch of wormwood in his hand, and steadily
went on.
IV
The Market Reached
" Did you see that, Ben ? "
" Yes, what was it ? "
" Flash of eyes ! There are queer people
about us in the wood, and they make no sound.
One of them ran against me, and walked through
me, and could not be felt. Hark, Ben ! What
voice is that ? "
" The nightingale."
" Oh, husband ! I wish we were well through
the wood."
" That's a bold cock of ours to blow his
clarion against the nightingale," said Ben.
" There is a distant answer. Trumpet music,
that comes nearer and nearer. There's a chorus
coming with it. Hark, old girl, hark to the
words ! We must be getting to our journey's
end."
" Make way through the press, Oh yes ! Oh yes I
To the never despairing, the manfully daring,
Market is open, Oh yes ! Oh yes ! " - ^^
THE CHICKEN MARKET 251
Then, under the gloomy forest-paths, the
chickens all began to shine with their own light.
The wood was full of spirit lamps, for every
lamp was a Fairy. The glorious procession was
seen coming onward like the miracle of a bright
sunbeam in the midst of night. There was no
light but that which issued from the robes and
beaming faces of the Fairies.
On each side of the path the Fairies stood in
treble line, face over face. Behind and above
these keepers of the way, among the trees and
on the trees, a frolicsome crowd made with its
happiness a wall of light that shone reflected
from Ben Ody, in his royal purple, and Madge,
in her figured cotton gown. Hemmed in by
Fairy faces, of which every one looked lovingly
upon her Ben, a little dazed by the light, a little
troubled with embarrassment about her pattens,
the Goody took a firm grip of her husband's
arm, and happily marched on.
That path led to the open space of the great
Fairy Market, which is hemmed in by the dark
Forest of Doubt. The moon stood over it large and
round, but the whole market was filled in part
with its own emerald light from the robes of the
Fairies, in part with the white and rosy radiance
of their faces, and the glitter of a crowd of eyes
252 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
brighter than stars that cluster in the milky
way.
Goody Madge was beset by praises of her
chickens, and her heart warmed at the sound of
merry traffic from fragrant alcoves cut out of
the forest. She felt no more concern about her
pattens. Nobody heeded them, and yet it seemed
that everybody heeded her and her Goodman.
" What shall I give j^ou for those chickens,
mortal dame ? " a busy Elf asked of the Goody.
" Three shillings a couple, Madam, was their
price at Peni worth, but "
" Shillings ! What are shillings, you dear
friend ?
" Wit or beauty, troth to duty,
Strength to conquer or obey,
Heart to give well, soul to live well.
Such alone is Fairies' pay."
" That's a funny sort of money," said old
Madge, almost in rhyme.
Then another Fairy whispered, " Don't be
eager. Bide your time."
Goodman Ben Ody spoke with Yolk, and then
began to sing :
" All the fowls that hither we bring,
Body and legs, liver and wing,
We mean to present to the Fairy King."
Then there was more music and more chorus-
THE CHICKEN MARKET 253
ing, and, in the middle of the market-place,
Oberon, who descended in form of a moonbeam,
became visibly present on a bed of night-flowers
there laid for him. The burden of the chorus
changed when in a ring of dancing light the
Fairies stood about the royal couch and fixed
their eyes upon Ben Ody and his wife, as they
were left alone together in the great space
opposite the King.
" To you he descends ; you are his friends.
To the never despairing, the manfully daring,
Oberon speaks and the world attends."
" Your chickens shall come into my barn-
yard, Goodman Ody," said the King. " What
shall I give you more than thanks for them ? "
" Only 3^our hand to kiss," Ben stammered.
The circle of the Fairies closed in on the
Goodman and his wife, as Oberon stretched forth
his royal hand. Ben stood erect when he had
kissed it ; erect even when he saw the Fairy
King rise from his couch, and bending reverently
over it, himself kiss the brown, wrinkled hand of
the old Goody.
