Dancing with Trees

by Allison Galbraith

  ‘Say please,’ added Gran.

  ‘And thank you,’ called the boy.

  ‘Don’t forget to stop when you have had enough to be going on with,’ the sister shouted after the farmer.

  But it was too late. He couldn’t hear her, as he was already halfway down the lane, heading towards the magical woodland.

  ‘I own this land too!’ declared the wicked man, as he jumped over the fence. ‘It’s next to my land and no one believes that ‘little men’ really live here!’ He laughed contemptuously as he devoured handful after handful of ripe, red strawberries.

  He ate and ate and ate.

  He didn’t say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ and he certainly didn’t stop and say, ‘that’s enough to be going on with.’

  The little men watched from their secret places. They were not at all happy with this rude, greedy behaviour.

  The farmer kept on eating all day.

  He carried on eating all Monday.

  All Tuesday.

  All Wednesday.

  All Thursday.

  All Friday.

  All Saturday.

  And on Sunday he couldn’t stop, because the little men were very angry by this time, and had put a spell on him, so that he couldn’t stop eating even if he wanted to!

  On Sunday the greedy farmer had grown so huge on juicy strawberries that he looked just like an enormous ripe strawberry himself.

  And finally, BOOM! He burst. Exploding into a million tiny pieces.

  So that was the end of a very rude man who never said ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ or knew when, ‘that was enough to be going on with’.

  That is what happened to the greedy man who upset the little men of the woods, and some said, ‘It served him right!’

  NOTES: This tale can be used to help younger children look at issues of sustainability – what happens if we continue to take from the earth without caution and restraint? The lesson of good manners can extend to all our ecological neighbours and our practices.

  Where our food comes from and how we source some foods, like strawberries, even when they are out of season, are important global issues, worth discussing.

  The spirit of nature personified as supernatural beings pervades the British folk tale. It is no surprise that our children, pure in mind and heart, are the ones who believe in fairies.

  24

  ST BRIGID AND THE WOLF

  (IRELAND)

  Hundreds of years ago, a saint named Brigid built a small hut under a huge oak tree in a place that came to be known as Kildare, in honour of that tree. When she first moved into her home under that oak, it was a quiet, rural place, with a forest and a dandelion meadow and many wild creatures, which Brigid loved dearly. However, word of St Brigid’s kindness, generosity and talent for healing spread. Soon many pilgrims were making the journey to Kildare to see her. Some of them came to love Kildare as much as she did and decided to stay. Eventually, a village grew up around Brigid’s home. Even the king made a pilgrimage to see her and soon after had a hunting lodge constructed in the forest nearby.

  In those days, wolves still roamed the woodlands of Ireland and they were often seen around Kildare. Brigid loved the wolves, just as she loved all the animals of the earth, but the villagers were afraid of them. They were quick to blame wolves when a lamb went missing – and they were often right to do so. Lambs made a tasty meal for a hungry pack of wolves, especially with the king and his hunting parties taking so many deer from the forest.

  After a while, the king noticed that the deer were becoming scarcer. He was quick to blame the wolves for taking them – and he was partly right to do so. The wolves had been feeding on the deer in those parts for hundreds of years. They did not know that the deer now belonged to the king. The king wanted them punished. He offered to pay anyone who brought him a dead wolf, one gold coin.

  Despite the price he had put on the heads of these wild wolves, the king kept a tame one as his pet. He had been given the wolf as a cub by a hunter who had killed its mother, but couldn’t bring himself to kill the pup. The king had worked hard to train the pup and was proud of having a wolf that would walk to his heel.

  The king often brought this tame wolf with him when he came to Kildare. Unfortunately, one day the king’s wolf got loose. He was an amiable beast, used to living with people, so the first thing he did was seek out the village. A woodcutter spotted him heading towards the houses. Not knowing this was a tame wolf and fearing for the lives of the village children, he set an arrow to his bow and shot the poor creature between its shoulder blades. Then, looking forward to his reward, he dragged the dead wolf all the way through the woods to the king’s lodge.

