The day had broken when Gabriel Grub awoke, and found himself lying, at full length on the flat gravestone in the churchyard, with the wicker bottle lying empty by his side, and his coat, spade, and lantern, all well whitened by the last night's frost, scattered on the ground. The stone on which he had first seen the goblin seated, stood bolt upright before him, and the grave at which he had worked, the night before, was not far off. At first, he began to doubt the reality of his adventures, but the acute pain in his shoulders when he attempted to rise, assured him that the kicking of the goblins was certainly not ideal. He was staggered again, by observing no traces of footsteps in the snow on which the goblins had played at leap-frog with the gravestones, but he speedily accounted for this circumstance when he remembered that, being spirits, they would leave no visible impression behind them. So, Gabriel Grub got on his feet as well as he could, for the pain in his back; and brushing the frost off his coat, put it on, and turned his face towards the town.
But he was an altered man, and he could not bear the thought of returning to a place where his repentance would be scoffed at, and his reformation disbelieved. He hesitated for a few moments; and then turned away to wander where he might, and seek his bread elsewhere.
The lantern, the spade, and the wicker bottle, were found, that day, in the churchyard. There were a great many speculations about the sexton's fate, at first, but it was speedily determined that he had been carried away by the goblins; and there were not wanting some very credible witnesses who had distinctly seen him whisked through the air on the back of a chestnut horse blind of one eye, with the hind-quarters of a lion, and the tail of a bear. At length all this was devoutly believed; and the new sexton used to exhibit to the curious, for a trifling emolument, a good-sized piece of the church weathercock which had been accidentally picked up by himself in the churchyard, a year or two afterwards.
Unfortunately, these stories were somewhat disturbed by the unlooked-for re-appearance of Gabriel Grub himself, some ten years afterwards, a ragged, contented, rheumatic old man. He told his story to the clergyman, and also to the mayor; and in course of time it began to be received, as a matter of history, in which form it has continued down to this very day. The believers in the weathercock tale, having misplaced their confidence once, were not easily prevailed upon to part with it again, so they looked as wise as they could, shrugged their shoulders, touched their foreheads, and murmured something about Gabriel Grub having drunk all the Hollands, and then fallen asleep on the flat tombstone; and they affected to explain what he supposed he had witnessed in the goblin's cavern, by saying that he had seen the world, and grown wiser. But this opinion, which was by no means a popular one at any time, gradually died off; and be the matter how it may, as Gabriel Grub was afflicted with rheumatism to the end of his days, this story has at least one moral, if it teach no better one - and that is, that if a man turn sulky and drink by himself at Christmas time, he may make up his mind to be not a bit the better for it: let the spirits be never so good, or let them be even as many degrees beyond proof, as those which Gabriel Grub saw in the goblin's cavern.
JOHN STERLING (1806-1844) wrote a notable series of pieces for Blackwood's entitled "Legendary Lore", which culminated in the serial novel "The Onyx Ring" (1838-39); this was revised by Sterling with a view to book publication but he died before making such an arrangement and the revised version eventually appeared in his posthumously assembled Essays and Tales (1848). Several earlier fantasy stories appeared in the Atheneum while he was its editor and co-proprietor in 1828-29, and a few more are strewn about the text of his novel Arthur Coningsby (1833).
Sterling would surely have become one of the leading writers of his day had he not died so young, and he might well have become the most important nineteenth century fantasy writer; his prose fantasies are more various and more adventurous than any other contemporary work. They include "The Last of the Giants" (1828), whose title is selfexplanatory; "Zamor" (1828), about a cautionary vision experienced by Alexander the Great; "Cydon" (1829), about a Greek athlete persuaded by a spirit to embark on a quest to find the cave of Prometheus; "The Substitute for Apollo" (1833), a neat classical allegory; and "The Palace of Morgana" (1837), a uniquely delicate prose poem. "A Chronicle of England" (1840) was his last story.
