her rags of clothes, and she wrapped the little boy in her own clothes,
and gave him food and put him to sleep; and as she lay, the gipsy woman
watched her with her great black eyes, and at last she said, “Have you
a brown cup here, a little rough brown cup? did your husband give it to
you?”
The potter’s wife stared with astonishment. “How did you know I had a
little rough brown cup?” she said. “There was such a one, and it stood
upon the shelf, but I have given it away. I gave it to a poor gipsy man
who begged it of me; he wanted it so badly that I couldn’t refuse, and
he made me drink his health in it ere he took it away.”
Then the gipsy woman raised her head, and her eyes looked blacker and
her cheeks blacker.
“And what was the gipsy man like?” she cried. “Had you drunk from the
cup before? Can you remember?”
“I remember well,” said the woman. “I drank from it on the day when I
promised I would marry my husband, and I drank from it once again when
I wished the gipsy God-speed, and soon after that, my husband left me,
for I could not bear to have him near me.”
Then the gipsy cried out aloud, and said something in a language which
the woman did not understand, and beat her hands.
“I think it was my husband,” she said. “Alack a day! to-morrow night
I shall die, and who will take care of my little boy, and see that he
does not starve? for his father would beat and ill-treat him if he
found him.” Then the potter’s wife kneeled down beside the gipsy woman,
and kissed her on the forehead.
“Be at peace,” she said. “If it be that you must die, die with a
quiet heart, for I will keep your little boy. What is enough for two
is enough for three, and he shall call my little girl sister and me
mother.”
The gipsy said nothing, but she looked at the potter’s wife for long,
and then she said, “And my clothes are all in rags, and I have no
garment in which you can wrap me for my grave.”
Then the potter’s wife began to cry. “Be at peace,” she said, “for I
have a fine cloth made of flax and my own hair, and in it you can lie
clad like a princess.”
Then again the gipsy woman cried out words that the potter’s wife did
not understand, and again she beat her breast and lamented. But as
evening drew nigh she turned to the potter’s wife, and told her all the
truth about the charms in the cup, and wept for the evil she had done
her, who was so good and kind.
The potter’s wife sat by her all that day, and into the dark hours of
the night, but when it was drawing nigh to twelve o’clock the gipsy
woman sat up, and stretched out her arms. “The wheel,” she cried,
“bring me your husband’s wheel, and give me a piece of clay, that while
there is yet time I may throw my last cup, and you may drink from it
before the dawn and undo the harm I have worked.”
The potter’s wife wondered much, but she feared to disobey her, and she
went out into her husband’s workshop, and she brought in his wheel and
a piece of clay which stood there, and placed them beside the gipsy.
The gipsy was so weak that she could scarcely sit up, but when she saw
the wheel she staggered to her feet, and took the clay in her thin
little brown hands, and moulded it as she had done years before; and
then she set it on the wheel, and set the wheel spinning, and formed it
into a little brown bowl, and bent her head over it, and whispered into
it.
“Now drink,” she cried, “although the clay is still wet. Pour water
into it and drink from my little bowl, and wish me God-speed as you did
to my husband. And then dress me in white and gold like a princess, for
I must start upon my journey. But keep my little boy always, and if my
husband comes to search for me, give him my ring, but tell him that he
shall never find me more.”
The potter’s wife poured some water into the little clay cup, and
stooped her face and drank it, that the woman might be content, and
when she had done so, the gipsy folded her hands and lay back and
died. But when she had tasted the water out of the wet clay, the
potter’s wife thought of her husband, and she called his name, and
cried to him to come and help her with the poor gipsy woman. And then
she thought of how long it was since he had been with her, and she
began to cry, and wept bitterly as she leant over the dead woman.
“Oh, where is he gone? why did I drive him from me?” she said. “Have
I been mad? Truly the poor gipsy spoke rightly, that if a woman has a
husband who loves her and works for her, she should cherish him with
all her might. Alas, alas! and now my husband is out in the wide world,
and I am alone here with no one to help me; until this poor woman told
me, I never knew how wrong I was.” Then she looked at the gipsy woman
lying in all her rags, and she remembered her promise to her, and she
took the fine linen cloth in which was woven the gold heart and the
gilt cup, and she clothed her in it as if she were a princess, and the
next day the poor woman was buried, and no one knew from whence she
came nor to whom she belonged.
