'Have a Bath Oliver,' said Dan, and he passed over the squashy envelope
with the eggs.
'By Oak, Ash and Thorn,' cried Puck, taking off his blue cap, 'I like
you too. Sprinkle a plenty salt on the biscuit, Dan, and I'll eat it
with you. That'll show you the sort of person I am. Some of us'--he went
on, with his mouth full--'couldn't abide Salt, or Horse-shoes over a
door, or Mountain-ash berries, or Running Water, or Cold Iron, or the
sound of Church Bells. But I'm Puck!'
He brushed the crumbs carefully from his doublet and shook hands.
'We always said, Dan and I,' Una stammered, 'that if it ever happened
we'd know ex-actly what to do; but--but now it seems all different
somehow.'
'She means meeting a fairy,' said Dan. 'I never believed in 'em--not
after I was six, anyhow.'
'I did,' said Una. 'At least, I sort of half believed till we learned
"Farewell Rewards". Do you know "Farewell Rewards and Fairies"?'
'Do you mean this?' said Puck. He threw his big head back and began at
the second line:
'Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they;
And though they sweep their hearths no less
('Join in, Una!')
Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?'
The echoes flapped all along the flat meadow.
'Of course I know it,' he said.
'And then there's the verse about the rings,' said Dan. 'When I was
little it always made me feel unhappy in my inside.'
'"Witness those rings and roundelays", do you mean?' boomed Puck, with a
voice like a great church organ.
'Of theirs which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days
On many a grassy plain,
But since of late Elizabeth,
And, later, James came in,
Are never seen on any heath
As when the time hath been.'
'It's some time since I heard that sung, but there's no good beating
about the bush: it's true. The People of the Hills have all left. I saw
them come into Old England and I saw them go. Giants, trolls, kelpies,
brownies, goblins, imps; wood, tree, mound, and water spirits;
heath-people, hill-watchers, treasure-guards, good people, little
people, pishogues, leprechauns, night-riders, pixies, nixies, gnomes,
and the rest--gone, all gone! I came into England with Oak, Ash and
Thorn, and when Oak, Ash and Thorn are gone I shall go too.'
Dan looked round the meadow--at Una's Oak by the lower gate; at the line
of ash trees that overhang Otter Pool where the mill-stream spills over
when the Mill does not need it, and at the gnarled old white-thorn where
Three Cows scratched their necks.
'It's all right,' he said; and added, 'I'm planting a lot of acorns this
autumn too.'
'Then aren't you most awfully old?' said Una.
'Not old--fairly long-lived, as folk say hereabouts. Let me see--my
friends used to set my dish of cream for me o' nights when Stonehenge
was new. Yes, before the Flint Men made the Dewpond under Chanctonbury
Ring.'
Una clasped her hands, cried 'Oh!' and nodded her head.
'She's thought a plan,' Dan explained. 'She always does like that when
she thinks a plan.'
'I was thinking--suppose we saved some of our porridge and put it in the
attic for you? They'd notice if we left it in the nursery.'
'Schoolroom,' said Dan quickly, and Una flushed, because they had made a
solemn treaty that summer not to call the schoolroom the nursery any
more.
'Bless your heart o' gold!' said Puck. 'You'll make a fine considering
wench some market-day. I really don't want you to put out a bowl for me;
but if ever I need a bite, be sure I'll tell you.'
He stretched himself at length on the dry grass, and the children
stretched out beside him, their bare legs waving happily in the air.
They felt they could not be afraid of him any more than of their
particular friend old Hobden the hedger. He did not bother them with
grown-up questions, or laugh at the donkey's head, but lay and smiled to
himself in the most sensible way.
'Have you a knife on you?' he said at last.
Dan handed over his big one-bladed outdoor knife, and Puck began to
carve out a piece of turf from the centre of the Ring.
'What's that for--Magic?' said Una, as he pressed up the square of
chocolate loam that cut like so much cheese.