" Goodman Ben Ody," said His Majesty,
*' you that have kissed the hand of Oberon, are
minded to go back to Peniworth and dig with
a new strength in your own farm. Out of the
254 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
fulness of your heart as of your hand, you will
deal wisely, liberally, gently, with your fellows.
The wiser you become, the better will you feel
why Oberon paid homage to your faithful wife.
Dame Margery requires none of your Fairy lore.
Look down, fortunate husband, into the old eyes
under her spectacles, and learn to read in them
the greater mysteries of a good woman's soul."
Margery's hand shook, and her pattens clicked
together, as she heard these fine things said
about herself. It was odd that they should
make her think of her lame youngest boy, the
cowherd, and a great deal more curious that he
should take that very time to pull the bobbin
and come limping in over the stone floor of her
kitchen. Never before was known such easy
travelling as the return from Oberon's Court
into the old house-place. Ben, in his usual
smock, and with the usual freckles and wrinkles,
was only fetching his spade out of the tool-house.
But there had been no dreaming. The chickens
were gone, and, in a suit of corduroy, a fair-sized
ploughboy, with a face yellow and seamed as an
old pea, there was Yolk smoking his pipe in the
chimney-corner.
XVI
THE INHERITANCE
There was once a farmer who was well off. He
had three sons. When he was on the bed of
death he called them to him and said, " My
sons, I am going to leave you ; let there be no
disputing when I am gone. In a certain drawer,
in a dresser in the inner room, you will find a
sum of gold ; divide it fairly and honestly
amongst you, work the farm, and live together
as you have done with me " ; and shortly after the
old man went away. The sons buried him, and
when all was over they went to the drawer,
and when they drew it out there was nothing
in it.
They stood for a while without speaking a
word. Then the youngest spoke. " There is no
knowing if there ever was any money at all."
" There was money, surely, wherever it is now,"
said the second ; and the eldest said, " Our
father never told a lie. There was money, cer-
tainly, though I cannot understand the matter.
256 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
Come, let us go to such an old man ; he was
our father's friend ; he knew him well ; he was
at school with him ; and no man knew so much of
his affairs. Let us go to consult him."
So the brothers went to the house of the old
man and told him all that had happened.
" Stay with me," said the old man, " and I
will think over this matter. I cannot under-
stand it ; but, as you know, your father and I
were very great with each other. When he had
children I stood sponsor, and when I had children
he did the same. I know that your father never
told a lie." And he kept them there, and gave
them meat and drink for ten days.
Then he sent for the three young lads, and he
made them sit down beside him, and said :
" There was once a young lad, and he was
poor, and he fell in love with the daughter of a
rich neighbour. The maiden loved him too,
but because he was so poor there could be no
wedding. At last they pledged themselves to
each other, and the young man went away and
stayed in his own house. After a time there
came another suitor, and because he was well-'
off, the girl's father made her promise to marry
him, and after a time they were married. But
directly afterwards the bridegroom found her
THE INHERITANCE 257
weeping and bewailing. ' What ails thee ? ' he
said. The bride would say nothing for a long
time, then she told him all about it, and how she
had pledged herself to another. ' Dress thyself,'
said the man, ' and follow me.' So she dressed
herself in her wedding clothes, and he took the
horse, and put her behind him, and rode to the
house of the other man, leaving the bride there
at the door while he returned home.
What brought thee here ? ' said he.
The man I married to-day. When I told
him of the promise we had made he brought me
here himself and left me.'
" Immediately he loosed the maiden from the
promise she had given, and set her on the horse,
telling her to return to her husband.
" So the bride rode away. She had not gone
far when she came to a thick wood where three
robbers stopped and seized her.
Aha ! ' said one, " we have waited long,
and have got nothing, but now we have the
bride herself.'
Oh,' said she, ' let me go, let me go to
my husband. Plere are ten pounds in gold-
take them, and let me go on my journey.' So
she begged and prayed for a long time.