Then the potter’s wife sat down, and grieved bitterly, for she didn’t
know what it would be best to do to find her husband again, and tell
him that she loved him as at first. At first she thought she would go
out and seek for him in the wide, wide world, but then she remembered
how he bid her wait where she was till he came back, and she knew she
ought to do what he had told her; but as now she had three to keep
instead of two, she feared they would be very poor, and as she had
buried the gipsy in the fine gold and white cloth woven with her hair,
she had not got it to sell, and she had not any money left wherewith
to buy more fine thread to weave. The gipsy’s little boy was a pretty
boy, with dark eyes like his mother’s, and when she looked at him she
said they would all three starve together, but she would keep him, as
she had promised his mother, rather than turn him out into the cold
streets. So she washed him, and mended his rags as best she might, and
then she began to seek everywhere for something she might weave to
sell, and keep them from starving. She wandered round the garden, and
in and out of the house, and the gipsy boy, who was a clever, bright
lad, went with her.
“What are you searching for?” he asked.
“I am searching for thread, that I may weave into some kind of cloth
and sell,” she said. “Otherwise we shall surely starve, for I have no
money left to buy it with, and nothing more left to sell.”
“I will go and get you something to weave,” said the boy, and he ran
out into the road, and looked up and down it to see what would come
past. Presently there came up a big cart laden with straw, and on the
top of the cart lay one man, while another drove. The horses went
slowly, and the gipsy boy followed them, and began to beg.
“Run off, little chap,” cried the man at the top, “I have no money to
give to beggars.”
“But I don’t ask you for money,” cried the boy, “but of your charity
give me a handful of straw.”
“And what do you want with a handful of straw?” asked the carter, as
the boy still went on begging.
“Why, see!” cried the lad, “I am all in rags, but if my mother had a
handful of straw she can weave me a coat, and I shall be quite warm,”
at which the men both laughed, and declared that the idea of a coat
of straw was very funny, but the driver said, “Well, give some to the
little chap. I expect he comes from a lot of lying gipsies further on,
and they want it for their animals, still it won’t do any harm to give
him a few wisps,” and so they flung down a bundle, and the boy picked
it up, and ran back with it to the potter’s wife.
“See what I have brought you,” he cried. “Now make that into a mat, and
I will take it out and sell it, and bring you back the money.”
The potter’s wife was amazed by his cleverness, but she knew that the
gipsies had to live by their wits, and that teaches them to be sharp,
so she sat down, and tried to weave the straw into a mat, as the gipsy
boy had said.
At first she found it very hard to use, for it was coarse and brittle,
and she thought she could make nothing of it. The lad sat beside her,
and cut it into even lengths for her, and chose out the good pieces,
and at last betwixt them it was done, and it looked quite a smart
little mat, and the boy took it on his back and ran away with it to the
village.
“A mat, a mat,” he cried, “who wants to buy a good straw mat to wipe
their feet on when they are dirty, or for the cat to sit on by the
fire, or to put over the fowl-house and keep it warm?”
At first all the people he met laughed at him, and said nobody wished
to buy a mat at all. Then he turned into the ale-house. There were
some men smoking and keeping themselves warm by the fire, and when the
host saw him, and the mat over his shoulder, he said it was quite a
well-made thing, and he would have it to lay down by his doorway for
in-comers to tread on; and then one and another looked at it, and the
boy told them where it came from, and said he could bring them plenty
more straw mats and carpets, all as good or better, and so well worked
that they would last almost for ever; and presently one and another
began to say that they would buy them, and when he had taken his money,
the gipsy boy ran home well content.
So the potter’s wife sat all day weaving straw mats, and presently she
got to do them so well, that from far and near the people sent to buy
them of her. Then after a time she put patterns into them, made with
red, and black, and white straws, but do what she could, the patterns
always came out in the shape of a cup, and still she wept and grieved
all day long. Then the gipsy lad said to her—
“What are you crying for now? You have plenty to eat and drink. Tell me
why you are crying, and I will help you if I can, because you took my
mother into your house to die, and buried her in your fine cloth like a
princess.”
