There was great excitement in the Belgic fairyland at the wonderful things that men were doing in the world. The new inventions for flying, diving, racing, and what not, were upsetting all the old ideas as to what fairies alone could do.
It used to be that only fairies could fly in the air, like birds, or go far down beneath the waves and stay there, or travel under water, or move about near the bottom, like fishes.
In old times, it was only the elves, or gnomes, or kabouters, or it might be, dragons, that could find out and possess all the treasures that were inside the earth.
Only the fairies of long ago could rush along like the wind, anywhere, or carry messages as fast as lightning, but now men were doing these very things, for they could cross continents and oceans.
“We’ll hear of their landing in the moon, next,” said one vixen of a fairy, who did not like men.
“By and bye, we fairies won’t have anything to do,” said another.
“If men keep on in this way,” remarked a third, “the children will not believe in us any more. Then we shall be banished entirely from the nursery and the picture books, and our friends, the artists and story-tellers, will lose their jobs.”
“It is just too horrible to think of,” said one of the oldest of the fairies, “but what are we going to do about it? Why, think of it, only last week they crossed the Atlantic, by speeding through the air. Before this, they made a voyage over the same mighty water by going down below the surface.”
“True, but I know the reason of all this,” said a wise, motherly looking fairy.
“Do tell us the reason and all about it,” cried out several young fairies in one breath.
“Well, I do not wonder at what they have been able to do; for long ago, they caught some of our smartest fairies, harnessed them and made beasts of burden of them, to do their work.”
“They lengthen their own life to shorten ours, that’s what they do,” said the fairy, who was very wise, but did not always have a sweet temper.
“How, what do you mean?” asked a couple of young fairies, that looked forward to an old age of about two million years.
“I mean what I have just said. These men are like kidnappers, who first steal children and then give them other names, or alter their appearance. They change their dress, or clip their hair, and even mar their faces. They make them look so different, that even their own mothers, if they ever saw them again would not know them.”
“For instance? Give us an example,” challenged one incredulous, matter-of-fact fairy, who was inclined to take the men’s part.
“I will,” said the old fairy. “We used to have among our number a very strong fairy, called Stoom. Now, in his freedom, he used to do as he pleased. He blew things up whenever he felt like having a little fun, and he made a great fuss when affairs did not suit him. But, by and bye, the men caught him and put him inside of their boilers and pipes. They made stopcocks and gauges, pistons and valves, and all the things that are like the bits, and bridles, and traces, in which they harness horses. Now that they have got him well hitched, they make him work all day and often all night. He has to drive ships and engines, motors and plows, cars and wagons, and inventions and machinery of all sorts. They use him for pumping, hoisting, pounding, lighting, heating, and no one knows what. A windmill or a waterfall nowadays has no chance of competition with him.
“They call him Steam now. At any rate, he is no longer one of us, for men have caught and tamed him. They have all sorts of gauges, meters, dials, regulators, and whatever will keep the poor fellow from blowing things up; for, they can tell at once the state of his temper. He cannot do as he pleases any more.”
“Well, they won’t catch me, I can tell you,” said one big fellow of a fairy, whose name, in Flemish, is frightful, but in English is ‘Perpetual Motion.’ “These men have been after me, for a thousand years and I call them fools; but, just when one thinks he has me, I give him the slip, and this every time. As soon as I see that they are ready to cry ‘Eureka,’ I’m off.”
“Don’t be too sure,” said another big fairy. “Look at our old pal, we used to call Vonk. In playful moods, he liked to rub the cat’s back on winter mornings, and make sparks from poor pussy fly out. Or, with bits of amber, in friction, he could draw up a hair, or a scrap of paper; but when mad, would leap out of the sky in a lightning flash, or come down in a fire-bolt, that would set a house in flames.”
“Who ever thought that a fairy, with such power, could be caught? But he was. First they put him in a jar. Then they drew him from the clouds, with a kite and key. Then they made him dance the tight rope on wires, and carry messages a thousand miles on land. Now, they stretch an iron clothes-line under the sea, and keep him all the time waltzing backwards and forwards between Europe and America. Now, again, they have made a harness of batteries and wires, and, with his help, they write and talk to each other at the ends of the earth. They gabble about ‘receivers’ and ‘volts’ and a thousand things we cannot understand; but, with their submarine cables and overland wires, and wireless stations, they have beaten our English neighbor Puck; for they have ‘put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.’ Besides this, they make this fairy, who was a former member of our family, do all sorts of work, even to toasting, cooking and scrubbing and washing and ironing clothes. Worse than all, where we used to have control of the air, and keep men out of it, now they have put Vonk in a machine with wings, and a motor to drive it through the sky and across the ocean.”
