The Anthology of English Folk Tales: Volume II E-Book

Folk Tales Authors

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Folk Tales
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 284

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

This spellbinding collection of stories once again gathers together folk tales from across England in one special volume. Drawn from The History Press' popular Folk Tales series, herein lies a second treasure trove of tales from a wealth of talented storytellers performing in the country today. From wandering kings and ethereal fairies to battling dragons and the fabled Apple Tree Man, this book celebrates the distinct character of England's different customs, beliefs and dialects, and is a treat for all who enjoy a good yarn.

Leseprobe

First published 2025

The History Press

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© The Authors, 2025

The right of The Authors to be identified as the Authorof this work has been asserted in accordance with theCopyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprintedor 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 informationstorage or retrieval system, without the permission in writingfrom the Publishers.

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ISBN 978 1 83705 033 8

Typesetting and origination by The History Press.

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SocietyforStorytelling

Since 1993, the Society for Storytelling has championed the art of oral storytelling and the benefits it can provide - such as improving memory more than rote learning, promoting healing by stimulating the release of neuropeptides, or simply great entertainment! Storytellers, enthusiasts and academics support and are supported by this registered charity to ensure the art is nurtured and developed throughout the UK.

Many activities of the Society are available to all, such as locating storytellers on the Society website, taking part in our annual National Storytelling Week at the start of every February, purchasing our quarterly magazine Storylines, or attending our Annual Gathering - a chance to revel in engaging performances, inspiring workshops, and the company of like-minded people.

You can also become a member of the Society to support the work we do. In return, you receive free access to Storylines, discounted tickets to the Annual Gathering and other storytelling events, the opportunity to join our mentorship scheme for new storytellers, and more. Among our great deals for members is a 30% discount off titles in the Folk Tales series from The History Press website.

For more information, including how to join, please visit

www.sfs.org.uk

CONTENTS MAP

Cornwall

The Piskey Thresher

Devonshire

The Founding of Britain: Brute the Trojan and Gogmagog

Somerset

The Apple Tree Man

Dorset

The Abbey Bells

Gloucestershire

The Royalist Ferryman

Wiltshire

The Fairies of Hackpen Hill

Hampshire

Orfeo and the King Under Twyford Down

Berkshire

Fight Me or Wed Me

Oxfordshire

Frideswide and the Treacle Well

Sussex

The Legend of the Devil’S Dyke

Surrey

The Trial of Joan Butts, So-Called Witch of Ewell

London

London Bridge

Herefordshire

Black Vaughan

Worcestershire

Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?

Shropshire

Nellie in the Churchyard

Staffordshire

Ned Saunterer

Bedfordshire

Finding the Source

Essex

The Coccodil’s Story

Norfolk

The Peddlar of Swaffham

Suffolk

The Suffolk Black and the Essex Red

Northamptonshire

The Angel and the Cross

Nottinghamshire

Old Jackey Peet

Derbyshire

The Devil in the Church Porch

Cheshire

The Congleton Bear

Cumbria

Long Meg

Aira Force

Lancashire

Lady Sybil and the Milk-White Doe, Sabden

South yorkshire

Carconan On The Don

East yorkshire

Saltersgate Inn

North yorkshire

Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar

West yorkshire

The Rocky Road of Love

County durham

Nicky Nacky Field

Northumberland

The Henhole

CORNWALL

THE PISKEY THRESHER

MIKE O’CONNOR

Mike O’Connor is an expert on Cornish folklore. A bard of the Cornish Gorsedh, he holds the Henwood Medal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall and his tale ‘Return to Lyonesse’ won a British Award for Storytelling Excellence. His research on travelling storytellers in Cornwall is put to great use in Cornish Folk Tales.

The north coast of Cornwall is wild and rugged. But the south coast has lower cliffs, and above them farmland rolls down towards the sea. On the south coast there is one place I could show you where it always seems that the crops are good, and in the late summer the waves on the ocean are echoed by waves wind-blown in golden fields.

But it was it not always so ...

Once the land was farmed by an old widow-woman and her young son, Jack. The old woman was wise to the ways of the land; she understood the soil and the seasons. One of her many instructions was always to leave a little something for the piskeys. She used to say:

Kind hearts are gardens,

Kind thoughts are roots,

Kind words are blossoms,

Kind deeds are fruits.

But often times were difficult and they had hardly enough for themselves. But still her son always followed his mother’s instructions and left a saucer of milk or some scraps of bread in the barn, just in case the little people were in need.

