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Assipattle and the Muckle-great Mester Stoor WormThere was a dangerous creature in the deep sea. He was known as the Mester Stoor Worm. If the earth shook and the sea swept over the fields, it was Stoor Worm yawning. He was so long that there was no place for his body until he coiled it around the earth. His breath was so venomous that when he was angry and blew out a great blast of it every living thing within reach was destroyed and all the crops were withered. With his forked tongue he would sweep hills and villages into the sea, or seize and crush a house or ship so that he could devour the people inside. When he came close to the country where Assipattle lived, and began to yawn, the people knew that he must be fed, otherwise he would get into a rage and destroy the whole land. The news was that the king had consulted a wise man, a spaeman, about what must be done. After thinking a while, the spaeman said that the only way to keep the Stoor Worm happy was to feed him on young virgins, seven of them each week. The people were horrified by this, but the danger was so appalling that they consented. Every Saturday morning seven terrified girls were bound hand and foot and laid on a rock beside the shore. Then the monster raised his head from the sea and seized them in the fork of his tongue and they were seen no more. As they listened to what the king's messenger, who had brought the news, had to tell, the faces of Assipattle's father and brothers grew grey and they trembled, but Assipattle declared he was ready to fight the monster. All through the years, he bragged, he had been saving his strength just for this. His brothers were furious and pelted him with stones, but his father said sadly, "It's likely you'll fight the Stoor Worm when I make spoons from the horns of the moon." [Babylonsk astrology - ] There were even more dreadful things for the messenger to relate. He said that the people of the country were so horrified by the deaths of the loveliest and most innocent girls that they demanded some other remedy. Once again the king consulted the spaeman, who declared at long last, with terror in his eyes, that the only way to persuade the monster to depart was to offer him the most beautiful girl in the land, the Princess Gem-de-lovely, the king's only child. Gem-de-lovely was the king's heir and he loved her more than anyone else. But the people were so frantic with grief at the loss of their own children, that the king said with tears rolling down his cheeks, "It is surely a wonderful thing that the last of the oldest race in the land, who is descended from the great god Odin, should die for her folk." There was only one possible way of saving the princess, so the king asked for sufficient time to send messengers to every part of his realm. They were to announce that the princess would become the wife of any man who was strong enough and brave enough to fight the monster and overcome him. The wedding gift to the champion would be the kingdom itself and the famous sword Sikkersnapper that the king had inherited from Odin. Thirty champions had come to the palace [said the messenger; who had halted his weary horse at Assipattle's farm], but only 12 of them remained after they had seen the Stoor Worm. Even they were sick with fear. It was certain that the king had no faith in them. Old and feeble as he was, he had taken the sword Sikkersnapper out of the chest behind the high table, and had sworn that he would fight the monster himself rather than let his daughter be destroyed. His boat was pulled down from its noust [a sheltered stance above the reach of the tide] and was anchored near the shore, so as to be ready when he needed it. Assipattle listened eagerly to all this, but no one heeded him. The messenger mounted his horse and slowly rode away. Soon the father and mother went to bed. From where he lay in the ashes beside the flickering fire, Assipattle heard them saying that they would go next day to see the fight between the king and the monster. They would ride Teetgong, who was the swiftest horse in the land. How was it that Teetgong could be made to gallop faster than any other horse? asked the mother. It was a long time before Assipattle's father would tell her, but at last, worn out by her questions, he said, "When I want Teetgong to stand I give him a clap on the left shoulder; when I want him to run quickly I give him two claps on the right shoulder; and when I want him to gallop as fast as he can go I blow through the thrapple [windpipe] of a goose that I always keep in my pocket. He has only to hear that and he goes like the wind." After a while there was silence and Assipattle knew that they were asleep. Very quietly he pulled the goose thrapple out of his father's pocket. He found his way to the stable, where he tried to bridle Teetgong. At first the horse kicked and reared, but when Assipattle patted him on his left shoulder he was as still as a mouse. When Assipattle got on his back and patted his right shoulder he started off with a loud neigh. The noise wakened the father, who sprang up and called his sons. All of them mounted the best horses they could find and set off in pursuit of the thief, little knowing that it was Assipattle. The father, who rode fastest, almost overtook Teetgong, and he shouted to him, "Hi, hi, ho! Teitgong wo." At that, Teetgong came at once to a halt. Assipattle put the goose thrapple to his mouth and blew as hard as he could. When Teetgong heard the sound he galloped away like the wind, leaving his master and the six sons far behind. The speed was such that Assipattle could hardly breathe. It was almost dawn when Assipattle reached the coast where the Stoor Worm was lying. There was a dale between the hills. In the dale was a small croft house. Assipattle tethered his horse and slipped into the croft. An old woman lay in bed, snoring loudly. The fire had been rested [banked], and an iron pot stood beside it. Assipattle seized the pot. In it he placed a glowing peat from the fire. The woman did not waken as he crept quietly out of the house, but the grey cat which lay at the bottom of her bed yawned and stretched itself. Down to the shore Assipattle hurried. Far out from the land there was a dark