"At last one of the robbers, who was of a
17
258 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
better nature than the rest, said, ' Come, I will
take you home myself.'
" ' Take thou the money,' said she.
- ' I will not take a penny,' said the robber,
but the other two said, ' Give us the money,'
and they took the ten pounds.
-The maiden rode home, and the robber
left her at her husband's door.
- Now," said the old man, " which of all these
do you think did best ? "
" I think the man that sent the maiden to
him to whom she was pledged, was the honest
generous man," said the eldest son. " He did
well." ^ ,
The second said, " Yes, but the man to whom
she was pledged did still better, when he sent
her to her husband."
- Then," said the youngest, " I don't know
myself ; but perhaps the wisest of all were the
robbers who got the money."
Then the old man rose up and said, '' Thou
hast thy father's gold and silver. I have kept
you here for ten days. I have watched you well.
I know your father never told a he, and thou
hast stolen the money." So the youngest son
had to confess the fact, and the money was got
and divided.
XVII
THE GIANT'S STAIRS
On the road between Passage and Cork there is
an old mansion called Ronayne's Court. It may
be easily known from the stack of chimneys and
the gable ends, which are to be seen, look at it
which way you will. Here it was that Maurice
Ronayne and his wife Margaret kept house, as
may be learned to this day from the great old
chimney-piece, on which is carved their arms.
They were a mighty worthy couple, and had but
one son, who was called Philip, after no less a
person than the King of Spain.
Immediately on his smelhng the cold air of
this world the child sneezed, and it was naturally
taken to be a good sign of his having a clear
head ; but the subsequent rapidity of his learning
was truly amazing, for on the very first day a
primer was put into his hand he tore out the
ABC page and destroyed it, as a thing quite
beneath his notice. No wonder then that both
father and mother were proud of their heir, who
260 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
gave such indisputable proofs of genius, or, as
they call it in that part of the world, " genus.
One morning, however, Master Phil, who
was then just seven years old, was missing, and
no one could tell what had become of him;
servants were sent in all directions to seek him
on horseback and on foot, but they returned
without any tidings of the boy, whose disap-
pearance altogether was most unaccountable.
A large reward was offered, but it brought them
no news, and years rolled away without Mr. and
Mrs. Ronayne having obtained any satisfactory
account of the fate of their lost child.
There lived, at this time, one Robert Kelly,
a blacksmith by trade. He was what is termed
a handy man, and his abilities were held m much
estimation by the lads and the lasses of the
neighbourhood; for, independent of shoeing
horses, which he did to great perfection, and
making plough irons, he interpreted dreams for
the young women, sang at their weddings, and
was so good-natured a fellow at a chnstemng,
that he was godfather to half the country
round.
Now it happened that Robin had a dream
himself, and young Philip Ronayne appeared to
him in it at the dead hour of the night. Robin
THE GIANTS STAIRS 261
thought he saw the boy mounted upon a beautiful
white horse, and that he told him how he was
made a page to the giant Mahon MacMahon,
who had carried him off, and who held his court
in the hard heart of the rock. " The seven years
— my time of service — are clean out, Robin,"
said he, " and if you release me this night, I
will be the making of you for ever after."
" And how will I know," said Robin — cunning
enough, even in his sleep — " but this is all a
dream ? "
" Take that," said the boy, " for a token,"
and at the word the white horse struck out with
one of his hind legs, and gave poor Robin such
a kick in the forehead, that, thinking he was a
dead man, he roared as loud as he could after
his brains, and woke up calhng a thousand
murders. He found himself in bed, but he had
the mark of the blow, the legular print of a
horseshoe upon his forehead, as red as blood ;
and Robin Kelly, who never before found him-
self puzzled at the dream of any other person,
did not know what to think of his own.
