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CHAPTER XVI

STORIES OF STRANGE STONES

What I wanted to find was Dozmare Pool. I had heard about it and I had read about it, and I wanted to see it. I studied the maps and the time-tables. We had to go from Penzance to Exeter, and I thought that if we got off the train at Liskeard we could find a carriage to take us to Dozmare Pool and back in time to catch another train and get to Exeter before night. Then it turned out that Helen's mother did not care about going to Dozmare Pool at all.

You may never have noticed it, but one of the best ways in the world for two people to get along together is for each of them to have his own way always. So it took us less than a minute to settle that Helen's mother should just stay in the train till it got to Exeter and wait there for us. Helen was young enough to feel an ambition to see and do as much as possible, instead of as little as possible, and she said that she would go to see Dozmare Pool too. And so Helen and I got off the train at Liskeard and stood on the platform and saw it go on and watched it till it was out of sight. Then we felt that we were alone in a strange land, for we knew almost as little about Liskeard as we did about the moon, and how could we tell that we should be able to get to Dozmare Pool at all? We left the station and began to look around. We did not have to look far. Just across the road there was a little hotel called the Stag. We went in and the landlord did not seem quite so surprised to see us as some of the hotel keepers we had met before. We asked him if we could have luncheon and he said we could. Then we asked him if he knew where Dozmare Pool was. That made him stare a little, but he said he did. Next we asked him if he could find a carriage and a driver to take us there. "Yes," he said, "and I suppose you will want to go to the Cheesewring too."

"What is the Cheesewring?"

"It's some very curious stones, sir; visitors almost always go to see it, sir."

"Is it near Dozmare Pool?"

"Oh, it's a matter of three miles, sir."

"Shall we have time to go to both places and get back so as to catch a train for Exeter?"

"Oh, yes, sir; you'll have plenty of time, I think."

"Very well, then, we will go to the Cheesewring."

That is the way with hotel keepers in such places. They have certain sights that they expect everybody to go to see, but they never can understand why you want to see anything else. And of course it doesn't really matter whether they understand or not. Still I was willing to take the landlord's advice. I had read something about the Cheesewring before and I was glad to find that we had such a good chance to see it.

When we had finished luncheon the carriage and the driver were ready, and in a few minutes Liskeard was behind us. The country was of the same pretty sort that we had seen so many times before, with tall trees, that hung over the road, and fields and high hedges. They were not wonderful scenes that we were riding through, but just fresh and bright and lovely scenes.

There was a place where, for a short way, we rode along beside a little brook, and even from the carriage, as we passed, we could see the trout swimming in it. The driver told us that the boys of a school near-by often caught the trout by letting down wide-mouthed bottles, with bait in them, into the water. The fish would go into the bottles and the boys would pull them up by the strings. This was a way of catching trout that I had never heard of, but it seemed likely enough that it might be done, with a stream so full of them as this one was.

I tried, as usual, to get the driver to tell us stories. "What sort of place is this Dozmare Pool, where we are going?" I said. "I have heard that there are some very wonderful stories about it."

"I can't say, sir," he answered; "I never heard any stories about it in particular."

This was just the answer that I expected. It is not at all easy to get people to tell you the stories about the places where they live, even when they know them. I don't know why it is. Perhaps they are afraid of being laughed at, if the stories happen to be a little hard to believe, and perhaps they feel that the stories belong to them and to their neighbors, and they do not like to give them to strangers.

But one of the best ways to get them to tell you a story is to tell them one. I thought that this way was worth trying, so I said: "I am surprised at that. I thought everybody about here must know stories about Dozmare Pool. Why, I was reading only the other day about a giant named Tregagle, who lived about the pool and had a great deal of trouble. He was once a wicked steward, I think, who killed his master and mistress and got the property that belonged to their child, and for that he was condemned to empty Dozmare Pool with a limpet shell. Of course he never could do it, but he had to keep working at it forever. And then, as if that was not enough, the story said that sometimes the devil used to come after him, and the only way that he could get away from the devil was to run fifteen miles to the Roche Rocks and put his head in at the window of a chapel there, and then the devil could not harm him. And when the devil got tired of waiting and went away, poor old Tregagle had to come back and go to work again at emptying the pool with his limpet shell."

