The Gold of Fairnilee | Page 6

on fire. Then the people would hurry up to the Castle, and find that it was not on fire at all. When they returned, all the earth would be just as it was before they began, and they would give up in despair. Nobody could ever see the man again that gave the alarm.
"Who could he be, nurse?" Randal asked.
"Just one of the good folk, I 'm thinking; but it's no weel to be speaking o' them."
Randal knew that the "good folk" meant the fairies. The old nurse called them the good folk for fear of offending them. She would not speak much about them, except now and then, when the servants had been making merry.
"And is there any treasure hidden near Fairnilee, nursie?" asked little Jean.
"Treasure, my bonny doo! Mair than a' the men about the toon could carry away frae morning till nicht. Do ye no ken the auld rhyme?--
'Atween the wet ground and the dry The gold of Fairnilee doth lie.'
And there's the other auld rhyme--
'Between the Camp o' Rink And Tweed water clear, Lie nine kings' ransoms For nine hundred year!'"
Randal and Jean were very glad to hear so much gold was near them as would pay nine kings' ransoms. They took their small spades and dug little holes in the Camp of Rink, which is a great old circle of stonework, surrounded by a deep ditch, on the top of a hill above the house. But Jean was not a very good digger, and even Randal grew tired. They thought they would wait till they grew bigger, and then find the gold.
[Illustration: Chapter Five]
CHAPTER V.
--The Good Folk
"EVERYBODY knows there's fairies," said the old nurse one night when she was bolder than usual. What she said we will put in English, not Scotch as she spoke it. "But they do not like to be called fairies. So the old rhyme runs:
'If ye call me imp or elf, . I warn you look well to yourself; If ye call me fairy, Ye 'll find me quite contrary; If good neighbour you call me, Then good neighbour I will be; But if you call me kindly sprite, I 'll be your friend both day and night.'
So you must always call them 'good neighbours' or 'good folk,' when you speak of them."
"Did you ever see a fairy, nurse?" asked Randal.
"Not myself, but my mother knew a woman--they called her Tibby Dickson, and her husband was a shepherd, and she had a bairn, as bonny a bairn as ever you saw. And one day she went to the well to draw water, and as she was coming back she heard a loud scream in her house. Then her heart leaped, and fast she ran and flew to the cradle; and there she saw an awful sight--not her own bairn, but a withered imp, with hands like a mole's, and a face like a frog's, and a mouth from ear to ear, and two great staring eyes."
"What was it?" asked Jeanie, in a trembling voice.
"A fairy's bairn that had not thriven," said nurse; "and when their bairns do not thrive, they just steal honest folks' children and carry them away to their own country."
"And where's that?" said Randal.
"It's under the ground," said nurse, "and there they have gold and silver and diamonds; and there's the Queen of them all, that's as beautiful as the day. She has yellow hair-down to her feet, and she has blue eyes, like the sky on a fine day, and her voice like all the mavises singing in the spring. And she is aye dressed in green, and all her court in green; and she rides a white horse with golden bells on the bridle."
"I would like to go there and see her," said Randal.
"Oh, never say that, my bairn; you never know who may hear you! And if you go there, how will you come back again? and what will your mother do? and Jean here, and me that's carried you many a time in weary arms when you were a babe?"
"Can't people come back again?" asked Randal.
"Some say 'Yes,' and some say 'No.' There was Tarn Hislop, that vanished away the day before all the lads and your own father went forth to that weary war at Flodden, and the English, for once, by guile, won the day. Well, Tam Hislop, when the news came that all must arm and mount and ride, he could nowhere be found. It was as if the wind had carried him away. High and low they sought him, but there was his clothes and his jack,* and his sword and his spear, but no Tam Hislop. Well, no man heard more of him for seven whole years, not till last year, and then he came back: sore tired