Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales from Burns to Buchan

by Gordon Jarvie

  Down the glen they ran, faster than the stream when the flood rides it; but the tailor had got the start and a nimble pair of legs, and he did not choose to lose the laird’s reward. And though the thing roared to him to stop, the sprightly tailor was not the man to be restrained by a monster if he could help it. So he held his trews tight, and let no darkness grow under his feet, until he had reached Saddell Castle. He had no sooner got inside the gate, and shut it, than the monster came up to it; and, enraged at losing his prize, struck the wall above the gate, and left there the mark of his five great fingers. You may see them plainly to this day, if you’ll only peer close enough.

  But the sprightly tailor gained his reward: for Macdonald was impressed by his courage and paid him handsomely for the trews, and never discovered that a few of the stitches were somewhat long.

  THE LONELY GIANT

  Alasdair MacLean

  There was a giant once who was lonely. Most giants are, of course, or would be if they stopped to think about it. A giant needs a great deal of land to live off, which means that giants have to space themselves out very thinly, something like one to every shire. So the only time they see one another is on the rare occasions when two neighbouring giants happen to arrive at the borders of their territories at the same time. When that takes place they usually play catch for a time with a boulder or have a game of hide-and-seek among the mountains. Then they go their separate ways. You can hear them shouting goodbye for miles.

  They don’t think about this loneliness, however, because thinking isn’t something they go in for very much. Mostly they just get on with the business of being giants, which takes up all their time and which is very hard work because it is laid down in the Rule Book for Giants that, when they aren’t actually eating or sleeping, they have to stamp around the countryside bellowing at the tops of their voices and looking very fierce. Looking fierce is hard work in itself as you’ll find out if you try it for half an hour. You keep forgetting that you’re supposed to have a scowl on your face and you find yourself smiling at something. Then you have to start all over again.

  Being kept so busy means that giants don’t have much time for thinking. When a giant does manage to get a few minutes to himself he generally feels so tired that he just drops off to sleep. He sits down first of all with his back against the nearest hill. Then he opens his huge mouth and gives a huge yawn. Then he spits out all the birds that have got sucked into his mouth while the yawn was going on. Then off he goes to dream-land.

  But the giant who was lonely was different. He had long since lost his rule book and had never bothered to get it replaced. He didn’t go around stamping and roaring because he couldn’t see much point in it. It only made your feet sore and gave you a headache. Besides that, it frightened people away and he didn’t want to frighten people away. He wanted to be friendly.

  What made him especially different from other giants, though, was that he was always thinking, and what he was always thinking about was how much alone he was. It was true that he did have one or two friends among the creatures. There was Goldentop, the eagle, for example. But the creatures as a rule weren’t greatly interested in people big or little, considering them a very limited species, incapable of running at much more than a trot, or swimming farther than a few miles, or flying any higher than five or six feet and staying up any longer than one or two seconds, or burrowing underground, or carrying their houses on their backs or anything really worthwhile like that.

  ‘As for people,’ said Goldentop once to the lonely giant – whose name, by the way, was Angus Macaskill – ‘all that they are good for, whether they are big or little and with very few exceptions, is making a noise or making places dirty or breaking things. And all that pink naked skin on them without a single feather! Ugh!’ So all that Angus got from Goldentop, usually, was a dip of the wings in passing.

  It was true, also, that Angus did have one or two friends among the ordinary-sized folk. There was Morag Matheson, for instance, the shoemaker’s daughter. He sometimes had quite good conversations with her. But in order for them to talk either Angus had to lie down to get his ear to the level of her mouth, which usually struck him as such a comical proceeding that he burst into fits of laughter, or he had to pick her up and hold her to his ear, which usually struck her as such a comical proceeding that she burst into fits of laughter.

  It is difficult, as you will know from your own experience, to have a sensible talk with someone who giggles all the time. You can hear properly only one or two words in every sentence and you have to guess at the rest. If you guess wrongly, of course, it produces even more laughter. Morag had once told Angus that her mother had been ordered by the doctor to eat two legs for breakfast every day. He was quite horrified until he discovered that she had really said ‘eggs’.

  One day Angus’s loneliness became more than he could bear and he realized that he would have to do something about it. He thought that the wisest thing he could do would be to ask for advice and he decided to ask Morag first of all. He went along to her father’s house and saw her in the distance, as he approached, sitting at the front door, spinning and singing, the sound and the thread flowing out with equal sweetness.

  I wish I were not a giant, thought Angus, then I could ask Morag to marry me. And if she said ‘Yes’ I would not be lonely any more.

  But he was a giant, therefore he put that thought away from him, as a peasant lad might put away a thought of the king’s daughter. Instead, he picked Morag up so quickly that she was too much out of breath to start laughing.

  ‘Morag,’ he said, ‘listen to me carefully because I need your advice. And don’t laugh, please, because it’s a very serious matter. The trouble is that I am lonely. What can I do about it? Is there any cure?’

  ‘I wish you weren’t a giant,’ Morag answered. ‘Or I wish that I were. I would soon cure your loneliness.’

  ‘How?’ asked Angus.