Robin was well acquainted with the Giant's
Stairs, as, indeed, who is not that knows the
harbour ! They consist of great masses of rock,
which, piled one above another, rise like a flight
262 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
of steps, from very deep water, against the bold
cliff of Carrigmahon. Nor are they badly suited
for stairs to those who have legs of sufficient
length to stride over a moderate-sized house, or
to enable them to clear the space of a mile in a
hop, step, and jump. Both these feats the giant
MacMahon was said to have performed, in the
days of Finnian glory, and the common tradition
of the country placed his dwelling within the cliff
up whose side the stairs led.
Such was the impression which the dream made
on Robin, that he determined to put its truth to
the test. It occurred to him, however, before
setting out on this adventure, that a plough iron
may be no bad companion, as, from experience,
he knew it was an excellent knock-down argument,
having, on more occasions than one, settled a
little disagreement very quietly ; so, putting one
on his shoulder, off he marched in the cool of the
evening through the Hawk's Glen to Monkstown.
Here an old gossip of his, Tom Clancey by name,
lived, who, on hearing Robin's dream, promised
him the use of his skiff, and moreover, offered
to assist in rowing it to the Giant's Stairs.
After a supper which was of the best, they
embarked. It was a beautiful still night, and
the little boat glided swiftly along. The regular
THE GIANTS STAIRS 263
dip of the oars, the distant song of the sailor,
and sometimes the voice of a belated traveller
at the ferry, alone broke the quietness of the land
and sea and sky. The tide was in their favour,
and in a few minutes Robin and his friend
rested on their oars under the dark shadow of
the Giant's Stairs. Robin looked anxiously for
the entrance to the Giant's palace, which, it
was said, may be found by any one seeking it at
midnio-ht ; but no such entrance could he see.
His impatience had hurried him there before
that time, and after waiting a considerable
space in a state of suspense not to be described,
Robin, with pure vexation, could not help ex-
claiming to his companion, " 'Tis a pair of fools
we are, Tom Clancey, for coming here at all on
the strength of a dream."
" And whose doing is it," said Tom, " but
your own ? "
At the moment he spoke, they perceived a
faint ghmmering light to proceed from the cliff,
which gradually increased until a porch big enough
for a king's palace unfolded itself almost on a
level with the water. They pulled the skiff
directly towards the opening, and Robin Kelly,
seizing his plough iron, boldly entered with a
strong hand and a stout heart. Wild and
264 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
strange was that entrance ; the whole of which
appeared formed of grim and grotesque faces,
blending so strangely each with the other that
it was impossible to define any ; the chin of one
formed the nose of another ; what appeared to
be a fixed and stern eye, if dwelt upon, changed
to a gaping mouth, and the lines of the lofty
forehead grew into a majestic and flowing beard.
The more Robin allowed himself to contemplate
the forms around him, the more terrific they
became ; and the stony expression of this crowd
of faces assumed a savage ferocity as his imagina-
tion converted feature after feature into a dif-
ferent shape and character. Losing the twilight
in which these forms were visible, he advanced
through a dark and devious passage, whilst a
deep and rumbling noise sounded as if the rock
was about to close upon him and swallow him
up alive for ever. Now, indeed, poor Robin
felt afraid.
" Robin, Robin," said he, " if you were a
fool for coming here, what in the name of fortune
are you now ? " But as before, he had scarcely
spoken, when he saw a small light twinkling
through the darkness of the distance, like a star
in the midnight sky. To retreat was out of the
question ; for so many turnings and windings
THE GIANT'S STAIRS 265
were in the passage, that he considered he had
but Httle chance of making his way back. He
therefore proceeded towards the Hght, and came
at last into a spacious chamber, from the roof of
which hung the soHtary lamp that had guided
him. Emerging from such profound gloom, the
single lamp afforded Robin abundant light to
discover several gigantic figures seated round a
massive stone table, as if in serious deliberation,
but no word disturbed the breathless silence
which prevailed. At the head of this table sat
Mahon MacMahon himself, whose majestic beard
had taken root, and in the course of ages grown
into the stone slab. He was the first who
perceived Robin, and instantly starting up,
drew his long beard from out the huge lump
of rock in such haste, and with so sudden a
jerk, that it was shattered into a thousand
pieces.
