Stories from the Ballads | Page 3

Ye shall
know that the moor belongs to me, me!' and Janet stamped her foot.
'My father made it all my own.'
But the young Tamlane took the white hand of the lady Janet in his
own, and so gentle were his words, so kind his ways, that soon the
maiden had no wish to leave the little wee man. Hand in hand they
wandered through the red rose-bushes that grew by the side of the well.
And in the light of the moon the elf knight wove his spell and made the
lady Janet his own.
Back to the castle sped Janet when the moonlight failed, but all her
smiles were gone. Lone and sad was she, all with longing for her little
elfin knight.
Little food would Janet eat in these days, little heed would she take of
the gowns she wore. Her yellow hair hung down uncombed, unbraided
around her sad, pale face.
Janet had been used to join in the games her four-and-twenty maidens
played. She had run the quickest, tossed the ball the highest, nor had
any been more full of glee than she.
Now the maidens might play as they listed, little did the lady Janet
care.
When evening fell, her four-and-twenty ladies would play their games
of chess. Many a game had Janet won in bygone days.
Now the ladies might win or lose as they pleased, little did the lady
Janet care. Her heart was away on the plain of Carterhaugh with her
little wee elfin knight, and soon she herself would be there.
Once more the moonbeams peeped in at her lattice window, and Janet
smiled, put on her fairest gown, and combed her yellow locks. She was

off and away to Carterhaugh.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Frontispiece.]
She reached the moor, she ran to the well, and there as before, there,
stood the steed of the little elfin man.
And Janet put out her hand and plucked a red red rose, but ere she had
plucked another, close beside her stood the young Tamlane.
'Why do ye pluck my roses?' asked the little elf man. But Janet had not
come to talk about the roses, and she paid no heed to his question.
'Tell me, Tamlane,' said the lady Janet, 'tell me, have ye always been a
little elfin man? Have ye never, in days gone by, been to the holy
chapel, and have ye never had made over you the sign of the Holy
Cross?'
'Indeed now, Janet, the truth will I tell!' cried the young Tamlane.
Then the lady Janet listened, and the lady Janet wept as the little wee
knight told her how he had been carried away by the Queen of the
Fairies.
But yet a stranger tale he told to the maiden.
'Ere I was carried off to Fairyland, Janet,' said young Tamlane, 'we
played as boy and girl in the old castle grounds, and well we loved each
other as we played together in those merry merry days of long ago. Ye
do not forget, Janet?'
Then back into the lady Janet's mind stole the memory of her
childhood's merry days, and of the little lad who had shared her toys
and played her games. Together they had made the walls of the old
castle ring with their laughter.
No, the lady Janet had not forgotten, and she knew that now, as in the
days of long ago, she loved the young Tamlane.

'Tell me,' she said, 'tell me how ye do spend your day in Fairyland?'
'Blithe and gay is the life we lead,' cried the little wee knight. 'There is
no sickness, no pain of any kind in Fairyland, Janet.
'In earth or air I dwell as pleases me the best. I can leave this little body
of mine an it pleases me, and come back to it an I will. I am small, as
you see me now, but when I will, I grow so small that a nut-shell is my
home, a rosebud my bed. But I can grow big as well, Janet, so big that I
needs must make my home in some lofty hall.
'Hither and thither we flit, bathe in the streams, frolic in the wind, play
with the sunbeams.
'Never would I wish to leave Fairyland, Janet, were it not that at the end
of each seven years an evil spirit comes to carry one of us off to his
dark abode. And I, so fair and fat am I, I fear that I shall be chosen by
the Evil one.
[Illustration: 'In earth or air I dwell as pleases me the best,']
'But weep not, Janet; an you wish to bring me back to the land of
mortals, I will e'en show you how that may be done.