If I could take you with me up to Scotland,—take
you, for instance, along the Tay, up the pass of Dunkeld,
or up Strathmore towards Aberdeen, or up the Dee towards
Braemar,—I could show you signs, which cannot
be mistaken, of the time when Scotland was, just like
Spitzbergen or like Greenland now, covered in one
vast sheet of snow and ice from year’s end to
year’s end; when glaciers were ploughing out
its valleys, icebergs were breaking off the icy cliffs
and floating out to sea; when not a bird, perhaps,
was to be seen save sea-fowl, not a plant upon the
rocks but a few lichens, and Alpine saxifrages, and
such like—desolation and cold and lifeless
everywhere. That ice-time went on for ages and
for ages; and yet it did not go on in vain.
Through it Madam How was ploughing down the mountains
of Scotland to make all those rich farms which stretch
from the north side of the Frith of Forth into Sutherlandshire.
I could show you everywhere the green banks and knolls
of earth, which Scotch people call “kames”
and “tomans”—perhaps brought
down by ancient glaciers, or dropped by ancient icebergs—now
so smooth and green through summer and through winter,
among the wild heath and the rough peat-moss, that
the old Scots fancied, and I dare say Scotch children
fancy still, fairies dwelt inside. If you laid
your ear against the mounds, you might hear the fairy
music, sweet and faint, beneath the ground.
If you watched the mound at night, you might see the
fairies dancing the turf short and smooth, or riding
out on fairy horses, with green silk clothes and jingling
bells. But if you fell asleep upon the mounds,
the fairy queen came out and carried you for seven
years into Fairyland, till you awoke again in the
same place, to find all changed around you, and yourself
grown thin and old.
These are all dreams and fancies—untrue,
not because they are too strange and wonderful, but
because they are not strange and wonderful enough:
for more wonderful sure than any fairy tale it is,
that Madam How should make a rich and pleasant land
by the brute force of ice.
And were there any men and women in that old age of
ice? That is a long story, and a dark one too;
we will talk of it next time.
CHAPTER VI—THE TRUE FAIRY TALE
You asked if there were men in England when the country
was covered with ice and snow. Look at this,
and judge for yourself.
What is it? a piece of old mortar? Yes.
But mortar which was made Madam How herself, and
not by any man. And what is in it? A piece
of flint and some bits of bone. But look at
that piece of flint. It is narrow, thin, sharp-edged:
quite different in shape from any bit of flint which
you or I ever saw among the hundreds of thousands of
broken bits of gravel which we tread on here all day
long; and here are some more bits like it, which came
from the same place—all very much the same
shape, like rough knives or razor blades; and here
Copyrights
Madam How and Lady Why from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
