Dancing with Trees

by Allison Galbraith

  ‘She is mine, all mine,’ said a disembodied voice, echoing around them. ‘I will not let someone else have her. Release her to me or you will both forfeit your lives.’ The force of the words blew through his hair, lifting it off his forehead.

  The hare became a mad thing in his arms, scratching and struggling. She screamed once, a harsh and eerie sound that cut him to the core.

  ‘She wants to come to me,’ coaxed and wheedled the voice. ‘Let her go. She wants to return to her old life.’ The hare screamed again.

  And then another sound, at first so low he couldn’t quite hear it. A hum that became a buzz and then grew to an angry roar as his bees poured down the chimney. The swarm circled around the beekeeper and the hare, forming a moving, living wall, sheltering the pair from the unseen forces of the crooked old woman. As the bees swirled around them, the hare began to settle.

  The voice growled and moaned with frustration, growing louder and louder until with a bang, the cottage door blew open and the voice was gone. The bees flew out after it.

  In the sudden quiet, the hare twitched once more, shimmered in the candlelight and transformed into a beautiful, brown-haired woman with piercing blue eyes.

  Needless to say, the young beekeeper married the beautiful young woman, who had been turned into a hare by the witch and freed by the love of the man and his bees. They lived happily ever after, their days sweetened by the honey from their hives.

  NOTES: This tale is a popular one at weddings and connects to the tradition of the ‘honeymoon’. It was believed that drinking mead, wine made from honey, helped a bride to conceive a child. The story also explores the important role that bees play in pollinating most major human food crops, their presence providing protection from the howling winds of hunger.

  21

  MOUSE’S TAIL

  (ENGLAND)

  The cat and the mouse

  played in the malt-house:

  The cat bit off the mouse’s tail.

  ‘Ouch’, said the mouse, ‘please give me back my tail.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ said the cat, ‘I’ll not give you back your tail, till you go to the cow and fetch me some milk.’

  First mouse leapt, and then she ran,

  Till she came to the cow, and so began –

  ‘Pray cow, do give me some milk so that I may give cat milk and cat will give me back my own tail again.’

  ‘No,’ said the cow. ‘I will give you no milk, till you go to the farmer and get me some hay.

  First mouse leapt, and then she ran,

  Till she came to the farmer, and so began –

  ‘Pray farmer, please give me some hay, that I may give cow hay, that cow will give me milk, so that I can give cat milk and cat will give me back my tail again.’

  ‘No,’ said the farmer. ‘I will give you no hay, till you go to the butcher and get me some meat.’

  First mouse leapt, and then she ran,

  Till she came to the butcher, and so began –

  ‘Pray butcher, please give me some meat, that I may give farmer meat, that farmer may give me hay, that I may give cow hay, that cow may give me milk, so that I can give cat milk and cat will give me back my tail again.’

  ‘No,’ said the butcher. ‘I will give you no meat, till you go to the baker and fetch me some bread.’

  First Mouse leapt and then she ran,

  Till she came to the baker, and so began –

  ‘Pray baker, please give me some bread, that I may give butcher bread, that butcher may give me meat, that I may give farmer meat, that farmer may give me hay, that I may give cow hay, that cow may give me milk, so that I may give cat milk and cat will give me back my tail again.’

  ‘Yes’, said baker, ‘I’ll give you some bread,

  But if you eat my grain, I’ll cut off

  your head.’

  Then baker gave mouse bread, and mouse gave butcher bread, and butcher gave mouse meat, and mouse gave farmer meat, and farmer gave mouse hay, and mouse gave cow hay, and cow gave mouse milk, and mouse gave cat milk, and cat gave mouse back her very own tail again!

  NOTES: A story to illustrate the web of life and the interdependency of all species and food-chain connections.

  This is an accumulative tale and works well with younger and mixed age-group audiences.

  When telling this story, it’s fun to encourage the audience to join in with the growing list of acquisitions. You don’t have to worry about remembering everything in precise detail, just the running order of characters and what they want mouse to ‘fetch’ for them – hand the rest over to your audience and they will be delighted to fill in the repeated lines.

  If you find it too difficult to remember the rhymes then you can just improvise the lines, as you think the different characters would speak them – accents and funny voices work well. Whichever way you tell it, the audience will have lots of fun joining in, as the chain reaction unfolds before them.

  22

  THE ELF AND THE SLOP BUCKET

  (ENGLAND, IRELAND, SCOTLAND, WALES)

  There was once an old couple who lived happily together in their country cottage. They had a lovely flower garden in front of the house, and a vegetable garden at the back. Life was simple. They didn’t have running water, but they had a well in the garden that gave them the purest spring water. Every day they filled a bucket from the well and put it in the kitchen next to the back door. If either of them fancied a cup of tea, they filled a jug of water from the bucket and poured it into the kettle on the stove. When they wanted a drink, they dipped their cups in and helped themselves to the cool fresh water. In the evening, the vegetables were washed and peeled – potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, beans and turnips all scrubbed clean in a basin. Then after the meal the water that was left was used to wash the dishes. At the very end of the day the dirty vegetable water was poured back into the bucket. When all this was done you can imagine the state of that water! It was full of dirt and peelings, onion skins, carrot tops, and grease. It was very smelly and very mucky – the old couple called it the ‘slops’. Last thing at night, the old man would open the back door and throw the bucket of slops over the garden wall, into the field – one, two, three, whoosh!

