The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby
"Well, this is wonderful! I have seen things just like you again and
again, but I thought you were shells, or sea-creatures. I never took you
for water-babies like myself."
Now, was not that very odd? So odd, indeed, that you will, no doubt,
want to know how it happened, and why Tom could never find a water-baby
till after he had got the lobster out of the pot. And, if you will read
this story nine times over, and then think for yourself, you will find
out why. It is not good for little boys to be told everything, and never
to be forced to use their own wits. They would learn, then, no more than
they do at Dr. Dulcimer's famous suburban establishment for the idler
members of the youthful aristocracy, where the masters learn the lessons
and the boys hear them--which saves a great deal of trouble--for the
time being.
"Now," said the baby, "come and help me, or I shall not have finished
before my brothers and sisters come, and it is time to go home."
"What shall I help you at?"
"At this poor dear little rock; a great clumsy boulder came rolling by
in the last storm, and knocked all its head off, and rubbed off all its
flowers. And now I must plant it again with seaweeds, and coralline, and
anemones, and I will make it the prettiest little rock-garden on all the
shore."
So they worked away at the rock, and planted it, and smoothed the sand
down round it, and capital fun they had till the tide began to turn. And
then Tom heard all the other babies coming, laughing and singing and
shouting and romping; and the noise they made was just like the noise of
the ripple. So he knew that he had been hearing and seeing the
water-babies all along; only he did not know them, because his eyes and
ears were not opened.
And in they came, dozens and dozens of them, some bigger than Tom and
some smaller, all in the neatest little white bathing dresses; and when
they found that he was a new baby, they hugged him and kissed him, and
then put him in the middle and danced round him on the sand, and there
was no one ever so happy as poor little Tom.
"Now then," they cried all at once, "we must come away home, we must
come away home, or the tide will leave us dry. We have mended all the
broken seaweed, and put all the rock-pools in order, and planted all the
shells again in the sand, and nobody will see where the ugly storm swept
in last week."
And this is the reason why the rock-pools are always so neat and clean;
because the water-babies come inshore after every storm to sweep them
out, and comb them down, and put them all to rights again.
Only where men are wasteful and dirty, and let sewers run into the sea
instead of putting the stuff upon the fields like thrifty reasonable
souls; or throw herrings' heads and dead dog-fish, or any other refuse,
into the water; or in any way make a mess upon the clean shore--there
the water-babies will not come, sometimes not for hundreds of years (for
they cannot abide anything smelly or foul), but leave the sea-anemones
and the crabs to clear away everything, till the good tidy sea has
covered up all the dirt in soft mud and clean sand, where the
water-babies can plant live cockles and whelks and razor-shells and
sea-cucumbers and golden-combs, and make a pretty live garden again,
after man's dirt is cleared away. And that, I suppose, is the reason why
there are no water-babies at any watering-place which I have ever seen.
And where is the home of the water-babies? In St. Brandan's fairy isle.
Did you never hear of the blessed St. Brandan, how he preached to the
wild Irish on the wild, wild Kerry coast, he and five other hermits,
till they were weary and longed to rest? For the wild Irish would not
listen to them, or come to confession and to mass, but liked better to
brew potheen, and dance the pater o'pee, and knock each other over the
head with shillelaghs, and shoot each other from behind turf-dykes, and
steal each other's cattle, and burn each other's homes; till St. Brandan
and his friends were weary of them, for they would not learn to be
peaceable Christians at all.
So St. Brandan went out to the point of Old Dunmore, and looked over the
tide-way roaring round the Blasquets, at the end of all the world, and
away into the ocean, and sighed--"Ah that I had wings as a dove!" And
far away, before the setting sun, he saw a blue fairy sea, and golden
fairy islands, and he said, "Those are the islands of the blest." Then
he and his friends got into a hooker, and sailed away and away to the
westward, and were never heard of more. But the people who would not
hear him were changed into gorillas, and gorillas they are until this
day.
And when St. Brandan and the hermits came to that fairy isle they found
it overgrown with cedars and full of beautiful birds; and he sat down
under the cedars and preached to all the birds in the air. And they
liked his sermons so well that they told the fishes in the sea; and they
came, and St. Brandan preached to them; and the fishes told the
water-babies, who live in the caves under the isle; and they came up by
hundreds every Sunday, and St. Brandan got quite a neat little
Sunday-school. And there he taught the water-babies for a great many
hundred years, till his eyes grew too dim to see, and his beard grew so
long that he dared not walk for fear of treading on it, and then he
might have tumbled down. And at last he and the five hermits fell fast
asleep under the cedar-shades, and there they sleep unto this day. But
the fairies took to the water-babies, and taught them their lessons
themselves.
And some say that St. Brandan will awake and begin to teach the babies
once more: but some think that he will sleep on, for better for worse,
till the coming of the Cocqcigrues. But, on still clear summer evenings,
when the sun sinks down into the sea, among golden cloud-capes and
cloud-islands, and locks and friths of azure sky, the sailors fancy that
they see, away to westward, St. Brandan's fairy isle.
