



Produced by Jo Churcher





REWARDS AND FAIRIES

By Rudyard Kipling



Contents

        A Charm
     Introduction
     Cold Iron
        Cold Iron
     Gloriana
        The Two Cousins
        The Looking-Glass
     The Wrong Thing
        A Truthful Song
        King Henry VII and the Shipwrights
     Marklake Witches
        The Way through the Woods
        Brookland Road
     The Knife and the Naked Chalk
        The Run of the Downs
        Song of the Men's Side
     Brother Square-Toes
        Philadelphia
        If--
        Rs
        'A Priest in Spite of Himself'
        A St Helena Lullaby
        'Poor Honest Men'
     The Conversion of St Wilfrid
        Eddi's Service
        Song of the Red War-Boat
     A Doctor of Medicine
        An Astrologer's Song
        'Our Fathers of Old'
     Simple Simon
        The Thousandth Man
        Frankie's Trade
     The Tree of Justice
        The Ballad of Minepit Shaw
        A Carol




A Charm


     Take of English earth as much
     As either hand may rightly clutch.
     In the taking of it breathe
     Prayer for all who lie beneath--
     Not the great nor well-bespoke,
     But the mere uncounted folk
     Of whose life and death is none
     Report or lamentation.
     Lay that earth upon thy heart,
     And thy sickness shall depart!

     It shall sweeten and make whole
     Fevered breath and festered soul;
     It shall mightily restrain
     Over-busy hand and brain;
     it shall ease thy mortal strife
     'Gainst the immortal woe of life,
     Till thyself restored shall prove
     By what grace the Heavens do move.

     Take of English flowers these--
     Spring's full-faced primroses,
     Summer's wild wide-hearted rose,
     Autumn's wall-flower of the close,
     And, thy darkness to illume,
     Winter's bee-thronged ivy-bloom.
     Seek and serve them where they bide
     From Candlemas to Christmas-tide,
     For these simples used aright
     Shall restore a failing sight.

     These shall cleanse and purify
     Webbed and inward-turning eye;
     These shall show thee treasure hid,
     Thy familiar fields amid,
     At thy threshold, on thy hearth,
     Or about thy daily path;
     And reveal (which is thy need)
     Every man a King indeed!




Introduction


Once upon a time, Dan and Una, brother and sister, living in the English
country, had the good fortune to meet with Puck, alias Robin Goodfellow,
alias Nick o' Lincoln, alias Lob-lie-by-the-Fire, the last survivor
in England of those whom mortals call Fairies. Their proper name, of
course, is 'The People of the Hills'. This Puck, by means of the magic
of Oak, Ash, and Thorn, gave the children power

     To see what they should see and hear what they should hear,
     Though it should have happened three thousand year.

The result was that from time to time, and in different places on the
farm and in the fields and in the country about, they saw and talked to
some rather interesting people. One of these, for instance, was a Knight
of the Norman Conquest, another a young Centurion of a Roman Legion
stationed in England, another a builder and decorator of King Henry
VII's time; and so on and so forth; as I have tried to explain in a book
called PUCK OF POOK'S HILL.

A year or so later, the children met Puck once more, and though they
were then older and wiser, and wore boots regularly instead of going
barefooted when they got the chance, Puck was as kind to them as ever,
and introduced them to more people of the old days.

He was careful, of course, to take away their memory of their walks and
conversations afterwards, but otherwise he did not interfere; and Dan
and Una would find the strangest sort of persons in their gardens or
woods.

In the stories that follow I am trying to tell something about those
people.




COLD IRON


When Dan and Una had arranged to go out before breakfast, they did not
remember that it was Midsummer Morning. They only wanted to see the
otter which, old Hobden said, had been fishing their brook for weeks;
and early morning was the time to surprise him. As they tiptoed out of
the house into the wonderful stillness, the church clock struck five.
Dan took a few steps across the dew-blobbed lawn, and looked at his
black footprints.

'I think we ought to be kind to our poor boots,' he said. 'They'll get
horrid wet.'

