"I will take care that he shall not come near you again. But there are
some in the wood more like me, from whom, alas! I cannot protect you.
Only if you see any of them very beautiful, try to walk round them."
"What then?"
"I cannot tell you more. But now I must tie some of my hair about you,
and then the Ash will not touch you. Here, cut some off. You men have
strange cutting things about you."
She shook her long hair loose over me, never moving her arms.
"I cannot cut your beautiful hair. It would be a shame."
"Not cut my hair! It will have grown long enough before any is wanted
again in this wild forest. Perhaps it may never be of any use again--not
till I am a woman." And she sighed.
As gently as I could, I cut with a knife a long tress of flowing, dark
hair, she hanging her beautiful head over me. When I had finished, she
shuddered and breathed deep, as one does when an acute pain, steadfastly
endured without sign of suffering, is at length relaxed. She then took
the hair and tied it round me, singing a strange, sweet song, which I
could not understand, but which left in me a feeling like this-"I saw thee ne'er before;
I see thee never more;
But love, and help, and pain, beautiful one,
Have made thee mine, till all my years are done."
I cannot put more of it into words. She closed her arms about me again,
and went on singing. The rain in the leaves, and a light wind that had
arisen, kept her song company. I was wrapt in a trance of still delight.
It told me the secret of the woods, and the flowers, and the birds. At
one time I felt as if I was wandering in childhood through sunny spring
forests, over carpets of primroses, anemones, and little white starry
things--I had almost said creatures, and finding new wonderful flowers
at every turn. At another, I lay half dreaming in the hot summer noon,
with a book of old tales beside me, beneath a great beech; or, in
autumn, grew sad because I trod on the leaves that had sheltered me,
and received their last blessing in the sweet odours of decay; or, in
a winter evening, frozen still, looked up, as I went home to a warm
fireside, through the netted boughs and twigs to the cold, snowy moon,
with her opal zone around her. At last I had fallen asleep; for I
know nothing more that passed till I found myself lying under a superb
beech-tree, in the clear light of the morning, just before sunrise.
Around me was a girdle of fresh beech-leaves. Alas! I brought nothing
with me out of Fairy Land, but memories--memories. The great boughs of
the beech hung drooping around me. At my head rose its smooth stem, with
its great sweeps of curving surface that swelled like undeveloped limbs.
The leaves and branches above kept on the song which had sung me asleep;
only now, to my mind, it sounded like a farewell and a speedwell. I sat
a long time, unwilling to go; but my unfinished story urged me on. I
must act and wander. With the sun well risen, I rose, and put my arms as
far as they would reach around the beech-tree, and kissed it, and said
good-bye. A trembling went through the leaves; a few of the last drops
of the night's rain fell from off them at my feet; and as I walked
slowly away, I seemed to hear in a whisper once more the words: "I may
love him, I may love him; for he is a man, and I am only a beech-tree."