Arising, “We too must be garlanded
With mandrake;” and the plant in the rock’s cleft
Of three fair sprays mysteriously bereft,
Herself crowned first, and next the wounded man,
And last the maid. Then, crying, “Forward!” ran
Down the weird way, before her footsteps lit
By shining beetles trooping over it.
Yet turned with a sage word—“All paths of glory,
My children, have their space of purgatory!
“Therefore have courage! for we must, alas!
The terrors of the Sabatori64 pass.”
And, while she spake, their faces cut they find,
And breathing stopped, by rush of keenest wind.
“Lie down!” she whispered hurriedly—“lie low!
The triumph of the Whirlwind Sprites is now!”
Then fell upon them, like a sudden gale
Or white squall on the water fraught with hail,
A swarm of whirling, yelping, vicious things,
Under the fanning of whose icy wings
The mortals, drenched with sweat and struck with cold,
Stood shivering. “Away, ye over-bold,
“Ye spoilers of the harvest, unlicked whelps!”
Taven exclaimed. “Must we then use such helps
To the fair deeds we do? Yet, as by skill
The sage physician bringeth good from ill,
We witches, by our hidden arts, compel
Evil to yield its fruit of good as well.
“Naught’s hid from us. For where the vulgar see
A stone, a whip, a stag, a malady,
We witches can the inner force divine
Like that which works under the scum of wine
In fermentation. Pierce the vat, you know,
A seething, boiling scum will outward flow.
“Find, if you can, the key of Solomon!
Or speak unto the mountain in its own
Dread language! It shall move at your behest,
And roll into the valley ere it rest.”
Meanwhile they wended lower, and were ’ware
Of a small, roguish voice a-piping there,
Most like a goldfinch: “Our good granny spins,
And winds and spins, and then anew begins,
And thinks that she spins worsted night and day,
And ha! ha! gossip, she spins only hay!
Te! he! spin, Aunty, spin!” And long-drawn laughter,
Like whinnying of young colts, followed thereafter.
“Why, what can that be?” asked Mirèio—
“The little voice that laughs and jeers us so?”
Again the childish treble came, “Te! he!
Who is this pretty mortal? Let us see!
We’ll raise the neckerchief a little bit:
Are nuts and pomegranates under it?”
Then the poor maid had nearly cried outright;
But the hag stayed her, “Here’s no cause for fright.
The singing, jeering thing is but a Glari:
Fantasti is his name, a sprightly fairy.
In his good mood he will your kitchen sweep,
Mind fire, turn roast, and a full hen’s-nest keep.
“But what a marplot when he takes the whim!
He’ll salt your broth just as it pleaseth him,
Or blow your light out ere you’re half in bed!
Or, if to vespers you would go,” she said,
“At Saint Trophime,65 in all your best bedight,
He’ll hide your Sunday suit, or spoil it quite!”
“Hear!” shrieked the imp: “now hear the old hag talk!
’Tis like the creak of an ill-greasèd block!
No doubt, my withered olive,” the thing said,
“I twitch the bedclothes off a sleeping maid
Sometimes at midnight, and she starts with fear
And trembles, and her breast heaves. Oh, I see her!”
And with its whinnying laugh the sprite was gone;
Then, for a brief space, as they journeyed on
Under the grots, the witcheries were stayed;
And in the gloomy silence, long delayed,
They heard the water drop from vaulted roof
To crystal ground. Now there had sat aloof,
Upon a ledge of rock, a tall, white thing,
Which rose in the half-light as menacing
With one long arm. Then stiff as a quartz rock
Stood Vincen; while, transported by the shock,
Mirèio would have leaped a precipice,
Had such been there. “Old scare-crow, what is this?
“What mean you,” cried Taven, “by swaying so
Your limp head like a poplar to and fro?”
Then turning to the stricken twain, “My dears,
You know the Laundress? Ofttimes she appears
On Mount Ventour, and then the common crowd
Are wont to take her for a long, white cloud.
“But shepherds, when they see her, pen their sheep.
The Laundress of destruction, who doth keep
The errant clouds in hand, is known too well.
She scrubs them with a strength right terrible;
Wringing out buckets full of rain, and flame.
And neatherds house their cattle at her name;
“And seamen, on the angry, tossing wave,
Upon our Lady call, their craft to save.”
Here drowned her speech a discord most appalling,
Rattling of latches, whimpering, caterwauling,
With uncouth words half-uttered intervening,
Whereof the devil only knows the meaning;
And brazen din through all the cave resounding,
As one were on a witch-cauldron pounding.
Then whence those shrieks of laughter, and those wails
As of a woman in her pains? Prevails
Hardly amid the howl the beldam’s speech,
“Give me a hand that I may hold you each,
“And let your magic garlands not be lost!”
Here were they jostled from their feet almost
By rush of something puffing, grunting, snorting,
Most like a herd of ghostly swine comporting.
On starlit winter-nights, when Nature slumbers
Under her snowy sheets, come forth in numbers
The fowlers, torch in hand, who bush and tree
By riverside will beat right vigorously,
Till all the birds at roost arise in haste,
And, as by breath of smithy-bellows chased,
Affrighted, rush until the net receive:
So drave Taven the foul herd with her sieve
Into the outer darkness. With the same
She circles traced, luminous, red as flame,
And divers other figures. All the while,
“Avaunt!” she cried, “ye locusts, ye who spoil
The harvest! Quit my sight, or woe betide you!
Workers of evil, in your burrows hide you!
“Since, by the pricking of your flesh, ye know
The hills are still with sunshine all aglow,
Go hang yourselves again on the rock-angles,
Ye bats!” They flit. The clamour disentangles,
And dies away. Then to the children spake
The witch: “All birds of night themselves betake
“To this retreat what time shines the daylight
On the ploughed land and fallow; but at night—
At night the lamps are lighted without hand
In churches void and triply fastened, and
The bells toll of themselves, and pavement stones
Upstart, and tremble all the buried bones,
“And the poor dead arise and kneel to pray,
And mass is said by priests as pale as they.
Ask the owls else, who clamber down the steeple
To drain the lamps of oil; and if the people
Who thus partake of the communion
Be not all dead except the priests alone!
“What time the beldam jeers at February,66
Let women everywhere be wondrous wary,
Nor fall