It was their first summer in boots, and they hated them, so they took
them off, and slung them round their necks, and paddled joyfully over
the dripping turf where the shadows lay the wrong way, like evening in
the East. The sun was well up and warm, but by the brook the last of
the night mist still fumed off the water. They picked up the chain of
otter's footprints on the mud, and followed it from the bank, between
the weeds and the drenched mowing, while the birds shouted with
surprise. Then the track left the brook and became a smear, as though a
log had been dragged along.

They traced it into Three Cows meadow, over the mill-sluice to the
Forge, round Hobden's garden, and then up the <DW72> till it ran out
on the short turf and fern of Pook's Hill, and they heard the
cock-pheasants crowing in the woods behind them.

'No use!' said Dan, questing like a puzzled hound. 'The dew's drying
off, and old Hobden says otters'll travel for miles.'

'I'm sure we've travelled miles.' Una fanned herself with her hat. 'How
still it is! It's going to be a regular roaster.' She looked down the
valley, where no chimney yet smoked.

'Hobden's up!' Dan pointed to the open door of the Forge cottage. 'What
d'you suppose he has for breakfast?' 'One of them. He says they eat good
all times of the year,' Una jerked her head at some stately pheasants
going down to the brook for a drink.

A few steps farther on a fox broke almost under their bare feet, yapped,
and trotted off.

'Ah, Mus' Reynolds--Mus' Reynolds'--Dan was quoting from old
Hobden,--'if I knowed all you knowed, I'd know something.' [See 'The
Winged Hats' in PUCK OF POOK'S HILL.]

I say,'--Una lowered her voice--'you know that funny feeling of things
having happened before. I felt it when you said "Mus' Reynolds."'

'So did I,' Dan began. 'What is it?'

They faced each other, stammering with excitement.

'Wait a shake! I'll remember in a minute. Wasn't it something about a
fox--last year? Oh, I nearly had it then!' Dan cried.

'Be quiet!' said Una, prancing excitedly. 'There was something happened
before we met the fox last year. Hills! Broken Hills--the play at the
theatre--see what you see--'

'I remember now,' Dan shouted. 'It's as plain as the nose on your
face--Pook's Hill--Puck's Hill--Puck!'

'I remember, too,' said Una. 'And it's Midsummer Day again!' The young
fern on a knoll rustled, and Puck walked out, chewing a green-topped
rush.

'Good Midsummer Morning to you! Here's a happy meeting,' said he. They
shook hands all round, and asked questions.

'You've wintered well,' he said after a while, and looked them up and
down. 'Nothing much wrong with you, seemingly.'

'They've put us into boots,' said Una. 'Look at my feet--they're all
pale white, and my toes are squidged together awfully.'

'Yes--boots make a difference.' Puck wriggled his brown, square, hairy
foot, and cropped a dandelion flower between the big toe and the next.

'I could do that--last year,' Dan said dismally, as he tried and failed.
'And boots simply ruin one's climbing.'

'There must be some advantage to them, I suppose,'said Puck, or folk
wouldn't wear them. Shall we come this way?' They sauntered along side
by side till they reached the gate at the far end of the hillside. Here
they halted just like cattle, and let the sun warm their backs while
they listened to the flies in the wood.

'Little Lindens is awake,' said Una, as she hung with her chin on the
top rail. 'See the chimney smoke?'

'Today's Thursday, isn't it?' Puck turned to look at the old pink
farmhouse across the little valley. 'Mrs Vincey's baking day. Bread
should rise well this weather.' He yawned, and that set them both
yawning.

The bracken about rustled and ticked and shook in every direction. They
felt that little crowds were stealing past.

'Doesn't that sound like--er--the People of the Hills?'said Una.

'It's the birds and wild things drawing up to the woods before people
get about,' said Puck, as though he were Ridley the keeper.

'Oh, we know that. I only said it sounded like.'

'As I remember 'em, the People of the Hills used to make more noise.
They'd settle down for the day rather like small birds settling down for
the night. But that was in the days when they carried the high hand. Oh,
me! The deeds that I've had act and part in, you'd scarcely believe!'

