Dedication

For Sam

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Prayer

Introduction

Gobbleknoll

Shick-Shack

Vukub-Cakix

Tops or Bottoms

The Voyage of Maelduin

The Fort of Rathangan

Willow

Maggoty’s Wood

Edward Frank and the Friendly Cow

Yallery Brown

Moowis

The Lady of the Wood

A Voice Speaks from the Well

Bash Tchelik

Iram, Biram

The Goblin Spider

To the Tengu Goblins and other Demons

The Secret Commonwealth

The Piper of Shacklow

The Adventures of Nera

The Green Mound

A Letter

Halloween

Great Head and the Ten Brothers

Faithful John

The Trade that No One Knows

Jack and his Golden Snuff-Box

A Charm against Witches

Tarn Wethelan

Mist

Asrai

Hoichi the Earless

The Breadhorse

Ramayana

The Island of the Strong Door

The Smoker

R. I. P.

Wild Worms and Swooning Shadows

Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm

The Barguest of Nidderdale

Loki

Baldur the Bright

The Flying Childer

Father, Wait for Me

Glooskap

The Wonderful Wood

Wae’s Me

The Green Mist

Other Books by Alan Garner

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prayer

Graunt that no Hobgoblins fright me,

No hungrie devils rise up and bite me;

No Urchins, Elves, or drunkards Ghoasts

Shove me against walles or postes.

O graunt I may no black thing touch.

Though many men love to meet such.

John Day

1604

Introduction

“Believe the fairy tales. What were the fairy tales, they will come true.”

That is a common beginning to Russian stories, and it is a wise one. We have always tried to make sense of the natural forces in the world and of the hidden forces in ourselves. Sometimes we give them shapes as gods and devils and spirits; sometimes we make them into animals; sometimes we subject them to rules, which we call magic. And I would call much of magic “the science we have not discovered yet”.

Four hundred years ago, a man could write in England: “Our mothers maids have so terrified us with an ouglie divell having hornes on his head, fier in his mouth, and a taile in his breache, eies like a bason, fanges like a dog, claws like a beare, and a voice roring like a lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we hear one cry Bough; and they have so fraied us with bull beggers, spirits, witches, urchins, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, syleens, kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaures, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, conjurers, nymphes, changelings, Incubus, Robin good-fellowe, the spoorne, the mare, the man in the oke, the hell waine, the firedrake, the puckle, Tom thombe, hob goblin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our own shadows.”

Little has changed since then. We may have lost our faith in the terror of the cornfield and the greenwood, but we still need terror. Boneles and such other bugs now ride flying saucers, and it is in the galaxy, not the churchyard, that menace lies.

We need to be scared. It is healthy and good for us. But not all traditional stories are about confronting fear. They can show us our humanity and convey a sense of the numinous.

Traditional stories may be myth, legend, fairy tale or folk tale. Each of these terms has a different and technical meaning; but this book is not technical. It is for anyone that loves a story, whether the story be anecdote or epic.

I believe that story is, at root, universal; though it changes with, and benefits from, its cultural trappings. To test this I have taken some stories out of their context and put them into the words of my own family, especially into the words of my grandfather, Joseph Garner, who was a smith. In a village the glow of the dark smithy is, or was, a place of mystery, a boundary between worlds. What was spoken round the anvil was not spoken in the street. So, having selected and compared written texts, I took some of them back to my childhood and said: Please, Grandad, tell me this story. And I listened, and wrote what he told me. I did it for more than one reason.

Folk tales once belonged to everyone, though not everyone was qualified to tell them, and it is a comparatively recent assumption that they are for children only.

In this selection I have tried to get back, through the written word, a sense of the spoken. These stories, even the most formal, are to be heard as well as seen.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in Britain, traditional stories of the fantastic and the supernatural came under attack: directly from the Church, for being either lies or the work of the Devil; indirectly from the educated and the literate, who followed the new sceptical materialism; and incidentally from the growth of towns and cities, which obliterated the oral traditions that a settled rural community may sustain, but an urban society of strangers does not. The result was, by the middle of the nineteenth century, that stories that have existed in all times and in all places, as the common property of all, had been removed from their tellers and their audience and delivered up to child-minders and to scholars.

In the nursery, printed folk tales became tracts to support authority, with moral lessons inserted and the wilder elements tamed so that children should not be exposed to unseemly events. And in the academic world, the duty of the folklorist was to rescue and record the stories that had survived, without concern for a popular audience. On the one hand, the texts were made literary and trite; and on the other, remote and unattractive, since the accurate transcription of spoken words carries with it little of the performance, in which the vitality lies.

By nature, folk tale addresses itself to the ear rather than to the eye. Its first appeal is to a listener, and, since a listener is unable to stop and consider as a reader may, the form of the tale is direct. Plot evolves through physical action, and other concerns are kept in the listener’s head by repetition. When literary styles, based on reason, try to make sense of folk tale, they render it mundane. The real meaning is in the music; it is in the language: not phonetics, grammar or syntax, but pitch and cadence, and the colour of the word.

In this selection I have tried to get back, through the written word, a sense of the spoken. I have worked to recreate the moment of the telling, so that the printed word may sing.

Alan Garner

here was a hill that ate people. The Rabbit’s grandmother told him never to go near it.

So the Rabbit went to the hill, and shouted, “Gobbleknoll, swallow me! Come, devour me!”

But Gobbleknoll knew the Rabbit, and took no notice.

Later that day, a group of travellers came by, looking for a place to shelter from the rain, and Gobbleknoll opened his green and ferny lips, and the travellers thought that they had found a cave. They went in, and the Rabbit slipped close behind them. But the hill felt hairy pads on his tunnels, and before the Rabbit could reach the middle, Gobbleknoll threw him out, and the grass shut.

The Rabbit went and hid behind a tree, and a few days later a hunting party arrived at the hill just before night, and Gobbleknoll opened again. This time the Rabbit used magic art, and took the shape of a man, except for his ears, which he tucked down his shirt, so that they would not brush against the roof and make Gobbleknoll sneeze.

He went down long and horrid passages, until he came to the hill’s stomach, and there were the remains of all the victims, and some who were not yet dead.

“Hey hey hey!” shouted the Rabbit. “Why don’t you eat? You leave the best! Here’s a delicious heart. What’s wrong with that?”

Gobbleknoll set up a dismal howling, for it was his own heart that the Rabbit had seen. And the Rabbit knew this, and took out a knife, and stabbed the hill dead. The ground split, and the blue sky lit the deep hollows, and the living came out and wept before the Rabbit, and wanted to give him power and riches. But all the Rabbit would take was Gobbleknoll’s fat, and he went home with it on his back, and he and his grandmother were fit to burst from it for many a day.

ong, long ago, when the world had just been made, and the blue sky was being put up over it, Shick-Shack lived with a fox in a wilderness place.

One day, the fox said that he would go hunting.

“Then go to the hill,” said Shick-Shack. “Do not go to the lake.”

Well, the fox was away all that day, and at night he did not come home. And the next day, too, he did not come back.

“That fox,” said Shick-Shack, “has gone to the lake. And now I shall have to find him.”

So Shick-Shack went to the lake to look for the fox, but all he could see was a brown bird on a branch over the water.

“Brown bird,” said Shick-Shack, “why are you sitting there and staring down so at the water?”

The brown bird said nothing.

“Brown bird,” said Shick-Shack, “why won’t you speak?”

The brown bird said nothing.

“Brown bird,” said Shick-Shack, “if you’ll tell me why you are staring down so at the water, I’ll paint you with bright colours.”

“If you’ll paint me with bright colours,” said the brown bird, “I’ll tell you why I’m staring down so at the water.”

“Well, I’ll do that,” said Shick-Shack. And he painted the brown bird with bright colours.

Then the bird said, “The truth of why I’m staring down so at the water is that a fox came here the day before now; and the snake that lives in the lake has eaten the fox, and is down there, sleeping.”

“Hah,” said Shick-Shack. And he sat on the shore of the lake, and turned himself into a tree stump.

