Translatedfrom the original runesby Hermione Granger by
J. K. ROWLING
First published in Great Britain in 2008 by the Children’s High Level Group, 45 Great Peter Street, London, SW1P 3LT, in association with Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY
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www.bloomsbury.com/beedlebard
Introduction
The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a collection of stories written for young wizards and witches. They have been popular bedtime reading for centuries, with the result that the Hopping Pot and the Fountain of Fair Fortune are as familiar to many of the students at Hogwarts as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are to Muggle (nonmagical) children.
Beedle’s stories resemble our fairy tales in many respects; for instance, virtue is usually rewarded and wickedness punished. However, there is one very obvious difference. In Muggle fairy tales, magic tends to lie at the root of the hero or heroine’s troubles – the wicked witch has poisoned the apple, or put the princess into a hundred years’ sleep, or turned the prince into a hideous beast. In The Tales of Beedle the Bard, on the other hand, we meet heroes and heroines who can perform magic themselves, and yet find it just as hard to solve their problems as we do. Beedle’s stories have helped generations of wizarding parents to explain this painful fact of life to their young children: that magic causes as much trouble as it cures.
Another notable difference between these fables and their Muggle counterparts is that Beedle’s witches are much more active in seeking their fortunes than our fairy-tale heroines. Asha, Altheda, Amata and Babbitty Rabbitty are all witches who take their fate into their own hands, rather than taking a prolonged nap or waiting for someone to return a lost shoe. The exception to this rule – the unnamed maiden of “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart” – acts more like our idea of a storybook princess, but there is no “happily ever after” at the end of her tale.
Beedle the Bard lived in the fifteenth century and much of his life remains shrouded in mystery. We know that he was born in Yorkshire, and the only surviving woodcut shows that he had an exceptionally luxuriant beard. If his stories accurately reflect his
opinions, he rather liked Muggles, whom he regarded as ignorant rather than malevolent; he mistrusted Dark Magic, and he believed that the worst excesses of wizardkind sprang from the all-too-human traits of cruelty, apathy or arrogant misapplication of their own talents. The heroes and heroines who triumph in his stories are not those with the most powerful magic, but rather those who demonstrate the most kindness, common sense and ingenuity.
One modern-day wizard who held very similar views was, of course, Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Order of Merlin (First Class), Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, and Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. This similarity of outlook notwithstanding, it was a surprise to discover a set of notes on The Tales of Beedle the Bard among the many papers that Dumbledore left in his will to the Hogwarts Archives. Whether this commentary was written for his own satisfaction, or for future publication, we shall never know; however, we have been graciously granted permission by Professor Minerva McGonagall, now Headmistress of Hogwarts, to print Professor Dumbledore’s notes here, alongside a brand new translation of the tales by Hermione Granger. We hope that Professor Dumbledore’s insights, which include observations on wizarding history, personal reminiscences and enlightening information on key elements of each story, will help a new generation of both wizarding and Muggle readers appreciate The Tales of Beedle the Bard. It is the belief of all who knew him personally that Professor Dumbledore would have been delighted to lend his support to this project, given that all royalties are to be donated to the Children’s High Level Group, which works to benefit children in desperate need of a voice.
It seems only right to make one small, additional comment on Professor Dumbledore’s notes. As far as we can tell, the notes were completed around eighteen months before the tragic events that took place at the top of Hogwarts’ Astronomy Tower. Those familiar with the history of the most recent wizarding war (everyone who has read all seven volumes on the life of Harry Potter, for instance) will be aware that Professor Dumbledore reveals a little less than he
knows – or suspects –about the final story in this book. The reason for any omission lies, perhaps, in what Dumbledore said about truth, many years ago, to his favourite and most famous pupil:
“It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treatedwithgreatcaution.”
Whether we agree with him or not, we can perhaps excuse Professor Dumbledore for wishing to protect future readers from the temptations to which he himself had fallen prey, and for which he paid so terrible a price.
J K Rowling
A Note on the Footnotes
Professor Dumbledore appears to have been writing for a wizarding audience, so I have occasionally inserted an explanation of a term or fact that might need clarification for Muggle readers.
JKR
The Wizard and the Hopping Pot
There was once a kindly old wizard who used his magic generously and wisely for the benefit of his neighbours. Rather than reveal the true source of his power, he pretended that his potions, charms and antidotes sprang ready-made from the little cauldron he called his lucky cooking pot. From miles around people came to him with their troubles, and the wizard was pleased to give his pot a stir and put things right.
This well-beloved wizard lived to a goodly age, then died, leaving all his chattels to his only son. This son was of a very different disposition to his gentle father. Those who could not work magic were, to the son’s mind, worthless, and he had often quarrelled with his father’s habit of dispensing magical aid to their neighbours.
Upon the father’s death, the son found hidden inside the old cooking pot a small package bearing his name. He opened it, hoping for gold, but found instead a soft, thick slipper, much too small to wear, and with no pair. A fragment of parchment within the slipper bore the words “In the fond hope, my son, that you will never need it.”
The son cursed his father’s age-softened mind, then threw the slipper back into the cauldron, resolving to use it henceforth as a rubbish pail.
That very night a peasant woman knocked on the front door.
“My granddaughter is afflicted by a crop of warts, sir,” she told him. “Your father used to mix a special poultice in that old cooking pot –”
“Begone!” cried the son. “What care I for your brat’s warts?”
And he slammed the door in the old woman’s face.
At once there came a loud clanging and banging from his kitchen. The wizard lit his wand and opened the door, and there, to his amazement, he saw his father’s old cooking pot: it had sprouted a single foot of brass, and was hopping on the spot, in the middle of the floor, making a fearful noise upon the flagstones. The wizard
approached it in wonder, but fell back hurriedly when he saw that the whole of the pot’s surface was covered in warts.
