Magic Casements

Magic Casements - 1905 - Contents - FERN-SEED ON THE NIGHT O F THE NATIVITY TIMES GO BY TURNS . AMORF ILIUSM ISERICORDZB . THE BOWED HEAD . A LOST SAINT . . THE ORB OF TERROR . IN BLUE AND WHITE . DEATH IN APRIL . . CRIMSON FO R SNOW-WHIT . E THE BLACK-FAC L E A D M B . . Fern-Seed IT was one evening in September, in the last year of King Harry the Sixth, that a Kentish lad went into a Kentish wood to gather fern-seed. The wood was the great wood that runs up the southern hills from the marshes. The river of division flows in the level these, and you are soon across into Sussex, but should you travel up the road as far as the wood goes, you will be deep in Kent. In a cup of the ground with a rim of oak saplings, that you might call a fairies lodge or a witches kitchen, according as the weather were clear or foul, the Iad found what he sought. That evening was a clear harvest yellow one the moon that had been up just an hour before the sun set, was now bright with the glean Fern-Seed iilgs he had left her. In the bloom and dew and haze, the fern-harvester groped among the leaves. Soon he stole away with a full pouch. Out of the wood he came, and down on to the black marsh path among a score of great sheep that a shepherd was fetching home by moonshine. Then across the ford into Sussex, and thence a long trudge, with a-many dykes to leap, to the Anchorage of Udimore. This anchorage was built at the east wall of the church and stood lonely. There is but a. scatter of houses in the village and they are poor ones. But the last anchoress, that was the Lady Elizabeth, made the honour of the place and the Lady Anne, that was but five years come to inhabit there, seemed like to cherish it.Herein was the famous window-curtain, crimson woven with a great cross of white, that came across the sea in the French Wars. Thirty years before, a wrecked Winchelsea crew that fought their way to their friends, robbed it from a heath-chapel in Brittany, Fern-Seed They vowed it to Saint Michael at home, a, nd swearing it had brought them good aid, kept their vow. From behind that veil, it was the rule of the Udimore anchoress to counsel those that came to her. An you stayed a whole month in the village you would see her face but seldom, in such seemly wise was she enclosed. Through her white cross on crimson, the young sun would look very meekly and the old moon very kindly...