By and by, the snake came out of the water. And when it saw the stump, it said, “That’s no tree stump.” And the snake wound all its lubber length about the stump, and squeezed. The stump split, and said nothing.

“It is like a stump,” said the snake, “but it is Shick-Shack.”

Just then, a dog came along, and the snake said, “Dog, bite that stump with your teeth.” So the dog bit the stump with its teeth. And the stump said nothing.

“It is like a stump,” said the dog, and went away.

Next, a bear came along.

“Bear,” said the snake, “rip that stump with your claws.”

So the bear ripped the stump with its claws. And the stump said nothing.

“It is like a stump,” said the bear, and went away.

“It is a stump,” said the snake. “It is not Shick-Shack.” And it lay down on the shore, and went back to sleep.

The next thing was that Shick-Shack turned back from a stump into himself, and he throttled that snake, and threw it into the lake.

Now the water didn’t like that, and it came up out of the lake to drown Shick-Shack.

Shick-Shack ran, and the water came after. He ran to the hill, and ran up it. He ran to the top. The water came after. There was a tree at the top of the hill, and Shick-Shack climbed it. The water came after. Shick-Shack climbed to the top of the tree. The water came after.

Shick-Shack said to the tree, “Grow.” The tree grew. The water came after.

Shick-Shack said to the tree, “Grow.” The tree grew. The water came after.

Shick-Shack said to the tree, “Grow.” The tree grew. The water came after.

Shick-Shack said to the tree, “Grow.” The tree said, “I’ve done with growing.”

The water came after. Shick-Shack broke branches from the tree to make a raft, and he sat on the raft and floated over the water.

Shick-Shack saw an otter swimming by, and he said to the otter, “Have you seen any land?”

“No, I haven’t,” said the otter.

“Go and find some,” said Shick-Shack.

So the otter swam down into the water, and when she came back she said, “There is none.”

Shick-Shack saw a rat swimming by, and he said to the rat, “Have you seen any land?”

“No, I haven’t,” said the rat.

“Go and find some,” said Shick-Shack.

So the rat swam down into the water, and when she came back she said, “There is none.”

“Show me your paw,” said Shick-Shack.

The rat showed him her paw. And there were three grains of sand in it.

Shick-Shack put the three grains of sand on the water, and took some ants from the branches of the raft, and he said to the ants, “Walk round that sand.”

So they did. And the sand grew.

“More,” said Shick-Shack. The ants walked round the sand. The sand grew. Shick-Shack said, “More.” The ants walked round the sand. The sand grew. Shick-Shack said, “More.” The ants walked round the sand. The sand grew. “Is that enough?” said Shick-Shack.

So he put a wolf and her cub out on the new land, and the cub ran; and it ran and it ran, till it was an old wolf, but it never did reach the end of the land.

“Hah,” said Shick-Shack.

Then Shick-Shack grew an oak tree, and he lived there, in the oak tree, on the new land. And he was so glad, he sang a little song:

“Within and out, in and out, round as a ball,

With hither and thither, as straight as a line,

With lily, germander, and sops in wine.

With sweet briar,

And bonfire,

And strawberry wire,

And columbine.”

un-apu and Xbalanque were twin hero-wizards, warriors and mischief-makers, both the pride and the torment of Guatemala.

Vukub-Cakix, the Great Macaw, was nothing but trouble. He shone with the brilliance of gold and silver, and his teeth were emeralds, and he owned the nanze-tree of succulent fruit. He was a boaster, and his sons were no better. Their names were Zipacna the Earthmaker and Cabrakan the Earthshaker. The sons made mountains and then toppled them, and the father guzzled the harvests, so that between them they were a plague in Guatemala.

One day Vukub-Cakix climbed his nanze-tree to eat the fruit, but the fruit had been eaten already. He swung in the tree-top, screaming his rage, but the rage turned to pain as a blow-pipe dart struck him on the jaw, and he lost his grip and tumbled to the ground. While he lay there, winded, Hun-Apu jumped on him out of a bush and began to strangle him. Vukub-Cakix would have died then if he had not seen the pulp of the nanze-fruit smeared round Hun-Apu’s mouth. This angered Vukub-Cakix more than his throttling, and he swelled into monster-fury and tore Hun-Apu’s arm from its shoulder.

Vukub-Cakix went home with the arm, still chattering vengeance, and he built a fire and put the arm on a spit to roast. Then he lay on his bed in a sulk and nursed his jaw.

Hun-Apu found his brother Xbalanque. “We must get my arm back,” he said, “before it’s cooked, or it will be stiff for life.” So they made their way as doctors to Vukub-Cakix’s house.

“We are famous doctors,” they said, “and from the noise we hear there must be somebody in need of us.”

“Aiee,” said Vukub-Cakix. “Aiee.”

“That sound I diagnose as a bad case of Grimgums,” said Xbalanque.

“Og, og,” moaned Vukub-Cakix.

“And that’s Eyetitis,” said Hun-Apu.

“They’ll have to come out,” said Xbalanque.

“Yes, all out,” said Hun-Apu.

“But shall I be cured?” said Vukub-Cakix.

“Cured?” said the twins. “Why, you’ll not recognise yourself.”

So they took out Vukub-Cakix’s teeth and put in grains of maize, but they gave him nothing for his eyes. And from that moment Vukub-Cakix was harmless. His colours faded, his mouth was no terror, and whether or not he died, or wandered in the forest as a beggar, no one knew or cared. Hun-Apu pulled his arm off the fire and stuck it back on his shoulder.

But the twins had not yet finished their work. Vukub’s two sons were still alive, and trouble enough without the need to avenge their father’s disaster. They decided to deal with Zipacna the Earthmaker first, and got four hundred young men to help them.

The young men pretended to be building a house. They cut down the biggest tree of Guatemala, and Zipacna found them heaving and straining to lift it.

“Oh, Sir,” they said, “please help us carry this tree. It is the ridge of our new house, which we are making as an offering to those two heroes, the sons of Vukub-Cakix.”

“Weaklings,” said Zipacna, and hefted the tree on to his shoulder.

“This way,” said the four hundred young men. “This way, if you please, Sir.”

The giant carried the tree through the forest to a clearing where the young men had dug a pit deeper even than the giant was tall.

“That is for the foundations, Sir,” they said. “Would you be so good as to take the tree down there?”

Zipacna jumped into the pit. “Foundations are a funny place for roof ridges, aren’t they?” he said. In answer, the young men piled logs and rocks on his head, and when the pit was a mound, they danced on it to celebrate the death of Zipacna.

But Zipacna was not dead. He was holding his strength, and when he felt that all the young men were above him on the mound, he burst upwards, the great mountainmaker, and his force sent the young men flying into the sky, where they have remained ever since as the Pleiades, waiting for someone to help them down.

Hun-Apu and Xbalanque had watched all this, and felt that they now had the measure of their enemy.

They made a ravine below a mountain range, and at the bottom of the ravine they carved an enormous crab out of stone, and painted it so that it seemed alive. Crabs were Zipacna’s favourite food. Then the twins spread the rumour that the biggest crab in the world was hiding in the ravine, and before long Zipacna came to investigate. When he saw the crab he swallowed it at a gulp.

“Good,” he said. “But heavy. No doubt I’ll be sorry.”

And he was. The twins diverted a river into the ravine, and Zipacna was too weighted to swim, and the twins pushed the whole range on top of him and shaped it into a single mountain over his head, so that Zipacna was both drowned and buried, and he lies under Mount Meahuan even now.

This left Cabrakan the Earthshaker.

The twins worked on him through his conceit.

They found Cabrakan throwing rocks about. He took no care for anything. If one flattened a village, it was just too bad.

“Good morning,” said Hun-Apu. “Would you tell us what you are doing?”

“Can’t you see?” said Cabrakan.

He lobbed a boulder into a maize crop.

“And who are you two?”

“We have no names,” said the twins. “We hunt with the blow-pipe, and since we never meet anyone, we need no names. But may we stay and watch you?”

“If you like,” said Cabrakan.

The twins sat and stared at Cabrakan with the unwinking eyes of children, and said nothing, nor showed themselves impressed by anything he did. Cabrakan tried all the harder to make these two hunters applaud, until after a week of mountain-hurling he was dizzy with hunger and fatigue.