“Disgusting object!” he cried, and he tried firstly to Vanish the pot, then to clean it by magic, and finally to force it out of the house. None of his spells worked, however, and he was unable to prevent the pot hopping after him out of the kitchen, and then following him up to bed, clanging and banging loudly on every wooden stair.
The wizard could not sleep all night for the banging of the warty old pot by his bedside, and next morning the pot insisted upon hopping after him to the breakfast table. Clang, clang,clang, went the brass-footed pot, and the wizard had not even started his porridge when there came another knock on the door.
An old man stood on the doorstep.
“’Tis my old donkey, sir,” he explained. “Lost, she is, or stolen, and without her I cannot take my wares to market, and my family will go hungry tonight.”
“And I am hungry now!” roared the wizard, and he slammed the door upon the old man.
Clang,clang,clang,went the cooking pot’s single brass foot upon the floor, but now its clamour was mixed with the brays of a donkey and human groans of hunger, echoing from the depths of the pot.
“Be still. Be silent!” shrieked the wizard, but not all his magical powers could quieten the warty pot, which hopped at his heels all day, braying and groaning and clanging, no matter where he went or what he did.
That evening there came a third knock upon the door, and there on the threshold stood a young woman sobbing as though her heart would break.
“My baby is grievously ill,” she said. “Won’t you please help us? Your father bade me come if troubled –”
But the wizard slammed the door on her.
And now the tormenting pot filled to the brim with salt water, and slopped tears all over the floor as it hopped, and brayed, and groaned, and sprouted more warts.
Though no more villagers came to seek help at the wizard’s cottage for the rest of the week, the pot kept him informed of their
many ills. Within a few days, it was not only braying and groaning and slopping and hopping and sprouting warts, it was also choking and retching, crying like a baby, whining like a dog, and spewing out bad cheese and sour milk and a plague of hungry slugs.
The wizard could not sleep or eat with the pot beside him, but the pot refused to leave, and he could not silence it or force it to be still.
At last the wizard could bear it no more.
“Bring me all your problems, all your troubles and your woes!” he screamed, fleeing into the night, with the pot hopping behind him along the road into the village. “Come! Let me cure you, mend you and comfort you! I have my father’s cooking pot, and I shall make you well!”
And with the foul pot still bounding along behind him, he ran up the street, casting spells in every direction.
Inside one house the little girl’s warts vanished as she slept; the lost donkey was Summoned from a distant briar patch and set down softly in its stable; the sick baby was doused in dittany and woke, well and rosy. At every house of sickness and sorrow, the wizard did his best, and gradually the cooking pot beside him stopped groaning and retching, and became quiet, shiny and clean.
“Well, Pot?” asked the trembling wizard, as the sun began to rise.
The pot burped out the single slipper he had thrown into it, and permitted him to fit it on to the brass foot. Together, they set off back to the wizard’s house, the pot’s footstep muffled at last. But from that day forward, the wizard helped the villagers like his father before him, lest the pot cast off its slipper, and begin to hop once more.
Albus Dumbledore on "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot"
A kind old wizard decides to teach his hardhearted son a lesson by giving him a taste of the local Muggles’ misery. The young wizard’s conscience awakes, and he agrees to use his magic for the benefit of his non-magical neighbours. A simple and heart-warming fable, one might think – in which case, one would reveal oneself to be an innocent nincompoop. A pro-Muggle story showing a Muggle-loving father as superior in magic to a Muggle-hating son? It is nothing short of amazing that any copies of the original version of this tale survived the flames to which they were so often consigned.
Beedle was somewhat out of step with his times in preaching a message of brotherly love for Muggles. The persecution of witches and wizards was gathering pace all over Europe in the early fifteenth century. Many in the magical community felt, and with good reason, that offering to cast a spell on the Muggle-next-door’s sickly pig was tantamount to volunteering to fetch the firewood for one’s own funeral pyre.1 “Let the Muggles manage without us!” was the cry, as the wizards drew further and further apart from their non-magical brethren, culminating with the institution of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy in 1689, when wizardkind voluntarily went underground.
Children being children, however, the grotesque Hopping Pot had taken hold of their imaginations. The solution was to jettison the pro-Muggle moral but keep the warty cauldron, so by the middle of the sixteenth century a different version of the tale was in wide circulation among wizarding families. In the revised story, the Hopping Pot protects an innocent wizard from his torch-bearing, pitchfork-toting neighbours by chasing them away from the wizard’s cottage, catching them and swallowing them whole. At the end of
the story, by which time the Pot has consumed most of his neighbours, the wizard gains a promise from the few remaining villagers that he will be left in peace to practise magic. In return, he instructs the Pot to render up its victims, who are duly burped out of its depths, slightly mangled. To this day, some wizarding children are only told the revised version of the story by their (generally antiMuggle) parents, and the original, if and when they ever read it, comes as a great surprise.
As I have already hinted, however, its pro-Muggle sentiment was not the only reason that “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot” attracted anger. As the witch-hunts grew ever fiercer, wizarding families began to live double lives, using charms of concealment to protect themselves and their families. By the seventeenth century, any witch or wizard who chose to fraternise with Muggles became suspect, even an outcast in his or her own community. Among the many insults hurled at pro-Muggle witches and wizards (such fruity epithets as “Mudwallower”, “Dunglicker” and “Scumsucker” date from this period), was the charge of having weak or inferior magic.
Influential wizards of the day, such as Brutus Malfoy, editor of Warlock at War, an anti-Muggle periodical, perpetuated the stereotype that a Muggle-lover was about as magical as a Squib.2 In 1675, Brutus wrote:
This we may state with certainty: any wizard who shows fondness for the society of Muggles is of low intelligence, with magicsofeebleandpitifulthathecanonlyfeelhimselfsuperior ifsurroundedbyMugglepigmen. Nothingisasurersignofweakmagicthanaweaknessfornonmagicalcompany.
