The Midsummer Crown Read Online Free PDF Page B

summer to make up for the previous evening’s wind and rain.
    I thought once more of the giants, Vincent and Goram, whom legend credited with cutting the gorge using only one axe between them. The latter, the lazy, gluttonous brother, had suggested that they raise great mounds of rocks mingled with bones of the huge creatures which stalked the earth at that time. Vincent could supply the rocks, he the bones, and incidentally provide meat for their table. The axe, which Goram also used for hunting, would be tossed from one to the other as needed, preceded by a shout of warning, a system that worked well enough until one day the inevitable happened. Goram, asleep in his chair, failed to hear his brother, who was digging three miles off, call out. The axe split his skull in two and he died instantly, leaving Vincent, grief-stricken with self-blame, to devote the rest of his life to good works, amongst which were the building of the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, the raising of the ancient stone circle at Stanton Drew and even the single-handed building of the Giant’s Dance on Salisbury Plain.
    Hercules, my dog, who had accompanied me on my excursion, as he so often did, nudged me with his cold, wet nose, indicating his willingness to finish my bread and cheese for me if I really didn’t want it. As he had already demolished a large chunk of meat which Adela had thoughtfully packed for him, I ignored the suggestion and, instead, got to my feet preparatory to starting on the homeward journey.
    â€˜You’re quite right,’ I said, addressing him. ‘All this brooding on old legends and fairy stories is doing no good whatsoever. I don’t know what’s got into me lately.’
    Hercules wagged his tail in a disappointed sort of way as I crammed the last of the bread into my mouth, but was soon happy again now that we were on the move, snuffling for rabbits among the long grass. (He had never caught one and never would, but he lived in hope.) I strode out across the downs, that high plateau of grassland that shelters Bristol from the northerly winds, keeping it snug in its marshy bed from the worst of the winter weather. In the past ten years, however, since I had been a resident, the city had begun to spread its tentacles ever further beyond the walls, spawning dozens of little communities on the slopes rising towards Clifton and Westbury, so that it was no longer remarkable to encounter children escaping from harassed mothers or to meet with washing drying on wayside bushes, or even blowing about one’s ankles on windy days.
    As we descended the first of the three main slopes leading homeward, a young lad, some ten or eleven years old, toppled out of the lower branches of a birch tree, landing almost at my feet with a painful thud. Luckily, his fall was broken by a pile of small, leafy branches which he had hacked off previously and which provided a sort of mattress at the base of the trunk.
    He picked himself up, cursing, but before I could commiserate with him, a voice from overhead enquired, ‘Are you all right, Harry?’
    â€˜Of course I’m all right,’ Harry said irritably. ‘Don’ ask stupid questions.’
    Another boy of roughly the same age as the first, swung from a lower bough and dropped to the grass. Together, the pair began to gather up the birch branches which I now noticed were far too young and green to serve as firewood.
    â€˜They won’t burn,’ I remarked. ‘Your mothers won’t be pleased.’
    The second lad regarded me scornfully. ‘They bain’t fer burning, master.’ His tone was derisive.
    â€˜Naa,’ added the boy called Harry. ‘They’m fer makin’ midsummer crowns. We’m goin’ t’ sell ’em in Bristol market.’
    Of course! I had forgotten the old pagan custom of making wreaths of tender young birch twigs and crowning some local child king or queen of Midsummer Eve. It was a