The windfairies, and other tales

by Mary De Morgan

THE GIPSY’S CUP

In a little village there lived a young potter, who made his living by making all sorts of earthenware. He took the clay, and made it into shapes on the wheel, and then baked his cups and jars in a kiln. He made big jugs and little jugs, and basins and cups and saucers, and indeed every sort of pot or jar that could be wanted. He was very fond of his work, and was always thinking of how to make new shapes, or colour his jars with pretty colours. It was a very tiny village he lived in, and he worked at throwing his pots on his wheel by the road-side, but people came from many other villages and towns to buy his ware. Once a year there was a big fair, held in the town near, and just before it, the potter was always very busy making new pots and jugs to sell there. A few nights before the fair was to be held, he was hard at work, trying to finish a number of little bowls, so he sat at his wheel late in the evening after the sun was set. All day long the road had been gay with folk coming to the fair, some were in carts, and some were on foot, and there were a number of gipsies in caravans, bringing all sorts of goods to sell. Most of them went through the village and on to a big common a little further on, where they got out of their carts and put up tents, to sleep in while the fair went on. The potter was so busy with his little basins on his turning wheel that he did not hear the sound of footsteps, and when he looked up, he was surprised to see a young gipsy girl standing near, watching him. She was quite young, and had big black eyes, and rosy round cheeks, and her black hair was twisted up in little red beads and chains. She was dressed in some very gay stuff, and round her neck was a gold necklace, and on her fingers and arms were rings and bracelets.

“That should be a fine cup,” said the girl, “since you keep your eyes on it and can look at nothing else.”

“I keep my eyes for my work, that I may do it well,” said the potter, “for I live by my work, and neither by stealing nor begging.”

“But I fancy many others can do your work as well, or better than you,” answered the gipsy. “What can your cups do when they are finished? I don’t hear you say anything to them, so I should think they would be stupid cups—only fit to drink out of.”

“And what else should they be for?” asked the potter angrily. “What do you mean by saying that you don’t hear me saying anything to my cups? I don’t think you know what you are talking about. It is nonsense, and you are talking nonsense.”

“My grandfather used to make pots on a wheel,” said the gipsy, and she laughed low, and showed her white teeth in the moonlight; “ah! but he knew how to do them, and he had charms to say to them when he threw them. And one of his cups would make you wise if you drank out of it, and another would give you your true love’s heart if she drank from it, and another would make you forget everything—yes, even your true love, and all your mirth and all your sorrow, and I think that was the best cup of all;” and again the gipsy laughed in the moonlight, and sang a little song to herself as she sat herself down before the potter.

“Now this is real child’s talk,” said the potter very impatiently. “’Tis easy to say your grandfather knew how to do all this, but why should I believe you? and because your grandfather may have been able to throw a bowl upon the wheel, that doesn’t make you know anything about the craft, or how it is done.”

“Nay, but he taught me too,” said the gipsy. “Give me a piece of your clay, and let me come to your wheel and you shall see.”

At first the potter thought she was talking nonsense, but to his great surprise she took hold of the clay in her little brown hands, and moulded and modelled it with the greatest skill. Then she placed it on the wheel and threw a little jug, and he wondered to see how deft she was.

“Now I will make you a little bowl,” she said, and then she made jugs and pots and jars, far more quickly and skilfully than the potter could have done. “And now I will colour them too,” she cried. “See, I shall catch the colour from the moon, and to-morrow you can put them into your kiln and bake them, and you may be sure that you have never had such pots there before.” Then she put her little brown hands out into the moonlight, and they were covered with rings which glittered and shone, but as she held up her palms to the moon’s rays, it seemed to the potter as if they too were full of some strange glittering liquid. “And now,” she said, “see, I will put it on to your pots, and I should think I had taught you that I know more about your trade than you do yourself.” And she took the pots in her hands and rubbed her palms over them, and she traced patterns on them with her fingers.

The potter looked at her and felt almost angry, but she only laughed in his face.

“And now one last thing,” she cried, “and that is, that I will make you a cup that has a spell in it, and it shall be a present for you to remember me by. It will be very plain, and there will be no gay colours in it, but when you give it to your true love to drink from, if once you have drunk from it yourself, you will have all her heart, but beware that she doesn’t take a second draught. For though the first draught that she drinks will be drunk to love, the second draught will be drunk to hate, and though she have loved you more than all else on earth, all her love will turn to hate when she drinks again. And as you are so ignorant how to make bowls and cups, you will not know how to fashion one so as to win back her love again.”

The potter stared in silence, while the gipsy took another bit of clay and placed it upon the wheel, and then she bent her head, which glittered with beads and coins, low over it, and placing her rosy lips close to the mouth of the cup, sang some words into it, while she moulded it with her hands, and turned the wheel with her foot. It was in some strange language that the potter had never heard before.

