“Howiver, shoo niver clapped een on me wheer I was sittin’ behind t’ stone.  Shoo were thrang wi’ t’ birds were Janet, an’ gettin’ more excited ivery minute.  By now t’ din were fair deafenin’; I’d niver heerd aught like it afore, nor yet sin:  without it were when my man took me down to Keighley, Christmas afore we were wed, an’ I heerd t’ lads and t’ lasses singin’ t’ Hallelujah Chorus i’ t’ Methody chapil.  When I saw t’ conductor-lad wi’ t’ stick in his hand callin’ up t’ trebles an’ basses an’ tother sets o’ singers, Marry!  I bethowt me o’ Janet an’ t’ birds i’ t’ cove, an’ I brast out a-laughin’ while fowks thowt I were daft.

“But theer, barns, I mun get forrad wi’ my tale, or your mothers will be coomin’ seekin’ you afore I’m through wi’ it.  By now ommost all t’ birds i’ t’ cove were wakkened up an’ were singin’ their cantiest.  I looked up, an’ t’ sun had gotten clean ower t’ top o’ t’ fell, an’ were shinin’ straight down into t’ cove.  Ay, an’ Janet saw t’ sun too, an’ when it were like a gert gowden ball at top o’ t’ hill, shoo pointed her wand at t’ sun an’ started dancin’ aboon t’ watterfall.  I looked at her and then I looked at t’ sun, an’, Honey-fathers! if t’ owd sun weren’t dancin’ too.  I rubbed my een to finnd out if I’d made ony mistak, but, sure enough, theer were t’ lile nakt lass an’ t’ owd sun aboon t’ breast o’ t’ fell dancin’ togither like mad.  Then, all on a sudden, I bethowt me it were Easter Sunday, and how I’d heerd fowks say that t’ sun allus dances on Easter mornin’.”

At this point I could not forbear interrupting Grannie to ask her whether she had ever heard of a poem called A Ballad upon a Wedding.  She said she had not, so I quoted to her Suckling’s well-known lines: 

   Her feet beneath her petticoat,
   Like little mice, stole in and out,
      As if they feared the light. 
   But O! she dances such a way,
   No sun upon an Easter day
      Is half so fine a sight.

Grannie listened attentively and seemed to think that the heroine of the poem was the fairy that wakened the birds in Janet’s Cove.

“T’ lad that wrote yon verses has gotten it wrang,” she said.  “Shoo hadn’t no petticoat on her.  T’ lass were nakt frae top to toe.  Well, when shoo’d bin dancin’ a while shoo seemed to forget all about t’ birds.  Shoo let her wand drop and climmed down t’ fall.  Then shoo set hersel on a rock behind t’ fall an’ clapped her hands an’ laughed.  I looked at her an’ I saw t’ bonniest seet I’ve iver set een on.

“You see by now t’ sun had getten high up i’ t’ sky, an’ were shinin’ straight up t’ beck on to t’ fall.  There had bin a bit o’ flood t’ day afore, an’ t’ watter were throwin’ up spray wheer it fell on to t’ rocks below t’ fall.  An’ theer, plain as life, were a rainbow stretched across t’ fall, an’ Janet sittin’ on t’ rock reet i’ t’ middle o’ t’ bow wi’ all t’ colours o’ t’ bowgreen an’ yallow an’ blue—­shinin’ on her hair.