"I never heard of Tregagle," said the driver, "but the way I heard the story was that it was the devil himself who had to empty the pool with a limpet shell, and he did it. Then he was condemned to bind the sand and mike the binds of the sime, and that he couldn't do."

So the driver did know a story after all. I must tell you just here that this driver had a very queer way of speaking, as it seemed to us. I am not quite sure whether it was a Cornish way or not. It was harder to understand than any other speech that we had heard in Cornwall. Liskeard is almost on the edge of Devonshire and this man's talk, too, had something that sounded like London in it. I try to tell you the things that he said in every-day English, and not just the way he said them. But I have tried, too, to give you a few words just as they sounded, to show you what they were like. But I feel that I have not quite done it. When the driver told us that the devil was condemned to "bind the sand and mike the binds of the sime," Helen and I stared at each other and could not make out what he meant at first. But we soon thought it out. The words that he had tried to say were "bind the sand and make the binds of the same," and what he meant was, that the devil was to make the sand into bundles and make ropes out of the sand to bind them around. Making ropes out of sand has always been counted a hard thing to do, and it is really no wonder that the devil could not do it.

After he had told us this one story the driver was much better company, and I think he tried to tell us all that he could about all that we saw. "The well of St. Keyne is not far from here," he said. "Perhaps you may have heard of it, sir. They tell the story about it that when a man and a woman are married, the one of them that drinks from the well of St. Keyne first will always be the ruler of the house. And the story tells how there was a man who was married, and he wanted to be sure to drink first. So as soon as the marriage was over he left his wife in the church and ran and drank from the well. But his wife was before him after all, for she had brought a bottle of the water to church with her. There was a piece of poetry made about it. I don't remember who did it."

"Southey?" I suggested.

"Yes, sir; I think so, sir."

The driver showed us two curious stones in a field that we passed and waited while we went to look at them more closely. They stood on end and were rather higher than a man's head, as I remember. They were square at the bottom, but smaller at the top, and one of them had somewhat the form of a chair. There was some rough carving on the sides. The driver said that he had heard that some old King of Cornwall was buried there. Since then I have read more about these stones in a very old book about Cornwall. The writer does not seem to know much more than we as to how they came there, but he says that they are called "the Other Half Stone." I think that you will say that that is as curious a name as you ever heard. The old writer seems to think so too, and he does not know anything about the one half stone of which these are "the other half." But he says that they are just half way between Exeter and the Land's End.

The driver decided that he would take us to the Cheesewring before Dozmare Pool, and by and by he said that we were as near to it as we could go with the carriage. He pointed it out to us, on a hill, a long way off, as it seemed. Then he drove along to a poor little village, where we left the horse and carriage at a house that called itself an hotel, and from there we walked to the Cheesewring. The way was across a broad stretch of rough ground and it was not at all easy walking. We had not gone far before the driver had some more stones to show us. They were not very large, but there were a good many of them, and they stood on end, as usual. They had stood in two great circles once, as if they were little stones trying to look like Stonehenge, but now some of them had fallen down, and of course that was a part of their game of Stonehenge too.

"They call these the Hurlers," said the driver, "and they tell the story that they were men, who were turned into stone for playing quoits on Sunday." (He pronounced it "kites.") Then he pointed to two stones that stood by themselves, a little way from the circles, and said: "I suppose those two were men who were only looking on, and not playing."