Hun-Apu then shot a bird and baked it in clay for the giant, but the clay he used was poisoned, and when Cabrakan took up his work again he trembled as if with fever.

“Our father was a weak man,” said Xbalanque, “but he did all you have done. His favourite game was to throw that mountain over there into the sea.”

Cabrakan strove to focus his eyes through the sweat.

“What, that little white pimple of quartz?” he said. “That’s too small for me to bother with.”

“So you say,” said Hun-Apu.

“And so I’ll show,” said Cabrakan. He staggered to the hill and put his arms about it.

Now this hill was not like any other hill or mountain. It had no roots in the earth, but was a piece of the earth itself that showed through the land, an unbroken, shining rock that went on for ever beneath the giant’s feet.

So Cabrakan, exhausted by his efforts, poisoned by his enemies, took hold of the world and tried to lift it. His knees knocked like war-drums.

“We’ve been wasting our time,” said Xbalanque.

“I knew he couldn’t,” said Hun-Apu.

Cabrakan gave one great heave. The top of his head blew off. And that was the last of the race of Vukub-Cakix in Guatemala.

Brownie was a type of goblin that lived in and around the farmhouse. He would often work for the people on the farm, but he had an unpredictable temper, and sometimes, as in this story, he was much more trouble than he was worth.

here was a brownie once who got above himself, and thought that because he stacked the hay (if he felt like it), and cleaned up in the kitchen (if it wasn’t too mucky), the whole farm belonged to him. He was for giving the farmer marching orders.

Of course farmer will have none of that, so brownie makes a great to-do at night, and it’s half a day’s work regular to clear up after him around the house. Well, then farmer gives over leaving milk out in a saucer by the hearth; and so it goes from bad to worse.

Anyway, brownie must have the big field, he says, and they chunner and chunner, calling each other all the names, so as women have to cover their ears for language. Anyway, it’s left that farmer will do the work, and they’ll share the crop half and half between them.

When Spring comes, farmer says, “Which will you have, tops or bottoms?”

“Bottoms,” says brownie.

So farmer plants wheat, keeps the grain for himself, and gives brownie the roots and stubble.

Next year, farmer says to brownie, “Which will you have, tops or bottoms?”

“Tops,” says brownie.

So farmer plants turnips, and brownie is left to make what he can of the leaves.

He’ll have none of it the next year: not tops or bottoms: he will not. Corn, says brownie, that’s what it must be, and the field divided in half, and brownie and farmer to have a mowing match, winner keep all.

July next, farmer goes to the blacksmith and has ever so many thin iron rods made, and he plants them all over brownie’s half of the field.

Anyway, they start mowing at daybreak. Farmer walks through his patch, up and down, sweet as a comb, but brownie’s snagged like I don’t know what.

“Mortal hard docks, these: mortal hard docks,” he keeps clacking.

Anyway, after an hour of this the rods have knocked the edge from his scythe and it’s as blunt as a plough handle, and brownie is right borsant.

Now in a match, mowers take time off together for sharpening up; so brownie calls to farmer, “When do we wiffle-waffle, mate?”

“Oh, about noon, maybe,” says farmer.

“Noon!” says brownie. “I’ve lost my land!”

He drops his scythe, and he’s never seen on that farm again. And no wonder.

Adapted from the Translation of WHITLEY STOKES

I have to admit to a weakness for Celtic legends. It would be all too easy to fill this book with them. For me, no other people were so rich and terrifying in their imagination. They found no need to explain: the stories often appear to be strung together at random – and yet there is always the feeling that everything is very simple. We are looking at a real and brilliant and logical world through strange glass.

You can take this story all at once, or bit by bit. All at once will crowd your brain with colour: bit by bit will make thoughts like yeast.

The Voyage of Maelduin’s Boat This. Three Years and Seven Months Was It Wandering in the Ocean.

here was a famous man of the Eoganacht of Ninuss (that is, the Eoganacht of the Arans): his name was Ailill of the Edge of Battle. A mighty soldier was he, and a hero-lord of his own tribe and kindred. And there was a young nun, the prioress of a church of nuns, with whom he met. Between them both there was a noble boy; Maelduin, son of Ailill, was he.

Now this boy was reared by the king’s queen, and she gave out that she was his mother.

Now the one fostermother reared him and the king’s three sons, in one cradle, and on one breast, and on one lap.

Beautiful indeed was his form, and it is doubtful if there has been in flesh anyone as beautiful as he. So he grew up till he was a young warrior and fit to use weapons. Great, then, was his brightness and his gaiety and his playfulness. In his play he outwent all his comrades, both in throwing balls, and running, and leaping, and putting stones, and racing horses. He had truly the victory in each of those games.

One day, then, a certain haughty warrior grew envious against him, and he said in raging anger, “You,” he said, “whose clan and kindred no one knows, whose mother and father no one knows, to vanquish us in every game, whether we contend with you on land or on water, or on the draughtboard!”

So then Maelduin was silent, for till that time he had thought that he was the son of the king and of the queen his fostermother. Then he said to his fostermother, “I will not eat and I will not drink until you tell me,” said he, “my mother and my father.”

“But,” said she, “why are you asking after that? Do not take to heart the words of the proud warriors. I am your mother,” said she. “The love of the people of the earth for their sons is no greater than the love I bear to you.”

“That may be,” said he: “nevertheless, make known my parents to me.”

So his fostermother went with him, and delivered him into his mother’s hand; and thereafter he entreated his mother to declare his father to him.

“Silly,” said she, “is what you are doing, for if you should know your father you would have no good of him, and you will not be the gladder, for he died long ago.”

“It is the better for me to know it,” said he, “however it be.”

Then his mother told him the truth. “Ailill of the Edge of Battle was your father,” said she, “of the Eoganacht of Ninuss.”

Then Maelduin went to his fatherland and to his heritage, having his three fosterbrothers with him; and beloved warriors were they. And then his kindred welcomed him, and gave great courage there.

At a certain time afterwards there was a number of warriors in the graveyard of Dubcluain, putting stones. So Maelduin’s foot was planted on the scorched ruin, and over it he was flinging the stone. A certain poison-tongued man – Briccne was his name – said to Maelduin: “It were better,” said he, “to avenge the man who was burnt there than to cast stones over his bare burnt bones.”

“Who was that?” said Maelduin.

“Ailill,” said he, “your own father.”

“Who killed him?” asked Maelduin.

Briccne replied: “Raiders of Leix,” said he, “and they destroyed him on this spot.”

Then Maelduin threw away the stone which he was about to cast, and took his mantle round him, and his armour on him; and he was mournful. And he asked the way to go to Leix, and the guides told him that he could go only by sea.

So he went into the country of Corcomroe to seek a charm and a blessing of a wizard who lived there, to begin building a boat. Nuca was the wizard’s name, and it is from him that Boirenn Nuca is called. He told Maelduin the day on which he should begin the boat, and the number of the crew that should go in her, which was seventeen men, or sixty according to others. And he told him that no number greater or less than that should go; and he told him the day he should set to sea.

Then Maelduin built a three-skinned boat; and they who were to go in it in his company were ready. German was there and Diuran the Rhymer.

So then he went to sea on the day that the wizard had told him to set out. When they had gone a little from land, after hoisting the sail, then came into the harbour after them his three fosterbrothers, the three sons of his fosterfather and fostermother; and they shouted to them to come back again to them to the end that they might go with them.

“Get you home,” said Maelduin; “for even though we should return to land, only the number we have here shall go with me.”

“We will go after you into the sea and be drowned there, unless you come to us.”

Then the three of them cast themselves into the sea, and they swam far from land. When Maelduin saw that, he turned towards them so that they might not be drowned, and he brought them into the boat.

1

They rowed that day till evening, and the night after it till midnight, when they found two small bald islands, with two forts in them; and then they heard out of the forts the noise and outcry of the drunkenness, and the soldiers, and the trophies. And this is what one man said to the other: “Stay off from me,” said he, “for I am a better hero than you, for it is I that slew Ailill of the Edge of Battle, and burnt Dubcluain on him; and no evil has so far been done to me by his kindred for it; and you have never done the like of that!”

