the fold and telling tales
and singing songs. Our whole West Country is full of the most wonderful
stories one might seek in vain for among the world of books and
scholars--of giants and dwarfs, fairies, wizards, water-horse, and
sea-maiden. The most unlikely looking peasant that ever put his foot to
a _caschrom_, the most uncouth hunter that ever paunched a deer, would
tell of such histories in the most scrupulous language and with cunning
regard for figure of speech. I know that nowadays, among people of
esteemed cultivation in the low country and elsewhere, such a
diversion might be thought a waste of time, such narratives a sign of
superstition. Of that I am not so certain. The practice, if it did
no more, gave wings to our most sombre hours, and put a point on the
imagination. As for the superstition of the tales of _ceilidh_ and
_buaile-mhart_ I have little to say. Perhaps the dullest among us
scarce credited the giant and dwarf; but the Little Folks are yet on our
topmost hills.

A doctor laughed at me once for an experience of my own at the Piper's
Knowe, on which any man, with a couchant ear close to the grass, may
hear fairy tunes piped in the under-world.

"A trick of the senses," said he.

"But I can bring you scores who have heard it!" said I.

"So they said of every miracle since time began," said he; "it but
proves the widespread folly and credulity of human nature."

I protested I could bring him to the very spot or whistle him the very
tunes; but he was busy, and wondered so sedate a man as myself could
cherish so strange a delusion.

Our fold on Elrigmore was in the centre of a flat meadowland that lies
above Dhu Loch, where the river winds among rush and willow-tree, a
constant whisperer of love and the distant hills and the salt inevitable
sea. There we would be lying under moon and star, and beside us the
cattle deeply breathing all night long. To the simple tale of old, to
the humble song, these circumstances gave a weight and dignity they may
have wanted elsewhere. Never a teller of tale, or a singer of song so
artless in that hour and mood of nature, but he hung us breathless on
his every accent: we were lone inhabitants of a little space in a
magic glen, and the great world outside the flicker of our fire hummed
untenanted and empty through the jealous night.

It happened on a night of nights--as the saying goes--that thus we
were gathered in the rushy flat of Elrigmore and our hearts ea