"Could ye not," said the Sea-Child, "have always taken refuge from them in the lower garden, where I have been with you?"
"We did not know it till thou wert among us, and should perhaps never have ventured thither, had we not been driven to distress by the hatred of the giants for thee. When we had thee for our nursling and sister, their attempts were no longer bursts of violence that passed away. They seemed always lying in wait to discover and to destroy thee. Had we not known a strain of music, of power when sung to frighten them away, thou, dear Sea-Child, wouldst long ere this have been taken from us. When they came rushing down in the wind and darkness, and sought for thee in every thicket, and every hollow tree, and under each of those large pink shells which we often made thy bed, they sang and shouted together such words as these:
But we too had our song-, and never could these grim wild beasts resist the spell, when we sang together with soft voice,
"Oh! well I remember," said her companion, "with what delight I first heard you sing that song. I fancied that, if I could only listen long enough to it, I should become as airy and gentle as ye are, and no longer be encumbered with this dark solid flesh. We were in that green chamber in the midst of red rocks, where the pines spread over the brinks of the precipices far above the mossy floor we sat on; and the vines hung their branches down the stony walls from the pine-boughs which they cling to on the summit, and drop their clusters into the smooth stream, with its floating water-lilies, which traverses the spot. There, dear sisters, were ye sporting, climbing up the vine-trails, and throwing yourselves headlong down, or launching over the quick ripples of the stream. Ye had laid me on a bed of harebells; and I looked up with half-shut eyes. I saw your sparkling hosts pass to and fro up the cliff, through the straggling beams of sunshine; when something blacker than the pineboughs on the summit appeared in the deepest of their shade. Long tangled locks, and two fierce round eyes, and a mouth with huge protruding lip, came on and peered over, till the monster spied me, and gave a yell. I saw a crag, with two young pine-trees growing on it, toppling before the thrust of his hand, and at the moment of falling to crush me. Then suddenly came your cry and song. A sheet of water, thinner than a rose-leaf, and transparent as the starry sky, rose from the stream, and seemed to form an arch above me. There was in it a perpetual trembling and eddying of the brightest colours; and I saw the forms of thousands of my sisters, floating, circling, wavering up and down in the liquid light. All seemed joining in the song, -
The crag fell, but shattered not my crystal vault, down the side of which it rolled into the stream; and the giant, with a roar of rage, fell after it, and stung by the warm air, and pierced through and through by the music, and writhing in the bright stream, half melted, half was broken like a lump of ice, and darkened the water, while he flowed away in it."
"It was the frequency of such attempts however," said the fairy, "which drove us to take refuge in the regions of our friends, the dwarfs. We found too that we had no longer the mere risk of being surprised by our enemies in the sudden descent of storm and mists, and through the opportunities of thick and gloomy lurking-places near our sunlit haunts. They had discovered a secret, by which they could at will darken and deface our whole kingdom, and blight all its sweet flowers and fruitage. There is somewhere, in the centre of their mountains, in the midst of desolate rocks, a black ravine. The upper end of it is enclosed by an enormous crag, which turns as on a pivot, and is the door of an immeasurable cave. The giants, hating our Sea-Child, and determined to drive her from the land, heaved with their pine-stem clubs at this great block of stone, until they had forced it open. Thence, so long as they had strength to hold it thus, a thick and chilling mist boiled out, poured down the glens and mountains, and stifled all our island. When they were so wearied with the huge weight that they could endure no longer, the rock swung to again and closed the opening; but not until the work was done for that time, and the land made well nigh uninhabitable to thee and us. Then in the fearful gloom the giants rushed abroad, howling and trampling over high and low; and many were the devices we were compelled to use in order to preserve thee from their fury. We scattered the golden sea-sand, which had been transmuted by the sunbeams, over the softest greensward, and watered it with the dew shaken from musk-roses; and it grew up into a golden trelliswork, with large twining leaves of embossed gold, and fruits like bunches of stars. When thou hadst been sprinkled with the same dew, and so hushed into charmed sleep, we laid thee beneath the bowery roof, and kept watch around thee. The giants could not approach this spot; for it threw off the darkness, and burnt in the midst of storm and fog with an incessant light. But still we were obliged to be perpetually on our guard; and we shivered and pined in the desolation of our beautiful empire. At last we resolved to try our fortunes in a new region. When we had lulled thee into deep slumber, we all glided down the waterfall that pours out of the lake of lilies, and sank with it deep into the ground. We were here in the kingdom of the dwarfs.
"The little people showed us as much friendship, as the giants had ever displayed of enmity. Their great hall had a thousand columns, each of a different metal, and with a capital of a different precious stone. The roof was opal, and the floor lapis-lazuli. In the centre stood a pillar, which seemed cut off at half its height. On it sat a dwarf, rather smaller than the others, but broad and strong. His dark and twisted face looked like a little copy of one of the giants; but his clear blue eyes were as beautiful as ours, or as thine, my Sea-Child. He sat with his arms folded, and his legs hung down and swinging. His head was turned to one side, and rather upwards; and on the tip of his nose spun perpetually a little golden circle, with a golden pin run through it, on which it seemed to dance unweariedly, turning round and round for ever, smooth and swift as an eddy in a stream. In its whirl the little circle gave out large flakes of white fire, which formed a wheel of widening rings above the head of the dwarf, flashing off on all sides between the capitals of the pillars, and lighting the whole hall. The queer cunning look, with which the dwarfs blue eyes glanced up at the small spinner, as if it were alive, and answering his glances with its own, amused us much.
