“Full many a night in the clear moonlight
Have I wandered by valley and Down,
Where the owls fly low, and hoot as they go,
The white-winged owl, and the brown.
For it’s up and away, e’er the dawn of the day,
Where the glowworm shines in the grasses,
And the dusk lies cool on the reed-set pool,
And the night wind passes.”
She showed them how to gather the gipsies’ tent-pins, which are the thorns that grow on the sloe bushes. And she picked the thyme, that grew in scented cushions on the turf, to make tea from it later in the day. She saw squirrels before they did, and beetles whose noses bleed a bright ruby drop when you touch them—not because you’ve touched them too hard, but because that is their weapon of defence when in danger, and they do it to frighten you away.
And she showed them the larder of a butcher-bird, the bird who impales the things he is going to eat on the sharp points of thorns. Beetles and nestlings, and shrew-mice, and it’s interesting to find a strike’s larder, because it’s not a thing you very often see.