The Lad Of The Gad

The music did not please the Champion. He caught the harps, and he crushed them under his feet, and he set them on the fire, and made himself a warming, and a sound warming, at them.

Donald took lofty rage that a man had come into his court who should do the like of this to the harps.

“My good man, Donald,” said the slim, swarthy Champion, “I will not believe but that you are taking anger.”

“Well, then, I am,” said Donald, “if I did but know at what I should be angry.”

“It was no harder for me to break your harps than to make them again,” said the Champion. And he seized the fill of his two palms of the ashes, and squeezed them, and made all the harpers their harps and a great harp for himself.

“Let us hear your music,” said Donald. The Champion began to play.

He could play tunes with wings,

Trampling things, tightened strings,

Warriors, heroes, and ghosts on their feet,

Goblins and spectres, sickness and fever,

That set in sound lasting sleep

The whole great world

With the sweetness of the calming tunes

That Champion could play.

“You are melodious, o Champion,” said the king. And he and his harpers took anger and rage that such an unseemly stripling, with two shoulders through his coat, two ears through his hat, two squat kickering tattery shoes full of cold roadwayish water, three feet of his sword sideways on the side of his haunch, after the scabbard was ended, should come to the town and play music as well as they.

“I am going,” said the Champion.

“If you should stir,” said the king, “I should make a sharp sour shrinking for you with this plough in my hand.”

The Champion leapt on the point of his pins, and he went over top and turret of court and city of Donald.

And Donald threw the plough that was in his hand, and he slew four and then twenty of his own people.

Well, what should the Champion meet but the tracking-lad of Donald, and he said to him, “Here’s a little grey weed for you. And go in and rub it on the mouths of the four and then the twenty that were killed by the plough, and bring them back alive again, and earn for yourself from King Donald twenty calving cows. And look behind you when you part from me.”

And when the tracking-lad did this, and looked, he saw the slim, swarthy Champion thirteen miles off on a hillside already.

He moved as a wave from a wave

And marbles from marbles,

As a wild winter wind,

Sightly and swiftly singing

Right proudly,

Through glens and high tops

And made no stops

Until he reached the town

Of John, the South Earl.

He struck the latch. Said John, the South Earl, “Who’s that in the door?”

“I am Dust, son of Dust,” said the Champion.

“Let in Dust of Dust,” said John, the South Earl. “No one must be in my door without entering.”

They let him in.

“What can you do, Dust of Dust?” said the South Earl.

“There was a time when I could play a juggle,” said the Champion.

“What is the trick you can do, Dust of Dust?” said the South Earl.

“Well,” said the Champion, “There was a time when I could put three straws on the back of my fist and blow them off.”

And he put three straws on the back of his fist, and blew them off.

“Well,” said the Earl’s big son, “if that is a juggle, then I can do no worse than you.”

“Do so,” said the Champion.

And the big son of the South Earl put three straws on his fist, and the Champion blew them off, and the fist with them.

“You are sore, and you will be sore,” said the Earl. “My blessing on the hand that hurt you. And what is the next trick you can do, Dust of Dust?”

“I will do other juggles for you,” said the Champion. And he took hold of his own ear, and lifted it from his cheek, bobbed it on the ground and back again.

“I could do that,” said the middle son of the Earl.

“I shall do it for you,” said the Champion. And he gave a pull at the son’s ear, and the head came away with it.

“I see that the juggling of this night is with you,” said John, the South Earl.

Then the Champion went and set a great ladder against the moon, and in one part of it he put a hound and a hare, and in another part of it he put a man and a woman. And they are alive there till now.

“That is a great trick,” said the Earl.

“And I can not do that trick,” said the Earl’s little son.

“It is a great trick and a juggle,” said the Champion, “and it is not you that can do it.”

“Then what will you do now?” said the Earl.

“I am going away,” said the Champion.

“You will not leave my set of sons,” said the Earl.

But the Champion leapt on the point of his pins, and he went over turret and top of court and town, till he met a man threshing in a barn.

“I will make you a free man for your life,” said the Champion. “There are two of your master’s sons, one with his fist off, one with his head off. Go there and put them on again.”

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