The Fairy Whirlwind

A young married woman, who was very pretty, lived with her husband in a sweet little cottage by the sea. The cottage was cob-walled, and had a small flower-garden in its front, which was a picture in the early springtime with periwinkles and gilliflowers, and in the summer-time with roses and hollyhocks. There was another garden belonging to the cottage, but it was only for vegetables, and was on the top of a cliff quite five minutes’ walk from the cottage.

This young wife and her husband, who was a waggoner, had one little child a few months old. The child was very dear to them both, and they thought she was the sweetest and most beautiful little baby in all the world. The fairies must have been quite of the same opinion, as you will see.

One afternoon the young wife was about to make an Irish stew¹ for her husband’s supper, when she found she had not enough potatoes in the house to make it.

As she took her sun-bonnet² from its peg³ to go up to the cliff garden to dig some up, her baby, who was lying in its wooden cradle, puckered⁴ its fair little face and began to cry. [186]

‘I believe the darling knows I am going out,’ cried the fond young mother. ‘I can’t leave her here all by her little self; I must take her with me.’ And when she had put on her bonnet and a basket for the potatoes on her arm, she lifted the baby out of the cradle and took her with her to the cliff, fondling the dear little thing and talking to it as she went.

When she had reached the cliff-garden, she stood on the edge of the cliff with her flaxen-haired babe in her arms, looking out over the sea. It was a lovely June day, and the water was as quiet as a mill-pond and blue as vipers’ bugloss, she told her baby. ‘Just the sort of weather for my pretty to be out in,’ she cried, hugging the child.

Mrs. Davies, as the young woman was called, after gazing out over the sea for a few minutes, laid her baby down on the top of a potato ridge⁵, close to where a succory and a knapweed grew side by side, and interlaced their blue and purple blossoms. When the babe had fixed⁶ its eyes upon the flowers and cooed to them in baby fashion, she set to work to dig up the potatoes.

She had not been digging very long when she heard a curious noise behind her, like the sound of soft wind in trees, but there were no trees in the cliff-garden, and not wind enough to move even the potato leaves.

She dropped the biddix1 to see what it was that made so strange a sound, and as she dropped it she [187]was caught in a whirlwind—a Fairy Whirlwind, she said it was—which whirled her round and round like a whirligig; and as she whirled she was enveloped⁷ in a cloud of fine grey pillum, or dust, and she could not see anything beyond her nose.

When the whirlwind went away—and it vanished as suddenly as it came—she found herself close to the edge of the cliff ever so far away from her baby.

Fearing she knew not what for her child, she ran over to it to see if it was quite safe; and to her horror, there, where her own fair little baby had lain, she saw a dark, wizen little creature, with a face wrinkled all over like an old woman’s!

‘That is not my little maid,’ she shrieked⁸; ‘it’s a changeling! The wicked Little People envied us our little beauty, and have stolen her away, and left one of their own ugly brats⁹ in her place. They raised a Fairy Whirlwind to hide from me what they were doing, the wicked, wicked little things!’

Mrs. Davies never knew how long she stood staring down in hopeless misery¹⁰ upon the ugly babe the Small People had left there on the potato ridge in place of her own; but in the end she took it up in her arms and carried it down to the cottage.

Her husband was at home by this time, wondering what had become of his wife and child, and you might have knocked him down with a straw when she poured out her woe¹¹ to him, and showed him the ugly dark babe the fairies had exchanged for their own beautiful babe. [188]

‘What must I do with it?’ she asked piteously, when her husband turned away from it with grief in his eyes and sorrow in his heart.

‘Keep it till the Small People are tired of our little handsome,’ he said, ‘and be good to it if you can. If we ain’t kind to the fairies’ cheeld, they won’t be kind to ours, that’s certain.’

So the young woman and her husband, for the sake of their own flaxen-haired, blue-eyed little darling the Small People had envied and taken away, were very kind to the babe they had left in its place. They hoped, as they took care of it, although they never loved it, that the fairies would quickly grow tired of their child and bring her back; but they hoped in vain.

A year after the Small People had raised a whirlwind, the fairies’ cheeld, as Mrs. Davies and her husband called the babe left on the potato ridge in place of their own, pined away and died; but the little human child with its flaxen curls and eyes of Cornish blue was never seen by mortal eyes after the fairies had stolen it.

The End

1 stew   

n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑

参考例句：

• The stew must be boiled up before serving.炖肉必须煮熟才能上桌。
• There's no need to get in a stew.没有必要烦恼。

2 bonnet   

n.无边女帽；童帽

参考例句：

• The baby's bonnet keeps the sun out of her eyes.婴孩的帽子遮住阳光，使之不刺眼。
• She wore a faded black bonnet garnished with faded artificial flowers.她戴着一顶褪了色的黑色无边帽，帽上缀着褪了色的假花。

3 peg   

n.木栓，木钉；vt.用木钉钉，用短桩固定

参考例句：

• Hang your overcoat on the peg in the hall.把你的大衣挂在门厅的挂衣钩上。
• He hit the peg mightily on the top with a mallet.他用木槌猛敲木栓顶。

4 puckered   

v.（使某物）起褶子或皱纹( pucker的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• His face puckered , and he was ready to cry. 他的脸一皱，像要哭了。
• His face puckered, the tears leapt from his eyes. 他皱着脸，眼泪夺眶而出。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 ridge   

n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭

参考例句：

• We clambered up the hillside to the ridge above.我们沿着山坡费力地爬上了山脊。
• The infantry were advancing to attack the ridge.步兵部队正在向前挺进攻打山脊。

6 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

7 enveloped   

v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She was enveloped in a huge white towel. 她裹在一条白色大毛巾里。
• Smoke from the burning house enveloped the whole street. 燃烧着的房子冒出的浓烟笼罩了整条街。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 shrieked   

v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She shrieked in fright. 她吓得尖叫起来。
• Li Mei-t'ing gave a shout, and Lu Tzu-hsiao shrieked, "Tell what? 李梅亭大声叫，陆子潇尖声叫：“告诉什么？ 来自汉英文学 - 围城

9 brats   

n.调皮捣蛋的孩子( brat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• I've been waiting to get my hands on you brats. 我等着干你们这些小毛头已经很久了。 来自电影对白
• The charming family had turned into a parcel of brats. 那个可爱的家庭一下子变成了一窝臭小子。 来自互联网

10 misery   

n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦

参考例句：

• Business depression usually causes misery among the working class.商业不景气常使工薪阶层受苦。
• He has rescued me from the mire of misery.他把我从苦海里救了出来。

11 woe   

n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌

参考例句：

• Our two peoples are brothers sharing weal and woe.我们两国人民是患难与共的兄弟。
• A man is well or woe as he thinks himself so.自认祸是祸，自认福是福。