English Fairy Tales / Английские сказки. Группа авторовЧитать онлайн книгу.
and not even a goat could find foothold. So he got up again, and made his way round through the wood, pushing by trees, scrambling over rocks, wading through streams, till at last he was on flat ground again, close to the mouth of the cavern.
His wife gave a shriek of joy when he came in, and then burst into tears, for she was tired and very frightened. But her husband did not understand why she wept, and he was tired and bruised from his climb, and a little cross too.
‘You give me but a sorry welcome,’ grumbled he, ‘when I have half-killed myself to get to you.’
‘Do not heed him,’ said the horses to the weeping woman; ‘put him in front of us, where he will be safe, and give him food, for he is weary.’ And she did as the horses told her, and he ate and rested, till by and bye a long shadow fell over them, and their hearts beat with fear, for they knew that the giant was coming.
‘I smell a stranger,’ cried the giant, as he entered; but it was dark inside the chasm, and he did not see the king, who was crouching down between the feet of the horses.
‘A stranger, my lord! no stranger ever comes here, not even the sun!’ and the king’s wife laughed gaily as she went up to the giant and stroked the huge hand which hung down by his side.
‘Well, I perceive nothing, certainly,’ answered he, ‘but it is very odd. However, it is time that the horses were fed;’ and he lifted down an armful of hay from a shelf of rock and held out a handful to each animal, who moved forward to meet him, leaving the king behind. As soon as the giant’s hands were near their mouths they each made a snap, and began to bit them, so that his groans and shrieks might have been heard a mile off. Then they wheeled round and kicked him till they could kick no more. At length the giant crawled away, and lay quivering in a corner, and the queen went up to him.
‘Poor thing! poor thing!’ she said, ‘they seem to have gone mad; it was awful to behold.’
‘If I had had my soul in my body they would certainly have killed me,’ groaned the giant.
‘It was lucky indeed,’ answered the queen; ‘but tell me, where is thy soul, that I may take care of it?’
‘Up there, in the Bonnach stone,’ answered the giant, pointing to a stone which was balanced loosely on an edge of rock. ‘But now leave me, that I may sleep, for I have far to go to-morrow.’
Soon snores were heard from the corner where the giant lay, and then the queen lay down too, and the horses, and the king was hidden between them, so that none could see him.
Before the dawn the giant rose and went out, and immediately the queen ran up to the Bonnach stone, and tugged and pushed at it till it was quite steady on its ledge, and could not fall over. And so it was in the evening when the giant came home; and when they saw his shadow, the king crept down in front of the horses.
‘Why, what have you done to the Bonnach stone?’ asked the giant.
‘I feared lest it should fall over, and be broken, with your soul in it,’ said the queen, ‘so I put it further back on the ledge.’
‘It is not there that my soul is,’ answered he, ‘it is on the threshold. But it is time the horses were fed;’ and he fetched the hay, and gave it to them, and they bit and kicked him as before, till he lay half dead on the ground.
Next morning he rose and went out, and the queen ran to the threshold of the cave, and washed the stones, and pulled up some moss and little flowers that were hidden in the crannies, and by and bye when dusk had fallen the giant came home.
‘You have been cleaning the threshold,’ said he.
‘And was I not right to do it, seeing that your soul is in it?’ asked the queen.
‘It is not there that my soul is,’ answered the giant. ‘Under the threshold is a stone, and under the stone is a sheep, and in the sheep’s body is a duck, and in the duck is an egg, and in the egg is my soul. But it is late, and I must feed the horses;’ and he brought them the hay, but they only bit and kicked him as before, and if his soul had been within him, they would have killed him outright.
It was still dark when the giant got up and went his way, and then the king and the queen ran forward to take up the threshold, while the horses looked on. But sure enough! just as the giant had said, underneath the threshold was the flagstone, and they pulled and tugged till the stone gave way. Then something jumped out so suddenly, that it nearly knocked them down, and as it fled past, they saw it was a sheep.
‘If the slim yellow dog of the greenwood were only here, he would soon have that sheep,’ cried the king; and as he spoke, the slim yellow dog appeared from the forest, with the sheep in his mouth. With a blow from the king, the sheep fell dead, and they opened its body, only to be blinded by a rush of wings as the duck flew past.
‘If the hoary hawk of the rock were only here, he would soon have that duck,’ cried the king; and as he spoke the hoary hawk was seen hovering above them, with the duck in his mouth. They cut off the duck’s head with a swing of the king’s sword, and took the egg out of its body, but in his triumph the king held it carelessly, and it slipped from his hand, and rolled swiftly down the hill right into the river.
‘If the brown otter of the stream were only here, he would soon have that egg,’ cried the king; and the next minute there was the brown otter, dripping with water, holding the egg in his mouth. But beside the brown otter, a huge shadow came stealing along– the shadow of the giant.
The king stood staring at it, as if he were turned into stone, but the queen snatched the egg from the otter and crushed it between her two hands. And after that the shadow suddenly shrank and was still, and they knew that the giant was dead, because they had found his soul.
Next day they mounted the two horses and rode home again, visiting their friends the brown otter and the hoary hawk and the slim yellow dog by the way.
The Tulip Fairies
Near a pixy field in the neighbourhood of Dartmoor, there lived, on a time, an old woman who possessed a cottage and a very pretty garden, wherein she cultivated a most beautiful bed of tulips. The pixies, it is traditionally averred, so delighted in this spot that they would carry their elfin babes thither, and sing them to rest. Often, at the dead hour of the night, a sweet lullaby was heard, and strains of the most melodious music would float in the air, that seemed to owe their origin to no other musicians than the beautiful tulips themselves, and whilst these delicate flowers waved their heads to the evening breeze, it sometimes seemed as if they were marking time to their own singing. As soon as the elfin babes were lulled asleep by such melodies, the pixies would return to the neighbouring field, and there commence dancing, making those rings on the green which showed, even to mortal eyes, what sort of gambols had occupied them during the night season.
At the first dawn of light the watchful pixies once more sought the tulips, and, though still invisible they could be heard kissing and caressing their babies. The tulips, thus favoured by a race of genii, retained their beauty much longer than any other flowers in the garden, whilst, though contrary to their nature, as the pixies breathed over them, they became as fragrant as roses, and so delighted at all was the old woman who kept the garden that she never suffered a single tulip to be plucked from its stem.
At length, however, she died, and the heir who succeeded her destroyed the enchanted flowers, and converted the spot into a parsley-bed, a circumstance which so disappointed and offended the pixies, that they caused all the parsley to wither away, and, indeed, for many years nothing would grow in the beds of the whole garden. These sprites, however, though eager in resenting an injury, were, like most warm spirits, equally capable of returning a benefit, and if they destroyed the product of the good old woman’s garden when it had fallen into unworthy hands, they tended the bed that wrapped her clay with affectionate solicitude. They were heard lamenting and singing sweet dirges around her grave; nor did they neglect to pay this mournful tribute to her memory every night before the moon was at the full, for then their high solemnity of dancing, singing, and rejoicing took place to hail the queen of the night on completing her circle in the heavens. No human hand ever tended the grave of the poor old woman who had nurtured the tulip bed for the delight of these elfin