The Red Fairy Book - Andrew Lang (best novels for beginners TXT) 📗

to Renelde and to stop

her wheel.

 

Renelde obeyed, and that evening Guilbert asked her:

 

`Has the Count given his consent to our marriage?’

 

`No,’ said Renelde.

 

`Continue your work, sweetheart. It is the only way of gaining

it. You know he told you so himself.’

V

The following morning, as soon as she had put the house in order,

the girl sat down to spin. Two hours after there arrived some

soldiers, and when they saw her spinning they seized her, tied her

arms and legs, and carried her to the bank of the river, which was

swollen by the late rains.

 

When they reached the bank they flung her in, and watched her

sink, after which they left her. But Renelde rose to the surface,

and though she could not swim she struggled to land.

 

Directly she got home she sat down and began to spin.

 

Again came the two soldiers to the cottage and seized the girl,

carried her to the river bank, tied a stone to her neck and flung her

into the water.

 

The moment their backs were turned the stone untied itself.

Renelde waded the ford, returned to the hut, and sat down to spin.

 

This time the Count resolved to go to Locquignol himself; but,

as he was very weak and unable to walk, he had himself borne in

a litter. And still the spinner spun.

 

When he saw her he fired a shot at her, as he would have fired

at a wild beast. The bullet rebounded without harming the spinner,

who still spun on.

 

Burchard fell into such a violent rage that it nearly killed him.

He broke the wheel into a thousand pieces, and then fell fainting on

the ground. He was carried back to the castle, unconscious.

 

The next day the wheel was mended, and the spinner sat down

to spin. Feeling that while she was spinning he was dying, the

Count ordered that her hands should be tied, and that they should

not lose sight of her for one instant.

 

But the guards fell asleep, the bonds loosed themselves, and the

spinner spun on.

 

Burchard had every nettle rooted up for three leagues round.

Scarcely had they been torn from the soil when they sowed themselves

afresh, and grew as you were looking at them.

 

They sprung up even in the well-trodden floor of the cottage, and

as fast as they were uprooted the distaff gathered to itself a supply

of nettles, crushed, prepared, and ready for spinning.

 

And every day Burchard grew worse, and watched his end

approaching.

VI

Moved by pity for her husband, the Countess at last found out

the cause of his illness, and entreated him to allow himself to be

cured. But the Count in his pride refused more than ever to give

his consent to the marriage.

 

So the lady resolved to go without his knowledge to pray for

mercy from the spinner, and in the name of Renelde’s dead mother

she besought her to spin no more. Renelde gave her promise, but

in the evening Guilbert arrived at the cottage. Seeing that the cloth

was no farther advanced than it was the evening before, he inquired

the reason. Renelde confessed that the Countess had prayed her not

to let her husband die.

 

`Will he consent to our marriage?’

 

`No.’

 

`Let him die then.’

 

`But what will the Countess say?’

 

`The Countess will understand that it is not your fault; the Count

alone is guilty of his own death.’

 

`Let us wait a little. Perhaps his heart may be softened.’

 

So they waited for one month, for two, for six, for a year. The

spinner spun no more. The Count had ceased to persecute her, but

he still refused his consent to the marriage. Guilbert became

impatient.

 

The poor girl loved him with her whole soul, and she was more

unhappy than she had been before, when Burchard was only tormenting

her body.

 

`Let us have done with it,’ said Guilbert.

 

`Wait a little still,’ pleaded Renelde.

 

But the young man grew weary. He came more rarely to

Locquignol, and very soon he did not come at all. Renelde felt as

if her heart would break, but she held firm.

 

One day she met the Count. She clasped her hands as if in

prayer, and cried:

 

`My lord, have mercy!’

 

Burchard the Wolf turned away his head and passed on.

 

She might have humbled his pride had she gone to her spinning-wheel again, but she did nothing of the sort.

 

Not long after she learnt that Guilbert had left the country.

He did not even come to say good-bye to her, but, all the same, she

knew the day and hour of his departure, and hid herself on the road

to see him once more.

 

When she came in she put her silent wheel into a corner, and

cried for three days and three nights.

VII

So another year went by. Then the Count fell ill, and the

Countess supposed that Renelde, weary of waiting, had begun her

spinning anew; but when she came to the cottage to see, she found

the wheel silent.

 

However, the Count grew worse and worse till he was given up

by the doctors. The passing bell was rung, and he lay expecting

Death to come for him. But Death was not so near as the doctors

thought, and still he lingered.

 

He seemed in a desperate condition, but he got neither better

nor worse. He could neither live nor die; he suffered horribly,

and called loudly on Death to put an end to his pains.

 

In this extremity he remembered what he had told the little

spinner long ago. If Death was so slow in coming, it was because

he was not ready to follow him, having no shroud for his burial.

 

He sent to fetch Renelde, placed her by his bedside, and ordered

her at once to go on spinning his shroud.

 

Hardly had the spinner begun to work when the Count began

to feel his pains grow less.

 

Then at last his heart melted; he was sorry for all the evil he

had done out of pride, and implored Renelde to forgive him. So

Renelde forgave him, and went on spinning night and day.

 

When the thread of the nettles was spun she wove it with her

shuttle, and then cut the shroud and began to sew it.

 

And as before, when she sewed the Count felt his pains grow

less, and the life sinking within him, and when the needle made the

last stitch he gave his last sigh.

VIII

At the same hour Guilbert returned to the country, and, as he

had never ceased to love Renelde, he married her eight days later.

 

He had lost two years of happiness, but comforted himself with

thinking that his wife was a clever spinner, and, what was much

more rare, a brave and good woman.[24]

 

[24] Ch. Denlin.

FARMER WEATHERBEARD

THERE was once upon a time a man and a woman who had an

only son, and he was called Jack. The woman thought that

it was his duty to go out to service, and told her husband that he

was to take him somewhere.

 

`You must get him such a good place that he will become master

of all masters,’ she said, and then she put some food and a roll of

tobacco into a bag for them.

 

Well, they went to a great many masters, but all said that

they could make the lad as good as they were themselves, but

better than that they could not make him. When the man came

home to the old woman with this answer, she said, `I shall be

equally well pleased whatever you do with him; but this I do say,

that you are to have him made a master over all masters.’ Then

she once more put some food and a roll of tobacco into the bag,

and the man and his son had to set out again.

 

When they had walked some distance they got upon the ice,

and there they met a man in a carriage who was driving a black

horse.

 

`Where are you going?’ he said.

 

`I have to go and get my son apprenticed to someone who will

be able to teach him a trade, for my old woman comes of such

well-to-do folk that she insists on his being taught to be master of

all masters,’ said the man.

 

`We are not ill met, then,’ said the man who was driving, `for

I am the kind of man who can do that, and I am just looking out

for such an apprentice. Get up behind with you,’ he said to the

boy, and off the horse went with them straight up into the air.

 

`No, no, wait a little!’ screamed the father of the boy. `I

ought to know what your name is and where you live.’

 

`Oh, I am at home both in the north and the south and the

east and the west, and I am called Farmer Weatherbeard,’ said

the master. `You may come here again in a year’s time, and then

I will tell you if the lad suits me.’ And then they set off again

and were gone.

 

When the man got home the old woman inquired what had

become of the son.

 

`Ah! Heaven only knows what has become of him!’ said the man.

`They went up aloft.’ And then he told her what had happened.

 

But when the woman heard that, and found that the man did

not at all know either when their son would be out of his apprentice-ship, or where he had gone, she packed him off again to find out,

and gave him a bag of food and a roll of tobacco to take away

with him.

 

When he had walked for some time he came to a great wood,

and it stretched before him all day long as he went on, and when

night began to fall he saw a great light, and went towards it.

After a long, long time he came to a small hut at the foot of a

rock, outside which an old woman was standing drawing water up

from a well with her nose, it was so long.

 

`Good-evening, mother,’ said the man.

 

`Good-evening to you too,’ said the old woman. `No one

has called me mother this hundred years.’

 

`Can I lodge here to-night?’ said the man.

 

`No,’ said the old woman. But the man took out his roll of

tobacco, lighted a little of it, and then gave her a whiff. Then

she was so delighted that she began to dance, and thus the man

got leave to stay the night there. It was not long before he asked

about Farmer Weatherbeard.

 

She said that she knew nothing about him, but that she ruled over

all the four-footed beasts, and some of them might know him. So

she gathered them all together by blowing a whistle which she

had, and questioned them, but there was not one of them which

knew anything about Farmer Weatherbeard.

 

`Well,’ said the old woman, `there are three of us sisters; it

may be that one of the other two knows where he is to be found.

You shall have the loan of my horse and carriage, and then you

will get there by night; but her house is three hundred miles off,

go the nearest way you will.’

 

The man set out and got