  ‘Never mind,’ replied Morag. She thought long and hard and sadly. ‘The only cure for you, Angus,’ she said at last, ‘is to get married. You must find yourself a giantess somewhere.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Angus.

  ‘Well, now, that I don’t know,’ Morag answered. ‘Most of the people I have met in my life have been very small in one way or another. You’d better ask Goldentop the eagle. He’s always boasting that he knows every mountain in the whole Land of Lorne.’

  ‘Giants aren’t mountains,’ Angus pointed out.

  ‘No,’ agreed Morag. ‘Giants are lighter coloured and more gentle. At least, some of them are.’ She looked at the ground, where it dizzied away into the distance. ‘But there are certain resemblances just the same.’

  Angus in his turn looked down at the ground. Somewhere down there were daisies and primroses and violets. ‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘I know what you mean.’ He put Morag down very gently and set off in search of Goldentop.

  The eagle was sat on a favourite perch. One of his eyes was watching the approach of Angus and it was more or less blank. The other was fixed on some hills that stuck up above the horizon and it was a calculating eye, the sort of eye that added up figures and got one less every time.

  ‘What are you watching with that left eye?’ asked Angus.

  ‘A flock of sheep leaving Hugh Henderson’s sheep-fold in the village of Carraig in the parish of Cray,’ answered Goldentop.

  ‘You have good eyesight,’ said Angus.

  ‘I have an empty belly,’ said the eagle. ‘It clears the vision of trivialities.’

  ‘Has this vision of yours ever rested on a giantess?’ queried Angus. ‘An unattached one, I mean.’

  ‘Island of Alva,’ replied Goldentop promptly. ‘Walk north along the coast until you come to the Blue Bay. Then swim due west.’

  ‘Ah, but are you sure she’s unattached?’ insisted Angus. ‘There might have been a giant there when you weren’t looking.’

  ‘Somehow I do not think so,’ remarked the eagle thoughtfully.

/>   ‘Anyway, I can’t go to this island,’ Angus told him, ‘even if I could swim that far. My mother told me on her deathbed never to go into the salt water.’

  ‘Then you must balance the commands of the dead against the requirements of the living,’ said Goldentop. ‘It is an old dilemma. But not for eagles.’ He left the perch and slid upwards, heading in the direction of the sheep.

  Angus didn’t know what to do. He decided that while he was making up his mind he might as well walk to the Blue Bay. He had never been there and it sounded like a pleasant spot. Besides, he knew that there is nothing like a good long walk for getting rid of sadness. It flows out of your feet into the ground, which of course is where it comes from in the first place, only it enters through your bottom while you are sitting down.

  By the time he reached the Blue Bay he was feeling a lot better. He knew it was the right place because the surrounding hills were blue and the sea was blue and the sky was blue. Also there was a small stunted signpost near by, growing crookedly between two rocks, and on it there said in blue letters, This is the Blue Bay.

  The tide was out when he got there. Indeed it was so far out that it might well need the help of a signpost itself to get back. It had left behind it, as a pledge perhaps, a mile or more of ribbed sand and stranded right in the middle of this sand there was a whale. If you think it was anything other than a blue whale you have not been following my story as closely as you should.

  Angus approached the whale circumspectly, which means that he stopped about fifty feet away. He could see that it had worn a hollow in the sand by threshing around. When it saw him it shouted ‘Help!’ in a tiny squeaky voice, whales having very small throats.

  ‘What seems to be the trouble, Whale?’ inquired Angus.

  ‘The trouble, Giant,’ replied the whale, ‘is that I fell asleep on a sandbank in the middle of the bay. It was only a baby sandbank then but by the time I woke it had grown up. I am stranded. Unless I can get back to the water soon this hot white sun will shrivel my tender skin, which is used only to the coolness and moistness and greenness of the deep sea. I shall die. But what can I do? I cannot swim over the sand and I have neither legs to walk with nor wings to fly.’

  It was plain that he spoke the truth, for already on his blue back two or three blisters were beginning to form.

  ‘It seems to me,’ remarked Angus, ‘that you creatures aren’t quite as superior as Goldentop is always saying you are. I may be only a giant but at least I would never get stuck in the middle of a flat piece of land. I have legs.’

  ‘Goldentop is a snob,’ said the whale. ‘It comes of continually looking down on the rest of the world. And as for legs, unless they are put to the service of the community they remain a private luxury.’

  ‘You are a heavy weight,’ Angus told him. ‘Even for me. But I think that with the help of my legs – and arms – I might just be able to pull you as far as the water’s edge.’

  He caught hold of the whale’s tail and set to work. After a long hard struggle he managed to get it into the shallows, and with a flick of its powerful body it did the rest. It was so happy to be back where it belonged that it turned three underwater cart-wheels in succession.

  ‘Look at me, Giant!’ it shouted when it re-emerged. ‘Where are your legs now? Can you swim like this?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not very much of a swimmer,’ replied Angus. ‘If I were I might swim across to the Island of Alva, for on it there lives a giantess.’

  ‘I know,’ said the whale.

  ‘Have you seen her?’ Angus asked.

