In the green valley of the Yarrow, near the castle-keep of Norham,
dwelt an honest, sonsy little family, whose only grief was an unhappy
son, named Robin.
Janet, with jimp form, bonnie eyes, and cherry cheeks, was the best of
daughters; the boys, Sandie and Davie, were swift-footed, brave, kind,
and obedient; but Robin, the youngest, had a stormy temper, and, when
his will was crossed, he became as reckless as a reeling hurricane.
Once, in a passion, he drove two of his father's "kye," or cattle,
down a steep hill to their death. He seemed not to care for home or
kindred, and often pierced the tender heart of his mother with sharp
words. When she came at night, and "happed" the bed-clothes carefully
about his form, and then stooped to kiss his nut-brown cheeks, he
turned away with a frown, muttering, "Mither, let me be."
It was a sad case with Wild Robin, who seemed to have neither love nor
conscience.
"My heart is sair," sighed his mother, "wi' greeting over sich a son."
"He hates our auld cottage and our muckle wark," said the poor father.
"Ah, weel! I could a'maist wish the fairies had him for a season, to
teach him better manners."
This the gudeman said heedlessly, little knowing there was any danger
of Robin's being carried away to Elf-land. Whether the fairies were at
that instant listening under the eaves, will never be known; but it
chanced, one day, that Wild Robin was sent across the moors to fetch
the kye.
"I'll rin away," thought the boy: "'tis hard indeed if ilka day a
great lad like me must mind the kye. I'll gae aff; and they'll think
me dead."
So he gaed, and he gaed, over round swelling hills, over old
battle-fields, past the roofless ruins of houses whose walls were
crowned with tall climbing grasses, till he came to a crystal sheet of
water, called St. Mary's Loch. Here he paused to take breath. The sky
was dull and lowering; but at his feet were yellow flowers, which
shone, on that gray day, like freaks of sunshine.
He threw himself wearily upon the grass, not heeding that he had
chosen his couch within a little mossy circle known as a "fairy's
ring." Wild Robin knew that the country people would say the fays had
pressed that green circle with their light feet. He had heard all the
Scottish lore of brownies, elves, will-o'-the-wisps, and the strange
water-kelpies, who shriek with eldritch laughter. He had been told
that the queen of the fairies had coveted him from his birth, and
would have stolen him away, only that, just as she was about to seize
him from the cradle, he had _sneezed_; and from that instant the
fairy-spell was over, and she had no more control of him.
Yet, in spite of all these stories, the boy was not afraid; and if he
had been informed that any of the uncanny people were, even now,
haunting his footsteps, he would not have believed it.
"I see," said Wild Robin, "the sun is drawing his night-cap over his
eyes, and dropping asleep. I believe I'll e'en take a nap mysel', and
see what comes o' it."
In two minutes he had forgotten St. Mary's Loch, the hills, the moors,
the yellow flowers. He heard, or fancied he heard, his sister Janet
calling him home.
"And what have ye for supper?" he muttered between his teeth.
"Parritch and milk," answered the lassie gently.
"Parritch and milk! Whist! say nae mair! Lang, lang may ye wait for
Wild Robin: he'll not gae back for oat-meal parritch!"
Next a sad voice fell on his ear.
"Mither's; and she mourns me dead!" thought he; but it was only the
far-off village-bell, which sounded like the echo of music he had
heard lang syne, but might never hear again.
"D'ye think I'm not alive?" tolled the bell. "I sit all day in my
little wooden temple, brooding over the sins of the parish."
"A brazen lie!" cried Robin.
"Nay, the truth, as I'm a living soul! Wae worth ye, Robin Telfer: ye
think yersel' hardly used. Say, have your brithers softer beds than
yours? Is your ain father served with larger potatoes or creamier
buttermilk? Whose mither sae kind as yours, ungrateful chiel? Gae to
Elf-land, Wild Robin; and dool and wae follow ye! dool and wae follow
ye!"
