Shropshire Folk Tales for Children E-Book

Amy Douglas

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 130

Beschreibung

This is a children's book. But it is for real children. It is a book of buried treasure, people-eating giants, sleeping kings and a monster fish. There's fire, wee, milk and missing body parts. It's a book that's got the bits adults don't like left in. These are stories of Shropshire. They are old and wild, like the land itself. If you like giants having their heads lopped off, girls who won't do what they're told, knights fighting with lances, one-armed ghosts and grumpy witches, then this is the book for you.

Leseprobe

With love:

For Lucy, who is full of mischief, mayhem and magic – just like these stories!

For Olly, the riddle master, here is the King Arthur story I promised you

and

In memory of Sam

from Amy

To my family and the Viking for their endless support, to Debbie, Jane and Trevor, and Margaret for opening the door to such wonderful opportunities, and to Alice Ross for her limitless patience, guidance and understanding…to you all I say,thank you!

from Sal

First published 2018

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Amy Douglas, 2018

The right of Amy Douglas to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 8944 2

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Introduction

GIANTS AT LARGE

The Wrekin Giant (Wellington and Shrewsbury)

Hunt the Slipper

The Stokesay Giants (Near Craven Arms)

CUNNING PLANS THAT DON’T ALWAYS WORK

The Ellesmere Cuckoos and the Wise Men of Madeley (Ellesmere, Welshampton and Madeley)

A Game – Cuckoo Hide and Seek

The Bishops Castle Money Trick (Bishops Castle)

Crawl Meadows (Bromfield)

Simon and Nelly (Shrewsbury)

The Clee Hill Sheep Dog (Clee Hill)

LEGENDS OF WILD EDRIC

The Stiperstones (The Stiperstones)

The Wild Hunt (Minsterley)

The Monster Fish of Bomere Pool (Bayston Hill / Condover)

The Bells of Shropshire

The Mermaid of Childs Ercall (Childs Ercall)

The White Lady of Longnor (Longnor)

Green Gravel

Ned Pugh’s Farewell (Llanymynech)

CUNNING MEN AND WITCH WOMEN

Tommy and the Ghost (Ludlow)

The Bridgnorth Witch (Bridgnorth)

The Witch of Mitchell’s Fold (near White Grit)

GHOSTS AND THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

The Jockey’s Arm (Wenlock Edge)

The Man Monkey (Market Drayton)

The Great Fire of Wem (Wem)

OAKS AND KINGS: HIS-STORIES OF HIS-TREES

Gogmagog (Oswestry)

The Tree of Shields (Hawkestone)

King Charles and the Oak Tree (Boscobel, near Shifnal)

Where the Stories Come From

Where to Find More Stories

List of Thanks

About the Author and Illustrator

Introduction

Shropshire is a beautiful county. There are towns filled with the buzz of people and traffic, but the wild places are only ever a heartbeat away, places where the land feels old, full of mystery and magic.

Wherever you go in Shropshire, there are stories – stories of the land and the people who live there. They are stories of magic and mystery; cunning men and clever dogs; kings and battles; ghosts and giants; defiant girls and monster fish.

These are not stories with morals … though they might make you think.

These are stories that can make you feel the stillness of moonlight on a quiet pool of water, the loneliness of a buzzard’s cry, and the satisfaction of curling up by a warm log fire.

The Wrekin Giant

Riddle:

What has eyes that can’t see?

A tongue that can’t speak?

And a soul that’s not worth the saving?

There was once a giant living in Wales – a real giant. His head reached so far into the sky that clouds gathered about his head and snow fell like dandruff on his shoulders. The earth trembled as he moved across the land.

The giant was hungry. He was always hungry. He ate everything. He had eaten all the animals and birds, then all the bushes and trees. All he had left were some lumps of rock to chew.

But on the horizon, to the East, he could see green. He felt he could hear the fields of Shropshire calling to him, making his mouth water.

He followed the rising sun into Shropshire. Soon he saw grass, then bushes. Trees lined the road. Animals heard him coming and fled. Flocks of birds startled up from the trees. He reached out with enormous fists, catching handfuls of birds and eating them like popcorn.

The road led him on and he saw plump goats and cattle grazing in the fields. They followed the birds into his mouth and down his gullet.