  By his markings, the king recognised immediately that the wolf was his own beloved pet. The king’s grief quickly turned to anger. He told his guards to seize the woodcutter and throw him in the dungeon. Then he sent for the local carpenter and ordered him to build a gallows, which is when the villagers found out what had happened to their friend, the woodcutter.

  They went to Brigid to beg for her help.

  Brigid was very sorry to hear of the poor wolf’s death and of the imminent death of the woodcutter, who had only been trying to do what he thought best. She borrowed a horse and cart from one of the villagers and set off to see the king. As she steered the cart onto the dark road that led through the woods to the king’s lodge, she saw, out of the corner of her eye, a white shadow weaving between the trees. The horse began to shy and stumble, snorting with fear, but Brigid said a few calming words and he settled. The white shadow picked up speed and jumped, landing in Brigid’s lap. It was a huge, beautiful white wolf with deep, dark, brown eyes and a long pink tongue, which he used to lick Brigid across her cheek, making her laugh.

  They made a strange pair as they approached the king’s lodge, sitting side-by-side in the wagon, the tall white wolf towering over the fair-haired, blue-eyed young woman. The king received the pair in his chambers, staring at the wolf greedily. White wolves were as rare back then as they are now, and the king rather fancied owning one.

  Brigid asked if the king would pardon the woodcutter. In exchange, the white wolf had offered to take the place of the king’s lost pet.

  The king didn’t need to think twice. Releasing the woodcutter would cost him nothing and having a huge, white wolf walking to his heel would make quite an impression on everyone he met.

  Brigid whispered in the wolf’s ear that he was to be a good servant to the king and he would be richly rewarded with the best cuts of meat on offer all his long life. The wolf loped willingly to the king’s side and laid his head in his lap. The king stroked the great beast’s soft ear, a look of wonder suffusing his face.

  Brigid took the woodcutter back to the village. As they journeyed along in the cart she told him, ‘it is better that two wicked beasts go free than one innocent one gets punished’. While St Brigid was still alive, no wolf was ever killed in that part of Ireland again.

  NOTES: St Brigid is one of the most popular saints in Ireland and is comparable to St Francis in terms of her concern for the poor and her love of nature. No collection of eco-stories from the British Isles would be complete without her. Stories of St Brigid often blend with earlier stories of the Celtic goddess Brigid or Bride, who is associated with Imbolc. St Brigid’s flower is the dandelion.

  This old legend touches on a great many contemporary environmental issues: human encroachment on the habitat of other animals; the problematic interactions that can occur when wild animals become habituated to humans and their food sources; competition between wild carnivores and farmers; the issues of wealthy estates being managed for hunting; and the reintroduction of carnivore species. St Brigid’s thoughtfulness and kindness towards both the people and the animals of this story provide a role model to which we can all aspire.

  25

  THOMAS THE THATCHER

  (SCOTLAND, TRAVELLERS)

  Thomas the Thatcher was good at his job. When thatching a ro
of, he knew just the right straw to use. He knew when to cut the straw. He knew how to bundle it and store it, so it would stay fresh until it was needed. And he knew how to lay the straw out on a roof and fix it in place so that it stayed flat and tight, keeping out the rain and the wind.

  Thomas lived in a small but beautiful village of tidy wee houses with tidy roofs, every one of which he had thatched himself. Lairds and ladies passing through the village in their carriages admired the houses with their neat little roofs. And soon those carriages were being sent to fetch Thomas to thatch buildings on wealthy estates all over the land. But no matter how busy he got, Thomas made certain his neighbours’ roofs were always in good repair.

  Which is why they turned a blind eye at first. You see, Thomas’ roof was a mess. Stray bits of thatch straggled over the edges. Great gaping holes dotted the middle. And when there was a wind, straw would blow loose and fall onto neighbouring gardens. It wasn’t as if he didn’t work on his roof. His neighbours saw him up there every fortnight or so, fiddling with the thatch. But it never looked any tidier.

