Collected Folk Tales

by Alan Garner

  But Rama took a garuda weapon and loosed a flight of golden arrows, changing at will to birds, and devouring all the serpent arrows of the rakshasa.

  Then the indwelling gods of all the weapons came to stand by Rama, and Rama hymned the Sun, and purified himself with water-sippings, and was glad; and he turned to deal with Ravana, for the rakshasa had come to himself again and was eager for the battle.

  Each like a flaming lion fought the other. Head after head of the many-necked did Rama cut away with his deadly arrows, but new heads ever rose in place of those cut off, and Ravana’s death seemed nowise nearer than before.

  Then Rama took up a weapon: the Wind lay in its wings, the Sun and Fire in its head. Blessing that shaft, Rama set it to his bow and loosed it, and it sped to its appointed place and cleft the breast of Ravana, and, bathed in blood, returned and entered Rama’s quiver humbly.

  Thus was the lord of the rakshasas slain, and the gods rained flowers on Rama’s chariot and gave thanks, for their desired end was now accomplished – that end for which alone the Great Vishnu had taken human form. The heavens were at peace, the air grew clear and bright, and the sun shone cloudless on the field of battle.

  4. VISHNU

  X

  Hanuman went to the Asoka tree, and there discovered Sita; and Sita and Rama were rejoined, she bathed and fitly adorned with sandal-paste and jewels, and he decked in the blossom from the gods and with the hurts of war cleansed from him. And thereafter Rama sat on his father’s throne and governed the city of Ayodhya for ten thousand years, and Sita bore him two sons.

  Then one day there blew a sweet, cool, fragrant air, such as used to blow only in the golden age, and folk were astonished that the air should blow also in the second age. And a heavenly throne rose up from within the earth, borne on the heads of mighty spirits, and Earth stretched out her arms to Sita, who was first given to her father from the new turned furrow of the land and had no mortal mother, and Sita took her place on the throne, and the throne sank down again.

  But Rama sat stricken with grief, and he was torn by anger that Sita had disappeared before his eyes. But Brahma spoke, and said:

  “O Rama of firm vows, you should not weep. Rather remember your godhead, and bethink you that you are Vishnu. You shall be with Sita in Heaven.”

  But now Rama was heavy-hearted, and the whole world seemed empty without Sita, and he knew no peace. He gave the monkeys and the kings and hermits gifts and sent each back to his own place; and he made a golden image of Sita to be with him in his loneliness, and a thousand years passed.

  And so Rama’s course on earth was run, and he felt godhead stir within him. He said to Hanuman:

  “It is determined already that you shall live for ever. Do you be glad on earth so long as the tale of me endures.”

  And all the people of Ayodhya, with the beasts and birds and the least of breathing things, and the bears and rakshasas and monkeys followed Rama from the city with happy hearts.

  When they came to the river, Brahma, the Creator, came with the godly folk and a hundred thousand chariots, and the wind of Heaven blew and flowers rained upon earth. Then Brahma said to Rama:

  “Hail, O Vishnu! Do you, with your brothers, enter in again in whatsoever form you will, you who are the refuge of all creatures and beyond the range of thought or speech.”

  Then Vishnu entered Heaven in his own form, and all the gods bowed down to him and rejoiced.

  And Brahma appointed places in the heavens for all those who had come after Rama, and the bears and monkeys assumed their godly forms. Thus did all beings there assembled attain to the heavenly state, and Brahma and the gods returned to their own abode.

  Thus ends Ramayana, revered by Brahma and made by Valmiki. He that has no sons shall attain a son by reading even a single verse of Rama’s lay. All sin is washed away from those who read or hear it read. He who recites Ramayana should have rich gifts of cows and gold. Long shall he live who reads Ramayana, and shall be honoured, with his sons and grandsons, in this world and in Heaven.

  It is not enough to enter

  The bone of the mother,

  The rope of blood.

