The Tale of the Fine Legs – by Rab Swannock Fulton
There was a great grand aunt of my mother who had a neighbour that gave birth to a boy eighty years ago or so, that they called Deibhlin after his maternal grandfather. It was said by everybody who saw the newborn child that he had fine legs on him and clever too. And so it proved. Deibhlin grew to be a handsome child, with a bloom on his cheek and a sparkle in his eye, and the legs on him were as strong as the legs of a horse. The child though was given to squalls of impetuosity heeding neither advice nor warning – and devil take anyone that tried to dissuade him from going his own way.
Fortunately, the legs on the lad were as fine and as clever as ever. If the tide was coming up the way, the legs refused to go swimming. Nor would they go running in a field after a rainstorm had made mud deep enough to swallow a calf. Deibhlin had good strong legs and clever, and everybody agreed that when the rest of him grew to match his legs he would be a fine man, and clever also.
Now, the boy had a deadly fascination for a hill two miles behind the farm he lived on, and it was his mother’s fear that the child’s curiosity would prove stronger than the cleverness of his legs. From the moment he was finished weaning the child was warned that the hill belonged to the fairy folk who lived in the valley behind it. 'Fairies', his mother said, 'like to steal children who wander into their territory, never to let them go home again'. For most of his childhood, the fear of the fairies was enough to keep Deibhlin straying, but the wonder of the fairies meant his eyes were always stealing glances at the forbidden hill.
But far worse than the child’s fascination for the fairy hill, was his terrible compulsion for rubbish and his legs, on this, seemed to be in perfect agreement with the boy. He could not pass a bin nor a skip nor a ditch filled with broken bits of spades or ploughs, without jumping right in. Not a day would pass without him bringing the dirtiest things home with him, declaring a bent penny was a medal, a sheep’s leg bone evidence of man-eating cannibals, a rusty washer a magic ring with incredible powers. His mother would stand before him, the face red on her, warning him about the danger of bins; of injuries to be had and diseases suffered and the terrible savagery of germs that lurked beneath rubbish.
By the time he was nine years of age the child had managed to curtail his need to intrude into rubbish, but his interest in the fairy hill was more powerful than ever. The child in him wanted to see the fairies just once; the man in him was determined to prove there was no such thing. Both parts though held no fear for the Good Folk, and together they created an awful and foolish passion in the breast of the child.
The day before his tenth birthday Deibhlin found himself all alone in his home. His father was out tending the cows, his mother and sister were in town selling eggs. Deibhlin himself had a list of jobs he to do around the farm but he did not do them. Instead he took some cheese, bread and an apple and wrapped them in a cloth, filled a bottle with water, then put the food and drink in his satchel, opened the front door and headed off towards the hill.
He walked for hours, and the sun came up bright and strong. By the time he came to the hill the day was as hot as the Devil's furnace. Half way up Deibhlin was so tired and hungry that he ate all his food. Three quarters of the way up and the thirst on him was so strong that he drank all his water in one big gulp.
At times he doubted he would ever get to the top of the hill, but whilst he himself was weak, his legs were as strong and as sure as ever, marching up and up without any hint of hesitation till finally Deibhlin was at the very summit. Well did the child not cry out in joy when he saw the valley below him. From one end to another it was filled with the most wondrous of wonders. In heaps and mounds as far as the eye could see was the most marvellous amount of rubbish ever seen. It was a cornucopia of bottles, toasters, tyres, dead cows, rotten turnips, half eaten seagulls, mouldy chunks of old ham.
There were things that he could not recognised, some sharp and hard, others oozing and dripping. The scent by itself would have killed an elephant stone dead. But to Deibhlin the stench was as sweet as the fragrance of summer flowers given to a maiden by a handsome prince.
Now you or I would have ran from that place as fast as we could. We would have scrubbed ourselves clean in the hottest bath ever, and avoided rubbish for the rest of our lives. But not so young Deibhlin. Oh no. He ran down the other side of the hill whooping at the top of his voice, the noise of him disturbing the rats and the flies that squealed and buzzed around the endless heaps of waste.
Deibhlin forgot his thirst and his hunger and his exhaustion. With the big fine legs on him he could scrambled up one heap that was as tall as a tower in a magical tale, and leapt from it to another many feet and yards distant. Next he imagined he was Sinbad searching for hidden treasure, then a knight seeking a dragon’s lair. For a whole hour he was a wizard who, with one wave of his wand, could – if he chose - transform ever broken wheel, pot, sheep skull, fly festooned pile of dung into diamonds and rubies. Other times, when the heap under his feet swayed from side to side, Deibhlin imagined he was one of the fishermen his father had told him about, out battling the Atlantic swell to bring home cod and mackerel.
