Linnets and Valerians

by Elizabeth Goudge

Castle Rock,

They thought as ’e’d drowned in the marsh. Lady Alicia believed that. Yet maybe the gipies took ’im.’

‘I puts a fresh bunch there each full moon. There’s ’onesty there, St John’s wort, rosemary an’ rowan.

So any time you children be in trouble in the woods or on the moor, keep your eyes open for a rowan tree. An’ when you’ve picked a branch of it use it like a sword.

Rosemary too, that always brings a blessin’. ’Tis a real ’erb. With a sprig in your pocket no ’arm can come to ee.

Haha. Ezra’s posset

Uncle Ambrose

Haha

Haha

Robert,

Ezra

What he and Rob-Roy did there he did not say, but he came home again with his wet face rosy and his eyes very bright. He became older during that week and somehow nicer.

Nan

Timothy and Betsy

He seemed to have magic in his fingers.

But the queerest thing was that they found they now liked Grandmama and Miss Bolt, and they rather thought that Grandmama and Miss Bolt liked them.

distance lends enchantment to the view.

Haha

Simile

Haha

Pausing to bow and curtsy to the bees,

‘Hugo Francis Valerian.

‘Then there’s no one in the tomb,’ said Timothy sadly. ‘Then they aren’t dead,’ said Betsy.

Haha - maybe ….

Tom Biddle

‘Eliza and William Lawson.

‘Linden Manor?’

The wall was high but full of crannies where good climbers could cling with toes and fingers, and Robert and Timothy didn’t have any bother in climbing it.

‘Rowan trees grow in woods and on hillsides and Ezra says that witches are frightened of it.

spillikins and tea.’

‘Egypt!’ said Nan. ‘Look, Betsy. It’s Egypt, where Father is.’

Haha

Emma Cobley’s handwriting.

love-letters, written by Emma to Hugo Valerian.

Abednego,

Gertrude

Haha

Lady Alicia’s

my husband’s library.’

Abu Simbel.’

My husband was last heard of at Abu Simbel.’

Haha - sort of creepy, too, as a victim of “thwarted paternity,” . 71

the tapestry of the horsemen riding up through the wood with the falcons on their wrists.

All the Valerians were restless men, never content to stay at home.

They are riding to a city in the clouds. That is what the Valerian men have always done.’

‘The hill is shaped like Lion Tor,’

that picture on the wall in front of her was the picture that Daft Davie had painted on the wall of his cave.

Haha

I was dull. I’d rather be frightened than dull.’ ‘I think,’ said Nan, ‘that I’d rather be dull than frightened.

But one can’t choose, you have to take what comes, Father says.

'piggyback' has nothing to do with pigs. In the 20th century, we settled on the 'piggyback' spelling, but the term has existed in myriad forms over the years - 'a pick-apack', 'pick-a-back', 'pig-aback' and so on. The earliest forms of 'piggyback' were the medieval 'pick back' and 'pick pack'. These are cited within a year of each other in the 1560s, …. https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/piggyback.html

Haha