The Well in the Wood

The Well in the Wood by Bert Leston Taylor

Bert Leston Taylor's "The Well in the Wood" follows Buddie, a small girl who lives with her family in a log house on a lonely northern lake, hemmed in by pine woods stretching toward the far North. Her constant companion is her yellow dog, Colonel; her mother has warned her never to venture far into the wood, for fear the bears will eat her up. One day, while throwing sticks for Colonel near the wood's edge, Buddie discovers a small white flower growing on a fallen cedar and gathers a bouquet, fastening it under her hair-ribbon. The flower is Enchanter's Nightshade, and from that moment enchantment takes hold: Colonel suddenly speaks in "really talk," standing proud and eloquent, and defends the honor of yellow dogs against unfair prejudice. He invites Buddie into the wood to visit his friend the Laziest Beaver at Beavertown. There they learn that Bunny Cotton-Tayle has gone to a mysterious place called The Well to discover the answer to a great mystery: why does a rabbit wabble his nose? Colonel sings a long comic song on the subject, "Nobody Knows," and each time an echo makes Buddie look upward, the scene dissolves and shifts her elsewhere in the wood — a recurring, dreamlike mechanism throughout the story. Buddie's wanderings bring her to a series of talking-animal encounters, each providing comic non-explanations of natural phenomena: the boastful, mirror-consulting Rabbit, who cannot explain his own nose-wabbling and speaks of "old saws" and backwards logic; a tearful Guinea-Pig whose eyes fall out when lifted by his tail, and who recites a sorrowful history of laboratory mishaps; a White Blackbird named Snowfeathers who gives absurd directions to "the Corner"; and a donkey musician, Professor Bray, who plays a lute with his ear, sings comic songs setting old proverbs to verse ("Sammy Patch," "Look Before You Leap"), and boasts of exotic vocal "methods" and a Victoria Cross earned in South Africa. The Donkey escorts Buddie to visit a bachelor Great Huge Bear, who suffers from insomnia because he cannot decide how to furnish his den. They attend a birthday dinner for a Little Small Wee Bear, joined by a Middle Bear, a soft-quilled Fretless Porcupine, an Owl, a Loon, and the perpetually quarreling Doctor Fox and Doctor Goose, who dispute whether the bear or the grin came first — a debate the Donkey resolves with mock-philosophical reasoning ("both came together"), likening it to the hen-and-egg question. Songs, toasts, and squabbling follow, until the Loon's hysterical spinning flight carries the scene away again. Buddie finds herself alone on a swampy lumber road bordered entirely by Enchanter's Nightshade blossoms, and discovers she can wish the flowers into other kinds — violets, roses, harebells, daisies — and they change accordingly. Sign-boards point her "This Way to the Corner," though the directions prove contradictory. Along the way she meets a saucy Black Lamb who recites a revised, less sentimental version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and a vain, argumentative Stork who denies the myth of storks delivering babies, mocks Buddie's picture-book fairy tales (including "The Three Bears" and "Jack and the Beanstalk") as morally corrupting, and unsuccessfully attempts to stand on one leg with Buddie's help. Eventually Buddie reaches the Corner and rejoins the Rabbit, now packed for his journey to The Well, carrying a comically useless circular "target" map inherited from his grandfather. She proceeds with him to the Greenwood Club, a woodland gathering of animals for games and society: a race between the Rabbit and a Tortoise, tossing a sleeping Weasel in a blanket, a Stork's bear-back riding trick, bowling with porcupine and chipmunks, and a disrupted lecture by Doctor Goose on "The Evolution of the Man Story," repeatedly interrupted by a mischievous Golf Lynx. The Donkey then organizes an expedition to The Well, hiring a slow-talking 'Possum as storytelling guide and using a witch-hazel divining stick for direction. At last they reach The Well, marked with a rhyming legend about truth lying at its bottom. As Buddie leans over the curb to ask why the Rabbit wabbles his nose, the bouquet of Enchanter's Nightshade slips from her hair and falls into The Well — and no answer comes. Immediately all her animal companions vanish, The Well's curb and sign disappear, and the wood turns frightening: the waterfall roars, the river rushes close, and Buddie, terrified, hides her face and cries. She is found by a land-looker named Mr. Goodell, guided by Colonel's barking, who carries her home. When she recounts her day's adventures, he gently suggests she must have fallen asleep and dreamed it all, though Buddie insists it was real. He carries her home on his shoulder, with Colonel trotting behind — and from that day on, Colonel never again speaks a word about their adventures.

By Bert Leston Taylor · First published 1922 · Genre: Fantasy, Children's Literature, Fairy Tale · 19 chapters · 37,332 words

First lines

"Colonel, you 'diculous dog, you're so hot _now_ you can hardly / breathe. No; you needn't bark. It's too warm to play any more."

Buddie was sitting on the fallen, mossy trunk of a cedar tree, just / inside the edge of the wood, throwing little sticks for her dog Colonel / to fetch. Being a young dog, Colonel wanted to play all day long, and / he could not understand why Buddie should tire of throwing sticks when / _he_ never wearied of recovering them. So when she bent to tie her / shoe-string he assumed that another stick was coming, and, yelping with / delight, he crouched for the spring.

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children's literature · whimsical · talking animals · fantasy · adventure · moral lessons · illustrated · early twentieth century · humorous · enchanted forest · anthropomorphic characters · classic literature

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