'One of my little magics,' he answered, and cut another. 'You see, I
can't let you into the Hills because the People of the Hills have gone;
but if you care to take seizin from me, I may be able to show you
something out of the common here on Human Earth. You certainly deserve
it.'
'What's taking seizin?' said Dan, cautiously.
'It's an old custom the people had when they bought and sold land. They
used to cut out a clod and hand it over to the buyer, and you weren't
lawfully seized of your land--it didn't really belong to you--till the
other fellow had actually given you a piece of it--like this.' He held
out the turves.
'But it's our own meadow,' said Dan, drawing back. 'Are you going to
magic it away?'
Puck laughed. 'I know it's your meadow, but there's a great deal more in
it than you or your father ever guessed. Try!'
He turned his eyes on Una.
'I'll do it,' she said. Dan followed her example at once.
'Now are you two lawfully seized and possessed of all Old England,'
began Puck, in a sing-song voice. 'By right of Oak, Ash, and Thorn are
you free to come and go and look and know where I shall show or best you
please. You shall see What you shall see and you shall hear What you
shall hear, though It shall have happened three thousand year; and you
shall know neither Doubt nor Fear. Fast! Hold fast all I give you.'
The children shut their eyes, but nothing happened.
'Well?' said Una, disappointedly opening them. 'I thought there would be
dragons.'
'"Though It shall have happened three thousand year,"' said Puck, and
counted on his fingers. 'No; I'm afraid there were no dragons three
thousand years ago.'
'But there hasn't happened anything at all,' said Dan.
'Wait awhile,' said Puck. 'You don't grow an oak in a year--and Old
England's older than twenty oaks. Let's sit down again and think. _I_
can do that for a century at a time.'
'Ah, but you're a fairy,' said Dan.
'Have you ever heard me say that word yet?' said Puck quickly.
'No. You talk about "the People of the Hills", but you never say
"fairies",' said Una. 'I was wondering at that. Don't you like it?'
'How would you like to be called "mortal" or "human being" all the
time?' said Puck; 'or "son of Adam" or "daughter of Eve"?'
'I shouldn't like it at all,' said Dan. 'That's how the Djinns and
Afrits talk in the _Arabian Nights_.'
'And that's how _I_ feel about saying--that word that I don't say.
Besides, what you call them are made-up things the People of the Hills
have never heard of--little buzzflies with butterfly wings and gauze
petticoats, and shiny stars in their hair, and a wand like a
schoolteacher's cane for punishing bad boys and rewarding good ones. _I_
know 'em!'
'We don't mean that sort,' said Dan. 'We hate 'em too.'
'Exactly,' said Puck. 'Can you wonder that the People of the Hills don't
care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving,
sugar-and-shake-your-head set of impostors? Butterfly wings, indeed!
I've seen Sir Huon and a troop of his people setting off from Tintagel
Castle for Hy-Brasil in the teeth of a sou'-westerly gale, with the
spray flying all over the Castle, and the Horses of the Hills wild with
fright. Out they'd go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they'd
be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind
again. Butterfly-wings! It was Magic--Magic as black as Merlin could
make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing
mermaids in it. And the Horses of the Hills picked their way from one
wave to another by the lightning flashes! _That_ was how it was in the
old days!'
'Splendid,' said Dan, but Una shuddered.
'I'm glad they're gone, then; but what made the People of the Hills go
away?' Una asked.
'Different things. I'll tell you one of them some day--the thing that
made the biggest flit of any,' said Puck. 'But they didn't all flit at
once. They dropped off, one by one, through the centuries. Most of them
were foreigners who couldn't stand our climate. _They_ flitted early.'
'How early?' said Dan.
