‘Between the Camp o’ Rink
And Tweed water clear,
Lie nine kings’ ransoms
For nine hundred year.’”
“I doubt it’s fairy gold, nurse,” said Randal, “and would all turn black when it saw the sun. It would just be like this bottle, the only thing I brought with me out of Fairyland.”
Then Randal put his hand in his velvet pouch, and brought out a curious small bottle.* It was shaped like this,
and was made of something that none of them had ever seen before. It was black, and you could see the light through it, and there were green and yellow spots and streaks on it.
* In bottles like this, the old Romans used to keep their
tears for their dead friends.
“That ugly bottle looked like gold and diamonds when I found it in Fairyland,” said Randal, “and the water in it smelled as sweet as roses. But when I touched my eyes with it, a drop that ran into my mouth was as salt as the sea, and immediately everything changed: the gold bottle became this glass thing, and the fairies became like folk dead, and the sky grew grey, and all turned waste and ugly. That’s the way with fairy gold, nurse; and if you found it, even, it would all be dry leaves and black bits of coal before the sun set.”
“Maybe so, and maybe no,” said the old nurse. “The Gold o’ Fairnilee may no be fairy gold, but just wealth o’ this world that folk buried here lang syne. But noo, Randal, ma bairn, I maun gang out and see ma sister’s son’s dochter, that’s lying sair sick o’ the kincough* at Rink, and take her some of the physic that I gae you and Jean when you were bairns.”
* Kincough, whooping cough.