Free Thistle and Thyme by Sorche Nic Leodhas

pity. He’d just take her the way she was from now on, silent or clackiting, he told himself.
    She looked up and smiled at him, and then she called down the well. “I bid you good day, kelpie. ’Tis time for me to go home.”
    There wasn’t a sound from the well for a moment. Then in a great loud angry voice the kelpie shouted, “GO HOME!”
    So the soldier gave his arm to the lass, and they started to walk back through the woods to her father’s house. She said only two things on the way home.
    The first thing she said was, “I’m awful thirsty,” but she drank no water from the well. The soldier made sure of that!
    And the second thing she said was, “I’m tired of talking.”
    Well, from that time on, she neither talked too little or too much but just enough. The soldier was content, for she was his own dear lass, and he loved her dearly.
    Since the old body with the second sight would never let them pay her for the good she’d done them, they invited her to be godmother when their first bairn was born. That pleased her more than if they’d given her a sack of gold. But never again in all her days did the wife go out alone in the gloaming or drink from a fairy well.

The Drowned Bells
of the Abbey
    I N THE FAR-OFF DAYS WHEN THE PICTS AND THE SCOTS were dividing the ancient land of Scotland and fighting amongst themselves to decide who could get hold of the most of it, there came good men from over the seas to settle in the land.
    They found places for themselves here and there along the coasts by the sea and lived wherever they could find shelter and fed themselves on whatever the earth and the sea were willing to give them. ’Twas a hard life, but they made no complaint, for all they did was done for the glory of God.
    These men called themselves monks, and what they had come for was to spread the word of God among these strange wild people, who had never heard tell of it before. The monks were learned men and wise in the arts of knowledge and healing. They taught the people and helped them in illness and in trouble. Soon they were greatly loved because of the goodness there was in them.
    There was a band of these good monks who settled in a wild deserted place at the head of a deep glen near the sea in the north of Scotland. At first there was only a half dozen of them with a leader they called their abbot. The monks made their homes in the caves along the sides of the glen.
    The people of the land at the time were wild and savage and given to the worship of demons, but the monks brought them to gentler ways and taught them to live as people lived in the lands from which they had come.
    As time went by, more monks came to joint the band, and the people for love of them built them an abbey so that they no longer needed to dwell in caves.
    For love, too, in time the people had a peal of bells made for the chapel of the abbey. There were five bells from the smallest silver-tongued one to the great bell which sent praise to God in deep brazen tones.
    The bells were cast in the churchyard of the abbey and made of the finest metal that could be had, by the most skillful smiths that could be found.
    Now, in those days there were pirates sailing up and down the sea along the coasts, robbing and plundering wherever they could find prey. What they liked best to find was an abbey, for some of the abbeys had great wealth because of the gifts made to them of money and golden vessels and jewelled cups and the like.
    The abbey of the glen was one of the richest, for it had prospered greatly in the long years that had passed since the first monks came. Men of wealth and great standing had sent their sons to be schooled there and had paid generouly for the service, and many were the priceless gifts that had been given to the abbey.
    The monks of all abbeys lived in terror of the pirates, and those of the abbey of the glen feared them no less than the rest. Still, the abbey