'A couple of thousand years or more. The fact is they began as Gods. The
Phoenicians brought some over when they came to buy tin; and the Gauls,
and the Jutes, and the Danes, and the Frisians, and the Angles brought
more when they landed. They were always landing in those days, or being
driven back to their ships, and they always brought their Gods with
them. England is a bad country for Gods. Now, _I_ began as I mean to go
on. A bowl of porridge, a dish of milk, and a little quiet fun with the
country folk in the lanes was enough for me then, as it is now. I belong
here, you see, and I have been mixed up with people all my days. But
most of the others insisted on being Gods, and having temples, and
altars, and priests, and sacrifices of their own.'
'People burned in wicker baskets?' said Dan. 'Like Miss Blake tells us
about?'
'All sorts of sacrifices,' said Puck. 'If it wasn't men, it was horses,
or cattle, or pigs, or metheglin--that's a sticky, sweet sort of beer.
_I_ never liked it. They were a stiff-necked, extravagant set of idols,
the Old Things. But what was the result? Men don't like being sacrificed
at the best of times; they don't even like sacrificing their
farm-horses. After a while, men simply left the Old Things alone, and
the roofs of their temples fell in, and the Old Things had to scuttle
out and pick up a living as they could. Some of them took to hanging
about trees, and hiding in graves and groaning o' nights. If they
groaned loud enough and long enough they might frighten a poor
countryman into sacrificing a hen, or leaving a pound of butter for
them. I remember one Goddess called Belisama. She became a common wet
water-spirit somewhere in Lancashire. And there were hundreds of other
friends of mine. First they were Gods. Then they were People of the
Hills, and then they flitted to other places because they couldn't get
on with the English for one reason or another. There was only one Old
Thing, I remember, who honestly worked for his living after he came down
in the world. He was called Weland, and he was a smith to some Gods.
I've forgotten their names, but he used to make them swords and spears.
I think he claimed kin with Thor of the Scandinavians.'
'_Heroes of Asgard_ Thor?' said Una. She had been reading the book.
'Perhaps,' answered Puck. 'None the less, when bad times came, he didn't
beg or steal. He worked; and I was lucky enough to be able to do him a
good turn.'
'Tell us about it,' said Dan. 'I think I like hearing of Old Things.'
They rearranged themselves comfortably, each chewing a grass stem. Puck
propped himself on one strong arm and went on:
'Let's think! I met Weland first on a November afternoon in a sleet
storm, on Pevensey Level----'
'Pevensey? Over the hill, you mean?' Dan pointed south.
'Yes; but it was all marsh in those days, right up to Horsebridge and
Hydeneye. I was on Beacon Hill--they called it Brunanburgh then--when I
saw the pale flame that burning thatch makes, and I went down to look.
Some pirates--I think they must have been Peofn's men--were burning a
village on the Levels, and Weland's image--a big, black wooden thing
with amber beads round his neck--lay in the bows of a black
thirty-two-oar galley that they had just beached. Bitter cold it was!
There were icicles hanging from her deck and the oars were glazed over
with ice, and there was ice on Weland's lips. When he saw me he began a
long chant in his own tongue, telling me how he was going to rule
England, and how I should smell the smoke of his altars from
Lincolnshire to the Isle of Wight. I didn't care! I'd seen too many Gods
charging into Old England to be upset about it. I let him sing himself
out while his men were burning the village, and then I said (I don't
know what put it into my head), "Smith of the Gods," I said, "the time
comes when I shall meet you plying your trade for hire by the wayside."'
'What did Weland say?' said Una. 'Was he angry?'
'He called me names and rolled his eyes, and I went away to wake up the
people inland. But the pirates conquered the country, and for centuries
Weland was a most important God. He had temples everywhere--from
Lincolnshire to the Isle of Wight, as he said--and his sacrifices were
simply scandalous. To do him justice, he preferred horses to men; but
men or horses, I knew that presently he'd have to come down in the
world--like the other Old Things. I gave him lots of time--I gave him
about a thousand years--and at the end of 'em I went into one of his
temples near Andover to see how he prospered. There was his altar, and
there was his image, and there were his priests, and there were the
congregation, and everybody seemed quite happy, except Weland and the
priests. In the old days the congregation were unhappy until the priests
had chosen their sacrifices; and so would you have been. When the
service began a priest rushed out, dragged a man up to the altar,
pretended to hit him on the head with a little gilt axe, and the man
fell down and pretended to die. Then everybody shouted: "A sacrifice to
Weland! A sacrifice to Weland!"'
