Thistle and Thyme (8 page)

There was a band of these good monks who settled in a wild deserted place at the head of a deep glen near the sea in the north of Scotland. At first there was only a half dozen of them with a leader they called their abbot. The monks made their homes in the caves along the sides of the glen.

The people of the land at the time were wild and savage and given to the worship of demons, but the monks brought them to gentler ways and taught them to live as people lived in the lands from which they had come.

As time went by, more monks came to joint the band, and the people for love of them built them an abbey so that they no longer needed to dwell in caves.

For love, too, in time the people had a peal of bells made for the chapel of the abbey. There were five bells from the smallest silver-tongued one to the great bell which sent praise to God in deep brazen tones.

The bells were cast in the churchyard of the abbey and made of the finest metal that could be had, by the most skillful smiths that could be found.

Now, in those days there were pirates sailing up and down the sea along the coasts, robbing and plundering wherever they could find prey. What they liked best to find was an abbey, for some of the abbeys had great wealth because of the gifts made to them of money and golden vessels and jewelled cups and the like.

The abbey of the glen was one of the richest, for it had prospered greatly in the long years that had passed since the first monks came. Men of wealth and great standing had sent their sons to be schooled there and had paid generouly for the service, and many were the priceless gifts that had been given to the abbey.

The monks of all abbeys lived in terror of the pirates, and those of the abbey of the glen feared them no less than the rest. Still, the abbey was well hidden and hardly to be seen from the sea, for the stones with which it had been built were the same color as the gray rocks of the glen. Besides that, great trees grew between the abbey and the sea, and screened it with their wide-spreading branches.

The wicked pirates might never have found the abbey at all, had it not been for one young lay brother.

The young lay brother loved the sweet-singing bells so dearly that he would have sent their voices to Heaven in praise every hour of day and night. But when it was known that the pirates were nearby, it was forbidden that anyone ring the bells lest the pirates hear and come down upon the abbey to raid it. It was always the pirates' way to seek for an abbey by day, and when they had found where it was, they would steal on it by night and take it by surprise.

As happens very often, temptation was too great for the young lay brother. For a while he fought against it and only laid his hand lovingly but lightly on the bell ropes when he passed by during the forbidden times. But one evening as he was on his way to vespers, he not only laid his hand upon the ropes but, thinking a very little peal would be scarcely heard, he gently pulled the rope of the smallest bell.

Clear and silvery, one chiming note rang out, down to the shore and across the waters of the sea. But hidden from the abbey around a point of rock a pirate ship lay moored, to take on fresh water. The silver note came to the ears of the captain of the pirate ship, who knew at once that the sound of a bell meant there was an abbey somewhere near.

As soon as they had finished storing the water in the ship, the captain sent out a spy to find where the abbey lay. Then they waited in hiding, until the moon rose and lit the way, and soon after, the pirates were battering at the gates of the abbey.

The abbot knew by the fury of the attack that pirates were upon them. He ordered the monks and their pupils to carry away the chests of the abbey treasures, and flee by a small door at the side to the caves of the glen where the pirates would not think to seek for them. He stayed back himself to gather the cross and the vessels from the altar. A brave man was that abbot, for he had no more than reached the little side door with the rood and the holy vessels gathered into the skirts of his robe when the pirates broke down the gates and rushed into the abbey grounds. He heard their shouts of rage when they found the abbey deserted and the treasure not to be found. He heard their cries of disappointment at finding so little plunder, and then he heard them shout that they would have the bells since there was naught else worth the taking.

When the abbot heard they were going to take the bells that the people had cast and given the abbey for love, he forgot his own danger. He turned at the door and, holding high the cross he had saved from the altar, he called the wrath of God down upon them all.

“Have the bells!” he cried at the end. “Take them if you will! But they will give you neither profit nor good.”

The pirates neither saw the abbot nor heard a word of his curse. Up in the bell tower they were, tearing loose the bells and hauling them down the ladder from the bell loft with great clamor and noise.

So the abbot went away from the abbey and made his way up the glen in safety.

When the pirates had the bells all down, they rejoiced to have such a great pile of metal of a quality so fine and pure. They were sure of getting a good price for it when they got it to the foreign ports where they'd offer the bells for sale. They carried them off to their ship, but before they left they set fire to the abbey.

When they were back on their ship again, they stored the bells in the hold and then they prepared to set sail. The captain of the pirates looked back at the burning abbey and at the sky, red with dancing flames that seemed to reach clear to the moon. He roared with laughter and vowed that he'd never set a grander bonfire nor found loot more to his liking.

But while he stood there looking and laughing, the stolen bells in the hold began to peal. First rang the silver-tongued smallest bell. Then, one by one the others joined in, and last of all the great bell boomed out its deep-toned song. And the peal they pealed was the death knell!

Then the pirate crew came running to the captain. Near-deafened they were by the sound of the bells. They screamed out to the captain that something was amiss with the ship, for the sails were all set and the wind was stiff and the seas running free, but the sails would not fill and the ship would not move at all. The bells were accursed, they shouted.

So then they ran to open the hold and throw the bells into the sea. But before the crew could lay hand upon the hatches, they flew open. There lay the bells rolling gently from side to side and tolling as they rolled. Before the terrified pirates' eyes the bells began to increase in size, growing bigger and bigger and bigger. The timbers of the ship creaked and strained, but the bells kept on growing until at last the ship could contain them no longer. With a great wild noise of crashing masts and breaking beams, the ship flew apart, and down to the bottom of the sea went pirates, bells, and all.

The monks who had been drawn from their caves at the sound of their bells, watched in wonder. They could see the ship by the light of the flames and the moon. When the ship went down, they grieved at the fate of the bells they loved so well. But they said to each other that the hand of God is ever heavy upon evildoers.

Now when the people of the countryside saw the flames in the sky, they rushed to the abbey, fearing that all the monks were dead. Great was the joy of the people when they found their monks safe and unharmed. In thanksgiving for their safety, they built the monks a new chapel and abbey and had a new peal of bells cast, as fine as the lost ones.

There were five of them, just as there had been before, and all were the same as before, from the silver-tongued smallest bell to the brazen-toned largest bell of all. And it is a strange queer thing that whenever the new bells were pealed and sent their noble tones over the waters of the sea, there came back from the sea an answering peal. There are those who will tell you 'tis only some odd sort of echo, but the truth of it is that it is the drowned bells the pirates stole, ringing back from the bottom of the sea. Even to this day you can hear them if you listen.

The Beekeeper
and the Bewitched Hare

T
HERE WAS A LAD ONCE WHO LIVED IN A COTTAGE ACROSS
the moor. He was a beekeeper, and made his living selling the honey that his bees gathered from wild flowers and heather on the moor. He lived alone, and maybe he would have been lonely if it had not been for his bees. He knew them so well, and they trusted him so completely, that he could go among them as he pleased. There were folks who said he even knew their language and what they said with their buzzing, but he said it was only the tone of it that gave him a notion of what they meant. However it was, they buzzed to him and he talked to them, and whether they understood each other or not, they were all happy together.

One evening as he stood on his doorstep in the gloaming, he heard the sound of hounds baying across the moor, and soon a hare came flying out of the heather with two dogs chasing close after.

When the hare saw him standing there, it leaped into its arms for safety's sake. The lad slipped it inside his shirt and, catching up a stick, he soon drove the dogs yelping away.

When he was sure the hounds were gone, he took the hare out to stroke it and soothe it before he let it go. It made no effort to get away from him and lay quietly in his arms, only trembling a bit from the fright it had got. When it seemed to be over its fricht, he set it down and turned to go into the house to get his supper.

He thought the hare would run away into the thicket behind the house, but it followed him into the room. As he moved about getting his meal, it hopped after him. When he sat down to the table and began to eat, it leaped to the table and sat up prettily beside his plate.

“Och!” he laughed. “So you've come to supper, have you?” and he fed it bits from his plate. Having it close, he took a look at it and saw what he'd not noticed before. The hare's eyes were as blue as the summer skies over the moor.

“I've seen many a black-eyed hare,” said the lad, “and I've seen pink-eyed hares with white coats in the animal fanciers' shops, but never before have I seen a blue-eyed hare!”

It was such an odd creature that it pleased him. And since it seemed to be contented to bide with him, he decided to keep it for a pet. It was that clever and knowing. He'd ne'er seen its like before.

The next morning he took the hare out to show it to the bees. Every beekeeper knows that bees like to be told what's going on in the place where they live, and will not stay there happily unless they are. If the hare was to bide with him, the bees must know about it.

So the beekeeper carried the creature from hive to hive. “This is my hare,” he told the bees, “that's going to live in my house with me. So make yourselves acquainted.”

The bees flew about the hare as if they were looking it over, buzzing noisily to each other the while. The hare showed no fear of them and sat quietly till they seemed satisfied and flew off again on their business of honey gathering. After that, the hare followed him about at his work and took no more harm from the bees than he did himself.

One day as he was working among the hives with the hare at his side, he saw an old woman coming along the track over the moor. He thought maybe she'd be coming to buy a comb of honey, so he stood and waited for her.

But when she came up to him, she said naught at all about honey. “That's a fine-looking hare you've got,” she said, looking down at it.

“Aye,” said he shortly. She was a stranger to him and he did not like the looks of her. She had a sly air about her that struck him unpleasantly.

“What will you take for her?” she asked.

“I'm not offering her for sale,” said he.

“I'll give you a bonnie piece of gold for her,” coaxed the old woman.

“I'm not selling her!” the beekeeper said roughly.

The old woman made as if to reach down and take up the hare. As she did so, a bee that had been hovering above the hare's head gave a shrill warning buzz. In a trice, out from the hives and in from the moor swept a great swarm of bees. They set themselves close together, buzzing angrily, and put themselves between the old woman and the hare. The old woman took a few steps back in fright, and the bees flew at her, driving her back to the moor. She ran faster than you'd think one so old could run and as she ran she called back over her shoulder, “Look well to yourself and your hare, beekeeper!” But the bees drove her on until she was out of the lad's sight.

Not long after, he was in the town across the moor with some honey he had brought in to sell, for it was market day. As he stopped to pass the time of day with a man he knew, an old woman walked by. As she passed close to him he saw that it was the old body his bees had driven across the moor. When she was gone he said to the man, “Who was that old besom just now?”

The man made a forked sign with his fingers and looked terribly frighted. “Eist!” he said. “Do not let her be hearing you!” Then he whispered, “They do be saying she's a witch and has the evil eye!”

Well, maybe she was and maybe she wasn't. The beekeeper wouldn't know about that. But in any case he was going to do what she told him to do as she ran away over the moor. He'd be sure to look well to himself and his hare. He'd grown that fond of it that he'd have grieved sorely had anything harmed it. He knew the bees would watch over it by day, but he took to barring the doors and the windows at night. And he kept a wary eye out for strangers coming by.

Summer went by and autumn came. The first frosts lay on the ground at morn. There were berries on the brambles for the picking. And now the bees were seeking their hives for the winter and seldom did one see more than a stray one or two, for there was no more honey to be gathered from the hedgerows or the moor.

The singing birds had flown south and, like the birds, the gypsy caravans were flitting southward too. Few of the vans came over the moor, for although it was much shorter than the road through the towns, it was barely more than a rough track, and there were few trees to offer shelter or wood for kindling. So when the beekeeper saw a van coming across the moor one chill October day, it surprised him. He came out to the doorstep as it passed by in the road beyond his gate. Being a friendly, civil soul, the beekeeper raised a hand in greeting to the young gypsy man who sat on the seat of the van, driving the horse. The driver saluted with his whip as they passed by and the lad watched him out of sight. The beekeeper went on with his morning's work, and it wasn't till after he'd had his dinner at noon that he had reason to come to the door again. When he did, he saw that something was lying in the road just past the gate. He walked down to look at it and found that it was a sack of grain. He knew at once that it had dropped from the gypsy van. They'd lost it from under the wagon bed where they usually carried such things.