“Good-bye,” she said presently. “Now, there, that is for you, and be sure you do not sell the little brown cup, but keep it and give it to your true love to drink out of; but only one draught, for if there are two maybe you will need the gipsy’s help again.” Then she laughed, and nodding her head over her shoulder, tripped lightly away in the moonlight while the potter stared after her.

At first he thought he had been asleep, but there around him stood the little rows of jugs and pots which the gipsy had made, and truly they were beautifully done. He took them up, and turned them over in his hand, and wondered at their shape and workmanship.

“To-morrow,” he said, “I will put them into the kiln, and see how they come out. She certainly was a clever wench, and knew her work; but as for her talk about having coloured them, that was all nonsense, and as for breathing spells and charms into the cups, why it is like baby’s talk.”

But next day when the pots were baked, the potter was even more surprised, for they had the most wonderful colours that he had ever seen: silver, blue, grey and yellow, in all sorts of patterns, all save the little brown cup, which was the last the gipsy had made. But when he looked at it the potter felt a little uncomfortable, and began to wonder if it really did contain the charm as she had declared.

When the fair began, the potter placed all the gipsy’s wares on a stall with his own, and marked them with very high prices, but had he asked three times as much he could have got it, for there were some rich folk from the big houses who came to the fair, and they at once bought them all up, declaring that such pots and jugs they had never seen. At this the potter was well pleased, and found that he had made more money than he had earned in many a long month past; but when people wanted him to make them more like them, he was obliged to shake his head, and say, “That he was very sorry, but he had had them coloured from afar, and he did not know where he could now have them done.” Of the gipsy he saw nothing more, though he looked for her everywhere during the three days in which the fair lasted, but she was not to be seen, and when the fair was over, and the other people were packing their carts and vans to go on their way, he saw very many gipsies, and supposed that she had gone with some of them, without giving him the chance of speaking to her again.

Years went by, and the potter never heard anything more of the gipsy, indeed he would have thought it had all been a dream if it had not been for the little brown pot standing on the shelf. Sometimes he took it up, and looked at it, and wondered when he saw how well and cleverly it was made. He still laughed when he remembered what the gipsy had said about leaving a charm in it, for though he himself had drunk out of it many times, he never thought it had brought any spell on him.

One year when the fair was being held, the potter was at his place as usual with his stall covered with pots, and there came and placed herself beside him at the next stall a woman with some spinning-wheels. Her stall was covered with fine linen cloths woven in pretty patterns, and so fine and well wrought were they, that many people wanted to buy them. With her were her two daughters, and one sat at the spinning-wheel and spun the flax, and the other had a hand-loom and wove it when it was spun to show the good folk how the cloths were made. Both were pretty girls, but the girl who had the hand-loom had the sweetest face the potter had ever seen. Her eyes were very blue, and her hair was like golden corn, and when she smiled, it was as if the sun shone. The potter watched her as she sat weaving, and could not keep his eyes from her or attend properly to his own pots, or to the people who wanted to buy them. Every day he watched the young girl at her work, for the fair lasted for a week, and the more he looked at her the more he wanted to look, till at last he said to himself that somehow or other he must get her for his wife; so when the fair was done he begged her to marry him, and to remain with him, and he said he would always work for her, and she should want for nothing. The mother was a poor widow, and she and her daughters made their bread by going about the country spinning and weaving, and she would have been quite willing that the potter should marry her daughter, but the girl only laughed, and said that she scarcely knew the potter, but when she came back again the next year to the fair, she would give him his answer. So the widow and her two daughters went away, and no sign of them was left with the potter, save a lock of golden hair, which he had begged from the daughter.

The year passed away, but to the potter it seemed the longest year he had ever lived. He pined for the time to come when the fair should be held, and the widow and her daughters should return. As the time drew near he got down the brown cup, and looked at it again and again. “Nay,” he said, “what harm could it do? the gipsy said it would give me my true love’s heart if she drank out of it after I had drunk, and I have drunk out of it many a time. I don’t believe it, but all the same it would be no harm for her to drink from it.”

And so when the fair was opened, he took the brown cup down with him, and stood it upon the stall with his other ware. The spinning woman and her two daughters came back with their fine cloths, and their wheel and their loom, and when he saw the golden-haired girl, he loved her still more than before, for he thought her eyes were bluer and her smile was brighter. He watched her all the time as she sat weaving, but said nothing, but when the fair was over, and they were packing their goods to go on their way, he pressed the maid for her answer. Still she hesitated, and then the potter took the little brown cup off his stall, and poured into it some choice wine, and said to her,

“If then you wish to go away, and never see me again, I pray you drink one draught, in remembrance of the happy days we have had together.”

The young girl took the cup, but no sooner had she tasted it than she put it down and turned her eyes on the potter, and said in a low voice,

“I will stay with you always, if you want me, and will be a true wife to you, and love you better than anything on earth.”

So the potter married her, and she went to live in his little cottage.