“I cry because my husband has gone a long way off,” said the potter’s
wife, “and he doesn’t know that I love him, and he will never come back
to me, for when he went away I hated him.”
“He will never know it if you don’t try to tell him,” said the gipsy
boy. “You should tell it to every one you meet, to all the birds of the
air, and the wild animals too. That is what my mother told me to do,
if I wanted to send news abroad. You should say it even to the winds,
and write it in the sand, and on the earth, and on the leaves of the
trees in case they blow about, for she said all things could pass on a
secret, though none can keep one. And why don’t you weave it into your
mats too? For the people who buy them take them far and near, and maybe
he will see one, and know that you want him to come home again.”
Then the potter’s wife tried to weave her secret into her mats, and
beside the pattern of the cup she wove a little verse—
“From the gipsy’s cup I drank for love,
From the gipsy’s cup I drank for hate,
But when she gave me a cup again
My love had gone and I drank too late.”
“Now,” cried the gipsy boy, “your husband may see it, and perhaps he
will come home, and all will be well with us.”
But still the potter journeyed far into the world, and wherever he went
he asked if any gipsy had been near there; and if there happened to be
a gipsy camp in the neighbourhood, he went to it at once, and asked
for a gipsy woman with red beads and gold chains in her hair, or for a
gipsy man who carried a brown cup with him. But though he saw hundreds
of gipsies, yet he never again saw the girl who had thrown the cup,
and none of the men knew anything about the man, nor could tell him
anything about the little brown bowl. Then he went to the shops in the
big towns where jars and bowls are sold, and asked for a cup that had
a spell in it, for he thought if they sold such a one, they might know
how to help him to undo the work of the gipsy’s bowl, but everywhere
the people only laughed at him.
So he went through strange countries, seeing strange things, but none
of them gave him any pleasure, since he was always thinking of his wife
at home. Then he returned to his native land, and pondered whether he
should go back to his own cottage, but his heart failed him, and he
kept far from the little village where it stood.
“It would be little use to go home,” he said, “for if my wife is not
glad to see me, it is no home to me; and she will not be glad to see me
till I can find the gipsy and know how the charm can be broken.”
One night he went into a booth where there were a number of men
drinking, and amongst them there was one who looked like a gipsy, a
dark, savage-looking fellow who was talking loud, and boasting much
of all he had done. The potter sat and listened to their talk, and
presently they began quarrelling, and talking about who was the most
beautiful woman in the world. The gipsy cried out that he knew the
most beautiful, and that she had given him a parting gift and wished
him God-speed, and now he was going back to her, for he knew now the
way to make her love him, and he meant to wed her and have her for his
wife.
Upon this the others laughed and jeered, and said, was it likely that
such a beautiful woman would care for such a rough, ill-favoured fellow
as he, and declared they didn’t think much of her beauty if she was
willing to marry him and to be his wife.
Then another man standing near said that he knew where lived the most
beautiful woman on the face of the earth, though he did not believe
that she would ever be wife of his, still all the same it would be hard
to beat her for loveliness; and she was a clever worker too, for she it
was who worked the mats that lay under his feet in the cart he drove.
Upon this they all began to wrangle, and their words grew high.
“And if the beautiful woman loved you so,” cried one man to the gipsy,
“how could you come away and leave her?”
The gipsy laughed. “She didn’t love me then,” he said, “but she will
now, for I am taking her a charm which will make her love me more than
any one on earth. She has only to drink out of the cup I carry here,
and she will be mine for life.”
Upon this they all laughed, and derided him still more.
“Then let every one believe that what I say is true,” cried the gipsy,
and from his bosom he took out a small brown bowl and waved it in the
air, “and here is the cup to prove it.” And the potter’s heart almost
stood still, for he recognized the cup which the gipsy girl had made
for him years before.
The other man laughed scornfully. “That proves nothing,” he said. “I
might take the mat out from the cart and ask it to say if I spoke the
truth; but mats and cups have no tongues to speak with, though my mat
can say more than your cup, for there is a rhyme on it with a pattern
of a cup; moreover, the rhyme is about a gipsy too.”
“Let us see it,” cried they all.
Then the man went out to his cart and fetched in a white and brown
straw mat, covered with a pattern made of cups, and he read the rhyme
which was written upon it—
“From the gipsy’s cup I drank for love,
From the gipsy’s cup I drank for hate,
And when she gave me that cup again
My love was gone and I drank too late.”