We resolved that we would never play quoits on Sunday, or so much as look at anybody playing quoits on Sunday, and then we went on toward the Cheesewring. We had to climb a little way up the hillside to get to it, and then we stood almost on the edge of a precipice, looking down into a great quarry, where there were men at work cutting out stone. The Cheesewring itself was almost on the edge of the precipice too. It was a great pile of stones – a great pile, but few stones, for they were huge ones. They were skilfully fitted and balanced, one upon the other, and the top one was much the largest of them all, so that the whole pile had somewhat the shape of a rude anvil. The whole pile was perhaps four times as high as our heads. I think I have forgotten to say till now that "Cheesewring" means "cheese-press," and surely a very large and very stiff cheese might be well flattened out by having that pile of stones set upon it.

The puzzle of it, as usual, is how the stones got there. The machinery that they are using down below there in the quarry to-day would be none too good to move such stones as these. Yet there they are, and there is no history of the time when they were put there. "What do you think of them," I said, "and whoever do you suppose knew how to pile them up there?"

"I don't know," Helen answered, "but when there are any big stones anywhere you generally say that Merlin put them there."

"Well, I am not going to say so this time, though these stones do somehow remind me of Merlin. Did I ever tell you what became of him at last?"

"No," said Helen, "of course you didn't."

"Why, here we are," I said, "telling stories about the very end of King Arthur's reign, and nobody had seen or heard anything of Merlin since almost the very beginning of it. And do you mean to tell me that I have never told you what became of him?"

"Why, you know you never did; what was it?"

"Well, to be sure, if I have never told you that, we ought not to lose another minute about it. But you must forget everything that you have heard lately and go away back, for that is where this story begins. After Merlin had taken good care of King Vortigern and of King Pendragon, King Arthur's uncle; and King Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father; and of King Arthur himself; after he had set him on his throne and had helped him to win battles and to get his sword Excalibur, what do you think Merlin did? You would think that he was old enough to know better, only I believe nobody is ever old enough to know better. He fell in love.

"Merlin knew everything, and so he knew that he was going to fall in love. He knew, too, that because of his falling in love he should go away from the court and away from the King and away from all the world, and that after that he should never be of any use again to the King or to England or to the world. Merlin knew, and yet he could not help it. Merlin could rule kingdoms and set up and cast down kings, yet there was one power in the world that he could not rule and could not resist. He could not save himself from the end that he knew was coming. He told King Arthur that he should leave him soon and should never see him again, and King Arthur tried to reason with him and to make him use his magic against his fate. But Merlin said that no magic could do any good; in this one thing he was helpless; when the time came he must go, and the time was coming soon.

"And who was it, do you suppose, that Merlin was in love with? It was Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, Lancelot's Fairy Mother. He met her in a forest over in France, where she had her home. He taught her magic and he made a splendid palace by magic and filled it with knights and ladies for her, and there they had feasts and dances and games. One day she asked him to show her how she could put to sleep any one whom she chose, so that he could not awake till she should let him awake. And Merlin knew that it was himself whom she wished to put to sleep so, yet he knew that it was fate that he should tell her, and so he told her.

"They used to meet in the forest near a spring that was famous afterward, for the water of the spring used to bubble up when anything of iron or copper or brass was thrown into it, and the children who knew the spring threw pins into it and said: 'Laugh, spring, and I will give you a pin,' and then the spring would laugh for them. Merlin sat often beside the spring with Nimue and taught her magic. He taught her so much that at last there was nobody in the world who knew so much of it as she, except himself and perhaps King Arthur's sister, Queen Morgan-le-Fay.

"Then another time Nimue begged Merlin to teach her how one man or woman could be shut up by another, so that he never could get away again, so that no one could ever come to him but the one who had worked the spell, so that he could never see any but that one, and no one could break the spell but the one who made it. Then Merlin was sad again, for he knew that Nimue loved him so much that she wanted to keep him all to herself and never to let any one else see him or hear of him. And he knew, too, that she must have her way in this. 'I know,' he said, 'what it is that you wish, and I love you so much that I know that I must do what you ask.'

"'If you know what it is that I wish,' she said, 'you know that I want a place where we can be together always, only we two, where nobody else can ever come to us and where I shall never see any one but you and you will never see anyone but me. Surely, when I love you so much as you know I do, you should love me enough for that.'

