“Wake, baillie, wake! the crafts
are out;
Wake!” said the knight,
“be quick!
For high street, bye street, over the
town
They fight with poker and
stick.”
Said the squire, “A fight so fell
was ne’er
In all thy bailliewick.”
What said the old clock in the tower?
“Tick,
tick, tick!”
“Wake, daughter, wake! the hour
draws on;
Wake!” quoth the dame,
“be quick!
The meats are set, the guests are coming,
The fiddler waxing his stick.”
She said, “The bridegroom waiting
and waiting
To see thy face is sick.”
What said the new clock in her bower?
“Tick,
tick, tick!”
Jack looked at these hot, brown rocks,
first on the left bank and then on the right, till
he was quite tired; but at last the shore on the right
bank became flat, and he saw a beautiful little bay,
where the water was still, and where grass grew down
to the brink.
He was so much pleased at this change,
that he cried out hastily, “Oh how I wish my
boat would swim into that bay and let me land!”
He had no sooner spoken than the boat altered her
course, as if somebody had been steering her, and
began to make for the bay as fast as she could go.
“How odd!” thought Jack.
“I wonder whether I ought to have spoken; for
the boat certainly did not intend to come into this
bay. However, I think I will let her alone now,
for I certainly do wish very much to land here.”
As they drew towards the strand, the
water got so shallow that you could see crabs and
lobsters walking about at the bottom. At last
the boat’s keel grated on the pebbles; and just
as Jack began to think of jumping on shore, he saw
two little old women approaching, and gently driving
a white horse before them.
The horse had panniers, one on each
side; and when his feet were in the water he stood
still; and Jack said to one of the old women, “Will
you be so kind as to tell me whether this is Fairyland?”
“What does he say?” asked one old woman
of the other.
“I asked if this was Fairyland?”
repeated Jack, for he thought the first old woman
might have been deaf. She was very handsomely
dressed in a red satin gown, and did not look in the
least like a washer-woman, though it afterwards appeared
that she was one.
“He says, ‘Is this Fairyland?’”
she replied; and the other, who had a blue satin cloak,
answered, “Oh, does he?” and then they
began to empty the panniers of many small blue, and
pink, and scarlet shirts, and coats, and stockings;
and when they had made them into two little heaps
they knelt down and began to wash them in the river,
taking no notice of him whatever.
Jack stared at them. They were
not much taller than himself, and they were not taking
the slightest care of their handsome clothes; then
he looked at the old white horse, who was hanging
his head over the lovely clear water with a very discontented
air.
At last the blue washer-woman said,
“I shall leave off now; I’ve got a pain
in my works.”
“Do,” said the other.
“We’ll go home and have a cup of tea.”
Then she glanced at Jack, who was still sitting in
the boat, and said, “Can you strike?”
“I can if I choose,” replied
Jack, a little astonished at this speech. And
the red and blue washer-women wrung out the clothes,
put them again into the panniers, and taking the old
horse by the bridle, began gently to lead him away.
“I have a great mind to land,”
thought Jack. “I should not wonder at all
if this is Fairyland. So as the boat came here
to please me, I shall ask it to stay where it is,
in case I should want it again.”
So he sprang ashore, and said to the
boat, “Stay just where you are, will you?”
and he ran after the old women, calling to them,
“Is there any law to prevent
my coming into your country?”
“Wo!” cried the red-coated
old woman, and the horse stopped, while the blue-coated
woman repeated, “Any law? No, not that I
know of; but if you are a stranger here you had better
look out.”
“Why?” asked Jack.
“You don’t suppose, do
you,” she answered, “that our Queen will
wind up strangers?”
While Jack was wondering what she
meant, the other said,
“I shouldn’t wonder if
he goes eight days. Gee!” and the horse
went on.
“No, wo!” said the other.
“No, no. Gee! I tell you,” cried
the first.
Upon this, to Jack’s intense
astonishment, the old horse stopped, and said, speaking
through his nose,
“Now, then, which is it to be?
I’m willing to gee, and I’m agreeable
to wo; but what’s a fellow to do when you
say them both together?”
“Why, he talks!” exclaimed Jack.
“It’s because he’s
got a cold in his head,” observed one of the
washer-women; “he always talks when he’s
got a cold, and there’s no pleasing him; whatever
you say, he’s not satisfied. Gee, Boney,
do!”
“Gee it is, then,” said the horse, and
began to jog on.
“He spoke again!” said
Jack, upon which the horse laughed, and Jack was quite
alarmed.
“It appears that your horses
don’t talk?” observed the blue-coated
woman.
“Never,” answered Jack; “they can’t.”
“You mean they won’t,”
observed the old horse; and though he spoke the words
of mankind, it was not in a voice like theirs.
Still Jack felt that his was just the natural tone
for a horse, and that it did not arise only from the
length of his nose. “You’ll find out
some day, perhaps,” he continued, “whether
horses can talk or not.”
“Shall I?” said Jack, very earnestly.
