16
This is another tale which I’ve shared throughout the land; it teaches bullies how not to behave. I hope you enjoy it. My dear friend Robert Dawson gave it to me. He informs me that he got it from travelling people.
Old Tizzy and her son Jack lived alone on a remote moorland some place in England. Jack made dolly pegs, paper flowers, baskets and brooms and Tizzy sold them. They were saving to buy a horse and wagon so that they could move away from there and go on the road. Jack’s dad had died the previous year, and since his death they’d found life much more difficult. It was such hard work carrying baskets, hawking from door to door, that Tizzy’s fingers grew stiff and painful. One day Jack said, ‘Mother, I will get a job.’
‘Oh son, I’m sure that’s a very admirable thing to say, but getting a job is harder than you think.’
‘Why mother? I’m strong and healthy, with good eyesight and can work all day long on only a plate of meal.’
‘Dear son, you’re a traveller boy. Nobody would trust you.’
‘Well, if I don’t try, then I will never know.’
He decided that after breakfast he’d go down into the nearest town and ask around to see if anyone needed a strong lad.
Butcher Brown was slicing chunks of beef when Jack enquired about work. He was delighted when the butcher looked him up and down and said, ‘Lift that pig’s carcass, sit it on your shoulder and show me how far you can carry it.’
He was very impressed with Jack when he saw how fast he worked and offered him a job. However when Jack told him he lived in a tent on the moor with his mother, the butcher said abruptly, ‘Sorry, I don’t employ travellers.’
Sadly young Jack walked off, until he came to a busy baker’s shop. The same thing happened there – he was offered a job, but when he said how he lived, he was turned away. Onto the next place, and it was the same story, they did not employ travellers.
Jack felt terrible; he couldn’t understand why people didn’t like his kind. After hours without any success, he stopped to rest on the outskirts of the town beside a large house with lots of windows and a big red door. After a while a tall man came out, leading another man by the hand. ‘Hello,’ said the tall man to Jack, ‘nice day.’
‘Yes, but I think it will be wet,’ he answered, feeling spits of rain on his face.
‘Mary,’ the tall man called back through the half open door where a tiny lady stood. ‘It’s going to rain.’
She walked back into the house and came out seconds later with a basket. ‘Thank you, Tom.’
‘It wasn’t me, it was this young man here who says it’s going to rain.’
‘Thank you, young man,’ Mary the tiny lady called out, as she hurried out to the washing green and gathered laundry off the line.
Jack smiled as Tom and his companion came over to him. ‘This is Bill, he’s blind,’ he told Jack. Both men held out their hands. Jack shook each in turn, introducing himself. They invited him to share some lunch with them. He gladly accepted, and when in the house met Mary, who had been born with rickets, leaving her with deformed legs. She told him she had difficulty walking, but did the best she could. Along with Tom, Bill and Mary there was another man called Roger who couldn’t remember things. Tom was deaf but very good at lip reading.
Jack spent the rest of the day with his new friends, who all lived together looking after themselves. They even grew their own corn. ‘You are such kind people,’ he told them as he got ready to go home. ‘I’ll visit you when I come back to the village looking for a job.’
Mary looked at her friends and said, ‘The miller needs someone.’
Bill, Tom and Roger said in unison, ‘Oh Mary, that would not be fair on Jack.’
Jack’s ears pricked up, and he asked what the miller did that was so wrong. He was simply told that the miller wasn’t a nice man.
His new friends refused to say any more, because they relied on the miller to grind their corn. Without the mill, they’d have no bread.
Jack assured them that travelling people are used to being treated unfairly. A job would mean money and a better life for Tizzy. So having said farewell, he set off with the directions to the mill in his head, and soon was knocking on the mill door.
‘I’m a strong lad who needs a job. I won’t let you down. I shall be here every day when the cock crows and leave as it roosts. Give me a job and you will not regret it.’
The miller turned Jack around and examined his muscles. Jack felt as if he was a horse for sale.
‘Be here at six o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ll give you a trial period, and at the first sign of laziness, illness or cheek you’re out the door, is that clear?’
Jack felt good as he ran off to tell Tizzy the good news – he had a job!
He left his campsite just as the sun was peeping over the horizon, and soon stood eager to take up his post as a miller’s apprentice. This sounded quite a title, but as day followed day it became all too clear that the young man did all the lifting and carrying, while his boss lay around doing nothing but shout orders. Jack hardly had time to eat his lunch, when every minute he was humping two heavy sacks of grain at a time up the long narrow steps to the threshing mill.
When the miller wasn’t trotting orders off his tongue, he did something else – he made fun of Jack’s tent and his traveller culture. But every week, for all his hard work he was paid a wage. This he proudly took home to his mother, who saved it in a leather pouch. One day that horse and wagon would be theirs, and they would be able to take the road again as all travellers long to do.
