'If ye call me imp or elf, .

I warn you look well to yourself; If ye call me fairy, Ye 'll find me quite contrary; If good neighbour you call me, Then good neighbour I will be; But if you call me kindly sprite, I 'll be your friend both day and night.'

So you must always call them 'good neighbours' or 'good folk,' when you speak of them."

"Did _you_ ever see a fairy, nurse?" asked Randal.

"Not myself, but my mother knew a woman--they called her Tibby d.i.c.kson, and her husband was a shepherd, and she had a bairn, as bonny a bairn as ever you saw. And one day she went to the well to draw water, and as she was coming back she heard a loud scream in her house. Then her heart leaped, and fast she ran and flew to the cradle; and there she saw an awful sight--not her own bairn, but a withered imp, with hands like a mole's, and a face like a frog's, and a mouth from ear to ear, and two great staring eyes."

"What was it?" asked Jeanie, in a trembling voice.

"A fairy's bairn that had not thriven," said nurse; "and when their bairns do not thrive, they just steal honest folks' children and carry them away to their own country."

"And where's that?" said Randal.

"It's under the ground," said nurse, "and there they have gold and silver and diamonds; and there's the Queen of them all, that's as beautiful as the day. She has yellow hair-down to her feet, and she has blue eyes, like the sky on a fine day, and her voice like all the mavises singing in the spring. And she is aye dressed in green, and all her court in green; and she rides a white horse with golden bells on the bridle."

"I would like to go there and see her," said Randal.

"Oh, never say that, my bairn; you never know who may hear you! And if you go there, how will you come back again? and what will your mother do? and Jean here, and me that's carried you many a time in weary arms when you were a babe?"

"Can't people come back again?" asked Randal.

"Some say 'Yes,' and some say 'No.' There was Tarn Hislop, that vanished away the day before all the lads and your own father went forth to that weary war at Flodden, and the English, for once, by guile, won the day.

Well, Tam Hislop, when the news came that all must arm and mount and ride, he could nowhere be found. It was as if the wind had carried him away. High and low they sought him, but there was his clothes and his jack,* and his sword and his spear, but no Tam Hislop. Well, no man heard more of him for seven whole years, not till last year, and then he came back: sore tired he looked, ay, and older than when he was lost.

And I met him by the well, and I was frightened; and 'Tam,' I said, 'where have ye been this weary time?' 'I have been with them that I will not speak the name-of,' says he. 'Ye mean the good folk,' said I. 'Ye have said it,' says he. Then I went up to the house, with my heart in my mouth, and I met Simon Grieve. 'Simon,' I says, 'here's Tam Hislop come home from the good folk.' 'I 'll soon send him back to them,' says he.

And he takes a great rung** and lays it about Tarn's shoulders, calling him coward loon, that ran away from the fighting. And since then Tam has never been seen about the place. But the Laird's man, of Gala, knows them that say he was in Perth the last seven years, and not in Fairyland at all. But it was Fairyland he told me, and he would not lie to his own mother's half-brother's cousin."

* Jack, a kind of breastplate.

** Rung, a staff.

Randal did not care much for the story of Tam Hislop. A fellow who would let old Simon Grieve beat him could not be worthy of the Fairy Queen.

Randal was about thirteen now, a tall boy, with dark eyes, black hair, a brown face with the red on his cheeks. He had grown up in a country where everything was magical and haunted; where fairy knights rode on the leas after dark, and challenged men to battle. Every castle had its tale of Redcap, the sly spirit, or of the woman of the hairy hand. Every old mound was thought to cover hidden gold. And all was so lonely; the green hills rolling between river and river, with no men on them, nothing but sheep, and grouse, and plover. No wonder that Randal lived in a kind of dream. He would lie and watch the long gra.s.s till it locked like a forest, and he thought he could see elves dancing between the green gra.s.s stems, that were like fairy trees. He kept wishing that he, too, might meet the Fairy Queen, and be taken into that other world where everything was beautiful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chapter Six]

CHAPTER VI.--_The Wishing Well_

"JEAN," said Randal one midsummer day, "I am going to the Wishing Well."

"Oh, Randal," said Jean, "it is so far away!"

"I can walk it," said Randal, "and you must come, too; I want you, Jeanie. It 's not so very far."

"But mother says it is wrong to go to Wishing Wells," Jean answered.

"Why is it wrong?" said Randal, switching at the tall foxgloves with a stick.

"Oh, she says it is a wicked thing, and forbidden by the Church. People who go to wish there, sacrifice to the spirits of the well; and Father Francis told her that it was very wrong."

"Father Francis is a shaveling," said Randal. "I heard Simon Grieve say so."

"What's a shaveling, Randal?"

"I don't know: a man that does not fight, I think. I don't care what a shaveling says: so I mean just to go and wish, and I won't sacrifice anything. There can't be any harm in _that!_"

"But, oh Randal, you've got your green doublet on!"

"Well! why not?"

"Do you not know it angers the fair--I mean the good folk,--that anyone should wear green on the hill but themselves?"

"I cannot help it," said Randal. "If I go in and change my doublet, they will ask what I do that for. I 'll chance it, green or grey, and wish my wish for all that."

"And what are you going to wish?"

"I 'm going to wish to meet the Fairy Queen! Just think how beautiful she must be! dressed all in green, with gold bells on her bridle, and riding a white horse shod with gold! I think I see her galloping through the woods and out across the hill, over the heather.'

"But you will go away with her, and never see me any more," said Jean.

"No, I won't; or if I do, I 'll come back, with such a horse, and a sword with a gold handle. I'm going to the Wishing Well. Come on!"

Jean did not like to say "No," and off they went.

Randal and Jean started without taking anything with them to eat. They were afraid to go back to the house for food. Randal said they would be sure to find something somewhere. The Wishing Well was on the top of a hill between Yarrow and Tweed. So they took off their shoes, and waded the Tweed at the shallowest part, and then they walked up the green gra.s.sy bank on the other side, till they came to the burn of Peel. Here they pa.s.sed the old square tower of Peel, and the shepherd dogs came out and barked at them. Randal threw a stone at them, and they ran away with their tails between their legs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Page 265]

"Don't you think we had better go into Peel, and get some bannocks to eat on the way, Randal?" said Jean.

But Randal said he was not hungry; and, besides, the people at Peel would tell the Fairnilee people where they had gone.

"We'll _wish_ for things to eat when we get to the Wishing Well," said Randal. "All sorts of good things--cold venison pasty, and everything you like."

So they began climbing the hill, and they followed the Peel burn. It ran in and out, winding this way and that, and when they did get to the top of the hill, Jean was very tired and very hungry. And she was very disappointed. For she expected to see some wonderful new country at her feet, and there was only a low strip of sunburnt gra.s.s and heather, and then another hill-top! So Jean sat down, and the hot sun blazed on her, and the flies buzzed about her and tormented her.

"Come on, Jean," said Randal; "it must be over the next hill!"

So poor Jean got up and followed him, but he walked far too fast for her. When she reached the crest of the next hill, she found a great cairn, or pile of grey stones; and beneath her lay, far, far below, a deep valley covered with woods, and a stream running through it that she had never seen before.

That stream was the Yarrow.

Randal was nowhere in sight, and she did not know where to look for the Wishing Well. If she had walked straight forward through the trees she would have come to it; but she was so tired, and so hungry, and so hot, that she sat down at the foot of the cairn and cried as if her heart would break.

Then she fell asleep.