Page:Curiosities of Olden Times.djvu/302

Curiosities of Olden Times very ancient trenches. Out of these trenches there once came, in harvest-time, two children, a boy and a girl, whose bodies were of a green colour, and who wore dresses of some unknown stuff. They were caught and taken to the village, where for many months they would eat nothing but beans. They gradually lost their green colour. The boy soon died. The girl survived, and was married to a man of Lynn. At first they could speak no English; but when they were able to do so they said that they belonged to the land of St. Martin, an unknown country, where, as they were once watching their father's sheep, they heard a loud noise, like the ringing of the bells of St. Edmund's Monastery. And then, all at once, they found themselves among the reapers at Woolpit. Their country was a Christian land and had churches. There was no sun there, only a faint twilight; but beyond a broad river there lay a land of light. Giraldus Cambrensis in his Itinerary of Wales tells another queer story of the underground world, and notices that some of the words used in it are closely related to the British tongue. But in neither story are the sun and stars spoken of as stones incrusting the vault.

The underground Rose-garden of Laurin the Dwarf by Botzen, is, however, illumined by one great carbuncle. The same sun-stone—a white, 290