Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales from Burns to Buchan (Penguin Classics) (13 page)

He says, ‘Well, that’s a good idea. It might bring back yir memory,’ he says, ‘if nothing else has all this time.’

She says, ‘That’s right.’ So away they go down the riverside
and, sure enough, the wee boat wis still sittin there. ‘Aw,’ she says, ‘Look at it! It’s aa covered wi moss an lichen an aa kinds o dirt: A must go down an clean it.’

So she ran doon the bank, and she says: ‘You keep the bairns here an A’ll run down the bank an clean it.’ Down she goes, an she’s scrapin away at it, an the baler wis still lyin in it, an she startit tae bale oot the water. And in the end she stepped intae the boat to bale oot the last water, an ye can guess whit happen’t! The boat’s away wi her again, an it kept goin and kept goin, an the fella – there wis no wey he could stop it, it went so fast, an he couldnae swim efter it, so he jist had tae stand there an let it go.

Now halfway across the water when she lookit doon, there wis the auld tackety boots, the auld moleskin troosers covered wi coo shairn, the whiskers an baird an… this auld sleeved waistcoat, an he looked ower intae the water an there wis this cattleman… wi his teeth all broon wi tobacco juice an everything. ‘Oh my God!’ He started to roar an greet, an howl an greet, ‘Oh, ma man an ma bairns! Ma man an ma bairns! Ma man an ma bairns…’ and he jist sat like this and the tears trippin him, until the boat scraped the other side: an the boat took him right back tae where it had started aff.

Then Sandy jumpit oot the boat, an he ran an ran greetin an sobbin an sobbin an greetin. An when he ran up tae the fairm, this ceilidh’s still gaun on, see? an the pot o sowens is still on the fire! An he cam in howlin an greetin an sobbin, an the laird says tae him, ‘Whit’s adae wi ye, Sandy?’

‘Oh, dinnae speak tae me, dinnae speak tae me,’ he says. ‘Wheesht, leave me alane – wid ye leave me alane? Ma man an ma bairns! Ma man an ma bairns!’

‘Man an bairns?’ the laird says. ‘Whit are ye speakin aboot?’

‘Oh, would you wheesht?’ he says.

‘Sandy, come in here. Come on an sit doon beside… me here an tell us aa aboot it!’ So Sandy came in, an he sat doon beside the laird, an between sobbin an greetin he tells them aa aboot his man an his bairns.

coo shairn
, cow dung.     
Whit’s adae
, What’s wrong.

An the laird says, ‘Well, Sandy, that’s the biggest lie we’ve heard the nicht, so you’ve won the golden guinea!’

That’s the end o that one. Ye see, the laird had
pit a glamourie ower him
, so that he thought aa this had happen’t tae him, but actually he’d only been awa aboot twenty minutes.

In far bygone days, on the Mainland of Orkney, there lived a well-to-do farmer, who had seven sons and one daughter. And the youngest of these seven sons bore a very curious name; for he was called Assipattle, which means, ‘He who grovels among the ashes’.

Perhaps Assipattle deserved his name, for he was rather a lazy boy, who never did any work on the farm as his brothers did, but ran about outdoors with ragged clothes and unkempt hair, and whose mind was ever filled with wondrous stories of trolls and giants, elves and goblins.

When the sun was hot in the long summer afternoons, when the bees droned drowsily and even the tiny insects seemed almost asleep, the boy was content to throw himself down on the ash-heap amongst the ashes, and lie there, lazily letting them run through his fingers, as one might play with sand on the sea-shore, basking in the sunshine and telling stories to himself.

And his brothers, working hard in the fields, would point to him with mocking fingers, and laugh, and say to each other how well the name suited him, and how little use he was in the world.

And when they came home from their work, they would push him about and tease him, and even his mother would make him sweep the floor, and draw water from the well, and fetch peats from the peat-stack, and do all the little odd jobs that nobody else would do.

So poor Assipattle had rather a hard life of it, and he would often have been very miserable had it not been for his sister, who loved him dearly, and who would listen quite patiently to all the
stories that he had to tell; who never laughed at him or told him that he was telling lies, as his brothers did.