Then one magic year young Jack sowed his corn-seed. As he sowed he sang:

One for the rook, one for the crow,

One to rot and one to grow.

But the rook said to the crow:

Fly away Peter, fly away Paul,

Piskey says take none at all.

And the sun said to the warm earth:

Sun and rain and growing seed,

August harvest gold indeed.

When the first green shoots appeared it was clear that they would have a bumper harvest. Jack said to himself, ‘How shall I ever get such a harvest safe in the barn before the rains come?’ When the harvest field shone gold he went out at dawn with his scythe and with slow steady strokes worked until dusk. But the field was large and in the last light of the day he saw he had only cut about a quarter of it. As he gathered in the stooks that were ready, he sighed as he saw the clouds on the horizon.

But when Jack awoke next morning and looked from the window he saw that the whole field had been cut. He ran to the barn and saw it was full. As if by magic the harvest was ready for threshing, to loosen the wheat from the chaff. So Jack took his threshel to beat the grain on the threshing floor. But the barn was large, and in the last light of day he saw he had only threshed about a quarter of the grain. He sighed as he realised he could never get his harvest threshed and winnowed and sacked in time for market.

But when Jack woke the next morning and went to the barn he saw that all the threshing had been done. As if by magic all the grain was ready for winnowing. So Jack opened the doors either end of the barn so that the wind blew through. Then he took his winnowing fork and began tossing the grain so the light chaff was carried away on the wind, and the heavy grain collected at his feet. When there was enough he shovelled the grain into a sack. All day he winnowed and sacked. But the harvest was large, and in the last light of day he saw he had only winnowed about a quarter of it. He sighed as he realised he could never get his grain winnowed and sacked in time for market, which was the very next day.

But in the middle of the night Jack suddenly woke up. He put on a dressing gown and crept down the stairs. Without making a sound, Jack tip-toed out to the barn. The doors had been opened, but he carefully looked in through a crack in the planking. Inside he saw a little man, clad in a tattered green jacket. This little fellow was wielding a winnowing fork unlike anyone Jack had ever seen. The fork moved so swiftly it was almost invisible. Sack after sack of grain was filled and put on the cart.

So when Jack woke the next morning and returned to the barn he saw that all the winnowing and sacking was done. All the sacks of grain were on the cart ready to be taken to the market. In the first light of the day, off he went to market, and there he got an excellent price for his grain. Then the very next thing he did was go to the tailor’s shop. ‘I want the finest jacket you can make,’ said Jack, ‘but it must be green, and must fit a little man only about two feet high.’ The tailor looked very surprised, but he made the jacket just as he was asked.

That night, before Jack went to bed he went out to the barn. There he left a little jug of milk, some bread and cheese, and beside it he left the green jacket. Then Jack went to bed, but in the middle of the night he woke up. Once again he put on his dressing gown and he went tip-toeing out to the barn. There, as he peered inside, he saw the little chap drink up the milk, eat the bread and cheese and, with a huge smile on his face, try on the jacket. Jack smiled too as he saw that the jacket fitted perfectly.

Then the little man started to sing:

Piskey fine, and piskey gay,

Piskey now will fly away.

Then the little man ran out into the darkness, and he was never seen again. But still Jack always left what he could for the little people. And to this very day on the south coast there is a place I could show you, where it always seems that the crops are always good, and in the late summer the waves on the ocean are echoed by waves wind-blown in golden fields.

DEVONSHIRE

THE FOUNDINGOF BRITAIN:BRUTE THE TROJAN AND GOGMAGOG

MICHAEL DACRE

Michael Dacre has been a professional storyteller specialising in traditional tales and legends from the West Country for over twenty years.

This is the Devonshire legend to cap them all – the founding of Britain by Brutus the Trojan at Totnes. The stone is still there, halfway up the High Street, to prove the truth of the tale!

After the fall of Troy, when the Greeks took the city by means of the wooden horse devised by the wily Odysseus, some of the Trojans, led by Aeneas, fled the carnage, rapine and pillage and set sail into the Mediterranean, coming at length to the shores of Italy, where they founded a new city that would one day be Rome.