'And the man wasn't really dead?' said Una.
'Not a bit. All as much pretence as a dolls' tea-party. Then they
brought out a splendid white horse, and the priest cut some hair from
its mane and tail and burned it on the altar, shouting, "A sacrifice!"
That counted the same as if a man and a horse had been killed. I saw
poor Weland's face through the smoke, and I couldn't help laughing. He
looked so disgusted and so hungry, and all he had to satisfy himself was
a horrid smell of burning hair. Just a dolls' tea-party!
'I judged it better not to say anything then ('twouldn't have been
fair), and the next time I came to Andover, a few hundred years later,
Weland and his temple were gone, and there was a Christian bishop in a
church there. None of the People of the Hills could tell me anything
about him, and I supposed that he had left England.' Puck turned; lay on
the other elbow, and thought for a long time.
'Let's see,' he said at last. 'It must have been some few years later--a
year or two before the Conquest, I think--that I came back to Pook's
Hill here, and one evening I heard old Hobden talking about Weland's
Ford.'
'If you mean old Hobden the hedger, he's only seventy-two. He told me so
himself,' said Dan. 'He's a intimate friend of ours.'
'You're quite right,' Puck replied. 'I meant old Hobden's ninth
great-grandfather. He was a free man and burned charcoal hereabouts.
I've known the family, father and son, so long that I get confused
sometimes. Hob of the Dene was my Hobden's name, and he lived at the
Forge cottage. Of course, I pricked up my ears when I heard Weland
mentioned, and I scuttled through the woods to the Ford just beyond Bog
Wood yonder.' He jerked his head westward, where the valley narrows
between wooded hills and steep hop-fields.
'Why, that's Willingford Bridge,' said Una. 'We go there for walks
often. There's a kingfisher there.'
'It was Weland's Ford then, dear. A road led down to it from the Beacon
on the top of the hill--a shocking bad road it was--and all the hillside
was thick, thick oak-forest, with deer in it. There was no trace of
Weland, but presently I saw a fat old farmer riding down from the Beacon
under the greenwood tree. His horse had cast a shoe in the clay, and
when he came to the Ford he dismounted, took a penny out of his purse,
laid it on a stone, tied the old horse to an oak, and called out:
"Smith, Smith, here is work for you!" Then he sat down and went to
sleep. You can imagine how _I_ felt when I saw a white-bearded, bent old
blacksmith in a leather apron creep out from behind the oak and begin to
shoe the horse. It was Weland himself. I was so astonished that I jumped
out and said: "What on Human Earth are you doing here, Weland?"'
'Poor Weland!' sighed Una.
'He pushed the long hair back from his forehead (he didn't recognize me
at first). Then he said: "_You_ ought to know. You foretold it, Old
Thing. I'm shoeing horses for hire. I'm not even Weland now," he said.
"They call me Wayland-Smith."'
'Poor chap!' said Dan. 'What did you say?'
'What could I say? He looked up, with the horse's foot on his lap, and
he said, smiling, "I remember the time when I wouldn't have accepted
this old bag of bones as a sacrifice, and now I'm glad enough to shoe
him for a penny."
'"Isn't there any way for you to get back to Valhalla, or wherever you
come from?" I said.
'"I'm afraid not," he said, rasping away at the hoof. He had a wonderful
touch with horses. The old beast was whinnying on his shoulder. "You may
remember that I was not a gentle God in my Day and my Time and my Power.
I shall never be released till some human being truly wishes me well."
