At the keyhole

‘Grill me some bones,’ said the Cobbler,
’Some bones, my pretty Sue;
I’m tired of my lonesome with heels and soles,
Springsides and uppers too;
A mouse in the wainscot is nibbling;
A wind in the keyhole drones;
And a sheet webbed over my candle, Susie, –­
Grill me some bones!’

‘Grill me some bones,’ said the Cobbler,
I sat at my tic-tac-to;
And a footstep came to my door and stopped,
And a hand groped to and fro;
And I peered up over my boot and last;
And my feet went cold as stones:
I saw an eye at the keyhole, Susie! –­
Grill me some bones!’

The old stone house

Nothing on the grey roof, nothing on the brown,
Only a little greening where the rain drips down;
Nobody at the window, nobody at the door,
Only a little hollow which a foot once wore;
But still I tread on tiptoe, still tiptoe on I go,
Past nettles, porch, and weedy well, for oh, I know
A friendless face is peering, and a still clear eye
Peeps closely through the casement
as my step goes by.

The ruin

When the last colours of the day
Have from their burning ebbed away,
About that ruin, cold and lone,
The cricket shrills from stone to stone;
And scattering o’er its darkened green,
Bands of the fairies may be seen,
Chattering like grasshoppers, their feet
Dancing a thistledown dance round it:
While the great gold of the mild moon
Tinges their tiny acorn shoon.

The ride-by-nights

Up on their brooms the Witches stream,
Crooked and black in the crescent’s gleam;
One foot high, and one foot low,
Bearded, cloaked, and cowled, they go,
’Neath Charlie’s Wain they twitter and tweet,
And away they swarm ’neath the Dragon’s feet,
With a whoop and a flutter they swing and sway,
And surge pell-mell down the Milky Way.
Betwixt the legs of the glittering Chair
They hover and squeak in the empty air.
Then round they swoop past the glimmering Lion
To where Sirius barks behind huge Orion;
Up, then, and over to wheel amain,
Under the silver, and home again.

Peak and puke

From his cradle in the glamourie
They have stolen my wee brother,
Housed a changeling in his swaddlings
For to fret my own poor mother.
Pules it in the candle light
Wi’ a cheek so lean and white,
Chinkling up its eyne so wee
Wailing shrill at her an’ me.
It we’ll neither rock nor tend
Till the Silent Silent send,
Lapping in their awesome arms
Him they stole with spells and charms,
Till they take this changeling creature
Back to its own fairy nature ­
Cry! Cry! As long as may be,
Ye shall ne’er be woman’s baby!

The changeling

‘Ahoy, and ahoy!’
’Twixt mocking and merry ­
’Ahoy and ahoy, there,
Young man of the ferry!’

She stood on the steps
In the watery gloom –­
That Changeling ­’Ahoy, there!’
She called him to come.
He came on the green wave,
He came on the grey,
Where stooped that sweet lady
That still summer’s day.
He fell in a dream
Of her beautiful face,
As she sat on the thwart
And smiled in her place.

No echo his oar woke,
Float silent did they,
Past low-grazing cattle
In the sweet of the hay.
And still in a dream
At her beauty sat he,
Drifting stern foremost
Down down to the sea.

Come you, then: call,
When the twilight apace
Brings shadow to brood
On the loveliest face;
You shall hear o’er the water
Ring faint in the grey –­
‘Ahoy, and ahoy, there!’
And tremble away;
‘Ahoy, and ahoy!...’
And tremble away.

The mocking fairy

‘Won’t you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill?’
Quoth the Fairy, niddling, nodding in the garden;
‘Can’t you look out of your window, Mrs. Gill?’
Quoth the Fairy, laughing softly in the garden;
But the air was still, the cherry boughs were still,
And the ivy-tod ’neath the empty sill,
And never from her window looked out Mrs. Gill
On the Fairy shrilly mocking in the garden.

‘What have they done with you, you poor Mrs. Gill?’
Quoth the Fairy brightly glancing in the garden;
‘Where have they hidden you, you poor old Mrs. Gill?’
Quoth the Fairy dancing lightly in the garden;

But night’s faint veil now wrapped the hill,
Stark ’neath the stars stood the dead-still Mill,
And out of her cold cottage never answered Mrs. Gill
The Fairy mimbling, mambling in the garden.

Bewitched

I have heard a lady this night,
Lissom and jimp and slim,
Calling me calling me over the heather,
’Neath the beech boughs dusk and dim.

I have followed a lady this night,
Followed her far and lone,
Fox and adder and weasel know
The ways that we have gone.

I sit at my supper ’mid honest faces,
And crumble my crust and say
Naught in the long-drawn drawl of the voices
Talking the hours away.

I’ll go to my chamber under the gable,
And the moon will lift her light
In at my lattice from over the moorland
Hollow and still and bright.

And I know she will shine on a lady of witchcraft,
Gladness and grief to see,
Who has taken my heart with her nimble fingers,
Calls in my dreams to me;

Who has led me a dance by dell and dingle
My human soul to win,
Made me a changeling to my own, own mother,
A stranger to my kin.

The honey robbers

There were two Fairies, Gimmul and Mel,
Loved Earth Man’s honey passing well;
Oft at the hives of his tame bees
They would their sugary thirst appease.

When dusk began to darken to night,
They would hie along in the fading light,
With elf-locked hair and scarlet lips,
And small stone knives to slit the skeps,
So softly not a bee inside
Should hear the woven straw divide:
And then with sly and greedy thumbs
Would rifle the sweet honeycombs.

And drowsily drone to drone would say,
‘A cold, cold wind blows in this way’;
And the great Queen would turn her head
From face to face, astonished,
And, though her maids with comb and brush
Would comb and soothe and whisper, ‘Hush!’
About the hive would shrilly go
A keening keening, to and fro;
At which those robbers ’neath the trees
Would taunt and mock the honey-bees,
And through their sticky teeth would buzz
Just as an angry hornet does.

And when this Gimmul and this Mel
Had munched and sucked and swilled their fill,
Or ever Man’s first cock could crow
Back to their Faerie Mounds they’d go;
Edging across the twilight air,
Thieves of a guise remotely fair.

Longlegs

Longlegs he yelled ‘Coo-ee!’
And all across the combe
Shrill and shrill it rang ­ rang through
The clear green gloom.
Fairies there were a-spinning,
And a white tree-maid
Lifted her eyes, and listened
In her rain-sweet glade.
Bunnie to bunnie stamped; old Wat
Chin-deep in bracken sate;
A throstle piped, ‘I’m by, I’m by!’
Clear to his timid mate.
And there was Longlegs, straddling,
And hearkening was he,
To distant Echo thrilling back
A thin ‘Coo-ee!’

Melmillo

Three and thirty birds there stood
In an elder in a wood;
Called Melmillo flew off three,
Leaving thirty in the tree;
Called Melmillo nine now gone,
And the boughs held twenty-one;
Called Melmillo and eighteen
Left but three to nod and preen;
Called Melmillo three ­ two one
Now of birds were feathers none.

Then stole Melmillo in
To that wood all dusk and green,
And with lean long palms outspread
Softly a strange dance did tread;
Not a note of music she
Had for echoing company;
All the birds were flown to rest
In the hollow of her breast;
In the wood thorn, elder, willow ­
Danced alone lone danced Melmillo.