" What seek you ? " he demanded in a voice
of thunder.
" I come," answered Robin, with as much
boldness as he could put on — for his heart was
almost fainting within him — " I come," said he,
" to claim Philip Ronayne, whose time of service
is out this night."
" And who sent you here ? " said the giant.
266 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
" 'Twas of my own accord I came," said
Robin.
" Then you must single him out from among
my pages." said the giant ; " and if you fix on
the wrong one your life is the forfeit. Follow me."
He led Robin into a hall of vast extent and
filled with lights ; along either side were rows of
beautiful children all apparently seven years
old, and none beyond that age, dressed in green,
and every one dressed exactly alike.
" Here," said Mahon, " you are free to take
Philip Ronanye, if you will ; but, remember,
I give but one choice."
Robin was sadly perplexed, for there were
hundreds upon hundreds of children, and he had
no very clear recollection of the boy he sought.
But he walked along the hall, by the side of Mahon
as if nothing was the matter, although his great
iron dress clanked fearfully at every step, sound-
ing louder than Robin's own sledge battering on
his anvil.
They had nearly reached the end of the hall
without speaking, when Robin, seeing that the
only means he had was to make friends with the
giant, determined to try what effect a few soft
words might have upon him.
" 'Tis a fine wholesome appearance the poor
THE GIANT'S STAIRS 267
children carry," remarked Robin, *' although
the}^ have been here so long shut out from the
fresh air and the blessed light of heaven. 'Tis
tenderly your honour must have reared them 1 "
" Ay," said the giant, " that is true for you,
so give me your hand ; for you are, I believe, a
very honest fellow for a blacksmith."
Robin at the first look did not much like the
huge size of the hand, and therefore presented
his plough-iron, which the giant seizing, twisted
in his grasp round and round again as if it had
been a potato stalk ; on seeing this all the
children set up a shout of laughter. In the midst
of their mirth Robin thought he heard his name
called, and, all ear and eye, he put his hand
on the boy whom he fancied had spoken, crying
out at the same time, " Let me live or die for
it, but this is young Phil Ronayne."
" It is Philip Ronayne — happy Philip Ron-
ayne," said his young companions, and in an
instant the hall became dark. Crashing noises
were heard, and all was in strange confusion ;
but Robin held fast his prize, and found himself
lying in the grey dawn of the morning at the head
of the Giant's Stairs with the boy clasped in
his arms.
Robin had plenty of gossips to spread the
268 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
story of his wonderful adventure ; the whole
barony rung with it.
*' Are you quite sure, Robin, it is young
Phil Ronayne you have brought back with you ? "
was the regular question ; for although the boy
had been seven years away, his appearance now
was just the same as on the day he was missed.
He had neither grown taller nor older in look,
and he spoke of things which had happened before
he was carried off as one awakened from sleep,
or as if they had occurred yesterday.
" Am I sure ? Well, that's a queer question,"
was Robin's reply ; " seeing the boy has the blue
eyes of the mother, with the foxy hair of the
father, to say nothing of the wart on the right
side of his little nose."
However Robin Kelly may have been ques-
tioned, the worthy couple of Ronayne's Court
doubted not that he was the deliverer of their
child from the power of the giant MacMahon,
and the reward they bestowed upon him equalled
their gratitude.
Philip Ronayne lived to he an old man, and
he was remarkable- to the day of his death for
his skill in working in brass and iron, which it was
believed he had learned during his seven years'
apprenticeship to the giant Mahon MacMahon.
XVIII
THE KING OF LOCHLIN'S THREE
DAUGHTERS
There was a king over Lochlin, once upon a time,
who had three daughters. They went out on a
day to take a walk, and there came three giants,
who took with them the daughters of the king,
and there was no knowing where they had gone.