This prejudice eventually died out in the face of overwhelming evidence that some of the world’s most brilliant wizards3 were, to use the common phrase, “Muggle-lovers”.
The final objection to “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot” remains alive in certain quarters today. It was summed up best, perhaps, by
Beatrix Bloxam (1794-1910), author of the infamous ToadstoolTales. Mrs Bloxam believed that The Tales of Beedle the Bard were damaging to children because of what she called “their unhealthy preoccupation with the most horrid subjects, such as death, disease, bloodshed, wicked magic, unwholesome characters and bodily effusions and eruptions of the most disgusting kind”. Mrs Bloxam took a variety of old stories, including several of Beedle’s, and rewrote them according to her ideals, which she expressed as “filling the pure minds of our little angels with healthy, happy thoughts, keeping their sweet slumber free of wicked dreams and protecting the precious flower of their innocence”.
The final paragraph of Mrs Bloxam’s pure and precious reworking of “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot” reads:
Then the little golden pot danced with delight – hoppitty hoppittyhop!– onitstinyrosytoes!WeeWillykinshadcuredall the dollies of their poorly tum-tums, and the little pot was so happy that it filledup with sweeties for Wee Willykins and the dollies!
“Butdon’tforgettobrushyourteethy-pegs!”criedthepot. And Wee Willykins kissed and huggled the hoppitty pot and promised always to help the dollies and never to be an old grumpy-wumpkinsagain.
Mrs Bloxam’s tale has met the same response from generations of wizarding children: uncontrollable retching, followed by an immediate demand to have the book taken from them and mashed into pulp.
The Fountain of Fair Fortune
High on a hill in an enchanted garden, enclosed by tall walls and protected by strong magic, flowed the Fountain of Fair Fortune.
Once a year, between the hours of sunrise and sunset on the longest day, a single unfortunate was given the chance to fight their way to the Fountain, bathe in its waters and receive Fair Fortune for evermore.
On the appointed day, hundreds of people travelled from all over the kingdom to reach the garden walls before dawn. Male and female, rich and poor, young and old, of magical means and without, they gathered in the darkness, each hoping that they would be the one to gain entrance to the garden.
Three witches, each with her burden of woe, met on the outskirts of the crowd, and told one another their sorrows as they waited for sunrise.
The first, by name Asha, was sick of a malady no Healer could cure. She hoped that the Fountain would banish her symptoms and grant her a long and happy life.
The second, by name Altheda, had been robbed of her home, her gold and her wand by an evil sorcerer. She hoped that the Fountain might relieve her of powerlessness and poverty.
The third, by name Amata, had been deserted by a man whom she loved dearly, and she thought her heart would never mend. She hoped that the Fountain would relieve her of her grief and longing.
Pitying each other, the three women agreed that, should the chance befall them, they would unite and try to reach the Fountain together.
The sky was rent with the first ray of sun, and a chink in the wall opened. The crowd surged forward, each of them shrieking their claim for the Fountain’s benison. Creepers from the garden beyond snaked through the pressing mass, and twisted themselves around
the first witch, Asha. She grasped the wrist of the second witch, Altheda, who seized tight upon the robes of the third witch, Amata.
And Amata became caught upon the armour of a dismal-looking knight who was seated on a bone-thin horse.
The creepers tugged the three witches through the chink in the wall, and the knight was dragged off his steed after them.
The furious screams of the disappointed throng rose upon the morning air, then fell silent as the garden walls sealed once more.
Asha and Altheda were angry with Amata, who had accidentally brought along the knight.
“Only one can bathe in the Fountain! It will be hard enough to decide which of us it will be, without adding another!”
Now, Sir Luckless, as the knight was known in the land outside the walls, observed that these were witches, and, having no magic, nor any great skill at jousting or duelling with swords, nor anything that distinguished the non-magical man, was sure that he had no hope of beating the three women to the Fountain. He therefore declared his intention of withdrawing outside the walls again.
At this, Amata became angry too.
“Faint heart!” she chided him. “Draw your sword, Knight, and help us reach our goal!”
And so the three witches and the forlorn knight ventured forth into the enchanted garden, where rare herbs, fruit and flowers grew in abundance on either side of the sunlit paths. They met no obstacle until they reached the foot of the hill on which the Fountain stood.
There, however, wrapped around the base of the hill, was a monstrous white Worm, bloated and blind. At their approach, it turned a foul face upon them, and uttered the following words:
“Paymetheproofofyourpain.”
Sir Luckless drew his sword and attempted to kill the beast, but his blade snapped. Then Altheda cast rocks at the Worm, while Asha and Amata essayed every spell that might subdue or entrance it, but the power of their wands was no more effective than their friend’s stone, or the knight’s steel: the Worm would not let them pass.
The sun rose higher and higher in the sky, and Asha, despairing, began to weep.
Then the great Worm placed its face upon hers and drank the tears from her cheeks. Its thirst assuaged, the Worm slithered aside, and vanished into a hole in the ground.
Rejoicing at the Worm’s disappearance, the three witches and the knight began to climb the hill, sure that they would reach the Fountain before noon.
Halfway up the steep slope, however, they came across words cut into the ground before them.
Paymethefruitofyourlabours.
Sir Luckless took out his only coin, and placed it upon the grassy hillside, but it rolled away and was lost. The three witches and the knight continued to climb, but though they walked for hours more, they advanced not a step; the summit came no nearer, and still the inscription lay in the earth before them.
All were discouraged as the sun rose over their heads and began to sink towards the far horizon, but Altheda walked faster and harder than any of them, and exhorted the others to follow her example, though she moved no further up the enchanted hill.
“Courage, friends, and do not yield!” she cried, wiping the sweat from her brow.
