Seven Little People and their Friends — John Shaqi
Seven Little People and their FriendsScudder, Horace Elisha
Science
Seven Little People and their Friends
Scudder, Horace Elisha
Children -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories; Fairies -- Juvenile fiction; Magic -- Juvenile fiction
After some games of hide and seek when they hid in the eyebrows and the
edge of the forest, they had a Tableau. The subject was "The Faery's
Sacrifice." That is a favourite story with them. I myself have painted
it on glass. A Faery--so the story runs--was once in great danger from a
Musquito; it would certainly have caught her and killed her, though she
was winged and flying very swiftly; but just then a horse of
dandelion-down came gliding by; she jumped on it and they two together
were too swift for the Musquito and she escaped; but they went so fast
through the wind that the poor horse lost almost all his down and
finally dropped upon the ground from sheer inability to go further. The
Faery loved him so for saving her that she pulled out her own wings and
fastened them on the horse;--away he went, and she had to creep home as
well as she could. But she did right though she suffered for it; she was
never sorry, and the story is told by the Faeries to their children.
This was the story that they played in the Tableau. There were two
scenes; in the first the Faery is just mounting the horse to escape the
Musquito--the Musquito of course they had to make believe was there, in
the second the horse lies panting on the ground and she is leaning over
it weeping. There should have been a third, as there usually is, where
she puts the wings on the horse, but they had no material with them for
that scene.
Then came a Charade. The word was a very easy one--I guessed it
myself--it was _Duty_. It was divided into two parts; the first was
_dew_. Dew is a drink of the Faeries in summer-time. Half a dozen
Faeries sat in a circle. The hat of one of them which was made of a bit
of rose-leaf, they twisted and turned till it looked a little like the
cup of a violet, though the colour wasn't exact. This they put in the
middle; but where was the dew? there was none of course, so one of the
Faeries had crept down, got on a dandelion-down horse's back and ridden
over the moon-beam to the window. In the crack of the sash he got a wee
bit of ice that made part of a drop of water when he held it in his
hand. It looked like dew, and he managed to get it safely back without
spilling much. This had been put in the hat or pretended violet cup.
Each of the Faeries, according to custom, took a spoon in hand and
slowly stirred the dew in the cup. The spoons they use are made of
pieces of the stamens of different flowers; here they had make-believe
spoons made out of bits of hair from Milly's eyebrows. They stirred the
dew in the cup, and as they stirred they sang the Dew drinking
chorus:--
"The shining Dew in the Violet cup
Flows round and round in a silvery flood:--
Against the sides we'll dash the dew up,--
Then drink! and cool our summer-hot blood."
But though they each in turn lifted the cup, they only pretended to
drink, for it was icy cold.
That was for _du_; next came _ty_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account