Time passed, and the potter and his young wife lived together very happily, and every day he thought her fairer and sweeter. And they had a little baby girl with blue eyes like its mother’s, and the potter thought himself the happiest man on earth, and the little brown pot stood on the shelf, and the potter looked at it, and still he would not believe about the charm, for he said to himself, “My wife loved me for my own sake, and not for any silly charm or nonsense.”

“I pray you drink one draught, in remembrance of the happy days we have had together.”

So for a time all things went well, but there came a day when the potter had to go to a neighbouring town and leave his wife at home alone all day. When he was gone she sat by the window with her little child, and presently there came up outside a dark, rough-looking man, with a wicked face, and he looked at her as she sat rocking the cradle, and thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen on earth. When he looked at her the potter’s wife was frightened, but when he told her he was very hungry, and begged her for food and drink, she rose, for her heart was tender, and she fetched him bread and meat, and spread them on the table before him. So the rough man came into the cottage and sat at the table, and ate the potter’s bread and meat, and drank his wine. “And who is your husband, and where is he?” he said. “I am sure he is a lucky man to have such a wife and such a home.”

“Yes, truly,” said the potter’s wife. “We are very happy, and we love each other dearly, and we really have nothing else to wish for.”

Then the gipsy man said, “But your dress is plain, and your rooms are bare; now, were you the wife of some wealthy man, he would give you pearls and diamonds for your neck, and beautiful silks and satins.”

“No, but I don’t want them,” said the potter’s wife smiling. “My husband works very hard, and he gives me all he can, and I am quite content with it.”

“And you say he is a potter; then what sort of things does he make?” asked the gipsy man as he cast his eyes about the room, and they lit upon the little brown jug standing upon the shelf. “And did he make the little bowl there?”

“I don’t know,” said his wife, and she took it down and turned it about in her hand. “I suppose so, but he has told me it was very old.”

The gipsy man seized it eagerly, and poured wine in it, and looked inside it, and then he laughed, and stooping his head over it, said a few words, and then laughed again.

“I have seen cups like this before,” he said. “And they are worth a mint of money, though you would not think it. And have you never drunk out of it? Has it not been used?”

“I don’t drink from it,” said the potter’s wife, “but I believe I did so once, and that was on the day when I promised my husband I would be his wife.”

Then the gipsy laughed again and again. “See,” he said, “I am going a long way off, perhaps to die by cold and hunger by the road-side, while you and your husband are cosy and warm. You set small store by this cup, but it may be that in foreign countries I could sell it for what would keep me for many a long day. Give it to me, I pray you, that I may take it with me.”

The potter’s wife hesitated and trembled. She was afraid of the man, and she thought he had a hard, bad face, but she did not want to seem unkind.

“Well, take it,” she said; “but why should you want it?”

Then the gipsy man came and caught her by the arm. “Now,” he said, “you are the fairest woman I have ever seen, and I am going away, and shall never see you again. So I beg you wish me God-speed, and drink my health out of the little brown cup you have given me. And if your lips have touched it, it will be the dearest thing I have on earth!”

Then the potter’s wife was still more frightened, and trembled more than before. But the man looked so dark and threatening, that she did not like to refuse him, and she took the cup in her hand,

“And then you will go on your way,” she said.

“And then I shall go on my way,” cried the gipsy. “And you will wait here till your husband comes, whom you love more than anything else on this earth.”

Then the potter’s wife bent her head and tasted the wine out of the cup, and wished the gipsy happiness. And when she had done so he laughed again, long and low, till her heart sank with fear, and he picked up the cup and put it into his bundle, and went his way. Then the potter’s wife sat down by the cradle, and almost cried, she knew not why, and the whole room seemed cold, and when she looked out at the sunshine it looked dark, and she bent over the baby in the cradle with her tears falling.

“Alack!” she cried, “why doesn’t my husband come home? Where is he gone? How cruel it is to leave me all alone here, so that any rough man may come into the house. In truth I don’t think he can love me much, since all he thinks of is to go away and leave me; and as for me, surely I could have had many a better husband, and one who should have loved me more. How foolish I was to marry him.”

Thus she sat and lamented all day, and in the evening, when the potter drove up to his door and cried out “Wife, wife,” she wouldn’t go out to receive him. And when he came in to their little sitting-room, he found her with tears in her eyes, sitting lamenting and complaining. When he went up to her to take her in his arms and kiss her, she turned away from him and would not let him touch her, and the potter, who had never seen his wife cross or angry, knew that there must be something wrong. She must be ill, he thought; to-morrow or the next day she will be well again. So he urged her to rest well, and took no notice of her angry words; but the next day, and the next, there was no change, and things were growing from bad to worse. For now the wife wouldn’t speak to him at all, and when she came nigh him she looked at him with anger, and would not even suffer him to touch the hem of her dress. Then the potter began to think of the little brown cup, and he looked up at the shelf and saw that it was not there, and he began to feel very much alarmed.