“They’ll tell,”
proceeded the white horse. “I wouldn’t
be you when they tell how you’ve used them.”
“Have you been ill used?” said Jack, in
an anxious tone.
“Yes, yes, of course he has,”
one of the women broke in; “but he has come
here to get all right again. This is a very wholesome
country for horses; isn’t it, Boney?”
“Yes,” said the horse.
“Well, then, jog on, there’s
a dear,” continued the old woman. “Why,
you will be young again soon, you know, young,
and gamesome, and handsome; you’ll be quite
a colt, by and by, and then we shall set you free
to join your companions in the happy meadows.”
The old horse was so comforted by
this kind speech, that he pricked up his ears and
quickened his pace considerably.
“He was shamefully used,”
observed one washer-woman. “Look at him,
how lean he is! You can see all his ribs.”
“Yes,” said the other,
as if apologizing for the poor old horse. “He
gets low-spirited when he thinks of all he has gone
through; but he is a vast deal better already than
he was. He used to live in London; his master
always carried a long whip to beat him with, and never
spoke civilly to him.”
“London!” exclaimed Jack;
“why that is in my country. How did the
horse get here?”
“That’s no business of
yours,” answered one of the women. “But
I can tell you he came because he was wanted, which
is more than you are.”
“You let him alone,” said
the horse, in a querulous tone. “I don’t
bear any malice.”
“No; he has a good disposition,
has Boney,” observed the red old woman.
“Pray, are you a boy?”
“Yes,” said Jack.
“A real boy, that wants no winding up?”
inquired the old woman.
“I don’t know what you
mean,” answered Jack; “but I am a real
boy, certainly.”
“Ah!” she replied.
“Well, I thought you were, by the way Boney spoke
to you. How frightened you must be! I wonder
what will be done to all your people for driving,
and working, and beating so many beautiful creatures
to death every year that comes? They’ll
have to pay for it some day, you may depend.”
Jack was a little alarmed, and answered
that he had never been unkind himself to horses, and
he was glad that Boney bore no malice.
“They worked him, and often
drove him about all night in the miserable streets,
and never let him have so much as a canter in a green
field,” said one of the women; “but he’ll
be all right now, only he has to begin at the wrong
end.”
“What do you mean?” said Jack.
“Why, in this country,”
answered the old woman, “they begin by being
terribly old and stiff, and they seem miserable and
jaded at first, but by degrees they get young again,
as you heard me reminding him.”
“Indeed,” said Jack; “and do you
like that?”
“It has nothing to do with me,”
she answered. “We are only here to take
care of all the creatures that men have ill used.
While they are sick and old, which they are when first
they come to us, after they are dead, you
know, we take care of them, and gradually
bring them up to be young and happy again.”
“This must be a very nice country
to live in, then,” said Jack.
“For horses it is,” said the old lady,
significantly.
“Well,” said Jack, “it
does seem very full of haystacks, certainly, and all
the air smells of fresh grass.”
At this moment they came to a beautiful
meadow, and the old horse stopped, and, turning to
the blue-coated woman, said, “Faxa, I think I
could fancy a handful of clover.” Upon this
Faxa snatched Jack’s cap off his head, and in
a very active manner jumped over a little ditch, and
gathering some clover, presently brought it back full,
handing it to the old horse with great civility.
“You shouldn’t be in such
a hurry,” observed the old horse; “your
weights will be running down some day, if you don’t
mind.”
“It’s all zeal,” observed the red-coated
woman.
Just then a little man, dressed like
a groom, came running up, out of breath. “Oh,
here you are, Dow!” he exclaimed to the red-coated
woman. “Come along, will you? Lady
Betty wants you; it’s such a hot day, and nobody,
she says, can fan her so well as you can.”
The red-coated woman, without a word,
went off with the groom, and Jack thought he would
go with them, for this Lady Betty could surely tell
him whether the country was called Fairyland, or whether
he must get into his boat and go farther. He
did not like either to hear the way in which Faxa
and Dow talked about their works and their weights;
so he asked Faxa to give him his cap, which she did,
and he heard a curious sort of little ticking noise
as he came close to her, which startled him.
“Oh, this must be Fairyland,
I am sure,” thought Jack, “for in my country
our pulses beat quite differently from that.”
“Well,” said Faxa, rather
sharply, “do you find any fault with the way
I go?”
“No,” said Jack, a little
ashamed of having listened. “I think you
walk beautifully; your steps are so regular.”
“She’s machine-made,”
observed the old horse, in a melancholy voice, and
with a deep sigh. “In the largest magnifying-glass
you’ll hardly find the least fault with her
chain. She’s not like the goods they turn
out in Clerkenwell.”
Jack was more and more startled, and
so glad to get his cap and run after the groom and
Dow to find Lady Betty, that he might be with ordinary
human beings again; but when he got up to them, he
found that Lady Betty was a beautiful brown mare!
She was lying in a languid and rather affected attitude,
with a load of fresh hay before her, and two attendants,
one of whom stood holding a parasol over her head,
and the other was fanning her.