However, as he played in the rubbish there was one thing he did not notice. Germs. Germs everywhere. Millions and billions of them. They lived in the broken bottles and bones, kept warm in the skin of the rats, fed on the mouldy meat and flew about on the backs of flies. An invisible army of them crawled down Deibhlin’s mouth and up Deibhlin’s nose. Deibhlin stomach grumbled a little and he felt slightly queasy for a moment, but thought nothing of it, thinking he was getting hungry again.
What he did not know was that the good germs in his belly were fighting a terrible war against the invading bad germs. It was a hard battle, and the good germs almost won. However, Deibhlin was also covered in scratches from tins and bottles and broken plates.Battalions of germs scrambled over these cuts and scraps in Deibhlin’s skin and spread deeper and deeper into his body.
It was late in the afternoon when Deibhlin’s mother found him. Somehow his legs had managed to get him back up the hill and down the other side. But now his body was turning blue in some parts, and yellow or red in others. He was soaked in sweat and burning hot. His mother carried him home on her back, got him into the house, and sent the daughter out to the next farm to telephone the doctor.
It was night time before the doctor came by, and by then Deibhlin’s face had turned black and his fingernails had fallen off. ‘The blood is poisoned in him’ declared the doctor. ‘Is there nothing we can do?’ wept the mother. ‘Prayers,’ said the good physician, ‘Prayers and perhaps an amputation or two.’
It seemed to the doctor that the most poisoned part of the body was the legs, and that the removal of them might – just might – give Deibhlin a chance of surviving through the night. The father went to fetch his toolbox, the mother began boiling water and looking out clean rags, whilst the daughter was sent to fetch a priest with a thirst. Within an hour all was ready. The father had taken his best tools from out of the attic and laid them – the saw and axe and chisel – on a chair beside the kitchen table. A priest had arrived and was praying with a mighty fervour whilst sipping the whiskey that had ensured his hasty arrival.
In the pots on the stove the boiling water spat and bubbled. The doctor had taken off his coat and shirt and wrapped a big towel round himself to keep the blood from him. Daughter and mother stood ready with clean cloth strips for bandages. The child and his big fine legs were put up on to the kitchen table and tied there with a strong rope, and then the gruesome deed was done.
The kitchen was crimson with blood, but the boy survived. Within an hour the blackness had gone from his features. Even the legs in the milking bucket looked healthier having lost all the bad blood in them. The priest gave thanks to God and left, taking the last of the whiskey with him for companionship. The doctor toted up how much he was owed for his services and handed over his bill.
‘Are you sure?’ asked father, ‘it seems incredibly steep, seeing as it was my saw and chisel and axe you used.’
But the doctor was adamant that the price could not be altered. ‘I’ve charged you as little as I could already’, he said, ‘knowing you’ll need every spare penny from now on to pay for the boys medicine and up keep.’
‘Medicine?!’ declared the mother.
‘Upkeep?!’, declared the father.
‘Just so,’ said the doctor, scribbling another list of words and figures, ‘He’ll be needing all these to stop the wounds going septic, and all these to build up his strength after the wounds are healed. You'll be needing every penny you have to care for the boy.’
‘The devil I will!’ cried Deibhlin's father, ‘The best part of that boy was the legs on him. And it’s the legs alone I’ll be keeping.’ And with that he threw the doctor out into the night, and then threw Deibhlin right out on top of him. But the doctor was not shy and hammered the door whilst shouting about getting the Law and the Child Cruelty Board onto the family. Deibhlin's mother opened the door and apologised saying it was the stress that had affected father. She paid the bill, thanked the doctor for his attendance, and took young Deibhlin back inside.
But that was not the end of the story. A few hours later, just before dawn, mother and father tiptoed out the house carrying Deibhlin in a flour sack. They took him up the hill and over the other side, and dumped him down amongst all the rubbish there. ‘He’ll be happier here,’ declared mother, ‘And we still have the legs at home to comfort us.’
Father nodded in agreement. ‘And damn fine legs they are too,’ he said.
And mother, father, daughter and the two fine legs all lived happily ever after.