‘We have the victory in our hands!” said German, and said Diuran the Rhymer. “Let us go and wreck these two forts.”

As they were saying these words, a great wind came upon them, so that they were driven over the sea all that night until morning. And even after morning they saw neither earth nor land, and they knew not where they were going. Then said Maelduin: “Leave the boat still, without rowing.”

Then they entered the great, endless ocean; and Maelduin afterwards said to his fosterbrothers: “You have caused this to us, hurling yourselves upon us in the boat in spite of the words of the enchanter and wizard, who told us that on board the boat we should go only the number that we were before you came.”

They had no answer, save only to be in their little silence.

2

Three days and three nights were they, and they found neither land nor ground. Then on the morning of the third day they heard a sound from the north-east. “This is the voice of a wave against a shore,” said Maelduin. Now when the day was bright they made towards land. As they were casting lots to see which of them should go on shore, there came a great swarm of ants, each of them the size of a foal, down to the strand towards them, and into the sea. What the ants desired was to eat the crew and their boat: so the sailors fled for three days and three nights; and they saw neither land nor ground.

3

On the morning of the third day they heard the sound of a wave against a beach, and with the daylight they saw an island high and great; and banks of earth all round about it. Lower was each of them than the other, and there was a row of trees around it, and many great birds on these trees. And they were taking counsel as to who should go to explore the island and see whether the birds were gentle. “I will go,” said Maelduin. So Maelduin went, and warily searched the island, and found nothing evil there. And they ate their fill of the birds, and brought some of them on board their boat.

4

Three days and three nights were they at sea after that. But on the morning of the fourth day they saw another great island. Sandy was its soil. When they came to the shore of the island they saw there a beast like a horse. The legs of a hound he had, with rough, sharp nails; and huge was his joy at seeing them. And he was prancing before them, for he longed to devour them and their boat. “He is not sorry to meet us,” said Maelduin; “let us go back from the island.” That was done; and when the beast saw them fleeing, he went down to the strand and began digging up the beach with his sharp nails, and pelting them with the pebbles, and they did not expect to escape from him.

5

When they went from the island they were a long while voyaging, without food, hungrily, till they found another island, with a great cliff round it on every side, and therein was a long, narrow wood, and great was its length and its narrowness. When Maelduin reached that wood he took from it a rod in his hand as he passed it. Three days and three nights the rod remained in his hand, while the boat was under sail, coasting the cliff, and on the third day he found a cluster of three apples at the end of the rod. For forty nights each of these apples fed them.

6

Then afterwards they found another island, with a fence of stone around it. When they drew near it a huge beast sprang up in the island, and raced round about the island. To Maelduin it seemed swifter than the wind. And then it went to the height of the island, and there it performed the trick known as “straightening of body”, that is, its head below and its feet above; and so it continued; it turned in its skin, that is, the flesh and bones revolved, but the skin outside was unmoved. Or at another time the skin outside turned like a mill, the bones and the flesh unmoved.

When it had been doing this for a long while, it sprang up again and raced about the island, as it had done at first. Then it returned to the same place; and that time the lower half of its skin stayed still, and the other half above ran round and round like a millstone. That, then, was its practice when it was going round the island. Maelduin and his people fled with all their might, and the beast saw them fleeing, and it went into the beach to seize them, and began to hit them with stones of the harbour. Now one of these stones came into their boat, and pierced through Maelduin’s shield, and lodged in the keel of the boat.

7

Now their hunger and thirst were great, and when their noses were full of the stench of the sea they sighted an island which was not large, and therein a fort surrounded by a white, high rampart as if it were built of burnt lime, or as if it were all one rock of chalk. Great was the height from the sea: it all but reached the clouds.

The fort was open wide. Round the ramparts were great, snow-white houses. When the warriors entered the largest of these they saw no one there, save a small cat which was in the midst of the house, playing on the four stone pillars that were there. It was leaping from each pillar to the other. It looked a little at the men, and did not stop itself from its play. After that they saw three rows on the wall of the house round about, from one doorpost to the other. A row there, first, of brooches of gold and of silver, with their pins in the wall, and a row of necktorques of gold and of silver; like hoops of a vat was each of them. The third row was of great swords, with hilts of gold and of silver.

The rooms were full of white quilts and shining garments. A roasted ox, moreover, and a flitch in the midst of the house, and great vessels with good intoxicating drink.

“Has this been left for us?” said Maelduin to the cat. It looked at him suddenly, and began to play again. Then Maelduin recognised that it was for them that the dinner had been left. So they dined and drank and slept. They put the leavings of the drink into the pots, and stored up the leavings of the food.

Now when they proposed to go, Maelduin’s third fosterbrother said: “Shall I take with me a necklace of these necklaces?”

“No,” said Maelduin. “Not without a guard is this house.”

Howbeit the fosterbrother took it as far as the middle of the enclosure. The cat followed them, and leapt through him like a fiery arrow, and burnt him so that he became ashes, and went back till it was on its pillar.

Then Maelduin soothed the cat with words, and set the necklace in its place, and cleansed the ashes from the floor of the enclosure, and cast them on the shore of the sea.

Then they went on board their boat.

8

Early on the morning of the third day after that they espied another island, with a brazen palisade over the midst of it which divided the island into two, and they espied great flocks of sheep therein, a black flock on this side of the fence and a white flock on the far side. And they saw a big man separating the flocks. When he used to fling a white sheep over the fence from this side to the black sheep it became black at once. So, when he used to cast a black sheep over the fence to the far side, it became white at once. The men were adread at seeing that.

“This were well for us to do,” said Maelduin. “Let us cast two rods into the island. If they change colour, we shall change if we land on it.”

So they flung a rod with black bark on the side where were the white sheep, and it became white at once. Then they flung a peeled, white rod on the side where were the black sheep, and it became black at once.

“Not encouraging was that experiment,” said Maelduin. “Let us not land on the island. Doubtless our colour would have fared no better than the rods.”

They went back from the island in terror.

9

On the third day afterwards they saw another island, great and wide, and a great mountain in the island, and they proposed to go and view the island from it. Now when Diuran the Rhymer and German went to visit the mountain they found before them a broad river which was not deep. Into this river German dipped the handle of his spear, and at once it was consumed, as if fire had burnt it. And they went no further.

10

They found a large island, and a great multitude of human beings therein. Black were these, both in bodies and raiment. Bands round their heads, and they rested not from wailing.

An unlucky lot fell to one of Maelduin’s two fosterbrothers to land on the island. When he went to the people who were wailing he at once became a comrade of theirs, and began to weep along with them. Two were sent to bring him back, and they did not recognise him amongst the others, and they themselves turned to lament.

Then said Maelduin, “Let four go,” said he, “with your weapons, and bring you the men by force, and look not at the land nor the air, and put your garments round your noses and round your mouths, and breathe not the air of the land, and take not your eyes off your own men.”

The four went, and brought back with them by force the other two, but not the fosterbrother. When they were asked what they had seen in the land, they would say, “Indeed, we know not; but what we saw others doing, we did.”

Thereafter they came rapidly from the island.

11

Thereafter they came to another lofty island, wherein were four fences, which divided it into four parts. A fence of gold, first: another of silver: the third of brass: and the fourth of crystal. Kings in the fourth division, queens in another, warriors in another, maidens in the other. A maiden went to meet them, and brought them on land, and gave them food. They likened it to cheese; and whatever taste was pleasing to anyone he would find it there. And she poured to them out of a little vessel, so that they slept a drunkenness of three days and three nights. All this time the maiden was tending them. When they awoke on the third day they were in their boat on sea. Nowhere did they find their island or their maiden.

Then they rowed away.

12

They heard in the north-east a great cry and chant. That night and the next day they were rowing that they might know what cry or what chant they heard. They beheld a high, mountainous island, full of birds, black and dun and speckled, shouting and speaking loudly.

