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"Tis none of mine," old Izan grumbled, "'tis the brat of a scatter-brained woman Kate, wife to Howel the mason. She came screeching at me saying the babe was a changeling I had left in place of her child of two years, and I should care for it. I have no mind for the tending of babes at my time of life, but I could not let the creature starve.
She had begun to teach Eleanor the use of herbs, especially the nature of those to be found in the neighborhood, and here Mother Izan was of great service. In her younger days she had ranged the country for miles in every direction, in search of healing plants, and she knew what grew in every swamp, glen, meadow and thicket.
The water is pure as the sunlight, and never fails. Hugh thinks it may be one of the places the heathen priests held sacred. It is not so very long since the people worshiped pagan gods." The lady traced a pattern in the dust with the point of her slender shoe. "I think," she said, "that I will take the children and ride over to see Mother Izan."
The women," she added dryly, "mostly comes for it after their men ha' made holiday." Eleanor was already off her pony, and Roger followed her. "We'll get you all you want, Mother Izan," she called back; "there's ever so much of it up here among the rocks." "I should like to know," queried Roger as they pulled and pried at the queer twisted roots, "why they call this Solomon's Seal.
"She hated it, when mother used some of her herb drinks last year." "I like Mother Izan," said Roger sturdily. "She cured my leg once, when a stone fell on it long before you came, when I was a little fellow." Roger was not quite ten. "She knows more about plants and animals than anybody. Ruric let her doctor his dog, the big one he calls Cuchullin."
There came a shout from the forest, and a boy on a brown moor pony went racing off after the truant beast, while a lady and a young girl looked on laughing. It was a very pretty chase, but at last Roger came back in triumph and tethered the donkey, repentant and lop-eared, to a wind-warped oak. "O Mother Izan!" cried Eleanor, "we've found a great parcel of herbs.
"But if Mother Izan can't keep her cow out of the bog I don't see how she could pull down a stone wall. It's like the story of Dinas Emrys father told me," he added with relish. "King Vortigern was building a castle on Snowdon, and every night whatever they had built in the daytime fell down. After awhile they sent for old Merlin to see what the matter was.
The four-petaled flowers, the cross-bearers, were never poisonous, and many of them, as mustard and cabbage, were valuable for food or medicine. But when Roger took this lore to Mother Izan for her opinion she remarked that if that was doctors' learning it was no wonder they killed more folk than they cured.
The disdained and the slaves shall go forth with song; but in a little while their oppressors shall be seen in the fire, amid the howling of wolves. Zan tzinitzcan impetlatl ipan, ohuaya; on tzinitzcan iceliztoca oncan izan in ninentlamatia, in zan icnoxochicuicatica inocon ya temohua ya ohuaya, ohuaya.
Where the moor met the woodland beyond the Fairies' Hill, old Izan went painfully searching for the herbs she had been wont to find there. The woodcutters had opened clearings that gave an unaccustomed look to the place. Fumiter, mercury, gilt-cups, four-leaved grass and the delicate blossoms of herb-robert came out to meet the sun with a half-scared look, and wished they had stayed underground.
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