The Old-Fashioned Fairy Book

by Mrs. Burton Harrison

it be but fairy thumps and pinches that kept the lazy folk from sleeping soundly, when their houses were not to rights before they went to bed. And what could explain the silver penny often found in the shoe of a tidy housekeeper, when up she jumped at break of day to set her maids to work? For fairies never show by day, and it is only when the people of a house are fast asleep and snoring, that they glide in by key-holes, through cracks and broken panes of glass, and swarm over the rooms, spying out everything amiss, and leaving tracks on the dust of shelves or tables, scattering the ashes of an unswept hearth, and bewitching the inside of a dirty iron pot, so that it never more may cook sweet porridge!

Of all the villagers, as I have said, Simon alone professed

to have any recent acquaintance with the little folk, and the wonder was how they, who were known to be sworn enemies to idleness, could keep him in their favor.

Simon's house was a poor little cottage on the outskirts of the town. His wife, once a pretty, rosy lass, had taken to drink, and the husband and children led a dog's life within doors. Consequently, their one pleasure was to roam the woods and fields, and the children were growing up brown and barefoot as two young gypsies. They were a boy named Timothy and a girl named Bess, of whom Simon was very proud, their fresh young faces making a strong contrast with his wizened visage, crossed with a hundred lines, and topped with a sunburned mop of hair. As they grew old enough to understand, their father instructed them in all the arts of woodcraft. There was no tree or plant for which he had not a name or a virtue. The habits of all birds and fishes and animals were as familiar to him as their haunts. In this way, the vast green forest, with its great tree-boles and twisted boughs, its verdant moss-carpet and hidden streams, became to them an enchanted world, through which the children strayed like a sylvan king and queen. A sad change it was to come back to the dirt and confusion of their miserable home, where the mother received them either with grudging welcome if they brought berries or a string of brook trout, or with blows and drunken curses if they came empty-handed. As his wife's intemperance increased, Simon stayed less and less at home, and the children dreaded lest some day their poor father would be driven to desert them altogether. So they resolved to keep a close watch on his movements, and to follow him should he go away.

One night the harvest moon was riding her glorious way across the heavens, and the little village of Hayfield lay steeped in silver light. Not a lamp or a taper glimmered in the hamlet, and every one of the brown thatched cottages was buried in profound repose.

Not even a watch-dog barked; and the forest-leaves yielded to the universal spell, and ceased to rustle.

There had been held a harvest-home that day, and Simon had been hard at work with his fiddle, playing jigs and reels for the dance in the squire's great barn. Between every dance, he had quenched his thirst at the cider-barrel, or quaffed the big brown mug of beer they kept brimming at his side. Naturally, Simon's brain was a little the worse for such free potations; and when the last strains of the "Wind that Shakes the Barley" had died upon his fiddle-strings, and all the gay company had gone their homeward way, Simon with his pocket full of silver pennies staggered out into the field, and lay down under a haystack to take his well-earned rest.

There, just before midnight, his two children, who had come in search of him, found their father peacefully sleeping, his fiddle on his breast. Not wishing to disturb him, the children decided to have their own night's sleep in the same fragrant nest of hay; and curling up at some little distance from the slumbering fiddler, they whispered together for a while, and then were about to drop asleep. Just as their eyes were closing they heard an odd sound, as of hundreds of little pattering feet, and out from the shadow of the wood came into the unbroken argent of the field a long train of little men, women, and children, dressed magnificently in cobweb gauze and green, bespangled with glittering gems, and wearing each a tiny crimson cap with a golden bell upon its peak. The two children were broad awake in a moment, for they knew that these were the fairies they had so longed to see, all dressed in holiday costume, and proceeding to their famous midsummer festival. The procession wavered like a gleaming snake across the field, and, when passing near the haystack, came to a halt. To the children's surprise, two queer little old men, holding carved ivory wands, came straight up, and tapped the sleeping fiddler across the bridge of his nose.