Sterling is almost forgotten today, despite the fact that the biographical sketch by Julius Hare which introduced Essays and Tales so annoyed Sterling's friend Thomas Carlyle that Carlyle was moved to write a book-length biography by way of correction. It is a great pity that "The Onyx Ring", an intense and deeply personal moral fantasy in which an unhappy young man is enabled by the eponymous object temporarily to assume the identities of several of his seemingly-more-fortunate friends (including a thinlydisguised version of Carlyle), was never published in volume form.
by John Sterling
"Sister," said the little one to her companion, "dost thou remember aught of this fair bay, these soft white sands, and yonder woody rocks?"
"Nay," replied the other, who was somewhat taller, and with a fuller yet sweet voice, "I knew not that I had ever been here before. And yet it seems not altogether new, but like a vision seen in dreams. The sea ripples on the sand with a sound which I feel as friendly and not unknown. Those purple shapes that rise out of the distant blue, and float past over the surface like the shadows of clouds, do not fill me with the terror which haunts me when I look on vast and strange appearances."
"To me," said the little one, "they look only somewhat more distinct than the marks which I have so often watched upon the sea."
"Oh! far brighter are they in colour, far more peculiar and more various in their forms. My heart beats while I look at them. There are ships and horses, living figures, bearded, crowned, armed, and some bear banners and some books, and softer shapes, waving and glistening with plumes, veils, and garlands. Ali! now 'tis gone."
"Rightly art thou called the Daughter of the Sea, and art indeed our own Sea-Child. Here in this bay did I and my sisters, in this land of Faery, first find our nursling of another race."
"Was this then my first name among you, beloved friends? The bay is so beautiful, that, even in your land of Faery, I have seen no spot where it were better to open one's eyes upon the light."
"Yes, here did our Sea-Child first meet our gaze. I and a troop of my sisters were singing on the shore our ancient Song of Pearls, and watching the sun, which, while we sang, and while it went down, changed the sands its beams fell on into gold, and the foam that rippled to the shore into silver. We had often watched it before; and we knew that, if without ceasing our song we gathered the gold sands and silver foam while the sun was on them, into the shells that lay about, they would continue in their changed state. Left till sunset, they returned to what they were, and we had only the sands and foam. We thought the sport so pleasant, that we had carried it on for some minutes, and even amused ourselves with scattering the shining dust over each other's hair, when I saw something floating between us and the sun. We all looked; and soon it drifted near us, and was entangled in the web of sea-weed that waves in the tide round this black single rock. A large sea-eagle at the moment stooped to seize the prize. But I wished myself there before it; and one bound carried me farther than a long stone's-throw of our dark enemies the mountaineers. Thus the eagle in his descent struck only the waters with his talons, and flew off again screaming to the clouds, while I brought what I had won to my sisters."
"Dear one!" said the Sea-Child, "I guess what it was." And she kissed the airy face of her companion with her own, which seemed rather of rose-leaves, and the other only of coloured vapour.
"Yes," said she, "my own Sea-Child, there was a small basket of palm-leaf lined with the down of the phoenix; and in this the baby lay asleep. Beautiful it was indeed, but far unlike the beauty of my sisters. We cared no more for gold or silver dust, or rippling waves, or the rays of the setting sun. We even hushed our song, and bent over our nursling, and took her to be our own. T
hus was it that our Sea-Child came to our Faeryland."
The Sea-Child bent to embrace her friend; for she was somewhat taller than the elfin sprite. They could not hold each other in their arms; for one was gleaming air, and the other human substance. But the fairy hung round the child, as the reflection of a figure in bright water round one who bathes at the same spot of the same transparent pool. To the phantom it was more delightful than to rest and breathe upon a bank of flowers: to the mortal it seemed as if she was encompassed by a soft warm air, full of the odours of opening carnations and of ripe fruits.
"Let us sit here," said the Sea-Child, "and look around us, and discourse."
She placed herself on a mossy stone at the foot of a green birch-tree; and the fairy sat on the extremity of one of the sprays, which hung beside her companion's face, and which hardly bent a hair's-breadth with her weight. By one hand she held to a leaf above her, and with the other touched the dark-brown locks that streamed round the mortal head. The child sat, and looked down, and seemed to think, till the fairy said, "Why art thou sad? Of what art thou musing?"