13

They rowed a little from that island, and found another island that was not large. There were many trees, and on them many birds. And after that they saw in the island a man whose clothing was his hair. So they asked him who he was, and from where his kindred.

“Of the men of Ireland am I,” said he. “I went on my pilgrimage in a small boat, and when I had gone a little from land my boat split under me. I went again to land,” said he, “and I put under my feet a sod from my country, and on it I got me up to the sea. And that sod is established here for me in this place, and a foot is added to its breadth each year from that time to this, and a tree every year to grow therein. You shall all,” said he, “reach your country save one man.”

14

After that they voyaged till they entered a sea that resembled green glass. Such was its purity that the gravel and the sand of the sea were clearly visible through it; and they saw no monsters nor beasts therein among the crags, but only the pure gravel and the green sand. For a long space of the day they were voyaging in that sea, and great was its splendour and its beauty.

15

They afterwards put forth into another sea like a cloud, and it seemed to them that it would not support them or the boat. Then they beheld under the sea down below them roofed strongholds and a beautiful country. And they saw a beast huge, awful, monstrous, in a tree there, and a drove of herds and flocks round about the tree, and beside the tree an armed man, with shield and spear and sword.

When he beheld yon huge beast that abode in the tree he went from there in flight immediately. The beast stretched forth its neck out of the tree, and set his head into the back of the largest ox of the herd, and dragged it into the tree and devoured it in the twinkling of an eye. The flocks and the herdsmen fled away at once; and when Maelduin and his people saw that, greater terror and fear seized them, for they supposed that they would never cross that sea without falling down through it, by reason of its tenuity like mist.

So after much danger, they passed over it.

16

Thereafter they found another island, and up around it rose the sea, making vast cliffs of water all about it. As the people of that country perceived them, they set to screaming at them, and saying, “It is they! It is they!” till they were out of breath.

Then Maelduin and his men beheld many human beings, and great herds of cattle, and troops of horses, and many flocks of sheep. Then there was a woman pelting them from below with large nuts which remained floating on the waves above them. Much of these nuts they gathered and took with them. They went back to the island, and thereat the screams ceased.

“Where are they now?” said the man who was coming after them at the scream.

“They have gone away,” said another group of them.

“They are not so,” said another group.

Now it is likely that there was someone concerning whom the islanders had a prophecy that he would ruin their country and expel them from their land.

17

They got them to another island, wherein a strange thing was shown to them, to wit, a great stream rose out of the island, and went, like a rainbow, over the whole island, and descended into the other strand of the island on the other side thereof. And they were going under the stream without being wet. And they were piercing with their spears the stream above; and great, enormous salmon were tumbling from above out of the stream down upon the soil of the island. And all the island was full of the stench of fish.

18

Thereafter they voyaged till they found a great silvern column. It had four sides, and the width of each of these sides was two oarstrokes of the boat, so that in its whole circumference there were eight oarstrokes of the boat. And not a single clod of earth was about it, but only the boundless ocean. And they saw not how its base was below, or – because of its height – how its summit was above. Out of its summit came a silvern net far away from it; and the boat went under sail through a mesh of that net. And Diuran gave a blow of the edge of his spear over the mesh.

“Destroy not the net,” said Maelduin, “for what we see is the work of mighty men.”

“I do this that my tidings may be the more believed,” said Diuran.

And they heard a voice then from the summit of yonder pillar, mighty, and clear, and distinct. But they knew not the tongue it spoke, or the words it uttered.

19

Then they saw another island, standing on a single pedestal, to wit, one foot supporting it. And they rowed round it to seek a way into it, and they found no way thereinto; but they saw down in the base of the pedestal a closed door under lock. They understood that that was the way by which the island was entered. And they saw a plough on the top of the island; but they held speech with no one, and no one held speech with them. Then they went away back to sea.

20

They found a large island, with a great level plain therein. A great multitude was on that plain, playing and laughing without any cessation. Lots were cast by Maelduin and his men to see unto whom it should fall to enter the island and explore it. The lot fell to the first of Maelduin’s fosterbrothers. When he went he at once began to play and laugh continually along with the islanders, as if he had been with them all his life. His comrades stayed for a long, long space expecting him, and he came not to them. So they left him.

21

After that they sighted another island, which was not large; and a fiery rampart was round it; and that rampart kept turning about the island. There was an open doorway in the side of that rampart. Now, whenever the doorway would come opposite to them, they would see through it the whole island, and all that was therein, and all its indwellers, even human beings, beautiful, abundant, wearing adorned garments, and feasting with golden vessels in their hands. And the wanderers heard their ale-music. And for a long space were they seeing the marvel they beheld, and they judged it delightful.

22

Now, after they had gone from there they came to an island with abundant cattle, and with oxen and kine and sheep. There were no houses nor forts therein, and so they ate the flesh of the sheep. Then said some of them, seeing a large falcon there, “The falcon is like the falcons of Ireland!”

“That is true, indeed,” said some of the others.

“Watch,” said Maelduin, “and see how the bird will go from us.”

They saw that it flew from them to the south-east. So they rowed after the bird in the direction in which it had gone from them. At nightfall they saw land like the land of Ireland. They rowed towards it. They found a small island, and it was from this very island that the wind had snatched them into the ocean when they first went to sea.

Then they put their prow to the shore, and they went to the fortress that was in the island, and they were listening, and the inhabitants of the fortress were then dining.

They heard some of them saying, “It is well for us if we should not see Maelduin.”

“That Maelduin has been drowned,” said another man to them.

“Perhaps it is he who shall wake you from your sleep,” said another.

“If he should come now, what should we do?”

“That is not hard to say,” said the chief of the house. “Great welcome to him if he should come, for he has been a long time in trouble.”

Thereat Maelduin struck the clapper against the door-valve.

“Who is there?” said the doorkeeper.

“Maelduin is here,” said he himself.

“Then open!” said the chief. “Welcome is your coming.”

So they entered the house, and great welcome was made to them, and new garments were given them.

Maelduin then went to his own district, and Diuran the Rhymer took the five half-ounces of silver he had brought from the net. And they declared their adventures from beginning to end, and all the dangers and perils they had found on sea and land.

Now Aed the Fair, chief sage of Ireland, arranged this story as it stands here; and he did it so for delighting the mind and for the people of Ireland after him.

The fort over against the oak-wood,

Once it was Bruidge’s, it was Cathal’s,

It was Aed’s, it was Ailill’s,

It was Conaing’s, it was Cuilne’s,

And it was Maelduin’s;

The fort remains after each in his turn—

And the kings asleep in the ground.

Translated by Kuno Meyer

n a village in Japan there stood a green willow tree. For centuries the people loved it. In summer it was a place where villagers could meet after work and the heat of the day, and talk there till the moonlight fell through the branches. In winter it was a half-opened umbrella covered with snow.

A young farmer named Heitaro lived near the tree, and he, more than any other, loved the huge willow. It was the first thing he saw on waking, and the last at sleeping. Its shape greeted him when he returned from the fields, and all day he could see its crest. Sometimes he would burn a joss-stick beneath its branches and kneel down and pray.

One day an old man of the village came to Heitaro and explained to him that the people were anxious to build a bridge over the river, and that they particularly wanted the willow tree for timber.

“My dear willow for a bridge?” said Heitaro, covering his face. “Planks below feet? No! Take my own trees first, and spare the willow.”

The villagers accepted Heitaro’s trees, and the willow stood.

One night, while Heitaro was sitting under the tree he saw a beautiful woman close beside him. She stood, and looked at him shyly, as if she wanted to speak.

“Honourable lady,” said Heitaro, “I shall go home. I see you wait for somebody you love, and my presence here is uncouth.”

“He will not come now,” said the woman.

“Has he grown cold?” said Heitaro. “It is terrible when a mock love woos and leaves ashes.”

“He has not grown cold,” she said.

“And yet he does not come?” said Heitaro. “What strangeness is this?”

“He has come! His heart has been always here, here under this willow tree.” And the woman smiled, and left him.

Night after night they met there. The woman’s shyness disappeared, and it seemed that she could not hear too much praise of the willow tree from Heitaro’s lips.

