in the Dale. Yet folk there were both on the
east side and the west of the Flood. On neither side were they utterly
cut off from the world outside the Dale; for though it were toilsome,
it was not perilous to climb the bents and so wend over the necks east
and west, where some forty miles from the west bank and fifty from the
east you might come down into a valley fairly well peopled, wherein
were two or three cheaping-towns: and to these towns the dalesmen had
some resort, that they might sell such of their wool as they needed
not to weave for themselves, and other small chaffer, so that they
might buy wrought wares such as cutlery and pots, and above all boards
and timber, whereof they had nought at home.

But this you must wot and understand, that howsoever the Sundering
Flood might be misnamed down below, up in the Dale and down away to
the southern mountains it was such that better named it might not be,
and that nought might cross its waters undrowned save the fowl flying.
Nay, and if one went up-stream to where it welled forth from the great
mountains, he were no nearer to passing from one side to the other,
for there would be nought before him but a wall of sheer rock, and
above that rent and tumbled crags, the safe strong-houses of erne and
osprey and gerfalcon. Wherefore all the dealings which the folk on the
east Dale and the west might have with each other was but shouting and
crying across the swirling and gurgling eddies of the black water,
which themselves the while seemed to be talking together in some dread
and unknown tongue.

True it is that on certain feast days and above all on Midsummer
night, the folk would pluck up a heart, and gather together as gaily
clad as might be where the Flood was the narrowest (save at one place,
whereof more hereafter), and there on each side would trundle the
fire-wheel, and do other Midsummer games, and make music of
string-play and horns, and sing songs of old time and drink to each
other, and depart at last to their own homes blessing each other. But
never might any man on the east touch the hand of any on the west,
save it were that by some strange wandering from the cheaping-towns
aforesaid they might meet at last, far and far off from the Dale of
the Sundering Flood.

Chapter II. Of Wethermel and the Child Osberne

Draw we nigher now to the heart of our tale, and tell how on the east
side of the Sundering Flood was erewhile a stead hight Wethermel: a
st