"And still Merlin was sad, knowing that this was to be the end of all his work for the King and for the world, but he answered: 'I will do what you ask. I will make a place where we two can be and no one else can ever come to us or see us or know of us.'

"But Nimue said: 'I do not wish it so; you must teach me the magic, so that I can do it myself. Then I will make the enchantment when I please.'

"So Merlin, knowing that it was fate and that there was no other way, taught her all the charms by which she could do what she wished. He taught her how to walk about in circles and how to wave her hands and what words to say. And she learned it and remembered it all. Then they left France and came over into Cornwall and wandered together about the hills and the woods. And one day, when they had gone a long way, they sat down to rest. And Nimue took Merlin's head in her lap and put him to sleep with the charm that he had taught her. When he was asleep she rose and walked around him nine times and waved her hands and began to say the words that he had taught her. And as she worked the charm Merlin slept more soundly, and then the ground opened and he sank down into it. She sank down too, and when they were deep enough the ground closed above them. But still she went on with the charm and great stones were moved by the magic words and piled themselves high above the place where they had sunk.

"When Merlin awoke he knew that the spell was done. He was in a beautiful place and Nimue was with him. She could go out and come in when she chose, and she often did so, but he could never go out till the spell was broken. And nobody could ever break the spell but Nimue, who had made it. Merlin himself, with all his magic, could not break it, for it was one of his own spells and the strongest of them, and it was planned so that it could never be undone by anyone, even the greatest magician of the world, except the one who had done it. And Nimue never undid the spell.

"Now I am not sure where all this happened, and you know I would not tell you anything that I was not sure of. Some say that it was here in Cornwall and some say that it was over in France, and that Merlin and Nimue did not come back to England at all. Some say, too, that there was another Cornwall in France. But if they did come to England again, and if the place was in this very Cornwall, then why might not this be the very place where we are? Here is this great pile of stones and neither we nor anybody else can tell how they came here or how they could come here. Why might they not be the very ones that Nimue piled up over Merlin by the enchantment that he taught her? I don't say that they are, but I do say that I cannot see why they might not be, so let us believe that they are."

Helen looked over the edge of the hill, down into the quarry. "If those men down there dig out the rock a little more over this way," she said, "they will let Merlin out, if he is still there."

"They will do nothing of the sort," I answered; "do you think that Merlin's charms were worth no more than that? No one can ever let Merlin out of his prison but Nimue, and she never did and never will. If those men down there should dig to where Merlin was, you may be sure that he would sink again, down and down through the earth, so that no quarriers in the world could ever reach him. Merlin's charms were charms that were made to last, and Merlin will never be seen again on the earth as long as Stonehenge is on Salisbury Plain."

CHAPTER XVII

"AND ON THE MERE THE WAILING DIED AWAY"

It was only a short drive from the place where we had left the carriage to Dozmare Pool. That is, it was a short drive to the nearest place to it where we could get with the carriage. The carriage could not go close to it, any more than it could to the Cheesewring. The driver began to remember still more about Dozmare Pool, as we got nearer to it. The water was salt, like the sea, he had heard, and in stormy times it had great waves like the sea.

This reminded me of some things that I had heard and read about it myself. The name "Dozmare," I had been told somewhere, meant "drop of the sea." I had been told somewhere else that the name was made up of two Cornish words that meant "come" and "great," and that the name was given to it because it had tides, like the ocean. Long ago it had no outlet that anybody could see, but it was said that something that was thrown onto it was found many miles off, on the seashore. So it was believed that a passage under ground led from it to the sea. It was said, too, that it was so deep that no plummet had ever reached its bottom.

