CHAPTER VI. —The Wishing Well
“JEAN,” said Randal one midsummer day, “I am going to the Wishing Well.”
“Oh, Randal,” said Jean, “it is so far away!”
“I can walk it,” said Randal, “and you must come, too; I want you, Jeanie. It ‘s not so very far.”
“But mother says it is wrong to go to Wishing Wells,” Jean answered.
“Why is it wrong?” said Randal, switching at the tall foxgloves with a stick.
“Oh, she says it is a wicked thing, and forbidden by the Church. People who go to wish there, sacrifice to the spirits of the well; and Father Francis told her that it was very wrong.”
“Father Francis is a shaveling,” said Randal. “I heard Simon Grieve say so.”
“What’s a shaveling, Randal?”
“I don’t know: a man that does not fight, I think. I don’t care what a shaveling says: so I mean just to go and wish, and I won’t sacrifice anything. There can’t be any harm in that!”
“But, oh Randal, you’ve got your green doublet on!”
“Well! why not?”
“Do you not know it angers the fair – I mean the good folk, – that anyone should wear green on the hill but themselves?”
“I cannot help it,” said Randal. “If I go in and change my doublet, they will ask what I do that for. I ‘ll chance it, green or grey, and wish my wish for all that.”
“And what are you going to wish?”
“I ‘m going to wish to meet the Fairy Queen! Just think how beautiful she must be! dressed all in green, with gold bells on her bridle, and riding a white horse shod with gold! I think I see her galloping through the woods and out across the hill, over the heather.’
“But you will go away with her, and never see me any more,” said Jean.
“No, I won’t; or if I do, I ‘ll come back, with such a horse, and a sword with a gold handle. I’m going to the Wishing Well. Come on!”
Jean did not like to say “No,” and off they went.
Randal and Jean started without taking anything with them to eat. They were afraid to go back to the house for food. Randal said they would be sure to find something somewhere. The Wishing Well was on the top of a hill between Yarrow and Tweed. So they took off their shoes, and waded the Tweed at the shallowest part, and then they walked up the green grassy bank on the other side, till they came to the burn of Peel. Here they passed the old square tower of Peel, and the shepherd dogs came out and barked at them. Randal threw a stone at them, and they ran away with their tails between their legs.
“Don’t you think we had better go into Peel, and get some bannocks to eat on the way, Randal?” said Jean.
But Randal said he was not hungry; and, besides, the people at Peel would tell the Fairnilee people where they had gone.
“We’ll wish for things to eat when we get to the Wishing Well,” said Randal. “All sorts of good things – cold venison pasty, and everything you like.”
So they began climbing the hill, and they followed the Peel burn. It ran in and out, winding this way and that, and when they did get to the top of the hill, Jean was very tired and very hungry. And she was very disappointed. For she expected to see some wonderful new country at her feet, and there was only a low strip of sunburnt grass and heather, and then another hill-top! So Jean sat down, and the hot sun blazed on her, and the flies buzzed about her and tormented her.
“Come on, Jean,” said Randal; “it must be over the next hill!”
So poor Jean got up and followed him, but he walked far too fast for her. When she reached the crest of the next hill, she found a great cairn, or pile of grey stones; and beneath her lay, far, far below, a deep valley covered with woods, and a stream running through it that she had never seen before.
That stream was the Yarrow.
Randal was nowhere in sight, and she did not know where to look for the Wishing Well. If she had walked straight forward through the trees she would have come to it; but she was so tired, and so hungry, and so hot, that she sat down at the foot of the cairn and cried as if her heart would break.
Then she fell asleep.
When Jean woke, it was as dark as it ever is on a midsummer night in Scotland.
It was a soft, cloudy night; not a clear night with a silver sky.
Jeanie heard a loud roaring close to her, and the red light of a great fire was in her sleepy eyes.
In the firelight she saw strange black beasts, with horns, plunging and leaping and bellowing, and dark figures rushing about the flames. It was the beasts that made the roaring. They were bounding about close to the fire, and sometimes in it, and were all mixed in the smoke.
