Thistle and Thyme (10 page)

The lad went up to his hut and laid off his wet clothes to dry. The ring he laid on the chimney shelf against the time when he'd be needing it.

So he started out to serve his time, setting his nets and drawing up his fish and taking them to be sold. It was not sorrow that he nursed now, but hope for the day when he'd be claiming his own true love.

No more than a week had gone by when he came home one night in the gloaming, and as he drew his boat up out of the sea, he saw what he took to be a heap of seaweed lying upon the stone of his doorstep. He wondered how it came to be there, and hurried up from the shore to see.

When he got there, he found that it was not seaweed, but a lass who crouched on the doorstone. Her face was hidden in her lap and her hair streamed down around her. It was her hair that he had taken for seaweed because it was brown and so thick and long that it covered her to the ground.

When she heard his footstep, she sat up and her hair fell away from her face. Then he saw that her face was wet and her eyes were red with weeping. He was in no mood for anybody's troubles but his own, so he asked her roughly, “What are you doing here?”

“I've run off from my father's house,” she told him. “There's a new stepmother there and she no older than myself. There's no place for me there because she can't abide me, and I came away lest she do me some harm.”

“Then you'd best run back again,” said the lad. “For there's no place for you here, either.”

“Och, do not drive me away,” begged the lass. “I've wandered many a weary mile and found no place where they'd take me in. Let me stay, and I'll keep your house and cook your food and do for you all I can.”

“I can do for myself,” said the lad.

At that the lass burst into tears again. “I can go no farther,” she wept in despair. “If I cannot bide here, I must just go down and jump into the sea!”

The lad could no longer bear the sight and sound of her grief. His heart filled with pity for her and he said more gently, “Whisht, lass! Bide here then, if you like. Only keep out of my way.”

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

T
HERE 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.