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A short story by Enys Tregarthen |
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The Magic Pail |
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Title: The Magic Pail Author: Enys Tregarthen [More Titles by Tregarthen] [* 'The Magic Pail' is a West Cornwall story, the scene of which is laid on a moorland between Carn Kenidzhek (the Hooting Carn) and Carn Boswavas, and not a great distance from the once-celebrated Ding Dong tin-mine.]
The part of the moor where the Trebiskens lived was three miles or more from Ding Dong, and two miles from their nearest neighbour. It was quite out of the beaten track, and a passer by their cottage was as rare as blackberries in December. They would not have lived there at all, but that the cottage was their own--or, rather, Joan's. It had been left to her by will, with the condition that they should live in it themselves. The cottage was not an ordinary one; its walls were built of small blocks of mica and porphyry--much of the porphyry being of that lovely deep-pink kind, with blotchings of black hornblende, all of which a long century or more of weather had polished to the smoothness of glass. Joan said the weather had nothing whatever to do with it, and that it was done by the dear Little People [13] who, she declared, lived in the carn near where the cottage stood. But whoever polished the walls--weather or fairies--the house was a pleasure to look at, particularly when the sun began to sink behind the moors and shone full upon its walls; for then all the richness of the porphyry's rose, all the hornblende's soft blackness, and all the mica's brilliancy, were brought out of the stone, and intensified until a less imaginative person than Joan Trebisken would have believed it was built by enchantment. Even its commonplace roof of brown thatch, which overspread the small casement windows in shaggy raggedness, did not take from the burning wonder of the walls. Perhaps it was because a company of stone-crop had found a dwelling-place there, and that on the ridge of the roof stood out in red distinctness half a dozen Pysgy-pows [14]--curious little round-knobbed tiles placed there by Joan's forebears for the Piskeys to dance on.
In spite of its loneliness, Joan loved the moor with all her Celtic nature, and spent most of her day looking out upon it until the days shortened and Nisdhu, the Black Month, which the Cornish of our time call November, drew near. Nobody dreaded that dark month, with its damp clinging cold, its fogs and mists, which often veiled the whole landscape, including the great carns, more than Joan. She said she felt the chill of its breath before it showed its nose over the head of Carn Kenidzhek, and was careful to shut her door and hatch and her small casement-windows before October was half through. She was sorry to do this, and would not have done so but for the pain in her bones, which was always worse when November was on its way; for she shut out, she said, the music of the Small People's voices. Tom told her it wasn't the voices of the Wee Folk she heard, but the trickling of a little stream making its way down by the carn on its way across the moor. But she declared she knew better, and had ears to distinguish between the tinkle of water and the sweet voices of the dear Little People, if he had not, and Tom, like a sensible man, let her hold to her belief. Joan was a great believer in the fairies, and often declared they were very friendly towards her--perhaps because her forebears had put the pysgy-pows on the roof of their cottage for them to dance on. It was her regret that she had never seen any of the dear little creatures; but she lived in hope of seeing them some day; perhaps when the much-cried-for little maid came she should see them then, she said. It was now towards the end of October and exceedingly cold, and her door and window being shut, she felt very wisht; [15] and as the days jogged on to dreary November she became terribly depressed, so much so that Tom dreaded to leave her sitting all alone by the chimney-corner with a face as long as a fiddle.
When the hour for Tom's return at last drew near she grew more cheerful. She put on the last of the furze he had placed within reach of her hand, partly to boil the kettle and to light him down the road leading to their cottage, but chiefly to make her kitchen cheery-looking to make up for his cold send-off. She was on the watch now for his step, and her face grew brighter as she listened. The kettle was crooning on the fire and everything was warm in cheerful welcome as a step was heard on the hard road outside, and a hand fumbled at the door-latch. Joan, being all impatience to see her man, cried out: 'What are 'ee so stupid about, an? Give the door a shove, soas! [17] 'Tis sticked by the damp.'
She had scarcely said this when the door and its hatch opened gently, and in the doorway stood--not her husband, as she supposed, but the bent figure of a tiny old woman with a small costan, or bramble-basket, on her back. Her slight form was enveloped in a cloak the colour of far-away hills, and her face hidden in the depths of a large bonnet, such as the mine-maidens wear at their work in the mines. Joan was too amazed to see a stranger at her door to ask what she wanted, and before she could get over her surprise, the little old woman had come into the cottage, stepped noiselessly to the hearthplace, unslung the costan, and laid it at her feet, singing as she did so a curious rhyme in a voice so wild and sweet, it reminded Joan, as she listened, which she did as one in a dream, of moor-birds' music and rippling streams, and the voices of the Small People who lived among the carns. The rhyme was as follows:
'Then we to the carns will away, my pednpaley [21]
[Footnote 19: Dinky, very small.] [Footnote 20: Skavarnak, long-eared; also a hare.] [Footnote 21: Pednpaley, a blue-tit; also anything very soft and beautiful, such as velvet. Literally, a soft-head. The 'd' in this word is silent.]
Joan was all of a tremble quite five minutes after she had gone, and when she had somewhat recovered herself, her glance fell on the costan. At first she was afraid what it contained; but her woman's curiosity got the better of her fears, and, bending over the rough basket, she turned over the bracken, laid in careful order on its top, and saw lying on a bed of dried moss and leaves something that brought a cry of amazement, mingled with horror, to her lips. It was a babe, but so tiny and so ugly that she shuddered as she gazed upon it. It was in a deep sleep, or seemed to be, and its skinny little face, crinkled all over like a poppy just out of its sheath, was resting on its claw-like hand. In all her dreams of a child coming to her home, Joan had never dreamt of anything so uncanny as this babe, and she told herself that the little creature in its costan cradle was sent to punish her for her persistent desire for a child. Tom arrived just then, and soon knew all that his wife could tell of the mysterious coming and going of the little old woman in the bal-bonnet, and of her strange song; and, like Joan, when he looked into the bramble-basket and saw the bit of ugliness within, he gave voice to a cry of horror that anything so uncanny should be left on their hands. In fact, he was so angry that he wanted to take the basket and all it held on to the moor, and let her who brought it come and take it away, for have it in his house he would not--no, not for all the crocks of gold the Little People were said to have in their keeping. The night was bitterly cold, and by little moans and sighs coming from the direction of the Hooting Carn Joan could tell the wind was about to rise, and would perhaps end in a great storm. And though she was so much upset at having such an ugly little creature thrust on them, she was too tender-hearted to wish it to be exposed even for an hour on their moor on such a night. Besides, the child was helpless, whosoever child it was, and therefore demanded compassion, and she begged her husband to allow it to stay in their house until to-morrow. Tom could seldom refuse his crippled wife anything when her heart was set upon it, and, though much against his inclination, he yielded to her entreaties; but he was careful to add that he could only suffer it to stay until he was ready to start for the bal. 'Whatever the weather then, fair or foul, out it shall go on the moor!' he cried. 'It is a changeling,' he added, with a solemn shake of his head, 'and if we was to let it abide along o' we, we should have nothing but bad luck all the rest of our days.' Joan, having got her way, did not care to contradict her husband; for she told herself the song the little old woman had sung pointed to something quite different. Still, she would not keep the babe longer than the morrow if he were against it. When bedtime came, Tom and Joan had quite a dispute as to where the strange cradle and its stranger occupant should be put for the night, and as neither of them could decide, and Tom was against its being taken up into the bed-chamber, Joan declared she would sit up with it all night, and nothing Tom could say should prevent her. So he went off to his bed in a huff, muttering loudly that the cheeld, [22] or 'whatever it was,' had brought misery to them already.
'An' I ent sleepy nuther!' she cried in triumph. 'I ent felt so well since I was took with the rheumatics, and me hands don't look so twisted, do they?' holding them up. ''Tis my belief 'tis all owing to that little cheeld down there in the costan.' As Tom could not gainsay this, he went off to do his morning's work, and to get Joan's breakfast. By the time he had done this the sun was rising, and the sky, away in the east, was a miracle of purple and rose. The night had been wild, but the storm having exhausted itself, the dawn was all the more beautiful. The babe was still asleep, and had not moved all night, Joan said, and Tom fervently hoped it would not until it was safe out on the moor. But he hoped in vain, for when the sun began to wheel up behind the hills in the east, and sent a beam of rosy light in at the casement window, the little creature shuffled in the costan, and when Joan, willing to give it air, pushed back its covering of bracken, it opened its eyes and smiled, and that smile transformed its whole face. 'Why, Tom, my man,' she cried, 'the little dear isn't ugly one bit; an' the little eyes of it are as soft as moor-pools! Do 'ee come and have a squint at it.' Tom came, and when he had stared at the babe a minute or more, he said slowly, as if weighing his words: 'You be right, Joan; but it do make the mystery all the more queer. A cheeld that can look as ugly as nettles one minute and as pretty as flowers the next ent for we to keep.' 'Don't 'ee betray thy ignorance where babes is concerned!' cried Joan, fearful of what his words implied. 'Some do look terrible plain in their sleep--as this poor dear did--and some do look beautiful. 'Tis as Nature made 'em--bless their hearts!' The babe now turned her eyes on Tom, and was gazing on him as if she wanted to look into his very soul, and then, as if she quite approved of what she saw there, gave him a fascinating smile, which won his heart at once. 'You won't take the cheeld out on the moors to-day, Tom, will 'ee?' asked Joan, who was quick to see the change in her man's face. 'We will keep it till I come home from the bal, at any rate,' he said cautiously. And then the babe, as if to show its gratitude for the concession, held up both its little arms to him to be taken out of its costan cradle, whereupon Tom was so delighted at being preferred before his wife that he could hardly conceal his pride. 'That infant do knaw a thing or two, whatever it be,' said Joan to herself, with a chuckle. 'And 'tis a somebody, I can tell, by her little shift and things, which do look as if they was spun out of spiders' webs by the Small People, so fine an' silky they be!' There was no question now about the little stranger staying; but, all the same, Tom went off to the mine with many misgivings, and he said to himself, as he walked quickly over the moor, that if Joan were too helpless to do for herself, how was she going to tend a babe? And that thought troubled him all the day. But his fears were needless; for when he got home that evening and looked in at the door, he saw a sight which surprised him, yet gladdened his heart. Joan was sitting in her elbow-chair, with a face as bright as a moon in a cloudless sky, cuddling the strange babe, who was babbling to the kind face looking down into it as it lay in her arms. 'However did 'ee manage to lift the cheeld on to your lap, Joan?' he asked, when his wife saw him. 'Aw! we managed somehow or tuther between us,' she answered, with a happy laugh. 'It was as light as a feather, it was,' chirping to the babe, 'an' I do think the Small People gave it a hoist on to Mammie Trebisken's lap! Eh, my handsome?' speaking to the babe. 'An' it haven't a been a mite o' trouble nuther all this blessed day!' And then, looking up at Tom with a look he never forgot: 'An' it have a-lifted the latch of my loneliness, an' I am as happy as a queen!' Tom was thankful to hear all this, and he thought it was no accident that had brought such comfort to his poor lonely wife. He had still greater cause for thankfulness as the days wore on; for as Joan now had her thoughts taken from herself in having a babe--which, by the way, was a maiden babe--to think for and to attend to as far as she was able, she grew better in health, and before winter was over could go about the house-place 'and do all her little chores her own self,' she proudly declared. She even swept and sanded her kitchen floor, and made figgy hoggans [23] for her husband's dinner, which she had not been able to do since the early years of their marriage.
Several happy years passed away, and the little child--Ninnie-Dinnie, as they called her--so strangely brought to the moorland cottage and so strangely left, was now able to return some of her foster-parents' kindness. This she did by helping in small household duties. Joan, partly because it was right and partly because she feared the rheumatism might some day make her helpless again, had brought her up to be useful. The child did not at all like work, and, but for Joan's insistence, would have been a regular little do-nothing. Perhaps she would have spared the little maid from many a small household duty if the Pail had allowed it! In shaking up the moss and leaves in the bramble-basket the evening the mysterious little woman brought it to the cottage, Tom had found at the feet of the babe a small dark Pail, which he said must have been shaped out of a block of black tin left by the Old Men, or ancient Jews, who, ages before the art of turning black tin into white was discovered, worked the Cornish tin-mines. It was very crude, and had nothing remarkable about it save for its look of age and some curious characters cut under its rim, and which, of course, neither he nor his wife could read. They thought the Pail was put into the bramble-basket for the child to play with, and telling themselves they would give her a better plaything when she was old enough, they set it on the dresser. They were soon to learn that the Pail was something more than a child's toy, and had strange properties of making itself light or dark at will, thrusting its characters out of the metal in strong relief from its surface and withdrawing them again! Tom declared it had in some mysterious way to do with the little creature's welfare, and that it was a kind of conscience--a Small People's conscience, perhaps. But Joan said she believed it was something more than that, if there was any meaning in the words of the song the dinky old woman in the bal-bonnet had sung. But, whoever was right, there was no doubt that the Pail showed its approval or disapproval of whatever Ninnie-Dinnie did! If the little maid was especially helpful and kind, the Pail became a lovely shade of silver and gray, and its letters stood out in glittering distinctness; but if she was lazy, or spoke rudely to her foster-parents, it grew darker than hornblende, and its characters were hardly visible. This strange property of the Pail made Joan feel quite creepy when she first discovered its peculiarity, which she happened to do one day when Ninnie-Dinnie was very fractious and would do nothing she was bidden. She got used to it in time, and was even glad it showed its pleasure, or otherwise, in the manner it did. She often told her husband that, when the little maid was particularly kind to her when he was at the bal, the Pail would laugh all over its sides. Ninnie-Dinnie was now in her eighth year, counting the year she was brought to the cottage, and a dear, useful little maid she was; and no one to beat her anywhere for work, Tom declared, particularly when her size was considered. The child was very small, so small that she could still sleep in the basket cradle she came in--and did too, for the simple reason that she was wakeful all night if she slept anywhere else. Both Tom and Joan were sometimes troubled at her size. For she never seemed to grow bigger or fatter, whatever they gave her to eat, and they feared she would always be a little Go-by-the-ground. [25] Joan, however, consoled herself that perhaps she was an off relation of the dear Little People.
Tom said she was wise beyond her years, and all owing to her being moped in the cottage so much, and that she ought to be out of doors more. Joan quite agreed with him, and suggested that he should take her with him sometimes over the moor, only stipulating that she was not to go as far as the mine-works. Tom considered this a splendid idea; and so, every now and then, when Ninnie-Dinnie was willing, she accompanied him part of the way, and as there was only one road leading back to the cottage, she easily found her way home alone. One day, when the child had reached the place where the miner generally sent her back, she begged to go with him all the way to the bal; and as he was rather weak where his womenfolk were concerned, he willingly consented. When they reached Ding Dong, with its hundreds of busy workers, the little maid grew very frightened, and fled back across the moor, in the direction of home, as fast as her legs could take her. The miner, as he watched her running away, rather reproached himself for bringing her so far; and he wondered, as he put the tin into the furnace to be smelted, whether she got home all right. 'So you did take our Ninnie-Dinnie to the bal?' was his wife's greeting when he got home that evening. 'I've been terribly wisht [26] without her all day.'
He was gone a little over an hour, when, to Joan's thankfulness, he returned with the child. He found her, he said, not far from the beaten track, sitting at the foot of a carn waiting for him to come for her. She told him she had lost her way, and that as she was sitting on the griglans, [29] an ugly little man with long ears like a Skavarnak [30] came up to her, and because she was afraid of him and would not go into his little house under the carn, he was very angry. She did not know what would have happened to her if a little old woman in a sunbonnet had not come along just then, and took her to the place where Tom found her. She told her to sit where she was till Daddie Trebisken came to fetch her, which he would be sure to do after sunset. In the mean-time she was to say her own name backwards seven times if the Long-Eared came near her again. She also told her that Ninnie-Dinnie, if she cared to believe it, was her real name spelt backwards with an 'n' left out; and she said she must never go out on the lonely moors without taking the Pail, made out of old Cornish tin, with her.
[Footnote 30: A hare.]
As they were going out of the door, something fell on the Pail standing on the dresser, and the child, remembering the injunction of the little old woman about the Pail, turned back to get it. 'What shall I bring 'ee home, Mammie Trebisken?' she asked, looking at her foster-mother; and Joan, hearing the lark singing faintly in the distance, replied laughingly: 'You shall bring me home a pailful of lark's music, my dear.' 'You do knaw the little maid can't bring 'ee that,' cried Tom impatiently. 'I should think she was all the music you wanted now.' 'So she is, bless her!' said his wife. 'I was only joking.' 'Nevertheless, I will bring you home this Pail full of lark's music,' said Ninnie-Dinnie, with great seriousness; and putting her tiny hand into Tom's big one, they started off, and Joan watched them out of sight. When the miner and the child got about half-way to the mine, scores of larks were up in the blue air singing, and their little dark bodies waving to and fro in the rapture of their song, till it seemed to the miner as if their melody was trickling down all over him, and Ninnie-Dinnie declared it was. As they stood listening, one of the larks began to descend, singing as it came. 'Now is the time if you want to catch the lark's music for Mammie Trebisken,' laughed Tom, watching the bird's descent. 'There it is, just over thy soft little head. Up with thy Pail, my dear!' And Ninnie-Dinnie, with her face as grave as the great boulders lying amongst the golden-blossomed furze and the feathery fronds of the Osmunda, lifted the Pail above her head, and as she did so the strange letters under its rim stood out and glowed like white fire. 'Little lark, little lark, give me thy music!' she chanted in a voice as clear and sweet as linnets' fluting. 'Little lark, little lark, give me thy song!' and the small bird twirled down towards her singing wilder and sweeter as it came, until it hovered over the uplifted Pail. 'The dear little lark has given me its music and its song to make Mammie Trebisken's heart glad,' said the child, as the lark dropped on the thyme-scented turf at her feet. 'Pretending, are 'ee, an?' laughed Tom. 'No!' cried Ninnie-Dinnie. 'Listen!' And the miner, putting his ear close to the Pail, heard, to his unspeakable amazement, a lark singing quite distinctly, yet rather faintly, as it were singing far away. 'Jimmerychry! [31] Can it be believed?' he exclaimed. ''Tis magic, an' I don't half like it. An' I don't think the dear little bird do nuther,' looking down at the lark, who was trailing its wings on the ground in that distressful way birds have when their wee nestlings are in danger. 'Give it back its own, that's a dear little maid.'
She covered the Pail with her pinafore as she spoke, and the little lark disappeared into a brake of flaming gorse. There was no time to bandy words, Tom told himself, as he was late for his work, and he left the child to go back to their cottage without any more protesting. But he did not feel very comfortable as he strode on his way to the mine. It was late in the morning when Ninnie-Dinnie got home, and Joan was beginning to be troubled at her long absence when she came in. 'Have 'ee brought the lark's music along with 'ee?' she asked, as the child set the Pail on the red-painted dresser. 'Yes,' said Ninnie-Dinnie; 'and at sundown you will hear it.' Joan, thinking it was all make-believe, laughed, and said she would keep her ears open to listen. When the shadows of the great grey carns stretched over the heather and the sun sunk over the moor, the Pail began to move slightly on the dresser, and a sound came out like grass moved gently by the wind, which at once drew Joan's attention to it. Then, to her amazement, it shook all over, and there poured forth from it such a gush of melody that almost took her breath away. It was like lark's music, she said, with a strain of sweeter, wilder music added to it, and which, somehow, reminded her of the flute-like voice of the little old woman in the bal-bonnet, who sang that rude rhyme when she brought them their dear little Ninnie-Dinnie. She sat in her elbow-chair entranced, and the queer child sat at her feet, apparently entranced too! The melody, which at first came from the depths of the Pail, or the turfy ground, it was hard to say which, rose higher and higher, until it sounded like a bird singing its heart out in the soft azure of an evening sky. Joan never knew how long she listened to that fetterless song; she only knew she awoke to the fact that the sky's little songster, the Pail, or whatever it was, had stopped singing, that daylight was leaving the moor, and that a small dark shadow was slowly stealing across her window. 'Why, it is a little bird, surely,' she said, speaking to the tiny maid at her feet. 'The light of our fire have attracted it from its sleeping-place--poor little thing!' 'P'r'aps it is the little lark come for its music and its song,' suggested Ninnie-Dinnie, fixing her gaze on the bird, which was now fluttering against the panes and uttering a tiny note of distress. 'I never thought of that,' said Joan. 'I hope it haven't. I couldn't give it back its song and its music for the world!' As she was speaking, the Pail on the dresser was again agitated, and out of it rushed another entrancing melody, until all the cottage was full of music, and Joan said it was raining down upon her head from the oaken beams. But through the melody could be distinctly heard a little voice, which was the lark's voice: 'Give me back my music! Give me back my song!' 'My Aunt Betsy!' cried Joan. 'Whoever heard of a bird talking before?' 'Are you going to give the little lark what it wants?' asked Ninnie-Dinnie, watching the bird, which was still fluttering against the bottle-green pane. 'No!' said Joan decidedly. 'I don't think I ought. It do make my heart young an' happy again.' 'I was hoping you would like to give back the lark its music and its song,' said Ninnie-Dinnie. 'Whatever for, cheeld-vean?' [32] Joan asked.
'Because,' answered the child, 'I have been wondering what the lark's little mate will do if he hasn't his song to sing to her now she is sitting on her pretty eggs out on the grass.' 'Why, make another song, of course, you foolish little knaw-nothing!' cried Joan, laying her pain-twisted fingers on the child's elfin locks. 'It has no music to make a song with; it gave it all to me to take home to my dear Mammie Trebisken,' said the little maid. Once more the lark's song came out of the Pail, and Joan said it was sweeter and wilder and freer than even the second time. As she listened intently she was carried to her courting days, when she and Tom took their Sunday walks through the growing corn and flaming poppies to hear the larks sing. Then as the songster came earthward again and its music died away into the silence of the years, or into the Pail, she was too bewildered to say which, there appeared on the threshold of the door the little lark, which, as she looked at it, trailed its wings and piped: 'Give me back my music! Give me back my song!' and its sad cry went right down into her pitiful heart. 'I was a selfish body to want to keep what didn't belong to me,' she cried, and she told Ninnie-Dinnie to give it back what it wanted. 'I can't give back: you only can do that,' said the little maid. 'I can only bring you what you ask.' The wee bird in the doorway again made itself heard: 'Give me back my music! Give me back my song!' and so distressful was its pleading that she clutched the child's shoulder and went at once to the dresser, and, almost before she knew it, she was standing at the door with the Pail in her hand. 'Take your music and your song, you poor little dear,' she said in her tenderest voice to the bird; 'and go along home to your mate, and make her as happy as you have made my heart this day.' She turned the Pail over on its side as she spoke, and the lark flew into it; and in a minute or less it was out again and away into the semi-darkness, singing its own ecstatic song as it went! Tom came up the road as it flew off; and as she waited there by the door for him to help her back to her chair, the little old woman's rhyme came back to her, the last line of which floated through her brain:
