“The Will-o’-the-Wisp Is in the Town,” Says the Moor-Woman
(1865)
There was a man who once knew many stories, but they had slipped
away from him-so he said. The Story that used to visit him of its own
accord no longer came and knocked at his door. And why did it come no
longer? It is true enough that for days and years the man had not thought of
it, had not expected it to come and knock; and if he had expected it, it
would certainly not have come; for without there was war, and within was
the care and sorrow that war brings with it.
The stork and the swallows came back from their long journey, for they
thought of no danger; and, behold, when they arrived, the nest was burnt,
the habitations of men were burnt, the hedges were all in disorder, and
everything seemed gone, and the enemy’s horses were stamping in the old
graves. Those were hard, gloomy times, but they came to an end.
And now they were past and gone-so people said; yet no Story came and
knocked at the door, or gave any tidings of its presence.
“I suppose it must be dead, or gone away with many other things,” said
the man.
But the story never dies. And more than a whole year went by, and he
longed-oh, so very much! -for the Story.
“I wonder if the Story will ever come back again and knock?”
And he remembered it so well in all the various forms in which it had
come to him, sometimes young and charming, like spring itself, sometimes
as a beautiful maiden, with a wreath of thyme in her hair, and a beechen
branch in her hand, and with eyes that gleamed like deep woodland lakes in
the bright sunshine.
Sometimes it had come to him in the guise of a peddler, and had opened
its box and let silver ribbon come fluttering out, with verses and inscriptions
