The Field of Clover
L >> Laurence Housman >> The Field of Clover[Illustration: MERCURY GOD OF MERCHANDISE LOOK ON WITH FAVOURABLE
EYES]
[Illustration:
THE FIELD OF CLOVER
By Laurence Housman
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC., NEW YORK
ENGRAVED BY CLEMENCE HOUSMAN
BE KINDLY TO THE WEARY DROVER & PIPE THE SHEEP INTO THE CLOVER]
This Dover edition, first published in 1968, is an unabridged and
unaltered republication of the work originally published by Kegan
Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co. in 1898.
_Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-30802_
Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc.
180 Varick Street
New York, N. Y. 10014
Contents
THE BOUND PRINCESS (_in six parts_) PAGE
I THE FIRE-EATERS 3
II THE GALLOPING PLOUGH 13
III THE THIRSTY WELL 23
IV THE PRINCESS MELILOT 33
V THE BURNING ROSE 45
VI THE CAMPHOR WORM 57
THE CROWN'S WARRANTY 69
THE WISHING-POT 81
THE FEEDING OF THE EMIGRANTS 111
THE PASSIONATE PUPPETS 119
TO MY DEAR WOOD-ENGRAVER
THE BOUND PRINCESS
[Illustration]
THE BOUND PRINCESS
I
THE FIRE-EATERS
A long time ago there lived a man who had the biggest head in the
world. Into it he had crammed all the knowledge that might be gathered
from the four corners of the earth. Every one said he was the wisest
man living. "If I could only find a wife," said the sage, "as wise for
a woman as I am for a man, what a race of head-pieces we could bring
into the world!"
He waited many years before any such mate could be found for him:
yet, at last, found she was--one into whose head was bestowed all the
wisdom that might be gathered from the four quarters of heaven.
They were both old, but kings came from all sides to their wedding,
and offered themselves as god-parents to the first-born of the new
race that was to be. But, to the grief of his parents, the child, when
he arrived, proved to be a simpleton; and no second child ever came to
repair the mistake of the first.
That he was a simpleton was evident; his head was small and his
limbs were large, and he could run long before he could talk or do
arithmetic. In the bitterness of their hearts his father and mother
named him Noodle, without the aid of any royal god-parents; and from
that moment, for any care they took in his bringing-up, they washed
their wise hands of him.
Noodle grew and prospered, and enjoyed life in his own foolish way.
When his father and mother died within a short time of each other,
they left him alone without any friend in the world.
For a good while Noodle lived on just what he could find in the house,
in a hand-to-mouth sort of way, till at last only the furniture and
the four bare walls were left to him.
One cold winter's night he sat brooding over the fire, wondering where
he should get food for the morrow, when he heard feet coming up to the
door, and a knock striking low down upon the panel. Outside there was
a faint chirping and crackling sound, and a whispering as of fire
licking against the woodwork without.
He opened the door and peered forth into the night. There, just before
him, stood seven little men huddled up together; three feet high they
were, with bright yellow faces all shrivelled and sharp, and eyes
whose light leaped and sank like candle flame before a gust.
When they saw him, they shut their eyes and opened famished mouths at
him, pointing inwards with flickering finger-tips, and shivering from
head to foot with cold, although it seemed to the youth as if the
warmth of a slow fire came from them. 'Alas!' said Noodle, in reply to
these signs of hunger, 'I have not left even a crust of bread in the
house to give you! But at least come in and make yourselves warm!' He
touched the foremost, making signs for them all to enter. 'Ah,' he
cried, 'what is this, and what are you, that the mere touch of you
burns my finger?'
Without answer they huddled tremblingly across the threshold; but
so soon as they saw the fire burning on the hearth, they yelped all
together like a pack of hounds, and, throwing themselves face forwards
into the hot embers, began ravenously to lap up the flames. They
lapped and lapped, and the more they lapped the more the fire sank
away and died. Then with their flickering finger-tips they stirred
the hot logs and coals, burrowing after the thin tapes and swirls of
vanishing flame, and fetching them out like small blue eels still
wriggling for escape.
After each blue wisp had been gulped down, they sipped and sucked at
their fingers for any least tricklet of flavour that might be left;
and at the last seemed more famished than when they began.
'More, more, O wise Noodle, give us more!' they cried; and Noodle
threw the last of his fuel on the embers.