  One evening, when the old fella was throwing the slops out the door, a small elfin child appeared on the wall right before his eyes. The child called out, ‘Oh please don’t do that! My mother is so upset. She’s down there crying her eyes out at the mess you keep making.’

  The old man was surprised. He had never seen an elf before. He didn’t know what to say, ‘I, errm ... sorry ... but what do you mean, “the mess I’m making”? What mess?’

  The elf child sighed deeply and said, ‘Climb onto my feet and I’ll show you what happens when you throw your bucket of slops into the field every night.’

  The old man looked at the child’s feet. They were bigger than his own – in fact they were quite enormous for a little child.

  ‘Climb on,’ said the elf. ‘Don’t be shy. It won’t hurt me, I am a supernatural being after all!’

  As the old man stepped gently onto the elf-boy’s big feet, everything around him changed. Suddenly, he could see an elf-village lying below the garden, under the wall and into the field beyond. Through chinks in the stone-dyke, he could see tiny houses and streets, and little elves going about their everyday lives. But one of the little houses was covered with grease, mud, potato peelings and carrot tops. The elf-boy pointed at it. ‘That’s my house. Every night you throw your dirty slops all over it. The water pours down our chimney and puts the fire out. My mum is in there crying. It takes her all day to clean the mess away. She said she can’t take it any more! That’s why I came to show you our world – please, will you stop throwing your mucky water over our house?’

  The old man was flabbergasted. He hadn’t known that elves lived underneath his garden. He had never stopped to think that throwing out the bucket of dirty water might make a horrible mess of someone else’s home.


  ‘I’m so sorry about this,’ he said to the elf-boy, ‘I had no idea you and your family lived here. My wife and I will find a solution to this problem. I promise.’

  ‘I’ll come back tomorrow and see what you have decided,’ said the elf-boy and promptly disappeared.

  All night long the old man and the old woman stayed up talking. How could they get rid of their dirty water without making things worse for the elves?

  By morning they were still up discussing it, but hadn’t managed to find a solution to the problem.

  The old man fetched a bucket of fresh, clean water from the well – just like he always did. Then he and his wife got on with their daily chores – just like they usually did. They made tea, cooked a pot of porridge, fed the cat and the dog. Then they scrubbed the vegetables clean to make soup for lunch, peeled potatoes and carrots for dinner, and finally at the end of the day, they washed the dirty, greasy dishes. Together the old man and old woman took the bucket to the back door.

  The water was very mucky and full of vegetable peelings, tea leaves and grease. The old man pictured the elf village, there beneath the back garden, below their feet.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he said, sadly shaking his head. ‘We’ll just have to throw it further into the field, if we can.’

  As he lifted the bucket, ‘one, two, three ...’ the old woman clapped her hands.

  ‘Wait! I have an idea. Why don’t we change the doors around?’ The old man looked puzzled. ‘We’ll put the front door at the back of the house and the back door at the front of the house. Then when you take out the slops, you’ll be throwing them out the front door instead of the back door!’

  The old man lowered the bucket and smiled.

  ‘What a fine idea, my clever wife. With the front door at the back, and the back door at the front, I’ll never pour this dirty water on the elves’ houses again.’

  The elf boy had been listening quietly behind the wall. He made himself visible for a magical moment, smiled and waved to the man and his wife, then he disappeared forever.

  The next day the man and his wife hired the local carpenter to change around their doors – the back door was put at the front, and the front door was put at the back of the cottage. Later that evening the old man proudly took the slops bucket out through their new back door. He lifted it up to throw its grubby contents over the wall. ‘One, two, three ...’ but he stopped himself from throwing it, as he realized that the slops would land on the road in front of the house. The elf village would be clean, but all the people walking to town, past their house would get vegetable peelings and grease all over their shoes. Oh dear, that wouldn’t do either.

  Not knowing where else to put the slops, he dumped the contents of the bucket in the corner of their front garden, behind his wife’s rose bush. Then he covered it over with old leaves. He did the same thing every evening for a year. And what do you know? The rose bushes in that corner of the garden grew so well that his wife won all the prizes at the village fair, with her beautiful, healthy flowers.

  The old man was happy because he had somewhere to dump the slops. The old woman was happy because her garden had never looked better. And the elves, well they never complained again, so they must have been happy too.

  Some people say that this is the story of how the first garden compost heap, was created.

  NOTES: A story about staying friendly with your neighbours and about making compromises and compost. In many ways fairies, elves and their kin are the nature spirits of the Celtic lands. In this traditional British fairy tale an elf brings a message that is even more relevant today than it would have been when the story was first told. This story is as popular with older people as it is with younger ones. You can ask your audience what meals they would cook, and what things the couple might put in the slops bucket. With younger children you can count, ‘one, two, three ... whoosh!’ and mime throwing the water out the door with them.

