Where Dragons Soar: And Other Animal Folk Tales of the British Isles

by Castle, Pete;

  The next day the fisherman went fishing again in the same place and, sure enough, he caught the same fish again, and it said, ‘I am the King of the Fishes, if you let me go you shall always find your nets full.’ So the fisherman let him go again. When he got back home he told his wife what he had done and she began to cry and wail and said, ‘I told you I wanted such a fish, but you let him go. You don’t love me!’

  The fisherman did love his wife very much indeed, and he felt ashamed of himself, so he promised that if he caught the King of the Fishes again he would bring him home to his wife for her to cook.

  The next day the fisherman went to the same place and caught the same fish for the third time. But when the fish begged the fisherman to let him go he told the King of the Fishes what his wife had said and what he had promised her. ‘Well,’ said the King of the Fishes, ‘if you must kill me then kill me you must, but as you’ve let me go twice I will do this for you. When your wife cuts me up she must throw some of my bones under the mare, and some of my bones under the bitch, and the rest of my bones she must bury beneath the rose tree in the garden and then you will see what you will see.’

  So the fisherman took the King of the Fishes home to his wife and he told her what the fish had said. That evening, when she cut up the fish for cooking, she threw some of the bones under the mare, and some under the bitch, and the rest she buried under the rose tree in the garden.

  A few months later, the fisherman’s wife found that she was, at last, pregnant, and when the time came she gave birth to two fine twin boys. Just under the hair on their foreheads each had a star. They named them George and Albert, for those were the names which were popular for boys at that time. At the same time the mare brought into the world two fine colts, and the bitch two puppies and they all had identical stars on their foreheads!

  Under the very ordinary rambling rose tree grew up two fine rose bushes, each of which bore, every year, only a single rose, but what a splendid rose it was! It lasted all through the summer and long into the winter and, most curious of all, when George fell ill one of the roses began to wilt, and if Albert wasn’t well the other rose faded.

  The fisherman and his wife lived happily together and George and Albert grew up to be fine young men. They went on to have many adventures and both married princesses and ruled their own lands. And all thanks to the King of the Fishes.

  I don’t know what happened to the fisherman and his wife. I assume they lived out their days very happily with their long awaited family and plenty of fish in their nets.

  If this story has a moral or a lesson to teach then I’m not quite sure what it is. The fisherman had pity on the fish twice but then went back on his word when his wife tried a bit of moral blackmail. The fish did keep his word and rewarded the fisherman with far more than he deserved. Like most folk tales, this one does not stand analysis so just enjoy it as a bit of fun.

  THE KING OF THE BIRDS

  The wren, the wren, the king of birds

  His brood is big, but he is small.

  One day the birds held a meeting. They all got together to decide things and to discuss important matters. There they were, all sitting around and chirruping to each other – you know how these meetings go, everyone talking to everyone else about things which don’t matter, not finishing one conversation before they start on another with someone else. Most of it was just idle chatter, but every now and again one would give a loud squawk and say something worth saying.

  One of the birds said that he’d been watching Man and every group of men seemed to have a king. Perhaps the birds should have a king too, he said. It would make it easier to make decisions and meetings would be much shorter. The other birds all thought this sounded a good idea, but how were they going to decide which bird should be king?

  Everyone chipped in with their different ideas:

  The biggest bird.

  The strongest bird.

  The bird who could fly furthest.

  The bird who could fly fastest.

  The bird who could stay in the air for the longest.

  The bird who could sing loudest.

  The bird with the most beautiful song.

  The bird with the prettiest feathers.

  The bird with the longest beak.

  The bird with the longest tail.

  The list was endless …

  I don’t know how they came to a conclusion, but the suggestion they decided on was the bird who could fly highest.

  One of the birds who was loudest in its support for this idea was, surprisingly, the wren – the little, tiny wren who flitters around in the shadows down by the ground and is rarely seen.

  So, at the appointed time all the birds met together again and competed with each other to see which could fly highest. Some could not fly very high at all, just a little above the tree tops; others soared up into the clouds until they could hardly be seen; but the one who beat them all was the eagle. Up and up and up he went until he was higher than any of the other birds had been. The eagle was king.

  But what was that? Just as eagle could go no higher and started to come down again a tiny spot launched itself from the feathers on eagle’s back and fluttered a few more feet into the air. It was the wren. He had hitched a ride on eagle’s back and now he had flown higher than any other bird, including eagle. The wren had won. The wren was king.

  Or was he?

  Did it count?

  Was it cheating?

  Did they want their king to be chosen in that way?

  The birds turned to the wise owl and asked him what he thought. The owl turned his head to the east, and then he turned it to the west; he turned it north, he turned it south and then he turned it right round. Then the owl gave his decision. The wren had played a clever trick, but a clever trickster didn’t deserve to be the king. The eagle was the king. He had won the right and won it fairly.

  And so it is. The eagle is the King of the Birds and the wren still flitters around in the undergrowth under the hedge, but every now and again he finds a nice pole to sit on and sings out to everyone, in a voice that seems far too loud for such a tiny bird, about how he flew higher than the eagle and could, or perhaps should, have been the King of the Birds.

