There is something glorious and majestic about a fine English oak. The
ancient Britons held them sacred; and the Saxons who came after revered
the Druids’ trees. William the Norman Conqueror ordered a record of
all the land. Because there were no maps they wrote down landmarks; I
remember an oak in Hertfordshire, that had been a landmark for Doomsday
Book.
This north country oak of my story was less old than the Doomsday Oak.
It had been a fine upstanding tree in Queen Elizabeth’s reign. For
centuries it grew tall and stately, deep-rooted amongst the rocks, by a
corner above an old highway that led to a market town.
How many travellers had passed the tree, since that road was a forest
track! Hunters, robbers, bowmen; knights on horseback riding along;
pikemen, jackmen marching; country folk and drovers; merchants,
peddlars with laden pack-horses.
At each change the road was mended and widened. There began to be
two-wheeled carts. Then farmers’ wives left off riding on pillions; the
gentry drove gigs and coaches; and alas! there came the wood wagons.
Other oak trees were carried to the sea-port to make ships’
timbers—old England’s wooden walls—but the fairy’s oak towered out of
reach. No wood-feller clambered up to it.
Now our ships are built of steel, and iron horses rush along our roads;
and the District Council decided to remove the rocks and corner, to
widen the road for motor cars.
Surely it is cruel to cut down a very fine tree! Each dull, dead thud
of the axe hurts the little green fairy that lives in its heart. The
fairy in the oak had been a harmless timid spirit for many hundred
years. Long ago, when the oak was a sapling, there had been wolves;
and the dalesmen hunted them with hounds. The hunt swept through the
forest; the frightened fairy leaped into the oak branches. She found
the tree a place of refuge; therefore she loved it and made it her
home. Because it had a guardian fairy, that oak grew tall and strong.
And each of the finest trees in the forest had a fairy of its own as
well.
There were birch fairies, beech fairies, alder fairies, and fairies of
the fir trees and pines; all were dressed in the leaves of their own
special trees; and in spring when the trees had new leaves, each fairy
got herself a new green gown.
They never went far from the trees that they loved; only on moonlight
nights they came down, and they danced together on the ground. In
autumn when the leaves fell off and the trees were left bare and cold,
each fairy withdrew into the heart of its tree, and slept there, curled
up, till spring.
Only the pine and fir fairies kept awake, and danced upon the snow,
because the firs and pines do not lose their needle-like evergreen
leaves; and that is why the fir trees sing in the wind on frosty
winter’s nights.
The oak fairy had danced with the pine fairies beneath the hunter’s
moon, because oak trees keep their leaves much later than birch or
beech; but the last of the russet oak leaves were blown off by a
November gale. She settled herself to sleep. The oak was enormous; tall
and bold. It held up its head against wind and snow; and scorned the
wintry weather.
But the Surveyor of the District Council has no sentiment; and no
respect, either, for fairies or for oaks!
The pine fairies were awake and saw what happened from their tree-tops
further back in the wood. The pine trees swayed, and moaned, and
shivered. But the oak fairy slept through it all. There arrived the
surveyor, his assistant with the chain links, two men who carried the
theodolite with three legs; a woodmonger; and four members of the
Council. They did much measuring with the chains; they made notes
in their pocketbooks; they squinted through the theodolite at white
and black sticks. Then they clambered up the rocks, and stared at
the fairy’s oak. The woodmonger measured it with a tape measure; he
measured near the foot of the butt; he measured again six foot up; he
reckoned the quarter girth; they did calculations according to Hoppus.
The councillors said that the tree had an enormous butt; thirty foot
run of clean timber to the first branch, with never a knot. They looked
at the rocks; and did sums. Then they went away.
Nothing happened for six weeks; except a gale that blew down an ash
tree. It crashed amongst the rocks. Its fairy fell out, shrieking. She
ran up and down in tattered yellow leaves, till she found an empty
bird-nest, and hid in it.
In January a number of men arrived; they had tools, and wheelbarrows,
and carts, and a wooden hut. They were quarrymen, navvies,
wood-fellers; and carters and wagoners with horses. They cleared
away the underwood; they drilled and blasted the rocks. The noise of
blasting was like thunder; it awoke every fairy in the wood.
And they felled the fairy’s oak.
