('Join in, Una!')
Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?'
The echoes flapped all along the flat meadow.
'Of course I know it,' he said.
'And then there's the verse about the Rings,' said Dan. 'When I was little it always made me feel unhappy in my inside.'
'"Witness those rings and roundelays", do you mean?' boomed Puck, with a voice like a great church organ.
'Of theirs which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary's days
On many a grassy plain,
But since of late Elizabeth,
And, later, James came in,
Are never seen on any heath
As when the time hath been.'
'It's some time since I heard that sung, but there's no good beating about the bush: it's true. The People of the Hills have all left. I saw them come into Old England and I saw them go. Giants, trolls, kelpies, brownies, goblins, imps; wood, tree, mound, and water spirits; heath-people, hill-watchers, treasure-guards, good people, little people, pishogues, leprechauns, night-riders, pixies, nixies, gnomes, and the rest—gone, all gone! I came into England with Oak, Ash and Thorn, and when Oak, Ash and Thorn are gone I shall go too.'
Dan looked round the meadow—at Una's Oak by the lower gate; at the line of ash trees that