The child blushed, and stooped her head, and at last looked up confusedly and said: "I never before felt so strongly the difference between me and you, who call me sister. Here, while we sit together on the spot where I was first wafted to your hands, it seems to me strange, - so strange! - that ye should have adopted me for your own, and not thrown me back into the waters, or left me a prey to the mountaineers, from whom ye have so long protected me."
"Strange!" said the other, "how strange? We could do no otherwise than we did. I know not how it is, that our SeaChild often speaks as if it were possible to do aught else than what one wishes. We felt we loved you: we saw that, in that pretty but solid mortal frame, there was a breath and beauty like our own, though also something akin to those huge enemies, who, but for our cunning, would swiftly have devoured thee."
"I too never thought of it in former years; but now, when I believe I am really capable of loving you, when I more want to be loved, and to find nothing dividing me from you, it seems so unnatural, so horrible, that I should be altogether unlike you. You are all of sunbeams and bright hues, and are soft like dewy gossamers; and I, - my limbs, through which no ray can pass, my head, that crushes the flowers I rest it on, as if it had been a head carved in stone! - Oh, sister! I am wretched at the thought. I touched the wing of a butterfly only yesterday with my finger; and I could perceive it shrink and shiver with pain. My touch had bruised its wing; and I thought I could see it ache, as it flew frightened away."
She burst into tears; and these were the first that ever were shed in Faeryland. But there they could not flow long; and she soon shook them from her eyes, and looked up smiling and said: "There thou see'st, dear sister, how unfit I am to live with such as thee. Better perhaps had I met my natural fate, and been destroyed on my first arrival by thy monstrous foes, or by the eagle from which thou didst save me."
"Strange would it have been, if we had not had wit enough to disappoint that big, brutal race!"
"I never could well understand why it was that they hated either you or me."
"They could not do otherwise being what they are, - thou what thou art, - and we the sprites thou knowest us. Curious is the tale, and long to tell, of all that has happened betwixt them and us."
"How came ye to have such dreadful inhabitants in your isle of Faery?"
"Ah! that I know not. They and we seem to belong to it by the same necessity. Before thou camest we had no measure of time; which we now reckon, as thou knowest, by thy years, not by ours. Till then our existence was like what thou describest thy dreams to be. It is in watching thee, that we have learned to mark how thy fancies and wishes and actions rise and succeed one another, as the sun and moon, the stars and clouds travel and change. And even now I hardly feel, as thou appearest to do, what is meant by to-day, yesterday, and to-morrow. Of times and years therefore I can tell thee little. We grow not old, nor cease to be young. Nor can we say of each other, as we can of thee, - thou art such a one, and none else. We discern differences of sunshine and shade, of land and sea, of wind and calm; but all of us feel alike under the same circumstances, and have no fixed peculiarity of being, such as that which makes thee so different from us. I know not whether it was I, or some other of my sisters, who visited this field and shore yesterday, and the day before danced in the showering drops of the white waterfall yonder up the valley. Each of us feels as all do, and all as each. I love thee not more than do my sisters, nor they more than I. Of our past life I only know, that we seemed always to have been in this our own land, and to have been happy here. The flowers fill us with odours, the sky with warmth; the dews bathe us in delight; the moonbeams wind us in a ring with filmy threads when we dance upon the sands; and, when the woods murmur above us, we have a thrill of quiet joy, which belongs not to me more than to another, but is the common bliss of all. Of all times have the mountains and deep ravines and bare and rocky uplands of our isle been the abode of a fierce and ugly race of giants, whom we have been accustomed to call our brothers, and to believe them allied with us by nature, though between us there has ever been a mortal enmity."
"Often, often," said the Sea-Child, "have I thought how much happier we should be, had there been no giants in the land."