Then the king sent word for the wise man of
the place, and he asked him if he knew where
his daughters had gone. The wizard said to the
king that three giants had taken them with them,
and they were in the earth down below, and there
was no way to get them but by making a ship
that would sail on sea and land. So it was that
the king set out an order, any one who would
build a ship that would sail on sea and on land,
that he would get the king's big daughter to
marry.
There was a widow there who had three sons ;
and the eldest said to his mother, " Cook for me
a bannock. I am going away to cut wood and
269
270 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
to build a ship that will go to seek the daughters
of the king. Give me a big bannock ; it will be
small enough before I build a ship."
He got it and went away. He arrived where
there was a great wood and a river, and there
he sat at the side of the river to eat his bannock.
A great Shape came out of the river and she
asked a part of his meal. He said that he would
not give her a morsel, that it was little enough
for himself. He began cutting the wood, and
every tree he cut would be on foot again ; and
so he was till the night came.
When the night came, he went home mourn-
fully and tearfully. His mother asked, " How
went it with thee to-day, my son ? "
" But black ill," answered the lad. " Every
tree I would cut would be on foot again."
A day or two after this, the middle brother
said that he himself would go ; and he asked his
mother to cook him a cake ; and in the very
way as it happened to his eldest brother, so it
happened to him. The Shape came from the
water and asked a part of the cake. He gave it
her. When she had eaten her own share of the
bannock, she said to him that she knew what
had brought him there as well as he himself,
but he was to go home, and to be sure to meet
KING OF LOCHLIN'S THREE DAUGHTERS 271
her there at the end of a day and year ; and that
the ship would be ready at the end.
It was thus it happened. At the end of a
day and a year the widow's young son went,
and found the ship floating on the river, fully
equipped. He went away then with the ship,
with a following of gentlemen, as great as were
in the kingdom, to marry the daughters of the king.
They were but a short time sailing when they
saw a man drinking a river that was there. They
asked him, " What art thou doing there ? "
" I am drinking up this river."
" Thou hadst better come with me, and I
will give thee meat and wages, and better work
than that."
" I will," said he.
They had not gone forward far, when they
saw a man eating stoats in a park.
" What art thou doing there ? " said he.
" I am here going to eat all the stoats in this
park."
" Thou hadst better go with me, and thou
wilt get work and wages better than raw flesh."
" I will," said he.
They went but a short distance when they
saw another man with his ear to the earth.
" What art thou doing there ? " said he.
272 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
** I am here hearing the grass coming through
earth."
" Go with me, and thou wilt get meat and
better wages than to be there with thy ear to
the earth."
They were thus saihng back and forwards,
when the man who was hstening said, " This is
the place in which are the king's daughters and
the giants."
The widow's son and the three who had
fallen in with them were let down in a creel in
a great hole that was there. They reached the
house of the big giant.
" Ha ! ha ! " said the giant, " I know well
what thou art seeking here. Thou art seeking
the king's daughter, but thou wilt not get that,
unless thou hast a man that will drink as much
water as I."
He set the man who was drinking the river
to hold drinking against the giant, and before
he was half satisfied the giant burst. Then they
went where the second giant was.
" Ho, both ! ha, hath ! " said the giant. " I
know well what sent thee here, thou art seeking
the king's daughter ; but thou shalt not get
her, if thou hast not a man who will eat as much
flesh as I."
KING OF LOCHLIN'S THREE DAUGHTERS 273
He set the man who was eating the stoats
to hold the eating of flesh against the giant, but
before he was half satisfied the giant burst.
Then he went where the third giant was.
" Haio ! " said the giant. " I know what
sent thee here ; but thou wilt not get the king's
daughter, by any means, unless thou stayest a
day and a year by me, a slave."
" I will do that," said he, and he sent up in
the basket, first the three men, and then the
king's daughters. The three great men were
waiting at the mouth of the hole till they should
come up, and they went with them to the king,
and told the king that they themselves had done
all the daring deeds.
