The Old Willow Tree, and Other Stories

In a cluster of sweet wild roses.

"Small birds in the brake fly up and down
Nor ever a bird flies single
And the woodman twines for his lass a crown
Where berries and beech commingle.

"Roe, fox and hare hold revel all,
Thro' flowerage the wee worm glances;
There great and small a-dancing fall
And the sun up in Heaven dances."

"What do you say to that?" asked the wood.

The heath said nothing. But, next year, he came over the fence.

"Are you mad?" screamed the wood. "Why, I forbade you to cross the fence!"

"You are not my mistress," said the heath. "I am doing as I said I would."

Then the wood called the red fox and shook her branches so that a quantity of beech-mast fell upon him and remained hanging in his skin:

"Run across to the heath, Foxie, and scatter the beech-mast out there!" said the wood.

"Right you are!" said the fox and jogged away.

And the hare did the same and the marten and the mouse. And the crow lent a hand, for old acquaintance' sake, and the wind took hold and blew and shook the branches till the mast flew far out into the heath.

"That's it!" said the wood. "Now let's see what comes of that."

"Yes, let us!" said the heath.

A certain time passed and the wood grew green and withered and the heath spread more and more and they did not talk to each other. But, one fine spring day, tiny little new-born beeches and oaks peeped up from the ground round about in the heather.

"What do you say now?" asked the wood, triumphantly. "My trees shall grow year after year, till they become tall and strong. Then they shall close their tops over you: no sun shall shine, no rain shall fall upon you; and you shall die, as a punishment for your presumption."

But the heath shook his black twigs earnestly:

"You don't know me," he said. "I am stronger than you think. Your trees will never turn green in me. I have bound the earth under me as firm as iron and your roots can't go through it. Just wait till next year! Then the little fellows you are so pleased with will all be dead."

"You're lying," said the wood.

But she was frightened.

3

Next year, it happened as the heath had said. The little oaks and beeches died as one tree. And now a terrible time came for the wood. The heath spread more and more; on every side there was heather instead of violets and anemones. None of the young trees grew up, the bushes withered, the old trees began to die in their tops, and it was a general calamity.

"It's no longer at all pleasant in the wood," said the nightingale. "I think I shall build somewhere else."

"Why, there's hardly a decent tree left to live in!" said the crow.

"The ground has become so hard that it's no longer possible to dig one's self a proper hole and burrow," said the fox.

The wood was at her wits' end. The beech stretched his branches to the sky in an appeal for help and the oak wrung his in silent despair.

"Sing your song once more!" said the heath.

"I have forgotten it," replied the wood, gloomily. "And my flowers are withered and my birds have flown away."

"Then I will sing," said the heath.

And he sang:

"A goodly song round the moorland goes
When the sun in the east leaps clearer;
And like blood or fire the heather glows
As to autumn the woods draw nearer.

"All day on the moor will the cotton-grass
Weave its white, long bands together;
And softly the snake and the adder pass
Through the stems of the tufted heather.

"On swinging tussock the lapwing leaps,
Lark's note above plover's swelling,
As the crook-backed cotter in silence creeps
From his lonely moorland dwelling."

4

Gradually, as the years passed, things looked worse and worse for the wood. The heath spread farther and farther, until it reached the other end of the wood. The great trees died and toppled down as soon as the storm took a fair hold of them: then they lay and rotted and the heather grew over them. There were now only half a score of the oldest and strongest trees left; but they were altogether hollow and had quite thin tops.

"My time is over, I must die," said the wood.

"Well, I told you so beforehand," replied the heath.

But then the men and women began to grow very frightened at the way the heather was using the wood:

"Where am I to get timber for my workshop?" cried the joiner.

"Where am I to get sticks to put under my pot?" screamed the goodwife.

"Where, oh where, are we to get fuel in the winter?" sighed the old man.

"Where am I to stroll with my sweetheart in the spring?" asked the young one.

Then, when they had looked at the poor old trees for a bit, to see if there was anything to be done with them, they took their spades and mattocks and ran up the hills to where the heath began.

"You may as well save yourselves the trouble," said the heath. "I am not to be dug into."