  8

  HERE COMES THE CAVALRY

  THE LION AND THE UNICORN

  The lion and the unicorn

  Were fighting for the crown,

  The lion beat the unicorn

  All around the town.

  In this old nursery rhyme the lion is, of course, England and the unicorn is Scotland. The fight still goes on and probably always will! The unicorn has been a part of the royal seal of Scotland since at least the 1300s when Robert III turned to it as a symbol of purity and strength when he was trying to rebuild the nation.

  When James VI of Scotland became James I of England he combined the Scottish unicorn with the English lion, which was perhaps not a wise choice as a Babylonian myth going back to 3,500 BCE points out that the lion and the unicorn are implacable enemies!

  The unicorn is not really a horse, though. Or is it? It seems to inhabit a no-man’s-land between a horse, a goat and a fairy creature. Although everyone knows about unicorns, and they occur in all kinds of literature – especially children’s literature – there is very little British folklore about them.

  Strangely, the same is true about horses generally. We are a nation who love horses and equestrianism but we don’t seem to go in for folk tales about them. We have acquired a few horses from other mythologies but they haven’t been adopted as British. Interestingly, most of these are white horses, which have always been ‘special’.

  From Greek mythology we have taken Pegasus and the Norse have loaned us Odin’s horse, Sleipnir, with its eight legs! In Celtic mythology, Rhiannon rides a ‘pale white horse’, as does St George. (And the tradition continues down through Roy Rogers to Clint Eastwood and many other Western heroes!) Two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride white or pale horses – Pestile
nce on the white and Death on the pale one.

  As the King James Bible puts it in Revelation 6:8:

  And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

  It seems very likely that the Bronze Age inhabitants of the South of England worshipped horses or, at least, held them in high esteem. They may have been ‘badges’, for they appear on early coins and, of course, were carved, hugely, on chalk hillsides. Many of those which survive are comparatively recent but the famous one at Uffington dates back to the Bronze Age, if not earlier.

  The white horse as a territorial badge survives to the present in the coat of arms of Kent, one of the oldest kingdoms. Fittingly the next story comes from that county.

  GREY DOLPHIN’S REVENGE

  Back in the fourteenth century there lived a knight called Sir Roger de Shurland. Sir Roger owned land on the north coast of Kent which included the Isle of Sheppey. He had a rich hall and farmed a large area of land. On the whole he was a good man and a good farmer who treated his people well – or as well as any knight treated his serfs in those days. The one drawback to Sir Roger was that he had a terrible temper. He would be quiet and thoughtful, kind and caring, but then something would annoy him and without the slightest warning he would lash out.

  As he grew older he learned to control his temper or, at least, to take himself off to where it would do no harm. This he did by riding. When he felt things getting on top of him, Sir Roger would mount his horse, Grey Dolphin, and ride full pelt through the fields or over the downs or along the beach until he had regained control of himself. They got by in this fashion for many years.

  Then, one Good Friday, a monk came to Sir Roger and begged him to allow his workers to have a day off so that they could go to church and pray. But Sir Roger wanted his men to finish ploughing some fields before the weather broke. The monk would not take ‘no’ for an answer and continued to argue his case until Sir Roger lost his temper. With no warning he drew his sword and ran the monk through. He immediately regretted his deed but it was too late, the monk was dead, so Sir Roger jumped on Grey Dolphin and galloped off. A hue and cry was raised and Sir Roger lived the next few months as an outlaw.

  One morning he happened to be riding his horse along the shores of the Thames Estuary when he saw a magnificent ship lying moored just off the beach. He recognised it as the king’s ship and the flags flying showed that the king was on board. Sir Roger turned his horse into the sea and swam it towards the ship. When they reached it, Grey Dolphin was tied safely to the stern and Sir Roger was taken aboard where he went to the king and confessed what he had done. He begged the king to forgive him. Taken by Sir Roger’s apparent grief and the daring of the deed he had undertaken in swimming out to the ship, the king pardoned Sir Roger who then remounted his horse and returned to the shore.

  By now Grey Dolphin was cold and exhausted and he stumbled on the shore. Sir Roger dismounted. Just then a strange old woman came by and said, ‘Sir, that horse which has just saved your life will one day be the cause of your death!’ Without a second thought, Sir Roger cut off the horse’s head and made his way home where he took up his old life.

  About a year later, Sir Roger was again walking along that same bit of seashore having once again lost his temper. He saw a piece of white bone sticking up from the shingle and kicked it as hard as he could. It was bigger and heavier than he had realised and a sharp piece of the bone went through his boot and pierced his toe. When the pain had subsided he dug it out from the shingle and found it was a horse’s skull.

  Over the next few days Sir Roger’s toe, then his foot, and soon his whole leg, swelled up with poison and he died a slow, lingering death during which he realised that the old woman’s prophecy had come true, that it was Grey Dolphin’s skull he had kicked so Grey Dolphin had, indeed, killed him.

  After his death, Sir Roger de Shurland was buried in the abbey church in Minster. His grave can still be seen and at the foot of his effigy is a horse’s skull.

  THE HORSE MECHANIC

  One aspect of being a professional storyteller that people often don’t appreciate is that you can spend more time driving to and from the gig than you do actually telling stories. There’s a plus side to that, though, because strange things can happen when you spend a lot of time on the road and you can sometimes use those adventures to make more stories.

  For instance, you meet all kinds of people who, with the kindest of intentions, can sabotage all your best-laid plans; then there’s the complete randomness of traffic and road conditions – weather, congestion, whatever it is. You allow for trouble and there isn’t any, and when you don’t there is – or there isn’t, and you spend the whole time waiting for the jam or worrying about not being held up. And, of course, there are the gremlins, which inhabit every piece of machinery that’s ever been invented and which wait until the most inopportune moment to make themselves known. So, being ‘on the road’ can sometimes be like being a participant in a fantastic fairy tale or game show!

  Nowadays things are made a bit easier by all the gadgets we have. Cars are more reliable (usually). If we need help we have mobile phones (as long as there’s a signal). And we can’t get lost because we have a satnav (but I’m sure I could write a whole book called ‘Adventures with a Satnav’). This story is something which happened to me years ago before all those useful aids were invented.

  I’d been doing a daytime storytelling session and was on my way home. It was getting towards evening, quite dark and very quiet. I was nonchalantly driving along, not taking much notice of anything – you know how you do when the car just drives itself and the miles pass without you being aware of anything, when the car stopped. Not suddenly or dramatically – it just … sort of … drifted … to a halt.

  As I say, I hadn’t been taking much notice of where I was. It was in the countryside and I hadn’t passed through a town or village for a while. It was on back roads, so if I needed to summon help I couldn’t even give them a road number!

  I know nothing about cars at all. I can drive them, but why they do what they do is a mystery. I knew I hadn’t run out of petrol but I suppose other things can go wrong too. So I got out of the car and stood there like a spare part wondering what to do and, basically, waiting for something to happen, for my guardian angel to come along – or the AA, or a breakdown truck, or just someone who knew about cars, anything like that would have done.

  Nowadays I would have had my mobile phone, but not then, it was before many people had them – just ‘yuppies’ (remember them?). I suppose I was trying to remember whether I’d seen a phone box or a garage or something recently. No help miraculously appeared, so I had ample time to look around – the trouble was there was nothing to see, just fields and hedges, trees, countryside …

  Then, after a while, I heard a voice, from out of nowhere. It said, ‘Open the bonnet.’

  That seemed a good idea: if your car breaks down open the bonnet … so I did and I stood there because I had no idea what to do next – I just stood there looking into the engine. Then the voice said, ‘Take the hose off the carburetter.’

  ‘What’s the carburetter look like?’ I wondered, but anyway I found a thing with hoses on and took one off and held it in my hand.

  I had a really good look around to see who was giving me this advice, but there was no one to be seen.

  ‘Blow down it then,’ said the voice.

  So I put one end of it in my mouth and blew and – pphht! – a bit of grit flew out of the other end. The wheels in my brain whirred and made connections. ‘Ah,’ I thought, ‘a blocked fuel pipe, I’ve heard of that.’ So I put the hose back on and tried to start the car. Sure enough – brrrm, brrrm – it started first time. Well, I didn’t dare turn the engine off again just in case that was tempting providence, but I wanted to know who w
as this invisible car mechanic that was giving me the advice, so I got out of the car and had a really good look around. Under the hedge, in the ditch, behind the car, in the field – everywhere. But there was no one to be seen.

  I couldn’t stand around all night so I got in and drove off down the road.

  As I drove along I was thinking about what had happened, and the more I thought about it the weirder it got. Who was it giving me the advice? Why couldn’t I see him? Was it the Phantom AA man? No, I don’t believe in fairies or ghosts but this was really weird …

  Then I saw a pub up ahead and I thought, ‘I need a drink’, so I stopped and went into the bar. There were two old blokes in the bar. They looked as though they were always in the bar, part of the furniture, and after I’d downed my pint we got talking and I told them what had happened. They looked at each other and one of them tapped his nose knowingly. ‘Where you broke down,’ he said, ‘was there a horse in the field?’

  I thought about it. ‘Yes, I think so,’ I said.

  ‘What colour was it?’

  ‘White, I think.’

  ‘Oh, then it’s your lucky day,’ he said. ‘There’s usually a black horse in that field and he doesn’t know anything about cars at all!’

  9

  HARES, HORSES AND HEDGEHOGS

  The hare is one of the most magical, most mysterious and, in many ways, one of the most loved animals in the countryside. There is a huge amount of modern pagan lore about hares, much of which claims to go back to the distant past. There are hare stories in many other cultures, but not many in Britain – and those all tend to be variations on the same theme: the witch or fairy who can take on hare form. It’s a very old story. Here’s an Irish version: