The smithy was all aglow with a roaring fire on the hearth. Sparks were
flying. Hot fire-light flickered on the rafters overhead. It shone
upon a crowd of dogs and horses, and upon the gypsies’ donkey, Cuddy
Simpson, who was dozing in a corner. His head drooped; he rested a
strained fetlock wearily. Dogs barked; horses stamped; there was even
the merry feedle tweedle of a fiddle, to which the collies, Meg, and
Fly, and Glen warbled a treble chorus. And through all the din sounded
the tap, tap, tap! of Mettle’s little hammer on the anvil, and the
creaking of the bellows that another dog was blowing. The dog was Eddy
Tinker, the gypsy lurcher; and the hand-hold of the bellows was made of
a polished ox-horn. “Welcome, Pony Billy! but wait for Cuddy Simpson.
He has cast a foreshoe, and he is lame and weary. Wait till I fit him
with fairy shoes that will make him as lish as new legs. That’s why
the donkeys never die! They know the road to the fairy smithy!” “I can
wait,” said Pony Billy, who was fond of Cuddy Simpson.
Creak, creak! went the bellows, keeping time to the tune of Black Nag.
Louder still barked the dogs, and the horses stamped on the floor.
They talked of the good old days, when roads were made for horses,
“None of this tarry asphalt like a level river of glass; none of
this treacherous granite where we toil and slip and stumble, dragged
backward by our loads. None of these hooting lorries that force us
against the wall. Shrieking, oily, smelly monsters! and everybody has
one—the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker—even the fisherman
and the farmer. Where are the patient horses? Where is butcher’s
Ginger? and fishcart Fanny? and baker’s Tommy? Where is the hog-maned
mare with the shrapnel marks? Gone, gone—all gone to Oxo! I, Queeny
Cross, I, poor old mare, am the last nag left in a huckster’s cart. But
happen you like them, Mettle? you that work amongst iron and nails and
bolts?”
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“_I_ like them?” snarled Mettle, banging the hammer on the anvil,
“_I_ like those snorting juggernauts? I hate them as much as you do,
old Queen. They run over us dogs; they lame our cattle; they kill
our sheep.” (Ragman and Roy growled low.) “Think of the noble horses
in the grand old days of the road! Who needed a starting handle? Who
required to wind up a thoroughbred? Breed—give me breed!” barked
Mettle, “Will-Tom’s team in the Coniston coach for me! Now it’s rattle,
rumble, rattle, rattle, shriek, shriek, shriek! Gone are the pleasant
jog-trot days of peace. They have ruined the smithies and stolen the
roads. Shame upon the Big Folks!” said Mettle, banging on the anvil,
“even Mistress Heelis—her that was so fond of ponies—serve her right
to lose her clog!” “Where did she lose it, Mettle?” “Nay, that is a
mystery! It seemed to have clog danced right away and back. It came
home by Hawkeshead and it had been to Graythwaite. As to the how—”
(here Mettle interrupted his story to throw a shovelful of small coal
onto the hearth)—“as to the how she came to lose it, it was this
a-way. She had been on a long, long journey in one of these here
rattletraps; and when she got home and unpacked her luggage, she left
her clogs upon the shelf.” “What shelf was that, Mettle?” “What the
Big Folk that ride in motors call a ‘footboard,’ quite appropriate
for clogs. When the car went forth next morning there sat the pair
of clogs, still upon the footboard. They looked proud.” “One thing
surprises me,” interrupted white collie Fan, “does Mistress Heelis
really ever take her clogs off? I thought she went to bed in them?”
“They were off that day, sure,” said Mettle, leaning on the bellows
handle, “I saw them pass the smithy. They grinned at me; their buckles
winked. But when the car came home in the afternoon, there was only
one clog on the footboard, sitting by itself. The other one had fallen
off.” “Which foot’s clog was it, Mettle?” “Her best foot that she
puts foremost. She was sad. She inquired all over for her right-foot
clog; and she put a notice—LOST, A CLOG—in the window of the village
shop. The clog came home again after a while. My word! it had seen
some fun. Now it happened this a-way,” continued Mettle, turning the
donkey shoe with the tongs, and blowing white flame through the small
coal, “it happened this way.” The car took the bumpy road through the
woods by Eesbridge. The clogs joggled on the footboard; joggled and
giggled and nudged each other with their elbows; until—bump, bump,
bump! over a rise of the road, they came in sight of Joshy Campbell’s
tin-can-dinner-box and his big green gingham umbrella.
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Joshy was an old man with a reddish gray beard, who tidied the sides
of the roads. Always took out with him his tin-can-dinner-box, and his
great big bunchy umbrella. I never saw him use his umbrella; he carried
it always rolled up, to keep it out of the rain. All day, while Joshy
worked, the umbrella sat by the dyke, bolt upright and serious, with
a long, curved, hooky nose. And snuggled up beside it sat the dumpy
tin-can-dinner-box. When the clogs saw the umbrella they bounced up
with a shout—who-op! The left-foot clog bounced back upon the board and
continued to joy-ride; but the right-foot clog bounced right off. It
bounced onto the road and ran back—back, back, back! back to old Joshy
Campbell’s umbrella. The umbrella made a bow and stepped out of the
ditch; the dinner-box made a bob; the clog made a gambol; and away down
the road they all ran, hoppitty hop! without ever a stop, stoppitty
stop! or the slightest consideration for old Joshy Campbell. They ran
and they ran, and they hopped and they hopped. For a mile or two they
ran, and it was night before they stopped. Mettle drew the coal over
the donkey shoe with a little colrake, and plied the bellows.