As the drops fell glittering on to the earth, the inscription blocking their path vanished, and they found that they were able to move upwards once more.
Delighted by the removal of this second obstacle, they hurried towards the summit as fast as they could, until at last they glimpsed the Fountain, glittering like crystal in a bower of flowers and trees.
Before they could reach it, however, they came to a stream that ran round the hilltop, barring their way. In the depths of the clear water lay a smooth stone bearing the words:
Paymethetreasureofyourpast.
Sir Luckless attempted to float across the stream on his shield, but it sank. The three witches pulled him from the water, then tried to leap the brook themselves, but it would not let them cross, and all the while the sun was sinking lower in the sky.
So they fell to pondering the meaning of the stone’s message, and Amata was the first to understand. Taking her wand, she drew from her mind all the memories of happy times she had spent with her vanished lover, and dropped them into the rushing waters. The stream swept them away, and stepping stones appeared, and the three witches and the knight were able to pass at last on to the summit of the hill.
The Fountain shimmered before them, set amidst herbs and flowers rarer and more beautiful than any they had yet seen. The sky burned ruby, and it was time to decide which of them would bathe.
Before they could make their decision, however, frail Asha fell to the ground. Exhausted by their struggle to the summit, she was close to death.
Her three friends would have carried her to the Fountain, but Asha was in mortal agony and begged them not to touch her.
Then Altheda hastened to pick all those herbs she thought most hopeful, and mixed them in Sir Luckless’s gourd of water, and poured the potion into Asha’s mouth.
At once, Asha was able to stand. What was more, all symptoms of her dread malady had vanished.
“I am cured!” she cried. “I have no need of the Fountain – let Altheda bathe!”
But Altheda was busy collecting more herbs in her apron.
“If I can cure this disease, I shall earn gold aplenty! Let Amata bathe!”
Sir Luckless bowed, and gestured Amata towards the Fountain, but she shook her head. The stream had washed away all regret for her lover, and she saw now that he had been cruel and faithless, and that it was happiness enough to be rid of him.
“Good sir, you must bathe, as a reward for all your chivalry!” she told Sir Luckless.
So the knight clanked forth in the last rays of the setting sun, and bathed in the Fountain of Fair Fortune, astonished that he was the chosen one of hundreds and giddy with his incredible luck.
As the sun fell below the horizon, Sir Luckless emerged from the waters with the glory of his triumph upon him, and flung himself in his rusted armour at the feet of Amata, who was the kindest and most beautiful woman he had ever beheld. Flushed with success, he begged for her hand and her heart, and Amata, no less delighted, realised that she had found a man worthy of them.
The three witches and the knight set off down the hill together, arm in arm, and all four led long and happy lives, and none of them ever knew or suspected that the Fountain’s waters carried no enchantment at all.
Albus Dumbledore on “The Fountain of Fair Fortune”
“The Fountain of Fair Fortune” is a perennial favourite, so much so that it was the subject of the sole attempt to introduce a Christmas pantomime to Hogwarts’ festive celebrations.
Our then Herbology master, Professor Herbert Beery,4 an enthusiastic devotee of amateur dramatics, proposed an adaptation of this well-beloved children’s tale as a Yuletide treat for staff and students. I was then a young Transfiguration teacher, and Herbert assigned me to “special effects”, which included providing a fully functioning Fountain of Fair Fortune and a miniature grassy hill, up which our three heroines and hero would appear to march, while it sank slowly into the stage and out of sight.
I think I may say, without vanity, that both my Fountain and my Hill performed the parts allotted to them with simple goodwill. Alas, that the same could not be said of the rest of the cast. Ignoring for a moment the antics of the gigantic “Worm” provided by our Care of Magical Creatures teacher, Professor Silvanus Kettleburn, the human element proved disastrous to the show. Professor Beery, in his role of director, had been dangerously oblivious to the emotional entanglements seething under his very nose. Little did he know that the students playing Amata and Sir Luckless had been boyfriend and girlfriend until one hour before the curtain rose, at which point “Sir Luckless” transferred his affections to “Asha”.
Suffice it to say that our seekers after Fair Fortune never made it to the top of the Hill. The curtain had barely risen when Professor Kettleburn’s “Worm” – now revealed to be an Ashwinder5 with an Engorgement Charm upon it – exploded in a shower of hot sparks and dust, filling the Great Hall with smoke and fragments of scenery. While the enormous fiery eggs it had laid at the foot of my Hill
ignited the floorboards, “Amata” and “Asha” turned upon each other, duelling so fiercely that Professor Beery was caught in the crossfire, and staff had to evacuate the Hall, as the inferno now raging onstage threatened to engulf the place. The night’s entertainment concluded with a packed hospital wing; it was several months before the Great Hall lost its pungent aroma of wood smoke, and even longer before Professor Beery’s head reassumed its normal proportions, and Professor Kettleburn was taken off probation.6 Headmaster Armando Dippet imposed a blanket ban on future pantomimes, a proud non-theatrical tradition that Hogwarts continues to this day.
Our dramatic fiasco notwithstanding, “The Fountain of Fair Fortune” is probably the most popular of Beedle’s tales, although, just like “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot”, it has its detractors. More than one parent has demanded the removal of this particular tale from the Hogwarts library, including, by coincidence, a descendant of Brutus Malfoy and one-time member of the Hogwarts Board of Governors, Mr Lucius Malfoy. Mr Malfoy submitted his demand for a ban on the story in writing:
Any work of fiction or non-fiction that depicts interbreeding between wizards and Muggles should be banned from the bookshelvesofHogwarts.Idonotwishmysontobeinfluenced into sullying the purity of his bloodline by reading stories that promotewizard–Mugglemarriage.