We came at last to the foot of a steep hill and the driver said that we could not go any farther with the carriage. He would stay here and attend to the horse, and we must go straight up this hill and we should find Dozmare Pool. Up the hill we went, a good, long climb, and when we got to the top, though we knew what we had come to see, we were surprised to see it. For all of a sudden there it was before us, the broad lake on the top of the hill, just where we should expect to find the downward slope of the other side of the hill. It did not look like a stormy sea to-day, but a fresh breeze was blowing over it and drove the little waves before it against the bank, where they made a plashing noise at our feet. The pool seemed to be at the very top of everything, except that far away across it we could see a mountain, with two peaks.

There was one little house near us and no other in sight. Near the house a man was at work piling up turf, cut in long, square strips, for winter fires. A little boy was playing about, or trying to help the man, and a woman was driving a cart that brought the turf from somewhere down below. We asked the man what mountain that was with the two peaks.

"Brown Gilly, sir," he said.

"Is the water of this lake salt?" we asked again.

"No, sir, it's fresh."

"Is it good to drink?"

"We don't drink it ourselves, sir, but it's good for washing and the cattle drink it."

"How big is the lake?"

"It's about a mile and a quarter round, sir."

"And is there any outlet?"

"Yes, sir, down at the other end there's one."

"It was not always there, was it? When was it made?"

"I couldn't say, sir; it was there before my time."

We left the man to pile his turf and wonder what strange sort of people we could be who wanted to know so many useless things. "Well, there is so much of our story spoiled," I said. "It is not salt and it probably does not have waves like the ocean, and an outlet has been made for it. Still, as you stand and look over it, do you not feel that there is something lonely and solemn and mysterious and magical about it? When you think of its being here at the top of a hill, instead of down in a valley, like a common lake, and when you see no higher hill around it, except that one mountain over there, and when you think of the stories about it, do you not get a little of what our old friend of the Alice books calls the 'eerie' feeling? Have you guessed that the reason why I brought you here was that this was the lake where King Arthur found his sword Excalibur? Well, it was. And now I have another story to tell you about it. It is rather a sad story. The most of our stories are getting to be rather sad now, but there are not many more of them."

I had told Helen long before how King Arthur got his sword Excalibur. His sword had been broken in a fight one day, and Merlin led him to the shore of a little lake – this very lake where we stood now – and out in the middle of it he had seen an arm rising out of the water. The arm was covered with white silk and the hand held a sword, the most beautiful that Arthur had ever seen. Merlin and Arthur went out to it in a boat and the King took the sword and kept it. That was the wonderful sword Excalibur. Merlin told Arthur strange things about the sword. No one else ever knew what they were, and it may be that we do not know, even yet, of all the wonders of that sword.

But now for the story. "You know," I said, "that I do not often throw morals at you in these stories. As a general thing, I hate to see morals hung up on the ends of stories as much as you do. If the moral cannot make itself felt as the story goes along, it isn't of much use, usually, to drag it out and hold it up at the end. But this story has such a good and sound and useful moral that I can't help pointing it out to you. But I will put it here at the beginning, instead of at the end, and have it over with. It is that when a lie has been told about anybody, no matter how wicked and silly it is, no matter how clearly it may have been proved to be a lie, it will always stick to him, it will never be forgotten, and there will always be people who will half believe it.

"You remember how once Meliagraunce charged Queen Guinevere with treason against King Arthur. Everybody knew that Meliagraunce himself was a traitor and a liar and that he got killed for telling that one lie. Still it never was forgotten and there were some who never had quite the trust in the Queen again that they had had before. And since it was Lancelot who had fought for the Queen then and at other times, they looked at him just as they did at her, and shook their heads and whispered to one another that they wondered if Lancelot was quite as true to the King as he ought to be. There were some who said, too, that Lancelot and the Queen both cared too much about honors and glory for themselves and not enough about the honor of the King. And I am afraid that was not a lie.

