Stories from the Ballads | Page 3

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. Little time is there to lose, for to-night is Hallowe'en, and this same night must the deed be done.
'On Hallowe'en, at the midnight hour, the fairy court will ride a mile beyond Carterhaugh to the cross at Milestone. Wait for me there, Janet, and ye will win your own true knight.'
'But many a knight will ride amid the fairy train. How shall I know you, my little wee man?' cried Janet.
'Neither among the first nor among the second company shall ye seek for me,' said young Tamlane. 'Only when ye see the third draw nigh give heed, Janet, for among them ye will find me.
'Not on the black horse, nor yet