“Where did they hop to; and stop at, Mettle?” “They hopped as far as
the middle of the great wood. It was darkish; but they could see to
follow the woodland track. For a long, long way they followed it,
winding amongst the bushes; until at length before them in the distance
they saw a pool of light. It was silvery, like moonlight; only it was
always streaming upwards; up from the ground, not downwards from the
sky above. The shining space was level, like the floor of a great
pitstead; it shone like a moonlit mere.
And on that shining floor were dancers—strange dancers they were!
Hundreds of filmy glittering dancers, dancing to silvery music;
thousands of tinkling, echoing murmurs from silver twigs and withered
leaves. And still from the dance floor a white light streamed, and
showed the dancing shoes that danced thereon—alone.
They tell me that in France there is a palace—a fairy palace; and
in that court, long mournful and deserted, there is a Hall of Lost
Footsteps, the Salle de Pas Perdus, where ghosts dance at night. But
this dance amongst the oak-woods was a dance of joyous memories. If
no feet were in the footgear, the shoes but danced more lightly. And
what shoes were not there? Shoes of fact and fable! Queen amongst the
dancers was a tiny glass slipper—footing it, footing it—in minuet
and stately gavotte. She danced with a cavalier boot; a high boot with
brown leather top. Step it, step it, high boot! Step it, little glass
slipper! The chimes will call you at midnight; ‘Cinderella’s carriage
stops the way! Room for the Marquis, the Grand Marquis of Carabas!
Make way for Puss-in-Boots!’ These two danced one-and-one; but beside
them danced a pair—Goody-two-shoes’ little red slippers. How they did
jet it, jet it, jet it in and out! And round about them danced other
shoes, other shoes dancing in hundreds. Broad shoes of slashed cloth;
and long-toed shoes with bells, that danced the milkmaid’s morris;
broad-toed shoes, and high-heeled shoes; jack-boots, and buckled shoes,
and shoes of Spanish leather, and pumps and satin sandals that jigged
in and out together.
And round about them—clump, clump, clump!—danced Mistress Heelis’
clog, clog dancing like a good one, with Joshy Campbell’s dinner-box
and the tall green gingham umbrella!
Only those two were different; all the other dancers were shoes; and
the main of them were horseshoes—shoes of all the brave horses that
ever were shod, in the good old days of the road. There were little
shoes of gallowways, and light shoes of thoroughbreds, and great shoes
of Clydesdales; and the biggest were the wagoners! “On they came
galloping, Ha halloo! Ha halloo! (Brill, the foxhound, lifted up her
voice—Ha halloo, ha halloo!)—galloping, galloping, Black Nag come
galloping! Hark to the timber wagons thundering down the drift road!”
shouted Mettle, banging on the anvil, “hark the ringing music of the
horseshoes—here’s—
‘Tap, tap, tappitty! trot, trot, trod!
Sing Dolly’s little shoes, on the hard high road!
Sing Quaker Daisey’s sober pace,
Sing high-stepping Peter, for stately grace.
Phoebe and Blossom, sing softly and low, dear dead horses of long ago;
Jerry and Snowdrop; black Jet and brown
Tom and Cassandra, the pride of the town;
Bobby and Billy gray, Gypsy and Nell;
More bonny ponies than I can tell;
Prince and Lady, Mabel and Pet;
Rare old Diamond, and Lofty and Bet.’
“Now for the wagoners! Hark to the trampling of the wagoners!” shouted
Mettle, banging on the anvil—“here’s—
‘Dick, Duke, Sally, and Captain true,
Wisest of horses that ever wore shoe,
Shaking the road from the ditch to the crown,
When the thundering, lumbering larch comes down.’”
“Ah, good old days! ah, brave old horses! Sing loud, sing louder, good
dogs!” barked Mettle, “sing, Pony Billy; sing up old Queenie, thou
last of the nags! Sing the right words, dogs, none of that twaddle! Now
sing all together; Keep time to the bellows—”
“‘D’ye ken John Peel with his coat so grey?
D’ye ken John Peel at the break of day?
D’ye ken John Peel when he’s far, far away,
With his hounds and his horn in the morning.
’Twas the sound of his horn call’d me from my bed.
And the cry of his hounds has me oft times led;
For Peel’s view halloa would ’waken the dead,
Or a fox from his lair in the morning.’”
Louder and merrier rose the hunting chorus, floating round the rafters
with the eddying smoke from the forge. Till the Big Folk, that slept up
above in Anvil Cottage, turned on their feather beds and dreamed that
they were fox hunting.
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