Collected Folk Tales. Alan Garner

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the sky, where they have remained ever since as the Pleiades, waiting for someone to help them down.

      Hun-Apu and Xbalanque had watched all this, and felt that they now had the measure of their enemy.

      They made a ravine below a mountain range, and at the bottom of the ravine they carved an enormous crab out of stone, and painted it so that it seemed alive. Crabs were Zipacna’s favourite food. Then the twins spread the rumour that the biggest crab in the world was hiding in the ravine, and before long Zipacna came to investigate. When he saw the crab he swallowed it at a gulp.

      “Good,” he said. “But heavy. No doubt I’ll be sorry.”

      And he was. The twins diverted a river into the ravine, and Zipacna was too weighted to swim, and the twins pushed the whole range on top of him and shaped it into a single mountain over his head, so that Zipacna was both drowned and buried, and he lies under Mount Meahuan even now.

      This left Cabrakan the Earthshaker.

      The twins worked on him through his conceit.

      They found Cabrakan throwing rocks about. He took no care for anything. If one flattened a village, it was just too bad.

      “Good morning,” said Hun-Apu. “Would you tell us what you are doing?”

      “Can’t you see?” said Cabrakan.

      He lobbed a boulder into a maize crop.

      “And who are you two?”

      “We have no names,” said the twins. “We hunt with the blow-pipe, and since we never meet anyone, we need no names. But may we stay and watch you?”

      “If you like,” said Cabrakan.

      The twins sat and stared at Cabrakan with the unwinking eyes of children, and said nothing, nor showed themselves impressed by anything he did. Cabrakan tried all the harder to make these two hunters applaud, until after a week of mountain-hurling he was dizzy with hunger and fatigue.

      Hun-Apu then shot a bird and baked it in clay for the giant, but the clay he used was poisoned, and when Cabrakan took up his work again he trembled as if with fever.

      “Our father was a weak man,” said Xbalanque, “but he did all you have done. His favourite game was to throw that mountain over there into the sea.”

      Cabrakan strove to focus his eyes through the sweat.

      “What, that little white pimple of quartz?” he said. “That’s too small for me to bother with.”

      “So you say,” said Hun-Apu.

      “And so I’ll show,” said Cabrakan. He staggered to the hill and put his arms about it.

      Now this hill was not like any other hill or mountain. It had no roots in the earth, but was a piece of the earth itself that showed through the land, an unbroken, shining rock that went on for ever beneath the giant’s feet.

      So Cabrakan, exhausted by his efforts, poisoned by his enemies, took hold of the world and tried to lift it. His knees knocked like war-drums.

      “We’ve been wasting our time,” said Xbalanque.

      “I knew he couldn’t,” said Hun-Apu.

      Cabrakan gave one great heave. The top of his head blew off. And that was the last of the race of Vukub-Cakix in Guatemala.

      

      Brownie was a type of goblin that lived in and around the farmhouse. He would often work for the people on the farm, but he had an unpredictable temper, and sometimes, as in this story, he was much more trouble than he was worth.

      here was a brownie once who got above himself, and thought that because he stacked the hay (if he felt like it), and cleaned up in the kitchen (if it wasn’t too mucky), the whole farm belonged to him. He was for giving the farmer marching orders.

      Of course farmer will have none of that, so brownie makes a great to-do at night, and it’s half a day’s work regular to clear up after him around the house. Well, then farmer gives over leaving milk out in a saucer by the hearth; and so it goes from bad to worse.

      Anyway, brownie must have the big field, he says, and they chunner and chunner, calling each other all the names, so as women have to cover their ears for language. Anyway, it’s left that farmer will do the work, and they’ll share the crop half and half between them.

      When Spring comes, farmer says, “Which will you have, tops or bottoms?”

      “Bottoms,” says brownie.

      So farmer plants wheat, keeps the grain for himself, and gives brownie the roots and stubble.

      Next year, farmer says to brownie, “Which will you have, tops or bottoms?”

      “Tops,” says brownie.

      So farmer plants turnips, and brownie is left to make what he can of the leaves.

      He’ll have none of it the next year: not tops or bottoms: he will not. Corn, says brownie, that’s what it must be, and the field divided in half, and brownie and farmer to have a mowing match, winner keep all.

      July next, farmer goes to the blacksmith and has ever so many thin iron rods made, and he plants them all over brownie’s half of the field.

      Anyway, they start mowing at daybreak. Farmer walks through his patch, up and down, sweet as a comb, but brownie’s snagged like I don’t know what.

      “Mortal hard docks, these: mortal hard docks,” he keeps clacking.

      Anyway, after an hour of this the rods have knocked the edge from his scythe and it’s as blunt as a plough handle, and brownie is right borsant.

      Now in a match, mowers take time off together for sharpening up; so brownie calls to farmer, “When do we wiffle-waffle, mate?”

      “Oh, about noon, maybe,” says farmer.

      “Noon!” says brownie. “I’ve lost my land!”

      He drops his scythe, and he’s never seen on that farm again. And no wonder.

      

      Adapted from the Translation of WHITLEY STOKES

      I have to admit to a weakness for Celtic legends. It would be all too easy to fill this book with them. For me, no other people were so rich and terrifying in their imagination. They found no need to explain: the stories often appear to be strung together at random – and yet there is always the feeling that everything is very simple. We are looking at a real and brilliant and logical world through strange glass.

      You can take this story all at once, or СКАЧАТЬ