Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rudyard Kipling
trologer—a doctor who knew all about the stars as well as all hay. ‘I wonder why.’
about herbs for medicine. He said that the sun, the moon, ‘Divine Astrology tells us,’ said Mr Culpeper. ‘The horse,
and five Planets, called Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, and being a martial beast that beareth man to battle, belongs natu-
Venus, governed everybody and everything in the world. They rally to the red planet Mars—the Lord of War. I would show
all lived in Houses—he mapped out some of them against you him, but he’s too near his setting. Rats and mice, doing
the dark with a busy forefinger—and they moved from House their businesses by night, come under the dominion of our
to House like pieces at draughts; and they went loving and Lady the Moon. Now between Mars and Luna, the one red,
hating each other all over the skies. If you knew their likes t’other white, the one hot t’other cold and so forth, stands, as
and dislikes, he said, you could make them cure your patient I have told you, a natural antipathy, or, as you say, hatred.
and hurt your enemy, and find out the secret causes of things. Which antipathy their creatures do inherit. Whence, good
He talked of these five Planets as though they belonged to people, you may both see and hear your cattle stamp in their
him, or as though he were playing long games against them. stalls for the self-same causes as decree the passages of the stars
The children burrowed in the hay up to their chins, and looked across the unalterable face of Heaven! Ahem!’ Puck lay along
out over the half-door at the solemn, star-powdered sky till chewing a leaf. They felt him shake with laughter, and Mr
they seemed to be falling upside down into it, while Mr Culpeper sat up stiffly.
Culpeper talked about ‘trines’ and ‘oppositions’ and ‘conjunc- ‘I myself” said he, ‘have saved men’s lives, and not a few neitions’
and ‘sympathies’ and ‘antipathies’ in a tone that just ther, by observing at the proper time—there is a time, mark you,
matched things.
for all things under the sun—by observing, I say, so small a beast
A rat ran between Middenboro’s feet, and the old pony as a rat in conjunction with so great a matter as this dread arch
stamped.
above us.’ He swept his hand across the sky. ‘Yet there are those,’
‘Mid hates rats,’ said Dan, and passed him over a lock of he went on sourly, ‘who have years without knowledge.’
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