  One day, after a particularly windy night, Thomas’ neighbour stepped out into his garden, only to find it covered by a layer of thatch. ‘Right, that’s enough of this,’ he said to himself and he marched down to the office of the Justice of the Peace and filed a complaint. In those days, the Justice of the Peace travelled around the country, so he had to wait several weeks before Thomas was brought to trial, which was held in the local pub. By that time, most of the village had joined in the complaint.

  The Justice of the Peace had his footman take the carriage past Thomas’ house on the way into the village and he saw what a mess it was in. His heart sank.

  Everyone in the village was waiting in the pub. They all loved Thomas; he was a good man and they owed him for years of dry, snug nights, but they sympathised with Thomas’ neighbour. Thomas’ house was an eyesore. A hush fell over the crowd as the Justice of the Peace entered and Thomas was called in from the back room.

  ‘Thomas,’ said the Justice of the Peace, ‘except for your own house, this village could be the most beautiful in all the land. Your neighbours’ well-dressed roofs are evidence of your skill at thatching. So why can you not repair your own roof?’

  Thomas looked at the crowd of people in the pub, all of them his neighbours, all of them customers at one time or another. He cleared his throat. ‘I have made your roofs so well that no water ever gets through, no thatch is ever blown out of place and no patches ever rot. If I made the thatch on my own roof that tight, the wee sparrows would have no space in which to raise their young. If I kept the edges of my roof even, the house martins, the swifts and the swallows would have no protection from the rain. I keep holes in my roof so that the red squirrels have somewhere to hide when the cats and the hawks come after them. If I kept my roof as tidy as yours, there would be no birds to sing us awake in the morning. The bees would have nowhere to make their sweet honey. There would be no squirrels to plant the acorns and hazelnuts in the ground and no one to eat the flies and the beetles that plague our gardens.’ Thomas looked a little out of breath. It was the longest speech anyone had ever heard him make.

  The Justice of the Peace, whose own estate had benefited many times from Thomas’ skilled hands, did not want to see him go to jail. So he asked Thomas’ neighbours, which roof they would prefer to have perfectly made: Thomas’ or their own. They decided they liked the way things were just fine.

  As for the Justice of the Peace, he hired Thomas to rethatch one of his own barns the messy way, so that he could wake to the joyful sound of birdsong each morning and know that the little squirrels he loved so much would have somewhere to hide.

  NOTES: In England and Wales, the Justice of the Peace was called the Magistrate. Thatching is done with long straw or reeds, both of which are a renewable building resource. This story resonates with contemporary conservation campaigns to plant wildlife gardens and put up bird and bat boxes.

  In some parts of the British Isles, special hollow bricks are put into new buildings to offer nesting places to the swifts that migrate here from Africa each year.

  26

  ONE TREE HILL

  (ENGLAND)

  Once upon a time, there was a farmer with a green and prosperous farm. At the heart of his farm stood a low hill and on that hill grew three ancient beech trees, known by everyone for miles around as the Three Ladies. Each spring, when the flowers were just beginning to open to the warming sun, the farmer would pick three posies of primroses, climb the hill and lay the flowers at the feet of these huge trees. No matter what the weather was like, whether it was dry or wet, hot or cold, stormy or calm, come autumn, the farmer would have an abundant crop to harvest.

  As happens to all of us, the farmer grew old. As he neared the end of his life, he called his three sons to his bedside. ‘Once I am gone, you must carry on the old ways. If you treat this land well, it will treat you well,’ he said. ‘Above all, you must always remember to honour the Three Ladies who watch over it.’

  Soon after, the old man died. To his oldest son, he left three bags of coins, the sprawling farmhouse and barns, the largest field and the hill where the Three Ladies stood. To his second son, he left two bags of coins, the smaller field and a sturdy, stone cottage. All that remained for his youngest son was half a bag of coins and a tiny wooden hut with a yard covered over by hard-packed, stony soil.