  LIVING IN HARMONY

  23

  THE GOAT AND THE STRAWBERRIES

  (ENGLAND)

  Once there was a young brother and sister, who lived with their granny in a small hut. They were very, very poor. They never had any money for food, or toys, or books, or new clothes. But there was something they were very rich in – GOOD MANNERS! Granny taught the children to be polite to everyone they met, always to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and never to be greedy.

  ‘After all,’ their granny told them, ‘good manners, do not cost anything!’

  Everybody loved the children because they were so well behaved and always very polite. People would give them leftovers, like cabbage leaves, a turnip now and then, and maybe even a bone for soup, or stale bread that had been put aside for the birds. The children would always thank people kindly for their generosity and were never greedy or ungrateful for the food scraps.

  Each day, the brother and sister would take their goat out along the farm track and hedgerows. The goat had eaten all the grass in granny’s garden long ago, so they had to search for fresh grass and wildflowers along the byways. Each evening the goat had just enough milk for one squirt each, which kept them all from starving or becoming ill.

  When they took their goat out, they had to run quickly past their neighbour’s farm, because he was mean. If this man saw their goat eating near his property, he would run out yelling, ‘Get off my land! I own all these hedgerows and the grass verges are mine too!’ If they didn’t run away quickly enough, he would set his dog on them.

  One day, after the dog of the wealthy farmer had chased them far along the country lane, the goat ran right under the fence and into the forbidden woods, the ‘Wood of the Little Men’.

  Brother and sister called after their pretty white goat, ‘You mustn’t eat anything in the Woods of the Little Men, without saying please and thank you, and knowing when to stop eating!’ They knew that this was a very magical wood. Here the little men lived secretly, and if anyone should steal from their woodland, or be greedy with what they found growing there, then something bad would happen to them.

  The goat glanced at the children but she kept right on eating. The children shouted out as politely as they could, ‘Excuse us little men. We are very sorry that our goat has strayed into your wood, but the grass is so green and she is a very hungry goat. Please may we have permission to fetch her back?’

  The little men were hiding, watching quietly from their secret places. They giggled and watched to see what would happen next. The girl and boy ducked under the fence, and caught their nanny goat. To their surprise, they discovered that it wasn’t grass she was eating, but ripe, red strawberries. The goat was munching greedily, sweet juice trickling down her chin.

  ‘Oh no,’ moaned the children, ‘she is being so greedy, we must be in trouble with the little men!’

  The fruity smell filled the air and the youngsters felt their mouths watering and tummies rumbling.

  ‘Dear little men, please may we have a few of your ripe strawberries to eat?’ called the sister.

  ‘It’s been so long since we tasted sweet strawberries, please just a few?’ shouted the brother.

  The little men sat and watched as the children each picked and ate a small handful of strawberries.

  But then, to the little men’s surprise, both children stopped, wiped their mouths clean and called out together, ‘Thank you so much for the lovely strawberries. That’s enough to be going on with.’

  Pulling their goat by the halter, they walked towards the road.

  Just as they reached the edge of the strawberry patch, the little girl asked, ‘May we take a few strawberries for our granny at home? She would be so grateful for such delicious fruit.’

  The children picked just two small handfuls each, enough to fill their pockets and then they thanked the little men once again for their kindness and tasty strawberries.

  The little men were very pleased with the children’s show of good manners and lack of greed. They were so impressed with such
well-behaved children that they decided to give them a bit of ‘little men’ luck and magic to take home with them.

  When the children arrived home with the goat, they ran to the door to give Gran her share of the strawberries, but one flew out of a pocket and landed in the middle of the garden. Immediately the fruit grew thick deep roots, luscious green leaves and the biggest, ripest berries ever seen. The plant began to grow and spread in all directions. By teatime the whole garden was covered in fresh red strawberries. Everyone was delighted with this tasty, new crop. No matter how many the goat ate, there was always enough left for the family for breakfast, lunch and tea. The kindly neighbours were happier than ever to give them their extra cabbages, turnips, bones and bread, because now, they would get a bowl of fresh strawberries in return.

  When winter came and snow covered the ground, to everyone’s amazement, those blessed strawberry plants kept on growing and producing sweet fruit.

  One morning, the mean, rich farmer was passing by the garden and he saw the red berries poking up through the blanket of snow. ‘What the devil? They must be my strawberries, stolen from my fields in the summer and hidden here under the snow!’ he said.

  The children and their granny knew it was a lie. They watched as he marched into their garden and began to gorge himself on the strawberries. He ate every strawberry on every plant. The family didn’t worry, they knew a fresh crop would grow back before evening.

  ‘I want more!’ roared the greedy man.

  ‘You will find some more in the Wood of the Little Men,’ the boy told their mean neighbour.

  ‘But you must remember to be very polite to the little men,’ said his sister kindly.