Aeneas’s son Ascanius had a son called Sylvius, and when Sylvius’s wife was about to give birth, Ascanius had his wizards surround the bed to predict the child’s future and whether it would be a boy or a girl. The wizards duly intoned their tone-deaf incantations, drank their hallucinogenic potions, lit their noxious concoctions and examined their reeking entrails, thus by art-magic terrifying the young mother out of her wits. They pronounced that the child was a boy who would be the death of his mother and father, who would be outlawed, outcast and exiled and who would found a race and country whose power and fame would extend over the whole world.

Nor were the wizards out in their forecast. The mother died in giving birth to the boy, who was duly named Brute, and in his sixteenth year Brute killed his father in a hunting accident. The huntsmen drove the deer in front of them and Brute, taking aim, loosed a fateful arrow which whistled through the air and struck Sylvius under the left pap. He died instantly. Brute’s surviving relatives were uneasy at the proximity of a boy who had killed his parents, so the lad was exiled and made his way to Greece, where he freed the enslaved Trojans, numbering some 7,000, and in 320 ships this outlawed people, having no country to call their own, embarked on their greatest adventure, sailing into the Mediterranean and into the unknown.

On the misty morning of the third day, they came to the uninhabited island of Leogecia, which had been laid waste by pirates some years earlier. Brute sent a party of men to spy out the land and, after killing many deer in the forest, they chanced upon the ruins of a city, overgrown by trees and undergrowth. Among these eerie and abandoned buildings they discovered a ruined temple dedicated to Diana, goddess of the hunt. In the temple stood a marble statue of the goddess; intact, perfect, with bared breasts, raised bow and arrow, and features so lifelike that the men were afraid of her, for the eyes followed them around the clearing.

Returning to the ships with the venison, the hunters told Brute of the city and its temple, and that night he made his way alone to the place with all things needful for a sacrifice. He set up an altar before the statue, raised a goblet filled with wine mixed with the blood of a pure-white hind, drank from it and said, in thrilling, ringing tones:

Great Goddess, Diana, forest queen, protecter of lost children,

You who walk the maze of Heaven and the forest paths,

Tell us what land, what safe home and haven we may inhabit,

That we may build temples to you there, Great Goddess Diana.

Then he walked three times round the altar, poured out the wine and blood upon it, and lay down in front of it on the hide of the white hind who had kindly donated the blood. At midnight Brute slipped into the sweetest sleep he had known since killing his father and dreamed that he awoke, that the marble image of the goddess turned her luminous eyes upon him, that she stepped down from the plinth, the new moon in her hair, a sceptre in her hand, the morning star glittering at its point. Fixing him with her lovely green eyes, the goddess Diana spoke these words in a voice like a peal of silver bells:

Brute, lost child, you sacrificed your father to me

And you shall be exalted to the highest honour.

You will sail from this sea, centre of the old world,

Past the Pillars of Hercules into an unknown sea,

Where you will find an island, the abode of giants,

Sad remnant of a strong race but old now and past it.

The Island of the Mighty will be your new home

And you will found a race, the mightiest ever known.

When Brute awoke next morning, he hastened back to the ships and told his companions of his wonderful vision and with great joy they got underway, making full sail to the west in search of the island-home Diana had promised them.

They had many adventures, fighting off Moroccan corsairs and escaping from sirens, and in Gaul they found more refugees from Troy, led by a huge man called Corineus, 7ft high, strong and valiant, whose favourite hobby was giant-wrestling. They joined forces, sailing into the unknown sea, a fair wind behind them and on the third day they saw land. It was a place of mists and mellow fruitfulness, with a gentle coastline, richly forested, with red cliffs and sandy beaches. A soft rain was falling on their ships as they steered into the mouth of a river, tree-clad hills rising on either side as they rowed, slowly and wonderingly up this turning, twisting river, until they came to a broad, open place, the wooded hills lying back from it, a great dark moor in the distance. Here the river ran broad and shallow; ahead it narrowed, becoming unnavigable so here it was that Brute decided to land.

He was the first to step ashore and, as he did so, his foot made an imprint in a large, granite rock lying on the bank and he said, ‘Here I stand and here I rest and this place shall be called Totnes.’ Actually he said it in Trojan or Crooked Greek but there, where the salt tide mingles with the brown waters of the moorland Dart, Totnes still stands firm and the stone that Brute stepped on lies halfway up the High Street, outside No 37. You can see the footprint and it’s called the Brutus Stone, to prove the truth of what I say.