But one day a very sad thing happened – at least, it was a sad thing for poor Assipattle.

For it chanced that the King of these parts had one only daughter, the Princess Gemdelovely, whom he loved dearly, and to whom he denied nothing. And Princess Gemdelovely was in want of a waiting-maid, and as she had seen Assipattle’s sister standing by the garden gate as she was riding by one day, and had taken a fancy to her, she asked her father if she might ask her to come and live at the castle and serve her.

Her father agreed at once, as he always did agree to any of her wishes; and sent a messenger in haste to the farmer’s house to ask if his daughter would come to the castle to be the Princess’s waiting-maid.

And, of course, the farmer was very pleased at the piece of good fortune which had befallen the girl, and so was her mother, and so were her six brothers, all except poor Assipattle, who looked with wistful eyes after his sister as she rode away, proud of her new clothes and of the slippers which her father had made her out of cowhide, which she was to wear in the Palace when she waited on the Princess, for at home she always ran barefoot.

Time passed, and one day a rider rode in hot haste through the country bearing the most terrible tidings. For the evening before, some fishermen, out in their boats, had caught sight of the Mester Stoorworm, which, as everyone in Orkney knows, was the largest, and the first, and the greatest of all sea serpents. It was that beast which, in the Good Book, is called the Leviathan, and if it had been measured in our day, its tail would have touched Iceland, while its snout rested at John-o’-Groat’s Head.

And the fishermen had noticed that this fearsome monster had its head turned towards the mainland, and that it opened its mouth and yawned horribly, as if to show that it was hungry, and that, if it were not fed, it would kill every living thing upon the land, both man and beast, bird and creeping thing.

For it was well known that its breath was so poisonous that it consumed as with a burning fire everything that it lighted on. So that, if it pleased the awful creature to lift its head and put forth
its breath, like noxious vapour, over the country, in a few weeks the fair farmland would be turned into a region of desolation.

As you may imagine, everyone was almost paralysed with terror at this awful calamity which threatened them; and the King called a solemn meeting of all his counsellors, and asked them if they could devise any way of warding off the danger.

And for three whole days they sat in Council, these grave, bearded men, and many were the suggestions which were made, and many the words of wisdom which were spoken; but, alas! no one was wise enough to think of a way by which the Mester Stoorworm might be driven back.

At last, at the end of the third day, when everyone had given up hope of finding a remedy, the door of the Council Chamber opened and the Queen appeared.

Now the Queen was the King’s second wife, and she was not a favourite in the Kingdom, for she was a proud, insolent woman, who did not behave kindly to her stepdaughter, the Princess Gemdelovely. She spent much more of her time in the company of a great Sorcerer, whom everyone feared and dreaded, than she did in that of the King, her husband.

So the sober counsellors looked at her disapprovingly as she came boldly into the Council Chamber and stood up beside the King’s Chair of State, and, speaking in a loud, clear voice, addressed them thus:

‘Ye think that ye are brave men and strong, oh, ye Elders, and fit to be the Protectors of the People. And so it may be, when it is mortals that ye are called on to face. But ye are no match for the foe that now threatens our land. Before him your weapons are but as straw. ’Tis not through strength of arm, but through sorcery, that he will be overcome. So listen to my words, even though they be but those of a woman, and take counsel with the great Sorcerer, from whom nothing is hid, but who knows all the mysteries of the earth, and of the air, and of the sea.’

Now the King and his counsellors did not like this advice, for they hated the Sorcerer, who had, as they thought, too much influence with the Queen; but they were at their wits’ end, and knew not to whom to turn for help, so they agreed to do as she said and summon the Wizard before them.

And when he obeyed the summons and appeared in their midst, they liked him none the better for his looks. For he was long, and thin, and awesome, with a beard that came down to his knees, and hair that wrapped him about like a mantle, and his face was the colour of mortar, as if he had always lived in darkness, and had been afraid to look on the sun.

But there was no help to be found in any other man, so they laid the case before him, and asked him what they should do. And he answered coldly that he would think over the matter, and come again to the Assembly the following day and give them his advice.

And his advice, when they heard it, was like to turn their hair white with horror.

