Rudyard Kipling

Puck of Pook's Hill Rudyard Kipling

The children were at the Theatre, acting to Three Cows as much as they could remember ofMidsummer Night's Dream. Their father had made them a small play out of the big Shakespeareone, and they had rehearsed it with him and with their mother till they could say it by heart. Theybegan when Nick Bottom the weaver comes out of the bushes with a donkey's head on hisshoulders, and finds Titania, Queen of the Fairies, asleep. Then they skipped to the part whereBottom asks three little fairies to scratch his head and bring him honey, and they ended where hefalls asleep in Titania's arms. Dan was Puck and Nick Bottom, as well as all three Fairies. He wore apointy-cloth cap for Puck, and a paper donkey's head out of a Christmas cracker-but it tore if youwere not careful-for Bottom. Una was Titania, with a wreath of columbines and a foxglove wand. The Theatre lay in a meadow called the Long Slip. A little mill-stream, carrying water to a milltwo or three fields away, bent round one corner of it, and in the middle of the bend lay a large oldFairy Ring of darkened grass, which was the stage. The millstream banks, overgrown with willow, hazel, and guelder-rose, made convenient places to wait in till your turn came; and a grown-up whohad seen it said that Shakespeare himself could not have imagined a more suitable setting for hisplay. They were not, of course, allowed to act on Midsummer Night itself, but they went down aftertea on Midsummer Eve, when the shadows were growing, and they took their supper-hard-boiledeggs, Bath Oliver biscuits, and salt in an envelope-with them. Three Cows had been milked andwere grazing steadily with a tearing noise that one could hear all down the meadow; and the noise ofthe Mill at work sounded like bare feet running on hard ground. A cuckoo sat on a gate-post singinghis broken June tune, 'cuckoo-cuck', while a busy kingfisher crossed from the mill-stream, to thebrook which ran on the other side of the meadow. Everything else was a sort of thick, sleepystillness smelling of meadow-sweet and dry grass. Their play went beautifully. Dan remembered all his parts-Puck, Bottom, and the threeFairies-and Una never forgot a word of Titania-not even the difficult piece where she tells theFairies how to feed Bottom with 'apricocks, green figs, and dewberries', and all the lines end in 'ies'. They were both so pleased that they acted it three times over from beginning to end before they satdown in the unthistly centre of the Ring to eat eggs and Bath Olivers. This was when they heard awhistle among the alders on the bank, and they jumped