He came to a village. The doors were open and the houses empty. The giant looked up. In the distance he saw people, running as fast as they could.

The giant strode after them, bent down and grabbed a man. He dangled him between his thumb and forefinger and lifted him up to peer at him. The man’s legs were still running even though he was high, high up in the air.

The giant’s huge eyes stared at the man. The giant opened his mouth, but instead of eating the man, the giant started to talk. His voice rumbled all around the man, who put his hands over his ears. The force of his breath blew the man backwards and forwards as he listened.

‘Tell your Mayor in Shrewsbury that I’m hungry. I want food. Bring me a herd of cattle and twelve nice young plump humans once a month and I’ll stay in the mountains and leave you alone. If you don’t, I’ll be cross. You won’t like me when I’m cross.’

He put down the man, who promptly ran away at top speed.

The Mayor of Shrewsbury was all dressed up and about to go to a very fancy and delicious dinner. He was just putting on his gold chain of office when the door flew open and a dishevelled man, all covered in dust and sweat, burst into the room.

‘Your … Mayorfulness … Giant … coming … wants … food … cattle … people … eat … us … only just … got away!’ the man puffed and panted, his eyes wide.

‘What is the meaning of this?!’ said the Mayor, his chest puffed out, indignant at being disturbed. ‘Who are you? How did you get in? What giant?!’

The man caught his breath. He told the Mayor about the huge hungry giant and how he wanted a herd of cattle and a dozen people to eat each month or he would destroy the town.

Suddenly the Mayor wasn’t hungry any more.

What were they going to do? They called an emergency meeting. The council gathered. Everyone agreed they couldn’t possibly feed twelve people to the giant every month. Even if they wanted to (which they didn’t), who would they choose? How could they make them go?

They talked all night. They talked all the next day. The council meeting went on for a whole week. Still, they didn’t know what to do.

While the people of Shrewsbury tangled themselves up in knots of words, the Giant sat at home in the mountains, waiting for his meal to arrive. He waited. And waited. Eventually, he realised his meal wasn’t coming. The Giant was cross. He’d warned the people that they wouldn’t like him when he was cross.

The Giant took a spade, sank it into the earth under one of his mountains and lifted it up onto his shoulder. He would go to Shrewsbury and dump the mountain into the river. The water would have nowhere to go. The water would rise, flood the town and destroy it. Ha! That would show them!

The giant had never been to Shrewsbury and he didn’t know the way. Somehow he walked straight past! He walked and walked. Sweat beaded his brow and sploshed to the ground in huge puddles. He got hotter and crosser. He got crosser and hotter. Where was Shrewsbury? He was lost.

Up ahead of him, he saw a shadow on the road. He took another step and saw it was a man with a sack over his shoulder.

‘Oi! You down there,’ called the giant, ‘am I on the right road for Shrewsbury?’

The man looked up … and up … and up. The enormous bulk of the Giant loomed over him, blocking out the sky. The man swallowed.

‘Er, why do you want to know?’

‘I’m going to teach them a lesson. See this mountain? I’m going to put it in the river and flood the town. Then they’ll be sorry! Ha ha ha!’

‘Oh,’ said the man. The man was a cobbler: he mended shoes for a living. He lived in Shrewsbury and was walking home from Wellington with a sack full of shoes that needed mending. What was he going to do?

He looked at the mountain on the Giant’s back, thought of the pack on his own back, and had an idea.

‘You’re on the right road to Shrewsbury, but it’s a long, long way. I’ve just walked from Shrewsbury and I’ve worn out all these shoes on the way.’

The cobbler emptied the sack of shoes onto the ground. To the huge giant they all looked the same; he couldn’t tell the shoes were different sizes, old men’s boots and ladies’ slippers.

‘HUH!’ said the Giant and scratched his head. His feet were sore, his legs ached and he missed his home. He was fed up with traipsing around. This plan was turning into hard work. He didn’t like hard work.

The Giant swung the shovel from his shoulder and put down the earth where he stood. He scraped the mud off his boots against the spade. He turned round and headed home to Wales.

The cobbler stared after him, open-mouthed. Then he looked at the huge pile of earth next to him. Even the scrapings from the spade made a good-sized hill.