So it went on, in the fairy world. First one, and then the other, told how human beings were doing what, long ago, only the fairies and none else could do. Things were different now, because men had kidnapped some of the fairies, and harnessed them to work, as if they were horses or dogs, or donkeys; that’s the reason they are so smart.
“We shall all be caught, by and bye,” grumbled a young and very lazy fairy. “Men will catch and drag us out, just as fish are caught in nets, or pulled out by hook and line. Who can, who will escape these mortals?”
“There won’t be any fairies left in Belgic land,” wailed another who seemed ready to cry.
“We’ll all be no better than donkeys,” sobbed another. “I know we shall.”
So after a long chat, it was proposed that a delegation should wait on the king of the fairies, to ask him to call a convention of all his subjects, of every sort and kind, to see what could be done in the matter. It would not do to let things go on at this rate, or there would not be one fairy left; but all would become servants, slaves, or beasts of burden for human beings. They might even make the fairies wear iron clothes, so they should have no freedom, except as their masters willed: and, even women would be their bosses.
They agreed unanimously to hold the Congress, or Convention, at Kabouterberg, or the Hill of the Kabouters, near Gelrode. All promised to lay aside their grudges, and forget all social slights and quarrels. Even the sooty elves, from the deep mines, were to be given the same welcome and to be treated with the same politeness, as the silvery fairies of the meadows, that were as fresh as flowers and sparkling as sapphires. It was agreed that none should laugh, even if one of the Kluddes should try to talk in meeting.
The invitations were sent out to every sort of fairy known in Belgium, from Flanders to Luxemburg, and from the sandy campine of Limburg, to the flax fields of Hainault. Over land and sea, and from the bowels of the earth, from down in the coal and zinc mines, to the highest hill of the Ardennes, the invitations were sent out. Not one was forgotten.
Of course, not every individual fairy could come, but only committees or delegations of each sort.
It would be too long a story to tell of all who did come and what they said and how they behaved; but from the secretary of the meeting, the story-teller obtained the list of delegates. The principal personages were as follows:
Honors were paid first to the smallest. These were the Manneken, or little fellows. They stood not much higher than a thimble, but were very merry. The Manneken had triangular heads, and their eyes always twinkled. They were very much like children, that do not show off before company, but are often very bright and cunning, when you do not expect them to be.
Their usual occupation was to play tricks on servant girls and lads, milkmaids, ostlers, farmers and the people that lived in the woods or among the dunes. The general tint of their clothes and skin was brown. Sometimes people called them Mannetje, or Darling Little Fellows. They and the rabbits were great friends.
Next came our old friends, the Kabouters, whom we have met before. Living down in the earth, and in the mines, and always busy at forge fires, or in coal or ore, they were not expected to come daintily dressed. They seemed, however, to have brushed off the soot, washed away the grime, and scrubbed themselves up generally. Too much light seemed to disturb them and all the time they kept shading their eyes with their hands. The majority were dressed in suits, caps, and shoes of a butternut color. Each one was about a yard high. They were cousins to the Kobolds of Germany.
The Klabbers were easily picked out of the crowd, by their scarlet caps, and because they were dressed in red, from head to foot. Most of them had green faces and green hands. They were very polite and jolly, but sometimes they appeared to be surly and snarlish, according to the moods they were in, but more especially because of the way they were treated by others. It is said that there was more of human nature in these fellows, than in any other kind of Belgian fairies. These Klabbers, or Red Caps, were somewhat taller than the Kabouters.
There were not many of the Kluddes, for these clownish fellows, who lived in the Campine, among the sand dunes, or by the sea shore, or loafed along country roads, or by the side of ditches, with no good purpose, hardly knew how to behave in the company of well bred, or even decent fairies. Even the Kabouters, not one of whom owned a dress coat, or a fashionable gown, had better manners than the Kludde rascals, whose one idea seemed to be to tumble farmers’ boys into the ditches. They had no originality, or variety in their tricks, beyond the single one of changing themselves into old “plugs,” or broken down horses; and they possessed no more powers of speech, than cows or cats, that say “moo” and “miouw.” They could understand the talk of the other fairies, but could not themselves speak, having no tongues.
