At the Back of the North Wind

At the Back of the North Wind

George MacDonald

I HAVE been asked to tell you about the back of the north wind. An old

Greek writer mentions a people who lived there, and were so comfortable

that they could not bear it any longer, and drowned themselves. My

story is not the same as his. I do not think Herodotus had got the right

account of the place. I am going to tell you how it fared with a boy who

went there.

He lived in a low room over a coach-house; and that was not by any means

at the back of the north wind, as his mother very well knew. For one

side of the room was built only of boards, and the boards were so old

that you might run a penknife through into the north wind. And then let

them settle between them which was the sharper! I know that when you

pulled it out again the wind would be after it like a cat after a mouse,

and you would know soon enough you were not at the back of the north

wind. Still, this room was not very cold, except when the north wind

blew stronger than usual: the room I have to do with now was always

cold, except in summer, when the sun took the matter into his own hands.

Indeed, I am not sure whether I ought to call it a room at all; for it

was just a loft where they kept hay and straw and oats for the horses.

And when little Diamond--but stop: I must tell you that his father, who

was a coachman, had named him after a favourite horse, and his mother

had had no objection:--when little Diamond, then, lay there in bed, he

could hear the horses under him munching away in the dark, or moving

sleepily in their dreams. For Diamond's father had built him a bed in

the loft with boards all round it, because they had so little room in

their own end over the coach-house; and Diamond's father put old Diamond

in the stall under the bed, because he was a quiet horse, and did not

go to sleep standing, but lay down like a reasonable creature. But,

although he was a surprisingly reasonable creature, yet, when young

Diamond woke in the middle of the night, and felt the bed shaking in the

blasts of the north wind, he could not help wondering whether, if the

wind should blow the house down, and he were to fall through into

the manger, old Diamond mightn't eat him up before he knew him in his

night-gown. And although old Diamond was very quiet all night long, yet

when he woke he got up like an earthquake, and then young Diamond knew

what o'clock it was, or at least what was to be done next, which was--to

go to sleep again as fast as he could.

There was hay at his feet and hay at his head, piled up in great trusses

to the very roof. Indeed it was sometimes only through a little lane

with several turnings, which looked as if it had been sawn out for him,

that he could reach his bed at all. For the stock of hay was, of course,

always in a state either of slow ebb or of sudden flow. Sometimes the

whole space of the loft, with the little panes in the roof for the

stars to look in, would lie open before his open eyes as he lay in bed;

sometimes a yellow wall of sweet-smelling fibres closed up his view at

the distance of half a yard. Sometimes, when his mother had undressed

him in her room, and told him to trot to bed by himself, he would

creep into the heart of the hay, and lie there thinking how cold it was

outside in the wind, and how warm it was inside there in his bed, and

WHEN Diamond got round the corner of the hay, for a moment he hesitated.

The stair by which he would naturally have gone down to the door was

at the other side of the loft, and looked very black indeed; for it was

full of North Wind's hair, as she descended before him. And just beside

him was the ladder going straight down into the stable, up which his

father always came to fetch the hay for Diamond's dinner. Through the

opening in the floor the faint gleam of the stable lantern was enticing,

and Diamond thought he would run down that way.

The stair went close past the loose-box in which Diamond the horse

lived. When Diamond the boy was half-way down, he remembered that it

was of no use to go this way, for the stable-door was locked. But at the

same moment there was horse Diamond's great head poked out of his box

on to the ladder, for he knew boy Diamond although he was in his

night-gown, and wanted him to pull his ears for him. This Diamond did

very gently for a minute or so, and patted and stroked his neck too, and

kissed the big horse, and had begun to take the bits of straw and hay

out of his mane, when all at once he recollected that the Lady North

Wind was waiting for him in the yard.

“Good night, Diamond,” he said, and darted up the ladder, across the

loft, and down the stair to the door. But when he got out into the yard,

there was no lady.

Now it is always a dreadful thing to think there is somebody and find

nobody. Children in particular have not made up their minds to it; they

generally cry at nobody, especially when they wake up at night. But it

was an especial disappointment to Diamond, for his little heart had been

beating with joy: the face of the North Wind was so grand! To have

a lady like that for a friend--with such long hair, too! Why, it was

longer than twenty Diamonds' tails! She was gone. And there he stood,

with his bare feet on the stones of the paved yard.

It was a clear night overhead, and the stars were shining. Orion in

particular was making the most of his bright belt and golden sword.

But the moon was only a poor thin crescent. There was just one great,

jagged, black and gray cloud in the sky, with a steep side to it like a

precipice; and the moon was against this side, and looked as if she had

tumbled off the top of the cloud-hill, and broken herself in rolling

down the precipice. She did not seem comfortable, for she was looking

down into the deep pit waiting for her. At least that was what Diamond

thought as he stood for a moment staring at her. But he was quite wrong,

for the moon was not afraid, and there was no pit she was going down

into, for there were no sides to it, and a pit without sides to it is

not a pit at all. Diamond, however, had not been out so late before in

all his life, and things looked so strange about him!--just as if he had

got into Fairyland, of which he knew quite as much as anybody; for his

mother had no money to buy books to set him wrong on the subject. I have

seen this world--only sometimes, just now and then, you know--look as

strange as ever I saw Fairyland. But I confess that I have not yet seen

Fairyland at its best. I am always going to see it so some time. But if

you had been out in the face and not at the back of the North Wind, on a

cold rather frosty night, and in your night-gown, you would have felt it