high island, which was really the top of the Stoor Worm's head. But close to the shore a boat was rocking at anchor. A man stood up in the boat beating flukes [swinging his arms across his chest to warm himself], for it was a cold morning. Assipattle shouted to the man, "Why don't you come on shore to warm yourself?" "I would if I could", replied the man, "but the king's kamperman [seneschal} would thrash me black and blue if I left the boat." "You had better stay then," said Assipattle, "a whole skin is better than a sarkful of sore bones. As for myself, I am going to light a fire to cook limpets for my breakfast." And he began to dig a hollow in the ground for a fireplace. He dug for a minute or two, then he jumped up crying, "Gold! It must be gold! It's yellower than the corn and brighter than the sun!" When the man in the boat heard this he jumped into the water and waded ashore. He almost knocked Assipattle down, so anxious was he to see the gold. With his bare hands he scratched the earth where Assipattle had been digging. Meanwhile, Assipattle untied the painter and sprang into the boat with the pot in his hand. He was well out to sea when the man looked up from his digging and began to roar with madram [rage]. The sun appeared like a red ball over the end of the valley as Assipattle hoisted his sail and steered towards the head of the monster. When he looked behind, he could see that the king and all his men had gathered on the shore. Some of them were dancing with fury, bawling at him to come back. He paid no heed, knowing that he must reach the Stoor Worm before the creature gave his seventh yawn. The Stoor Worm's head was like a mountain and his eyes like round lochs, very deep and dark. When the sun shone in his eyes the monster wakened and began to yawn. He always gave seven long yawns, then his dreadful forked tongue shot out and seized any living thing that happened to be near. Assipattle steered close to the monster's mouth as he yawned a second time. With each yawn a vast tide of water was swept down the Stoor Worm's gullet. Assipattle and his boat were carried with it into the mighty cavern of a mouth, then down the throat, then along twisting passages like tremendous tunnels. Mile after mile he was whirled, with the water gurgling around him. At last the force of the current grew less, the water got shallower, and the boat grounded. Assipattle knew that he had only a short while before the next yawn, so he ran, as he had never run in his life, around one corner after another until he came to the Stoor Worm's liver. He could see what he was about because all the inside of the monster was lit up by meeracles [phosphorescence]. He pulled out a muckle ragger [large knife] and cut a hole in the liver. Then he took the peat out of the pail and pushed it into the hole, blowing for all he was worth to make it burst into flame. He thought the fire would never take, and had almost given up hope, when there was a tremendous blaze and the liver began to burn and sputter like a Johnsmas bonfire. When he was sure that the whole liver would soon be burning, Assipattle ran back to his boat. He ran even faster than he had done before, and he reached it just in time, for the burning liver made the Stoor Worm so ill that he retched and retched. A flood of water from the stomach caught the boat and carried it up to the monster's throat, and out of his mouth, and right to the shore, where it landed high and dry. Although Assipattle was safe and sound, no one had any thought for him, for it seemed that the end of the world had come. The king and his men, and Assipattle, and the man who had been in the boat, and the old woman, who had been wakened by the noise, and her cat, all scrambled up the hill to escape from the floods that rushed from the Stour Worm's mouth. Bigger and bigger grew the fire. Black clouds of smoke swirled from the monster's nostrils, so that the sky was filled with darkness. In his agony he shot out his forked tongue until it laid hold of a horn of the moon. But it slipped off and fell with such a tredad [violent impact] that it made a deep rift in the earth. The tide rushed into the rift between the Dane's land and Norrowa. The place where the end of the tongue fell is the Baltic Sea. The Stoor Worm twisted and turned in torment. He flung his head up to the sky, and every time it fell the whole world shook and groaned. With each fall, teeth dropped out of the vile spewing mouth. The first lot became the Orkney Islands; the next lot became the Shetland Islands; and last of all, when the Stoor Worm was nearly dead, the Faroe Islands fell with an almighty splash into the sea. In the end the monster coiled himself tightly together into a huge mass. Old folk say that the far country of Iceland is the dead body of the Stoor Worm, with the liver still blazing beneath its burning mountains. After a long while the sky cleared and the sun shone, and the people came to themselves again. On the top of the hill the king took Assipattle into his arms and called him his son. He dressed Assipattle in a crimson robe, and put the fair white hand of Gem-de-lovely into the hand of Assipattle. Then he girded the sword Sikkersnapper on Assipattle. And he said that as far as his kingdom stretched, north, south, east and west, everything belonged to the hero who had saved the land and people. A week later, Assipattle and Gem-de-lovely were married in the royal palace. Never was there such a wedding, for everyone in the kingdom was happy that the Stoor Worm would never trouble them again. All over the country there was singing and dancing. King Assipattle and Queen Gem-de-lovely were full of joy, for they loved each other so much. They had ever so many fine children; and if they are not dead, they are living yet . . . and yet - AT 300. Assipattle is a Cinderlad, a common hero in Scottish fairy tales. While Cinderella is a princess or one of the nobility that malicious ones have cast down from her proper station into a condition of squalor, Cinderlads are often the sons of poor widows and who have led a life of complete sloth, doing nothing to help towards the household expenses, idle, dirty, greedy - until suddenly they are roused and show great qualities. This Nordic-like Ashlad has no superhuman powers. |