“Why,” he said, “what has become of my little old brown cup that used to stand up on the shelf?”

“I gave it to a gipsy man,” she answered scornfully. “He seemed to like it, and I didn’t see that I was obliged to keep all the rubbish that you had in the house.”

Then the potter groaned within himself and said,

“But did you just take it off the shelf and give it to him, and did he ask you for it? Why did he want it?”

“Of course he asked for it,” said the wife very angrily, “and I just gave it him when I had drunk his health out of it, as he wished me to.”

Then the potter was stricken with deadly fear, and remembered the words of the gipsy. “The first draught she will drink to your love, and the second draught she will drink to your hate,” and he knew in his heart that the words were true, and that the cup carried with it a charm.

He sat and thought and thought, and waited many days, hoping that his wife would change, and love him as before, but she remained cold and hard. Then the potter packed a wallet full of clothes, and put some money in his pocket, and he went to his wife and said, “Wife, there is a man somewhere who has done me a great wrong, and perhaps he did it unwittingly. I am going out to find him, and to make him right it, and though you do not love me, you will bide here quietly with your baby till I come back. And I do not know if that will be in months or in years.” Then the potter’s wife fell a-crying.

“I do not love you, nay, I hate you, and shall be glad when you have gone, but perhaps it may be because I am a wicked woman; and I do not know what has come over me, that now I want to fly away from you, when I used to think that I had the best husband on all this earth.” The potter sighed bitterly, but he kissed her cheeks, which felt as cold as ice, and then he said good-bye to his baby, and started on his way with the tears filling his eyes.

When the potter had gone the wife cried sorely, but still she was glad that she had not to see him, and for some time she lived with her baby happily enough. She kept the house, and mended and swept and cleaned as before, and thought little of the potter or where he had gone; but by and by all her money began to be spent, and she knew that unless the potter returned she would soon be very poor, and the winter was coming on, and she feared cold and hunger for her little one. So she went into a garret where she kept her old weaving loom, and she brought it out, and she bought flax, and sat down to weave just as she used to, when she went round the country with her sister who spun the flax. And she found that she could still weave her cloths very skilfully, and she began to sell them to the passers by, and in this way she earned her bread.

The winter set in very cold and hard, and the potter’s wife felt very sad. “But perhaps,” she said, “it is thinking of the poor things who are starving around with no homes,” for she never thought of her husband at all. And the flax began to be very dear, and she had difficulty in buying it. “Instead of doing all these cheap clothes,” she said, “it would be better to get very fine flax, and do a very very fine cloth; it will be the finest cloth I have ever woven, and I will sell it to some very rich lady.” So she bought the finest flax that money could bring her, and when she had woven a little bit of it, she sat and looked at it in her room, and she saw a tress of her own golden hair lying upon it, and she thought how beautiful it looked. Then she said—

“There is no one now who loves me or my hair, so I will weave it into a cloth with this very fine flax, and I must sell it for a very large sum of money, or else I shall have nothing left to go on with.” But she couldn’t think of any pattern in which the hair looked well with the fine linen flax, till at last she hit on one in which there was a cup with a heart on the top of it. The cup she made of the gold hair, and the heart also. She worked at it for many long days, and when she had finished it she looked at it, and was very much pleased, and said indeed it was the most beautiful cloth she had ever made; and now she must make haste and take it in to the town and sell it for a great deal of money, or she and her child would begin to do badly for food and fire.

The snow was lying heavily upon the ground, as the potter’s wife stood by the window looking at her cloth, when there crawled up outside the window a poor gipsy woman leading a little boy by the hand. She had big black eyes and a brown face, but her cheeks were so thin that the colour scarcely showed in them, and the potter himself would have had much ado to recognize her as the gipsy girl who made the cup years before; and her clothes all hung upon her in rags, and her little boy was crying bitterly with the cold. She knocked against the window with her poor thin hands. “Take me in,” she cried, “and have pity on me, for I can go no further.” Then the potter’s wife opened the door, and the gipsy woman entered the room with her little boy by her side, and crouched by the fire.

“Where is the potter who lived here?” said the gipsy. “It is long years ago since I saw him, and now I have come back to pray that he would give me food, for I am starving.”

“No,” said the wife, “I know not where he is, for he is my husband, and he has left me, and right glad of it am I; but if you will stay here I will give you food and drink and attend to you, for, poor woman, you seem to me to be very ill; so stay here and I will attend to you till you are well enough to go your way.”

“There is only one way that I shall ever go,” said the gipsy, and she looked into the fire with her big black eyes, “and that is the road which leads to the churchyard. But if he was your husband, why do you say that you are glad he is away? Is he not kind to you?”

“He was very kind to me,” said the potter’s wife, “he gave me everything I wanted, and money and to spare, but for all that I could not love him, and I am glad he has gone, and left me alone with my baby girl.”