On hearing this the potter jumped up, and dashed into their midst, and
seized the cup.
“The gipsy speaks truth,” he cried, “when he says she is the most
beautiful woman in the world, but he speaks false when he says that she
will ever love him; for he has stolen that cup, and I shall take it
from him, and if he tries to stop me, why then I will fight him, and
let every one see who is the better fellow of the two.”
But when the gipsy had seen the rhyme upon the mat, he stood and stared
as if he were made of stone, and said no word to the potter, and indeed
scarcely seemed to notice that he had taken away the cup from him. Then
the potter turned to the man who owned the mat and said, “If you will
sell me your mat I will pay you handsomely for it, and I beg you to
tell me who made it, and where you got it, for I would like to buy some
more like it.”
The traveller was much astonished, but he told the potter that it was
made by a woman who lived in a village a little way off, and she sat by
her doorway and wove mats, with a gipsy boy to help her; and she was
the loveliest woman he had ever seen on earth, with eyes just like blue
cornflowers and hair like golden corn. Then the potter took his bowl
and the mat and started to go home, but the gipsy slunk out of the room
and went into the night, and nobody noticed him.
Meantime the potter’s wife continued to grieve and lament, for in spite
of her taking the gipsy boy’s advice, and telling all things that she
loved her husband and wished him back, he did not come back to her; and
though she wove her rhyme into every mat that she made, she despaired
of the potter’s ever seeing one. The only thing which seemed to console
her, was the little brown clay cup that the gipsy woman had thrown for
her, before she died. As it had never been baked in the oven, the clay
was dry and hard and cracked, and it was a sorry thing to look at, but
still the potter’s wife kept it beside her, and would drink out of
nothing else, and from time to time she kissed it, and laid her cheek
against it.
The gipsy boy said to her—
“If I were you I should watch for my husband all day. I would weave my
mats in the doorway, and look up the road both ways, from morn till
night, otherwise your husband will come back and go past the cottage
and you will never know.” So she took her loom and sat by the roadway,
and watched, and looked over the hill and to right and left for whoever
might come. And often the gipsy boy would watch too, and look from the
other side of the cottage while the potter’s wife sat in the front. One
day the gipsy boy ran round to her and said, “There is some one coming
up the road who will come here, but it is not your husband. It is my
father, and he will want to take me away, and he will beat me as he did
my mother. And if he gets hold of the cup that my mother made for you,
he knows all her charms, and he can undo what she did, and perhaps can
throw some evil spell on us all, so that your husband will never return
again. So the best thing will be for you to give me the cup and let me
hide myself with it, and then you must tell him that you do not know
where I am, and if he asks, tell him that the cup is gone; and when he
is gone I will come back again, but promise that you will not give me
up to him.”
So the potter’s wife promised that she would never give up the little
boy, and she bid him take the cup and run quickly and hide himself, and
then she took her little girl by the hand and sat and waited for the
gipsy man to come, though she trembled with fear, and wished him far
away.
Presently the gipsy man came up to the front of the cottage where the
potter’s wife sat, and bid her good-day.
“I was here before,” he said. “And you gave me something to eat and
drink. Is your husband come back, for he was away then?”
“My husband is away still,” she said. “But soon I hope he will be here.”
Then the gipsy took up one of her mats which lay on the ground beside
her, and looked at it.
“You are clever with your loom,” he said; “but what do you mean by the
little verse you put on all these mats?”
“It is a little verse which can but be rightly read by one person,”
she answered; “and if he sees it, it will not matter whether others
understand it or no.”
“And have you been here all alone since I came by?” asked the gipsy;
“have no other gipsies been past? for I want to join some of my own
people, and perhaps you can tell me which way they are gone.”
“One came not so long ago,” answered the potter’s wife, “but she was
so tired with tramping far that she could go no further. So she has
stayed, and rests in the churchyard. She was a gipsy woman with red
beads and coins in her hair. And I kept her and let her die in peace,
and wrapped her in a cloth of white and gold.”
“And did she do nothing while she rested here?” asked the gipsy man.
“Did she make you no present to pay you for your trouble?”