They breathed round it, fanning it into a great blaze that leaped and
danced up to the rafters; then they fell on, till not a fleck or a
flake of it was left. Noodle, seeing them still famished, broke up
a stool and threw that on the hearth. And again they flared it with
their breath and gobbled off the flame. When the stool was finished he
threw in the table, then the dresser, and after that the oak-chest and
the window-seat.
Still they feasted and were not fed. Noodle fetched an axe, and broke
down the door; then he wrenched up the boards from the floor, and
pulled the beams and rafters out of the ceiling; yet, even so, his
guests were not to be satisfied.
'I have nothing left,' he said, 'but the house itself; but since you
are still hungry you shall be welcome to it!'
He scattered the fire that remained upon the hearth, and threw it out
and about the room; and as he ran forth to escape, up against all
the walls and right through the roof rose a great crackling sheaf of
flame. In the midst of the fire, Noodle could see his seven guests
lying along on their bellies, slopping their hands in the heat, and
lapping up the flames with their tongues. 'Surely,' he thought, 'I
have given them enough to eat at last!'
After a while all the fire was eaten away, and only the black and
smouldering ruins were left. Day came coldly to light, and there sat
Noodle, without a home in the world, watching with considerate eye his
seven guests finishing their inordinate repast.
They all rose to their feet together, and came towards him bowing; as
they approached he felt the heat of their bodies as it had been seven
furnaces.
'Enough, O wise Noodle!' said they, 'we have had enough!' 'That,'
answered Noodle, 'is the least thing left me to wonder at. Go your
ways in peace; but first tell me, who are you?' They replied, 'We are
the Fire-eaters: far from our own land, and strangers, you have done
us this service; what, now, can we do to serve you?' 'Put me in the
way of a living,' said Noodle, 'and you will do me the greatest
service of all.'
Then the one of them who seemed to be chief took from his finger a
ring having for its centre a great firestone, and threw it into the
snow, saying, 'Wait for three hours till the ring shall have had time
to cool, then take it, and wear it; and whatever fortune you deserve
it shall bring you. For this ring is the sweetener of everything that
it touches: bread it turns into rich meats, water into strong wine,
grief into virtue, and labour into strength. Also, if you ever need
our help, you have but to brandish the ring, and the gleam of it will
reach us, and we will be with you wherever you may be.'
With that they bowed their top-knots to the ground and departed,
inverting themselves swiftly till only the shining print of seven
pairs of feet remained, red-hot, over the place where they had been
standing.
Noodle waited for three hours; then he took up the firestone ring, and
putting it on his finger set out into the world.
At the first door he came to, he begged a crust of bread, and touching
it with the ring found it tasted like rich meats, well cooked and
delicately flavoured. Also, the water which he drew in the hollow of
his hand from a brook by the roadside tasted to him like strong wine.
[Illustration]
II
THE GALLOPING PLOUGH
Noodle went on many miles till he came near to a rich man's farm.
Though it was the middle of winter, all the fields showed crops of
corn in progress; here it was in thin blade, and here green, but in
full ear; and here it was ripe and ready for harvest. 'How is this,'
he said to the first man he met, 'that you have corn here in the
middle of winter?' 'Ah!' said the man, 'you have not heard of the
Galloping Plough; you too have to fall under bondage to my master.'
'What is your master?' inquired Noodle, 'and in what bondage does he
bind man?'
'My master, and your master that shall soon be,' answered the old man,
'is the owner of all this land and the farmer of it. He is rich and
sleek and fat like his own furrows, for he has the Galloping Plough as
his possession. Ah, that! 't is a very miracle, a wonder, a thing to
catch at the heartstrings of all beholders; it shines like a moonbeam,
and is better than an Arab mare for swiftness; it warms the very
ground that it enters, so that seeds take root and spring, though it
be the middle of winter. No man sees it but what he loses his heart to
it, and sells his freedom for the possession of it. All here are men
like myself who have become slaves because of that desire. You also,
when you see it, will become slave to it.'
Noodle went on through the summer and the spring corn, till he came
to bare fields. Ahead of him on a hill-top he saw the farmer himself,
sleek and rosy, and of full paunch, lolling like a lord at his ease;
yet with a working eye in the midst of his leisure.
To and fro, up to him and back, shot a silver gleam over the purple
brown of the fields; and Noodle's heart gave a thump at the sight, for
the spell of the Galloping Plough was on him.
Now and then he heard a clear sound that startled him with its note.
It was like the sweet whistling cry of a bird many times multiplied.
