“‘Did you ever hear tell on Pixies?’ quoth Jan again, after a pause. ‘And fairy rings?’ he added, as Nelly emerged from a dark corner, and nestled close to her father’s shoulder. We suggested that we had heard of the Devonshire fairies, a race of spirits peculiar for their diminutive size and perfect beauty, and for their friendly dealing with mankind.
“‘Well,’ said John, ‘this here be all about it.’
(And he proceeded to tell us so pretty a legend that we cannot refrain from translating it for the benefit of the uninitiated in the Devonshire dialect.)
“‘Ever so long ago, the Pixies were at war with the mine spirits who live underground all about the forest and the wild hill-country around. Now, the Pixies being perfectly harmless, and withal good-natured to excess, weren’t at all a match for the evil-nurtured earth-demons, who were always forging all kinds of fearful weapons in their underground armouries, and overcoming their poor little foes by all manner of unfair and unexpected stratagems. But the Pixie Queen of those days being like all women, fertile in resources, bethought her of a means of escape from the unbearable tyranny of the oppressors. Ever since the days of Merlin, running water, the numbers three and seven, and the mysteries of the emblematic circle, have been sure protections against the machinations of the foul fiend and his allies. And the fairy queen, like a wise woman, recollected this fact, and, like a wiser woman, applied it; for she assembled all her subjects, and bade them build on the summit of this central Exmoor Peak that strange circle which you have seen to-day. But it was no common building this, for with every stone and turf that the builders laid, they buried the memory of some kindly deed which the good Pixies had done to the race of men; and so, when the magic ring was completed, the baffled demons raved and plotted in vain around its sacred enclosure. Nor was this all; for when the grey morning broke upon that first night of victory and repose, as the driving mists rolled upwards and swept along the hill-tops like the advance-guard of a victorious army [we are not sure that this was Jan’s own similitude], from the summit of the fairy fortification there rose ring after ring of faintest amber-tinted vapour, and floated away in the brightening sky, each on its own mission of safety and peace.
“‘For these tiny wreathlets wandered hither and thither all over the broad expanse of the Exmoor country, and wherever the grass was greenest, and the neighbouring stream sang most merrily, and the sunlight was purest, and the moonbeams brightest, there these magic circles sank down softly on the level sward, and left no trace behind them of what they had been, or whence they had journeyed.
“‘But from each soft resting-place there sprang a ring of greenest grass, which flourished and grew year by year; and within those safe enclosures the Pixies danced on moonlight nights in peace and security, unharmed by the demon rout, who were never seen aboveground after that memorable morning. So you see that kind hearts and actions do not go unrewarded, even in other spheres than our own.
“‘And so,’ concluded Jan, ‘that’s my story about the building of the Pixie’s camp; and wise folk may talk for a year and a day without making me believe that there’s any other reason for fairy rings, at all events, hereabouts in Exmoor Forest.’
“Of course it would have been absolute cruelty, after so fanciful a legend, to have instilled any botanical ideas into Jan’s head, with regard to the law of the circular increase of fungi and the like; so we ‘left him alone in his glory,’ and felt duly thankful for the pleasure he had given us.”
Lower down the river is Landacre Bridge, where Jeremy Stickles had so narrow an escape