Ninnie-Dinnie did not go out on the moor all this time, and nothing Joan could say would make her. But when July came, and the blackberry brambles were in flower, and the great moors began to look beautifully purple with the bloom of the heather, she cast wistful glances out of the window, and one bright morning she asked Tom to take her with him a little way. Her eye caught the darkening look of the Pail as she was putting on her sunbonnet, and she thought the look meant she must take it with her, and she did. 'What shall I bring you home?' she asked, looking over her shoulder at Joan as she and Tom were going out of the door; and the invalid, catching sight of a sunbeamed pool lying high on the heath, said, with a laugh: 'You shall bring me home a pailful of sunbeams from the pool I can see from my chair.' 'A pack of nonsense!' cried Tom. 'As well ask for the moon. I should have thought that our Ninnie-Dinnie,' resting his huge hand on the child's head, 'was all the sunbeam you wanted now.' 'So she is, Tom, when you ent here,' cried the woman, smiling tenderly at both her dears. 'All the same,' said Ninnie-Dinnie, 'I will bring you home a pailful of sunbeams if I can.' When she and Tom reached the pool, they stopped and looked in, or tried to, for they could not see its bottom for sunbeams, which rippled all over its surface in tiny waves of light. 'Now is your chance to get that pailful of sunbeams thy foolish old Mammie Trebisken axed 'ee to get,' said the miner. 'It is,' said Ninnie-Dinnie in her grave old woman's manner; and, leaning over the pool, she held the Pail over the side and cried: 'Little brown pool, give me thy sunbeams! Little brown pool, give me thy light!' and, to Tom's amazement (he ought not to have been astonished at anything by this time), he saw the light leave the pool and flow into the Pail! When the moor-pool had given all its sunbeams, and the water was a darker brown than a sparrow's back, Ninnie-Dinnie stood up and looked into her Pail, and Tom looked too, and saw nothing. 'It is full of emptiness,' said he, laughing. 'It is full of the dear little Pool's sunbeams to make Mammie Trebisken's eyes glad,' insisted the child; and covering the Pail very carefully with her pinafore, she went down towards the cottage, and Tom watched her until she was hidden behind a great boulder of granite, and then he too went on his way. Ninnie-Dinnie did not get home till quite late in the afternoon, and when Joan asked her where she had been so long, she said a little Skavarnak would not let her come before, and that he stood in the path barring the way, till a dinky little woman in a bluish cloak came over the moor, and then he sped away through a hole in a carn. 'What a funny thing!' said Joan; 'hares generally keep out of folks' way. He must be different from other little hares.' 'I am sure he must be,' she said, setting the Pail on the dresser. 'Have 'ee brought the sunbeams?' asked Joan, turning her gaze to the bucket. 'Yes; and by-and-by, when the sun begins to set, you will be able to see them.' Joan, thinking her Ninnie-Dinnie was pretending--for she saw when the child came into the kitchen that the Pail contained nothing--only laughed. When the great round sun dropped down to his setting, the crippled woman, happening to turn her face to the dresser, saw a tongue of white flame rise out of the Pail, and on its tip burnt a ruby star! It startled her almost out of her senses at first; but as it did not grow bigger, but only increased in beauty, she gazed at it with wondering delight. As the evening darkened over the moor, and the Hooting Carn was dim in the distance, the light in the Pail grew exceedingly beautiful, and took all manner of shapes and colours, and made the room where Joan sat as lovely as the dear Small People's Country, Ninnie-Dinnie said--how she knew, it did not occur to her foster-mother to inquire. ''Tis magic!' cried the woman, looking round the room, 'an' I don't understand it one bit.' 'P'r'aps,' said the child softly, 'it is the dear Little People's way of showing how grateful they feel for your kindness to your little Ninnie-Dinnie.' 'I haven't been kinder than I ought,' began Joan; 'and--'tis raining, surely,' she broke off, as a trickle of water fell on her ear. ''Tis queer, too! There's no sign of wet weather in the sky.' The child went to the window and looked out. 'There is a tiny stream of water coming down the road,' she said. 'I believe 'tis the little brown Pool coming for its sunbeams.' 'Don't be silly!' cried Joan. 'It is,' said the little maid, looking out again, 'and it has made itself into a dark ring outside our door.' As she was speaking, a rippling voice broke out: 'Give me back my light! give me back my sunbeams!' 'I won't,' said Joan irritably. 'Why should I, when it is making my little place look handsome? I haven't seen anything like it in all my born days!' 'I was hoping you would give back the poor little brown Pool its shine,' said Ninnie-Dinnie, with a pleading look in her eyes. 'The little flowers that live in the Pool will die without light, and the dear little Sundews will have no silver beads to tip their red spikes.' 'Whatever did 'ee bring me home a pailful of sunbeams for, if you want me to give it away again?' asked the woman still more irritably. 'You asked me to bring you the brown Pool's sunbeams,' said the child gently. 'I did but do what you asked.' The light in the Pail was redder and brighter than the red planet Mars in his rising or the sun in his setting, and all in the room was a lovely crimson glow, and Joan, as she gazed at the Pail again, heard the rippling voice outside her door: 'Give me my light! give me my sunbeams!' and it continued rippling its demand until the woman's kind heart was troubled. 'Poor little Pool!' she said to herself at last. 'I expect it is feeling as wisht without its light as I was before my Ninnie-Dinnie came in the costan. 'Tis wrong to want to keep what will brighten something else. I don't s'pose even a little moor-pool can be happy and bear flowers on its bosom without sunbeams and light,' and she told the child to give back the Pool its own. 'I can't,' said Ninnie-Dinnie. 'Only you can do that. Lean on me,' offering her tiny arm, 'and I'll help you to get the Pail to give the dear little Pool its sunbeams.' Joan was greatly amused that a dinky little maid like her, scarcely bigger than a large doll, could support a great helpless body like herself to walk across the floor; and she laughed, and, as she laughed, the Pool cried again in such a beseeching voice that she unwittingly put her hand on the child's shoulder, and immediately found herself at the door, with the Pail in her hand, before she knew! 'I give 'ee back your brightness, dear little Pool,' she said, 'and much obliged I am to 'ee for letting me have it here in my little room. Now go along home to where you belong, amongst the griglans.' [33] And the little Pool took its shine and left, twisting and twirling its way back to its place, shining and rippling as it went.