The cobbler slowly picked up the scattered shoes, put them in his pack and carried on home.

The Giant didn’t bother the people of Shrewsbury again – it was too much like hard work.

The mountain the Giant left behind was called the Wrekin, and the hill from his boot scrapings became the Ercall.

The cobbler carried on mending shoes, but from then on, as he cut and stitched the leather, he would tell anyone who would listen the story of how he outwitted the giant – and some people brought their shoes to him just to hear the story.

Answer to riddle:

A shoe

Hunt the Slipper

Choose an object to be the slipper. This could be a real slipper, a bean bag, or anything small and non-breakable.

Choose a player to be the customer.

Everyone else pretends to be cobblers. Sit in a circle with your legs crossed and pretend to cobble shoes – hammer the soles and sew up the leather.

The customer gives the slipper to one of the cobblers and says, ‘Cobbler, cobbler, mend my shoe, fetch it back by half past two.’

The customer leaves the room and the cobblers pass the slipper around.

The customer comes back in and says, ‘Please can I have my slipper back?’

The cobbler replies, ‘It’s been sent next door.’

The customer goes around asking different cobblers for the slipper back. When the customer’s back is turned, the cobblers secretly pass the slipper around.

Cobblers are allowed to distract the customer with stories about how much work they have on, the shoes they are mending, etc, if they want to.

If the customer asks a cobbler for the slipper and they have the slipper, the cobbler has to give it to the customer and the customer has won.

The cobbler caught with the slipper now becomes the customer and the game starts again.

The Stokesay Giants

Riddle:

What force and strength cannot get through

I with a gentle touch can do

Many in the street would stand

If I were not a friend at hand

There were once two brothers, two giants. They travelled the land looking for a home, and – like many other giants – they found Shropshire. Near Craven Arms they found a perfect spot. There were plenty of sheep and cattle to eat, beautiful rolling green hills, not too many annoying humans, and even a castle where they could keep their treasure safe. Of course, there were people in the castle, but it didn’t take long to get rid of them. After a couple of days of roaring, grinding their teeth and shouting, ‘Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of Shropshire men’, all the people ran away, leaving the two giants to live in peace.

Each giant picked a hill to be his own and built a home on top of it. One giant chose Norton Camp and the other View Edge. In the middle of the two hills was Stokesay Castle. The two brothers loved gold and they had collected a great store of it. They kept their treasure in a huge oak chest, locked with a great iron key and hidden in the vaults below the castle.

If either of the brothers wanted any gold, he took the key, unlocked the chest, helped himself, and locked the chest back up again. Then, if the other brother wanted some gold, he would put his hands to his mouth and shout out across the valley:

‘OI! BROTHER! THROW ME THE KEY!’

The giant with the key would take it from his belt and throw it over the valley to the waiting hands of his brother.

When the first brother wanted it back, it was just the same thing:

‘OI! BROTHER! THROW ME THE KEY!’

The second brother would take the key from his belt and throw it back again.

So it went on for many years. The two brothers each lived on their own hill, throwing the key backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

Until one day.

On that day, one giant called out for the key. His brother was busy. He grabbed the key and chucked it over, but he didn’t look to see where he threw it. The key rose up into the air. It caught the shine from the sun, sparkled for a moment as it hung in the air and then fell down, down, down, far too short, not into the waiting hands of his brother but instead towards the sparkling water of the moat.

Both giants stared in horror, then ran down their hills, arms outstretched. They could not reach the moat in time. Each giant saw the key fall, saw the little splash as it entered the water. The two giants reached the castle and plunged into the moat after the key. They splashed and floundered in the water, kicking up all the mud from the bottom, but they could not find the key.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, the two giants searched for the key, but they never found it. The brothers fought and argued, shouted and sulked. At last, the two giants stomped off in opposite directions, leaving the key, the treasure and the castle behind.

Many, many people have looked for the key in the moat and all round the castle, but no one has found it yet. People say the treasure chest is still buried deep in the vaults beneath the castle. On top of the chest sits a great raven, with bright, black, unblinking eyes. The raven guards the chest and will let no one come near until, at last, the key is found.

Answer to the riddle:

A key