Jeanie was dreadfully frightened, too frightened to scream.
Presently she heard the voices of men shouting on the hill below her. The shouts and the barking of dogs came nearer and nearer.
Then a dog ran up to her, and licked her face, and jumped about her.
It was her own sheepdog, Yarrow.
He ran back to the men who were following him, and came again with one of them.
It was old Simon Grieve, very tired, and so much out of breath that he could scarcely speak.
Jean was very glad to see him, and not frightened any longer.
“Oh, Jeanie, my doo’,” said Simon, “where hae ye been? A muckle gliff ye hae gien us, and a weary spiel up the weary braes.”
Jean told him all about it: how she had come with Randal to see the Wishing Well, and how she had lost him, and fallen asleep.
“And sic a nicht for you bairns to wander on the hill,” said Simon. “It’s the nicht o’ St. John, when the guid folk hae power. And there’s a’ the lads burning the Bel fires, and driving the nowt5 through them: nae less will serve them. Sic a nicht!”
This was the cause of the fire Jean saw, and of the noise of the cattle. On midsummer’s night the country people used to light these fires, and drive the cattle through them. It was an old, old custom come down from heathen times.
Now the other men from Fairnilee had gathered round Jean. Lady Ker had sent them out to look for Randal and her on the hills. They had heard from the good wife at Peel that the children had gone up the burn, and Yarrow had tracked them till Jean was found.
CHAPTER VII. —Where is Randal?
JEAN was found, but where was Randal? She told the men who had come out to look for her, that Randal had gone on to look for the Wishing Well. So they rolled her up in a big shepherd’s plaid, and two of them carried Jean home in the plaid, while all the rest, with lighted torches in their hands, went to look for Randal through the wood.
Jean was so tired that she fell asleep again in her plaid before they reached Fairnilee. She was wakened by the men shouting as they drew near the house, to show that they were coming home. Lady Ker was waiting at the gate, and the old nurse ran down the grassy path to meet them.
“Where’s my bairn?” she cried as soon as she was within call.
The men said, “Here ‘s Mistress Jean, and Randal will be here soon; they have gone to look for him.”
“Where are they looking?” cried nurse.
“Just about the Wishing Well.”
The nurse gave a scream, and hobbled back to Lady Ker.
“Ma bairn’s tint!”6 she cried, “ma bairn’s tint! They ‘ll find him never. The good folk have stolen him away from that weary Wishing Well!”
“Hush, nurse,” said Lady Ker, “do not frighten Jean.”
She spoke to the men, who had no doubt that Randal would soon be found and brought home.
So Jean was put to bed, where she forgot all her troubles; and Lady Ker waited, waited, all night, till the grey light began to come in, about two in the morning.
Lady Ker kept very still and quiet, telling her beads, and praying. But the old nurse would never be still, but was always wandering out, down to the river’s edge, listening for the shouts of the shepherds coming home. Then she would come back again, and moan and wring her hands, crying for “her bairn.”
About six o’clock, when it was broad daylight and all the birds were singing, the men returned from the hill.
But Randal did not come with them.
Then the old nurse set up a great cry, as the country people do over the bed of someone who has just died.
Lady Ker sent her away, and called Simon Grieve to her own room.
“You have not found the boy yet?” she said, very stately and pale. “He must have wandered over into Yarrow; perhaps he has gone as far as Newark, and passed the night at the castle, or with the shepherd at Foulshiels.”
“No, my Lady,” said Simon Grieve, “some o’ the men went over to Newark, and some to Foulshiels, and other some down to Sir John Murray’s at Philiphaugh; but there’s never a word o’ Randal in a’ the country-side.”
“Did you find no trace of him?” said Lady Ker, sitting down suddenly in the great armchair.
“We went first through the wood, my Lady, by the path to the Wishing Well. And he had been there, for the whip he carried in his hand was lying on the grass. And we found this.”
He put his hand in his pouch, and brought out a little silver crucifix, that Randal used always to wear round his neck on a chain.
“This was lying on the grass beside the Wishing Well, my Lady – ”
Then he stopped, for Lady Ker had swooned away. She was worn out with watching and with anxiety about Randal.
