CHAP. X.] * THE WIDOW AND THE BABBITS.' 107 



better to carry out his wicked device, lie made interest with the king, by 

 bribing the attendants with haunches of venison and with salmon, to 

 make him a magistrate, by which he had power to cruelly ill-treat his 

 tenants, and to punish the peasantry for the slightest offence. 



The rabbits multiplied exceedingly, and the whole valley became a 

 vast rabbit warren, from which the creatures sallied forth by armies at 

 night and devoured all the grass in the fields ; and when they had finished 

 the grass, they ate the turnips ; and when they had eaten the turnips, they 

 attacked the corn ; and when they could get neither grass nor corn, nor 

 turnips, they set to work and destroyed the young trees by eating the 

 bark and young shrubs. 



The poor people in vain encircled their garden plots with close 

 palings, for wire fencing was not invented at that time. The rabbits 

 either scrambled over them, or burrowed underneath. Sometimes it is 

 recorded that they actually ate their way through the wooden palings, and, 

 when under the pressure of hunger, they smelt the poor men's cabbages ; 

 they have been seen to jump over the fence, when, in a short time, the 

 vegetables were eaten and disappeared. It was particularly noticed that 

 they always took the choicest and sweetest vegetables in the garden. 

 What they did not eat they spoilt, so that nothing was left for use in 



the winter. 



****** 



In ten short years the rabbits so changed the Happy Yalley of the 

 North, that all the population were wretched, and it became known in 

 more southern countries as " The Yalley of Misery and Woe." 



At this time there was a poor widow named Mary Suffermuch, whose 

 family had lived in the village more than five hundred years. She had lost 

 her husband by the fall of an ash-tree which overhung the road, and 

 which was blown down in a high wind, after the rabbits had undermined 

 the tree by cutting the roots with their sharp teeth, which are formed like 



chisels. 



****** 



But on the 10th of November, which in that year 780 fell on a Monday, 

 the poor widow looked at her prospects, and she found that the rabbits 

 had so far destroyed her crops that she had no turnips left for her cow, as 

 the interior of every one was eaten out, and merely the outside shell was 

 left. The ground was covered with snow, as winter had set in early that 

 year. She had only porridge for two days more. The barley had all been 

 sold, and the money expended for shoes for the children. The poor widow, 

 when she realized her position, was miserable indeed, and cried most bitterly. 

 ***** * 



The widow then goes off to a relation for assistance in her 

 misery, but finds him as destitute as herself. On her way thither 

 she admires the beauty of the country. Dispirited and dis- 

 heartened with her fruitless errand (all this is most pathetically 

 told), she sets off to return home. 



To rest herself she sat down on a bench in a beautiful wood, where 

 the waters of the river ran alongside, roaring among the rocks and large 

 stones ; there, too, the bright mid-day sun shone upon the white barks of 



