Tales of Britain Read online

  Where does Britannia herself come into this, you might wonder? Was she a giant, that fine, fork-brandishing helmeted Warrior Queen of this island people? It seems, alas, that Britannia was probably invented as a sort of mascot by the Romans, a noble woman to be crushed under their heel. But centuries later, the mysterious lady arose again, shining and proud.

  That’s rather what we hope can be said of the 77 stories we have gathered for you to share and enjoy. Many old wives’ tales bear few retellings – ask around your town; there will be shaggy dog tales of big black ghost dogs, and maybe the odd holy well where some saint had their head chopped off in the Dark Ages (which, incidentally, had much the same ratio of light and dark as today). But sometimes, every generation or so, all the very best tales of heroes, villains, weird creatures, tragic love, bloody battles and magic riddles, as recorded by the endless muddle of folk who rub shoulders from Land’s End to John O’Groats, do benefit from being brought together, buffed up nicely, and shown in a new light, shining and proud.

  It’s impossible to please everyone with a vast treasury of such breadth and strangeness, and with 77 tales to choose from, some will always be somebody’s favourite – and least favourite. Most of these retellings are suitable for all ages, but a few folktales have an indelibly rude flavour, or are steeped in buckets of blood (check our Tale Key for warning signs). It’s also best to be prepared that not every one of these stories completely adds up – that’s part of the charm: what on earth were the original storytellers getting at? Maybe two thousand years ago the druid, bard or teacher who was entertaining the crowd was offered a cup of warm mead at just the wrong time, and suddenly a crucial detail was left out of a plot. Why does the Welsh legend of Queen Rhiannon seem to passionately explode out of nowhere in The Mabinogion? What was the person who first told the very silly ‘King of Cats’ on? Was Robin Hood swinging through Sherwood in the 12th century or the 14th? Do eagles even have ears? And so on. As far as possible, these retellings do straighten things out a little, but sometimes that would be unfair on the sheer mysterious whimsy of the tale as it has come down to us.

  So if any of the following myths and stories leave you confused, or perhaps even freaked out, relax – that’s what they have been doing to people for centuries! If you want complete narrative clarity, there’s always soap opera. But if you are intrigued enough to investigate further, and find your own answers to any of the mysteries contained within, then: mission accomplished. All of these stories are here to be retold, again and again.

  Hopefully you will find your own favourites among this treasury of oddities – because, whether they are exciting, terrifying, saucy, perplexing, spooky, heartbreaking or just very very daft, the ‘British’ folk have left these tales here, for you.

  There are some who claim that Britain is the greatest country on Earth. This is, of course, utter poppy-nonsense. Every region on our planet has tales to tell, and people being people, wherever they come from, very interesting yarns they are too. But Britain is our home, and the home of these tales, and we should be proud to share them with the whole wide world.

  1. BRUTUS: LAND AHOY!

  Totnes, Devon

  Any country which can confidently claim to know how it came to be must be a very young country indeed – the youthful states of North America, for instance, or the positively newborn country of Australia, where natives had lived for thousands of years before the invaders arrived. You can be sure that the origin stories of most nations begin with invasion, and murder, and theft.

  Dear old Britain has been around and filled with proud Britons for a very generous amount of centuries, so it’s impossible to say for sure how such a land – call it the United Kingdom, Britain, Albion or what you like – really first came to be.

  There is, however, the whoppingly ancient tale of Brutus, the great Trojan Prince who gave Britain its very name… so some say.

  Perhaps you have never heard of the Trojan War? It was very famous, once upon a time. Many hundreds upon hundreds upon even more hundreds of eons ago, out towards the hot dusty lands of Turkey, war broke out between the early civilizations of Troy and Greece – reportedly due to a naughty Trojan Prince called Paris, who stole away with Helen, the wife of the Grecian King. Ever after, it was said that Helen’s beauty was somehow enough to launch a thousand ships, as soldiers amassed from all over the civilised tribes to settle the dispute at Troy itself.

  Many tales are told of this war and its aftermath. One Greek general, Odysseus (the clever dick who thought up the Trojan Horse ruse), had lots of unlikely adventures on his sails away from victory at Troy. But while Odysseus headed one way for his own mad journey, another Trojan Prince, Aeneas, was sailing off in the opposite direction.