Simon went and called the maids, and they brought water and wine, and soon Lady Ker came back to herself, with the little silver crucifix in her hand.
The old nurse was crying, and making a great noise.
“The good folk have taken ma bairn,” she said, “this nicht o’ a’ the nichts in the year, when the fairy folk – preserve us frae them! – have power. But they could nae take the blessed rood o’ grace; it was beyond their strength. If gipsies, or robber folk frae the Debatable Land, had carried away the bairn, they would hae taken him, cross and a’. But the guid folk have gotten him, and Randal Ker will never, never mair come hame to bonny Fairnilee.”
What the old nurse said was what everybody thought. Even Simon Grieve shook his head, and did not like it.
But Lady Ker did not give up hope. She sent horsemen through all the country-side: up Tweed to the Crook, and to Talla; up Yarrow, past Catslack Tower, and on to the Loch of Saint Mary; up Ettrick to Thirlestane and Buccleugh, and over to Gala, and to Branxholme in Teviotdale; and even to Hermitage Castle, far away by Liddel water.
They rode far and rode fast, and at every cottage and every tower they asked “had anyone seen a boy in green?” But nobody had seen Randal through all the country-side. Only a shepherd lad, on Foulshiels hill, had heard bells ringing in the night, and a sound of laughter go past him, like a breeze of wind over the heather.
Days went by, and all the country, was out to look for Randal. Down in Yetholme they sought him, among the gipsies; and across the Eden in merry Carlisle; and through the Land Debatable, where the robber Armstrongs and Grahames lived; and far down Tweed, past Melrose, and up Jed water, far into the Cheviot hills.
But there never came any word of Randal. He had vanished as if the earth had opened and swallowed him. Father Francis came from Melrose Abbey, and prayed with Lady Ker, and gave her all the comfort he could. He shook his head when he heard of the Wishing Well, but he said that no spirit of earth or air could have power for ever over a Christian soul. But, even when he spoke, he remembered that, once in seven years, the fairy folk have to pay a dreadful tax, one of themselves, to the King of a terrible country of Darkness; and what if they had stolen Randal, to pay the tax with him!
This was what troubled good Father Francis, though, like a wise man, he said nothing about it, and even put the thought away out of his own mind.
But you may be sure that the old nurse had thought of this tax on the fairies too, and that she did not hold her peace about it, but spoke to everyone that would listen to her, and would have spoken to the mistress if she had been allowed. But when she tried to begin, Lady Ker told her that she had put her own trust in Heaven, and in the Saints. And she gave the nurse such a look when she said that, “if ever Jean heard of this, she would send nurse away from Fairnilee, out of the country,” that the old woman was afraid, and was quiet.
As for poor Jean, she was perhaps the most unhappy of them all. She thought to herself, if she had refused to go with Randal to the Wishing Well, and had run in and told Lady Ker, then Randal would never have started to find the Wishing Well. And she put herself in great danger, as she fancied, to find him. She wandered alone on the hills, seeking all the places that were believed to be haunted by fairies.
At every Fairy Knowe, as the country people called the little round green knolls in the midst of the heather, Jean would stoop her ear to the ground, trying to hear the voices of the fairies within. For it was believed that you might hear the sound of their speech, and the trampling of their horses, and the shouts of the fairy children. But no sound came, except the song of the burn flowing by, and the hum of gnats in the air, and the gock, gock, the cry of the grouse, when you frighten him in the heather.
Then Jeanie would try another way of meeting the fairies, and finding Randal. She would walk nine times round a Fairy Knowe, beginning from the left side, because then it was fancied that the hill-side would open, like a door, and show a path into Fairyland. But the hill-side never opened, and she never saw a single fairy; not even old Whuppity Stoorie sit with her spinning-wheel in a green glen, spinning grass into gold, and singing her fairy song: —
“I once was young and fair,
My eyes were bright and blue,
As if the sun shone through,
And golden was my hair.
“Down to my feet it rolled
Ruddy and ripe like corn,
Upon an autumn morn,