My refusal to remove the book from the library was backed by a majority of the Board of Governors. I wrote back to Mr Malfoy, explaining my decision:
So-called pure-blood families maintain their alleged purity by disowning, banishing or lying about Muggles or Muggle-borns on theirfamilytrees.Theythen attempttofoisttheirhypocrisy upon therestofus byaskingus tobanworksdealingwiththe truths they deny. There is not a witch or wizard in existence
This exchange marked the beginning of Mr Malfoy’s long campaign to have me removed from my post as Headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort’s Favourite Death Eater.
The Warlock’s Hairy Heart
There was once a handsome, rich and talented young warlock, who observed that his friends grew foolish when they fell in love, gambolling and preening, losing their appetites and their dignity. The young warlock resolved never to fall prey to such weakness, and employed Dark Arts to ensure his immunity.
Unaware of his secret, the warlock’s family laughed to see him so aloof and cold.
“All will change,” they prophesied, “when a maid catches his fancy!”
But the young warlock’s fancy remained untouched. Though many a maiden was intrigued by his haughty mien, and employed her most subtle arts to please him, none succeeded in touching his heart. The warlock gloried in his indifference and the sagacity that had produced it.
The first freshness of youth waned, and the warlock’s peers began to wed, and then to bring forth children.
“Their hearts must be husks,” he sneered inwardly, as he observed the antics of the young parents around him, “shrivelled by the demands of these mewling offspring!”
And once again he congratulated himself upon the wisdom of his early choice.
In due course, the warlock’s aged parents died. Their son did not mourn them; on the contrary, he considered himself blessed by their demise. Now he reigned alone in their castle. Having transferred his greatest treasure to the deepest dungeon, he gave himself over to a life of ease and plenty, his comfort the only aim of his many servants.
The warlock was sure that he must be an object of immense envy to all who beheld his splendid and untroubled solitude. Fierce were
his anger and chagrin, therefore, when he overheard two of his lackeys discussing their master one day.
The first servant expressed pity for the warlock who, with all his wealth and power, was yet beloved by nobody.
But his companion jeered, asking why a man with so much gold and a palatial castle to his name had been unable to attract a wife. Their words dealt dreadful blows to the listening warlock’s pride.
He resolved at once to take a wife, and that she would be a wife superior to all others. She would possess astounding beauty, exciting envy and desire in every man who beheld her; she would spring from magical lineage, so that their offspring would inherit outstanding magical gifts; and she would have wealth at least equal to his own, so that his comfortable existence would be assured, in spite of additions to his household.
It might have taken the warlock fifty years to find such a woman, yet it so happened that the very day after he decided to seek her, a maiden answering his every wish arrived in the neighbourhood to visit her kinsfolk.
She was a witch of prodigious skill and possessed of much gold. Her beauty was such that it tugged at the heart of every man who set eyes on her; of every man, that is, except one. The warlock’s heart felt nothing at all. Nevertheless, she was the prize he sought, so he began to pay her court.
All who noticed the warlock’s change in manners were amazed, and told the maiden that she had succeeded where a hundred had failed.
The young woman herself was both fascinated and repelled by the warlock’s attentions. She sensed the coldness that lay behind the warmth of his flattery, and had never met a man so strange and remote. Her kinsfolk, however, deemed theirs a most suitable match and, eager to promote it, accepted the warlock’s invitation to a great feast in the maiden’s honour.
The table was laden with silver and gold bearing the finest wines and most sumptuous foods. Minstrels strummed on silk-stringed lutes and sang of a love their master had never felt. The maiden sat upon a throne beside the warlock, who spake low, employing words
of tenderness he had stolen from the poets, without any idea of their true meaning.
The maiden listened, puzzled, and finally replied, “You speak well, Warlock, and I would be delighted by your attentions, if only I thought you had a heart!”
The warlock smiled, and told her that she need not fear on that score. Bidding her follow, he led her from the feast, and down to the locked dungeon where he kept his greatest treasure.
Here, in an enchanted crystal casket, was the warlock’s beating heart.
Long since disconnected from eyes, ears and fingers, it had never fallen prey to beauty, or to a musical voice, to the feel of silken skin. The maiden was terrified by the sight of it, for the heart was shrunken and covered in long black hair.
“Oh, what have you done?” she lamented. “Put it back where it belongs, I beseech you!”
Seeing that this was necessary to please her, the warlock drew his wand, unlocked the crystal casket, sliced open his own breast and replaced the hairy heart in the empty cavity it had once occupied.
“Now you are healed and will know true love!” cried the maiden, and she embraced him.
The touch of her soft white arms, the sound of her breath in his ear, the scent of her heavy gold hair: all pierced the newly awakened heart like spears. But it had grown strange during its long exile, blind and savage in the darkness to which it had been condemned, and its appetites had grown powerful and perverse.
The guests at the feast had noticed the absence of their host and the maiden. At first untroubled, they grew anxious as the hours passed, and finally began to search the castle.
They found the dungeon at last, and a most dreadful sight awaited them there.
The maiden lay dead upon the floor, her breast cut open, and beside her crouched the mad warlock, holding in one bloody hand a great, smooth, shining scarlet heart, which he licked and stroked, vowing to exchange it for his own.
In his other hand, he held his wand, trying to coax from his own chest the shrivelled, hairy heart. But the hairy heart was stronger than he was, and refused to relinquish its hold upon his senses or to return to the coffin in which it had been locked for so long.
Before the horror-struck eyes of his guests, the warlock cast aside his wand, and seized a silver dagger. Vowing never to be mastered by his own heart, he hacked it from his chest.
For one moment, the warlock knelt triumphant, with a heart clutched in each hand; then he fell across the maiden’s body, and died.
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Title: The cruise of the Canoe Club
Author: W. L. Alden
Illustrator: W. A. Rogers
Release date: June 16, 2022 [eBook #68322]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Harper & Brothers, 1883
Credits: Richard Hulse, hekula03 and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRUISE OF THE CANOE CLUB ***
“DON’T THINK FOR A MOMENT OF GETTING ANY OTHER CANOE.” [P. 12.