One night he said to her, “Little one, will you be my wife?”

“Yes,” she said. “Call me Higo, and ask no questions, for love of me.”

Heitaro and Higo were married, and they had a son called Chiyodo, and they were happy.

Great news came to the village, and it was not long before Heitaro learnt it. The Emperor wished to build a temple in Kyoto, and his ministers were searching the land for the best of timber. It would be an eternal honour to have given even a fragment of that holy shrine, and the villagers looked around them for a sacrifice that would be worthy.

There was only the willow.

Heitaro offered every tree on his land, and the price of his farm, but only the willow had the quality that was sought.

“Oh, wife, my Higo,” he said that evening, “they are going to cut down the willow. Before I married you I could not have endured it. But, having you, perhaps I shall get over it some day.”

The same night, Heitaro held his wife close for comfort in his sorrow, but he was woken by a loud cry.

“It grows dark!” said Higo. “The room is full of whispers. Are you there, Heitaro? Listen! They are cutting the willow tree!”

“Hush, my love, hush. I am here.”

“They are cutting me! Look how the shadow trembles in the moonlight! They are killing me! Oh, how they cut and tear! The pain, the pain! Put your hands here, and here. Surely the blows cannot fall now!”

Heitaro tried to ease her pain, but nothing he did could heal her.

“Love,” she said, pressing her wet face to his, “I am going now. My body is breaking. Such a love cannot be cut down. Heitaro. Heitaro. My hair is falling through the sky!”

The willow tree lay green and tangled on the ground.

Maggoty’s Wood is old.

Nothing grows.

Nobody knows.

Nothing goes.

Grandfathers wouldn’t dare

At midnight. Fathers told

Of giggling; children scared

Silent to the centre, whooping out,

Could do it once, learning rain

And leaves, badgers, and to walk

Lanes after.

Maggoty’s Wood is old,

And when the lanes are sold

And the houses ponder through,

It becomes an Unspoilt View.

Where grandfathers wouldn’t,

And where fathers told,

And children could do once,

Is Woodend Close.

And nothing grows.

Beneath the playpen and

Beneath the bed,

Beneath the arrogant garden,

Nothing goes.

Nobody knows.

Alan Garner

s Edward Frank was coming home one night, he heard something walking towards him, but at first could see nothing. Suddenly his way was barred by a tall, dismal object which stood in the path before him.

It was a marvellous-thin man, whose head was so high that Edward nearly fell over backwards in his efforts to gaze at it. His knees knocked together, and his heart sank. With great difficulty he gasped forth: “In the name of God, what is here? Turn out of my way, or I will strike thee!”

The giant then disappeared, and the frightened Edward, seeing a cow not far off, went towards her to lean on her, which the cow stood still and permitted him to do.

This story, and “The Green Mist”, were told by the old people and the young children who lived in Lincolnshire before the fenlands were drained. I think that “Yallery Brown” is the most powerful of all English fairy tales.

’ve heard tell as how the bogles and boggarts were main bad in the old times, but I can’t rightly say as I ever saw any of them myself; not rightly bogles, that is, but I’ll tell you about Yallery Brown. If he wasn’t a boggart, he was main near it, and I knew him myself. So it’s all true – strange and true I tell you.

I was working on the High Farm to then, and nobbut a lad of sixteen or maybe eighteen years; and my mother and folks dwelt down by the pond yonder, at the far end of the village.

I had the stables and such to see to, and the horses to help with, and odd jobs to do, and the work was hard, but the pay good. I reckon I was an idle scamp, for I couldn’t abide hard work, and I looked forward all the week to Sundays, when I’d walk down home, and not go back till darklins.

By the green lane I could get to the farm in a matter of twenty minutes, but there used to be a path across the west field yonder, by the side of the spinney, and on past the fox cover and so to the ramper, and I used to go that way. It was longer for one thing, and I wasn’t never in a hurry to get back to the work, and it was still and pleasant like of Summer nights, out in the broad silent fields, mid the smell of the growing things.

Folk said as the spinney was haunted, and for sure I have seen lots of fairy stones and rings and that, along the grass edge; but I never saw nowt in the way of horrors and boggarts, let alone Yallery Brown, as I said before.

One Sunday, I was walking across the west field. It was a beautiful July night, warm and still, and the air was full of little sounds, as if the trees and grass were chattering to their selves. And all to once there came a bit ahead of me the pitifullest greetin I’ve ever heard, sob, sobbing, like a bairn spent with fear, and near heart-broken; breaking off into a moan, and then rising again in a long, whimpering wailing that made me feel sick nobbut to hark to it. I was always fond of babbies, too, and I began to look everywhere for the poor creature.

“Must be Sally Bratton’s,” I thought to myself. “She was always a flighty thing, and never looked after it. Like as not, she’s flaunting about the lanes, and has clean forgot the babby.”

But though I looked and looked I could find nowt. Nonetheless the sobbing was at my very ear, so tired like and sorrowful that I kept crying out, “Whisht, bairn, whisht! I’ll take you back to your mother if you’ll only hush your greetin.”

But for all my looking I could find nowt. I keekit under the hedge by the spinney side, and I clumb over it, and I sought up and down by, and mid the trees, and through the long grass and weeds, but I only frightened some sleeping birds, and stinged my own hands with the nettles. I found nowt, and I fair gave up to last; so I stood there, scratching my head, and clean beat with it all. And presently the whimpering got louder and stronger in the quietness, and I thought I could make out words of some sort.

I harkened with all my ears, and the sorry thing was saying all mixed up with sobbing:

“O, oh! The stone, the great big stone! O, oh! The stone on top!”

Naturally I wondered where the stone might be, and I looked again, and there by the hedge bottom was a great flat stone, near buried in the mools, and hid in the cotted grass and weeds. One of those stones as were used to call the Strangers’ Tables. The Strangers danced on them at moonlight nights, and so they were never meddled with. It’s ill luck, you know, to cross the Tiddy People.

However, down I fell on my knee-bones by the stone, and harkened again. Clearer nor ever, but tired and spent with greetin came the little sobbing voice.

“Ooh! Ooh! The stone, the stone on top.”

I was misliking to meddle with the thing, but I couldn’t stand the whimpering babby, and I tore like mad at the stone, till I felt it lifting from the mools, and all to once it came with a sigh, out of the damp earth and the tangled grass and growing things. And there, in the hole, lay a tiddy thing on its back, blinking up at the moon and at me.

It was no bigger than a year-old brat, but it had long cotted hair and beard, twisted round and round its body, so as I couldn’t see its clouts. And the hair was all yaller and shining and silky, like a bairn’s; but the face of it was old, and as if it were hundreds of years since it was young and smooth. Just a heap of wrinkles, and two bright black eyes in the mid, set in a lot of shining yaller hair; and the skin was the colour of the fresh turned earth in the Spring – brown as brown could be, and its bare hands and feet were brown like the face of it.

The greetin had stopped, but the tears were standing on its cheek, and the tiddy thing looked mazed like in the moonshine and the night air. It was wondering what I’d do, but by and by it scrambled out of the hole, and stood looking about it, and at myself. It wasn’t up to my knee, but it was the queerest creature I ever set eyes on. Brown and yaller all over; yaller and brown, as I told you before, and with such a glint in its eyes, and such a wizened face, that I felt feared on it, for all that it was so tiddy and old.

The creature’s eyes got some used to the moonlight, and presently it looked up in my face as bold as ever was.

“Tom,” it says, “you’re a good lad.”

As cool as you can think, it says, “Tom, you’re a good lad,” and its voice was soft and high and piping like a little bird twittering.

I touched my hat, and began to think what I had ought to say; but I was clemmed with fright, and I couldn’t open my gob.

“Houts!” says the thing again. “You needn’t be feared of me; you’ve done me a better turn than you know, my lad, and I’ll do as much for you.”

I couldn’t speak yet, but I thought: “Lord! For sure it’s a bogle!”

“No!” it says, quick as quick, “I’m not a bogle, but you’d best not ask me what I am; anyways, I’m a good friend of yours.”

