Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales from Burns to Buchan (Penguin Classics) (21 page)

‘Can’t people come back again?’ asked Randal.

‘Some say “Yes”, and some say “No”. There was Tam Hislop, that vanished away the day before all the lads and your own father went forth to that weary war at Flodden, and the English, for once, by guile, won the day. Well, Tam Hislop, when the news came that all must arm and mount and ride, he could nowhere be found. It was as if the wind had carried him away. High and low they sought him, but there was his clothes and his armour, and his sword and his spear, but no Tam Hislop. Well, no man heard more of him for seven whole years, not till last year, and then he came back: sore tired he looked, ay, and older than when he was lost. And I met him by the well, and I was frightened; and, “Tam,” I said, “where have ye been this weary time?” “I have been with them that I will not speak the name of,” says he. “Ye mean the good folk,” said I. “Ye have said it,” says he. Then I went up to the house, with my heart in my mouth, and I met Simon Grieve. “Simon,” I says, “here’s Tam Hislop come home from the good folk.” “I’ll soon send him back to them,” says he. And he takes a great stick and lays it about Tam’s
shoulders, calling him coward
loon
, that ran away from the fighting. And since then Tam has never been seen about the place. But the Laird’s man, of Gala, knows them that say Tam was in Perth the last seven years, and not in Fairyland at all. But it was Fairyland he told me, and he would not lie to his own mother’s half-brother’s cousin.’

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

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

‘Jean,’ said Randal one midsummer day, ‘I am going to the Wishing Well.’

‘Oh, Randal,’ said Jean, ‘it is so far away!’

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

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

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

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

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

‘What’s a shaveling, Randal?’

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

‘But, oh, Randal, you’ve got your green doublet on!’

‘Well! Why not?’

‘Do you not know it angers the fair– I mean the good folk – that anyone should wear green on the hill but themselves?’

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

‘And what are you going to wish?’

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

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

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

Jean did not like to say ‘No’, so off they went.

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

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

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

‘We’ll
wish
for things to eat when we get to the Wishing Well,’ said Randal. ‘All sorts of good things – cold venison pasty, and everything you like.’

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

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

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

That stream was the Yarrow.

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

Then she fell asleep.

When Jean woke, it was as dark as it ever is on a midsummer night in Scotland.

It was a soft, cloudy night; not a clear night with a silver sky.

Jeanie heard a loud roaring close to her, and the red light of a great fire was in her sleepy eyes.

In the firelight she saw strange black beasts, with horns, plunging
and leaping and bellowing, and dark figures rushing about the flames. It was the beasts that made the roaring. They were bounding about close to the fire, and sometimes in it, and were all mixed in the smoke.

Jeanie was dreadfully frightened, too frightened to scream.

Presently she heard the voices of men shouting on the hill below her. The shouts and the barking of dogs came nearer and nearer.

Then a dog ran up to her, and licked her face, and jumped about her.

It was her own sheep-dog, Yarrow.

He ran back to the men who were following him, and came again with one of them.

It was old Simon Grieve, very tired, and so much out of breath that he could scarcely speak.

Jean was very glad to see him, and not frightened any longer.

‘Oh, Jeanie, my doo,’ said Simon, ‘where hae ye been? A muckle gliff ye hae gien us, and a weary spiel up the weary braes.’

Jean told him all about it: how she had come with Randal to see the Wishing Well, and how she had lost him, and fallen asleep.

‘And sic a nicht for you bairns to wander on the hill,’ said Simon. ‘It’s the nicht o’ St John, when the guid folk hae power. And there’s a’ the lads burning the Bel fires, and driving the nowt through them: nae less will serve them. Sic a nicht!’

This was the cause of the fire Jean saw, and of the noise of the cattle. On Midsummer Night the country people used to light these fires, and drive the cattle through them. It was an old, old custom come down from heathen times.

Now the other men from Fairnilee had gathered around Jean. Lady Ker had sent them out to look for Randal and her on the hills. They had heard from the good wife at Peel that the children had gone up the burn, and Yarrow had tracked them until Jean was found.

gliff
, fright.    
spiel
, shout.    
nowt
, cattle.

Jean was found, but where was Randal? She told the men who had come out to look for her, that Randal had gone on to look for the Wishing Well. So they rolled her up in a big shepherd’s plaid, and two of them carried Jean home in the plaid, while all the rest, with lighted torches in their hands, went to look for Randal through the wood.

Jean was so tired that she fell asleep again in her plaid before they reached Fairnilee. She was wakened by the men shouting as they drew near the house, to show that they were coming home. Lady Ker was waiting at the gate, and the old nurse ran down the grassy path to meet them.

