





Transcribed from the 1904 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





THE HOUSE OF THE WOLFINGS
A TALE OF THE HOUSE OF THE WOLFINGS AND ALL THE KINDREDS OF THE MARK
WRITTEN IN PROSE AND IN VERSE
by William Morris


   Whiles in the early Winter eve
   We pass amid the gathering night
   Some homestead that we had to leave
   Years past; and see its candles bright
   Shine in the room beside the door
   Where we were merry years agone
   But now must never enter more,
   As still the dark road drives us on.
   E'en so the world of men may turn
   At even of some hurried day
   And see the ancient glimmer burn
   Across the waste that hath no way;
   Then with that faint light in its eyes
   A while I bid it linger near
   And nurse in wavering memories
   The bitter-sweet of days that were.




CHAPTER I--THE DWELLINGS OF MID-MARK


The tale tells that in times long past there was a dwelling of men beside
a great wood.  Before it lay a plain, not very great, but which was, as
it were, an isle in the sea of woodland, since even when you stood on the
flat ground, you could see trees everywhere in the offing, though as for
hills, you could scarce say that there were any; only swellings-up of the
earth here and there, like the upheavings of the water that one sees at
whiles going on amidst the eddies of a swift but deep stream.

On either side, to right and left the tree-girdle reached out toward the
blue distance, thick close and unsundered, save where it and the plain
which it begirdled was cleft amidmost by a river about as wide as the
Thames at Sheene when the flood-tide is at its highest, but so swift and
full of eddies, that it gave token of mountains not so far distant,
though they were hidden.  On each side moreover of the stream of this
river was a wide space of stones, great and little, and in most places
above this stony waste were banks of a few feet high, showing where the
yearly winter flood was most commonly stayed.

You must know that this great clearing in the woodland was not a matter
of haphazard; though the river had driven a road whereby men might fare
on each side of its hurrying stream.  It was men who had made that Isle
in the woodland.

For many generations the folk that now dwelt there had learned the craft
of iron-founding, so that they had no lack of wares of iron and steel,
whether they were tools of handicraft or weapons for hunting and for war.
It was the men of the Folk, who coming adown by the river-side had made
that clearing.  The tale tells not whence they came, but belike from the
dales of the distant mountains, and from dales and mountains and plains
further aloof and yet further.

Anyhow they came adown the river; on its waters on rafts, by its shores
in wains or bestriding their horses or their kine, or afoot, till they
had a mind to abide; and there as it fell they stayed their travel, and
spread from each side of the river, and fought with the wood and its wild
things, that they might make to themselves a dwelling-place on the face
of the earth.

So they cut down the trees, and burned their stumps that the grass might
grow sweet for their kine and sheep and horses; and they diked the river
where need was all through the plain, and far up into the wild-wood to
bridle the winter floods: and they made them boats to ferry them over,
and to float down stream and track up-stream: they fished the river's
eddies also with net and with line; and drew drift from out of it of far-
travelled wood and other matters; and the gravel of its shallows they
washed for gold; and it became their friend, and they loved it, and gave
it a name, and called it the Dusky, and the Glassy, and the
Mirkwood-water; for the names of it changed with the generations of man.

There then in the clearing of the wood that for many years grew greater
yearly they drave their beasts to pasture in the new-made meadows, where
year by year the grass grew sweeter as the sun shone on it and the
standing waters went from it; and now in the year whereof the tale
telleth it was a fair and smiling plain, and no folk might have a better
meadow.

But long before that had they learned the