  ‘Good luck, Aeneas!’ Odysseus whooped as his ship’s sails caught the wind eastwards.

  ‘Have fun, Odysseus!’ Aeneas waved back, ‘See you at the next World War perhaps!’

  Aeneas’ troops of friends wandered throughout Europe for years, and his children had children. Prince Brutus, however, is the grandson who interests us in this story. Brutus was a wiry little warrior, wily and sharp, a born leader of people. Great wizards predicted exciting things for little Brutus when he was still potty-training.

  The young lad got into a spot of bother one day by accidentally shooting his father with an arrow during one truly awful beach holiday in Italy. However, Brutus’ natural leadership was to come in very handy, because he was exiled – with his own gang of brave young Trojans to follow him.

  ‘But where am I supposed to go?’ young Brutus whined, ‘All my stuff is here!’

  ‘Never you mind, my lad,’ said the coastguard. ‘Hooligans like you aren’t wanted on the Continent. Here’s a boat, you find a home, just like your Grandad did.’

  ‘Fine then, I will!’ answered back Brutus, ‘Come on, gang!’

  This band of friends sailed up around Spain and found themselves in Gaul (the place people now call ‘France’), where a bit more trouble was caused – this time, by Brutus’ best mate, Corin. Corin was another Trojan Prince, but gigantic where Brutus was compact and nippy. He stood the height of any self-respecting tree, and impossibly bulging muscles rippled under the mass of his huge arms and belly. Corin’s favourite thing was food. It was just like Corin to eat all of the boars in the King of Aquitaine’s forests, and spark a war which spilled gallons and gallons of blood before the Gauls begged Corin to ‘Just leave us alone and go away!’

  ‘But we only just got here!’ Brutus complained.

  ‘Well, we already live here, find another home!’ the Gaulish King stormed back. ‘Here, have a boat, anything, but get off my land!’

  The daughter of this King of Gaul was called Ignoge – and yes, it was pronounced just like ‘eggnog’. Ignoge had taken a fancy to brave young Brutus, and announced that she was going wherever he was. And so without a glance back, Brutus, his young wife, and all his Trojan friends set sail away from the continent of Europe for the last time, to see what was ‘out there’.

  Unfortunately, what was ‘out there’ was wind, and rain, and horrifying storms that bashed and buffeted Brutus’ boat up, down, under and over a thousand times, the whole crew churning their guts up into the remorseless waves, day after day – and only maggoty biscuits to eat. Nobody on board had ever thought to ask if anyone knew how to sail a ship. But they sailed on, and on. The life on the ocean wave, it turned out, stank.

  It was with great relief that this half-wreck of a ship all but smashed itself into pieces on a scraggy little island somewhere out north-west-ish. Annoyingly, there was nothing on this chalky outcrop but an old half-ruined temple, devoted to the Greek goddess Artemis.

  ‘Oh dear, everyone, I’m afraid we’re not quite as saved as we thought we were,’ admitted Brutus.

  ‘Artemis!’ gasped Ignoge. ‘The goddess of the moon, and of hunting!’ Artemis was absolutely her favourite god of the many gods people had to choose from back then.

  ‘Grrr, not so much as a nesting gannet to roast for supper, or the odd strange root to suck on!’ grumped Corin, and Ignoge hugged one of his enormous arms.

  The exhausted crew fell on their knees and prayed to Artemis for a sign. And oddly, because this sort of thing still happened in those days, she gave them one.

  A clear, crystal voice broke out from the temple, and sang on the winds:

  ‘Brutus! There lies beyond the Gallic bounds

  An island which the western sea surrounds,

  By giants once possessed, now few remain,

  To bar thy entrance, or obstruct thy reign.

  To reach that happy shore thy sails employ

  There fate decrees to raise a second Troy

  And found an empire in thy royal line,

  Which time shall ne’er destroy, nor bounds confine!’

  ‘Did that lady just say I was going to be King of somewhere?’ asked Brutus.