The round yellow sun had dropped behind the hills; the evening breezes
began to blow; and now could be heard the faint trampling of small
hoofs, and the tinkling of tiny bridle-bells: the fairies were
trooping over the ground. First of all rode the queen.
"Her skirt was of the grass-green silk,
Her mantle of the velvet fine;
At ilka tress of her horse's mane
Hung fifty silver bells and nine."
But Wild Robin's closed eyes saw nothing; his sleep-sealed ears heard
nothing. The queen of fairies dismounted, stole up to him, and laid
her soft fingers on his cheeks.
"Here is a little man after my ain heart," said she: "I like his
knitted brow, and the downward curve of his lips. Knights, lift him
gently, set him on a red-roan steed, and waft him away to Fairy-land."
Wild Robin was lifted as gently as a brown leaf borne by the wind; he
rode as softly as if the red-roan steed had been saddled with satin,
and shod with velvet. It even may be that the faint tinkling of the
bridle-bells lulled him into a deeper slumber; for when he awoke it
was morning in Fairy-land.
Robin sprang from his mossy couch, and stared about him. Where was he?
He rubbed his eyes, and looked again. Dreaming, no doubt; but what
meant all these nimble little beings bustling hither and thither in
hot haste? What meant these pearl-bedecked caves, scarcely larger than
swallows' nests? these green canopies, overgrown with moss? He pinched
himself, and gazed again. Countless flowers nodded to him, and seemed,
like himself, on tiptoe with curiosity, he thought. He beckoned one of
the busy, dwarfish little brownies toward him.
"I ken I'm talking in my sleep," said the lad; "but can ye tell me
what dell is this, and how I chanced to be in it?"
The brownie might or might not have heard; but, at any rate, he
deigned no reply, and went on with his task, which was pounding seeds
in a stone mortar.
"Am I Robin Telfer, of the Valley of Yarrow, and yet canna shake aff
my silly dreams?"
"Weel, my lad," quoth the queen of the fairies, giving him a smart tap
with her wand, "stir yersel', and be at work; for naebody idles in
Elf-land."
Bewildered Robin ventured a look at the little queen. By daylight she
seemed somewhat sleepy and tired; and was withal so tiny, that he
might almost have taken her between his thumb and finger, and twirled
her above his head; yet she poised herself before him on a
mullein-stalk, and looked every inch a queen. Robin found her gaze
oppressive; for her eyes were hard and cold and gray, as if they had
been little orbs of granite.
"Get ye to work, Wild Robin!"
"What to do?" meekly asked the boy, hungrily glancing at a few kernels
of rye which had rolled out of one of the brownie's mortars.
"Are ye hungry, my laddie? touch a grain of rye if ye dare! Shell
these dry bains; and if so be ye're starving, eat as many as ye can
boil in an acorn-cup."
With these words she gave the boy a withered bean-pod, and, summoning
a meek little brownie, bade him see that the lad did not over-fill the
acorn-cup, and that he did not so much as peck at a grain of rye.
Then, glancing sternly at her unhappy prisoner, she withdrew, sweeping
after her the long train of her green robe.
The dull days crept by, and still there seemed no hope that Wild Robin
would ever escape from his beautiful but detested prison. He had no
wings, poor laddie; and he could neither become invisible nor draw
himself through a keyhole bodily.
It is true, he had mortal companions: many chubby babies; many
bright-eyed boys and girls, whose distracted parents were still
seeking them, far and wide, upon the earth. It would almost seem that
the wonders of Fairy-land might make the little prisoners happy. There
were countless treasures to be had for the taking, and the very dust
in the little streets was precious with specks of gold: but the poor
children shivered for the want of a mother's love; they all pined for
the dear home-people. If a certain task seemed to them particularly
irksome, the heartless queen was sure to find it out, and oblige them
to perform it, day after day. If they disliked any article of food,
that, and no other, were they forced to eat, or starve.
Wild Robin, loathing his withered beans and unsalted broths, longed
intensely for one little breath of fragrant steam from the toothsome
parritch on his father's table, one glance at a roasted potato. He was
homesick for the gentle sister he had neglected, the rough brothers
whose cheeks he had pelted black and blue; and yearned for the very
chinks in the walls, the very thatch on the home-roof.
Gladly would he have given every fairy-flower, at the root of which
clung a lump of gold ore, if he might have had his own coverlet
"happed" about him once more by the gentle hands he had despised.
"Mither," he whispered in his dreams, "my shoon are worn, and my feet
bleed; but I'll soon creep hame, if I can. Keep the parritch warm for
me."
Robin was as strong as a mountain-goat; and his strength was put to
the task of threshing rye, grinding oats and corn, or drawing water
from a brook.
Every night, troops of gay fairies and plodding brownies stole off on
a visit to the upper world, leaving Robin and his companions in ever
deeper despair. Poor Robin! he was fain to sing,--
"Oh that my father had ne'er on me smiled!
Oh that my mother had ne'er to me sung!
Oh that my cradle had never been rocked,
But that I had died when I was young!"
Now, there was one good-natured brownie who pitied Robin. When he took
a journey to earth with his fellow-brownies, he often threshed rye for
the laddie's father, or churned butter in his good mother's dairy,
unseen and unsuspected. If the little creature had been watched, and
paid for these good offices, he would have left the farmhouse forever
in sore displeasure.
To homesick Robin he brought news of the family who mourned him as
dead. He stole a silky tress of Janet's fair hair, and wondered to see
the boy weep over it; for brotherly affection is a sentiment which
never yet penetrated the heart of a brownie. The dull little sprite
would gladly have helped the poor lad to his freedom, but told him
that only on one night of the year was there the least hope, and that
was on Hallow-e'en, when the whole nation of fairies ride in
procession through the streets of earth.
So Robin was instructed to spin a dream, which the kind brownie would
hum in Janet's ear while she slept. By this means the lassie would not
only learn that her brother was in the power of the elves, but would
also learn how to release him.
Accordingly, the night before Hallow-e'en, the bonnie Janet dreamed
that the long-lost Robin was living in Elf-land, and that he was to
pass through the streets with a cavalcade of fairies. But, alas! how
should even a sister know him in the dim starlight, among the passing
troops of elfish and mortal riders? The dream assured her that she
might let the first company go by, and the second; but Robin would be
one of the third:--
"First let pass the black, Janet,
And syne let pass the brown;
But grip ye to the milk-white steed,
And pull the rider down.
For _I_ ride on the milk-white steed,
And aye nearest the town:
Because I was a christened lad
They gave me that renown.
My right hand will be gloved, Janet;
My left hand will be bare;
And these the tokens I give thee:
No doubt I will be there.
They'll shape me in your arms, Janet,
A toad, snake, and an eel
But hold me fast, nor let me gang,
As you do love me weel.
They'll shape me in your arms, Janet,
A dove, bat, and a swan:
Cast your green mantle over me,
I'll be myself again."
The good sister Janet, far from remembering any of the old sins of her
brother, wept for joy to know that he was yet among the living. She
told no one of her strange dream; but hastened secretly to the Miles
Cross, saw the strange cavalcade pricking through the greenwood, and
pulled down the rider on the milk-white steed, holding him fast
through all his changing shapes. But when she had thrown her green
mantle over him, and clasped him in her arms as her own brother
Robin, the angry voice of the fairy queen was heard:--
"Up then spake the queen of fairies,
Out of a bush of rye,
'You've taken away the bonniest lad
In all my companie.
'Had I but had the wit, yestreen,
That I have learned to-day,
I'd pinned the sister to her bed
E're he'd been won away!'"
However, it was too late now. Wild Robin was safe, and the elves had
lost their power over him forever. His forgiving parents and his
leal-hearted brothers welcomed him home with more than the old love.
So grateful and happy was the poor laddie, that he nevermore grumbled
at his oat-meal parritch, or minded his kye with a scowling brow.
But to the end of his days, when he heard mention of fairies and
brownies, his mind wandered off in a mizmaze. He died in peace, and
was buried on the banks of the Yarrow.