For he said that the only way to satisfy the Monster, and to make it spare the land, was to feed it every Saturday with seven young maidens, who must be the fairest who could be found; and if, after this remedy had been tried once or twice, it did not succeed in mollifying the Stoorworm and inducing him to depart, there was but one other measure that he could suggest, but that was so horrible and dreadful that he would not rend their hearts by mentioning it in the meantime.

And as, although they hated him, they feared him also, the Council had to abide by his words, and they pronounced the awful doom.

And so it came about that, every Saturday, seven bonnie, innocent maidens were bound hand and foot and laid on a rock which ran into the sea, and the Monster stretched out his long, jagged tongue, and swept them into his mouth; while all the rest of the folk looked on from the top of a high hill – or, at least, the men looked – with cold, set faces, while the women hid theirs in their aprons and wept aloud.

‘Is there no other way,’ they cried, ‘no other way than this, to save the land?’

But the men only groaned and shook their heads. ‘No other way,’ they answered; ‘no other way.’

Then suddenly a boy’s indignant voice rang out among the crowd. ‘Is there no grown man who would fight that monster,
and kill him, and save the lassies alive? I would do it; I am not feared for the Mester Stoorworm.’

It was the boy Assipattle who spoke, and everyone looked at him in amazement as he stood staring at the great sea serpent, his fingers twitching with rage, and his great blue eyes glowing with pity and indignation.

‘The poor bairn’s mad; the sight has turned his head,’ they whispered one to another; and they would have crowded around him to pet and comfort him, but his elder brother came and gave him a heavy clout on the side of his head.

‘You
fight the Stoorworm!’ he cried contemptuously. ‘A likely story! Go home to your ash-pit, and stop speaking havers.’ And, taking his arm, he drew him to the place where his other brothers were waiting, and they all went home together.

But all the time Assipattle kept on saying that he meant to kill the Stoorworm; and at last his brothers became so angry at what they thought was mere bragging, that they picked up stones and pelted him so hard with them that he took to his heels and ran away from them.

That evening the six brothers were threshing corn in the barn, and Assipattle, as usual, was lying among the ashes thinking his own thoughts, when his mother came out and bade him run and tell the others to come in for their supper.

The boy did as he was bid, for he was a willing enough little fellow; but when he entered the barn his brothers, in revenge for his having run away from them in the afternoon, set on him and pulled him down, and piled so much straw on top of him that, had his father not come from the farmhouse to see what they were all waiting for, he would certainly have been smothered.

But when, at supper-time, his mother was quarrelling with the other lads for what they had done, and saying to them that it was only cowards who set on bairns littler and younger than themselves, Assipattle looked up from the bowl of porridge which he was supping.

‘Don’t vex yourself, Mother,’ he said, ‘for I could have fought them all if I liked; ay, and beaten them, too.’

‘Why didn’t you try it then?’ cried everybody at once.

‘Because I knew that I would need all my strength when I go to fight the Giant Stoorworm,’ replied Assipattle gravely.

And, as you may fancy, the others laughed louder than before.

Time passed, and every Saturday seven lassies were thrown to the Stoorworm, until at last it was felt that this state of things could not be allowed to go on any longer; for if it did, there would soon be no maidens at all left in Orkney.

So the Elders met once more, and, after long consultation, it was agreed that the Sorcerer should be summoned, and asked what his other remedy was. ‘For, in truth,’ said they, ‘it cannot be worse than that which we are practising now.’

But, had they known it, the new remedy was even more dreadful than the old. For the cruel Queen hated her stepdaughter, Gemdelovely, and the wicked Sorcerer knew that she did, and that she would not be sorry to get rid of her, and, things being as they were, he thought that he saw a way to please the Queen. So he stood up in the Council, and, pretending to be very sorry, said that the only other thing that could be done was to give the Princess Gemdelovely to the Stoorworm, and then it would surely depart.

When they heard this sentence a terrible stillness fell upon the Council, and everyone covered his face with his hands, for no man dared look at the King.

But although his dear daughter was as the apple of his eye, he was a just and righteous monarch, and he felt that it was not right that other fathers should have been forced to part with their daughters, in order to try and save the country, if his child was to be spared.