A few days after Ninnie-Dinnie had brought the pailful of sunbeams, she again asked to go with Tom over the moors, and Tom willingly took her. 'What impossible thing is Mammie Trebisken going to ask you to bring back to-day?' said the miner in joke as the child went to the dresser for the Pail. 'The only thing I should like to have brought home to me to-day is that nasty little Skavarnak which frightened my Ninnie-Dinnie,' said Joan. 'If she do catch un an' bring un home in the Pail, I won't be willing to let him get out of it again in a hurry!' 'Do you really want the Little Long-Eared?' asked the child, with a curious look in her eyes. 'Of course I do. I s'pose he won't be so easy to get into the Pail as the lark's music or the pool's sunbeams.' 'Not nearly so easy,' responded Ninnie-Dinnie. 'And even if I can get him into the Pail, you won't like to keep him, and you must until----' She did not finish what she was going to say, as Tom was in a hurry to be off, and they left the invalid greatly wondering whatever the little maid could mean. The sun was rising when Tom and his little foster-child reached a part of the great moor where a road turned towards Ding Dong, and where they saw a hare sitting on his haunches cleaning his whiskers. 'There is Mister Long-Eared,' whispered Tom. 'Now is your chance to catch him, my dear;' but the hare had heard the whisper, and he vanished under the bracken. 'He will be very difficult to get into the Pail,' sighed Ninnie-Dinnie. 'But he will have to go into it, or the spell won't be broken.' 'What spell?' asked the miner. 'What! have you forgotten the rhyme the dinky woman sang when she brought me to Mammie Trevisken--
The miner went on his way to Ding Dong, and Ninnie-Dinnie seated herself on a bed of wild thyme close to where the hare had disappeared, and began calling very gently, but with great persistence: 'Skavarnak! Skavarnak! come into the Magic Pail! Long-Eared! Long-Eared! come into my Pail!' But nothing stirred in the bracken. Long the child called--hours it seemed--until at last there was a movement under the great fronds of bracken, and out came a woebegone little hare and went into the Pail! 'You are caught by the magic of the Old Men's Pail at last,' said Ninnie-Dinnie, with a strange look in her eye; and covering the Pail with her pinafore, she set her face homeward. 'Have 'ee got the hare?' was Joan's greeting, as the child appeared in the doorway. 'I have,' she cried, with a ring of triumph in her voice. 'Aw, you poor little thing!' exclaimed Joan, eyeing the hare, who was gazing at her from over the Pail with a most dejected look in his dark eyes. 'Please don't pity him,' said Ninnie-Dinnie. 'He isn't really a hare: he is a dreadful little hobgoblin who has been cruel to all the dear Little People you love so much.' 'Who told 'ee all that, cheeld?' asked Joan, looking at the little maid. 'P'r'aps the Wee Folk whispered it to me as I lay asleep in the costan,' answered the child. When evening came, a most terrible wail came from the dresser, like the cry of a hurt child or an animal caught in a gin, which found its way at once to Joan's feeling heart. 'I can't a-bear to hear that cry,' she said to Ninnie-Dinnie. 'Do set the poor little creature free, that's a dear.' 'I can't, Mammie Trebisken, and I don't think I want you to, either. It is good for him to be kept prisoner in the Magic Pail.' The hare wailed on, and poor Joan had to put her fingers in her ears to shut out the sound. Tom came home just then, and, seeing there was a nice fat hare in the Pail, said he would soon stop his music, and that he would have him put into a hoggan for his dinner--a threat which so frightened the poor creature that there was no wail left in him for all that evening, and, leaning his head on the edge of the Pail, he looked exceedingly miserable, as I am sure he was. The hare was kept prisoner in the Pail all that night and all the next day, and not even Joan gave him a look of pity, for even her heart was hardened against him. When evening came again, he once more lifted up his voice in a loud and prolonged howl, which was almost more than the tender-hearted woman could bear, and she was about to ask Ninnie-Dinnie to give him his liberty, when a soft scamper of tiny feet made her turn her gaze to the open door, and in a minute or less there appeared on the step three small hares, who, when they saw her pitiful glance on them, began to cry: 'Give us back our Daddy Skavarnak! Give us back our Daddy Long-Ears!' 'Hearken to that,' cried Joan, turning to Ninnie-Dinnie, who was preparing Tom's supper. 'I wonder you, of all people, can bear to hear it. Do 'ee give the little Skavarnaks their poor daddy.' 'You know I haven't the power,' said the little maid quietly, 'and I am afraid I shouldn't be very willing if I had.' 'But you wanted me to give the lark his music and his song and the pool its beams,' remonstrated Joan, as Ninnie-Dinnie shook her head. 'Why ever don't 'ee want the hare to be given back to his children?' 'I told you the Long-Eared had been very cruel to the dear Wee Folk. He was terribly cruel to one poor Little Skillywidden [34] in particular, and its mammie, to save it from further cruelty, had to hide it somewhere until he was caught in the Magic Pail. You see,' as Joan lifted up her pain-twisted hands in amazement, 'when he was taken prisoner by the Pail and brought into a good woman's cottage he became powerless to do the dear Little People any more harm, and all the spells that he threw over them became weak as money-spiders' threads.'
