Free Thistle and Thyme by Sorche Nic Leodhas Page B

he’d never set a grander bonfire nor found loot more to his liking.
    But while he stood there looking and laughing, the stolen bells in the hold began to peal. First rang the silver-tongued smallest bell. Then, one by one the others joined in, and last of all the great bell boomed out its deep-toned song. And the peal they pealed was the death knell!
    Then the pirate crew came running to the captain. Near-deafened they were by the sound of the bells. They screamed out to the captain that something was amiss with the ship, for the sails were all set and the wind was stiff and the seas running free, but the sails would not fill and the ship would not move at all. The bells were accursed, they shouted.
    So then they ran to open the hold and throw the bells into the sea. But before the crew could lay hand upon the hatches, they flew open. There lay the bells rolling gently from side to side and tolling as they rolled. Before the terrified pirates’ eyes the bells began to increase in size, growing bigger and bigger and bigger. The timbers of the ship creaked and strained, but the bells kept on growing until at last the ship could contain them no longer. With a great wild noise of crashing masts and breaking beams, the ship flew apart, and down to the bottom of the sea went pirates, bells, and all.
    The monks who had been drawn from their caves at the sound of their bells, watched in wonder. They could see the ship by the light of the flames and the moon. When the ship went down, they grieved at the fate of the bells they loved so well. But they said to each other that the hand of God is ever heavy upon evildoers.
    Now when the people of the countryside saw the flames in the sky, they rushed to the abbey, fearing that all the monks were dead. Great was the joy of the people when they found their monks safe and unharmed. In thanksgiving for their safety, they built the monks a new chapel and abbey and had a new peal of bells cast, as fine as the lost ones.
    There were five of them, just as there had been before, and all were the same as before, from the silver-tongued smallest bell to the brazen-toned largest bell of all. And it is a strange queer thing that whenever the new bells were pealed and sent their noble tones over the waters of the sea, there came back from the sea an answering peal. There are those who will tell you ’tis only some odd sort of echo, but the truth of it is that it is the drowned bells the pirates stole, ringing back from the bottom of the sea. Even to this day you can hear them if you listen.

The Beekeeper
and the Bewitched Hare
    T HERE WAS A LAD ONCE WHO LIVED IN A COTTAGE ACROSS the moor. He was a beekeeper, and made his living selling the honey that his bees gathered from wild flowers and heather on the moor. He lived alone, and maybe he would have been lonely if it had not been for his bees. He knew them so well, and they trusted him so completely, that he could go among them as he pleased. There were folks who said he even knew their language and what they said with their buzzing, but he said it was only the tone of it that gave him a notion of what they meant. However it was, they buzzed to him and he talked to them, and whether they understood each other or not, they were all happy together.
    One evening as he stood on his doorstep in the gloaming, he heard the sound of hounds baying across the moor, and soon a hare came flying out of the heather with two dogs chasing close after.
    When the hare saw him standing there, it leaped into its arms for safety’s sake. The lad slipped it inside his shirt and, catching up a stick, he soon drove the dogs yelping away.
    When he was sure the hounds were gone, he took the hare out to stroke it and soothe it before he let it go. It made no effort to get away from him and lay quietly in his arms, only trembling a bit from the fright it had got. When it seemed to be over its fricht, he set it down and turned to go into the house to get his