“You are a foolish woman,” said the gipsy. “If you had a husband who loved you and worked for you well, you should have loved him and cherished him. My husband beat me, and was cruel to me, and stole all I had. And now that I am dying, he has deserted me to die as I may.”

Then the potter’s wife brought her food and bid her lie down, and dried her rags of clothes, and she wrapped the little boy in her own clothes, and gave him food and put him to sleep; and as she lay, the gipsy woman watched her with her great black eyes, and at last she said, “Have you a brown cup here, a little rough brown cup? did your husband give it to you?”

The potter’s wife stared with astonishment. “How did you know I had a little rough brown cup?” she said. “There was such a one, and it stood upon the shelf, but I have given it away. I gave it to a poor gipsy man who begged it of me; he wanted it so badly that I couldn’t refuse, and he made me drink his health in it ere he took it away.”

Then the gipsy woman raised her head, and her eyes looked blacker and her cheeks blacker.

“And what was the gipsy man like?” she cried. “Had you drunk from the cup before? Can you remember?”

“I remember well,” said the woman. “I drank from it on the day when I promised I would marry my husband, and I drank from it once again when I wished the gipsy God-speed, and soon after that, my husband left me, for I could not bear to have him near me.”

Then the gipsy cried out aloud, and said something in a language which the woman did not understand, and beat her hands.

“I think it was my husband,” she said. “Alack a day! to-morrow night I shall die, and who will take care of my little boy, and see that he does not starve? for his father would beat and ill-treat him if he found him.” Then the potter’s wife kneeled down beside the gipsy woman, and kissed her on the forehead.

“Be at peace,” she said. “If it be that you must die, die with a quiet heart, for I will keep your little boy. What is enough for two is enough for three, and he shall call my little girl sister and me mother.”

The gipsy said nothing, but she looked at the potter’s wife for long, and then she said, “And my clothes are all in rags, and I have no garment in which you can wrap me for my grave.”

Then the potter’s wife began to cry. “Be at peace,” she said, “for I have a fine cloth made of flax and my own hair, and in it you can lie clad like a princess.”

Then again the gipsy woman cried out words that the potter’s wife did not understand, and again she beat her breast and lamented. But as evening drew nigh she turned to the potter’s wife, and told her all the truth about the charms in the cup, and wept for the evil she had done her, who was so good and kind.

The potter’s wife sat by her all that day, and into the dark hours of the night, but when it was drawing nigh to twelve o’clock the gipsy woman sat up, and stretched out her arms. “The wheel,” she cried, “bring me your husband’s wheel, and give me a piece of clay, that while there is yet time I may throw my last cup, and you may drink from it before the dawn and undo the harm I have worked.”

The potter’s wife wondered much, but she feared to disobey her, and she went out into her husband’s workshop, and she brought in his wheel and a piece of clay which stood there, and placed them beside the gipsy. The gipsy was so weak that she could scarcely sit up, but when she saw the wheel she staggered to her feet, and took the clay in her thin little brown hands, and moulded it as she had done years before; and then she set it on the wheel, and set the wheel spinning, and formed it into a little brown bowl, and bent her head over it, and whispered into it.

“Now drink,” she cried, “although the clay is still wet. Pour water into it and drink from my little bowl, and wish me God-speed as you did to my husband. And then dress me in white and gold like a princess, for I must start upon my journey. But keep my little boy always, and if my husband comes to search for me, give him my ring, but tell him that he shall never find me more.”

The potter’s wife poured some water into the little clay cup, and stooped her face and drank it, that the woman might be content, and when she had done so, the gipsy folded her hands and lay back and died. But when she had tasted the water out of the wet clay, the potter’s wife thought of her husband, and she called his name, and cried to him to come and help her with the poor gipsy woman. And then she thought of how long it was since he had been with her, and she began to cry, and wept bitterly as she leant over the dead woman.

“Oh, where is he gone? why did I drive him from me?” she said. “Have I been mad? Truly the poor gipsy spoke rightly, that if a woman has a husband who loves her and works for her, she should cherish him with all her might. Alas, alas! and now my husband is out in the wide world, and I am alone here with no one to help me; until this poor woman told me, I never knew how wrong I was.” Then she looked at the gipsy woman lying in all her rags, and she remembered her promise to her, and she took the fine linen cloth in which was woven the gold heart and the gilt cup, and she clothed her in it as if she were a princess, and the next day the poor woman was buried, and no one knew from whence she came nor to whom she belonged.

