PROLOGUE
The youngest Goddess sat in a corner of the Universe and sulked.
For æons, she had watched the older Goddesses play each in turn with the Earth-Ball, and every time the Ball passed her way, someone said,
"She is too young, and, if she played with the Ball, might injure it."
Another added,
"Even our honourable Sister E—— created baleful Etna in her ardent desire to give a beauteous mountain to flowering Sicily, and C——, when she designed the azure Mediterranean, raised her little finger all too hurriedly, causing the whirlpool so dreaded by Grecian sailors."
But the youngest Goddess had waited long and was becoming mutinous.
Her great grey eyes, like silent moorland tarns fringed with shadowy larches, were fixed on the handiwork of the Goddess who at that moment held the Ball.
She noticed the blue line thoughtfully traced across a vast tract of land, the line men call the River Amazon, and she watched the Designer proudly hold the Ball aloft to show her handiwork to her sisters.
"Surely it is the finest river we have yet traced!"
"Nay! let me see it."
"Can it be greater than that which Mortals call the Ganges?"
Then, as the Designer of the Amazon threw the Ball above the head of the youngest Goddess toward the lap of a weary, responsible-looking sister, the youngest Goddess leapt above the little silvern stars, and caught it in her lithe white arms.
A look of consternation went round the Universe.
"She is too young to play!"
But the youngest Goddess claspt the Ball to her breast.
"Let me play, just once," she pleaded. "I will make no earthquakes, no volcanoes, no geysers, nothing that could spoil the beauty of the Ball."
Then an old Goddess—so old that she could remember God calling order out of chaos, hobbled towards her.
"Child! thou hast seized the Ball, and play with it thou wilt, but disturb not the handiwork of thine elder sisters. Thou canst pattern only where they have not worked."
So the youngest Goddess held the Ball up to the glance of God to get a great light upon it, and by chance found one small space covered with heather and bilberry, a wild sad waste.
"Here, I may play! Oh! my sisters, I would make something rarer and more beautiful of my little wild heath than any of you have dreamed of for other parts of the Ball."
Lovingly she laid her outstretched hand upon the bosom of the moorland, and when she lifted it the uplands bore the soft imprint, and a little river flowed where each finger had rested.
Thus were created
Airedale,
Wharfedale,
Nidderdale,
Wensleydale, and
Swaledale.
And because the fingers of the youngest Goddess quivered with pleasure they are merry little dancing rivers, and even play underground as they ripple to the Ouse.
In this wise she fulfilled her desire to make something rarer and more beautiful of her moorland waste than her sisters had ever dreamed of for any other part of the Ball.
But, being very young, she boasted of her wondrous achievement, and, as a punishment, the other Goddesses prevented her from ever playing with the Ball again.
That is the reason there is only one Daleshire.