'"Surely," said I, "the farmer can't do less than that. You're shoeing
the horse all round for him."
'"Yes," said he, "and my nails will hold a shoe from one full moon to
the next. But farmers and Weald clay," said he, "are both uncommon cold
and sour."
'Would you believe it, that when that farmer woke and found his horse
shod he rode away without one word of thanks? I was so angry that I
wheeled his horse right round and walked him back three miles to the
Beacon, just to teach the old sinner politeness.'
'Were you invisible?' said Una. Puck nodded, gravely.
'The Beacon was always laid in those days ready to light, in case the
French landed at Pevensey; and I walked the horse about and about it
that lee-long summer night. The farmer thought he was bewitched--well,
he _was_, of course--and began to pray and shout. _I_ didn't care! I was
as good a Christian as he any fair-day in the County, and about four
o'clock in the morning a young novice came along from the monastery that
used to stand on the top of Beacon Hill.'
'What's a novice?' said Dan.
'It really means a man who is beginning to be a monk, but in those days
people sent their sons to a monastery just the same as a school. This
young fellow had been to a monastery in France for a few months every
year, and he was finishing his studies in the monastery close to his
home here. Hugh was his name, and he had got up to go fishing
hereabouts. His people owned all this valley. Hugh heard the farmer
shouting, and asked him what in the world he meant. The old man spun him
a wonderful tale about fairies and goblins and witches; and I _know_ he
hadn't seen a thing except rabbits and red deer all that night. (The
People of the Hills are like otters--they don't show except when they
choose.) But the novice wasn't a fool. He looked down at the horse's
feet, and saw the new shoes fastened as only Weland knew how to fasten
'em. (Weland had a way of turning down the nails that folks called the
Smith's Clinch.)
'"H'm!" said the novice. "Where did you get your horse shod?"
'The farmer wouldn't tell him at first, because the priests never liked
their people to have any dealings with the Old Things. At last he
confessed that the Smith had done it. "What did you pay him?" said the
novice. "Penny," said the farmer, very sulkily. "That's less than a
Christian would have charged," said the novice. "I hope you threw a
'Thank you' into the bargain." "No," said the farmer; "Wayland-Smith's a
heathen." "Heathen or no heathen," said the novice, "you took his help,
and where you get help there you must give thanks." "What?" said the
farmer--he was in a furious temper because I was walking the old horse
in circles all this time--"What, you young jackanapes?" said he. "Then
by your reasoning I ought to say 'Thank you' to Satan if he helped me?"
"Don't roll about up there splitting reasons with me," said the novice.
"Come back to the Ford and thank the Smith, or you'll be sorry."
'Back the farmer had to go. I led the horse, though no one saw me, and
the novice walked beside us, his gown swishing through the shiny dew and
his fishing-rod across his shoulders, spear-wise. When we reached the
Ford again--it was five o'clock and misty still under the oaks--the
farmer simply wouldn't say "Thank you." He said he'd tell the Abbot that
the novice wanted him to worship heathen Gods. Then Hugh the novice lost
his temper. He just cried, "Out!" put his arm under the farmer's fat
leg, and heaved him from his saddle on to the turf, and before he could
rise he caught him by the back of the neck and shook him like a rat till
the farmer growled, "Thank you, Wayland-Smith."'
'Did Weland see all this?' said Dan.
'Oh yes, and he shouted his old war-cry when the farmer thudded on to
the ground. He was delighted. Then the novice turned to the oak tree and
said, "Ho, Smith of the Gods! I am ashamed of this rude farmer; but for
all you have done in kindness and charity to him and to others of our
people, I thank you and wish you well." Then he picked up his
fishing-rod--it looked more like a tall spear than ever--and tramped off
down your valley.'
'And what did poor Weland do?' said Una.