“She made me a present which paid me for my trouble well,” said the
woman, “though it was only a little cup of clay that was grey and wet.
And she gave me this ring, and bid me give it to her husband if he came
by here, and tell him that it was useless for him to seek her further.”
The gipsy man looked at the ring she held out to him, and he turned
pale, and knit his brows.
“And where is that cup?” he asked; “and where is her little boy? For I
will take him with me into the world.”
“I don’t know where he is gone,” said the potter’s wife; “as for the
cup, he took it with him when he went.”
Meantime the gipsy boy had hidden in a hay-stack quite close to the
cottage, from where he could see the roadways all round, and he looked
to right and left for who should pass, for he was still half afraid
that his father might come and search for him, and take him away by
force. As he lay and watched he saw a man coming over the hill, who
looked spent and tired, as if he had walked far. He seemed to know the
path well, and he came straight to the cottage, but he did not come in,
but waited near as if he wanted to see who was there. Then the gipsy
boy said to himself—
“Perhaps this is the potter himself, whom she has been looking for all
this time.” So he slid down and ran to the man and began to pretend to
beg.
The man looked at him and said—
“You are a gipsy’s child. Where do you come from? Are you living under
a hedge, or do you come from a gipsy’s camp near?”
“It is true I am a gipsy’s child,” answered the boy, “but I am living
under no hedge, but in that little cottage, for the woman who lives
there keeps me for love of my mother, who helped her when she was in
trouble.”
“And what did your mother do for the woman?” asked the man, who was no
other than the potter. “It must have been a great service, that she
should be willing to take you and keep you.”
“She saved her from an evil charm that had been cast upon her,”
answered the boy, “and taught her to love her husband again, and she
waits his return now and longs for him to come. Therefore she promised
to keep me with her, but now I dare not go into the cottage, because my
father, who is a gipsy, is there, and I am afraid lest he may take me
away with him.”
When the potter heard that the gipsy man was there he would have run
straight into the cottage, but the boy implored him to listen first
and hear what he was saying. So they crept round to the side of the
cottage, and they heard the gipsy man growing angry, and threatening
the potter’s wife, that if she did not tell him where his boy had gone
he would seize her by the hair and wring her throat, in spite of her
being so fair a woman. At this the potter waited no longer, but burst
into the cottage, and seized the gipsy and hurled him out of the house
with all his might; but he and his wife never looked to see if he was
hurt or no, for they looked at nothing but each other and the little
child that the potter’s wife held by the hand. And the gipsy man went
away, and they never heard of him again.
Then the potter’s wife showed her husband the gipsy boy, and told him
of her promise to his mother, and of all he had done for her, and
begged him that he would let her keep him with them. And the potter
promised that she should, and said that when he grew up to be a man he
would teach him his trade, and make him a potter like himself. So they
all lived happily together, and the gipsy boy learned to make cups and
bowls, and was very clever at doing them, but they were cups and bowls
that carried no charms with them, and so could do no one any harm that
drank from them.
[Illustration: THE STORY OF A CAT]
ONCE there lived an old gentleman who was a very rich old gentleman,
and able to buy nearly everything he wanted. He had earned all his
wealth for himself by trading in a big city, and now he had grown so
fond of money that he loved it better than anything else in the world,
and thought of nothing except how he could save it up and make more.
But he never seemed to have time to enjoy himself with all that he had
earned, and he was very angry if he was asked to give money to others.
He lived in a handsome house all alone, and he had a very good cook who
cooked him a sumptuous dinner every day, but he rarely asked any one
to share it with him, though he loved eating and drinking, and always
had the best of wine and food. His cook and his other servants knew
that he was greedy and hard, and cared for nobody, and though they
served him well because he paid them, they none of them loved him.
It was one Christmas, and the snow lay thick upon the ground, and the
wind howled so fiercely that the old gentleman was very glad he was not
obliged to go out into the street, but could sit in his comfortable
arm-chair by the fire and keep warm.
“It really is terrible weather,” he said to himself, “terrible
weather;” and he went to the window and looked out into the street,
where all the pavements were inches deep in snow. “I am very glad that
I need not go out at all, but can sit here and keep warm for to-day,
that is the great thing, and I shall have some ado to keep out the cold
even here with the fire.”