The fairy Tree of Bourlemont (1 of 2)

This one is not from a magazine, is not really unavailable in book form (I
own copies of two editions), and is not a short story. But many of you have
still never heard of it, I would bet. It is the third (untitled) chapter of
the novel Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, dated 1896 in the Tauchnitz
copyright edition. (I can't find my other copy.)
I was winding up some details from the books-on-disk project I gave up on a
couple of years ago, and thought: "Well, maybe…"


THE FAIRY TREE OF BOURLEMONT
by Mark Twain

Our Domremy was like any other humble little hamlet of that
remote time and region. It was a maze of crooked, narrow lanes and
alleys shaded and sheltered by the overhanging thatch roofs of the
barn-like houses. The houses were dimly lighted by wooden-
shuttered windows -- that is, holes in the walls which served for
windows. The floors were of dirt, and there was very little
furniture. Sheep and cattle grazing was the main industry; all the
young folks tended flocks.
The situation was beautiful. From one edge of the village a
flowery plain extended in a wide sweep to the river -- the Meuse;
from the rear edge of the village a grassy slope rose gradually,
and at the top was the great oak forest -- a forest that was deep
and gloomy and dense, and full of interest for us children, for
many murders had been done in it by outlaws in old times, and in
still earlier times prodigious dragons that spouted fire and
poisonous vapours from their nostrils had their homes in there. In
fact, one was still living in there in our own time. It was as
long as a tree, and had a body as big around as a tierce, and
scales like overlapping great tiles, and deep ruby eyes as large as
a cavalier's hat, and an anchor-fluke on its tail as big as I don't
know what, but very big, even unusually so for a dragon, as
everybody said who knew about dragons. It was thought that this
dragon was of a brilliant blue colour, with gold mottlings, but no
one had ever seen it, therefore this was not known to be so, it was
only an opinion. It was not my opinion; I think there is no sense
in forming an opinion when there is no evidence to form it on. If
you build a person without any bones in him, he may look fair
enough to the eye, but he will be limber and cannot stand up; and
I consider that *evidence* is the bones of an opinion. But I will
take up this matter more at large at another time, and try to make
the justness of my position appear. As to that dragon, I always
held the belief that its colour was gold and without blue, for that
has always been the colour of dragons. That this dragon lay not a
little way within the wood at one time is shown by the fact that
Pierre Morel was in there one day and smelt it, and recognised it
by the smell. It gives one a horrid idea of how near to us the
deadliest danger can be and we not suspect it.
In the earliest times a hundred knights from many remote
places in the earth would have gone in there one after another, to
kill the dragon and get the reward, but in our time that method had
gone out, and the priest had become the one that abolished dragons.
Pere Guillaume Fronte did it in this case. He had a procession,
with candles and incense and banners, and marched around the edge
of the wood and exorcised the dragon, and it was never heard of
again, although it was the opinion of many that the smell never
wholly passed away. Not that any had ever smelt the smell again,
for none had; it was only an opinion, like that other -- and lacked
bones, you see. I know that the creature was there before the
exorcism, but whether it was there afterwards or not is a thing
which I cannot be so positive about.
In a noble open space carpeted with grass on the high ground
towards Vaucouleurs stood a most majestic beech-tree with wide-
reaching arms and a grand spread of shade, and by it a limpid
spring of cold water; and on summer days the children went there --
oh, every summer for more than five hundred years -- went there and
sang and danced around the tree for hours together, refreshing
themselves at the spring from time to time, and it was most lovely
and enjoyable. Also they made wreaths of flowers and hung them
about the tree and about the spring to please the fairies that
lived there; for they liked that, being idle, innocent little
creatures, as all fairies are, and fond of anything delicate and
pretty like wild flowers put together in that way. And in return
for this attention the fairies did any friendly thing they could
for the children, such as keeping the spring always full and clear
and cold, and driving away serpents and insects that sting; and so
there was never any unkindness between the fairies and the children
during more than five hundred years -- tradition said a thousand --
but only the warmest affection and the most perfect trust and
confidence; and whenever a child died the fairies mourned just as
that child's playmates did, and the sign of it was there to see:
for before the dawn on the day of the funeral they hung a little
immortelle over the place where that child was used to sit under
the tree. I know this to be true by my own eyes; it is not
hearsay. And the reason it was known that the fairies did it was
this -- that it was made all of black flowers of a sort not known
in France anywhere.
Now, from time immemorial all children reared in Domremy were
called the Children of the Tree; and they loved that name, for it
carried with it a mystic privilege not granted to any others of the
children of this world. Which was this: whenever one of these came
to die, then beyond the vague and formless images drifting through
his darkening mind rose soft and rich and fair a vision of the Tree
-- if all was well with his soul. That was what some said. Others
said the vision came in two ways: once as a warning, one or two
years in advance of death, when the soul was the captive of sin,
and then the Tree appeared in its desolate winter aspect -- then
that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If repentance came, and
purity of life, the vision came again, this time summer-clad and
beautiful; but if it were otherwise with that soul the vision was
withheld, and it passed from life knowing its doom. Still others
said that the vision came but once, and then only to the sinless
dying forlorn in distant lands and pitifully longing for some last
dear reminder of their home. And what reminder of it could go to
their hearts like the picture of the Tree that was the darling of
their love and the comrade of their joys and comforter of their
small griefs all through the divine days of their vanished youth?
Now the several traditions were as I have said, some believing
one and some another. One of them I knew to be the truth, and that
was the last one. I do not say anything aginst the others; I think
they were true, but I only *know* that the last one was; and it is
my thought that if one keep to the things he knows, and not trouble
about the things which he cannot be sure about, he will have the
steadier mind for it -- and there is profit in that. I know that
when the Children of the Tree die in a far land, then -- if they be
at peace with God -- they turn their longing eyes toward home, and
there, far-shining, as through a rift in a cloud that curtains
heaven, they see the soft picture of the Fairy Tree, clothed in a
dream of golden light; and they see the bloomy mead sloping down to
the river, and to their perishing nostrils is blown faint and sweet
the fragrance of the flowers of home. And then the vision fades
and passes -- but *they* know, *they* know! and by their
transfigured faces you know also, you who stand looking on; yes,
you know the message that has come, and that it has come from
heaven.
Joan and I believed alike about this matter. But Pierre
Morel, and Jacques d'Arc, and many others believed that the vision
appeared twice -- to a sinner. In fact they and many others said
they *knew* it. Probably because their fathers had known it and
had told them; for one gets most things at second hand in this
world.
Now one thing that does make it quite likely that there were
really two apparitions of the Tree is this fact: From the most
ancient times if one saw a villager of ours with his face ash-white
and rigid with a ghastly fright, it was common for everyone to
whisper to his neighbour, "Ah, he is in sin, and has got his
warning." And the neighbour would shudder at the thought and
whisper back, "Yes, poor soul, he has seen the Tree."
Such evidences as these have their weight: they are not to be
put aside with a wave of the hand. A thing that is backed by the
cumulative experience of centuries naturally gets nearer and nearer
to being proof all the time; and if this continue and continue, it
will some day become authority -- and authority is a bedded rock,
and will abide.
In my long life I have seen several cases where the Tree
appeared announcing a death which was still far away; but in none
of these was the person in a state of sin. No; the apparition was
in these cases only a special grace; in place of deferring the
tidings of that soul's redemption till the day of death, the
apparition brought them long before, and with them peace -- peace
that might no more be disturbed -- the eternal peace of God. I
myself, old and broken, wait with serenity; for I have seen the
vision of the Tree. I have seen it, and am content.
Always, from the remotest times, when the children joined
hands and danced around the Fairy Tree, they sang a song which was
the Tree's Song, the Song of *L'Arbre Feé de Bourlemont.* They
sang it to a quaint sweet air -- a solacing sweet air which has
gone murmuring through my dreaming spirit all my life when I was
weary and troubled, resting me and carrying me through night and
distance home again. No stranger can know or feel what that song
has been, through the drifting centuries, to exiled Children of the
Tree, homeless and heavy of heart in countries foreign to their
speech and ways. You will think it a simple thing, that song, and
poor perchance; but if you will remember what it was to us, and
what it brought before our eyes when it floated through our
memories, then you will respect it. And you will understand how
the water wells up in our eyes and makes all things dim, and our
voices break and we cannot sing the last lines:
"And when in exile wand'ring we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
O rise upon our sight!"
And you will remember that Joan of Arc sang this song with us
around the Tree when she was a little child, and always loved it.
And that hallows it -- yes, you will grant that:

L'ARBRE FEé DE BOURLEMONT
SONG OF THE CHILDREN.

Now, what has kept your leaves so green,
Arbre Feé de Bourlemont?
The children's tears! They brought each grief,
And you did comfort them and cheer
Their bruised hearts, and steal a tear
That healed rose a leaf.

And what has built you up so strong,
Arbre Feé de Bourlemont?
The children's love! They've loved you long:
Ten hundred years, in sooth,
They've nourished you with praise and song,
And warmed your heart and kept it young --
A thousand years of youth!

Bide alway green in our young hearts,
Arbre Feé de Bourlemont!
And we shall alway youthful be,
Not heeding Time his flight;
And when in exile wand'ring we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
O rise upon our sight.

The fairies were still there when we were children, but we
never saw them; because, a hundred years before that, the priest of
Domremy had held a religious function under the Tree and denounced
them as being blood kin of the Fiend and barred out from
redemption; and then he warned them never to show themselves again,
nor hang any more immortelles, on pain of perpetual banishment from
that parish.
All the children pleaded for the fairies, and said they were
their good friends and dear to them and never did them any harm,
but the priest would not listen, and said it was sin and shame to
have such friends. The children mourned and could not be
comforted; and they made an agreement among themselves that they
would always continue to hang flower-wreaths on the Tree as a
perpetual sign to the fairies that they were still loved and
remembered, though lost to sight.
But late at night a great misfortune befell. Edmond Aubrey's
mother passed by the Tree, and the fairies were stealing a dance,
not thinking anybody was by; and they were so busy, and so
intoxicated with the wild happiness of it, and with the bumbers of
dew sharpened up with honey which they had been drinking, that they
noticed nothing; so Dame Aubrey stood there astonished and
admiring, and saw the little fantastic atoms holding hands, as many
as three hundred of them, tearing around in a great ring half as
big as an ordinary bedroom, and leaning back away and spreading
their mouths with laughter and song, which she could hear quite
distinctly, and kicking their legs up as much as three inches from
the ground in perfect abandon and hilarity -- oh, the very maddest
and witchingest dance the woman ever saw.
But in about a minute or two minutes the poor little ruined
creatures discovered her. They burst out in one heart-breaking
squeak of grief and terror and fled every which way, with their wee
hazel-nut fists in their eyes and crying; and so disappeared.