  ‘I have seen her,’ the whale agreed. ‘And heard her too.’

  ‘I am going to ask her to marry me,’ Angus informed him.

  ‘Have you seen her?’ inquired the whale.

  ‘No,’ replied Angus. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Never mind,’ the whale answered. ‘But I owe my life to you and if you truly wish to go there I will help you. Wade into the water and catch hold of my tail.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you,’ Angus told him. ‘But there’s one more snag. My mother told me just before she died never to go into the sea.’

  ‘And died, I suppose,’ asked the whale, ‘before she had time to say why?’ Angus nodded. ‘That’s the trouble with Death,’ the whale continued. ‘He always comes when you’re in the middle of something, even if it’s only drawing breath. Well, it’s up to you whether you want to take a chance or not. I’ll give you five minutes to make up your mind.’

  The whale set off on a slow tour round the bay, or what was left of it. Angus pondered. What was the mysterious salt-water fate that lay in store for giants? Was it some monster of the deep? Something big enough to swallow even him? And whatever the fate was could it be any worse than loneliness?

  The sea looked lovely. Surely nothing too terrible could happen to him if he ventured in? There was the Giantess, too, to think about, on her island just below the horizon. Very likely she was waiting impatiently for just such a one as he was. He decided to take the risk.

  ‘I’m going to the island!’ he shouted to the whale. ‘I’m ready now!’

  They began their voyage, with Angus grasping the tail of his new friend and being towed through the water. Their progress, to be sure, was slow, for a giant is a considerable burden even for a whale. But the sun shone, the sea remained peaceful, no monsters appeared and one by one the miles slid past beneath them. Gradually they began to go a little faster.

  Angus noticed this. ‘You’re getting used to me!’ he called.

  ‘I expect that’s it,’ the whale agreed.

  On they went a mile or two farther and still the sea unrolled quietly before them like a great blue carpet. Their speed increased a little more.

  Angus noticed this as well. ‘Wonderful!’ he shouted. ‘You’re going faster than ever!’

  ‘I’m not sure that I am,’ the whale said. ‘There’s something very strange going on. I don’t understand it at all.’ He sounded worried.

  On they went again. Faster and still faster. Angus noticed that his hands didn’t grasp the whale’s tail as easily as they had when he started. ‘That’s because of the speed,’ he told himself. But almost as soon as he said it he knew it wasn’t true. His mother’s warning sounded again in his ears. ‘Don’t go into the salt water, Angus!’ And suddenly he realized what she had meant. He was slowly shrinking!

  What could he do? He called out once more to his friend the whale, telling it what was happening.

  ‘Yes, I thought you must be getting smaller,’ the whale admitted. ‘But I was afraid to say anything in case you dropped off through shock.’

  ‘Should we turn back?’ asked Angus.

  ‘We’re there,’ replied the whale. Sure enough, the island loomed ahead, a large well-wooded one with the tallest tower that Angus had ever seen soaring above the tree-tops.

  ‘That’ll be the Giantess’s tower, I suppose,’ thought Angus. The island grew nearer and nearer and presently a great booming voice thundered out across the water.

  ‘I am a giant, a female giant,

  by nature bold and strong.

  My eyes are quick, my club is thick,

  my arms are extra long.

  My voice is thunderously large,

  a wondrous voice to hear,

  and when I shout and stamp about,

  the echoes take a year.

  My towering height is something else

  of which I’m very proud.

  I scrape the sky when I pass by

  and drink from every cloud.

  A tailor who was measuring me

  and swore he had the knack,

  set off in haste to chalk my waist

  and hasn’t yet come back.

  My future husband, I insist,

  must be more huge than me,

  or with one bound I’ll swing him around

  and hurl him out to sea.’

  ‘Grammar never was her strong point,’ said the whale, ‘but sh
e sounds in excellent form today.’

  Angus had listened in trepidation to the great voice and to the awesome catalogue of attributes it had listed. He had tried to give himself courage by allowing ten per cent off the list for the usual giant’s exaggeration. But even if she were only half of what she claimed, the Giantess must be a formidable woman indeed. Somehow it was difficult to imagine her darning socks. And apart from that there was the worrying discovery he had made in the sea just now. How much had he shrunk?

  The whale glided into the shallow water of the creek. Angus released his hold, waded ashore and turned to face his friend. ‘How much have I lost?’ he inquired anxiously.

  ‘A lot,’ replied the whale, surveying him. ‘An awful lot. You’ve dwindled by about half.’

  The voice Angus had heard on approaching the island rolled out again, sounding louder and nearer all the time. He found himself thinking with longing of his home territory and of the clear eyes of Goldentop and the fringed ones of Morag Matheson.

  ‘You know, I think perhaps I’ll come back some other time,’ he said to the whale. ‘I don’t feel in the right frame of mind for courting.’

  ‘It’s too late to back out now,’ the whale told him. ‘Here she comes!’ He nodded with his head in the direction of Angus’s right shoulder. ‘Good luck!’ he added and with a flick of his tail he was gone. Angus turned. The ‘tower’ he had seen above the tree-tops was advancing down the beach towards him. It was the Giantess!