  It is not enough to enter

  By hewn birth

  The island of the strong door.

  Four widows draw the plough

  About the head,

  And eastward the birches

  Carry the riding drum

  That beats for no travailing women,

  Nor for soul’s plunder,

  But to find the man lost in the snow.

  I shall not be older,

  I shall not be younger,

  Than I was in the beginning.

  There will not come from my design

  Fear or death.

  I see not and I am not seen.

  Where twilight and the black night move together

  I gather all given and give back.

  In the island of the strong door.

  In the four-cornered castle.

  In the spinning circle.

  In the garth of glass.

  Hinged on the sky.

  A night to kill a king

  Is this night.

  Alan Garner

  boy lived in the woods, and his father told him never to go eastward, but to play in the clearing by their hut or to walk towards the west.

  For some years the boy obeyed his father, but as he grew older and the paths of the west became dusty with use, he felt himself drawn to the unknown trees, and the green trackways, and one day he set off towards the east.

  He found a lake, and knelt down to drink, but the water was alive with savage fish and he nearly lost a hand. He crouched by the shore and watched the fins swirl the water, and a stranger came up behind him so softly that the boy knew nothing until the man spoke.

  “Let us see who can throw a spear the farthest.”

  “Very well,” said the boy, and he won easily.

  “Let us run round the lake,” said the man.

  “I agree,” said the boy, and he won that, too.

  “Let me show you the island in the middle of the lake,” said the man.

  “Do you like fish?” said the boy. “I can see the island from here.”

  The man whistled, and a boat came into sight, drawn by three flying swans. The man and the boy stepped into the boat, and were carried to the island, but as soon as they landed the boy wished that he had stayed at home, for the man knocked him down, and left him, and went back across the lake.

  The boy felt his bruises. Nothing was broken, although he ached from the fists. He limped about the island to find food, but there was little except berries and roots, and no shelter. He sat and watched the night come.

  “If you would be good enough to dig an inch or so into the earth,” said a voice close by him, “you would do me a great kindness.”

  The boy was startled, for there was no one to be seen.

  “I’m in the leaf mould,” said the voice.

  The boy scraped the last year’s autumn, and underneath he found a skeleton lying yellow on the ground.

  “I am much obliged,” said the skeleton. “Now one more thing, if you will. Under that tree, just by the bole, there’s a pouch buried. Would you bring it to me?”

  The boy put his hand down by the bole, and he found a tobacco pouch in the soil and a pipe and flint.

  “It would gratify me,” said the skeleton, “if you would light the pipe and put it in my mouth.”

  The boy did so, and held the pipe between the skeleton’s teeth.

  “Ah, thank you. Thank you,” said the skeleton. “It’s the mice, you see. They nest in my ribs, and only the smoke will move them. Such a torment they are, and such a blessing this is.”

  The boy sat without moving until the skeleton had finished the pipe. “Now,” said the skeleton, “you will want to know what you can do about the man who brought you here. Well, I’ll help you. He’s on his way now with dogs, to hunt you for sport, so you must run up and dow
n all over the island, leaving tracks, and be sure to touch every tree. Then, when he comes, hide at the top of a tree, and they will never find you.”

  And that is what the boy did, and the dogs could not find him, for his scent was everywhere. At dawn the man took them off and went back to the land.

  “He will come at night,” said the skeleton, “and it will be to drink your blood. But you must dig a hole in the sand near where the boat is beached, and wait for him to start looking for you.”

  All that day the boy held the pipe for the skeleton. “And remember,” said the skeleton, “don’t return for a year. Then, if you will bring me a little tobacco, perhaps, it would be most beneficial. Indeed it would.”

  The boy hid in the sand until the man had disappeared among the trees, and then he ran to the boat and jumped in. As soon as they felt the movement, the swans flew back to the land, taking boat and boy with them safely among the deadly fish. And the boy went home, and stayed westwards for a year.