"Still all this thinking and talking counted for little for a long time. And then there came a time when they counted for much. It was after the quest of the Holy Grail. Lancelot had come back to the court and Bors had come back from the City of Sarras, and all had come back who were ever coming. Then, all at once, as it has always seemed to me, without any reason, half the people in King Arthur's court went mad. The first and the worst of them was Mordred, King Arthur's nephew, Gawain's brother. He was always all but mad with jealousy and envy and hatred of all who were greater than himself. And now he thought that nothing less could please him than to overthrow King Arthur and to be King of England.

"There are some people who cannot think of any better way of helping themselves than by doing all the harm that they can to those who stand in their way. Mordred was of this sort. He looked about him to see who there was whom he could harm, and he thought of this old lie about the Queen and of these new doubts about Lancelot. Then he went to the King and told him that he had found that Lancelot and the Queen were plotting treason together and forming some plan against the King. If the King wanted proof of it, Mordred said, let him go hunting the next day, and while he was gone, Mordred and some others would find Lancelot and the Queen together.

"Now Lancelot and the Queen had always been the best of friends and what in the world was supposed to be proved by their being seen together I am sure I don't know. But just at this time it seems to me that it was the King who went mad, and he said that he would do as Mordred advised him.

"The next day the King went hunting. Now Bors and some of Lancelot's other friends had heard these whispers about the court and they had told Lancelot of them. They had decided that it might stop the chatter, about Lancelot at least, if he were to leave the court for a time. It happened that Lancelot had meant to go this very day, and so he went to say good-by to the Queen. Bors knew what a mischief-maker Mordred was; he had seen that he dif not go to the hunt with the King, and he feared that something was wrong. He begged Lancelot not to go to see the Queen, but Lancelot laughed at the notion that there was anything to fear and went. And Mordred and some other knights whom he had got on his side were watching, and the minute that Lancelot and the Queen were together they were upon them.

"Lancelot had come only to see the Queen and to bid her good-by; he had not expected any fighting, and so he wore no armor. Mordred and his knights meant to fall upon Lancelot all at once and kill him or take him prisoner. But Lancelot was quick enough to shut the door of the room and keep them out for a few minutes. Then he drew his sword and opened the door just enough to let one of the knights come in. He struck that one with his sword and wounded him so that he fell inside the room, and then he shut the door again. Lancelot quickly took off the armor of the wounded knight and dressed himself in it. Then he threw the door wide open and rushed at the crowd of knights striking about him as he went and wounding more of them.

"Many as they were they could not stand against Lancelot and he escaped from them and went back to his friends. I suppose I ought to say just here that there was scarcely ever a man in the world who had such friends as Lancelot. There were his brother Ector, his cousins Bors and Lionel, Lavaine, and many others who were ready to give their very lives for Lancelot at any time. And now, after this terrible thing had happened, they all left the city with him, as quickly as they could, and then they waited near to see what would be done with the Queen.

"When the King came back Mordred told him about what had happened, in his own lying way, I suppose. And the King, it seems, had not got over his fit of madness yet, for surely nobody in his senses could think that what Mordred had to tell proved anything. But of course we don't know just how much Mordred lied, and I wonder if the King believed him just because he was his own nephew. Such things happen sometimes, though for my own part I don't see why any man should be believed because he is another man's nephew. Bad men have uncles, as well as good men. But it seems that the King did believe him, for some reason or other, and did believe that the Queen and Lancelot were guilty of treason. And he said that the Queen should have the punishment of treason, and so should Lancelot, if he could get him. Now the punishment of treason in those days was burning.

"Now, mad as the King seems to have been, I no more believe that he would have the Queen burnt than I believe that he would have himself burnt. I don't know why he pretended that he would. Perhaps he thought that he could make her confess something, or perhaps he thought that Mordred, when he saw how far things were going, would confess that he was wrong. But the King declared that the punishment of the Queen should be the next morning and he ordered some of his knights, and among them Gareth and his brother Gaheris, to be present and see it done. They and some of the others told the King plainly that they thought that what he was doing was wrong and that they would have nothing to do with it. Since he commanded them to be present, they said, they would be there only to look on, and they would wear no armor.