"I know not," replied the fairy, "how that might be. Much is the vexation that they cause us; but it is said that our race is inseparable from theirs, and that, if they were altogether destroyed, we also must perish. Never, till we had thee among us, did their enmity seem very dangerous, difficult as it often was to avoid their injuries. Always, as now, when the shadows of the storm-cloud swept from the hills over our plains, when the dark mist rolled out of the ravines down to our sunny meadows, the shaggy and huge creatures strode forth from their caves and forests, leaning on their pine clubs, shouting and growling, defacing our green and flowery sward with their weighty tramp, and scaring us away before them. When, as it has happened, some of us were trodden beneath their feet, or dashed below their swinging clubs, a faint shriek, a sudden blaze burst from under the blow; and all of us, lurking beneath the waterfalls, clinging amid the hidden nooks of flowers, or shrunken into sparry grottoes in the rocks, felt stricken and agonized, although none of us could cease to live. All round this bay, and others larger and more broken of our shore, the giant horde of our brothers would sit upon the cliffs and crags, looking themselves like prodigious rocks, and, with the rain and storm about them, and the sea-foam dashing up against their knees, would wash their dark beards in the brine, and seem to laugh aloud at the sound of the tempest. But when calm and sunshine were about to return, they always sprang from their places on the shore, and, like one of those herds of wild bulls that they chase before them, hurried back with dizzy bellowings, and rush of limbs and clubs, into their dark mountains. Sometimes indeed they were more malicious, and sought more resolutely to do us mischief. I have known them tear asunder the jaws of one of their hill-torrents, so as to pour the waters suddenly on our fields and valleys. Sometimes too we have seen them standing upon the mountains, with their figures marked against the sky, plying great stems of trees around a mass of snow and ice, till, loosened at last, it rolled down mile after mile, crashing through wood and stream. Thus our warm bright haunts were buried under a frozen heap of ruins, while the laughter of the mountain-monsters rang through the air, above the roar of the falling mass. But often we had our revenge. Once, when the storms had gathered fiercely on those far hills, and rushed in rainy gusts and black fogs down every gully, and opened at last over the green vale and sunny bay, our brothers hurried in tumult from their own region, their swinish ears tossing in the dark folds of their locks and beards, and, with mouths like wolves, drinking in the tempest as they ran. They rioted and triumphed on the shore, while the wind whistled loudly round them; and they played with the billows which tumbled on the beach, as I have seen you play with lambs in the green fields. We peeped from the grottoes where we had
hidden ourselves, and saw them catch some round black heaps out of the waters, like skins of animals full of liquid. These they threw at each other, till at last one burst, and covered the giant whom it had struck with a red stain. On this there was a loud shout: they flung the skins about no more, but caught them tenderly in their arms, lifted them to their mouths, bit them open and drained the contents. This increased their tumult and grim joy; and they turned to the meadow, and began to wrestle and leap and tear down the young trees, and disport themselves, till one by one they sank upon the turf in sleep. The storm was clearing off we ventured from our hiding-places, and looked upon the hairy dismal shapes, that lay scattered and heaped like brown rocks overgrown with weeds and moss. Suddenly we all looked at each other, and determined what to do. We pierced through the crevices of our grottoes, till we reached a fount of sunny fire. This we drew upwards by our singing to follow us, and led it in a channel over the grass, till it formed a stream of diamond light, dividing this field from the mountains, and encircling the whole host of giants. The warm sunshine at the same time began to play on them. They felt the soft sweet flowery air of our lower land; our songs sounded in their bristled ears; and they began to toss, roll, snort, and endeavoured to rise and escape to their dark hills. But this was not so easy now. They could not pass the bright pure stream. The sunshine, in which we revelled, weakened them so much that they could not rise and stand, but staggered on their knees, fell upon their hands and faces, and seemed to dissolve away, like their own ice-crags when flung with all their clay and withered herbage down into our warm lakes and dells. We thought there was now a chance of seeing our enemies, who were also our brothers, for ever destroyed. We began to deliberate whether we also should necessarily perish with them, when we heard a sudden gust of wind and flash of rain; another storm broke from the mountains; a torrent of snow-water quenched our diamond flame. The giants stood up, bold, wild, and strong as ever, leaped, roared, and swung their clubs, and, with the friendly tempest playing round them, stormed back into the depths of their own mountain world."
The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy: 19th Century (European Literary Fantasy Anthologies) Page 13