Then the potter’s wife sat down, and grieved bitterly, for she didn’t know what it would be best to do to find her husband again, and tell him that she loved him as at first. At first she thought she would go out and seek for him in the wide, wide world, but then she remembered how he bid her wait where she was till he came back, and she knew she ought to do what he had told her; but as now she had three to keep instead of two, she feared they would be very poor, and as she had buried the gipsy in the fine gold and white cloth woven with her hair, she had not got it to sell, and she had not any money left wherewith to buy more fine thread to weave. The gipsy’s little boy was a pretty boy, with dark eyes like his mother’s, and when she looked at him she said they would all three starve together, but she would keep him, as she had promised his mother, rather than turn him out into the cold streets. So she washed him, and mended his rags as best she might, and then she began to seek everywhere for something she might weave to sell, and keep them from starving. She wandered round the garden, and in and out of the house, and the gipsy boy, who was a clever, bright lad, went with her.

“What are you searching for?” he asked.

“I am searching for thread, that I may weave into some kind of cloth and sell,” she said. “Otherwise we shall surely starve, for I have no money left to buy it with, and nothing more left to sell.”

“I will go and get you something to weave,” said the boy, and he ran out into the road, and looked up and down it to see what would come past. Presently there came up a big cart laden with straw, and on the top of the cart lay one man, while another drove. The horses went slowly, and the gipsy boy followed them, and began to beg.

“Run off, little chap,” cried the man at the top, “I have no money to give to beggars.”

“But I don’t ask you for money,” cried the boy, “but of your charity give me a handful of straw.”

“And what do you want with a handful of straw?” asked the carter, as the boy still went on begging.

“Why, see!” cried the lad, “I am all in rags, but if my mother had a handful of straw she can weave me a coat, and I shall be quite warm,” at which the men both laughed, and declared that the idea of a coat of straw was very funny, but the driver said, “Well, give some to the little chap. I expect he comes from a lot of lying gipsies further on, and they want it for their animals, still it won’t do any harm to give him a few wisps,” and so they flung down a bundle, and the boy picked it up, and ran back with it to the potter’s wife.

“See what I have brought you,” he cried. “Now make that into a mat, and I will take it out and sell it, and bring you back the money.”

The potter’s wife was amazed by his cleverness, but she knew that the gipsies had to live by their wits, and that teaches them to be sharp, so she sat down, and tried to weave the straw into a mat, as the gipsy boy had said.

At first she found it very hard to use, for it was coarse and brittle, and she thought she could make nothing of it. The lad sat beside her, and cut it into even lengths for her, and chose out the good pieces, and at last betwixt them it was done, and it looked quite a smart little mat, and the boy took it on his back and ran away with it to the village.

“A mat, a mat,” he cried, “who wants to buy a good straw mat to wipe their feet on when they are dirty, or for the cat to sit on by the fire, or to put over the fowl-house and keep it warm?”

At first all the people he met laughed at him, and said nobody wished to buy a mat at all. Then he turned into the ale-house. There were some men smoking and keeping themselves warm by the fire, and when the host saw him, and the mat over his shoulder, he said it was quite a well-made thing, and he would have it to lay down by his doorway for in-comers to tread on; and then one and another looked at it, and the boy told them where it came from, and said he could bring them plenty more straw mats and carpets, all as good or better, and so well worked that they would last almost for ever; and presently one and another began to say that they would buy them, and when he had taken his money, the gipsy boy ran home well content.

So the potter’s wife sat all day weaving straw mats, and presently she got to do them so well, that from far and near the people sent to buy them of her. Then after a time she put patterns into them, made with red, and black, and white straws, but do what she could, the patterns always came out in the shape of a cup, and still she wept and grieved all day long. Then the gipsy lad said to her—

“What are you crying for now? You have plenty to eat and drink. Tell me why you are crying, and I will help you if I can, because you took my mother into your house to die, and buried her in your fine cloth like a princess.”

“I cry because my husband has gone a long way off,” said the potter’s wife, “and he doesn’t know that I love him, and he will never come back to me, for when he went away I hated him.”

“He will never know it if you don’t try to tell him,” said the gipsy boy. “You should tell it to every one you meet, to all the birds of the air, and the wild animals too. That is what my mother told me to do, if I wanted to send news abroad. You should say it even to the winds, and write it in the sand, and on the earth, and on the leaves of the trees in case they blow about, for she said all things could pass on a secret, though none can keep one. And why don’t you weave it into your mats too? For the people who buy them take them far and near, and maybe he will see one, and know that you want him to come home again.”

Then the potter’s wife tried to weave her secret into her mats, and beside the pattern of the cup she wove a little verse—

“From the gipsy’s cup I drank for love,

From the gipsy’s cup I drank for hate,

But when she gave me a cup again

My love had gone and I drank too late.”

“Now,” cried the gipsy boy, “your husband may see it, and perhaps he will come home, and all will be well with us.”