  At the end of the year he made his way to the lake again. The swans were waiting. The island was unchanged.

  “I’ve brought a new pipe, and pouches of tobacco,” said the boy.

  “You are more than considerate,” said the skeleton. “The nesting season has been a great burden.”

  The boy lit the pipe, and the mice were soon cleared.

  “Can I do anything more to help you?” said the boy. “You saved my life. Shall I bury you?”

  “No,” said the skeleton. “I would rather know the sun and the rain, the wind and the moon, and let them do their work. It is pleasanter here than in the dark.”

  So the boy built a hut on the lake shore, and each day he came with the swans to light the skeleton’s pipe and to keep him company, until the sun and the rain, the wind and the moon had done their work, and nothing remained to tempt the busy mice.

  A girl in our village makes love in the churchyard.

  She doesn’t mind who, but it must be the churchyard.

  They say she prefers the old part to the new.

  Green granite chippings, maybe,

  Rankle. Warm slabs welcome.

  And after, in her bedroom,

  She sees the mirror’s view

  Of her shoulder embossed

  In Loving Memory.

  Ann, why do you do it, you’ve eight ‘A’ Levels?

  Why not, Ann? If bones remember, you’ll give them joy.

  It’s as good a place as any,

  Close by nave, rood screen, chapel of ease,

  Peal of the bells,

  Bob Singles and Grandsire Doubles,

  And when you half close your eyes

  The horned gargoyles choose.

  But it has to happen.

  Eh, Ann, tonight you were levelled.

  William Jones, late of this parish,

  Was cold beneath you, and his great-great-grandson

  Warm above; and you rose,

  Though your shoulder didn’t show it,

  In Glorious Expectation of the Life to Come.

  Alan Garner

  ritain is a reasonably safe place for people to live in now, as far as animals are concerned. The last wolf was killed in 1743; the last wild boar in 1683; and the last dragon in 1614, or thereabouts.

  In the British Museum there is a printed document that says:

  True and Wonderful!

  A discourse relating a strange and Monstrous Serpent or Dragon, lately discovered, and yet living, to the great annoyance and divers slaughters both of men and cattle in Sussex, two miles from Horsham, in a wood called St. Leonard’s Forest, and thirty miles from London, this present month of August, 1614.

  To the Reader:

  I believe, ere thou hast read this little all, thou wilt not doubt of one, but believe there are many serpents in England.

  Farewell.

  By A.R. (He that would send better news if he had it.)

  In Sussex there is a pretty market towne called Horsham; near which is a forest, called St. Leonard’s Forest. And there, in a vast and unfrequented place; heathie; vaultie; full of unwholesome shades, and overgrown hollows; this serpent is thought to be bred. Certaine and too true it is that there it yet lives. And it hath been seen within half a mile of Horsham; a wonder no doubt most terrible and noisome to the inhabitants thereabouts.

  There is always in his tracke or path left a glutinous and slimie matter, which is very corrupt and offensive to the scent, which must needs be very dangerous; for though the corruption of it cannot strike the outward parts of a man, yet by receiving it into our breathing organs (the nose or mouth), it is mortall and deadlie.

  The Serpent or Dragon, as some call it, is reputed to be nine feet, or rather more, in length, and shaped almost in the form of the axle-tree of a cart; a quantitie of Thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller at both ends.

  The scales along his backe seem to be blackish, and so much as is discovered under his bellie, appeareth to be red; for I speak of no nearer discription than a reasonable ocular distance; for coming too near it hath already been too dearlie pay’d for.

  It is likewise discovered to have large feet, and rids away as fast as a man can run.

  He is of countenance very proud, and at the sight or hearing of man or cattell, will raise his necke upright, and seem to listen and loke about with great arrogance.

  There are like wise on either side of him discovered two great bunches, so big as a large foote ball, and as some think, will growe into wings. But God I hope will so defend the poore people of the neighbourhood, that he shall be destroyed before he growe so fledge.

