So he said, “This flat country needs towers. Such as they have in Italy. These will add to the beauty of the country. Then we can have bells, which will call the people to worship; for, over these plains, the sound will roll far away, and everybody will hear easily.”
Then he sighed and asked, “But where can we get the stone to build and where are the copper and tin for the bells? Good fairies, tell me and help.”
“Leave that to us,” shouted the fairies.
Then all those who had no wings, Kabouters, Wappers, Red Caps, and Mannekins, stumbled [[182]]out of the house, in the most merry and uproarious manner. They laughed and screamed with delight. They played leap frog over each other. Some of the Red Caps jumped on the shoulders of the Wappers and played riding piggy-back. The winged fairies, in gold, and silk, and gauze, flew out the door as quietly as if on a cloud, or in a dream.
Now for ages the solid rivers of ice, in Switzerland, had been grinding up the rocks to make clay and sand, gravel and soil for Belgium. From the heart of France, also, there rolled down the earth, which the rain washed out of the mountains. That is the reason why the river-beds in Belgium were full of just the sort of material the Kabouters liked to play in, and of which bricks could be made. They were just like two children that love to play in the soft mud and make pies and patty cakes.
Now all the fairies, especially those that had traveled in the southern countries, wondered why the northern people were so stupid, as not to make their houses and churches out of stone that would last a long time; instead of out of wood, which catches on fire so easily, or soon decays, and falls down.
For, already, there lay under their feet, and had lain there for ages, the stuff out of which bricks, as hard as stone, could be made, for the [[183]]river had brought it to their doors. The fairies, who understand what winds mean, when they whisper, or storms say, when they howl, declared that the river clay, in the streams, was calling, calling, calling, and this is what the voices said:
“Fairies and mortals, listen to us. We were once high and mighty in the world, and lived on the tops of mountains near the sky; and we expected to be there always. But Nature drove us out of our comfortable bed of rock, like as the parent eagles push their birdies out of the nest, just to make them fly in the air, which is their true home. So, the storms, and frost, and ice and rain, split us off from the mother rock, and tumbled us down towards the valley. The snow, and ice, and rushing waters have ground and rolled and tossed us about, until we have utterly lost our first form, as part of the mountain peaks. Now, we are nothing but soft mud, or ‘slyk,’ as the Flemings say. We live low in the river beds, not able even to nourish flowers, for we are not soil.
“But we want to be again in the bright air.
“Oh, that fairies, or men, would lift us up again high in the sunlight, and in the lofty heights again, nearer to the sky.