But still the potter journeyed far into the world, and wherever he went he asked if any gipsy had been near there; and if there happened to be a gipsy camp in the neighbourhood, he went to it at once, and asked for a gipsy woman with red beads and gold chains in her hair, or for a gipsy man who carried a brown cup with him. But though he saw hundreds of gipsies, yet he never again saw the girl who had thrown the cup, and none of the men knew anything about the man, nor could tell him anything about the little brown bowl. Then he went to the shops in the big towns where jars and bowls are sold, and asked for a cup that had a spell in it, for he thought if they sold such a one, they might know how to help him to undo the work of the gipsy’s bowl, but everywhere the people only laughed at him.

So he went through strange countries, seeing strange things, but none of them gave him any pleasure, since he was always thinking of his wife at home. Then he returned to his native land, and pondered whether he should go back to his own cottage, but his heart failed him, and he kept far from the little village where it stood.

“It would be little use to go home,” he said, “for if my wife is not glad to see me, it is no home to me; and she will not be glad to see me till I can find the gipsy and know how the charm can be broken.”

One night he went into a booth where there were a number of men drinking, and amongst them there was one who looked like a gipsy, a dark, savage-looking fellow who was talking loud, and boasting much of all he had done. The potter sat and listened to their talk, and presently they began quarrelling, and talking about who was the most beautiful woman in the world. The gipsy cried out that he knew the most beautiful, and that she had given him a parting gift and wished him God-speed, and now he was going back to her, for he knew now the way to make her love him, and he meant to wed her and have her for his wife.

Upon this the others laughed and jeered, and said, was it likely that such a beautiful woman would care for such a rough, ill-favoured fellow as he, and declared they didn’t think much of her beauty if she was willing to marry him and to be his wife.

Then another man standing near said that he knew where lived the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth, though he did not believe that she would ever be wife of his, still all the same it would be hard to beat her for loveliness; and she was a clever worker too, for she it was who worked the mats that lay under his feet in the cart he drove. Upon this they all began to wrangle, and their words grew high.

“And if the beautiful woman loved you so,” cried one man to the gipsy, “how could you come away and leave her?”

The gipsy laughed. “She didn’t love me then,” he said, “but she will now, for I am taking her a charm which will make her love me more than any one on earth. She has only to drink out of the cup I carry here, and she will be mine for life.”

Upon this they all laughed, and derided him still more.

“Then let every one believe that what I say is true,” cried the gipsy, and from his bosom he took out a small brown bowl and waved it in the air, “and here is the cup to prove it.” And the potter’s heart almost stood still, for he recognized the cup which the gipsy girl had made for him years before.

The other man laughed scornfully. “That proves nothing,” he said. “I might take the mat out from the cart and ask it to say if I spoke the truth; but mats and cups have no tongues to speak with, though my mat can say more than your cup, for there is a rhyme on it with a pattern of a cup; moreover, the rhyme is about a gipsy too.”

“Let us see it,” cried they all.

Then the man went out to his cart and fetched in a white and brown straw mat, covered with a pattern made of cups, and he read the rhyme which was written upon it—

“From the gipsy’s cup I drank for love,

From the gipsy’s cup I drank for hate,

And when she gave me that cup again

My love was gone and I drank too late.”

On hearing this the potter jumped up, and dashed into their midst, and seized the cup.

“The gipsy speaks truth,” he cried, “when he says she is the most beautiful woman in the world, but he speaks false when he says that she will ever love him; for he has stolen that cup, and I shall take it from him, and if he tries to stop me, why then I will fight him, and let every one see who is the better fellow of the two.”

But when the gipsy had seen the rhyme upon the mat, he stood and stared as if he were made of stone, and said no word to the potter, and indeed scarcely seemed to notice that he had taken away the cup from him. Then the potter turned to the man who owned the mat and said, “If you will sell me your mat I will pay you handsomely for it, and I beg you to tell me who made it, and where you got it, for I would like to buy some more like it.”

The traveller was much astonished, but he told the potter that it was made by a woman who lived in a village a little way off, and she sat by her doorway and wove mats, with a gipsy boy to help her; and she was the loveliest woman he had ever seen on earth, with eyes just like blue cornflowers and hair like golden corn. Then the potter took his bowl and the mat and started to go home, but the gipsy slunk out of the room and went into the night, and nobody noticed him.

Meantime the potter’s wife continued to grieve and lament, for in spite of her taking the gipsy boy’s advice, and telling all things that she loved her husband and wished him back, he did not come back to her; and though she wove her rhyme into every mat that she made, she despaired of the potter’s ever seeing one. The only thing which seemed to console her, was the little brown clay cup that the gipsy woman had thrown for her, before she died. As it had never been baked in the oven, the clay was dry and hard and cracked, and it was a sorry thing to look at, but still the potter’s wife kept it beside her, and would drink out of nothing else, and from time to time she kissed it, and laid her cheek against it.

The gipsy boy said to her—

“If I were you I should watch for my husband all day. I would weave my mats in the doorway, and look up the road both ways, from morn till night, otherwise your husband will come back and go past the cottage and you will never know.” So she took her loom and sat by the roadway, and watched, and looked over the hill and to right and left for whoever might come. And often the gipsy boy would watch too, and look from the other side of the cottage while the potter’s wife sat in the front. One day the gipsy boy ran round to her and said, “There is some one coming up the road who will come here, but it is not your husband. It is my father, and he will want to take me away, and he will beat me as he did my mother. And if he gets hold of the cup that my mother made for you, he knows all her charms, and he can undo what she did, and perhaps can throw some evil spell on us all, so that your husband will never return again. So the best thing will be for you to give me the cup and let me hide myself with it, and then you must tell him that you do not know where I am, and if he asks, tell him that the cup is gone; and when he is gone I will come back again, but promise that you will not give me up to him.”

So the potter’s wife promised that she would never give up the little boy, and she bid him take the cup and run quickly and hide himself, and then she took her little girl by the hand and sat and waited for the gipsy man to come, though she trembled with fear, and wished him far away.

Presently the gipsy man came up to the front of the cottage where the potter’s wife sat, and bid her good-day.

“I was here before,” he said. “And you gave me something to eat and drink. Is your husband come back, for he was away then?”

“My husband is away still,” she said. “But soon I hope he will be here.”

Then the gipsy took up one of her mats which lay on the ground beside her, and looked at it.

“You are clever with your loom,” he said; “but what do you mean by the little verse you put on all these mats?”

“It is a little verse which can but be rightly read by one person,” she answered; “and if he sees it, it will not matter whether others understand it or no.”

“And have you been here all alone since I came by?” asked the gipsy; “have no other gipsies been past? for I want to join some of my own people, and perhaps you can tell me which way they are gone.”

“One came not so long ago,” answered the potter’s wife, “but she was so tired with tramping far that she could go no further. So she has stayed, and rests in the churchyard. She was a gipsy woman with red beads and coins in her hair. And I kept her and let her die in peace, and wrapped her in a cloth of white and gold.”

“And did she do nothing while she rested here?” asked the gipsy man. “Did she make you no present to pay you for your trouble?”

“She made me a present which paid me for my trouble well,” said the woman, “though it was only a little cup of clay that was grey and wet. And she gave me this ring, and bid me give it to her husband if he came by here, and tell him that it was useless for him to seek her further.”

The gipsy man looked at the ring she held out to him, and he turned pale, and knit his brows.

“And where is that cup?” he asked; “and where is her little boy? For I will take him with me into the world.”

“I don’t know where he is gone,” said the potter’s wife; “as for the cup, he took it with him when he went.”

Meantime the gipsy boy had hidden in a hay-stack quite close to the cottage, from where he could see the roadways all round, and he looked to right and left for who should pass, for he was still half afraid that his father might come and search for him, and take him away by force. As he lay and watched he saw a man coming over the hill, who looked spent and tired, as if he had walked far. He seemed to know the path well, and he came straight to the cottage, but he did not come in, but waited near as if he wanted to see who was there. Then the gipsy boy said to himself—

“Perhaps this is the potter himself, whom she has been looking for all this time.” So he slid down and ran to the man and began to pretend to beg.

The man looked at him and said—

“You are a gipsy’s child. Where do you come from? Are you living under a hedge, or do you come from a gipsy’s camp near?”

“It is true I am a gipsy’s child,” answered the boy, “but I am living under no hedge, but in that little cottage, for the woman who lives there keeps me for love of my mother, who helped her when she was in trouble.”

“And what did your mother do for the woman?” asked the man, who was no other than the potter. “It must have been a great service, that she should be willing to take you and keep you.”

“She saved her from an evil charm that had been cast upon her,” answered the boy, “and taught her to love her husband again, and she waits his return now and longs for him to come. Therefore she promised to keep me with her, but now I dare not go into the cottage, because my father, who is a gipsy, is there, and I am afraid lest he may take me away with him.”

When the potter heard that the gipsy man was there he would have run straight into the cottage, but the boy implored him to listen first and hear what he was saying. So they crept round to the side of the cottage, and they heard the gipsy man growing angry, and threatening the potter’s wife, that if she did not tell him where his boy had gone he would seize her by the hair and wring her throat, in spite of her being so fair a woman. At this the potter waited no longer, but burst into the cottage, and seized the gipsy and hurled him out of the house with all his might; but he and his wife never looked to see if he was hurt or no, for they looked at nothing but each other and the little child that the potter’s wife held by the hand. And the gipsy man went away, and they never heard of him again.

Then the potter’s wife showed her husband the gipsy boy, and told him of her promise to his mother, and of all he had done for her, and begged him that he would let her keep him with them. And the potter promised that she should, and said that when he grew up to be a man he would teach him his trade, and make him a potter like himself. So they all lived happily together, and the gipsy boy learned to make cups and bowls, and was very clever at doing them, but they were cups and bowls that carried no charms with them, and so could do no one any harm that drank from them.