My very knee-bones struck, for certainly an ordinary body couldn’t have known what I’d been thinking to myself, but it looked so kind like, and spoke so fair, that I made bold to get out, a bit quavery like:

“Might I be asking to know your honour’s name?”

“Hm,” it says, pulling its beard, “as for that,” and it thought a bit, “ay so,” it went on at last, “Yallery Brown you may call me; Yallery Brown. It’s my nature, you see. And as for a name, it will do as well as any other. Yallery Brown, Tom, Yallery Brown’s your friend, my lad.”

“Thank you, master,” says I, quite meek like.

“And now,” he says, “I’m in a hurry tonight, but tell me quick, what shall I do for you? Will you have a wife? I can give you the rampingest lass in the town. Will you be rich? I’ll give you gold as much as you can carry. Or will you have help with your work? Only say the word.”

I scratched my head. “Well, as for a wife, I have no hankering after such. They’re but bothersome bodies, and I have women folk to home as will mend my clouts. And for gold; that’s as may be,” for, you see, I thought he was talking only, and may be he couldn’t do as much as he said, “but for work – there, I can’t abide work, and if you’ll give me a helping hand in it, I’ll thank you.”

“Stop,” says he, quick as lightning. “I’ll help you, and welcome, but if ever you say that to me – if ever you thank me, do you see? – you’ll never see me more. Mind that now. I want no thanks, I’ll have no thanks, do you hear?” And he stamped his tiddy foot on the earth and looked as wicked as a raging bull.

“Mind that now, great lump as you be,” he went on, calming down a bit, “and if ever you need help, or get into trouble, call on me and just say, ‘Yallery Brown, come from the mools, I want thee!’ and I shall be with you to once. And now,” says he, picking up a dandelion puff, “good night to you.” And he blowed it up, and it all came in my eyes and ears.

Soon as I could see again, the tiddy creature was gone, and but for the stone on end, and the hole at my feet, I’d have thought I’d been dreaming.

Well, I went home and to bed, and by the morning I’d near forgot all about it. But when I went to the work, there was none to do! All was done already! The horses seen to, the stables cleaned out, everything in its proper place, and I’d nowt to do but sit with my hands in my pockets.

And so it went on day after day, all the work done by Yallery Brown, and better done, too, than I could have done it myself. And if the master gave me more work, I sat down by, and the work did itself, the singeing irons, or the besom, or what not, set to, and with never a hand put to them would get through in no time. For I never saw Yallery Brown in daylight; only in the darklins I have seen him hopping about, like a will-o-the-wyke without his lanthorn.

To first, it was mighty fine for me. I’d nowt to do, and good pay for it; but by and by, things began to go arsy-varsy. If the work was done for me, it was undone for the other lads. If my buckets were filled, theirs were upset. If my tools were sharpened, theirs were blunted and spoiled. If my horses were clean as daisies, theirs were splashed with muck. And so on. Day in, day out, it was always the same. And the lads saw Yallery Brown flitting about of nights, and they saw the things working without hands of days, and they saw as my work was done for me, and theirs undone for them, and naturally they began to look shy on me, and they wouldn’t speak or come near me, and they carried tales to the master, and so things went from bad to worse.

For – do you see? – I could do nothing myself. The brooms wouldn’t stay in my hand, the plough ran away from me, the hoe kept out of my grip. I’d thought oft as I’d do my own work after all, so as may be Yallery Brown would leave me and my neighbours alone. But I couldn’t. I could only sit by and look on, and have the cold shoulder turned on me, whiles the unnatural thing was meddling with the others, and working for me.

To last, things got so bad that the master gave me the sack, and if he hadn’t, I do believe as all the rest of the lads would have sacked him, for they swore as they’d not stay on the same garth with me. Well, naturally I felt bad. It was a main good place, and good pay, too; and I was fair mad with Yallery Brown, as had got me into such a trouble. So before I knew, I shook my fist in the air and called out as loud as I could:

“Yallery Brown, come from the mools; thou scamp, I want thee!”

You’ll scarce believe it, but I’d hardly brung out the words as I felt something tweaking my leg behind, while I jumped with the smart of it. And soon as I looked down, there was the tiddy thing, with his shining hair, and wrinkled face, and wicked, glinting black eyes.

I was in a fine rage, and should liked to have kicked him, but it was no good, there wasn’t enough of him to get my boot against.

But I said to once: “Look here, master, I’ll thank you to leave me alone after this, do you hear? I want none of your help, and I’ll have nowt more to do with you – see now.”

The horrid thing brak out with a screeching laugh, and pointed his brown finger at me.

“Ho ho, Tom!” says he. “You’ve thanked me, my lad, and I told you not, I told you not!”

“I don’t want your help, I tell you!” I yelled at him. “I only want never to see you again, and to have nowt more to do with you. You can go!”

The thing only laughed and screeched and mocked, as long as I went on swearing, but so soon as my breath gave out, “Tom, my lad,” he says, with a grin, “I’ll tell you summat, Tom. True’s true I’ll never help you again, and call as you will, you’ll never see me after today; but I never said as I’d leave you alone, Tom, and I never will, my lad! I was nice and safe under the stone, Tom, and could do no harm; but you let me out yourself, and you can’t put me back again! I would have been your friend and worked for you if you had been wise; but since you are no more than a born fool, I’ll give you no more than a born fool’s luck; and when all goes arsy-varsy, and everything agee – you’ll mind as it’s Yallery Brown’s doing, though happen you didn’t see him. Mark my words, will you?”

And he began to sing, dancing round me, like a bairn with his yaller hair, but looking older nor ever with his grinning wrinkled bit of a face:

“Work as you will,

“You’ll never do well;

“Work as you might,

“You’ll never gain owt:

“For harm and mischief and Yallery Brown

“You’ve let out yourself from under the stone.”

Ay! He said those very words, and they have ringed in my ears ever since, over and over again, like a bell tolling for the burying. And it was the burying of my luck – for I never had any since. However, the imp stood there mocking and grinning at me, and chuckling like the old devil’s own wicked self.

And man! – I can’t rightly mind what he said next. It was all cussing and swearing and calling down misfortune on me; but I was so mazed in fright that I could only stand there, shaking all over me, and staring down at the horrid thing; and I reckon if he’d gone on long, I’d have tumbled down in a fit. But by and by, his yaller shining hair – I can’t abide yaller hair since that – rose up in the air, and wrapped itself round him, while he looked for all the world like a great dandelion puff; and he floated away on the wind over the wall and out of sight, with a parting skirl of his wicked voice and sneering laugh.

I tell you, I was near dead with fear, and I can’t scarcely tell how I ever got home at all, but I did somehow, I suppose.

Well, that’s all; it’s not much of a tale, but it’s true, every word of it, and there’s others besides me as have seen Yallery Brown and known his evil tricks – and did it come true, you say? But it did sure! I have worked here and there, and turned my hand to this and that, but it always went agee, and it is all Yallery Brown’s doing. The children died, and my wife didn’t; the beasts never fatted, and nothing ever did well with me. I’m going old now, and I shall must end my days in the house, I reckon; but till I’m dead and buried, and happen even afterwards, there’ll be no end to Yallery Brown’s spite at me. And day in and day out I hear him saying, whiles I sit here trembling:

“Work as you will,

“You’ll never do well;

“Work as you might,

“You’ll never gain owt;

“For harm and mischief and Yallery Brown

“You’ve let out yourself from under the stone.”

e was the finest hunter, the greatest fighter, the swiftest runner, of all the tribes of the Algonquin. She was the most beautiful, the most skilful, the boldest maiden.

He could summon chieftains’ daughters. She was beloved of warriors.

He wooed her. She mocked him.

She told all who listened of how he had come to her, humble, gentle, naked in his heart. The squaws cackled, and the braves jeered, and he lay in his tent and dared not show his tears. The tears chilled his soul.

It was the time for the tribe to move north for the Summer. They broke the Winter camp, and the village was bustle and noise, but still he lay in his tent and would not come out, nor would he speak. So they took the tent from over him, and left him alone on the prairie, while they went north after the deer and the buffalo.