THE CRUISE OF THE CANOE CLUB
B W. L. ALDEN
AUTHOR OF “THE MORAL PIRATES” “THE CRUISE OF THE ‘GHOST’” ETC.
I
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1883
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
All rights reserved.
THE CRUISE OF
H E C A N O E C L U B .
C I.
IT is a very easy thing for four boys to make up their minds to get four canoes and to go on a canoe cruise, but it is not always so easy to carry out such a project—as Charley Smith, Tom Schuyler, Harry Wilson, and Joe Sharpe discovered.
Canoes cost money; and though some canoes cost more than others, it is impossible to buy a new wooden canoe of an approved model for less than seventy-five dollars. Four canoes, at seventy-five dollars each, would cost altogether three hundred dollars. As the entire amount of pocket-money in the possession of the boys was only seven dollars and thirteen cents, it was clear that they were not precisely in a position to buy canoes.
There was Harry’s uncle, who had already furnished his nephew and his young comrades first with a row-boat, and then with a sailboat. Even a benevolent uncle deserves some mercy, and the boys agreed that it would never do to ask Uncle John to spend three hundred dollars in canoes for them. “The most we can ask of him,” said Charley Smith, “is to let us sell the Ghost and use the money to help pay for canoes.”
Now, the Ghost, in which the boys had made a cruise along the south shore of Long Island, was a very nice sail-boat, but it was improbable that any one would be found who would be willing to give more than two hundred dollars for her. There would still be a hundred dollars wanting, and the prospect of finding that sum seemed very small.
“If we could only have stayed on that water-logged brig and brought her into port we should have made lots of money,” said Tom. “The captain of the schooner that towed us home went back with a steamer and brought the brig in yesterday. Suppose we go and look at her once more?”
While cruising in the Ghost the boys had found an abandoned brig, which they had tried to sail into New York harbor, but they had been compelled to give up the task, and to hand her over to the captain of a schooner which towed the partly disabled Ghost into port. They all thought they would like to see the brig again, so they went down to Burling Slip, where she was lying, and went on board her.
The captain of the schooner met the boys on the dock. He was in excellent spirits, for the brig was loaded with valuable South American timber, and he was sure of receiving as much as ten thousand dollars from her owners. He knew very well that, while the boys had no legal right to any of the money, they had worked hard in trying to save the brig, and had been the means of putting her in his way He happened to be an honest, generous man, and he felt very rich; so he insisted on making each of the boys a present.
The present was sealed up in an envelope, which he gave to Charley Smith, telling him not to look at its contents until after dinner —the boys having mentioned that they were all to take dinner together at Uncle John’s house. Charley put the envelope rather carelessly in his pocket; but when it was opened it was found to contain four new one-hundred-dollar bills.
It need hardly be said that the boys were delighted. They showed the money to Uncle John, who told them that they had fairly earned it, and need feel no hesitation about accepting it. They had now money enough to buy canoes, and to pay the expenses of a canoe cruise. Mr. Schuyler, Mr. Sharpe, and Charley’s guardian were consulted, and at Uncle John’s request gave their consent to the canoeing scheme. The first great difficulty in the way was thus entirely removed.
“I don’t know much about canoes,” remarked Uncle John, when the boys asked his advice as to what kind of canoes they should get, “but I know the commodore of a canoe club. You had better go and see him, and follow his advice. I’ll give you a letter of introduction to him.”
No time was lost in finding the commodore, and Charley Smith explained to him that four young canoeists would like to know what was the very best kind of canoe for them to get.
The Commodore, who, in spite of his magnificent title, wasn’t in the least alarming, laughed, and said, “That is a question that I’ve made up my mind never to try to answer. But I’ll give you the names of four canoeists, each of whom uses a different variety of canoe. You go and see them, listen to what they say, believe it all, and then come back and see me, and we’ll come to a decision.” He then wrote four notes of introduction, gave them to the boys, and sent them away.
The first canoeist to whom the boys were referred received them with great kindness, and told them that it was fortunate they had come to him. “The canoe that you want,” said he, “is the ‘Rice Lake’ canoe, and if you had gone to somebody else, and he had persuaded you to buy ‘Rob Roy’ canoes or ‘Shadows,’ you would have made a great mistake. The ‘Rice Lake’ canoe is nearly flatbottomed, and so stiff that there is no danger that you will capsize her. She paddles easily, and sails faster than any other canoe. She is roomy, and you can carry about twice as much in her as you can carry in a ‘Rob Roy.’ She has no keel, so that you can run rapids easily in her, and she is built in a peculiar way that makes it impossible for her to leak. Don’t think for a moment of getting any other canoe, for if you do you will never cease to regret it.”
He was such a pleasant, frank gentleman, and was so evidently earnest in what he said, that the boys at once decided to get ‘Rice Lake’ canoes. They did not think it worth while to make any farther inquiries; but, as they had three other notes of introduction with them, Tom Schuyler said that it would hardly do to throw them away. So they went to see the next canoeist, though without the least
expectation that he would say anything that would alter their decision.
Canoeist No. 2 was as polite and enthusiastic as canoeist No. 1. “So you boys want to get canoes, do you?” said he. “Well, there is only one canoe for you to get, and that is the ‘Shadow.’ She paddles easily, and sails faster than any other canoe. She’s not a flatbottomed skiff, like the ‘Rice Laker,’ that will spill you whenever a squall strikes her, but she has good bearings, and you can’t capsize her unless you try hard. Then, she is decked all over, and you can sleep in her at night, and keep dry even in a thunder-storm; her water-tight compartments have hatches in them, so that you can stow blankets and things in them that you want to keep dry; and she has a keel, so that when you run rapids, and she strikes on a rock, she will strike on her keel instead of her planks. It isn’t worth while for you to look at any other canoe, for there is no canoe except the ‘Shadow’ that is worth having.”