‘Where’s my bairn?’ she cried as soon as she was within call.

The men said, ‘Here’s Mistress Jean, and Randal will be here soon; they have gone to look for him.’

‘Where are they looking?’ cried nurse.

‘Just about the Wishing Well.’

The nurse gave a scream, and hobbled back to Lady Ker.

‘Ma bairn’s
tint
!’ she cried. ‘Ma bairn’s tint! They’ll find him never. The good folk have stolen him away from that weary Wishing Well!’

‘Hush, nurse,’ said Lady Ker, ‘do not frighten Jean.’

She spoke to the men, who had no doubt that Randal would soon be found and brought home.

So Jean was put to bed, where she forgot all her troubles; and Lady Ker waited, waited, all night, until the grey light began to come in, about two in the morning.

Lady Ker kept very still and quiet, telling her beads, and praying. But the old nurse would never be still, but was always wandering out, down to the river’s edge, listening for the shouts of the shepherds coming home. Then she would come back again, and moan and wring her hands, crying for her ‘bairn’.

About six o’clock, when it was broad daylight and all the birds were singing, the men returned from the hill.

But Randal did not come with them.

Then the old nurse set up a great cry, as the country people do over the bed of someone who has just died.

Lady Ker sent her away, and called Simon Grieve to her own room.

‘You have not found the boy yet?’ she said, very stately and pale. ‘He must have wandered over into Yarrow; perhaps he has gone as far as Newark, and passed the night at the castle, or with the shepherd at Foulshiels.’

‘No, my Lady,’ said Simon Grieve, ‘some o’ the men went over to Newark, and some to Foulshiels, and other some down to Sir John Murray’s at Philiphaugh; but there’s never a word o’ Randal in a’ the countryside.’

‘Did you find no trace of him?’ said Lady Ker, sitting down suddenly in the great armchair.

‘We went first through the wood, my Lady, by the path to the Wishing Well. And he had been there, for the whip he carried in his hand was lying on the grass. And we found
this.’

He put his hand in his pouch, and brought out a little silver crucifix, that Randal used always to wear around his neck on a chain.

‘This was lying on the grass beside the Wishing Well, my Lady –’

Then he stopped, for Lady Ker had swooned away. She was worn out with watching and with anxiety about Randal.

Simon went and called the maids, and they brought water and wine, and soon Lady Ker came back to herself, with the little silver crucifix in her hand.

The old nurse was crying, and making a great noise.

‘The good folk have taken ma bairn,’ she said, ‘this nicht o’ a’ the nichts in the year, when the fairy folk – preserve us frae them! – have power. But they could nae take the blessed rood o’ grace; it was beyond their strength. If gypsies, or robber folk frae the
Debatable Land
, had carried away the bairn, they would hae
taken him, cross and a’. But the guid folk have gotten him, and Randal Ker will never, never mair come hame to bonny Fairnilee.’

What the old nurse said was what everybody thought. Even Simon Grieve shook his head, and did not like it.

But Lady Ker did not give up hope. She sent horsemen through all the countryside: up Tweed to the Crook, and to Talla; up Yarrow, past Catslack Tower, and on to the Loch of St Mary; up Ettrick to Thirlestane and Buccleuch, and over to Gala, and to Branxholme in Teviotdale; and even to Hermitage Castle, far away by Liddel water.

They rode far and rode fast, and at every cottage and every tower they asked, ‘Has anyone seen a boy in green?’ But nobody had seen Randal through all the countryside. Only a shepherd lad, on Foulshiels Hill, had heard bells ringing in the night, and a sound of laughter go past him, like a breeze of wind over the heather.

Days went by, and all the country was out to look for Randal. Down in Yetholm they sought him, among the gypsies; and across the Eden in merry Carlisle; and through the Land Debatable, where the robber Armstrongs and Grahames lived; and far down Tweed, past Melrose, and up Jed water, far into the Cheviot Hills.

But there never came any word of Randal. He had vanished as if the earth had opened and swallowed him. Father Francis came from Melrose Abbey, and prayed with Lady Ker, and gave her all the comfort he could. He shook his head when he heard of the Wishing Well, but he said that no spirit of earth or air could have power for ever over a Christian soul. But, even when he spoke, he remembered that, once in seven years, the fairy folk have to pay a dreadful tax, one of themselves, to the King of a terrible country of Darkness; and what if they had stolen Randal, to pay the tax with him!

This was what troubled good Father Francis, though, like a wise man, he said nothing about it, and even put the thought away out of his own mind.