Ever when the silver gleam of the Plough had run its farthest from the
farmer, the cry sounded; and at the sound the gleam wavered and stayed
and flew back dartingly to the farmer's side. So Noodle understood how
this was the farmer's signal for the Plough to return; and the Plough
knew it as a horse its master's voice, and came so fast that the wind
whistled against its silver side.
As he watched, Noodle's heart went down into the valley and up the
hillside, following in the track of the Galloping Plough. 'I can never
be happy again,' thought he; 'either I must possess it, or must die.'
He came to the farmer where he sat calling his Plough to him and
letting it go; and the farmer smiled, the wide indulgent smile of a
man who knows that a bargain is about to fall his way.
'What is the price,' asked Noodle, 'of yonder Galloping Plough, that
runs like an Arab mare, and returns to you at your call?'
Said the farmer, 'A year's service; and if the Plough will follow you,
it is yours; if not, then you must be my bondman until you die!'
Noodle looked once the way of the Galloping Plough, and his heart
flapped at his side like a sail which the wind drops and lets go; and
he had no thought or will left in him but to be where the Galloping
Plough was. So he closed hands on the bargain, to be the farmer's
servant either for a year, or for his whole life.
For a year he worked upon the farm, and all the while plotted how he
might win the Galloping Plough to himself. The farmer kept no watch
upon it, nor put it under lock and key, for the Plough recognised no
voice but his own, nor went nor came save at his bidding. In the night
Noodle would go down to the shed or field where it lay, and whistle to
it, trying to put forth notes of the same magical power as those which
came through the farmer's lips.
But no sound that came from his lips ever stroked life into its silver
sides. The year was nearly run out, and Noodle was in despair.
Then he remembered the firestone ring, the Sweetener. 'May be,' said
he, 'since it changes to sweetness whatever I eat and drink, it will
sweeten my voice also, so that the Plough will obey.' So he put the
ring between his lips and whistled; and at the sound his heart turned
a somersault for joy, for he felt that out of his mouth the farmer's
magic had been over-topped and conquered.
The Galloping Plough stirred faintly from the furrow where it lay,
breaking the ground and marring its smooth course. Then it shook its
head slowly, and returned impassively to rest.
In the morning the farmer came and saw the broken earth close under
the Plough's nose. Noodle, hiding among the corn hard by, heard him
say, 'What hast thou heard in the night, O my moonbeam, my miracle,
that thy lily-foot has trodden up the ground? Hast thou forgotten
whose hand feeds thee, whose corn it is thou lovest, whose heart's
care also cherishes thee?'
The farmer went away, and presently came back bearing a bowl of corn;
and Noodle saw the Plough lift its head to its master's palm, and feed
like a horse on the grain.
Then Noodle, gay of heart, waited till it was night, and surely his
time was short, for on the morrow his wages were to be paid, and the
Plough was to be his, or else he was to be the farmer's bondservant
for the rest of his life. He took with him three handfuls of corn, and
went down to where the Plough stood waiting by the furrow. Shaping his
lips to the ring, he whistled gently like a lover, and immediately the
Plough stirred, and lifted up its head as if to look at him.
'O my moonbeam, my miracle,' whispered Noodle, 'wilt thou not come to
the one that feeds thee?' and he held out a handful of corn. But the
Plough gave no regard to him or his grain: slowly it moved away from
him back into the furrow.
Then Noodle laughed softly and dropped his ring, the Sweetener, into
the hand that held the grain; and barely had he offered the corn
before he felt the silver Plough nozzling at his palm, and eating as a
horse eats from the hand of its master.
Then he whistled again, placing the Sweetener back between his lips;
and the Galloping Plough sprang after him, and followed at his heels
like a dog.
So, finding himself its master, he bid it stay for the night; and in
the morning he said to the farmer, 'Give me my wages, and let me go!'
And the farmer laughed, saying, 'Take your wages, and go!'
Then Noodle took off his ring, the Sweetener, and laid it between his
lips and blew through it; and up like a moonbeam, and like an Arab
mare, sprang the Galloping Plough at his call. So he leaped upon its
back, crying, 'Carry me away out of this land, O thou moonbeam, and
miracle of beauty, and never slacken nor stay except I bid thee!'
Vainly the farmer, borne down on a torrent of rage and amazement,
whistled his best, and threw corn and rice from the rear; for the
whistling of Noodle was sweeter to the ear, and his corn sweeter to
the taste, and he nearer to the heart of the Galloping Plough than was
the old master whom it left behind.