  The oldest brother grumbled about not getting all of the farm. The second brother complained about only getting the small field and a worker’s cottage. The youngest brother whistled happily all the way down the lane, eager to move into his own little hut and get to work on his own little piece of land.

  The oldest brother bought himself a wardrobe of fine clothes, a new horse and carriage and treated himself to a trip to London, where he stayed at only the best inns. Before the year was out, he was down to two bags of coins. The second brother hired some labourers to make his stone cottage bigger. By the end of the year, he had used up one of his bags of coins. The youngest brother used one coin to buy a dozen chickens, which he let loose in his yard, and a bag of feed. By year’s end he’d earned two coins back by selling his eggs.

  When spring arrived the following year, remembering his father’s words, the youngest brother got up at dawn, picked three posies of primroses and carried them up to lay at the feet of the Three Ladies. That year, his small garden prospered. The chickens had done their job scratching up and manuring the soil and he was able to plant a small orchard and a vegetable patch.

  Neither of his brothers bothered to climb the hill that year. The oldest brother was seen around town in his fine clothes more often than he was seen on the farm. He hired labourers to do the actual work, paid them poorly and rarely bothered to inspect what they’d done. Soon his large field was scraggly and neglected, full of weeds. The second brother’s field did not look much better. However, the once barren yard of the youngest brother was thriving and his bag of coins grew larger each market day.

  Meanwhile, the oldest brother was down to his last five coins. He began to wonder why his youngest brother was doing so well, when he’d been given so little. The only explanation he could think of was that the youngest must be stealing from him. So he began to watch him.

  It was very boring, watching his youngest brother. All he did was chores – chores in the garden, chores in the hut. Work, work, work from dawn to dusk. But then spring arrived and one morning the oldest brother saw the youngest pick some flowers. The youngest then left his little yard and walked right onto the oldest’s land. This was it, the oldest thought, now I’ll catch him in the act of stealing from me!

  Carefully, quietly, he tiptoed after his youngest brother as he went up the hill. The oldest crouched behind some bushes as his brother stopped in front of three big old trees and laid the flowers in front of them. Then he followed his youngest brother back down the hill, across the field and back to his tiny yard, which was overflowing with chick
ens and trees and vegetable plants.

  The oldest brother vaguely remembered his father saying something about those stupid trees, but he couldn’t remember what. He did know that his brother had no right to come onto his land and put flowers next to his trees! It was trespassing, that is what it was, and he was going to put an end to it.

  The oldest brother took an axe out of his barn. He would chop down the huge beech trees and use the wood to build a fence around his very large field to keep trespassers, like his brother, out.

  He marched up to the top of the hill, raised his axe and he chopped, and he chopped, and he chopped at the first tree. A strange breeze rose up around him, but he kept going. He chopped and he chopped and he chopped at the heart of that tree.

  The breeze blew into a wind, but he didn’t stop. He chopped and he chopped and he chopped through the heart of that tree. Crack! The tree began to fall. A gust picked it up, twisting it around so that it dropped, crashing onto the oldest brother. The cabinetmaker in town used the wood from the tree to build the oldest brother a coffin and that was the end of him.

  The second brother moved into the farmhouse. Now he had both the large and the small fields, but by this time barely anything would grow. That autumn, he barely managed to harvest enough to feed himself; he had nothing left to sell. It was only by renting out the cottage that he was able to keep the farm.

  The youngest brother, though, he kept a stall at the market every week, even through the winter. The second brother began to wonder what the youngest’s secret was. He began to wonder if his brother might be stealing from him. He began to follow his brother around.

  It was very boring work, watching his brother. All he did was chores – chores in the yard, chores in the hut, chores at the market. But then one spring day, he saw his brother pick some flowers, cross onto his land, walk up his hill and put those flowers in front of two of his trees!