by Alan Garner
“Loppy, Loppy, little lad!
Come to your mammy,
She’s fetched your milk!”
And Loppy said:
“Sail closer, closer, little boat!
That’s my mammy,
With my milk!”
And the boat sailed in to the shore; and the witch took Loppy and ran off with him to her house. When she got there, she gave Loppy to her daughter for her to roast while she went off to get more wood for the fire.
“Where shall you do for your roasting?” Loppy said to the daughter when the witch had gone.
“I’ll use the oven,” says the daughter.
“I’m too long to fit in the oven,” says Loppy.
“No, you’re not,” says the daughter.
“Yes, I am,” he says.
“I’ll measure you,” she says. And she upped and measured him, then she went to the oven to measure that.
“It’s no good measuring outside,” says Loppy. “Inside’s where you want to measure.”
“True,” says the daughter, and she opened the oven door and reached inside. Up jumped Loppy, quick as a flash, and pushed her in, and shut the door on her.
Then he ran out of the house and climbed a tree, to watch; and he waited.
Back came the witch with her firewood and put it on the fire. And when the oven had roasted, she ate and she drank, and then she came out into the yard, where she rolled and wallowed, and she said:
“I roll and I wallow,
For gobbling Loppy Lankin!”
But Loppy said from the tree:
“Roll, witch! Wallow, witch!
For gobbling your daughter!”
The witch heard him, and she lifted up her head and looked all around, but she saw no one; so she said:
“I roll and I wallow,
For gobbling Loppy Lankin!”
And Loppy said from the tree:
“Roll, witch! Wallow, witch!
For gobbling your daughter!”
And the witch was frightened. And she looked up; and she saw Loppy in the tree.
That did it! The witch ran off to the blacksmith, and, “Blacksmith,” she says, “make me an axe, quick!”
So the blacksmith made the witch an axe on his anvil; but when he gave it to her, he said, “Now, think on, missis,” he says. “You’re to chop with the butt; you mustn’t chop with the edge: it’ll blunt.”
And would you credit it, but that witch did as he said! She ran to the tree, and began hacking it with the butt; and of course that did her no good at all. So she threw away the axe, and began at gnawing the tree with her teeth. Now that was more like it! She bit and she bit; and the tree cracked. Grey geese new in the sky. Loppy saw the geese; and he saw it was time for him to be doing to shift himself out of that; so he said:
“Now then, geese, grey geese!
Let’s be having wings under me!
And my father and my mother,
They’ll give you food and drink!”
But the geese saw the witch, and they said, “Get another flock, hungrier than us, to take you home.” And on they flew.
By this time the witch was making splinters fly, never mind geese, with her chomping; and the tree shook, and cracked some more. And another flock of gees came by.
“Eh up!” says Loppy:
“Now then, geese, grey geese!
Let’s be having wings under me!
And my father and my mother,
They’ll give you food and drink!”
But the geese said, “There’s a little bald goose following us. Maybe she’ll take you.” And on they flew. And the little bald goose didn’t come. And the tree was bending and cracking, and the witch was licking her lips between bites; and Loppy was thinking: Well, this won’t do! when up comes the little bald, goose, and Loppy says:
“Now then, goose, little goose,
Bald goose, now then!
Let’s be having wings under me!
And my father and my mother,
They’ll give you food and drink;
And they’ll wash you in clean water, too!”
And the little bald goose flew down and took Loppy on her wings, just at the very moment that the witch chewed right through the tree. The tree clattered over, and the witch gnashed her teeth, all to no purpose, for the little bald goose and Loppy were gone.
They flew away, back to Loppy’s house, and landed outside the window.
What should they see there but all the friends and neighbours inside the house, with Loppy’s father and mother, having a ham tea, and weeping and wailing for Loppy being dead, as they thought. And Loppy’s mother was saying, “Have a cup of tea,” and, “You have a cup of tea,” to everybody. So Loppy pipes up from outside the window, “Can I have a cup?” And his mother says to his father, “Go and see who wants a cup of tea out there.”
Now when the father saw Loppy and the little bald goose sitting under the window – well, you can imagine the pandemonium! Hugging and kissing! Then they set to, the little bald goose and all, and polished off that gorgeous ham tea.
And that’s about the top and the bottom of it. You asked for a story; and now I’ve told you one, not too long and not too short, just the length same as from you to me. I’d tell you more, gladly; but that’s as much as I know.
Also by the Author
The Moon of Gomrath
Elidor
The Owl Service
Red Shift
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
The Lad of the Gad
The Stone Book Quartet
Fairy Tales of Gold
Book of British Fairy Tales
Copyright
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–88 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith
London W6 8JB
First published in 1986 by William Collins Sons & Company Ltd.
This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2002
www.harpercollinschildrensbooks.co.uk
Text copyright © Alan Garner 1986
Illustrations copyright © Patrick James Lynch 1986
The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Source ISBN 9780007127900
Ebook edition © JULY 2013 ISBN 9780007385430
Version 2013-08-05
HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
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