[Illustration]
III
THE THIRSTY WELL
So they escaped, slitting the swift hours with ungovernable speed. The
furrow they two made in the world that day, as they went shooting over
the round of it, was called in after times the Equator, and men still
know it by the heat of it, though it has since been covered over by
the dust of ages.
To Noodle, as he went careering round it, the whole world's circuit
ran in a line across his brain, entering his vision and passing
through it as a thread through the needle's eye. Nor would he of his
own will ever have stopped his galloping, but that at the completion
of the first round a mighty thirst took hold of him. 'O my moonbeam,'
he said, choking behind parched lips, and sick at heart, 'check me,
or I faint!' And the Galloping Plough stopped at once, and set him to
earth in a green space under the shadow of overhanging boughs.
He found himself in a richly grown garden, a cool paradise for a
traveller to rest in. Close at hand and inviting to the eye was a well
with a bucket slung ready to be let down. Noodle had little thought of
seeking for the owner of the garden to beg for a drink, since water is
an equal gift to all and the right of any man; but as he drew near he
found the means to it withheld from him, the lid being fast locked. He
went on in search of the owner, till at length he came upon the same
lying half asleep under a thorn-bush with the key in her hand. She was
an old woman, so withered and dry, she looked as if no water could
have ever passed her lips.
When Noodle asked for a drink from the well, she looked at him bright
and sharp, and said: 'Before any man drinks of my water he must make a
bargain with me.' 'What is the bargain?' asked Noodle; and she led him
down to the well.
Then she unlocked the lid and bade him look in; and at the sight
Noodle knew for a second time that his heart had been stolen from him,
and that to be happy he must taste that water or die.
Again he asked, with his eyes intent upon the blue wrimpling of the
water in the well's depth, 'What is the bargain?' And the old woman
answered, 'If you fail to draw water out of the well you must fling
yourself into it.' For answer Noodle swung down the bucket, lowering
it as fast as it would go; then he set both hands to the windlass and
wound.
He heard the water splashing off the sides of the bucket all the way
up, as the shortening rope brought it near; but when he drew it over
the well's brink wonder and grief held him fast, for the bucket was as
empty as vanity. From behind him came a noise of laughter, and there
was the old witch running round and round in a circle; and everywhere
a hedge of thorns came shooting up to enclose him and keep him fast
for her.
'What a trap I am in!' thought Noodle; but once more he lowered the
bucket, and once more it returned to him empty.
The old woman climbed up into the thorn-hedge, and sat on its top,
singing:
'Overground, underground, round-about spell;
The Thirsty has come to the Thirsty Well!'
Again Noodle let down the bucket; and this time as he drew it up he
looked over into the well's heart, and saw all the way up the side a
hundred blue arms reaching out crystal scallops and drawing water
out of the bucket as hard as they could go. He saw thick lips like
sea-anemones thrust out between the crevices of the wall, sucking the
crystals dry as fast as they were filled. 'Truly,' he said to himself,
'this is a thirsty well, but myself am thirstier!'
When he had drawn up the bucket empty for the third time, he stood
considering; and at last he fastened to it the firestone ring, the
Sweetener, and lowered it once more. Then he laughed to himself as he
drew up, and felt the bucket lightening at every turn till it touched
the surface of things.
Empty he found it, with only his firestone hanging by the rim, and
once again he let it down to be refilled. But this time as he wound
up, nothing could keep him from letting a curious eye go over the
brink, to see how the Well-folk fared over their wine; and in what he
beheld there was already comfort for his soul.
The blue arms went like oars out of unison; like carpet-beaters
stricken in the eyes and throat with dust, they beat foolishly against
the sides and bottom of the bucket, shattering and letting fall their
goblets in each unruly attempt. And because Noodle wound leniently at
the rope, willing that they should have their fill, at the last gasp
they were able to send the bucket empty to the top. It was the last
staving off of destiny that lay in their power to make; thereafter
wine conquered them.
Quickly Noodle drew out the ring, and sent the bucket flying on its
last errand. It smacked the water, heeled over, and dipped under a
full draught. Then Noodle spun the windlass with the full pinch of his
energies, calling on the bucket to ascend. He heard the water spilling
from its sides, and knew that the blue arms were there, battling to
arrest it as it flew, and to pay him back once more with emptiness and
mockery. Yet in spite of them the bucket hasted and lightened not, but
was drawn up to the well's head brimming largely, and winking a blue
eye joyously to the light of day.