When there was only the level sky to see him, and the silence to hear him, he moved about among the ashes of the dead fires, and the patches of earth, and the forsaken rubbish, gathering a broken bead, a scrap of rotted leather, a twist of rag, a spoilt headdress; and he took them to a sheltered place among the rocks, where some of the Winter’s snow still lingered. He gathered the snow, and heaped it, as the village children did, and trimmed it and smoothed it, and rounded a head, and put in stones for eyes and nose and teeth. Then he stuck the bits of rubbish here and there about the snow, and when he had finished he sang a song.

The tribe watched him come into the camp one cold dawn a week later. He had travelled through the nights to be with them, and by his side was a tall and fierce warrior, a young chieftain of the Cree by the marks on feather and skin. The name of this warrior was Moowis.

She looked on the chieftain, and loved him. Her mother offered the hospitality of their tent, but Moowis said that he was on a journey of hardship and that he must sleep out in the open, with no cover from the frosts of Spring. So she spent her days in pursuit of a chieftain’s love, and left him to the stars at night. And she soon came to her desire, for Moowis took her for his bride.

Yet still she could not bring the chieftain to the tent. “When we reach home, my home,” said Moowis, “we shall share everything. Until then, be patient,” and he gave her a glittering smile.

The Cree lands were further to the north than the tribe hunted, and Moowis seemed anxious to travel fast, so the new bride and groom took their leave, and her old love, the spurned one, was the last and gayest in the parting.

Moowis urged the way north, and would not allow for her softer strength, and he kept to shadows by day, and made most speed by night. She went with him on bleeding feet, uncomplaining at the hurt, as a chieftain’s wife should. She endured the edges of the rocks and the thorns of the woods when they came to the northern mountains. She planned the fine clothes she would wear, and the dressing of her tent, and was happy with Moowis, her lord and her love.

On the last day, the sun rose in a clear sky. The first scents of growing were in the air, and she followed Moowis up a long cliff path, with neither shade nor shelter. The straight back of her husband, which she had never seen bend in all their journey, went before her. His chieftain feathers were proud.

Yet there was something.

His body he pressed to the cliff, and for all his strength, there was less speed to his pace. She could keep with him easily. The doeskin across his shoulders sagged, the sleeves wrinkled, the legs were slack. And in the growing warmth of the sun dark patches spread like sweat.

“Have you the fever?” she said.

But Moowis did not speak again. He stopped, the headdress fell, and she crouched alone, the chieftain’s bride, on the mountain path, over a puddle of melt-water and some rags and feathers drying in the sun.

inion the son of Gwalchmai was one fine morning walking in the woods of Treveilir when he beheld a graceful slender lady of elegant growth, and delicate feature, and her complexion surpassing every white and red in the morning dawn and the mountain snow, and every beautiful colour in the blossoms of wood, field and hill.

And then he felt in his heart an inconceivable commotion of affection, and he approached her in a courteous manner, and she also approached him in the same manner; and he saluted her, and she returned his salutation; and by these mutual salutations he perceived that his society was not disagreeable to her. He then chanced to cast his eye upon her foot, and he saw that she had hoofs instead of feet, and he became exceedingly dissatisfied.

But the lady gave him to understand that he must pay no attention to this trifling freak of nature. “Thou must,” she said, “follow me wheresoever I go, as long as I continue in my beauty.”

The son of Gwalchmai thereupon asked permission to go and say goodbye to his wife, at least.

This the lady agreed to. “But,” said she, “I shall be with thee, invisible to all but thyself.”

So he went, and the goblin went with him; and when he saw Angharad, his wife, he saw her a hag like one grown old, but he retained the recollection of days past, and still felt extreme affection for her, but he was not able to loose himself from the bond in which he was.

“It is necessary for me,” said he, “to part for a time, I know not how long, from thee, Angharad, and from thee, my son, Einion.” And they wept together and broke a gold ring between them; he kept one half and Angharad the other, and they took their leave of each other, and he went with the Lady of the Wood, and knew not where. A powerful illusion was upon him, and he saw not any place, or person, or object under its true and proper appearance, excepting the half of the ring alone.

And after being a long time, he knew not how long, with the goblin, the Lady of the Wood, he looked one morning as the sun was rising upon the half of the ring, and he bethought him to place it in the most precious place he could, and he resolved to put it under his eyelid; and as he was endeavouring to do so, he could see a man in white apparel, and mounted on a snow-white horse, coming towards him, and that person asked him what he did there; and he told him that he was cherishing an afflicting remembrance of his wife Angharad.

“Dost thou desire to see her?” said the man in white.

“I do,” said Einion, “above all things, and all happiness of the world.”

“If so,” said the man in white, “get upon this horse, behind me.” And that Einion did, and looking around he could not see any appearance of the Lady of the Wood, the goblin, excepting the track of hoofs of marvellous and monstrous size, as if journeying towards the north.

“What delusion art thou under?” said the man in white.

Then Einion answered him and told everything how it occurred ’twixt him and the goblin.

“Take this white staff in thy hand,” said the man in white, and Einion took it. And the man in white told him to desire whatever he wished for.

The first thing he desired was to see the Lady of the Wood, for he was not yet completely delivered from the illusion. And then she appeared to him in size a hideous and monstrous witch, a thousand times more repulsive of aspect than the most frightful things seen on earth. And Einion uttered a cry of terror; and the man in white cast his cloak over Einion, and in less than a twinkling Einion alighted as he wished on the hill of Treveilir, by his own house, where he knew scarcely anyone, nor did anyone know him.

But the goblin, meantime, had gone to Einion’s wife, in the disguise of a richly apparelled knight, and wooed her, pretending that her husband was dead. And the illusion fell upon her; and seeing that she should become a noble lady, higher than any in that country, she named a day for her marriage with him. And there was a great preparation of every elegant and sumptuous apparel, and of meats and drinks, and of every honourable guest, and every excellence of song and string, and every preparation of banquet and festive entertainment.

Now there was a beautiful harp in Angharad’s room, which the goblin knight desired should be played on; and the harpers present, the best of their day, tried to put it in tune, and were not able.

But Einion presented himself at the house, and offered to play it. Angharad, being under an illusion, saw him as an old, decrepit, withered, grey-haired man, stooping with age, and dressed in rags. Einion tuned the harp, and played on it the air which Angharad loved. And she marvelled exceedingly, and asked him who he was. And he answered in song:

“Einion the golden-hearted.”

“Where hast thou been?”

“In Kent, in Gwent, in the wood, in Monmouth,

“In Maenol, Gorwenydd;

“And in the valley of Gwyn, the son of Nudd;

“See, the bright gold is the token.”

And he gave her the ring.

“Look not on the whitened hue of my hair,

“Where once my aspect was spirited and bold;

“Now grey, without disguise, where once it was yellow.

“Never was Angharad out of my remembrace,

“But Einion was by thee forgotten.”

But Angharad could not bring him to her recollection. Then said he to the guests:

“If I have lost her whom I loved, the fair one of polished mind,

“The daughter of Ednyfed Fychan,

“Still get you out! I have not lost

“Either my bed, or my house, or my fire.”

And upon that he placed the white staff in Angharad’s hand, and instantly the goblin which she had hitherto seen as a handsome and honourable nobleman, appeared to her as a monster, inconceivably hideous; and she fainted from fear, and Einion supported her until she revived.

And when she opened her eyes, she saw there neither the goblin, nor any of the guests, nor of the minstrels, nor anything whatever except Einion, and her son, and the harp, and the house in its domestic arrangement, and the dinner on the table, casting its savoury odour around. And they sat down to eat, and exceeding great was their enjoyment. And they saw the illusion which the goblin had cast over them. And thus it ends.

Gently dippe: but not too deepe;

For feare you make the goulden beard to weepe.

Faire maiden white and redde,

Combe me smoothe, and stroke my head:

And thou shalt have some cockell bread.

Gently dippe, but not too deepe,

For feare thou make the goulden beard to weepe.

Faire maide, white, and redde,

Combe me smoothe, and stroke my head;

And every haire, a sheave shall be,

And every sheave a goulden tree.

George Peele

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.