A FAIRY-TALE.*
Jr we are to have a fairy-tale—and it is quite possible to have many things far less readable—it is well to have the real thing; and this Mr. Andrew Lang has given us in The Gold of Fairnilee. Every one knows the story of True Thomas, and how the fairies carried him off to their mysterious realm, and how he came back, and what he had to tell of his ex- periences. But True Thomas belongs to a somewhat remote time, when the powers of fairyland were still flourishing. It is almost startling to find them powerful enough some ten years after the Battle of Flodden to carry off an able-bodied young
gentleman. We had thought that they did not survive the invention of the printing-press, though, indeed, the Germans have a story of a mischievous imp that haunts printing-houses, and brings about some of the extraordinary mistakes that no one can account for. But it is a fact, as the present "true history" assures us, that Randal Ker, son of a Scottish Knight who fell at Flodden, having had the rashness to wish, at a certain wishing-well "on a hill between Yarrow and Tweed," that he might meet the Fairy Queen, was carried off by her to her own dominions, and did not come back till he was a grown man. Now, these disappearances are commonly accounted for alter what we may call the manner of Enhemerus, the father of rationalists. The lad who has been spirited away is found to have run off to sea, or been kid-
napped, or disposed of in some other commonplace way. There is nothing of the kind here. Randal Ber does actually become a denizen of fairyland, and might have been there to this day,
but that he happens to fall in with the water that can dispel the fairyland charm, and make it appear the " forlorn " place that it really is. Here is a fine passage hi which this disenchantment is described :—
" The gold vanished from the embroidered curtains, the light grew dim and wretched like a misty winter day. The Fairy Queen that had seemed so happy and beautiful in her bright dress, was a weary, pale woman in black, with a melancholy face and melancholy eyes. She looked as if she had been there for thousands of years, always longing for the sunlight and the earth, and the wind and rain. There were sleepy poppies twisted in her hair, instead of a golden crown. And the knights and ladies were changed. They looked but half-alive ; and some, in place of their gay green robes, were dressed in rusty mail pierced with spears and stained with blood. And some were in burial-robes of white, and some in dresses torn or dripping with water, or marked with the burning of fire. All were dressed strangely, in some ancient fashion. . . . . . And their festivals were not of dainty meats, but of cold, tasteless flesh, and of beans, and pulse, and such things as the old heathens, before the coming of the Gospel, used to offer to the dead. It was dreadful to see them at such feasts, and dancing and riding, and pretending to be merry with hollow faces and wnhappy eyes."
There is something very weirdly suggestive in this. Randal
• The Gold of Pairniles. By Andrew Lang. Bristol: J. Arrowsmith. London : S'inpkin and Marshall.
then comes from the realm of fairies, comes back to his mother, and to Nancy, the old nurse, and, above all, to Jean, a fair English girl whom his retainers had carried off some years before from a Border manor-house. And here comes in the "gold of Fairnilee." How it was won, and whether it followed the way of most fairy treasures, and turned with the morning light to dry sticks and withered leaves, the reader must find for himself. And this he may do by reading one of the pleasantest books of the Christmas season.
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