Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rewards and Fairies
before—dismissed all conjectures and apprehensions that had stricken dead in very moonlight. I leaned out of the window
grown up within me, chose a good hour by my Almanac, to see which of Heaven’s host might be on our side, and there
clapped my vinegar-cloth to my face, and entered some empty beheld I good trusty Mars, very red and heated, bustling about
houses, resigned to wait upon the stars for guidance.’ his setting. I straddled the roof to see better.
‘At night? Were you not horribly frightened?’ said Puck. ‘Jack Marget came up street going to comfort our sick in
‘I dared to hope that the God who hath made man so no- Hitheram’s field. A tile slipped under my foot.
bly curious to search out His mysteries might not destroy a Says he, heavily enough, “Watchman, what of the night?”
devout seeker. In due time—there’s a time, as I have said, for ‘“Heart up, Jack,” says I. “Methinks there’s one fighting for
everything under the sun—I spied a whitish rat, very puffed us that, like a fool, I’ve forgot all this summer.” My meaning
and scabby, which sat beneath the dormer of an attic through was naturally the planet Mars.
which shined our Lady the Moon. Whilst I looked on him— ‘“Pray to Him then,” says he. “I forgot Him too this sum-
and her—she was moving towards old cold Saturn, her anmer.”cient ally—the rat creeped languishingly into her light, and ‘He meant God, whom he always bitterly accused himself of
there, before my eyes, died. Presently his mate or companion having forgotten up in Oxfordshire, among the King’s men. I
came out, laid him down beside there, and in like fashion called down that he had made amends enough for his sin by his
died too. Later—an hour or less to midnight—a third rat did work among the sick, but he said he would not believe so till the
e’en the same; always choosing the moonlight to die in. This plague was lifted from ‘em. He was at his strength’s end—more
threw me into an amaze, since, as we know, the moonlight is from melancholy than any just cause. I have seen this before among
favourable, not hurtful, to the creatures of the Moon; and priests and overcheerful men. I drenched him then and there with
Saturn, being friends with her, as you would say, was hourly a half-cup of waters, which I do not say cure the plague, but are
strengthening her evil influence. Yet these three rats had been excellent against heaviness of the spirits.’
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