<h2><SPAN name="page28"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>A FORGOTTEN TALE</h2>
<p>[The scene of this ancient fight, recorded by Froissart, is
still called ‘Altura de los Inglesos.’ Five
hundred years later Wellington’s soldiers were fighting on
the same ground.]</p>
<p class="poetry">‘Say, what saw you on the hill,<br/>
Campesino Garcia?’<br/>
‘I saw my brindled heifer there,<br/>
A trail of bowmen, spent and bare,<br/>
And a little man on a sorrel mare<br/>
Riding slow before them.’</p>
<p class="poetry">‘Say, what saw you in the vale,<br/>
Campesino Garcia?’<br/>
‘There I saw my lambing ewe<br/>
And an army riding through,<br/>
Thick and brave the pennons flew<br/>
From the lances o’er them.’</p>
<p class="poetry"><SPAN name="page29"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
29</span>‘Then what saw you on the hill,<br/>
Campesino Garcia?’<br/>
‘I saw beside the milking byre,<br/>
White with want and black with mire,<br/>
The little man with eyes afire<br/>
Marshalling his bowmen.’</p>
<p class="poetry">‘Then what saw you in the vale,<br/>
Campesino Garcia?’<br/>
‘There I saw my bullocks twain,<br/>
And amid my uncut grain<br/>
All the hardy men of Spain<br/>
Spurring for their foemen.’</p>
<p class="poetry">‘Nay, but there is more to tell,<br/>
Campesino Garcia!’<br/>
‘I could not bide the end to view;<br/>
I had graver things to do<br/>
Tending on the lambing ewe<br/>
Down among the clover.’</p>
<p class="poetry"><SPAN name="page30"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
30</span>‘Ah, but tell me what you heard,<br/>
Campesino Garcia!’<br/>
‘Shouting from the mountain-side,<br/>
Shouting until eventide;<br/>
But it dwindled and it died<br/>
Ere milking time was over.’</p>
<p class="poetry">‘Nay, but saw you nothing more,<br/>
Campesino Garcia?’<br/>
‘Yes, I saw them lying there,<br/>
The little man and sorrel mare;<br/>
And in their ranks the bowmen fair,<br/>
With their staves before them.’</p>
<p class="poetry">‘And the hardy men of Spain,<br/>
Campesino Garcia?’<br/>
‘Hush! but we are Spanish too;<br/>
More I may not say to you:<br/>
May God’s benison, like dew,<br/>
Gently settle o’er them.’</p>
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