Thistle and Thyme

by Sorche Nic Leodhas

  So she stayed. True to her word, she kept the house and kept it as bright and shining as a new pin—what there was of it. And as he had commanded, she kept out of his way. The only times he saw her at all were when she served him his meals. She kept herself back in a corner even then, and came forward only to fill his plate again or give him something he was looking about for. When she ate or where she stayed for the rest of the time, he never thought to ask.

  So it went on for a week or two, with him at his fishing and her at her housework, and he saw and heard so little of her ’twas as if she wasn’t there.

  Then, one night as he was coming up from his boat, he thought it was a foolish sort of thing for two human souls to bide in one house and hold so little converse together. So he went in and he said, “Set yourself a place on the table across from me, lass, and eat your supper like a Christian!” and so she did.

  After they had sat together at meals for a week or two, they began to find words to say to each other. Soon they knew all there was to know about each other. He said that she’d done well to leave her father’s house, and she said the blue eyes and golden hair and the grace of his true love must be the wonder of the world! So, since they were so well agreed, both of them were content.

  About that time, she took to coming down to the shore of an evening to help him beach the boat and spread the nets. She was only a wee thing, and it gave him a laugh to see her lay hold of the big boat. But for all that, she was sturdy, so her help was worth something to him. He was glad enough to have it when he came in tired after the day’s work.

  It came to his mind once, as she ran up the path before him to make sure his supper’d be good and hot, that she was bonny enough in her own way. To be sure, there was naught of the blue and gold of his true love about her and she’d never be reminding a man of a young ash tree. She was as brown of skin and hair and eye as an autumn hazelnut, and so small you’d be taking her for a bairn at first sight. But for all that, she was neatly made, and she was as light on her feet as a dry leaf borne on the wind.

  Before he knew it, half of the days of his time were over. She was the one who told him so, for she had figured it out on a chart she’d made, marking the days off one by one. It, was right clever of her, he said, for he’d have never thought of doing such a thing himself.

  Now that they were so well acquainted, she began to grow bolder. She never could be happy unless she was busying herself with something or other. It wasn’t enough that the house was tidy and clean. First, it was flowers that she brought from the fields to plant by the house wall. Then it was a wild rose that she trained to twine above the door. Now, she began to ask him to fetch things from the town where he sold his fish. He must bring glass for the window holes to keep the weather out. He grumbled a bit, but he brought the glass and made frames for it too, and fitted the windows into their places in the wall.

  Then she said the room was too bare, so he must fetch her a bit of goods for her to be making curtains of. He told her they’d been getting along well enough before they ever had either glass or curtains for the windows. But she only said that that was then and this was now, and for him to be off because she had work to do even if he didn’t.

  Then he must bring some white to wash the walls with inside, for the room was too dreary and dark. What with one thing and another, he complained that she wore him out and kept his pocket light.

  It was about this time that he found out that she’d been laying a pallet in the shed to sleep on of nights among the oars and the fishing gear. He’d never given a thought to where she slept, but when he found it out, he took steps to change it. He laid off from his fishing for a time and got busy at it.

  When she saw him about the place, measuring and hauling stone and hacking at this and that, she came out to watch him. “What will you be at now?” she asked.

  “I’m building a room to the house,” said he.

  “Whatever for?” said she.

  “For you to have a place for yourself,” he told her. ’Tisn’t seemly that you should be sleeping amongst the bait and the boat gear.”

  “Och!” said she and went back into the house. But he heard her singing as she went about her work, and it came to his mind that his mother used to do the same.

  So the days slipped by. Soon there were a wheen of them marked off on the lass’s chart and but a few days left to be marked.

  The house had a but and a ben with glass in the windows of both of the rooms and curtains to all of the windows, as well as glass. The walls were white as milk, and there was a drugget on the floor that the lass had made herself, and a hearth with a hob that the lad had built. There was a fire on the hearth and a shining kettle singing on the hob. And on the shelf above the fire was a clock that the lad had brought from the town, ticking busily beside the sea king’s pearl ring.

