The windfairies, and other tales

by Mary De Morgan

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.”