The Victorian Fairy Tale Book (The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library)

by Michael Patrick Hearn (Editor)

  On hearing such good news, everybody cried out Hip Hip Hip Hurrah! again.

  “It only remains,” said Grandmarina in conclusion, “to make an end of the fish-bone.”

  So she took it from the hand of the Princess Alicia, and it instantly flew down the throat of the dreadful little snapping pug-dog next door and choked him, and he expired in convulsions.

  1868

  Melilot

  HENRY MORLEY

  I

  The Three Neighbours of Melilot

  It had been raining for ten months, and everybody felt as if it had been raining for ten years. In the driest part of the country, in the driest corners of the driest houses, there was damp. Whoever came near a fire began to steam; whoever left the fire began to moisten as the damp entered the clothes. There was a breath of wet on everything in-doors, and Melilot was wet through when she came to the door of a broken-roofed cottage that stood in a marsh between two lakes.

  Melilot was a pretty girl of twelve, who had lived in a cottage up the mountains, as the only child of hard-working parents, who taught her all that was good, and whose one worldly good she was; for they had nothing to eat but what they could force to grow out of a stony patch of ground upon the mountain-side. They had loved Melilot, and they loved each other. To feed their little one they had deprived themselves, till when the rain running down the mountain-side had washed away their little garden crops, first the mother died—for she it was who had denied herself the most—and then the father also died in a long passion of weeping. The nearest neighbours occupied the cottage in the valley on the marsh between the lakes. In hunger and grief, therefore, Melilot went down to them to ask for human help.

  From Melilot’s home it was a long way up to the peak of the mountains, and a long way down to the marshy valley in which lay the two lakes with a narrow spit of earth between them, and a black rocky mountain overhanging them upon the other side. A gloomy defile, between high rocks, led out of the valley on the one side, and on the other side it opened upon a waste of bog, over which the thick mist brooded, and the rain now fell with never-ending plash.

  The runlets on the mountain formed a waterfall that, dashing over a smooth wall of rock, broke into foam on the ragged floor of a great rocky basin near Melilot’s cottage door. Then after a short rush, seething and foaming down a slope rugged with granite boulders, the great cataract fell with a mighty roar over another precipice upon the stream that, swollen by the rains almost into a river, carried its flood into one of the lakes. It was partly by this waterfall that the path down into the valley ran.

  Melilot knew that her father, when alive, had avoided the people in the lake cottage, and had forbidden her, although they were the only neighbours, to go near their dwelling. But her father now was dead, and her mother was dead, and there was need of human help if she would bury them. Her father, too, had told her that when she was left helpless she would have to go out and serve others for her daily bread. To what others than these could the child look? So by the stony side of the stream, and by the edge of the lake, her only path in the marsh, Melilot came down shivering and weeping through the pitiless rain, and knocked at the door of the lake cottage.

  “Who’s that?” asked a hoarse voice inside.

  “That’s Melilot from up above us,” said a hoarser voice.

  “Come in then, little Melilot,” another voice said, that was the hoarsest of the three.

  The child flinched before opening the door, but she did open it, and set one foot over the threshold; then she stopped. There was nothing in the cottage but a muddy puddle on the floor, into which rain ran from the broken roof. Three men sat together in the puddle, squatted like frogs. They had broad noses and spotted faces, and the brightest of bright eyes, which were all turned to look at Melilot when she came in.

  “We are glad to see you, Melilot,” said the one who sat in the middle, holding out a hand that had all its fingers webbed together. He was the one who had the hoarsest voice. “My friend on the right is Dock, Dodder sits on my left, and I am Squill. Come in and shut the door behind you.”

  Melilot had to choose between the dreary, empty world outside, and trust in these three creatures—who were more horrible to look at than I care to tell. She hesitated only for an instant, then went in and shut the door behind her.

  “A long time ago your father came to us, and he went out and shut the door upon us. You are wiser than your father, little girl.”

  “My father, oh, my dear father!” began Melilot, and fell to weeping bitterly.

  “Her father is dead,” said Dock, who was the least hoarse.

  “And her mother too,” said Dodder, who was hoarser.

  “And she wants us to help her to bury them,” croaked Squill.

  “She is fainting with hunger,” said Dock.

  “She is dying of hunger and grief,” said Dodder.

  “And we have nothing to offer her but tadpoles, which she cannot eat,” said Squill.

  “Dear neighbours, I am nothing,” said the child. “I do not know that I am hungry. But if you would come with me and help me.”

  “She asks us to her house,” said Dock.

  “We may go,” said Dodder, “if we are invited.”

  “Little Melilot,” said Squill then, in his hoarsest tone of all, “we will all follow you to the mountain hut.” Then the three ugly creatures splashed out of their pool, and moved, web-footed too, about their cottage with ungainly hopping. Melilot all the while only thanked them, frankly looking up into their bright eyes, that were eager, very eager, but not cruel.