  I presume he was. Otherwise we should have heard more about it. And although, by the description, he must have been a typical dragon of folk-lore, he was a bit on the small side. And he was mild, compared with the one that lived near Rotherham.

  “This dragon had two furious wings,

  Each one upon each shoulder;

  With a sting in its tail, as long as a flayl,

  Which made him bolder and bolder.

  He had long claws, and in his jaws

  Four-and-forty teeth of iron;

  With a hide as tough as any buff,

  Which did him round environ.”

  So a fully grown “loathly worm”, as dragons were called, was quite a problem. “Worm”, in the Middle Ages, was used to mean generally any monstrous or destructive creature. Even a plague of locusts was once referred to as “a visitation of wyld wormes”.

  The stories of dragons in Britain are all variations on the well-known legend of a terrible worm that lays waste the land, and drains it of milk, cattle and girls until it is killed by a brave knight. There is not much to the legend, but what is intriguing is the area where it is found.

  The north-east of England seems to have been thick with dragons at one time; and several ancient families are supposed to have earnt their estates as a reward for disposing of a worm. For instance, there was one killed at Bishop Auckland by a knight called Pollard, who received from the bishop as much land as he could ride round while the bishop dined. This estate, called Pollard’s Dene, was held by the family, not on payment of a rent or tax, but by the carrying out of a short ceremony.

  When a new bishop entered the district for the first time, he was met by the senior member of the Pollard family, carrying an ancient sword, which was handed to the bishop with these words:

  “My lord, I, in behalf of myself, as well as several others, possessors of the Pollard’s lands, do humbly present your Lordship with this sword at your first coming here; where-with, as the tradition goeth, the knight Pollard slew of old a venomous serpent, which did much harm to man and beast; and by performing this service, we hold our lands.”

  The bishop took the sword, and then immediately gave it back, wishing the holder of Pollard’s Dene health and a long enjoyment of the land. Customs of this sort lasted well into the nineteenth century in the north-east.

  Now dragons are found in the legends of nearly every count
ry in the world. They seem to be spirits of thunder and lightning, or the forces of darkness and winter that are always conquered by the sun. Belief in them is thousands of years old. But this tale of the girl-milk-and-cow-stealing serpent is strangely concentrated in the areas that suffered most from Viking raids. I wonder if our loathly, wild worms are perhaps also a memory of the Vikings’ long, dragon-headed ships. Anyone who could strike a decisive blow against them would deserve a bishop’s gratitude.

  But worms are not the only strange beasts that live in these places. Here is an account of another creature.

  “It was between eight and nine o’clock at night. Josh and I were in a lane near Geldeston, when we met Mrs Smith, and she started to walk with us. And then I heard something behind us, like the sound of a dog running. I thought it was some farmer’s dog, and paid little attention to it; but it kept on at the back of us, pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pat.

  ‘I wonder what that dog wants,’ I said to Mrs Smith.

  ‘What dog do you mean?’ said she, looking all round.

  ‘Why, can’t you hear it?’ said I. ‘It’s been following us for the last five minutes or more!’

  I was walking between Josh and Mrs Smith, and I lay hold of Mrs Smith’s arm, and she says, ‘I can hear it now; it’s in front of us: look, there it be!’

  And sure enough, just in front of us was what looked like a big black dog; but it wasn’t a dog at all; it was the Hateful Thing, that had been seen hereabouts before.

  It kept in front of us until it came to the churchyard, when it went right through the wall, and we saw it no more.”

  But what they had seen was a Dog of Darkness.

  This animal has almost as many names as places where it appears. At Leiston, in Suffolk, it is called the Galleytrot, and haunts the churchyard and surrounding lanes. The connection with churches may be due to a custom found in the Middle Ages of burying a dog alive under the corner-stone of the church, so that its ghost could keep watch over the churchyard, and drive off witches.