When a fairy stood up that was fluent, and entertaining, and made a good speech, these sand snipes applauded so loudly, and kept on crying “Kludde” so noisily—the only word they knew—that the president of the meeting had to call them to order. He sternly told them to be silent, or he would have them put out. Notwithstanding this, they kept on mumbling, “Kludde, Kludde” to themselves.
The Wappers were out in full force, or at least a dozen of them. At first they sat folded up, like jackknives; and all occupying one place together, like a lot of beetles; but when the place of meeting got crowded, by others wanting their room, the Wappers stretched themselves out and up, until they looked like a crowd of daddy longlegs, with their long, wiry limbs and their heads and bodies up in the air. They were told not to talk gibberish, except among themselves; but to address the chair, and speak in meeting only in correct and polite fairy language, which even then had to be interpreted.
No jokes or tricks, such as the different kinds of fairies play on human beings, were allowed during the meeting of the Congress.
Two big, fairy policemen, called Gog and Magog, dressed in the colors of the Belgian flag, black, yellow and red, were posted near the door, to make all Kabouters, Kludde, Wappers and Mannekens, behave. If any member of the Congress got too “fresh,” or obstreperous, he was immediately seized and thrown out of doors.
Both the policemen’s clubs, which were longer than barbers’ poles, were made of Flemish oak, wrapped round with black, yellow and red ribbons. Besides these bludgeons, each carried at his belt a coil of rope, to bind any of the big fairies that might give trouble.
No wash or bath tubs, aquariums, hogsheads, or barrels, having been provided, nor any salt water being at hand, there were no mermaids or mermen present.
No ogres or giants came, for it could not be found that any of these big fairy folk lived in the Belgium of our time. Formerly, they were very numerous and troublesome, not only to men and women, but even to the pretty and respectable fairies.
As for old Toover Hek, and his wife, Mrs. Hek, they had never been heard of, or from, for hundreds of years. Much the same report concerning dragons was given by the registrar, or secretary, who knew all about the different kind of Belgian fairies.
At the name of a certain mortal, Balthazar Bekker, the Dutch enemy of all fairies, every one hissed, the Kabouters howled, the Wappers banged tin pans, and the Kludde yelled. One fairy proposed the health of Toover Hek, as an insult to Bekker’s memory, but this was voted down as an extreme measure. Then it was suggested that the memory of Verarmen of Hasselt be praised, but those present in the Congress, being modern fairies, cared nothing about anything so far back.
As for the regular attendants at the Congress, they were many and interesting, and some were very lovely; yet, altogether, they were much, in their looks and manners, like the fairies in other countries; so that there is little advantage to be gained in describing them, or their dresses and ornaments. Some had wings, some had not. They looked very gauzy, and most of them were as tiny as babies, but there were some larger ones also.
One of the first laws passed at the Congress was a Foreign Fairy Exclusion Law! This was done at the suggestion of a member of the Kabouters’ Guild, who was afraid the Belgian fairies would be ruined by the cheap labor imported from other countries, like Ireland or Bulgaria.
It was also unanimously decided that no foreign fairies, even if they applied for membership, or wanted to attend as visitors, should be admitted to the Congress. So all the German kobolds, English brownies and nixies, Japanese oni, the French fee, Austrian gnomes, and the Scotch and Irish fays and fairies, of any and all kinds, were kept out. Though these might envy the fairies of Belgium, and their happy lot, they could not even sit as delegates, or be allowed the usual courtesies due to visitors.
This the story teller heard afterwards, when a fairy maiden let out the secret of this, one of the proceedings of the Congress, after they had gone into executive session! She just couldn’t keep a secret, that’s all!
“And why do we not report especially more of what was said and done behind the closed doors, or tell about the social side of the Congress,” does any one ask. Or why does he not tell more about the amusements, the receptions, and the fine clothes of the prettiest fairies?
Well, the American man was vexed enough, when the president of the Congress ordered all human beings and strangers of every sort to leave the house, and then locked the door, so that everything was done in secret.
This was the only time in Belgium, that the story-teller was not courteously treated. Yet the reason is plain. The President and secretary were both afraid that this tourist, who had really, many times visited Belgium, just to get better acquainted with the fairies, was a prude, who didn’t believe in letting children know anything about fairies. In other words, he was suspected of wanting to abolish all books of fairy tales from the libraries.
But you know better.