  II

  The Mountain Hut

  Melilot, with her three wonderful neighbours, Dock, Dodder, and Squill, hopping arm in arm behind her, and getting a good hold on the stones with their web feet, began to climb the mountain. Rain still poured out of the sky; runlets flooded their path, and the great cataract roared by their side. The faint and hungry child had climbed but half the way to her desolate home when she swooned, and was caught in the arms of Squill.

  “Sprinkle water,” said Dock.

  “No need of that,” said Dodder.

  “It will not be right for us to carry her,” said Squill.

  Either because there was more than a sprinkling of water, or because of her own stout young heart, Melilot recovered and climbed on. They reached the hut, and when there, the three neighbours at once bestirred themselves. Because of the flood outside, they dug the graves under the roof, one on each side of the hearth, for Melilot’s dead father and mother, and so buried them. Then the child made her friends sit down to rest; one in her father’s chair, one in her mother’s, and one on her own little stool. She raked the embers of the fire and put on fresh wood until a blaze leapt up that was strong enough to warm them before she would turn aside. Then standing in a corner by the morsel of window that looked out towards the waterfall, she gave way to her sobbing. But again—brave little heart—conquering herself, she came forward to where the monsters were sitting, with their legs crossed, basking in the firelight, and said, “I am sorry, dear, kind neighbours, that I have no supper to offer you.”

  “Nay, but you have,” said Dock.

  The child followed the glance of his eyes, and saw that on her father’s grave there stood a loaf of bread, and on her mother’s grave a cup of milk.

  “They are for you, from the good angels.” She said, “Oh, I am thankful!” Then Melilot broke the bread into three pieces, and gave a piece to each, and held the milk for them when they would drink.

  “She is famished herself,” said Dodder.

  “We must eat all of it up,” said Squill.

  So they ate all of it up; and while they ate, there was no thought in the child’s heart but of pleasure that she had this bread to give.

  When they had eaten all, there was another loaf upon the father’s grave, and on the mother’s grave another and a larger cup of milk.

  “See there!” Dock said.

  “Whose supper is that?” as
ked Dodder.

  “It must be for the pious little daughter Melilot, and no one else,” said Squill.

  The three neighbours refused to take another crumb; they had eaten so much tadpole, they said, for their dinners. Melilot, therefore, supped, but left much bread and milk, secretly thinking that her friends would require breakfast, if they should consent to stay with her throughout the night. It was long since the sun set, reddening the mists of the plain, and now the mountain path beside the torrent was all dark and very perilous. The monsters eagerly watched their little hostess with their brilliant eyes, and assented, as it seemed, with exultation, to her wish that they would sleep in the hut. There were but two beds under its roof—Melilot’s own little straw pallet, and that on which her parents were to sleep no more, on which she was no more to kneel beside them in the humble morning prayer. With sacred thoughts of hospitality the child gave up to the use of those who had smoothed for her dear parents a new bed, the bed that was no longer theirs; and the three monsters, after looking at her gratefully, lay down on it together and went to sleep on it, with their arms twisted about each other’s necks. The child looked down upon them, clinging together in their sleep as in their talk, and saw a weariness of pain defined in many a kindly-turned line of their half frog-like faces. If one stirred in sleep, it was to nestle closer to the other two. “How strange,” she said to herself, “that I should at first have thought them ugly!” Then she knelt in prayer by her little nest of straw, and did not forget them in her prayers. There was a blessing on them in her heart as she lay down to sleep.

  But when Melilot lay down with her face towards the hearth, the dying embers shone with a red light on the two solemn graves. She turned her face to the wall, and the rush of the torrent on the other side was louder than the passion of her weeping. But the noise of the waterfall first soothed her, and then, fixing her attention, drew her from her bed towards the little window, from which she was able to look out into the black night through which it roared. A night not altogether black, for there was a short lull in the rain, though the wind howled round the mountain, and through a chance break in the scurrying night-clouds the full moon now and then flashed, lighting the lakes in the valley far below, and causing the torrent outside the window to gleam through the night-shadows of the great rocks among which it fell. Could it be the song of busy Fairies that came thence to the child’s ear?

  “Up to the moon and cut down that ray!

  In and out the foam-wreaths plaiting;

  Spin the froth and weave the spray!

  Melilot is watching! Melilot is waiting!

  Pick the moonbeam into shreds,

  Twist it, twist it into threads!

  Threads of the moonlight, yarn of the bubble,

  Weave into muslin, double and double!

  Fold all and carry it, tarry ye not,

  To the chamber of gentle and true Melilot.”

  Almost at the same moment the door of the hut opened, and Melilot, turning round, saw two beautiful youths enter, bright as the moonlight, who laid a white bale at her feet, and said that it came from the Fairy Muslin Works. Having done that, they flew out in the shape of fire-flies, and Melilot herself closed the door after them. It was her first act to shut the door, because she was bred to be a careful little housewife, and she thought the night-air would not be good for the sleepers.

  Then the child looked again at the three monsters cuddled together on her father’s and mother’s bed. “The Fairies have done this for me,” she considered to herself, “that I might not have to send away kind helpers without a gift. White muslin is not quite the dress that will suit lodging such as theirs, but it is all I have! If I could make them, by the time they wake, three dresses, they would see, at any rate, that I was glad to work for them as they had worked for me.”