“I’m so glad you are come,
my good Dow,” said the brown mare. “Don’t
you think I am strong enough to-day to set off for
the happy meadows?”
“Well,” said Dow, “I’m
afraid not yet; you must remember that it is of no
use your leaving us till you have quite got over the
effects of the fall.”
Just then Lady Betty observed Jack,
and said, “Take that boy away; he reminds me
of a jockey.”
The attentive groom instantly started
forward, but Jack was too nimble for him; he ran and
ran with all his might, and only wished he had never
left the boat. But still he heard the groom behind
him; and in fact the groom caught him at last, and
held him so fast that struggling was of no use at
all.
“You young rascal!” he
exclaimed, as he recovered breath. “How
you do run! It’s enough to break your mainspring.”
“What harm did I do?”
asked Jack. “I was only looking at the mare.”
“Harm!” exclaimed the
groom; “harm indeed! Why, you reminded her
of a jockey. It’s enough to hold her back,
poor thing! and we trying so hard, too,
to make her forget what a cruel end she came to in
the old world.”
“You need not hold me so tightly,”
said Jack, “I shall not run away again; but,”
he added, “if this is Fairyland, it is not half
such a nice country as I expected.”
“Fairyland!” exclaimed
the groom, stepping back with surprise. “Why,
what made you think of such a thing? This is only
one of the border countries, where things are set
right again that people have caused to go wrong in
the world. The world, you know, is what men and
women call their own home.”
“I know,” said Jack; “and
that’s where I came from.” Then, as
the groom seemed no longer to be angry, he went on:
“And I wish you would tell me about Lady Betty.”
“She was a beautiful fleet creature,
of the racehorse breed,” said the groom; “and
she won silver cups for her master, and then they made
her run a steeple-chase, which frightened her, but
still she won it; and then they made her run another,
and she cleared some terribly high hurdles, and many
gates and ditches, till she came to an awful one,
and at first she would not take it, but her rider spurred
and beat her till she tried. It was beyond her
powers, and she fell and broke both her forelegs.
Then they shot her. After she had died that miserable
death, we had her here, to make her all right again.”
“Is this the only country where
you set things right?” asked Jack.
“Certainly not,” answered
the groom; “they lie about in all directions.
Why, you might wander for years, and never come to
the end of this one.”
“I am afraid I shall not find
the one I am looking for,” said Jack, “if
your countries are so large.”
“I don’t think our world
is much larger than yours,” answered the groom.
“But come along: I hear the bell, and we
are a good way from the palace.”
Jack, in fact, heard the violent ringing
of a bell at some distance; and when the groom began
to run, he ran beside him, for he thought he should
like to see the palace. As they ran, people gathered
from all sides, fields, cottages, mills, till
at last there was a little crowd, among whom Jack
saw Dow and Faxa, and they were all making for a large
house, the wide door of which was standing open.
Jack stood with the crowd, and peeped in. There
was a woman sitting inside upon a rocking-chair, a
tall, large woman, with a gold-colored gown on, and
beside her stood a table, covered with things that
looked like keys.
“What is that woman doing?”
said he to Faxa, who was standing close to him.
“Winding us up, to be sure,”
answered Faxa. “You don’t suppose,
surely, that we can go forever?”
“Extraordinary!” said
Jack. “Then are you wound up every evening,
like watches?”
“Unless we have misbehaved ourselves,”
she answered; “and then she lets us run down.”
“And what then?”
“What then?” repeated
Faxa, “why, then we have to stop and stand against
a wall, till she is pleased to forgive us, and let
our friends carry us in to be set going again.”
Jack looked in, and saw the people
pass in and stand close by the woman. One after
the other she took by the chin with her left hand,
and with her right hand found a key that pleased her.
It seemed to Jack that there was a tiny key-hole in
the back of their heads, and that she put the key
in and wound them up.
“You must take your turn with
the others,” said the groom.
“There’s no key-hole in
my head,” said Jack; “besides, I do not
want any woman to wind me up.”
“But you must do as others do,”
he persisted; “and if you have no key-hole,
our Queen can easily have one made, I should think.”
“Make one in my head!”
exclaimed Jack. “She shall do no such thing.”
“We shall see,” said Faxa,
quietly. And Jack was so frightened that he set
off, and ran back towards the river with all his might.
Many of the people called to him to stop, but they
could not run after him, because they wanted winding
up. However, they would certainly have caught
him if he had not been very quick, for before he got
to the river he heard behind him the footsteps of
those who had been first attended to by the Queen,
and he had only just time to spring into the boat
when they reached the edge of the water.
No sooner was he on board than the
boat swung round, and got out again into the middle
of the stream; but he could not feel safe till not
only was there a long reach of water between him and
the shore, but till he had gone so far down the river
that the beautiful bay had passed out of sight, and
the sun was going down. By this time he began
to feel very tired and sleepy; so, having looked at
his fairies, and found that they were all safe and
fast asleep, he laid down in the bottom of the boat,
and fell into a doze, and then into a dream.