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

by Hearn, Michael Patrick

  “Alicia.”

  “Yes, papa.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Snipping, stitching, cutting, and contriving, papa.”

  “Where is the magic fish-bone?”

  “In my pocket, papa.”

  “I thought you had lost it?”

  “O no, papa!”

  “Or forgotten it?”

  “No, indeed, papa!”

  After that, she ran up stairs to the Duchess and told her what had passed, and told her the secret over again, and the Duchess shook her flaxen curls and laughed with her rosy lips.

  Well! and so another time the baby fell under the grate. The seventeen young Princes and Princesses were used to it, for they were almost always falling under the grate or down the stairs, but the baby was not used to it yet, and it gave him a swelled face and a black eye. The way the poor little darling came to tumble was, that he slid out of the Princess Alicia’s lap just as she was sitting, in a great coarse apron that quite smothered her, in front of the kitchen fire, beginning to peel the turnips for the broth for dinner; and the way she came to be doing that was, that the King’s cook had run away that morning with her own true love, who was a very tall but very tipsy soldier. Then, the seventeen young Princes and Princesses, who cried at everything that happened, cried and roared. But the Princess Alicia (who couldn’t help crying a little herself) quietly called to them to be still, on account of not throwing back the Queen up stairs, who was fast getting well, and said, “Hold your tongues, you wicked little monkeys, every one of you, while I examine baby!” Then she examined baby, and found that he hadn’t broken anything, and she held cold iron to his poor dear eye, and smoothed his poor dear face, and he presently fell asleep in her arms. Then she said to the seventeen Princes and Princesses, “I am afraid to lay him down yet, lest he should wake and feel pain, be good and you shall all be cooks.” They jumped for joy when they heard that, and began making themselves cooks’ caps out of old newspapers. So to one she gave the salt-box, and to one she gave the barley, and to one she gave the herbs, and to one she gave the turnips, and to one she gave the carrots, and to one she gave the onions, and to one she gave the spice-box, till they were all cooks, and all running about at work, she sitting in the middle, smothered in the great coarse apron, nursing baby. By and by the broth was done, and the baby woke up, smiling like an angel, and was trusted to the sedatest Princess to hold, while the other Princes and Princesses were squeezed into a far-off corner to look at the Princess Alicia turning out the saucepan-full of broth, for fear (as they were always getting into trouble) they should get splashed and scalded. When the broth came tumbling out, steaming beautifully, and smelling like a nosegay good to eat, they clapped their hands. That made the baby clap his hands; and that, and his looking as if he had a comic toothache, made all the Princes and Princesses laugh. So the Princess Alicia said, “Laugh and be good, and after dinner we will make him a nest on the floor in a corner, and he shall sit in his nest and see a dance of eighteen cooks.” That delighted the young Princes and Princesses, and they ate up all the broth, and washed up all the plates and dishes, and cleared away, and pushed the table into a corner, and then they in their cooks’ caps, and the Princess Alicia in the smothering coarse apron that belonged to the cook that had run away with her own true love that was the very tall but very tipsy soldier, danced a dance of eighteen cooks before the angelic baby, who forgot his swelled face and his black eye, and crowed with joy.

  And so then, once more the Princess Alicia saw King Watkins the First, her father, standing in the doorway looking on, and he said, “What have you been doing, Alicia?”

  “Cooking and contriving, papa.”

  “What else have you been doing, Alicia?”

  “Keeping the children light-hearted, papa.”

  “Where is the magic fish-bone, Alicia?”

  “In my pocket, papa.”

  “I thought you had lost it?”

  “O no, papa.”

  “Or forgotten it?”

  “No, indeed, papa.”

  The King then sighed so heavily, and seemed so low-spirited, and sat down so miserably, leaning his head upon his hand, and his elbow upon the kitchen table pushed away in the corner, that the seventeen Princes and Princesses crept softly out of the kitchen, and left him alone with the Princess Alicia and the angelic baby.

  “What is the matter, papa?”

  “I am dreadfully poor, my child.”

  “Have you no money at all, papa?”

  “None, my child.”

  “Is there no way left of getting any, papa?”

  “No way,” said the King. “I have tried very hard, and I have tried all ways.”

  When she heard those last words, the Princess Alicia began to put her hand into the pocket where she kept the magic fish-bone.

  “Papa,” said she, “when we have tried very hard, and tried all ways, we must have done our very very best?”

  “No doubt, Alicia.”

  “When we have done our very very best, papa, and that is not enough, then I think the right time must have come for asking help of others.” This was the very secret connected with the magic fish-bone, which she had found out for herself from the Good Fairy Grandmarina’s words, and which she had so often whispered to her beautiful and fashionable friend the Duchess.

  So she took out of her pocket the magic fish-bone that had been dried and rubbed and polished till it shone like mother-of-pearl, and she gave it one little kiss and wished it was Quarter-Day. And immediately it was Quarter-Day, and the King’s quarter’s salary came rattling down the chimney, and bounced into the middle of the floor.

  But this was not half of what happened, no not a quarter, for immediately afterwards the Good Fairy Grandmarina came riding in, in a carriage-and-four (peacocks), with Mr. Pickles’s boy up behind, dressed in silver and gold, with a cocked hat, powdered hair, pink silk stockings, a jewelled cane, and a nosegay. Down jumped Mr. Pickles’s boy with his cocked hat in his hand and wonderfully polite (being entirely changed by enchantment), and handed Grandmarina out, and there she stood, in her rich shot-silk smelling of dried lavender, fanning herself with a sparkling fan.

  “Alicia, my dear,” said this charming old Fairy, “how do you do, I hope I see you pretty well, give me a kiss.”

  The Princess Alicia embraced her, and then Grandmarina turned to the King, and said rather sharply, “Are you good?”

  The King said he hoped so.

  “I suppose you know the reason, now, why my goddaughter here,” kissing the Princess again, “did not apply to the fish-bone sooner?” said the Fairy.

  The King made her a shy bow.

  “Ah! But you didn’t then!” said the Fairy.

  The King made her a shyer bow.

  “Any more reasons to ask for?” said the Fairy.

  The King said no, and he was very sorry.

  “Be good then,” said the Fairy, “and live happy ever afterwards.”

  Then, Grandmarina waved her fan, and the Queen came in most splendidly dressed, and the seventeen young Princes and Princesses, no longer grown out of their clothes, came in, newly fitted out from top to toe, with tucks in everything to admit of its being let out. After that, the Fairy tapped the Princess Alicia with her fan, and the smothering coarse apron flew away, and she appeared exquisitely dressed, like a little bride, with a wreath of orange-flowers, and a silver veil. After that, the kitchen dresser changed of itself into a wardrobe, made of beautiful woods and gold and looking-glass, which was full of dresses of all sorts, all for her and all exactly fitting her. After that, the angelic baby came in, running alone, with his face and eye not a bit the worse but much the better. Then, Grandmarina begged to be introduced to the Duchess, and when the Duchess was brought down many compliments passed between them.

  A little whispering took place between the Fairy and the Duchess, and then the Fairy said out loud, “Yes. I thought she would have told you.” Grandmarina then turne
d to the King and Queen, and said, “We are going in search of Prince Certainpersonio. The pleasure of your company is requested at church in half-an-hour precisely.” So she and the Princess Alicia got into the carriage, and Mr. Pickles’s boy handed in the Duchess, who sat by herself on the opposite seat, and then Mr. Pickles’s boy put up the steps and got up behind, and the peacocks flew away with their tails spread.

  Prince Certainpersonio was sitting by himself, eating barley-sugar and waiting to be ninety. When he saw the peacocks, followed by the carriage, coming in at the window, it immediately occurred to him that something uncommon was going to happen.

  “Prince,” said Grandmarina, “I bring you your bride.”

  The moment the Fairy said those words, Prince Certainpersonio’s face left off being sticky, and his jacket and corduroys changed to peach-bloom velvet, and his hair curled, and a cap and feather flew in like a bird and settled on his head. He got into the carriage by the Fairy’s invitation, and there he renewed his acquaintance with the Duchess, whom he had seen before.

  In the church were the Prince’s relations and friends, and the Princess Alicia’s relations and friends, and the seventeen Princes and Princesses, and the baby, and a crowd of the neighbours. The marriage was beautiful beyond expression. The Duchess was bridesmaid, and beheld the ceremony from the pulpit where she was supported by the cushion of the desk.

  Grandmarina gave a magnificent wedding feast afterwards, in which there was everything and more to eat, and everything and more to drink. The wedding cake was delicately ornamented with white satin ribbons, frosted silver and white lilies, and was forty-two yards round.

  When Grandmarina had drunk her love to the young couple, and Prince Certainpersonio had made a speech, and everybody had cried Hip Hip Hip Hurrah! Grandmarina announced to the King and Queen that in future there would be eight Quarter-Days in every year, except in leap-year, when there would be ten. She then turned to Certainpersonio and Alicia, and said, “My dears, you will have thirty-five children, and they will all be good and beautiful. Seventeen of your children will be boys, and eighteen will be girls. The hair of the whole of your children will curl naturally. They will never have the measles, and will have recovered from the whooping-cough before being born.”

  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, a
nd 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.