The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

fingers like shark's teeth, the whole thing, from beginning to end, had all of us rocking with laughter.

When at last the little figure had managed, in spite of it all, to fight his way to the final, triumphant chord, the harpsichord reared up, took a bow, and folded itself neatly up into a suitcase, which the puppet picked up. Then he strode off the stage to a storm of applause. A few of us even leapt to our feet.

The lights went down again.

There was a pause--a silence.

When the audience had settled, a strain of music--different music--came floating to our ears.

I recognized the melody at once. It was 'Morning,' from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt suite, and it seemed to me the perfect choice.

'Welcome to the Land of Fairy Tales,' said a woman's voice as the music faded down, and a spotlight came up to reveal the most strange and remarkable character!

Seated to the right of the stage--she must have taken her place during the moments of darkness, I thought-- she wore a ruff of Elizabethan lace, a black Pilgrim dress with a laced bodice, black shoes with square silver buckles, and a tiny pair of spectacles that perched precariously on the end of her nose. Her hair was a mass of gray curls, spilling out from under a tall pointed hat.

'My name is Mother Goose.'

It was Nialla!

There were oohs and aahs from the audience, and she sat, smiling patiently, until the excitement died down.

'Would you like me to tell you a story?' she asked, in a voice that was not Nialla's, yet at the same time, not anyone else's.

'Yes!' everyone shouted, including the vicar.

'Very well, then,' said Mother Goose. 'I shall begin at the beginning, and go on till I come to the end. And then I shall stop.'

You could have heard a pin drop.

'Once upon a time,' she said, 'in a village not far away ...'

And as she spoke those words, the red velvet curtains with their gold tassels opened slowly to reveal the cozy cottage I had glimpsed from behind the scenes, but now I could see it in far greater detail: the diamond-paned windows, the painted hollyhocks, the three-legged milking stool ...

'... there lived a poor widow with a son whose name was Jack.'

At that, a boy in short leather pants and an em broidered jacket and jerkin came strolling into the scene, whistling off-key to the music.

'Mother,' he shouted, 'are you at home? I want my supper.'

As he turned to look around, his hand shielding his eyes from the light of the painted sun, the audience let out a collective gasp.

Jack's carved wooden face was a face we all recognized: It was as if Rupert had deliberately modeled the puppet's head from a photograph of Robin, the Inglebys' dead son. The likeness was uncanny.

Like a wind in the cold November woods, a wave of uneasy whispers swept through the hall.

'Shhh!' someone said at last. I think it was the vicar.

I wondered how he must feel at being confronted with the face of a child he had buried in the churchyard.

'Jack was a very lazy boy,' Mother Goose went on. 'And because he refused to work, it was not long before his mother's small savings were completely gone. There was nothing to eat in the house, and not so much as a farthing left for food.'

Now the poor widow appeared, coming round the side of the cottage with a rope in her hand, and at the other end of the rope, a cow. Both of them were little more than skin and bones, but the cow had the advantage of a gorgeous pair of huge brown eyes.

'We shall have to sell the cow to the butcher,' the widow said.

At this, the cow's enormous eyes turned sadly towards the widow, then towards Jack, and finally towards the audience. 'Help me!' they seemed to say.

'Ahhhh,' everyone said at once, on a rising note of sympathy.

The widow turned her back on the poor creature and walked away, leaving Jack to do the dirty work. No sooner was she gone than a peddler appeared at the gate.

'Marnin', Squire,' he said to Jack. 'You looks like a sharpish lad--the kind o' lad what might be needin' some beans.'

'I might,' said Jack.

'Jack thought of himself as a shrewd trader,' Mother Goose said, 'and before you could say 'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch'--which is the name of a place in Wales--he had traded the cow for a handful of beans.'

The cow went all stiff-legged and dug in its heels as the peddler dragged it off, and Jack was left standing, looking at the little pile of beans in his palm.

Then suddenly his mother was back.

'Where's the cow?' she demanded. Jack pointed to the road, and held out his hand.