But whether men can see it or not, St. Brandan's Isle once actually
stood there; a great land out in the ocean, which has sunk and sunk
beneath the waves. Old Plato called it Atlantis, and told strange
tales of the wise men who lived therein, and of the wars they fought in
the old times. And from off that island came strange flowers, which
linger still about this land:--the Cornish heath, and Cornish moneywort,
and the delicate Venus's hair, and the London-pride which covers the
Kerry mountains, and the little pink butterwort of Devon, and the great
blue butterwort of Ireland, and the Connemara heath, and the
bristle-fern of the Turk waterfall, and many a strange plant more; all
fairy tokens left for wise men and good children from off St. Brandan's
Isle.
Now when Tom got there, he found that the isle stood all on pillars, and
that its roots were full of caves. There were pillars of black basalt,
like Staffa; and pillars of green and crimson serpentine, like Kynance;
and pillars ribboned with red and white and yellow sandstone, like
Livermead; and there were blue grottoes like Capri, and white grottoes
like Adelsberg; all curtained and draped with seaweeds, purple and
crimson, green and brown; and strewn with soft white sand, on which the
water-babies sleep every night. But, to keep the place clean and sweet,
the crabs picked up all the scraps off the floor and ate them like so
many monkeys; while the rocks were covered with ten thousand
sea-anemones, and corals and madrepores, who scavenged the water all day
long, and kept it nice and pure. But, to make up to them for having to
do such nasty work, they were not left black and dirty, as poor
chimney-sweeps and dustmen are. No; the fairies are more considerate and
just than that, and have dressed them all in the most beautiful colours
and patterns, till they look like vast flower-beds of gay blossoms. If
you think I am talking nonsense, I can only say that it is true; and
that an old gentleman named Fourier used to say that we ought to do the
same by chimney-sweeps and dustmen, and honour them instead of despising
them; and he was a very clever old gentleman: but, unfortunately for him
and the world, as mad as a March hare.
And, instead of watchmen and policemen to keep out nasty things at
night, there were thousands and thousands of water-snakes, and most
wonderful creatures they were. They were all named after the Nereids,
the sea-fairies who took care of them, Eunice and Polynoe, Phyllodoce
and Psamathe, and all the rest of the pretty darlings who swim round
their Queen Amphitrite, and her car of cameo shell. They were dressed in
green velvet, and black velvet, and purple velvet; and were all jointed
in rings; and some of them had three hundred brains apiece, so that they
must have been uncommonly shrewd detectives; and some had eyes in their
tails; and some had eyes in every joint, so that they kept a very sharp
look-out; and when they wanted a baby-snake, they just grew one at the
end of their own tails, and when it was able to take care of itself it
dropped off; so that they brought up their families very cheaply. But if
any nasty thing came by, out they rushed upon it; and then out of each
of their hundreds of feet there sprang a whole cutler's shop of
_Scythes_, _Javelins_,
_Billhooks_, _Lances_,
_Pickaxes_, _Halberts_,
_Forks_, _Gisarines_,
_Penknives_, _Poleaxes_,
_Rapiers_, _Fishhooks_,
_Sabres_, _Bradawls_,
_Yataghans_, _Gimblets_,
_Creeses_, _Corkscrews_,
_Ghoorka swords_, _Pins_,
_Tucks_, _Needles_,
_And so forth_,
which stabbed, shot, poked, pricked, scratched, ripped, pinked, and
crimped those naughty beasts so terribly that they had to run for their
lives, or else be chopped into small pieces and be eaten afterwards.
And, if that is not all, every word, true, then there is no faith in
microscopes, and all is over with the Linnæan Society.
And there were the water-babies in thousands, more than Tom, or you
either, could count.--All the little children whom the good fairies take
to, because their cruel mothers and fathers will not; all who are
untaught and brought up heathens, and all who come to grief by ill-usage
or ignorance or neglect; all the little children who are overlaid, or
given gin when they are young, or are let to drink out of hot kettles,
or to fall into the fire; all the little children in alleys and courts,
and tumble-down cottages, who die by fever, and cholera, and measles,
and scarlatina, and nasty complaints which no one has any business to
have, and which no one will have some day, when folks have common sense;
and all the little children who have been killed by cruel masters and
wicked soldiers; they were all there, except, of course, the babes of
Bethlehem who were killed by wicked King Herod; for they were taken
straight to heaven long ago, as everybody knows, and we call them the
Holy Innocents.
But I wish Tom had given up all his naughty tricks, and left off
tormenting dumb animals now that he had plenty of playfellows to amuse
him. Instead of that, I am sorry to say, he would meddle with the
creatures, all but the water-snakes, for they would stand no nonsense.
So he tickled the madrepores, to make them shut up; and frightened the
crabs, to make them hide in the sand and peep out at him with the tips
of their eyes; and put stones into the anemones' mouths, to make them
fancy that their dinner was coming.
The other children warned him, and said, "Take care what you are at.