“Oh, no, no!” cried Teddy. “Please don’t go yet.”
“Yes, I must,” said the Counterpane Fairy. “I hear your mother coming.”
“But will you come back again?” cried Teddy.
The Counterpane Fairy made no answer. She was walking down the other side of the bed-quilt hill, and Teddy heard her voice, little and thin, dying away in the distance:
“Oh dear, dear, dear! What a hill to go down! What a hill it is! Oh dear, dear, dear!”
Then the door opened and his mother came in. She was looking rested, and she smiled at him lovingly, but the little brown Counterpane Fairy was gone.
Puck of Pook’s Hill
By Rudyard Kipling
READING TIME: 20 MINUTES
The children were at the theatre, acting as much as they could remember of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Their father had made them a small play out of the big Shakespeare one, and they had rehearsed it with him and with their mother till they could say it by heart.
The theatre lay in a meadow called the Long Slip. A stream, carrying water to a mill two or three fields away, bent round a corner of it, and in the middle of the bend lay an old fairy ring of darkened grass, which was the stage.
They went down after tea on Midsummer Eve, when the shadows were growing, and took supper with them.
A cuckoo sat on a gate post singing his broken June tune, while a busy kingfisher crossed from the mill stream, to the brook which ran on the other side of the meadow. Everything else was a sort of thick, sleepy stillness smelling of meadow-sweet and dry grass.
Their play went beautifully. Dan remembered all his parts – and Una never forgot a word of Titania. They were both so pleased that they acted it three times over from beginning to end before they sat down in the unthistly centre of the ring to eat eggs and biscuits. This was when they heard a whistle among the alders on the bank, and they jumped.
The bushes parted. In the spot where Dan had stood as Puck they saw a small, brown, broad-shouldered, pointy-eared person with a snub nose, slanting blue eyes, and a grin across his freckled face. The children looked and gasped. The small thing – no taller than Dan’s shoulder – stepped into the ring.
Still the children stared at him – from his dark-blue cap, like a big columbine flower, to his bare, hairy feet. At last he laughed.
“Please don’t look like that. What else could you expect?” he said. “What on human earth made you act A Midsummer Night’s Dream three times, on Midsummer Eve, in the middle of a ring, and under – right under – one of my oldest hills in old England?
“By oak, ash, and thorn! If this had happened a few hundred years ago you’d have had all the people of the hills out like bees in June!” “We didn’t know it was wrong,” said Dan. “Wrong!” The little fellow shook with laughter. “Indeed, it isn’t wrong. You’ve done something that kings, knights and scholars in old days would have given their crowns and spurs and books to find out. You’ve broken the hills! It hasn’t happened in a thousand years. Unluckily the hills are empty now, and all the people of the hills are gone. I’m the only one left. I’m Puck, the oldest old thing in England, very much at your service – if you care to have anything to do with me.”
He looked at the children, and the children looked at him. His eyes were very kind, and there was the beginning of a good smile on his lips.
Una put out her hand. “Don’t go,” she said. “We like you.”
“Have a Bath Oliver biscuit,” said Dan, and he passed over the squashy envelope with the eggs.
“By oak, ash and thorn,” cried Puck, “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 horseshoes over a door, or mountain-ash berries, or running water, or cold iron. But I’m Puck!”
He brushed the crumbs carefully from his jacket and shook hands.
“We always said, Dan and I,” Una stammered, “that if it ever happened we’d know exactly what to do, but – but now it seems all different somehow.”
“She means meeting a fairy,” said Dan. “I never believed in ’em.”
“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, 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.”
“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.”
He stretched himself at length on the dry grass, and the children stretched out beside him. They felt they could not be afraid of him any more than of their particular friend old Hobden the hedger.
“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,
“One of my little magics,” he answered, and cut another. If you care to take seisin 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 seisin?” 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, 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 pieces of turf and turned his eyes on Una.
“I’ll do it,” she said. Dan followed her example.
“Now are you two lawfully seised 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—”
The children shut their eyes, but nothing happened.
“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,?” 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?”
“What made the people of the hills go away?, Una asked.
“Different things. 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 mor
e when they landed. 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.
“All sorts of sacrifices,” said Puck. ‘“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.
“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 who worked for his living after he came down in the world. He was called Weland, and he was a smith to some gods.
“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. I was on Beacon Hill when I saw the pale flame that burning thatch makes, and I went down to look. Some pirates 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.
“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. 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.
“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. I saw poor Weland’s face through the smoke. He looked so disgusted I judged it better not to say anything then, 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 his 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. 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.”
“It was Weland’s Ford then, dearie. A road led down to it from the beacon on the top of the hill 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, ‘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. 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. ‘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 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 farmer thought he was bewitched – well, he was, of course – and began to pray and shout. I didn’t care, 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.
“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.
“‘Hm!’ 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.
“‘I hope you threw a thank you into
the bargain’, the novice replied.
“‘No’, said the farmer. ‘Wayland-Smith’s a heathen.’
“‘Heathen or no heathen’, said the novice, ‘where you get help there you must give thanks. 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.’ “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. 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. ‘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.
“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. Come to the monastery.’
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