At that time the island was called Albion after the giant of the same name, son of the Celtic sea-god Manannan Mac Lir. He fathered a race of giants and they were the indigenous people when Brute arrived on these shores. But Brute wanted this land, for it was beautiful and bountiful and had been promised to him by the goddess Diana, so they drove all the giants up onto the high moors, where they sheltered in caves, and the Trojans took the land. But the giants were only biding their time. They gathered in a huge cave on Dartmoor, where they plotted their revenge, electing a leader for the first time, being natural anarchists – Gogmagog, who was 20ft tall. He could uproot an oak tree, strip off the branches like celery leaves and wield it like a hazel wand.

The Britons were celebrating the anniversary of their landing at a festival of thanksgiving to Diana at Totnes when the giants burst into the feasting hall and fell upon the surprised invaders, ripping off arms and legs, wrenching heads from bodies and gouging out hearts and entrails, Gogmagog laying about him with his enormous club. But the Britons soon rallied, fighting back fiercely, and the giants – huge, lumbering has-beens – could not dodge the British swords, spears and arrows. They fell in great bloody heaps until only Gogmagog was left alive and him they caught and bound, for Corineus had a mind to wrestle with him. For this they went to the place where Plymouth now stands, for there was much clearing up for the womenfolk to do at Totnes – burying the bodies, sluicing the blood from the hall, aromatherapy and new feng shui.

On what is now Plymouth Hoe Corineus, a giant of a man himself at 7ft high, faced Gogmagog, 20ft tall and ugly to boot, and soon they were hugging each other tight in the shackles of their embraces, making the very air quake with their heaving and gasping. Gogmagog broke three of Corineus’s ribs – cric-crac! cric-crac! cric-crac!

Roused by pain and fury and suddenly imbued with divine strength from Diana, Corineus broke the giant’s grip, heaved him up on his shoulders and ran to the edge of the cliff, where he hurled the monster onto the sharp rocks below, so that he was mangled to pieces and dyed all the waters of Plymouth Sound red with his blood. Thereafter that place was known as ‘Lamgoemagot’ or ‘Gogmagog’s Leap’.

The echo of this fight survives down the centuries to the present day. A Plymouth woman told Theo Brown, the late folklore recorder for the Devonshire Association, that the red earth of Devon was due to the county being formed from the body and blood of a giant, while in Tudor times, two giant figures were cut into the earth on the hillside of Plymouth Hoe. The Plymouth Corporation audit book for 1529 states, ‘Cleansing of the Gogmagog 8d ’, and in 1566, ‘New cutting the Gogmagog 20d ’.

Alas, these figures, one of whom was surely Corineus, were destroyed when the Royal Citadel was built in the reign of Charles II; but during the excavation for the foundations the builders turned up a huge pair of jaws and teeth that could only have belonged to a giant.

Two giant effigies have stood in the Guildhall in London for centuries. The present figures replaced a pair destroyed in the Blitz of the Second World War, which in turn replaced a pair consumed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. They are now called Gog and Magog but Queen Elizabeth I would have known them as Gogmagog and Corineus.

After this great victory over the indigenous inhabitants the Britons colonised the country, calling it Britain after Brute, while Corineus ruled over Cornwall, naming it after himself. Later, Brute founded the city of New Troy on the banks of the Thames, which became known as the City of London. And so Brute, the slayer of his mother and father, outcast, exile and outlaw man, came home to the island of Britain and fulfilled the final prophecy of the soothsayers, founding the mighty race of the British people, and when he died, his three sons ruled the Island of the Mighty. Locrine ruled over Logria or Logres, which is present-day England, Camber held Cambria, which we call Wales, while Albanact ruled over Albany, which we call Scotland.

Thus according to that grand old fabricator, Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his Histories of the Kings of Britain, the founding of Britain herself took place in Devonshire, presided over by our tutelary goddess, Diana. You know it makes sense.

SOMERSET

THE APPLE TREE MAN

SHARON JACKSTIES

Sharon Jacksties has been a performance, community and applied storyteller for over 30 years and is the author of four books published by The History Press. As a performance storyteller she is known for her eclectic repertoire and for telling unusual and seldom-heard stories from all over the world.

Seen by only the pure of heart, his face appears in the tree’s trunk, but, unlike the ubiquitous Green Man with his mouth stuffed full of leaves, the Apple Tree Man has the gift of speech.

Christmas falls just before the wassailing of the apple trees, and it was even closer before the Gregorian calendar was adopted. A strongly held belief in Somerset was that the animals which were in the stable when Jesus was born are, as the clocks strike midnight on Christmas Eve, gifted with human speech.

The apple tree stood in the garden

Its blossoms as white as the snow, the snow

And there in the cool of the evening

Our dear Lord God He did go, He did go.

But Old Mother Eve she liked apples

And Adam he liked them too, liked them too

The Serpent he hid in the garden

A-twined about the tree, the tree

‘You never did eat of such wonderful meat

And so honey sweet,’ said he, said he.

But Old Mother Eve she liked apples

And Adam he liked them too, liked them too

They turned them both out of the garden

Shut out with a fiery key, key, key

But Old Man Adam he rolled up his sleeves

And planted an apple tree, tree, tree.

But Old Mother Eve she liked apples

And Adam he liked them too, liked them too

There are apple trees down in the garden

There are orchards in valleys below

In autumn and spring the apple is king

And we bless it wherever we go.

There was once an old widower farmer who was a bitter and penny-pinching man. Some said that his bitterness was on account of losing his young wife, and that his penny-pinching was on account of him having to feed and clothe the two little boys she had left him with.

Others said that his miserly ways were due to his disappointment at not finding the Dane Hoard. This was the treasure that legend told was buried on the farm, or thereabouts. The farmer had neglected his work and neglected his sons, spending every spare moment digging for it. Much of his land was pitted like the old lead mine hollows up on the Mendips, but he had never found the treasure – if indeed it was ever there to be found.

As for his sons, the elder was as mean and bitter as his father, but the younger was as open-hearted and generous as a summer’s day.

‘Must of took after his mother,’ said the villagers.

No one was surprised when the widower died on a grim February day and left everything to his elder son. Like father, like son in this case; as soon as the will had been read, the elder brother said, ‘Well, Jan, now that this is all mine, I want you out by sunset tomorrow.’

‘But where shall I go?’ asked his poor brother.

‘There’s the old shack in the bottom paddock with that old donkey and ox, so far gone not even the knacker would take them. But I’ll want rent, mind. A silver piece to be paid on Christmas Day or you’re out.’

So the younger brother moved into the paddock in the bitter weather, into a shack that was so tumbledown he wouldn’t have put a dog in it. But what was worse was the sight of those poor animals, too weak from starvation to break through the neglected hedges and forage elsewhere.

The first thing he did was to beg some hay from a neighbour to feed them. Then he brushed away the snow from some healing plants and mixed them with a mash made with elder bark, to treat their coughs. He begged some honey from another neighbour to put on their sores, and only when all this had been done did he see what he could make of the old shack.

There he found the remains of a few abandoned tools, some with blades but no handles and some with handles but no blades. Nevertheless, they were better than nothing and he patched and mended and made do. As night fell on that short and bitter day, he fed and dosed the animals again, and now they had just enough strength to lift their heads a little and nuzzle his hand.

It wasn’t long before word got around about how badly he had been treated, and he was always the first to be offered work if there was any going – which was seldom enough. From time to time he would find that something useful had been left for him by the paddock gate – perhaps an old blanket, a few logs or half a sack of last season’s apples.

So it was that Jan managed; with his care, all around him in that place began to thrive. Before the month was out he had pruned all the old fruit trees, so neglected that they hadn’t fruited for years. He used the manure from the ox and donkey for fertiliser, and he wove and cut back what he could rescue of the hedges, and even laid some more. He broke up a stretch of ground, kneeling to do it as the mattock had no handle, but at last it was dug and weeded for planting vegetables.

However hard he worked for nearby farms, he and the animals ate up all his wages. And now there were more to feed, as those that his brother mistreated found their home with him. There were a few ducks and chickens, a one-eyed cat and an old lurcher. Starting with next to nothing, there was so much he needed all at once that every penny he earned was immediately spent. He wondered how he would pay his rent.

Now it was spring, and the trees he had tended blossomed. He had made withy hurdles to keep the animals from his vegetable bed and these were sprouting nicely. Tibby the cat was an excellent mouser in spite of her one eye, and she kept the vermin out of the animal feed. The ox was now so well recovered that Jan hired him out to plough a neighbour’s land in exchange for a share of the crops to come. The rabbits were breeding and the lurcher brought back plenty to share. The poultry were laying well.

The donkey too had regained his strength and was loaned out in exchange for some old planks and some nails. With these, Jan made a stable for him and the ox. He loaned the donkey again in exchange for a supply of straw, and all of the animals moved in together. There was enough for everyone, but never a spare penny to save.