  One day the lad came in and caught the lass with the ring upon her finger. She was holding up her hand and looking at the ring.

  “What are you doing there!” he asked sharply.

  She jumped and looked frighted. “Och!” said she. “I was just having a look at it!”

  “Well, put it away and do not do so again!” he ordered, going on out to the shed to put his gear away.

  “Till you give me leave,” she said softly to his back. But he didn’t hear her. She slipped the ring from her finger and laid it back in its place on the shelf by the clock.

  When he came back she said to him, “I’ll soon be leaving here.”

  “You will!” said he. “Why will you then?”

  “The year and the day will soon be up and you’ll be going to fetch your own true love,” she told him.

  “You’d best stay here,” said the lad.

  “Och, I’d not be liking to do that,” she said.

  “Where can you go then?” he asked her.

  “Back to my father’s house,” said she.

  “Are you not afraid to go back there?” he asked.

  “Nay! I’m a lot older now,” said she. “I can look after myself.”

  “A lot older!” he scoffed. “’Tis but a year that’s gone by and hardly that!”

  “Happen I’m a lot wiser then,” said the lass. “I’ll go there anyway.”

  So he said no more about it nor did she.

  But a few days later she rose at day’s dawning and made herself a packet of all she had of her own in the world. There was little enough to take. Just her comb and an apron or two she’d made for herself, a knot of ribbon and a kerchief he’d brought her from the town, and her nightshift. When she’d packed them all, she took the bundle under her arm and laid her shawl over her shoulders. Then she went out to the lad. She took the chart from the shelf behind the clock and laid it before him where he sat at the table. And she marked the last days off.

  “All of the days of your waiting are over today,” said she. “You’ll be going to claim your own true love tomorrow. So I’ll wish you well and bid you farewell!”

  Then she walked past him and out of the house.

  He sat there for a long while staring at the door through which she had gone, like a man who has heard something but not believed his ears. When he jumped up at last and went to the door to look after her, she was out of sight.

  The lad went back and sat down again in the place where he’d been sitting when she went away. All that day he did not go out in his boat nor move from his chair. He thought over all the days that had gone by since the day he caught the mermaid in his net. It took him all the hours of the day to do it. When he was through, he went to bed.

  The next morning he got up at break of dawn and dressed himself in the best he had. He took the sea king’s ring from the shelf and tucked it into his pocket, and started off to claim his own true love.

  But it wasn’t down to his boat he went, to sail back home. Instead, he turned away from the sea, and walked inland the same way the lass had gone the day before.

  She was walking in her father’s garden when she saw
him coming up the road. When he got up to her and spoke to her, she turned red and white by turns. But she spoke right up to him.

  “I thought you had gone to claim your own true love,” said she.

  “I have so!” said he. “That’s what I’m doing here!” And he took the sea king’s ring from his pocket and held it out to her.

  “Will you have it?” he asked her. “And me with it, of course!”

  “If you give me leave!” said she. And she took the ring from his hand and slipped it on her finger.

  So they were wed and a grand time it was to be sure! Everyone danced until they could dance no more. Then when they’d rested a while they started in all over again. Even the new young stepmother danced at the lass’s wedding and was glad to do it, for the two of them had made it up and were good friends in the end.

  When it was all over, the lad took the lass back to his own village. He was that proud of her that he wanted them to have a look at her. Whom should he meet there but his old love! Her eyes were as blue and her hair was as gold, and she was as straight and tall and slim as ever. But she didn’t look any different to him now from a lot of other blue-eyed, yellow-haired lasses he’d met in his life.

  Then he tucked his wee brown bride under his arm, and took her back to the house on the shore of the cove, which was where both of them wanted to be.

  The eve of the day they got there they walked down to the shore, and who should they find there sitting on a rock out in the water but the mermaid.

