“My heart is sair,” sighed his mother, “wi’ greeting over sich a son.”
“He hates our auld cottage and our muckle wark,” said the poor father. “Ah, weel! I could a’maist wish the fairies had him for a season, to teach him better manners.”
This the gudeman said heedlessly, little knowing there was any danger of Robin’s being carried away to Elf-land. Whether the fairies were at that instant listening under the eaves, will never be known; but it chanced, one day, that Wild Robin was sent across the moors to fetch the kye.
“I’ll rin away,” thought the boy: “’tis hard indeed if ilka day a great lad like me must mind the kye. I’ll gae aff; and they’ll think me dead.”
So he gaed, and he gaed, over round swelling hills, over old battle-fields, past the roofless ruins of houses whose walls were crowned with tall climbing grasses, till he came to a crystal sheet of water, called St. Mary’s Loch. Here he paused to take breath. The sky was dull and lowering; but at his feet were yellow flowers, which shone, on that gray day, like freaks of sunshine.
He threw himself wearily upon the grass, not heeding that he had chosen his couch within a little mossy circle known as a “fairy’s ring.” Wild Robin knew that the country people would say the fays had pressed that green circle with their light feet. He had heard all the Scottish lore of brownies, elves, will-o’-the-wisps, and the strange water-kelpies, who shriek with eldritch laughter. He had been told that the queen of the fairies had coveted him from his birth, and would have stolen him away, only that, just as she was about to seize him from the cradle, he had sneezed; and from that instant the fairy-spell was over, and she had no more control of him.
Yet, in spite of all these stories, the boy was not afraid; and if he had been informed that any of the uncanny people were, even now, haunting his footsteps, he would not have believed it.
“I see,” said Wild Robin, “the sun is drawing his night-cap over his eyes, and dropping asleep. I believe I’ll e’en take a nap mysel’, and see what comes o’ it.”
In two minutes he had forgotten St. Mary’s Loch, the hills, the moors, the yellow flowers. He heard, or fancied he heard, his sister Janet calling him home.
“And what have ye for supper?” he muttered between his teeth.