"The dwarfs, when we entered, were all placed round on ranges of seats rising above one another. Every seat was like a small pile of round plates of gold, each of them, as we afterwards found, having a head on it with some strange figures. These plates, the dwarfs told us, were all talismans, which would one day make the owners lords of the world. At the head of the hall, under a canopy of state, sat the king of the dwarfs, who looked wonderfully old and wise, with two eyes of ruby, and a long crystal tooth growing out of one side of his mouth, and a beard of gold-wire falling below his feet and twirled on the floor, going three times round the throne.
What seek ye?" said the King; and his words did not come out of his lips, but from a little hole in the top of his crystal tooth.
Help! necromancer.'
It belongeth rightly to the helpful, and shall not be denied you. What bring ye?'
'A young Sea-child.'
It is in the youngest that the oldest may see hope. She is welcome. What fear ye?'
The rage of the tall giants.'
" ' We are deeper than they are high. I can protect you against them.'
"He rose up and walked before us; and his golden beard streamed behind over both his shoulders, and seemed to be a stately cloth woven with figures for us to walk on. There was darkness round us; and we advanced upon this shining path, following the dwarf, till suddenly he disappeared, and we found ourselves in the garden which thou bast dwelt in with us. Thou rememberest the still and glistening loveliness of the place; and of the moon that lighted it, and the sweet moonflowers that filled its glades, I need not speak. But thou knowest not what wise instruction the old dwarf king was wont to give us, while thou wert sleeping under the myrtle shade.
" Mourn not,' he would say, ' fair sisters, that ye are driven from your upper land of life into this lower garden of peace.
"
All things are but as they must be; and, were they otherwise, they would not be the things they are.
Each worketh for itself, and doeth and knoweth all it can, save in so far as other things oppose it, which are also accomplishing their due tasks.
" Each is but a portion of the whole, and vainly seeketh to be aught but that which the whole willeth it to be.
" ' All, - that is, dwarfs, and giants, and fairies, and the world that holds them, - subsist in successions of strife, and, while they seem struggling to destroy each other, exert, as alone it is possible for them to do, the energies of their own being.
" All rise out of death to life; and many are the semblances of death which still accompany their life at its highest. They grow into harmony only by discord with themselves and others, and, while they labour to escape the common lot, rebound painfully from the walls which they strive against idly.
"'The giant disturbeth, the fairy brighteneth, the dwarf enricheth the world. Each doeth well in his own work. But therein often must he thwart and cross the work of another.
"'I am oldest, I am wisest of workers in the world. I was at the birth of things; and what hath been I know well: but what is future I know not yet, nor can read whether there shall be a new birth of all that may bring death to me.'
"Thus did the old King teach us a sad yet melodious contentment, that seemed suited to that visionary garden. This quiet state however was not to last, nor the wisdom of the dwarfs to secure them happiness. We longed for our upper world of daylight and freedom; and thou seemedst rather dreaming than awake. Yet thou beamedst ever fairer and fairer, and didst grow in stature and in loveliness. Thus was it that thou wert the occasion of our first difference with the dwarfs. Their King, so old, so wise, looked on thee ever with more joy and sadness; and at last he told us that he would fain have thee for his queen, to abide with him always in that secret lunar empire. Us too the other dwarfs appeared to love more than we wished; and we found that we must either leave their dominions, or consent to inhabit them for ever. We spake to the old King, and said, that for thee it would be a woeful doom to see our native Faery land no more; and we entreated him of his goodness and wisdom to enable us to dwell there without further peril. Ruby tears fell from his ruby eyes upon his golden beard as he turned away; and the faces of all Dwarfland were darkened.
"No long space seemed to have passed, before we were summoned again to the great hall, while thou wert left sleeping in the moon-garden. The King was on his throne; the dwarfs were seated round. But, instead of the pillars we had seen before, the metals now had all become transparent; and in the midst of each stood one of our enemies, the giants, with one heavy hand hung down, and clenched, as if in pain, and the other raised above his head, and sustaining the capital of the column. The small gold plate with its gold pin still spun incessantly on the nose; the blue eyes still watched it cunningly; the flakes of fire streamed off and flew between the pillars, and scorched the faces and brown-red shoulders of the giants. Our enemies grinned and writhed when they saw us, but seemed unable to utter any sound. The dwarfs also did not speak; but the King rose and moved before us. His beard fell over his shoulders, and formed a path on which we walked. We proceeded on and on, till the Dwarfland seemed changing, and daylight fell faintly upon us. The King grew more and more like the stones and trees around; and at last, we knew not how, instead of his figure before us, there was only a cleft in the rock, nearly of the same shape. The golden beard was now a track of golden sands, such as we had often seen before, with the bright sunshine falling on it. We were again in our own world of Faery. But oh, dear Sea-Child! I cannot say the grief that smote us when we missed thee. We wailed and drooped; and even the delights of our land could do nothing to console us, till we found thee sleeping in a grotto of diamond and emerald, which recalled the treasures of the dwarfs to us. Even now we were not happy; for we remembered a prophecy of the old man, that, though he might restore us to our home, and rescue us from the giants, short would be our enjoyment of thee whom we had refused him."