Ninnie-Dinnie did not answer, but a peculiar look came into her eyes and a smile played about her lips. 'I'm beginning to think our Ninnie-Dinnie is one of the Wee Folk her own self,' said Joan to herself, still gazing at the quaint little figure, with its dark, unfathomable eyes, and its elfin locks framing the gentle little face, 'an' that she is the Skillywidden its mammie hid for safety in a cottage. She is a dear little soul, whoever she is, an' I wouldn't part with her now--no, not for a bal full o' diamonds.' As these thoughts travelled through her mind, the three little hares on the doorstep wailed out their entreaty again: 'Give us back our Daddy Skavarnak! Give us back our Daddy Long-Ears!' and the hare in the Magic Pail lifted his head and looked beseechingly at the child, who, however, took no notice of him. The three little hares continued to cry on, and although it worried Joan's kind heart to hear it, she steeled herself against them on account of their daddy's cruelty, but into Ninnie-Dinnie's eyes there stole a wondrous pity. 'Poor little things!' she whispered to herself; and then, looking up at her foster-mother, she said softly: 'You may let the Long-Eared free if you like.' 'But I don't like,' said Joan severely. 'Why should I, when he have a-been so unkind to the dear Little People?' 'I would like you to give him his liberty if he will promise to go away from our moor and never come back any more for five hundred years,' continued the child, who apparently had not noticed the interruption. 'If he does not keep his promise after he is set free, he will run the terrible risk of again being taken prisoner in the Magic Pail and having Daddy Trebisken's threat carried out upon him.' 'What threat?' asked Joan. 'Aw, I remember now--his being put into a hoggan for my Tom's dinner. He is too bad for my good Tom to make a meal of,' shaking her head at the hare in the Pail. 'He will have to be made into a pasty, as a warning to all evil-intending Long-Ears.' The poor animal in the Pail could not have looked more wretched if he was to be made into a pasty there and then, and he cried in his terror, and the three little hares on the doorstep lifted up their small voices in sympathy. The latter's wails were more than Joan's tender heart could stand. 'Poor little things!' she cried, looking first at the small Long-Ears and then at Ninnie-Dinnie. 'If he will promise to do what you want him, I'll set him free. 'Tis hard they should suffer for their wicked old daddy's wrongdoing.' 'It is,' responded the child in her gravest manner. 'And it is for their sakes more than his own that I am willing he should have his liberty. Ask him if he will consent to do all I told you.' Joan, looking at the prisoner, repeated what Ninnie-Dinnie had said, and asked him whether he would have his freedom under those conditions. The Long-Eared muttered something--what, she did not know, but the little maid seemed to understand, and she told her foster-mother that though the conditions were hard, he had promised to keep them if she would set him free from the Magic Pail. 'Then let us do it at once,' cried Joan, for the appealing eyes of those three little hares on the doorstep were more than she could endure. The child came to her side, and offered her shoulder to enable the crippled woman to do her kind deed, and almost before Joan knew it she was at the door, with the Magic Pail gripped firmly in her hand, and found herself saying: 'I command thee, in the name of my little Ninnie-Dinnie an' the Magic Pail, never to come on our moors till the five hundred years are up. Remember, if you do, or try to hurt any of the dear Little People, they will compel thee to come into this here Pail, an' hand 'ee over to somebody who loves the Wee Folk as much as I do, an' who will cut 'ee all to bits, an' put 'ee into a great lashing [35] pasty for a miner's dinner.' [36]
[Footnote 36: Once upon a time the Cornish believed that his Dark Majesty was afraid to come into the Cornish land for fear of being put into a pasty.]
She dropped the Pail in her fright, and the ugly little creature sped away into the darkness, followed by the three wee hares, or hobgoblins, as no doubt they were. Ninnie-Dinnie looked very happy when they had gone, and the Pail evidently shared her joy, for it was nearly white, and its embossed characters looked almost as beautiful as the little Pool's sunbeams. The child would not go out on the moor for a long time after the Daddy Long-Ears was set free. She said she must stop at home and look after her Mammie Trebisken. But when October came, and the purple heath-bells had changed to tawny brown, and the bracken's green into orange and bronze, she began once more to give little wistful glances out over the great stretch of moorland. One day--the very day of the same month she was brought to the cottage in the bramble-basket ten years before--Tom, noticing the longing glances, begged her to go with him a little way, and Ninnie-Dinnie, after asking the crippled woman if she could spare her, got ready to go. 'I thought you wouldn't want to take the Pail along with you now the Long-Eared can't hurt 'ee any more,' said Joan, as the child went to the dresser for the Pail. 'And yet I must take it,' she replied. 'What shall I bring you home?' 'Thyself, my beauty!' cried the woman. 'I'm safe, I reckon, in wanting to have only my Ninnie-Dinnie brought back to me. She is better than all the lark's music an' the Pool's shine, isn't she?' appealing to Tom, who nodded his head. 'An' we don't want no Daddy Skavarnak here no more, do we?' 'I should think not,' cried the miner. 'Mammie Trebisken's request was a downright sensible one this time, wasn't it?' he remarked to the little maid as they walked away from the cottage. Ninnie-Dinnie did not answer, which somehow troubled him, and he looked at her curiously. When the miner and the child had reached the place where she had caught the hare, they stopped and looked about them. The sun had risen, and was making everything beautiful on the moor--the little pools and all. It was a perfect morning for so late in the autumn. The dwarf furze, now in blossom, was burning like gorse in springtime round the bases of the great grey carns; the bramble-vines were more beautiful than jewels, as they trailed in all their richness of colour over the boulders, and the gossamers lay thick on the turf and brown heather, and shone softly, as only gossamer can. Everything was very still, and there was not wind enough to stir even the blades of grass, nor was there anything on the wing save a seagull floating along on the blue air, and a few gorgeous Red Admirals hovering over their beloved nettles. For ever so long Tom and the quaint little maid stood still, taking in all the wild, yet soft, beauty of the moors, until the latter broke the silence: 'I must hasten on to the bal now, my dear. You can stay here or go back to Mammie Trebisken, jest as thee hast a mind to.' 'Yes,' she said, with a start. He glanced over his shoulder as he turned to go on his way, and, to his consternation, saw her put the Pail to her feet, and begin to speak in the same flute-like voice she had spoken to the Lark, the Pool, and the Hare, and the words were spoken to herself! 