Lud-In-The-Mist

Dame Marigold continued to smile, and to nibble marzipan with her cronies. But she used sometimes sadly to wonder whether Master Nathaniel had ever really come back from beyond the Debatable Hills; sometimes, but not always.

Master Nathaniel sat gazing moodily into the fire; and his pipe went out without his noticing it. Then the door opened softly, and someone stole in and stood behind his chair. It was Dame Marigold. All she said was, "Funny old Nat!" but her voice had a husky tenderness. And then she knelt down beside him and took him into her soft warm arms. And a new hope was borne in upon Master Nathaniel that someday he would hear the Note again, and all would be clear

Master Ambrose.
Master Nathaniel smiled, and for some minutes they puffed at their pipes in silence.

You may, perhaps, have wondered why a man so full of human failings, and set in so unheroic a mould as Master Nathaniel Chanticleer should have been cast for so great a role. Yet the highest spiritual destinies are not always reserved for the strongest men, nor for the most virtuous ones.
But though he had been chosen as Duke Aubrey's deputy and initiated into the Ancient Mysteries, he had not ceased to be in many ways the same Master Nathaniel as of old -whimsical, child-like, and, often, unreasonable. Nor, I fear, did he cease to be the prey of melancholy. I doubt whether initiation ever brings happiness. It may be that the final secret revealed is a very bitter one… or it may be that the final secret had not yet been revealed to Master Nathaniel.
And, strange to say, far from being set up by his new honours, he felt oddly ashamed of them - it was almost as if he was for the first time running the gauntlet of his friends' eyes after having been afflicted by some physical disfigurement

a fact that, to my mind, at least, proves that fairy fruit is as wholesome and necessary for man as the various other gifts brought for our welfare by our silent friends - the Dawl's gift of gold, the earth's gift of corn, the hills' gift of shelter and pasturage, and the trees' gift of grapes and apples and shade.
"And if all the gifts of Life are good, perhaps, too, are all the shapes she chooses to take, and which we cannot alter. The shape she has taken now for Dorimare is that of an invasion by our ancient foes. Why should we not make a virtue of necessity and throw our gates wide to them as friends?"

"There are many trees in my orchard, and many and various are the fruit they bear - music and dreams and grief and, sometimes, joy. All your life, Chanticleer, you have eaten fairy fruit, and some day, it may be, you will hear the Note again - but that I cannot promise. And now I will grant your a vision - they are sometimes sweet to the taste."

"There are windfalls of dreams, there's a wolf in the stars,
And Life is a nymph who will never be thine,
With lily, germander, and sops in wine.
With sweet-brier,
And bon-fire,
And strawberry-wire,
And columbine

"But you remember what my father said about the Law being man's substitute for fairy fruit? Fairy things are all of them supposed to be shadowy cheats - delusion. But man can't live without delusion, so he creates for himself another form of delusion - the world-in-law, subject to no other law but the will of man, where man juggles with facts to his heart's content, and says, `If I choose I shall make a man old enough to be my father my son, and if I choose I shall turn fruit into silk and black into white, for this is the world I have made myself, and here I am master.' And he creates a monster to inhabit it - the man-in-law, who is like a mechanical toy and always behaves exactly as he is expected to behave, and is no more like you and me than are the fairies."

But I've never held with fennel and such like. If folks know they're not wanted, it just makes them all the more anxious to come - be they Fairies or Dorimarites. It's just because we're all so scared of our neighbours that we get bamboozled by them. And I've always held that a healthy stomach could digest anything - even fairy fruit.

"I was country-bred, Master Nat, and I learned not to mind the smell of a fox or of a civet cat… or of a Fairy. They're mischievous creatures, I daresay, and best left alone. But though we can't always pick and choose our neighbours, neighbourliness is a virtue all the same. For my part, I'd never have chosen the Fairies for my neighbours - but they were chosen for me. And we must just make the best of them."