HAVE you ever heard the Little People of the Streams singing in the
night? I wonder!
Once you have heard their music you will never forget it!
The first time I heard it was one February—shortly after I had taken
the cottage—the season above all others when the brooks and falls
and mountain springs are over-full of water, that hurries along at a
great pace, tumbling over rocks, dropping down into green wells and
grottos below, always galloping down hill till finally it reaches the
ever-rushing river in the valley.
By day, each brook seems merely to be chatting sociably to the banks
and the long harts-tongue ferns as it passes down, and you only hear
one at a time. But after dark, when most other sounds have ceased, the
voices of the streams seem to grow marvellously in volume.
I was lying awake one night with the windows open, listening literally
to the sound of many waters, and trying to disentangle them.
First I heard the spring outside my garden gate as it scrambled down
from the hillside above, splashing the overhanging greenery with light
spray, and finally pouring out of a little trough—dark brown wood,
closely enamelled with green mosses—into a rocky pool, where it ceases
its swirl for half a minute, just while it gets its breath, before
rushing on down the hill, finding its own way around, or over, all
sorts of obstacles, and resenting any interference of man.
Soon I could distinguish a second brook, that serves a cottage a
quarter of a mile further along the lane, before it winds about and
enters my lower orchard. This had overflowed in the orchard, and was
having quite a gay time, running skittishly out of the orchard gate and
into another lane, instead of pursuing its proper course.
Next I was able to detach the conversation of the small waterfall that
drops about a hundred feet from an overhanging ledge of rock into a
green cave under the hill, where mosses of wonderful size abound, and
yellow flags stand guard at the entrance, with creeping jenny and
forget-me-nots just outside.
The sound always seems to increase as you listen, and soon I detected
the noise of the river as it tears over successive weirs. If the tide
is low it is often a roar when you stand on the river bank beside a
weir; but up here on the heights the noise is softened to a purling
sound, that runs like a never-ceasing ground-bass or pedal note amid
the fluctuating tones of the nearer streams.
Other and more distant murmurings floated in at the window; but one
could never allocate them all, for, excepting in the hottest weather,
this is in truth “a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains
and depths that spring out of valleys and hills.”
I was thinking of this, when suddenly the babbling of the water was
drowned in the sound of wonderful bells that rose upon the night air.
It was not from our village church; that possesses only one bell, whose
sound, unfortunately, resembles nothing so much as a cracked iron
shovel struck with a pair of tongs: and there is no other bell for
miles around.
And yet there was no mistaking it. I could distinctly hear the joyous
clashing and clanging of bells in a tall steeple.
It was no brazen banging; rather, some fairy music, like the carillon
at Malines (which I am proud to remember I once played, though, alas! I
shall never play it again).
I listened in amazement; soon was added the sound of voices, like
subdued distant singing in some vast cathedral, while the bells still
clashed outside. Yet it was never close at hand; it always seemed to
float to me from a distance.
I was sure I was not asleep, for I knew where I was, and decided to
get up and go to the window, when—the dog barked—(probably he could
hear a fox prowling around outside). Instantly the spell was broken. I
opened my eyes; there was no sound but the murmuring and burbling of
the brooks.
Like a sensible person, I of course decided that I had been dreaming.
Yet again and again have I heard the clanging bells, with often the
sound of an organ and singing wafted through the open window. It
always comes when the streams are most impetuous and when I am in that
lotus-flowering land that lies between awakeness and sleep.
The music is always enthrallingly happy, and my only regret is that
the bells and the singers do not come a trifle nearer, so that I could
catch every note and jot it all down for future reference.
I related my experiences to one or two people; but this was all the
information they seemed able to give me:
“If I were you, I should run down to Margate for a week or so, and
leave all work behind. Go to a nice bright boarding-house, where
there are lots of people, and enjoy yourself; and forget about that
wretched cottage. You’ve been overdoing it lately. I had another
friend just like you—got a little peculiar, you know, and then—well,
I won’t tell you any more; don’t want to make you nervous, of course,
but—her mother never got over it, and _so_ well-connected, too—kept
three motors. You take my advice. I’ll send you the name of a charming
boarding-house I know,” etc.
Then I kept my own counsel, and decided that there were Little People
living in the streams, just as I had always liked to picture them
living in the flowers and under the mushrooms. And the music I heard
was the Little People singing, and ringing all the harebells and
foxglove bells that grow along the banks of the brooks.
I concluded that no one had ever heard them but myself. But, to my
surprise, one day I found that others did know about these Little
People!
I was reading “The Forest,” by Stewart E. White, where he describes his
impressions and experiences as he lay awake at night in a tent on the
banks of a Canadian river, when I came upon the following, that in many
points coincides with my own sensations:—
“In such circumstances you will hear what the boatmen
call the voices of the rapids. Many people never
hear them at all. They speak very soft and low, and
distinct, beneath the steady roar and dashing, beneath
even the lesser tinklings and gurglings whose quality
superimposes them over the louder sounds. In the
stillness of your hazy half-consciousness they speak;
when you bend your attention to listen, they are gone,
and only the tumults and the tinklings remain.
“But in the moments of their audibility they are very
distinct. Just as often an odour will awake all a
vanished memory, so these voices, by the force of a
large impressionism, suggest whole scenes. Far off are
the cling-clang-cling of chimes and the swell-and-fall
murmur of a multitude _en fête_, so that subtly you
feel the gray old town, with its walls, the crowded
market-place, the decent peasant crowd, the booths,
the mellow church building with its bells, the
warm, dust-moted sun. Or, in the pauses between the
swish-dash-dashings of the waters, sound faint and
clear voices singing intermittently, calls, distant
notes of laughter, as though many canoes were working
against the current; only the flotilla never gets any
nearer, nor the voices louder. The boatmen call these
mist people the Huntsmen, and look frightened....
Curiously enough, by all reports, they suggest always
peacefulness—a harvest field, a street fair, a Sunday
morning in a cathedral town, careless travellers—never
the turmoils and struggles. Perhaps this is the great
Mother’s compensation in a harsh mode of life.
“Nothing is more fantastically unreal to tell about,
nothing more concretely real to experience, than this
undernote of the quick water. And when you do lie awake
at night, it is always making its unobtrusive appeal.
Gradually its hypnotic spell works. The distant chimes
ring louder and nearer as you cross the borderland of
sleep. And then outside the tent some little woods
noise snaps the thread. An owl hoots, a whippoorwill
cries, a twig cracks beneath the cautious prowl of some
night creature—at once the yellow sunlit French windows
puff away—you are staring at the blurred image of the
moon spraying through the texture of your tent.”
Since reading this, I have spoken of the matter to others with more
courage; and although the majority do not seem to have come across
them, I have discovered several people who have heard the Little People
singing.
Some, indeed, have been kind enough to attempt to give me a lucid
explanation of what they are pleased to call a very simple natural
phenomenon, and they prattle of enharmonics and sound vibrations, of
nodes and super-tones, in a very impressive manner. One tells me the
whole thing is merely a psychological emotion vibrating in sympathy
with the acoustical environment.