  So Melilot began measuring her neighbours with the string of her poor little apron; and when she had measured them all, shrank, with her scissors and thread and the bale of fairy muslin, into the farthest corner of her hut, and set to work by the light of a pine-stick, shaded from the eyes of her guests with a screen made of her own ragged old frock.

  While the child stitched, the Fairies sang, and it was a marvel to her that her needle never wanted threading. Keeping time with her fingers to the fairy song, she worked with a speed that almost surpassed her desire, and altogether surpassed understanding. One needleful of thread made the three coats, and the thread, when the coats were made, was as long as it had been when they were begun.

  Very soon after dawn the white dresses were made, and all the muslin had been used in making them, except what was left in the small litter of fragments round the stool upon which Melilot had been at work. Three coats of white muslin, daintily folded, were laid by the bed of the three guests, and each was folded with that corner uppermost on which there had been written in thread its owner’s name. Dock was worked in the corner of one; Dodder in the corner of another; and in the corner of the third coat, Squill.

  Then Melilot lay down for an hour’s sleep, and, weary with grief as with toil, slept heavily. Dock, Dodder, and Squill were awake before her, and the first thing that each of them did upon waking was to look upon his new coat. The next thing that each of them did was to put on his new coat; and after this the next thing they all did was to change into three beautiful Fairy youths—Dock with yellow hair, Dodder with brown, and Squill with black. Thus they stood hand in hand by the little girl’s bed.

  “She has freed us, the dear child!” said Dock.

  “She,” said Dodder, “she, our darling, and our brothers of the waterfall.”

  “She has saved nothing for herself,” said Squill. “Did not the child once wish to wear muslin in the place of these poor rags? I kiss them, brothers, for her sake,” But Squill’s kiss on the girl’s ragged frock made it a treasure for an empire.

  “And I kiss the walls that sheltered us,” said Dodder. But Dodder’s kiss upon the walls changed them into a close network of fragrant blossoms.

  “And I kiss the lips that bade us hither,” Dock said; and at his kiss the child smiled, and her eyes opened upon the three Fairies in the muslin dresses she had made.

  “Ah, Fairies,” she said, “those are the dresses I made for my three dear neighbours. Do not take back your gift, although the muslin is indeed yours, and the thread too, I know, and—and the work too, for surely it was you who made the needle run. I have done nothing, and am but a poor little child; only I thought you meant to give me something to be grateful with.”

  “We did not give you your good heart, dear little Melilot,” the Fairies said; and now their speaking was in softest unison. “That has done more for us than all our love and service will repay. We were your neighbours, but we are your servants now.”

  “No, no, no,” said the child. “I was afraid to ask to be your servant, because I thought last night you were too poor to feed me, as I am too poor and weak to feed myself. The angels themselves gave me bread yesterday, and I have some yet. But all is changed about me. Why do the walls flower, and why is my dress covered with glittering stones? Ah, yes, I am at home,” she said, for her eyes fell on the two graves.

  Then, as she rose to her knees, with quivering lips, the three Fairies went out into the sun, and stood at the door to see how all the rains were gone, and the bright morning beams played in the spray of the cataract.

  “Do you see anything between us and the sun?” Dock asked of the other two.

  “A speck,” said Dodder.

  “Frogbit herself,” said Squill.

  III

  Sir Crucifer

  Presently Melilot bade the three Fairies come in to share her breakfast. She had saved bread from last night, and while she took it from its place among the blossoms that last night were mud, again the loaf of bread stood on her father’s, and the cup of milk upon her mother’s grave. “The angels of my father and mother feed me still,” she said; “I must abide under the shelter of their wings.”

  T
he Fairies came at her bidding to eat with her; but Squill, excusing himself, went to the stool about which were the chips and shreds of Fairy muslin. There, joining each to each with a stroke of his finger, he was shaping them into a little net, when Melilot, who had been sent out to feel the sunshine, came in, saying that there was a chill wind; and though it was foolishness to think so, it did really seem to have come with a black raven that was sitting on the roof.

  “You had better strike through the roof, Frogbit,” Squill cried, looking up. The bird croaked as if in defiance, and at once began to beat a way in through the flowers. As it did so, the leaves of the bower withered, and the blossoms all began to stink.

  But Squill leapt up, and holding the net he had made under the hole Frogbit was making, caught her as she fell through, and held her captured in the folds of Fairy muslin that seemed to stand like iron against the beating of her wings.

  “Poor bird!” said Melilot.

  “Our enemy, who came on a bad errand, is our prisoner,” said Dock.

  “Cleverly done,” said Dodder. “Very cleverly done, brother Squill.”

  But Melilot, who loved man, beast, and bird, bent over the fluttering raven, and was not hindered from taking it, net and all, to her bosom, though it struck at her fiercely with its great bill that, strong as it was, could not tear through the muslin net.