Now is sundered the
Weapon-show. Be ye as merry to-day as your hearts bid you to be.'
Therewith he came down from his seat with the Alderman and the
Wardens, and they mingled with the good folk of the Dale and the
Shepherds and the Woodlanders, and merry was their converse there.
It yet lacked an hour of noon; so presently they fell to and feasted
in the green meadow, drinking from wain to wain and from tent to
tent; and thereafter they played and sported in the meads, shooting
at the butts and wrestling, and trying other masteries. Then they
fell to dancing one and all, and so at last to supper on the green
grass in great merriment. Nor might you have known from the
demeanour of any that any threat of evil overhung the Dale. Nay, so
glad were they, and so friendly, that you might rather have deemed
that this was the land whereof tales tell, wherein people die not,
but live for ever, without growing any older than when they first
come thither, unless they be born into the land itself, and then they
grow into fair manhood, and so abide. In sooth, both the land and
the folk were fair enough to be that land and the folk thereof.
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