  “Did you get your own true love?” the mermaid asked of the lad.

  “I did so!” said the lad. “And here she is!”

  The mermaid took a look at the lass. “Her eyes are not blue,” said she.

  “They are not,” the lad agreed.

  “And she has not golden hair,” the mermaid said.

  “She has not,” said the lad.

  “And I should call her neither slim nor tall,” the mermaid said.

  “Nay. She’s a wee thing and perhaps a bit on the plump side,” said the lad. “But she is the one I love the best of all.”

  “Well then,” said the mermaid, “you’ll not be saying we did not give you what you asked for.” And at that she divit off the rock and into the sea, and that was the last they ever saw of her.

  But they never forgot her. Because they knew it was from her and her father, the sea king, that the lad had got his own true love and all the happiness that came with her.

  Michael Scott

  and the Demon

  THERE WAS A MAN AND HIS NAME WAS MICHAEL SCOTT and he was a wizard. He had the knowledge on him of black magic and white magic and the whole of the shades between and he was a great man entirely.

  This same Michael Scott it was who stopped the plague, when it got to Scotland, by gathering the lot of it up into his bag and shutting it tight within. As the plague was the De’il’s own work, he put the bag where the De’il would not be getting at it to let it loose again. And that was in a vault at Glenluce Abbey in Galloway where the De’il would not be liking to go, it being too holy a place for the likes of him.

  That put the De’il against Michael Scott, so he sent one of his demons to be troubling him at his work.

  It was just the sort of a job for the demon, he being young and full of mischief. So Michael Scott had a terrible time of it after the demon came. What with his pots being o’erturned, his cauldon boiling over, his fire smoking, and one thing and another, he’d have had less time wasted if he had just sat with his hands folded.

  It was beyond bearing! So Michael Scott set his mind to mend matters, so that he could go on with his magic arts in peace.

  First, he tried to catch the demon, but that one was too nimble and couldn’t be caught. Then he tried to set a spell on him, but spells only seemed to make the demon livelier. So at last Michael Scott had the idea of trying to make a bargain with him.

  One day, when the demon was hopping around doing whatever mischief he could, Michael Scott said to him, “Och, now, ’tis weary work this must be for you what with all the flitting around you’ve got to do. Sit ye down and rest yourself for a while and let’s have a gab together.”

  “Och, I’m not weary at all,” the demon said. “It suits me fine to be busy.” But being willing to oblige Michael, he perched himself on the edge of the hob, anyway.

  “I can see that fine,” said Michael Scott. “But can you not go and be busy elsewhere?”

  “That I cannot,” said the demon, “because my master has sent me to attend to you.”

  “’Tis sad,” said Michael Scott. “Such a wearying job for a braw young lad like yourself. Is there no way you could be getting out of it?”

  “There is not,” said the demon cheerfully. “But it suits me fine, anyway.”

  “Och, aye,” said Michael Scott. “But that is for now whilst it’s all new to you. However, I’m none so old and ’tis likely I’ll live long. The heart of me aches to think of the long weary years you have ahead of you. It does indeed!”

  The demon stopped looking so cheerful. “That may be so,” said he, “but nevertheless I must just make the best of it.”

  “Aye,” sighed Michael Scott. “So you must. And there’s no way at all that you could be rid of the job?”

  “None,” said the demon, sighing, too, in spite of himself. “Barring one.”

  “And what would that one be?” Michael asked kindly, taking care not to seem too interested and eager.

  “Well, if you could be setting me a task that was too much for me so I’d not be able to do it,” the demon told him. Then he laughed, and added, “Never fear! That you ne’er could do.”

  “Well, ’tis worth trying,” said Michael Scott. “We could make sort of a game of it. ’Twould be a change for us both and make time pass quicker.”

  Well, the demon could see the sense of that. He’d been overturning pots and smothering fires and the like for a fortnight past. It was a bit monotonous, if you came to look at it straight. And it could get more so as years went by. He would like a change himself for a bit of diversion.