'He laughed and he cried with joy, because he had been released at last,
and could go away. But he was an honest Old Thing. He had worked for his
living and he paid his debts before he left. "I shall give that novice a
gift," said Weland. "A gift that shall do him good the wide world over
and Old England after him. Blow up my fire, Old Thing, while I get the
iron for my last task." Then he made a sword--a dark-grey, wavy-lined
sword--and I blew the fire while he hammered. By Oak, Ash and Thorn, I
tell you, Weland was a Smith of the Gods! He cooled that sword in
running water twice, and the third time he cooled it in the evening dew,
and he laid it out in the moonlight and said Runes (that's charms) over
it, and he carved Runes of Prophecy on the blade. "Old Thing," he said
to me, wiping his forehead, "this is the best blade that Weland ever
made. Even the user will never know how good it is. Come to the
monastery."
'We went to the dormitory where the monks slept, we saw the novice fast
asleep in his cot, and Weland put the sword into his hand, and I
remember the young fellow gripped it in his sleep. Then Weland strode as
far as he dared into the Chapel and threw down all his
shoeing-tools--his hammers and pincers and rasps--to show that he had
done with them for ever. It sounded like suits of armour falling, and
the sleepy monks ran in, for they thought the monastery had been
attacked by the French. The novice came first of all, waving his new
sword and shouting Saxon battle-cries. When they saw the shoeing-tools
they were very bewildered, till the novice asked leave to speak, and
told what he had done to the farmer, and what he had said to
Wayland-Smith, and how, though the dormitory light was burning, he had
found the wonderful rune-carved sword in his cot.
'The Abbot shook his head at first, and then he laughed and said to the
novice: "Son Hugh, it needed no sign from a heathen God to show me that
you will never be a monk. Take your sword, and keep your sword, and go
with your sword, and be as gentle as you are strong and courteous. We
will hang up the Smith's tools before the Altar," he said, "because,
whatever the Smith of the Gods may have been, in the old days, we know
that he worked honestly for his living and made gifts to Mother Church."
Then they went to bed again, all except the novice, and he sat up in the
garth playing with his sword. Then Weland said to me by the stables:
"Farewell, Old Thing; you had the right of it. You saw me come to
England, and you see me go. Farewell!"
'With that he strode down the hill to the corner of the Great
Woods--Woods Corner, you call it now--to the very place where he had
first landed--and I heard him moving through the thickets towards
Horsebridge for a little, and then he was gone. That was how it
happened. I saw it.'
Both children drew a long breath.
'But what happened to Hugh the novice?' said Una.
'And the sword?' said Dan.
Puck looked down the meadow that lay all quiet and cool in the shadow of
Pook's Hill. A corncrake jarred in a hay-field near by, and the small
trouts of the brook began to jump. A big white moth flew unsteadily from
the alders and flapped round the children's heads, and the least little
haze of water-mist rose from the brook.
'Do you really want to know?' Puck said.
'We do,' cried the children. 'Awfully!'
'Very good. I promised you that you shall see What you shall see, and
you shall hear What you shall hear, though It shall have happened three
thousand year; but just now it seems to me that, unless you go back to
the house, people will be looking for you. I'll walk with you as far as
the gate.'
'Will you be here when we come again?' they asked.
'Surely, sure-ly,' said Puck. 'I've been here some time already. One
minute first, please.'
He gave them each three leaves--one of Oak, one of Ash and one of Thorn.
'Bite these,' said he. 'Otherwise you might be talking at home of what
you've seen and heard, and--if I know human beings--they'd send for the
doctor. Bite!'
They bit hard, and found themselves walking side by side to the lower
gate. Their father was leaning over it.
'And how did your play go?' he asked.
'Oh, splendidly,' said Dan. 'Only afterwards, I think, we went to sleep.
it was very hot and quiet. Don't you remember, Una?'
Una shook her head and said nothing.
'I see,' said her father.
'Late--late in the evening Kilmeny came home,
For Kilmeny had been she could not tell where,
And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare.