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Updated: June 20, 2025
Prince Fairyfoot always thought the brook knew the forest's secret also, and sang it softly to the flowers as it ran along. And as for the flowers, they were beautiful; they grew as thickly as if they had been a carpet, and under them was another carpet of lovely green moss. The trees and the birds, and the brook and the flowers were Prince Fairyfoot's friends.
The moonlight seemed to grow brighter and purer at every step, and the sleeping flowers sweeter and lovelier, and the moss greener and thicken Fairyfoot felt so happy and gay that he forgot he had ever been sad and lonely in his life. Robin Goodfellow, too, seemed to be in very good spirits.
Just then Fairyfoot heard some enchanting sounds, faint, but clear. They were sounds of delicate music and of tiny laughter, like the ringing of fairy bells. "Ah!" said Robin Goodfellow, "there they are! But it seems to me they are rather gay, considering they have not seen me for so long. Turn into the path."
Suddenly he began to giggle, and to hug his knees up tight. "Do you wish to know what I'm laughing at?" he asked Fairyfoot. "Yes," Fairyfoot answered. The little man giggled more than ever. "I'm thinking about my wife," he said "the one I had when I was a robin. A nice rage she'll be in when I don't come home to-night!
When Robin Goodfellow came to take him home as usual he durst not let him know that he had overheard anything; but never was the boy so unwilling to get up as on that morning, and all day he was so weary that in the afternoon Fairyfoot fell asleep, with his head on a clump of rushes.
At first the king would not believe that there could be any use in his offer, because so many great physicians had failed to give any relief. The courtiers laughed Fairyfoot to scorn, the pages wanted to turn him out for an impudent impostor, and the prime-minister said he ought to be put to death for high-treason.
The wonder was that he was never tired nor sleepy, as people are apt to be who dance all night; but before the summer was ended Fairyfoot found out the reason. One night, when the moon was full, and the last of the ripe corn rustling in the fields, Robin Goodfellow came for him as usual, and away they went to the flowery green. The fun there was high, and Robin was in haste.
Thinking it might lead him to the fairies' dancing-ground, he followed that stream for many an hour, but it wound away into the heart of the forest, flowing through dells, falling over mossy rocks and at last leading Fairyfoot, when he was tired and the night had fallen, to a grove of great rose-trees, with the moon shining on it as bright as day, and thousands of nightingales singing in the branches.
"Well, well," said Robin Goodfellow, "that is a disagreeable state of affairs. Perhaps I can make it rather easier for you. You see that is a fairy whistle." "I thought so," said Fairyfoot. "Well," continued Robin Goodfellow, "you can always call your swine with it, so you will never be beaten again. Now, are you ever lonely?" "Sometimes I am very lonely indeed," ananswered the Prince.
He had a tiny scarlet silk pouch hanging at his girdle, and he put his hand into it and drew forth the smallest golden whistle you ever saw. "Blow that," he said, giving it to Fairyfoot, "and take care that you don't swallow it. You are such a tremendous creature!" Fairyfoot took the whistle and put it very delicately to his lips.
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