When the end of a day and year had come, the
widow's son said to the giant that he was going.
" I have an eagle that will set you up to the
top of the hole," said the giant.
The giant set the eagle away with him, and
five stoats and ten for a meal for her ; but the
eagle went not half-way up through the hole
when she had eaten the stoats and returned
back again.
" Thou must remain by me another day and
year, then I will send thee away," said the
giant."
274 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
When the end of this year came he sent the
eagle away with him, and ten stoats and twenty.
They went this time well farther on than they
went before, but she ate the stoats and turned
back.
" Thou must," said the giant, " stay by me
another year, and then I will send thee away."
The end of this year came, and the giant
sent them away, with threescore of stoats for
the eagle's meat. When they were at the mouth
of the hole the stoats were eaten, and she was
going to turn back ; but he took a steak out of
his own thigh, and gave this to the eagle, and
with one spring she was on the surface of the
earth.
At the time of parting the eagle gave him a
whistle, saying, " Any hard lot that comes on
thee, whistle and I will be at thy side."
He did not allow his foot to stop, or empty
a puddle out of his shoe, till he reached the
king's big town. He went where there was a
smith in the town, and asked him if he wanted
a man to blow the bellows.
" Yes," said the smith.
He was but a short time there when the
king's big daughter sent word for the smith.
" I am hearing," said she, " that thou art
KING OF LOCHLIN'S THREE DAUGHTERS 275
the best smith in the town ; but if thou dost
not make for me a golden crown, like the one
that I had when I was with the giant, the head
shall be taken off thee."
The smith came home sorrowfully, and his
wife asked him his news from the king's house.
" There is but poor news," said the smith.
" The king's daughter is asking that a golden
crown shall be made for her, like the crown that
she had when she was under the earth with the
giant ; but what do I know what likeness was
on the crown that the giant had ? "
The bellows-blowing servant said, " Let not
that set thee thinking ; get thou for me enough
gold, and I will not be long making the crown."
The smith got gold as he was asked, with the
king's order. The servant went in to the smithy,
shut the door, and began to splinter the gold
asunder and to throw it out of the window. Each
one that came the way was gathering the gold that
the bellows lad was hurling out. Here, then, he
blew the whistle, and in the twinkling of an eye
the eagle came.
" Go," said he to the eagle, " and bring here
the golden crown that is above the big giant's
door."
The eagle went. She was not long on the
2;6 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
way, and brought the crown back with her.
The lad gave it to the smith, who went merrily
and cheerily with it to the king's daughter.
" Well then," said she, "if I did not know
that it could not be done, I would not believe
that this is not the crown I had when I was with
the big giant."
The king's second daughter then said to the
smith, " Thou wilt lose thy head if thou dost
not make for me a silver crown, like the one I
had when I was with the giant."
The smith took himself home in misery ;
but his wife went to meet him, expecting great
news and flattery. But so it was, and the
bellows-blower said that he would make a silver
crown if he could get enough silver.
The smith got plenty of silver with the king's
order.
The servant went and did as he did before.
He whistled ; the eagle came.
" Go," said he, " and bring hither here to me,
the silver crown that the king's middle daughter
had when she was with the giant."
The eagle went, and was not long coming
back with the silver crown. The smith went
merrily, cheerily, with it to the king's daughter.
" Well, then," said she, " it is marvellously
KING OF LOCHLIN'S THREE DAUGHTERS 277
like the crown I had when I was with the
giant."
The king's young daughter said to the smith
that he should make a copper crown for her,
like the one she had when she was with the
giant.
The smith now was taking courage, and went
home much more pleasantly this turn.
The lad began to splinter the copper, and to
throw it out of each door and window ; that
now they were from each end of the town
gathering the copper, as they were gathering
the silver and gold. He blew the whistle, and
the eagle was at his side.
" Go back," said he, " and bring here hither
to me the copper crown that the king's young
daughter had when she was with the giant."