For all the constant name-calling, young Jack felt no ill-will towards the miller and refused to let his taunts bother him. After all, sticks and stones might break his bones, but words could never harm him.
Then one day, when the main milling season had begun, who should come to the mill with a barrowload of corn? None other than Tom, the tall man from the house on the edge of town with the red door. Jack rushed downstairs to carry Tom’s corn up for milling, but the miller shouted at him not to. Tom would do it himself. ‘Come on now, Tom, bring that corn up here,’ the miller whispered.
‘He’s deaf and won’t hear you. The best thing is to stand in front of him so he can read your lips,’ said Jack, pleased to help his friend. The miller sharply reminded him that Tom came every year, and he knew exactly how to treat him.
Standing in front of Tom, the miller covered his mouth and sang mockingly, ‘Tom, Tom, tell me dear, who has stolen your floppy ear? Can’t say who or can’t say when, turn around, come back again.’
Poor Tom repeatedly asked the miller what it was he was saying, because his hearing had became worse in the past year. Jack was furious, so he took Tom’s bag of corn and told him that he’d have the flour ready for him next day. The miller shouted at Jack, accusing him of spoiling his fun.
Next day it was blind Bill’s turn. He was pushing his barrow of corn with a white stick in his hand, and when the miller saw him he said, ‘Three blind mice, see how they run, eating Bill’s corn and having fun.’
Jack heard this and said, ‘Hello, Bill, is it your corn you want milled?’
Bill felt for Jack’s hand, saying, ‘Many thanks, Jack. It’s good to know you’re here.’
Taking hold of Bill’s sack of corn, Jack trudged upstairs with it. The miller shouted after him that if he spoiled his fun again, then he’d be sacked
Next day, Roger came to the mill and the same thing happened. The horrible miller made fun of him too. ‘Roger the dodger, can’t think right, sleeps in the day and works in the night.’
What a shame to see Roger standing there crying, because the miller had confused and upset him. Jack gave him Bill’s flour to take away as he’d done with Tom’s.
Next day it was tiny Mary’s turn. She could hardly push her barrow up the steps as she had been told to do by the miller. When she eventually got to the top he laughed and told her to take it back down, and then up again. ‘The grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men, he marched them up to the top of the hill and he marched them down again, hee hee. Mary has no legs, just a pair of twisted pegs, she’s too small to throw a ball, what a fool is she, hee hee.’
Although he had been ordered not to help anyone again, Jack couldn’t stand by and watch such dreadful treatment. He told Mary to collect Roger’s flour and leave her load with him. ‘I’ll bring it to the house tomorrow,’ he told her.
The miller was furious, and tore strips off Jack for spoiling his annual fun. Jack told him it wasn’t right to poke fun at people who couldn’t help being different. The angry miller replied that it wasn’t his fault they were cripples, and anyway, what harm did it do. Jack said nothing else. He thought he had better work twice as hard, or the miller might sack him.
That night, though as he shared supper with Tizzy, she asked why he’d been so quiet lately. When he told her that the miller was a cruel man because of the way he’d treated his friends, people with special needs, she smiled, patted his hand and said, ‘That miller needs to be taught a lesson!’
After supper, Tizzy put her plan into motion. The first thing she did was to sow a miniature pair of bellows into the hem of her long coat. Then, in an inner pocket of her coat she deposited handfuls of river grit. She also hid a kettle iron in another concealed pocket. The last thing to be hidden away was a piece of wood about ten inches long.
Jack was astounded to see her do this, and even when they went to bed for the night he had no idea what his mother was planning.
At breakfast he found that she had risen an hour before him. ‘Now, son,’ she said, ‘I will take your place today. The miller will think that you are sick. I will tell him that I’ll do your work for half a day, because no doubt you’ll be there in the afternoon when you’re feeling better.’
‘But mother, I’m not ill.’
‘Of course not, but the miller doesn’t know that. Listen, now what I want you to do is to go to the house with the red door and bring everyone to the mill at exactly twelve noon. The cruel miller will have learned his lesson by then.’
Jack knew the ways of his mother, and smiled as he watched her head off towards the mill. That foolish man had no idea what Tizzy had up her sleeve to cure him once and for all of his bad behaviour.
‘Hello, miller, I’m Jack’s mother. He’s not well today, but frightened that he might lose his job if he’s not here to do it. I’ll fill his boots until he comes in at twelve. He assures me he’ll be feeling better by then.’
The miller laughed at the sight of the small, thin woman and said, ‘I need bags carried up those steps which are heavier than you.’ But Tizzy had carried heavier loads than those bags, so putting her shoulder under one, she heaved it up the stairs without any problem.