Over head and ears Noodle plunged for the quenching of his thirst, nor
stayed nor drew back till his head had smitten upon the bottom of the
bucket in his pursuit of the draught. Then it was apparent that only
a third of the water remained, the rest having obeyed the imperative
suction of his throat, and that the thirsty well had at last found a
master under the eye of heaven.
In the depth of the bucket the water flashed like a burning sapphire
and swung circling, curling and coiling, tossing this way and that,
as if struggling to get out. At last with a laugh it threw down the
bucket, and tore back into the well with a crash like thunder.
Up from the well rose a chant of voices:
'Under Heaven, over Hell,
You have broken the spell,
You are lord of the Well.'
Noodle stepped over the brink of his new realm, calling the Well-folk
to reach hands for him and bear him down. All round, the blue arms
started out, catching him and handing him on from one to another
ladderwise, down, and down, and down. As he went, anemone lips came
out of the crannies in the wall, and kissed his feet and hands in
token of allegiance. 'You are lord of the well!' they said, as they
passed him each one to the next.
He came to the bottom of the well; under his feet, wherever he stepped
upon its waters, hands came up and sustained him. The knowledge of
everything that was there had become his. 'Give me,' he said, 'the
crystal cup that is for him who holds kingship over you; so shall I be
lord of you in all places wherever I go.'
A blue arm reached down and drew up from the water a small crystal,
that burned through the darkness with a blue fire, and gave it to
Noodle. 'Now I am your king, however far from you!' said Noodle. And
they answered, chanting:
'Under Heaven, over Hell,
You have broken the spell,
You are lord of the Well.'
'Lift me up!' said he; and the blue arms caught him and lifted him up;
from one to another they passed him in ascending circles, till he came
to the mouth of the well.
There overhead was the old witch, crouching and looking in to know
what had become of him; and her hair hung far down over her eyes into
the well. He caught her to him by it over the brink. 'Old witch,' he
said, 'you must change places with me now!' and he tossed her down to
the bottom of the well.
She went like a falling shuttlecock, shrieking as she fell; and as she
struck the water, the drowned bodies of the men she had sent there
came to the surface, and caught her by the feet and hair, and drew her
down, making an end of her, as she also had made of them.
[Illustration]
IV
THE PRINCESS MELILOT
When Noodle, carrying the crystal with him, set foot once more upon
dry land, straightway he was again upon the back of the Galloping
Plough, with the world flying away under him. But now weariness came
over him, and his head weighed this way and that, so that earth and
sky mixed themselves before his gaze, and he was so drugged with
sleep that he had no wits to bid the Plough slacken from its speed.
Therefore it happened that as they passed a wood, a hanging bough
caught him, and brushed him like a feather from his place, landing him
on a green bosom of grass, where he slept the sleep of the weary, nor
ever lifted his head to see the Plough fast disappearing over hill and
valley and plain, out of sound of his voice or sight of his eye.
When Noodle awoke and found that the Plough was gone, he was bitter
against himself for his folly. 'So poor a use to make of so noble
a steed!' he cried; 'no wonder it has gone from me to seek for a
worthier master! If by good fortune I find it again, needs must I do
great things by its aid to be worthy of its service.' So he set out,
following the furrow of its course, determined, however far he must
seek, to journey on till he found it.
For a whole year he travelled, till at length he came, footsore and
weary, to a deserted palace standing in the midst of an overgrown
garden. The great gates, which lay wide open, were overrun with
creepers, and the paths were green with weeds. That morning he had
thought that he saw far away on the hills the gleam of his silver
Plough, and now hope rose high, for he could see by its track that
the Plough had passed before him into the garden of the palace. 'O my
moonbeam,' he thought, 'is it here I shall find you at last?'
Within the garden there was a sound of cross questions and crooked
answers, of many talking with loud voices, and of one weeping apart
from the rest. When he got quite close, he was struck still with awe,
and joy, and wonder. For first there lay the Galloping Plough in the
middle of a green lawn, and round it a score of serving-men, tugging
at it and trying to make it move on. Near by stood an old woman,
wringing her hands and begging them to leave it alone: 'For,' cried
she, 'if the Plough touches but the feet of the Princess, she will be
uprooted, and will presently wither away and die. Of what use is it to
break one, if the other enchantments cannot be broken?'