“You don’t think much of the ‘Rice Lake’ canoe, then?” asked Harry.
“Why, she isn’t a civilized canoe at all,” replied the canoeist. “She is nothing but a heavy, wooden copy of the Indian birch. She hasn’t any deck, she hasn’t any water-tight compartments, and she hasn’t any keel. Whatever else you do, don’t get a ‘Rice Laker.’”
The boys thanked the advocate of the “Shadow,” and when they found themselves in the street again they wondered which of the two canoeists could be right, for each directly contradicted the other, and each seemed to be perfectly sincere. They reconsidered their decision to buy “Rice Lake” canoes, and looked forward with interest to their meeting with canoeist No. 3.
That gentleman was just as pleasant as the other two, but he did not agree with a single thing that they had said. “There are several different models of canoes,” he remarked, “but that is simply because there are ignorant people in the world. Mr. Macgregor, the father of canoeing, always uses a ‘Rob Roy’ canoe, and no man who has once been in a good ‘Rob Roy’ will ever get into any other canoe. The ‘Rob Roy’ paddles like a feather, and will outsail any
other canoe. She weighs twenty pounds less than those great, lumbering canal-boats, the ‘Shadow’ and the ‘Rice Laker,’ and it don’t break your back to paddle her or to carry her round a dam. She is decked over, but her deck isn’t all cut up with hatches. There’s plenty of room to sleep in her, and her water-tight compartments are what they pretend to be—not a couple of leaky boxes stuffed full of blankets.”
“We have been advised,” began Charley, “to get ‘Shadows’ or ‘Rice’—”
“Don’t you do it,” interrupted the canoeist. “It’s lucky for you that you came to see me. It is a perfect shame for people to try to induce you to waste your money on worthless canoes. Mind you get ‘Rob Roys,’ and nothing else. Other canoes don’t deserve the name. They are schooners, or scows, or canal-boats, but the ‘Rob Roy’ is a genuine canoe.”
“Now for the last canoeist on the list!” exclaimed Harry as the boys left the office of canoeist No. 3. “I wonder what sort of a canoe he uses?”
“I’m glad there is only one more of them for us to see,” said Joe. “The Commodore told us to believe all they said, and I’m trying my best to do it, but it’s the hardest job I ever tried.”
The fourth canoeist was, on the whole, the most courteous and amiable of the four. He begged his young friends to pay no attention to those who recommended wooden canoes, no matter what model they might be. “Canvas,” said he, “is the only thing that a canoe should be built of. It is light and strong, and if you knock a hole in it you can mend it in five minutes. If you want to spend a great deal of money and own a yacht that is too small to sail in with comfort and too clumsy to be paddled, buy a wooden canoe; but if you really want to cruise, you will, of course, get canvas canoes.”
“We have been advised to get ‘Rice Lakers,’ ‘Shadows,’ and ‘Rob Roys,’” said Tom, “and we did not know until now that there was such a thing as a canvas canoe.”
“It is very sad,” replied the canoeist, “that people should take pleasure in giving such advice. They must know better. However, the subject is a painful one, and we won’t discuss it. Take my advice, my dear boys, and get canvas canoes. All the really good canoeists in the country would say the same thing to you.”
“We must try,” said Joe, as the boys walked back to the Commodore’s office, “to believe that the ‘Rice Laker,’ the ‘Shadow,’ the ‘Rob Roy,’ and the canvas canoe is the best one ever built. It seems to me something like believing that four and one are just the same. Perhaps you fellows can do it, but I’m not strong enough to believe as much as that all at one time.”
The Commodore smiled when the boys entered his office for the second time and said, “Well, of course you’ve found out what is the best canoe, and know just what you want to buy?”
“We’ve seen four men,” replied Harry, “and each one says that the canoe that he recommends is the only good one, and that all the others are good for nothing.”
“I might have sent you to four other men, and they would have told you of four other canoes, each of which is the best in existence. But perhaps you have already heard enough to make up your minds.”
“We’re farther from making up our minds than ever,” said Harry. “I do wish you would tell us what kind of canoe is really the best.”
“The truth is,” said the Commodore, “that there isn’t much to choose among the different models of canoes, and you’ll find that every canoeist is honestly certain that he has the best one. Now, I won’t undertake to select canoes for you, though I will suggest that a light ‘Rob Roy’ would probably be a good choice for the smallest of you boys. Why don’t you try all four of the canoes that have just been recommended to you? Then, if you cruise together, you can perhaps find out if any one of them is really better than the others. I will give you the names of three or four builders, all of whom build good, strong boats.”
This advice pleased the boys, and they resolved to accept it. That evening they all met at Harry’s home and decided what canoes they
would get. Harry determined to get a “Shadow,” Tom a “Rice Laker,” Charley a canvas canoe, and Joe a “Rob Roy;” and the next morning orders for the four canoes were mailed to the builders whom the Commodore had recommended.
C II.
IT was some time before the canoes were ready, and in the mean time the young canoeists met with a new difficulty. The canoebuilders wrote to them wishing to know how they would have the canoes rigged. It had never occurred to the boys that there was more than one rig used on canoes, and of course they did not know how to answer the builders’ question. So they went to the Commodore and told him their difficulty.
“I might do,” said he, “just as I did when I told you to go and ask four different canoeists which is the best canoe; but I won’t put you to that trouble. I rather like the Lord Ross lateen rig better than any other, but, as you are going to try different kinds of canoes, it would be a good idea for you to try different rigs. For example, have your ‘Rob Roy’ rigged with lateen-sails; rig the ‘Shadow’ with a balancelug, the ‘Rice Laker’ with a ‘sharpie’ leg-of-mutton, and the canvas canoe with the standing lug. Each one of these rigs has its advocates, who will prove to you that it is better than any other, and you can’t do better than try them all. Only be sure to tell the builders that every canoe must have two masts, and neither of the two sails must be too big to be safely handled.”