The eagle went, and was not long going and
coming. He gave the crown to the smith, who
went merrily, cheerily, and gave it to the king's
young daughter.
" Well, then," said she, " I would not
believe that this was not the very crown that I
had when I was with the giant underground, if
there were a way of getting it."
Here the king said to the smith that he must
tell him where he had learned crown-making,
i
278 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
" for I did not know the like of thee was in the
kingdom."
" Well, then," said the smith, " with your
leave, oh king, it was not I who made the
crowns, but the lad I have blowing the bellows."
" I must see thy lad," said the king. " He
must make a crown for myself."
The king ordered four horses in a coach that
they should go to seek the smith's servant.
When the coach came to the smithy, the lad
was smutty and dirty, blowing the bellows.
The horsemen came in and asked for the man
who was going to look on the king.
" That is he yonder, blowing the bellows,"
said the smith.
" Ooo ! ooo ! " said they, and they caught
him and threw him head foremost into the
coach, as if they had a dog.
They went not far on their journey when he
blew the whistle. The eagle was at his side.
" If ever thou didst good for me, take me out
of this, and fill it full of stones," said he.
The eagle did so.
The king was out waiting for them, and
when he opened the door of the coach, he was
like to be dead with the stones bouncing on top
of him. He ordered the servants to be caught
KING OF LOCHLIN'S THREE DAUGHTERS 279
and hanged for giving such an affront to the
king.
Then the king sent other servants with a
coach ; and when they had reached the smithy,
" Ooo ! 000 ! " said they. " Is this the black
thing the king sent us to seek ? "
They caught him and cast him into the coach
as if they had a turf peat.
But they went not far on their way when
he blew the whistle, and the eagle was at his
side.
" Take me out of this," said he, *' and fill it
with every dirt thou canst get."
When the coach reached the palace, the
king went to open the door. All the dirt and
rubbish fell about the king's head. Then he
fell into a great rage, and ordered the horsemen
to be hanged immediately.
Then the king sent his own confidential
servant, and when he reached the smithy, he
caught the black bellows-blower by the hand.
" The king," said he, " sent me to seek thee.
Thou hadst better clean a Httle of the coal off
thy face."
The lad did so; he cleaned himself well,
and right well, and the king's servant caught him
by the hand and put him into the coach.
280 BRITISH FAIRY AND FOLK TALES
They were but a short time going, when he
blew the whistle. The eagle came, and he asked
her to bring the gold and silver dress that was
with the big giant here without delay, and the
eagle was not long going and coming with the
dress.
The lad arrayed himself in the gorgeous robe.
When they came to the palace, the king opened
the door of the coach, and there was the very
finest man the king ever saw.
Together they entered the palace, and the
lad told the king how it happened to him from
first to last.
The three great men who were going to marry
the king's daughters were hanged, and the king's
big daughter was given to him to marry. They
made them a wedding the length of twenty
days ; and I left them dancing, and I know not
but that they are cutting capers on the floor
till the day of to-day.
XIX
THE TAIL
There was a shepherd once who went out to
the hill to look after his sheep. It was misty and
cold, and he had much trouble to find them.
At last he had them all but one, and after much
searching he found that one too in a peat hag
half-drowned ; so he took off his plaid, and bent
down and took hold of the sheep's tail, and he
pulled ! The sheep was heavy with water, and
he could not hft her, so he took off his coat and
he pulled ! ! But it was too much for him, so
he spat on his hands and took a good hold of
the tail, and he pulled ! ! and the tail broke !
And if it had not been for that, this tale would
have been a great deal longer.
19
THE i:._ . ; :^^^ PUBLIC L{BWAi;Y
CiRCULATiOIJ DEPARTivlENT
COLUMBUS bRANCH, 742 yt^y^ .yg^.^
PRINTED BY
MORRISON AMD GJBB LTD.
EDINBURGH
S 5 9 6 1
^
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11