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Updated: June 19, 2025
He often ran ahead of his mother as she led the herd, and Rol, coming on them one day, laughed aloud at the sight as they passed, old and young, fat Simle' and antlered Storbuk, a great brown herd, all led, as it seemed, by a little White Calf. So they drifted away to the high mountains, to be gone all summer.
And then the wind would rage after its lost prey, and rush round the house, rattling and shrieking at window and door. In a lull, after one such loud gust, Rol lifted his head in surprise and listened. A lull had also come on the babel of talk, and thus could be heard with strange distinctness a sound outside the door the sound of a child's voice, a child's hands.
At sight of it, and the blood-stained linen, she drew in her breath suddenly, clasped Rol to her hard, hard till he began to struggle. Her face was hidden behind the boy, so that none could see its expression. It had lighted up with a most awful glee. Afar, beyond the fir-grove, beyond the low hill behind, the absent Christian was hastening his return.
'I'd a been tickled with it thirty years ago, but now-folks 'ud think I was crazy. 'Never heard such fol de rol, said Uncle Eb. 'If ye move t' the village it'll come handy t' go t' meetin' in. That seemed to be unanswerable and conclusive, at least for the time being, and the silk was laid away.
There was nothing ominous about this young, bright, fair reality, though her aspect was strange. Little Rol crept near, staring at the stranger with all his might. Unnoticed, he softly stroked and patted a corner of her soft white robe that reached to the floor in ample folds. He laid his cheek against it caressingly, and then edged up close to her knees. "What is your name?" he asked.
Then came the Yule-tide Fair, with the races on the ice, and Utrovand for once was gay. The sullen hills about reechoed with merry shouting. The Reindeer races were first, with many a mad mischance for laughter. Rol himself was there with his swiftest sled Deer, a tall, dark, five-year-old, in his primest prime.
Later, when his absence had begun to cause anxiety, his puppy crept back to the farm, cowed, whimpering and yelping, a pitiful, dumb lump of terror, without intelligence or courage to guide the frightened search. Rol was never found, nor any trace of him. Where he had perished was never known; how he had perished was known only by an awful guess a wild beast had devoured him.
"For my name it is Jimmy Barlow, I was born in the town of Carlow, And here I lie in Maryborough jail, All for the robbing of the Wicklow mail. Fol de rol de riddle-iddle-ido!" Then the principal singer took up the song, which seemed to be one of robbery, blood, and murder, for it ran thus:
Known danger could be braced, but not this stealthy Death that walked by day invisible, that cut off alike the child in his play and the aged woman so near to her quiet grave. "Rol she kissed; Trella she kissed!"
Next year he barely passed under the stunted birch, and the third year the Fossekal on the painted rock was looking up, not down, at him as he passed. This was the autumn when Rol and Sveggum sought the Hoifjeld to round up their half-wild herd and select some of the strongest for the sled. There was but one opinion about the Storbuk.
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