For three days they hacked and sawed and drove wedges; the wood was as
hard as iron. Their axes broke; their saws were nipped; they lost their
wedges overhead in the cuts. But day after day they laboured, and swung
their heavy axes; and drove iron wedges with sledge hammer blows into
the great tree’s heart. Then one climbed the tree and tied a wire rope
to its head; and they pulled with a wagon horse. The tree swayed and
groaned, and the hawser broke. Again they wielded their axes; and the
little fairy sobbed and cried with pain.
Suddenly, with a rending shriek and a roar, the oak thundered down
amongst the rocks!
It lamed a horse, and it did the men a mischief.
All next day they hacked and sawed; they cut off its head and arms.
They left the trunk lying overnight beside the road. The fairy stayed
beside it, and caused another accident, upsetting a farmer’s cart. His
horse in the dusk saw a thing like a little green squirrel that scolded
and wrung its hands.
Next day came the wagoners to hoist the great tree; and then again
there was disaster. The three legs slipped; the chains broke
twice—was it the fury of the little angry spirit that beat against the
chains and snapped them?
At length the tree was loaded. They drew away the wagon with two extra
pairs of horses; and the fairy, sullen and exhausted, sat huddled upon
the log. They swept the top stones off the walls; they had every sort
of trouble; but at last they reached the summit of the moor. Ten chain
horses were unhooked; leaving one trembling thill-horse in the shafts.
The brake was screwed on hard, to face the steep descent.
Down below the hill there sounded a humming, whirring sound—the noise
of the sawmill. The fairy sprang from her tree, and fled away into the
woods.
All winter she wandered homeless. One day she climbed into one tree;
another day she climbed into another tree. She always chose an oak
tree; but she could not settle to sleep. Whenever a load of sawn timber
came back up the road from the sawmill, the fairy came down to the road.
She looked at it wistfully; but it was always larch, or ash, or plane;
not oak.
She wandered further afield in spring time, into the meadows outside
the woods. There was grass for the lambs in the meadows; on the trees
young green leaves were budding—but no new green leaves for the oak
fairy. Her leaf-gown was tattered and torn.
One day she sat on a tree-top, and the west wind blew over the land. It
brought sounds of lambs bleating; and the cuckoo calling. And a strange
new sound from the river—clear ringing blows upon oak.
‘Men do not fell trees in May, when the sap rises. Why does this sound
stir my heart, and make my feet dance, in spite of me? Can I hear cruel
hammers and saws upon oak-wood, and feel glad?’ said the fairy of the
oak.
She came out of the wood, and her feet danced across the meadow,
through the cuckoo flowers and marsh mary-golds, to the banks of the
flooded stream, where men were building a bridge. A new bridge to the
farm, where none had been before; a wooden bridge with a broad span
across the rushing river; and the straight brave timbers that spanned
it were made of the fairy’s oak!
“Is that all, Xarifa?” She had come to a stop.
“All except that she was happy again, and she made her home in the
bridge. She lives there, contented and useful; and may live there for
hundreds of years; because hard-grown oak lasts forever; well seasoned
by trial and tears. The river sings over the pebbles; or roars in
autumn flood. The bridge stands sure and trusty, where never before
bridge stood. Little toddling children take that short cut to the
school; and Something guards their footsteps by the bank of the flowery
pool. The good farm-horses bless the bridge that spares them a weary
road; and Something leads them over, and helps to lighten their load.
It wears a russet-brown petticoat, and a little hodden gray cloak—and
that is the end of my story of the Fairy in the Oak.”
“Very sweet, Xarifa, albeit longwinded. Now mount the steps and away!
White clouds sail across the blue heaven. The sheep and their lambs
are on the fell; the plovers and curlews are calling. Tune up little
fiddlers; begone!”
They harnessed up, they trailed away—over the hills and far away—on
a sunny windy morning. But still in the broad green lonnin going up to
the intake, I can trace my pony’s fairy footsteps, and hear her eager
neighing. I can hear the rattle of the tilt-cart’s wheels, and the
music of the Fairy Caravan.
[Illustration]
Transcriber’s Notes
Page 64—changed carpetted to carpeted
Page 109—changed spining to spinning
Page 155—changed stifly to stiffly
Page 222—changed climed to climbing