  “Give us a task then!” he said with a chuckle, being terribly sure of himself.

  Michael Scott thought for a minute or two. Then he said, “River Tweed does need a cauld to it up by Kelso Town. No man’s ever been able to build one, for the water there runs too fast and deep. Would you like to be taking that in hand?”

  “I will so!” said the demon, and off he went.

  Michael Scott had one night to work in peace, but no more than that. The next morn, in came the demon very full of himself with his chest stuck out and a grin on his face that stretched from ear to ear.

  “’Tis done!” said he, putting a foot on the fire to set it smoking, and o’erturning a pot or two.

  “Is it now?” said Michael Scott, hiding his disappointment as well as he could. “Och! ’Tis something harder I should have asked you to do, for I’d have been able to do that myself.”

  “Have another try!” said the demon, laughing at him.

  “That I will,” said Michael Scott. “You’ll be knowing Ercildoune Hill where it sets in the plain like a big sugar loaf? Well then! Break it up and make three hills of it, if you can.

  “I’ll be at it at once!” the demon said. “I’ll be finding it easier far than last night’s work.”

  So Michael Scott had another night’s peace. He did no work in it but he set his wits to work for him. He sat in his chair and thought and thought and thought. He misdoubted that the demon would be back on the morrow’s morn, and he wanted to be ready with a task that would free him from the demon for good and all.

  Well, back the demon came the next morning, and the grin on his face was wide enough to near split his head in two. “ ’Twas no trouble at all,” he told Michael Scott gleefully. “I’d have been back long ere this, did I not stop to hear the commotion of the people to see three hills this morn where only one was the night before. ’Tis sore befuddled and bemazed they are, to
be sure!” And he screeched with laughter at the memory.

  “I’m hoping you’ll have something as easy and entertaining for me to do next,” he told Michael Scott.

  “Och,” said Michael Scott, putting on a doleful air. “I fear you are too much for me. ’Tis past believing the wonders you can bring about. I’m just at the point of giving it all up.”

  “Och, come now,” said the demon kindly. “Give it another try, anyway.” He looked pleased at the praise Michael had given him.

  “Happen ’tis too trifling a task for a lad with powers like your own,” Michael Scott said reluctantly.

  “Nay! Nay!” said the demon. “Tell me then. I’ll not be offended.”

  “Well then,” said Michael hesitating-like, “’Tis not much, but I’d like it fine if you’d go down by the sea and make me a few fathom of rope from the sand on the shore there.”

  “I will so!” cried the demon happily. “And be back in time for my tea. ’Tis the softest task of them all!”

  So off he went and left Michael Scott with a promise that he’d not be long gone.

  But he never came back again. For Michael’s last bidding had stumped him entirely. To this very day the demon is still there by the sea trying to make ropes of sand, and all in vain.

  When the wind blows high and the waves beat the shore, if you listen you’ll hear him whispering, “R-r-r-r-ropes of s-s-s-s-sand! R-r-r-r-ropes of s-s-s-s-sand!” as he works away at the task he ne’er can do.

  So Michael Scott had peace at his magic for all the rest of his days. Even the De’il himself did not bother him any more, for he was afraid if he did, Michael Scott would get the best of him, too.

  About the Author

  Sorche Nic Leodhas (1898-1969) was born LeClaire Louise Gowansin Youngstown, Ohio. After the death of her first husband, she moved to New York and attended classes at Columbia University. Several years later, she met her second husband and became LeClaireGowans Alger. Shewas a longtime librarian at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she also wrote children’s books. Shortly before she retired in 1966, she began publishing Scottish folktales and other stories under the pseudonym Sorche Nic Leodhas, Gaelic for Claire, daughter of Louis. In 1963, she received a Newbery Honor for Thistle and Thyme: Tales and Legends from Scotland. Alger continued to write and publish books until her death 1969.