North Cornwall Fairies and Legends Part 3

'Have you never looked for your soul?' queried the tiny fellow who, having lost his laugh, felt very sorry for the unhappy Giant who had lost so precious a thing as his soul.

'It was no good to look for my soul when I gave it away in exchange for wealth,' cried the Giant; 'I can never get it back again unless I empty this big pool of every drop of water that is in it.'

'And can't you do that, and you a giant?' asked the little Piskey in surprise.

'I am afraid I can't with a limpet-sh.e.l.l that has a hole in it; and I am not allowed to use any other.'

'Will you let me help you to empty the pool?' asked the tiny Piskey. 'I am only a little bit of a chap compared with you, I know--a G.o.d's little cow by the side of a plough-horse, the Man in the Lantern said,'

as the Giant laughed sardonically; 'and my d.i.n.ky hand is nothing for size, but it hasn't a hole in it.'

'You can help me if you like,' said the Giant with another sardonic laugh. 'It will be perhaps another case of a mouse freeing the lion!'

'Who knows?' cried the Piskey, who took the Giant's remark quite seriously; and climbing out of the huge ear, he slid down over the boulder to the pool, and making a dipper of his tiny hand, began to dip out water as fast as he could, and never stopped dipping once till a movement behind him made him pause, and, looking up, he saw the great big Giant on his feet towering above him like a tor, with an awful look of rage on his face.

'I can never, never, empty Dozmare Pool with a limpet-sh.e.l.l that has a hole in it,' howled the Giant--'no, not if I dip till the Day of Doom;'

and he flung the sh.e.l.l into the big pool. As he flung it a great blast of rage broke from him and lashed the dark water of the big pool in fury. He howled and howled, and his howls were heard in every part of the lonely waste surrounding the pool, and went roaring round and round the far-stretching moors, and were echoed by the desolate hills. By-and-by the Giant turned his back on the pool and strode away in the direction of the sea, howling and roaring as he went.

The little Piskey was so terrified by the Giant's roaring that he crept into a water-rat's hole, and never ventured out for a night and a day.

The second night after the Giant had gone he came out of the hole to see if he had returned, but he had not. He was disappointed in spite of the fright he had received, for the Giant had never told him whether he had seen his laugh, and he did not know where to go in search of it, or whom to ask if it had been seen.

As he thought about this, he became very miserable--almost as miserable as the unhappy Giant who had sold his soul, and he wished with all his heart that the kind little Man in the Lantern would come his way again. As he was wis.h.i.+ng this he looked over the big pool, which was very dark and unlit by single star, when something very soft and bright smote the black water on the opposite side of the pool.

Thinking it was the dear little Man in his Lantern come in answer to his wish, he fixed his gaze upon the brightness, and in a minute or two a little Barge shot out from the reeds and came swiftly towards him, and he saw (for the Piskeys can see in the dark like a cat) that the Barge was being rowed across the big pool by a little old man. The soft light that smote the water came from the prow of the little craft and lit up the face of the Bargeman, which was half turned towards the Piskey, and was very seared and brown.

When the Barge came near the spot where the Piskey was standing, the Tiny Bargeman said:

'Who are you, looking as if you had the world on your back? and what are you doing here this time of night, when all good folk ought to be in bed?'

'I am a poor unfortunate Piskey who has lost his laugh,' answered the tiny little Piskey, and his voice was very sad.

'It is a dreadful thing to lose your laugh,' said the little old Bargeman.

'It is,' responded the little Piskey. 'The little Man in the Lantern thought so too, and he brought me all the way from Rough Tor Marsh to Dozmare Pool in his Lantern to ask Giant Tregeagle if he had seen it.'

'And didn't you ask Giant Tregeagle that important question after the little Lantern Man had brought you so far?' asked the little Bargeman.

'I did, but he was so troubled about something he had lost--his soul it was--that he forgot to say whether he had seen my laugh.'

'That is a pity, for the Giant is now on St. Minver sand-hills making trusses of sand and sand-ropes to bind them with, and when the sand-ropes break in his hand--which they are sure to do when he tries to lift them--he will fly away to Loe Bar [7] to work at another impossible task.'

'How do you know that?' asked the little Piskey.

The Tiny Bargeman looked at the green-coated, red-capped little Piskey with a strange expression in his dark eyes for a second or two, and then he said:

'I have lived so long in the world that I know most things. People who knew me in a far-away time called me Merlin the Magician, and said I had all the secrets of the world in the back of my head.'

'Then you will be able to tell me where my laugh has gone to?' struck in the little Piskey eagerly.

'I was speaking more of the past than of the present,' said the Tiny Bargeman. 'Since the time of which I spoke, I have lived here by this lake, now called Dozmare Pool. I lived sealed up in a stone, into which the Lady of the Lake shut me till a hundred years or so ago.'

'How very unkind of the Lady to put you into a stone!' said the little Piskey indignantly. 'Whatever did she do it for?'

'Thereby hangs a tale which is not good for a small Piskey like you to hear,' returned the Tiny Bargeman, with another strange look in his dark, mysterious little eyes. 'When Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, shut me up in the stone--like a toad in a hole she said--she thought she had done for me, and that I should soon die. But Merlin, the man who worked magic, was not so easily got rid of.'

'And didn't you die?' asked the Piskey innocently.

'You must have lost your wits, as well as your laugh, to ask such a stupid question,' said the Tiny Bargeman. 'I did not die, or I should not be sitting in this Barge now. But I grew down to the tiny old fellow you now see me through working my way out of that dreadful stone. My magical powers have also dwindled, I fear; for they are as nothing to what they once were. Therefore I am no longer Merlin the Magician, but only Merlin the Bargeman of Dozmare Pool.'

'And can't you tell me where my laugh is?' asked the little Piskey wistfully. 'I am a miserable, poor thing without my laugh.'

'I'm sure you are,' said the Tiny Bargeman, 'and I'll do what I can to help you to find it. I wasn't shut up in a stone all those centuries for nothing, as, perhaps, you have not lost your laugh for nothing. I'll tell you at once that your laugh has never been near this desolate spot, but it is possible that Giant Tregeagle may have seen it on his wild flight down to St. Minver sand-hills, or maybe he has seen it on the golden dunes. I advise you to go there and ask him.'

'How can I get to the sand-hills?' asked the poor little Piskey. 'It would take me such a long time to get there with no dance in my feet; and there is no little Lantern Man here to give me a lift in his Lantern.'

'You need not trouble your head how you are to get to the sand-hills. I'll take you near there in my Barge.'

'In your Barge?' echoed the little Piskey, looking over his shoulder to the long stretch of country between him and the sea, and then at the great pool set like a cup on the top of the moors, with no visible outlet.

'You are wondering how I can take you to the great outer sea,'

said the Tiny Bargeman. 'For your satisfaction I will tell you that there is an underground waterway that leads down to Trebetherick Bay, close to St. Minver sand-hills. I will take you there in my Barge.'

'Why are you so kind?' asked the little Piskey, looking gratefully at the little old Bargeman. 'My brothers were not nearly so kind.'

'I saw you helping the wicked Giant to dip this great mere dry, and I thought so kind a deed deserved another,' answered the Little Bargeman lightly; 'and I told myself as I watched you that I would do you a kindness, if you needed a kindness. Will you let me take you to Trebetherick Bay?'

'Gladly,' answered the little Piskey.

'Get into my Barge, then,' cried the little old Bargeman; and the Piskey scrambled in and sat in the stern of the Barge facing the Bargeman.

'I like rowing about this pool,' remarked the Tiny Bargeman, as he put his little craft about and began to row from the sh.o.r.e. 'It has so many memories. It was here by this mere that the Lady of the Lake (not the one who shut me up in a stone) forged the wonderful Excalibur, the two-handled sword with the jewelled hilt, which she gave to Arthur the King, who, you know, afterwards ruled all the land. It was here that Sir Bedivere--one of the Knights of the far-famed Round Table--flung the sword by order of the wounded King, and was caught by the Lake Lady's uplifted arm. It was here---- But you are not listening,'

he cried, breaking off his sentence as he noticed that the little Piskey was not paying any attention to what he was saying.

'I'm afraid I wasn't,' he said, very much ashamed. 'I am very dull and stupid since I lost my laugh.'

'You can't be more stupid than I was when I was shut up in the stone,'

said the tiny old Bargeman; 'and I can well excuse your stupidity.'

He said nothing more, for just then the Barge reached the sh.o.r.e from which it had put off, and, without getting out, he reached over and touched a big stone with an oar. He had no sooner touched the stone than it sprang back, and revealed a dark, deep tunnel, into which the little Barge shot like a thing alive.

'This underground waterway was known to the fair ladies who lived by the pool, and who took away the wounded King in their little s.h.i.+p to the Vale of Avilion,' remarked the Bargeman when the stone shut up itself behind them.

'Did they?' asked the little Piskey, trying to look interested.

'Yes,' he answered; 'and they also knew of another waterway, which will never be revealed to anybody except by the Good King,' he added half to himself, looking straight before him into the darkness of the narrow pa.s.sage as he steered.

The tiny Barge, which was a very ancient-looking little craft, with a gilded dragon forming its prow, sped on. But for its size, it might well have been the same little s.h.i.+p to which Merlin, the little old Bargeman, had just referred. The waterway was very long and deep, and the water ran so swiftly that the Barge did not now require to be rowed. It was also very dark, and the only light that shone was the light from the little boat.

The little old Bargeman did not speak again till a roaring fell on their ears.