'I like that!' said Dan. 'After all you told us last year, too!'

'Only, the minute you went away, you made us forget everything,' said
Una.

Puck laughed and shook his head. 'I shall this year, too. I've given you
seizin of Old England, and I've taken away your Doubt and Fear, but your
memory and remembrance between whiles I'll keep where old Billy Trott
kept his night-lines--and that's where he could draw 'em up and hide 'em
at need. Does that suit?' He twinkled mischievously.

'It's got to suit,'said Una, and laughed. 'We Can't magic back at you.'
She folded her arms and leaned against the gate. 'Suppose, now, you
wanted to magic me into something--an otter? Could you?'

'Not with those boots round your neck.' 'I'll take them off.' She threw
them on the turf. Dan's followed immediately. 'Now!' she said.

'Less than ever now you've trusted me. Where there's true faith, there's
no call for magic.' Puck's slow smile broadened all over his face.

'But what have boots to do with it?' said Una, perching on the gate.

'There's Cold Iron in them,' said Puck, and settled beside her. 'Nails
in the soles, I mean. It makes a difference.'

'How?' 'Can't you feel it does? You wouldn't like to go back to bare
feet again, same as last year, would you? Not really?'

'No-o. I suppose I shouldn't--not for always. I'm growing up, you know,'
said Una.

'But you told us last year, in the Long Slip--at the theatre--that you
didn't mind Cold Iron,'said Dan.

'I don't; but folks in housen, as the People of the Hills call them,
must be ruled by Cold Iron. Folk in housen are born on the near side of
Cold Iron--there's iron 'in every man's house, isn't there? They handle
Cold Iron every day of their lives, and their fortune's made or spoilt
by Cold Iron in some shape or other. That's how it goes with Flesh and
Blood, and one can't prevent it.'

'I don't quite see. How do you mean?'said Dan.

'It would take me some time to tell you.'

'Oh, it's ever so long to breakfast,' said Dan. 'We looked in the
larder before we came out.' He unpocketed one big hunk of bread and Una
another, which they shared with Puck.

'That's Little Lindens' baking,' he said, as his white teeth sunk in
it. 'I know Mrs Vincey's hand.' He ate with a slow sideways thrust and
grind, just like old Hobden, and, like Hobden, hardly dropped a crumb.
The sun flashed on Little Lindens' windows, and the cloudless sky grew
stiller and hotter in the valley.

'AH--Cold Iron,' he said at last to the impatient children. 'Folk in
housen, as the People of the Hills say, grow careless about Cold Iron.
They'll nail the Horseshoe over the front door, and forget to put it
over the back. Then, some time or other, the People of the Hills slip
in, find the cradle-babe in the corner, and--'

'Oh, I know. Steal it and leave a changeling,'Una cried.

'No,' said Puck firmly. 'All that talk of changelings is people's excuse
for their own neglect. Never believe 'em. I'd whip 'em at the cart-tail
through three parishes if I had my way.'

'But they don't do it now,' said Una.

'Whip, or neglect children? Umm! Some folks and some fields never alter.
But the People of the Hills didn't work any changeling tricks.
They'd tiptoe in and whisper and weave round the cradle-babe in the
chimney-corner--a fag-end of a charm here, or half a spell there--like
kettles singing; but when the babe's mind came to bud out afterwards,
it would act differently from other people in its station. That's no
advantage to man or maid. So I wouldn't allow it with my folks' babies
here. I told Sir Huon so once.'

'Who was Sir Huon?' Dan asked, and Puck turned on him in quiet
astonishment.

'Sir Huon of Bordeaux--he succeeded King Oberon. He had been a bold
knight once, but he was lost on the road to Babylon, a long while back.
Have you ever heard "How many miles to Babylon?"?'

'Of course,' said Dan, flushing.

'Well, Sir Huon was young when that song was new. But about tricks
on mortal babies. I said to Sir Huon in the fern here, on just such a
morning as this: "If you crave to act and influence on