The miller was impressed. He showed her what the job was, then left her to it. As he went into his office, she called out to him, ‘Will I see the ghost? I’m not staying a minute in this place if it appears to me. Folk in these parts have told me this place is haunted.’ She watched as the miller stopped dead in his tracks. He turned around with a puzzled look on his face. ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard rubbish like that,’ he said.
‘Oh, I’ve been told many times about the boy who floats around in the flour dust. People say that he can do all kinds of damage to the working wheels and threshing machinery.’ She could easily see her words were taken in by the miller. He was no fool, though, and so he laughed off her tale of woe. He strode into his office and slammed the door. It was then that Tizzy began her haunting of the mill. First, she threw a handful of river grit into the grinding wheels. The noise was dreadful: crit, grut, hork, prrrrittttit. She heard the miller’s door open, so threw in a little more grit. ‘Miller,’ she screamed, ‘what is that noise?’
He rushed into the threshing room and listened to the awful din. ‘I don’t know what it is, I’ve never heard the like of it.’ He stood and waited until the grit had travelled through the wheels and they sounded normal once more. Just as he was about leave, Tizzy pushed her heel down on the tiny bellows sown in her coat hem. Instantly, clouds of white dust floated upwards, giving an unearthly shape in the air. ‘Help,’ Tizzy screamed again, sending shivers down the miller’s spine. ‘What is that?’
Not waiting to find out, the miller ran off into his office and slammed the door. Tizzy followed on his heels. ‘Miller, you assured me that no haunting would take place in this building. But me being of the gypsy blood, I can feel that there is a ghost. Did you hear the awful sounds and see the ghostly dusts of flour?’ Before he could answer, she continued. ‘Butcher Brown told me the cause of it was the miller before you. He bullied his young helper. The poor lad couldn’t stand the treatment he got, so he threw himself into the wheels. Oh miller, do you think he’s back to haunt us?’
Again she searched his face for fear. It wasn’t long in coming, ‘I had nothing to do with that. Why would he haunt me?’
Tizzy turned the door handle and said, ‘Do you know of anyone who taunts those less fortunate than himself?’
He lied, and said no he didn’t. Then, composing himself, he ordered her to get back to work. Tizzy obeyed, but instead of going upstairs she slipped downstairs and put the piece of wood between the machines that separated husk from corn. This meant that the bags were filled with husks instead of corn – the worst thing that could possibly happen to a miller. She then ran upstairs and dropped more river grit into the machinery.
‘Miller,’ she screamed yet again, ‘listen to the noise, and what on earth is going on downstairs?’
He rushed out of his office, with the gritting and crunching going on from the stones upstairs, and went downstairs to find a chaos of husks bagged and corn spilling everywhere.
‘What is happening?’ he shouted, rushing into the room where Tizzy was blowing eerie clouds of flour from her hem, drip-feeding river grit into the millstones and looking very afraid. ‘Is he here?’ asked the miller. She’d taken the opportunity to rub flour on her cheeks as she stood shivering amid the madness of the mill, and answered, ‘Listen, miller, if the working of this place stops we will know the ghost has come back. But the question is, is he seeking revenge?’
The miller was terrified and shaking with fear as he grabbed her arm. ‘Please don’t let him get me! I don’t mean what I do, it’s just harmless fun.’
Tizzy pretended not to know what he meant. The miller was a coward. Most bullies are. She calmed him, and said, ‘It might be that the ghost has gone. You go and put the kettle on, and I’ll finish my morning work.’
It was almost twelve o’clock as she put the final touch to her plan. When he’d gone off, she took the heavy kettle iron and dropped it into the machinery. There was a crunching sound which could be heard for miles. ‘Miller,’ Tizzy really was acting now, ‘he’s here for you!’
‘No, don’t let him take me!’ The miller left his office and was bounding downstairs when Tizzy halted him. ‘Wait, miller!’ she called, ‘he’ll find you no matter where you hide. What has to be done is for you to make an apology to the people who you have wronged. Only that will stop the ghost from stealing your soul!’
At that precise moment, coming up the road were Bill, Tom, Mary, Roger and Jack. The miller rushed up to them, shaking their hands, apologising repeatedly and swearing that from then on he’d be of exemplary behaviour. While this was taking place, Tizzy slipped away unseen.
From that day on, the cruel miller was known throughout the land as a gentleman; he was good to deal with and as fair a tradesman as anyone knew for miles. Jack’s wages were doubled and his workload halved. Never again would people deal with the miller without a handshake and a smile.
I think in England today there’s an old lady with her son who travel the back roads and byways in as fine a wagon as ever there is, drawn by a thoroughbred piebald horse.