Spring gave way to summer and Jan used the longer hours of daylight to work harder. There were so many clutches that he was selling chicks and ducklings as well as eggs. Those earnings went on a pair of boots and making his old shack weatherproof – the first money he had spent on himself apart from food. The fruit had set on the trees, the hedges would be full of nuts and berries, and the chickens were keeping the root crops free from pests. They would get through the approaching cold weather more easily than last time, if only he could find the rent.

Since that cold February day, Jan had not spoken to his brother, who had shown no interest in how he was managing. But the elder son had his own concerns. Like father, like son – his whole life had now become a treasure hunt. He neglected the farm and dug where there was no sign of the earth having been disturbed before, still without finding any sign of treasure. People in the village said that he would go mad with it. Some said he already had – to treat his poor brother so.

Autumn slipped into winter, and Jan gathered the little crop of cider apples when the first frosts had had a good chance to nibble at them. Another friendly farmer allowed him to use his cider press, and though the cider barely filled an old keg rather than a barrel, it was more than anyone could have expected those neglected trees to produce. Now that it was December, Jan was looking with regretful eyes at all he had created, because he knew that, without the rent, his brother wouldn’t hesitate to turn him out in the snow.

He reached for the little keg to cheer himself with the glow of cider, and found that much of it had seeped away through a crack he hadn’t noticed. Jan felt that his luck had run out with the drink. But when you have been down so low that you can’t go down any further, there is only one way to go after that.

Jan remembered the time of year and that he had yet to attend a wassail. He thought of how he might never tend his little orchard again, and went to the oldest of the trees that he had rescued, carrying the last of the cider. Tibby followed him, twining between his ankles and the base of the tree, whilst he pulled a crust of bread from his pocket and poked it onto some bare twigs.

Then he tipped the firkin over the base of the branches, splashed the last few drops at the foot of the trunk, and sang:

Old Apple Tree we wassail thee

And hoping thou wilt bear

For the Lord doth know where we shall be

Till apples come next year.

For to bear well, and to bear well

So merry let us be

Let every man take off his hat

And shout to the Old Apple Tree!

Old Apple Tree, we wassail thee

And hoping thou wilt bear

Hatfuls, capfuls and three bushel bagfuls

And little heaps under the stairs

Hip, Hip, Hooray!

His voice rang through the frosty air, but he felt so lonely singing all by himself that he didn’t have the heart to cheer three times.

‘Now run along little Tibby back to the stable and don’t be meddling with things that don’t concern you,’ came a deep voice.

Jan was sure that there was no one else in the orchard, but he looked around as the cat ran off. There were only the silent criss-cross shadows caught between starlight and snowlight. Then, in the stillness, the tree’s branches rustled, and where they joined the trunk there was a shimmering. The rough gnarling of the bark was now a mouth and the knotholes had become eyes, wrinkling like old pippins as the Apple Tree Man smiled.

‘We have been watching you now for the best part of the year, boy, when we thought your sort had forgotten us. I don’t need to tell you this – but for your kindness to us, and the other creatures that live in this orchard, I will. That scoundrel brother of yours has been wasting his life like your father before him, digging for that Dane Hoard. But like his father he’ll never find it – because only you and I know that the treasure is buried right here where you’re standing.’

All that remained of the Apple Tree Man was one knothole eye, which winked at him before it disappeared. The next day would be Christmas Eve. Jan rushed to get his tools and desperately attacked the frozen ground beneath the set of footprints nearest the tree. At last his pick clawed through the topsoil to a layer that hadn’t been reached by the frost. He dug with his broken spade and felt something solid; then came the rasp of metal on metal. Soon the old iron box was in his hands, so rusted through that the gleams between his fingers looked like handfuls of starlight.

Jan hid the treasure in his old boots, which he hadn’t thrown away as Tibby liked to curl up in them – but tonight she would find herself a softer bed in the stable. Then he returned to the orchard, and, as best he could, hid the signs of his digging. That night there was a heavy snowfall and no trace of his efforts remained.

The next day he had a visitor. This was the first time his brother had sought him out, and it was only to remind him that his rent was due the next day.

‘Where did you get they?’ he asked suspiciously, pointing at the ox and the donkey. They were now in such good condition that at first he didn’t recognise them. ‘Well, ’tis certain you’ll be paying your rent tomorrow if you could afford to pay for their feed,’ he sneered.