  ‘Something like that,’ grumped Corin. ‘But anyway, let’s get what’s left of this ship lashed together and set off north, I’m starving. I don’t even mind rowing if it gets me something for my supper.’

  ‘Back on the ship, everyone!’ Brutus called, and off they went again. However, at Ignoge’s suggestion, they took with them a spare stone from the rubble around the magical temple, to remind them of Artemis’s promise.

  With Corin whirling his mighty oars through the grey waves, the rest of their journey was much swifter – and before they knew it…

  ‘LAND AHOY!’ cried Brutus with a grin.

  White cliffs stretched up for what seemed like miles, and the sun shone above on the greenest fields any of them had ever seen. There, peeping over from the top of the cliffs, they saw sheep, deer, boars, and huge cows called aurochs – who all ran away at the s
ight of the ship, to the shelter of trees weighed down with deep shining fruit of all kinds.

  Ignoge’s smile was bedazzling. ‘This land is a vision of home I have never imagined before. A fruity place of mysteries and comforts. Brutus – are we home at last?’

  Brutus was the first to set his foot ashore. ‘Here I stand and here I rest. And this town shall be called Totnes!’ he announced, and everyone whooped and cheered and poured down onto the dry land, and set about finding gorgeous things to eat, building fires, erecting shelters and thanking Artemis for their safe arrival in this land, newly-named ‘Brutus land’, or perhaps ‘Britain’…

  Britain? Safe? The giants who romped around this green and pleasant land took issue with both of these words. This place, you see, was Albion, a playground for the giant children of an even more ancient Greek Princess called Albina and her sisters – and these cheeky little strangers were not at all welcome.

  Brutus awoke the next morning to smouldering campfires and, as he looked up, wiping the sleep from his eyes… there were a whole host of slavering mountain-sized giants bearing down on them all, roaring righteous bloodlust!

  ‘HUMANS HUMANS HUMANS! OUT! OUT! OUT!’ they bellowed, and the ground shook as they drew near.

  The battles were many and frankly upsetting. You wouldn’t want to hear about upsetting things like battles between dumb giants and sword-wielding humans, would you? All the biffing, and splatting, and nibbling of ears and so on… it was all very messy. It’s enough to say that Brutus and his army had Corin on their side, and soon there was only one giant left of this attacking party. His name was Gogmagog, and he was the hugest of all the huge giants of Albion – as big as two giants in one!

  ‘Come here then, big fella,’ Corin laughed, ‘then it’s time for breakfast!’

  Corin and Gogmagog wrestled and struggled all along the south coast. Sometimes Corin had the upper hand, both fists up Gogmagog’s nostrils in a special killer move he’d developed, called ‘The Bogey Basher’. Sometimes Gogmagog forced himself back into power position, swinging Corin around like a particularly beefy rag doll.

  Eventually the wrestlers arrived atop a monstrously tall cliff in an area now known as Plymouth Hoe – and there, a particularly timely poke in the eye from Corin toppled the mighty Gogmagog over the side. He crashed all the way down with such a big splat, the locals put two chalk outlines there to mark the body for generations to come, and called them ‘Gog’ and ‘Magog’.

  Brutus was so glad his best friend was alive, he gave him the whole wodge of land he stood on, and it became known as Cornwall. Brutus and Ignoge themselves rode out east trying to find the perfect spot to call home.

  ‘To found an empire in our royal line!’ Ignoge reminded him.

  ‘Well yes, dearest, but just somewhere cosy and relatively safe from giants would be good,’ replied Brutus. Eventually they both agreed on an unspoiled hillside on the banks of the river Thames, and built their home there, calling it ‘New Troy’ – so it really was home from home. The cosy settlement of ‘Troia Nova’ became known to the Romans as Trinovantum – and only many eons later by its other name, ‘London’.

  In this city Brutus and Ignoge built a new temple to Artemis, and ruled happily together for 25 years. They had three sons – Locrinus, Albanactus and Kamber – to rule in the east, the north and the west when their time was done. But the couple never wandered far from their new home ever again.

  THE END

  TOTNES, DEVON

  The London Stone, said to have been a piece of Trojan temple brought to the capital by Brutus, is held in a not-very-secret corner of England’s capital city, on Cannon Street, and very nearby is the Guildhall, guarded by statues of Gog and Magog. But London is so entirely packed with tourist spots, Totnes is a better place to let the record of Brutus’ life ring out. It also has its own Brutus Stone, allegedly the exact spot where the brave adventurer first set foot on this island. Filled with more listed buildings than almost any other British town of its size, the not-quite-coastal beauties of Totnes, perched on the River Dart, are a world away from the dirty metropolis for which Brutus claimed the credit. There is a castle to please any visitor who has only seen one in a book before, and all manner of maritime pursuits to look into if you make the journey south-west.

  totnesinformation.co.uk

  2. THE THREE BEARS

  Keiss, Highlands

  You may think you know this story – the one about the Three Bears and their unwelcome visitor. But that naughty little blonde called Goldilocks was entirely made up! This is the real story of what happened to those poor Three Bears many centuries ago, when wild bears were still to be found in the forests of Britain – in this case, the wild brown bears of northern Scotland.

  These Three Bears lived very happily together in their own broch – which was a sort of dry stone castle – up on a little hill, in a clearing of a huge, luscious forest which stretched for hundreds of miles around. There was one Big Bear, and one Little Bear, and a third who was neither big nor little, but just the size that they were.

  These Three Bears were wild, of course, but very civilised for all that. Every morning, they would arise from their cosy beds, bid each other ‘A very, very good morning!’ and then pad down to the kitchen to enjoy a piping hot bowl of porridge together to start the day.

  One day, however, all three found that their porridge was just too hot.

  ‘I have had a momentous idea!’ announced the Middle Bear.

  ‘Oh good, I do love it when you have your ideas,’ replied the Big Bear. ‘Go you on ahead.’

  ‘It’s a truly splendid day, why don’t we take a stroll around the forest while our breakfast cools?’

  ‘I declare it to be the idea of the year!’ cried the Little Bear, often the decider of all decisions for the trio. The wee fluffball set down their little spoon and said, ‘Let’s go, chums!’

  And the Three Bears trooped out into the morning sun, with a ‘tra-la-lee’ on their lips. They did not even pause to put the broch’s door on the latch. That’s just the kind of trusting, idealistic, possibly naive young bears they were.

  Because, no matter how far away from the madding crowd you may be, there may well be a rotter somewhere in the vicinity. It was all well and lovely that the Three Bears wished no harm to anyone, but in the shadows of that forest lurked many a scamp, not to mention numerous scoundrels, cads and the odd miscreant. That morning, a miscreant stepped into the sunshine, and sniffed the air excitedly.

  ‘Milky milk! And mmm, cinnamon! Porridge!’ The loud sound of a tummy rumble filled the clearing where the Three Bears’ broch stood.

  This was one of the wily fox brethren – sly and usually clever animals known to some storytellers, from Scotland to France, as ‘Reynard’ – but this particular fox’s name was Scrapefoot. And what a hungry fox he was!

  Scrapefoot tiptoed up to the broch’s door, the heavy porridge aroma drawing him in, and he spied through a chink in the door to case the joint. ‘Abandoned, and fair game, and I am game for that!’ he whispered to himself, and stealthily let himself into the Bears’ home.

  Porridge was the only thing on Scrapefoot’s mind as he crept over to the kitchen’s broad oak table. He scampered up onto the biggest chair, picked up a spoon, licked his drooling lips and tucked in. But then he stopped, and pulled a face. ‘This porridge,’ Scrapefoot said, ‘is far too lumpy!’

  And so he shifted over to the next chair, and sampled the contents of the next bowl. He pulled a worse face. ‘This porridge,’ he announced to himself, ‘is far too runny!’

  One more time, he moved over onto the next chair, and picked up the smallest spoon. One big gulp. ‘Mmm, this porridge is just right,’ said Scrapefoot, and even though he was a fox, he wolfed down the whole lot.

  Then Scrapefoot felt like a nice sit down, after his long prowl through the forest, and so he looked around and saw a huge chair. He scampered up onto it, but soon his bottom was hurting, and he pulled a face. ‘This chair is too hard!’ he said.