Then the wood laughed till all her leaves quivered:
"So that's what you mean to do, is it?" she said. "If only you can manage it! I'm afraid that you will find me too big a mouthful. I daresay you think I'm a bit of a field or meadow, which one can walk over in a couple of strides. But I'm the most powerful and important person in the neighbourhood, you may as well know. I shall soon sing my song to you; then perhaps you will change your ways of thinking."
Then the wood began to sing. All the birds sang; and the flowers raised their heads and sang too. The smallest leaf hummed with the rest, the fox stopped in the middle of eating a fat chicken and beat time with his brush, the wind blew through the branches and played an organ accompaniment to the song of the wood:
"Merrier meeting was never yet
Than the festal wood discloses,
When wood-ruff nestles by violet
In a cluster of sweet wild roses.
"Small birds in the brake fly up and down
Nor ever a bird flies single
And the woodman twines for his lass a crown
Where berries and beech commingle.
"Roe, fox and hare hold revel all,
Thro' flowerage the wee worm glances;
There great and small a-dancing fall
And the sun up in Heaven dances."
"What do you say to that?" asked the wood.
The heath said nothing. But, next year, he came over the fence.
"Are you mad?" screamed the wood. "Why, I forbade you to cross the fence!"
"You are not my mistress," said the heath. "I am doing as I said I would."
Then the wood called the red fox and shook her branches so that a quantity of beech-mast fell upon him and remained hanging in his skin:
"Run across to the heath, Foxie, and scatter the beech-mast out there!" said the wood.