'Ninnie-Dinnie, give me thyself! Ninnie-Dinnie, give me thyself!' and the next minute he saw the little figure disappear into the Pail, which started at a rapid speed down towards his cottage. He was too upset to go on to Ding Ding after that, and trembling like an aspen leaf, he followed in the track of the Pail; but whether he was Piskey-led, or what, he could not get home until dark, and when he got there, he found his wife sitting alone. Three or four hours after Tom and Ninnie-Dinnie had left, Joan heard a little noise outside the cottage, so she told her husband when she related to him this strange story, and, looking up, saw, to her unspeakable amazement, the Pail a-walking down the road all by itself, as if it had legs, to the step of her door; and in another moment it had crossed the threshold and come to the fireplace where she was sitting gazing with all the eyes in her head at it coming! When it reached her feet it stopped, and looking into it she saw a very tiny Ninnie-Dinnie looking up at her with eyes full of love and pleading. 'Please, Mammie Trebisken, give me back myself!' she piped. 'Please, Mammie Trebisken, give me back myself!' and Joan took up the Pail in her crooked hands, and turning it over on its side, she cried: 'Ninnie-Dinnie, I give thee back thyself; an' come out of the Pail at once!' And Ninnie-Dinnie came out and stood before her, looking just as she had looked when she set out with Tom in the dawn. 'Whatever did 'ee let the Pail get hold of 'ee for?' asked Joan, when the child set the Pail in its place. 'Because you asked me to bring me back myself,' she said. 'And now I will sit at your feet and kiss your dear hands straight.' Ninnie-Dinnie was very quiet the rest of the day, and when it drew towards evening and Tom's return, she asked if she might bring the costan to the hearthplace, as she felt so tired and sleepy. Joan said she might, but was afraid it was too heavy for a dinky little maid like her to carry. The child said she would manage to bring it somehow, and she did; and when she had shaken up the moss and leaves in the costan she got into it, lay down, and was soon in a deep slumber. Joan kept very quiet, so as not to disturb the poor little thing, and when she looked into the bramble-basket half an hour later, she saw something lying there that made her rub her eyes to see if she were dreaming. In the place where Ninnie-Dinnie had lain down there was the most beautiful little creature it was possible to conceive. 'Its face,' as Joan afterwards told her husband, 'was ever so much sweeter to look at than a wild-rose, and its hair was softer and more silky than anything she had ever seen, even the head of the tom-tit; and as for its mouth, it was far too tender and lovely even for her kissing. It had different clothes on, too, from what their little dear wore.' Joan said she could not tell what they were, only they were all goldy, like furze blossom. Before she could get over her surprise at this little tiny thing in the bramble-basket, she heard a step outside, and thinking it was Tom come back from the mine, she looked up, and there in the doorway stood the same little bent old woman, her face hidden in a bal-bonnet, who had brought the child ten years before. Before she could ask her what she wanted, the dinky woman had glided like moor-mist over to the hearthplace, and was bending over the basket and singing: 'Give back my own dinky, my little pednpaley; 'I can't give back my dear little Ninnie-Dinnie!' cried Joan, breaking in on the song, as it suddenly dawned upon her for what purpose the little old woman had come. 'Please don't ask me to do that. I have given back whatever else was asked of me gladly; but I can't--aw, I can't--part with that dear little thing down there in the costan.' The strange little body took no notice of the interruption, but went on singing; and as she sang, the beautiful little creature in the bramble-basket opened its eyes and looked up at Joan with tender entreaty in them. That they were Ninnie-Dinnie's own little eyes looking up at her Joan did not for a moment doubt; and she could but see they grew more wistful as the queer little woman sang on:
'Oh, seek not to hinder my own little Ninnie, The Ninnie-Dinnie in the bramble-basket gave the crippled woman another look of entreaty as the voice of the singer died away. She understood that look so well, for she had appealed to her heart in that very same way when she had asked her to give back the Lark his music, the Pool its beams, and it made her feel now, as she felt then, that it was exceedingly selfish of her to want to keep what was not really her own, however desirable. And when the child, or whatever it was, met her gaze again she conquered her selfishness and resolved to give her back, whatever it cost her--'even,' she said, 'if it breaks my heart-strings.' And as the odd little woman in the mine-maiden's bonnet paused for a moment as if awaiting her will, in all the impetuosity of her generous nature she cried out: 'I give 'ee back your dinky, your little Mudgeskerry, your little Pednpaley, and whatever else you do call the little dear that you brought me ten years ago. I feel I've no mortal right to keep what don't belong to me, though I thought she did by this time. Take her if you must, an' thank 'ee kindly for the loan of her all these years.' Joan's voice trembled as she uttered the last word, and the eyes of the lovely little Ninnie-Dinnie spoke their sympathy as she kept her gaze on her, and the funny little woman who had the voice of youth and the figure of old age showed hers in her voice, for she sang sweeter than before. It was an unfettered song, as unfettered as a lark's in the golden dawn:
As the last words of the song died away into the silence of the fire-lighted room, the little old woman in the bal-bonnet lifted the bramble-basket on to her back and glided out of the cottage as she had entered it; and the crippled woman, as she followed her with her eyes, saw hundreds and hundreds of dear Little People coming down the moor to meet her, singing and dancing as they came, and waving little white lights tipped with red stars, very much like the one that had shone from the Pail. When they came to where she stood they formed a ring around the quaint bent little figure with the costan on her back; and then she disappeared, and Joan saw in the centre of the ring, as the Wee Folk twirled in their dance, two tiny Little People more beautiful than all the rest--one of which she was sure was her Ninnie-Dinnie and the other the fairy who, in the form of a little old woman in a blue-grey cloak and a mine-maiden's bonnet, had brought her to her cottage that never-to-be-forgotten autumn evening. Joan missed Ninnie-Dinnie dreadfully at first; but from the evening she gave her back, the rheumatism left her, and she was as well and strong as she was in the first years of her married life. And when autumn came round again, a dear little soft head of her own came to nestle close to her heart, and to make Tom and herself glad the rest of their days. But dear as this little Ninnie-Dinnie was, lovely as they thought her, they did not love her one bit more than that other Ninnie-Dinnie, the Skillywidden of the dear Little People, who were her friends for ever after. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |