And some they brought the brown lintseed,
And flung it down from the Low;
“And this,” said they, “by the sunrise,
In the weaver’s croft shall grow.”
O! the poor, lame weaver,
How he will laugh outright,
When he sees his dwindling flax-field
All full of flowers by night.
Then up and spoke a brownie,
With a long beard on his chin,
“And I have spun the tow,” said he,
“And I want some more to spin.
“I’ve spun a piece of hempen cloth,
And I want to spin another;
A little sheet for Mary’s bed,
And an apron for her mother.”
And with that I could not help but laugh,
And I laugh’d out loud and free,
And then on the top of the Calden-Low
There was no one left but me.
And all on the top of the Calden-Low
The mists were cold and grey,
And nothing I saw but the mossy stones,
That round about me lay.
This deponent saith, that coming down from the Low, she saw all their benevolent intentions already realized. It is to be hoped that such visits may be again paid to Calden-Low, but we have our doubts.
The Pixies may possibly still haunt those caves and dells in Devonshire where Coleridge and Carrington saw them; but with those exceptions—and they received on the faith of poets, who take license—we believe they have all emigrated. In the lays of Shakspeare and Milton, they are made immortal denizens of our soil; and we shall never see moonlight, or come upon the VER-RINGS that still mark our plains and downs, without feeling and poetically believing that the fairies have been there. In Wales, however, the common people still declare that they abide. Scotland may have given up the brownies, and kelpies, and urisks; and we may no longer have hobthrushes dwelling amongst our rocks, or Robin Goodfellow, alias Puck, alias Hobgoblin, playing his pranks, as in this confession:
Whene’er night-wanderers I meet,
As from their night-sports they trudge home,
With counterfeiting voice I greete,
And call them on with me to roame,
Through woods, through lakes,
Through bogs, through brakes;
Or else unseen with them I go,
All in the nicke,
To play some tricke,
And frolicke it with ho, ho, ho!
Sometimes I meet them like a man;
Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound;
And to a horse I turn me can,
To trip and trot about them round.
But if to ride
My backe they stride,
More swift than wind away I go,
O’er hedge and lands,
Through pools and ponds
I winny, laughing ho, ho, ho!
He may not come to play those pranks, nor as Milton has described his visits to the farm:
To earn the cream-bowl duly set.