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Tourraine, and all the country on the banks of the Loire, has a kind of popular mythology of its own; it is the land of fairies and elfins, and there is scarcely a glen, a grove, or a shady recess, but what has its tale belonging to it. What one of the French poets has said of the Seine, may be said with more truth of the Loire all its women are queens, and all its young men poets.
He carried a Bludgeon with a Horse's Head on it. In order to attract the Attention of Mr. Mother!" "Cut it out!" exclaimed the Artist. "What's matter? Huh?" "Oh, how you startled me," said the Author sitting up among the Rugs. "Just as you came in I was writing about the Fays and the Elfins. I was in the deep Greenwood, the velvet Sward kissing my wan Cheek and the Leaves whispering overhead."
What were those wraith-like things those tiny forms dancing weirdly on the roaring waters? Ah, he knew. They were the elfins of his brain that had tormented him with their music and fled at his approach. They had flown from their little cells, and were holding court on the storm-waves like fairies on the green. It was like them to love the danger and the tumult and the night.
"I see," said the Artist. "A Dark Change from an Interior to a Wood Set. That's all right if you can do it quick. Who did you say you was doing it for the Fays?" "I mentioned the Fays and Elfins," replied the Author. "I've heard of the Fays," said the Artist. "They're out on the Orpheum Circuit now. But the Elfins no. What kind of a Turn do they do?" "Ah, the Elfins!" said the Author.
"There seems to be a supernatural influence pervading the air to-day," he said, in a low-tone, "for I sometimes imagine that flitting spirits become partially visible. On the pendent icicles and jewelled twigs, me thinks I sometimes behold for an instant the prismatic rays of elfins' eyes " "Don't believe it," said Joe; "or if it is so, they are weeping at the cold, and will soon be frozen up."
Nevertheless it was not alone the thought of trolls and elfins that disturbed him. At that time the wild boar and the wolf were denizens of the forest wherein he walked animals which would indeed be welcomed in the daylight by a band of hunters with their spears and hounds, but which might give some trouble to a youth appearing alone in their midst on a dark night.
But the blue hawk that lives in the corrie o' the Dreichil can speak o' kelpies and the dwarfs that bide in the hill. The heron, the lang solemn fellow, kens o' the greenwood fairies and the wood elfins, and the wild geese that squatter on the tap o' the Muneraw will croak to ye of the merry maidens and the girls o' the pool.
He had heard it snap that moment within his brain. And it was pouring upward, that river of song. The elfins had come back, and were quiring like the immortals. She would hear them down there, in her cold, nameless grave, with the ceaseless requiem of the waters above her, and smile and rejoice that death had come to her to give him speech.
We had to cross a few narrow fiords, and at last quite a wide gulf; the tide, then high, allowed us to pass over without delay, and to reach the hamlet of Alftanes, one mile beyond. That evening, after having forded two rivers full of trout and pike, called Alfa and Heta, we were obliged to spend the night in a deserted building worthy to be haunted by all the elfins of Scandinavia.
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