“How does it happen that every canoeist is so perfectly certain that he has the best canoe and the best rig in existence?” asked Tom.
“That is one of the great merits of canoeing,” replied the Commodore. “It makes every man contented, and develops in him decision of character. I’ve known a canoeist to have a canoe so leaky that he spent half his time bailing her out, and rigged in such a way that she would neither sail nor do anything in a breeze except
capsize; and yet he was never tired of boasting of the immense superiority of his canoe. There’s a great deal of suffering in canoeing,” continued the Commodore, musingly, “but its effects on the moral character are priceless. My dear boys, you have no idea how happy and contented you will be when you are wet through, cramped and blistered, and have to go into camp in a heavy rain, and without any supper except dry crackers.”
While the boys were waiting for their canoes they read all the books on canoeing that they could find, and searched through a dozen volumes of the London Field, which they found in Uncle John’s library, for articles and letters on canoeing. They thus learned a good deal, and when their canoes arrived they were able to discuss their respective merits with a good degree of intelligence.
The “Rob Roy” and the “Shadow” were built with white cedar planks and Spanish cedar decks. They shone with varnish, and their nickel-plated metal-work was as bright as silver. They were decidedly the prettiest of the four canoes, and it would have been very difficult to decide which was the prettier of the two. The “Rice Laker” was built without timbers or a keel, and was formed of two thicknesses of planking riveted together, the grain of the inner planking crossing that of the outer planking at right angles. She looked strong and serviceable, and before Tom had been in possession of her half an hour he was insisting that she was much the handiest canoe of the squadron, simply because she had no deck. The outside planks were of butternut; but they were pierced with so many rivets that they did not present so elegant an appearance as did the planks of the “Shadow” and the “Rob Roy.” The canvas canoe consisted of a wooden skeleton-frame, covered and decked with painted canvas. She was very much the same in model as the “Shadow;” and though she seemed ugly in comparison with her varnished sisters, Charley claimed that he would get more comfort out of his canoe than the other boys would out of theirs, for the reason that scratches that would spoil the beauty of the varnished wood could not seriously injure the painted canvas. Thus each boy was quite contented, and asserted that he would not change canoes with anybody. They were equally well contented with
the way in which their canoes were rigged, and they no longer wondered at the confident way in which the canoeists to whom the Commodore had introduced them spoke of the merits of their respective boats.
Of course the subject of names for the canoes had been settled long before the canoes arrived. Joe had named his “Rob Roy” the Dawn; Harry’s canoe was the Sunshine; Tom’s the Twilight; and Charley’s the Midnight. The last name did not seem particularly appropriate to a canoe, but it was in keeping with the other names, and, as the canoe was painted black, it might have been supposed to have some reference to her color.
The boys had intended to join the American Canoe Association, but Uncle John suggested that they would do well to make a cruise, and to become real canoeists, before asking for admission to the association. They then decided to form a canoe club of their own, which they did; and Harry was elected the first Commodore of the Columbian Canoe Club, the flag of which was a pointed burgee of blue silk, with a white paddle worked upon it. Each canoe carried its private signal in addition to the club flag, and bore its name in gilt letters on a blue ground on each bow.
Where to cruise was a question which was decided and reconsidered half a dozen times. From the books which they had read the boys had learned that there is, if anything, more fun in cruising on a narrow stream than in sailing on broad rivers; that running rapids is a delightful sport, and that streams should always be descended instead of ascended in a canoe. They, therefore, wanted to discover a narrow stream with safe and easy rapids, and also to cruise on some lake or wide river where they could test the canoes under sail and under paddle in rough water. They learned more of the geography of the Eastern States and of Canada, in searching the map for a good cruising route, than they had ever learned at school; and they finally selected a route which seemed to combine all varieties of canoeing.
The cruise was to begin at the southern end of Lake Memphremagog, in Vermont. On this lake, which is thirty miles long,
the young canoeists expected to spend several days, and to learn to handle the canoes under sail. From the northern end of the lake, which is in Canada, they intended to descend its outlet, the Magog River, which is a narrow stream, emptying into the St. Francis River at Sherbrooke. From Sherbrooke the St. Francis was to be descended to the St. Lawrence, down which the canoes were to sail to Quebec. They wrote to the postmaster at Sherbrooke asking him if the Magog and the St. Francis were navigable by canoes, and when he replied that there were only one or two rapids in the Magog, which they could easily run, they were more than ever satisfied with their route.
The previous cruises that the boys had made had taught them what stores and provisions were absolutely necessary and what could be spared. Each canoe was provided with a water-proof bag to hold a blanket and dry clothes, and with a pair of small cushions stuffed with elastic felt, a material lighter than cork, and incapable of retaining moisture. These cushions were to be used as mattresses at night, and the rubber blankets were to be placed over the canoes and used as shelter tents. Although the mattresses would have made excellent life-preservers, Uncle John presented each canoeist with a rubber life-belt, which could be buckled around the waist in a few seconds in case of danger of a capsize. Harry provided his canoe with a canvas canoe-tent, made from drawings published in the London Field, but the others decided not to go to the expense of making similar tents until Harry’s should have been thoroughly tested.
When all was ready the blankets and stores were packed in the Sunshine, the cockpit of which was provided with hatches, which could be locked up, thus making the canoe serve the purpose of a trunk. The four canoes were then sent by rail to Newport, at the southern end of Lake Memphremagog, and a week later the boys followed them, carrying their paddles by hand, for the reason that, if they had been sent with the canoes and had been lost or stolen, it would have been impossible to start on the cruise until new paddles had been procured.
