WE soon grow used to the greatest changes, and almost forget the things
that we were accustomed to before. In a day or two, Randal had nearly
forgotten what a dull life he had lived in Fairyland, after he had
touched his eyes with the strange water in the fairy bottle. He
remembered the long, grey sands, and the cold mist, and the white faces
of the strange people, and the gloomy queen, no more than you remember
the dream you dreamed a week ago. But he did notice that Fairnilee was
not the happy place it had been before he went away. Here, too, the
faces were pinched and white, and the people looked hungry. And he
missed many things that he remembered: the silver cups, and plates, and
tankards. And the dinners were not like what they had been, but only
a little thin soup, and some oatmeal cakes, and trout taken from the
Tweed. The beef and ale of old times were not to be found, even in the
houses of the richer people.
Very soon Randal heard all about the famine; you may be sure the old
nurse was ready to tell him all the saddest stories.
“Full many a place in evil case Where joy was wont afore, oh! Wi’ Humes
that dwell in Leader braes, And Scotts that dwell in Yarrow!”
And the old woman would croon her old prophecies, and tell them how
Thomas the Rhymer, that lived in Ercildoune, had foretold all this. And
she would wish they could find these hidden treasures that the rhymes
were full of, and that maybe were lying--who knew?--quite near them on
their own lands.
“Where is the Gold of Fairnilee?” she would cry; “and, oh, Randal! can
you no dig for it, and find it, and buy corn out of England for the poor
folk that are dying at your doors?
‘Atween the wet ground and the dry
The Gold o’ Fairnilee doth lie.’
There it is, with the sun never glinting on it; there it may bide till
the Judgment-day, and no man the better for it.
‘Between the Camp o’ Rink
And Tweed water clear,
Lie nine kings’ ransoms
For nine hundred year.’”
“I doubt it’s fairy gold, nurse,” said Randal, “and would all turn black
when it saw the sun. It would just be like this bottle, the only thing I
brought with me out of Fairyland.”
Then Randal put his hand in his velvet pouch, and brought out a curious
small bottle.* It was shaped like this,
[Illustration: Page 298]
and was made of something that none of them had ever seen before. It was
black, and you could see the light through it, and there were green and
yellow spots and streaks on it.
* In bottles like this, the old Romans used to keep their
tears for their dead friends.
“That ugly bottle looked like gold and diamonds when I found it in
Fairyland,” said Randal, “and the water in it smelled as sweet as
roses. But when I touched my eyes with it, a drop that ran into my mouth
was as salt as the sea, and immediately everything changed: the gold
bottle became this glass thing, and the fairies became like folk dead,
and the sky grew grey, and all turned waste and ugly. That’s the way
with fairy gold, nurse; and if you found it, even, it would all be dry
leaves and black bits of coal before the sun set.”
“Maybe so, and maybe no,” said the old nurse. “The Gold o’ Fairnilee may
no be fairy gold, but just wealth o’ this world that folk buried
here lang syne. But noo, Randal, ma bairn, I maun gang out and see ma
sister’s son’s dochter, that’s lying sair sick o’ the kincough* at Rink,
and take her some of the physic that I gae you and Jean when you were
bairns.”
* Kincough, whooping cough.
So the old nurse went out, and Randal and Jean began to be sorry for
the child she was going to visit. For they remembered the taste of
the physic that the old nurse made by boiling the bark of elder-tree
branches; and I remember it too, for it was the very nastiest thing that
ever was tasted, and did nobody any good after all.
Then Randal and Jean walked out, strolling along without much noticing
where they went, and talking about the pleasant days when they were
children.
[Illustration: Chapter Twelve]