Puck of Pook's Hill

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Rudyard Kipling. Puck of Pook's Hill

PUCK’S SONG

WELAND’S SWORD

WELAND’S SWORD

A TREE SONG

YOUNG MEN AT THE MANOR

YOUNG MEN AT THE MANOR

SIR RICHARD’S SONG

THE KNIGHTS OF THE JOYOUS VENTURE

HARP SONG OF THE DANE WOMEN

THE KNIGHTS OF THE JOYOUS VENTURE

THORKILD’S SONG

OLD MEN AT PEVENSEY

OLD MEN AT PEVENSEY

THE RUNES ON WELAND’S SWORD

A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH

A CENTURION OF THE THIRTIETH

A BRITISH-ROMAN SONG

ON THE GREAT WALL

ON THE GREAT WALL

A SONG TO MITHRAS

THE WINGED HATS

THE WINGED HATS

A PICT SONG

HAL O’ THE DRAFT

HAL O’ THE DRAFT

SMUGGLERS’ SONG

‘DYMCHURCH FLIT’

THE BEE BOY’S SONG

‘DYMCHURCH FLIT’

A THREE-PART SONG

THE TREASURE AND THE LAW

SONG OF THE FIFTH RIVER

THE TREASURE AND THE LAW

THE CHILDREN’S SONG

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The children were at the Theatre, acting to Three Cows as much as they could remember of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Their father had made them a small play out of the big Shakespeare one, and they had rehearsed it with him and with their mother till they could say it by heart. They began where Nick Bottom the weaver comes out of the bushes with a donkey’s head on his shoulder, and finds Titania, Queen of the Fairies, asleep. Then they skipped to the part where Bottom asks three little fairies to scratch his head and bring him honey, and they ended where he falls asleep in Titania’s arms. Dan was Puck and Nick Bottom, as well as all three Fairies. He wore a pointy-eared cloth cap for Puck, and a paper donkey’s head out of a Christmas cracker – but it tore if you were not careful – for Bottom. Una was Titania, with a wreath of columbines and a foxglove wand.

The Theatre lay in a meadow called the Long Slip. A little mill-stream, carrying water to a mill two or three fields away, bent round one corner of it, and in the middle of the bend lay a large old fairy Ring of darkened grass, which was their stage. The mill-stream banks, overgrown with willow, hazel, and guelder rose made convenient places to wait in till your turn came; and a grown-up who had seen it said that Shakespeare himself could not have imagined a more suitable setting for his play. They were not, of course, allowed to act on Midsummer Night itself, but they went down after tea on Midsummer Eve, when the shadows were growing, and they took their supper – hard-boiled eggs, Bath Oliver biscuits, and salt in an envelope – with them. Three Cows had been milked and were grazing steadily with a tearing noise that one could hear all down the meadow; and the noise of the mill at work sounded like bare feet running on hard ground. A cuckoo sat on a gatepost singing his broken June tune, ‘cuckoo-cuk,’ while a busy kingfisher crossed from the mill-stream to the brook which ran on the other side of the meadow. Everything else was a sort of thick, sleepy stillness smelling of meadow-sweet and dry grass.

.....

‘Splendid,’ said Dan, but Una shuddered.

‘I’m glad they’re gone, then; but what made the People of the Hills go away?’ Una asked.

.....