The companions embraced anew; and the fairy hung round her friend like a rainbow on a smooth green hill. The fairies now poured in on all sides, singing and exulting in their own land, though not without a thought of grief from the dwarfs prophecy. The sun was hanging over the sea, and gilding the shore; and they looked at the bright waters, and marked the spot where they had first discerned the SeaChild's swimming cradle. Lo! there was again a speck. A floating shape appeared, and came nearer and nearer. It looked a living thing. Soon it touched the shore; and they saw a figure like that of the Sea-Child, but taller and stronger and bolder, and in a stately dress. The fairies said in their hearts, It is a man! Them he seemed not to see, but only her. She was frightened, but with a mixture of gladness at his appearance, and was trembling and nigh to sink, when he took her in his arms, and spake to her of hope and joy.
"I am come from distant lands upon this strange adventure, warned in dreams, and by aerial voices, and by ancient lays, that here I should find my bride, and the queen of my new dominions."
He too was beautiful, and of a sweet voice; and she heard him with more fear than pain. When she looked around, she no longer saw the fairies near. There were gleams floating over the landscape, and quivering in the woods, and a song of sweet sorrow, so sweet, that, as it died away, it left the sense of an eternal peace.
Thus did the land of England receive its first inhabitants. Ever since has it been favoured by the fairies; the dwarfs have enriched it secretly; and the giants have upbourne its foundations upon their hands, and done it huge though sullen service.
DINAH MARIA MULOCK (1826-1887) who signed herself MRS. CRAIK following her marriage, wrote several fairy romances for children, of which the best is Alice Learmont (1852) - a story more carefully and sensitively rooted in Scottish folklore than most contemporary works of its kind. Her fantasies for adults, including the tale below, were brought together in the collection Avillion and Other Tales (1853), and subsequently reprinted in Romantic Tales (1859); they include two novellas: "Avillion", a visionary fantasy about the Isle of the Blest, in which Ulysses and King Arthur make brief appearances; and "The Self-Seer", a curious didactic fantasy in which two friends exchange places with their spirit doppelgangers.
The frequent intrusion of pietistic homilies into her work marks Mrs. Craik out as one of the most Victorian of all the Victorian lady novelists, and testifies to her unease in dealing with the vocabulary of ideas typical of fantasy (which is, of course, drawn almost entirely from pagan sources). Like Dickens, she never introduced fantasy elements into her novels, but her fascination with fantasy motifs is evident in her shorter works.
A Tale of Ancient Greece
by Mrs. Craik
Chapter I
In the early days of Greece, when the gods yet spoke with men, before the oracles were silent in the groves of Dodona, and while the nymphs and dryads still lingered by wood and fountain, there was in Taurica a temple consecrated to Diana. Night and day in the sanctuary the virgin priestesses of the goddess kept vigil round her statue. Men said that this treasure was not the work of human hands, but had fallen from heaven. The elders of the generation well remembered that when the temple was finished, the priesthood who mourned over the yet vacant shrine of the goddess, had one night left it in moonlight solitude, and lo! next morning a beautiful statue of the divinity was in its place. How such glorious loveliness could have sprung to life from the cold marble, unless by an immortal touch, no one could imagine, but all worshipped the form as a token direct from heaven that their piety had been accepted. Not many days after, at the very foot of the statue, died a pale youth, whom no one knew, save that he had haunted the temple for months. Some kind hand gave him a tomb, and his name was never spoken; the worshippers worshipped, and no man dreamed that their idol was only divine in that it came from the hand of an unknown, but heaven-born and immortal genius.
This old tale was now forgotten, but far and wide spread the f
ame and renown of the shrine. Pilgrims came from all lands to kneel before the statue which was believed to have fallen from heaven, and brought back to their distant homes wondrous tales of its divine loveliness. Men spoke with reverence of the oracle of Diana Taurica, and the white pinnacles of the temple were looked upon from afar with enthusiastic adoration. But after a time these worshippers from foreign lands came no more. It was whispered that one of the pretended devotees had offered sacrilege to the goddess, and that Diana had exacted a fearful expiation. The real secret was never breathed; but for years after, many strangers who entered the temple were seen no more on earth. Still the white-robed priestesses encircled the flowercrowned shrine, and the statue of the goddess shone in imperishable beauty.
The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy: 19th Century (European Literary Fantasy Anthologies) Page 14