The Dare

How much of the world did Grandfather see? He died without ever having been to a neighbouring village. Once he said that on a particularly still August evening he had heard the bells of St Olaf's in Gresty, and that, he assured everyone, was as close as he had any wish to get. His world was delimited by the boundary stones of the parish in which he had been born. He knew that territory intimately.
Some folk, travellers far and wide, tell the tales of their voyages. By necessity, Grandfather, who was as natural a weaver of tales as ever you might meet, made his stories from the world close at hand, the place he had made his life's study. Some may see ten thousand places, but Grandfather saw ten thousand facets of that one place.
As he grew into venerable old age and became round where once he had been long and lean, he loved to gather his grandchildren, grand nephews and neices around him for storytime, but he did not limit his storytelling to young audiences.
One tale in particular he loved to recount. He used it to explain his attachment to his home in a time when more and more people were travelling the roads, roads which, when he had been a boy had been no more than tracks into the forest.
The village had been no more than two rows of houses and workshops running alongside a steep lane that went down to the river. Where football was concerned the sides of the street cleaved into two bitterly opposed teams, but otherwise the villagers lived in reasonable harmony.
From the cartwright's yard at the top of the hill to the tavern on the bend nearly at the riverbank the lane was cobbled. This gave the village an air of prosperity and progress that it little deserved and, being the gift of an old soldier rather than a reflection of wealth, the good roadway came to a sudden muddy end at exactly the place where the houses had ended a generation before. For a long time it was possible to tell where someone lived by the state of their boots.
From a young age Grandfather worked for the cartwright, an uncle of his, but often in the mornings work did not start until the older men who worked there recovered from the night before. As you know, it is only in more recent times that clocks and the terrible virtue of an early start have invaded this district.
Well, these easy mornings gave Grandfather the time to meet and get into all sorts of trouble with his friends. Village lads were a distinctive breed in those days just as they are today. He would fight and trade boasts with the other youngsters, cheek the village wives and often be chased with a broom or even a pitchfork for his efforts.
One spring day he was standing with a particular friend of his, Nobby, watching another boy, a simple lad who went by the nickname Nicely after his usual response when asked how he was doing. Nicely was struggling to move a big old pig from one sty to another and so long had he battled the great monster that the other lads were near hysterical with laughter.
'Do you two want to come and help me if you're so clever?' Nicely called finally.
'I'm a cartwright's prentice not a pigboy Nicely' Grandfather called cheerfully.
Now Nicely was not an argumentative sort but he had been sorely tried by the pig that morning, 'I 'spect' he shouted 'that you two lack the skill for moving pigs.'
Nobby looked at Grandfather and gave a great smile and a nod. Nicely's remark smacked of a dare and they both knew it. With a look back at the workshop to be sure that no work was being done there yet, they swaggered over towards the pig sties.
'I don't reckon it takes much skill to master a pig' Grandfather said.
'Well help me move this one if you can' replied Nicely breathlessly.
'Oh come on Nicely' Nobby scoffed mischievously, 'that's not much of a challenge.' Now Grandfather knew immediately that he was in trouble. He had at least to match Nobby's bravado and that kind of game had got out of hand before.
'Oh right' Nicely replied exasperated. He was still putting his back into pushing and pulling the impassive porcine, 'What kind of challenge did you pigmaster's have in mind?'
And that was it. Grandfather opened his mouth and spoke before he had given his words the slightest thought. It was a dangerous combination of youthful exuberance and one-up-manship: 'I'll ride that pig down the village as far as the mill' he said. When he had finished speaking his mouth fell open in surprise as if someone else had made him say the words.
Now Nicely laughed with such a forceful roar that the pig started and trotted forward into it's new home. His task completed and Grandfather having committed himself to surely the most foolish bet of the year so far, a broad grin took up residence on Nicely's round face. He was about to suggest that Grandfather try to ride the pig there and then when a shout came from across the street, it was the cartwright: 'Are you coming to work today boy? Or have you got something better to do?'
Grandfather turned away from Nicely and ran towards the workshop with great relief, but Nobby and Nicely had no intention of letting the challenge drop. 'Er Smudger' they called together, 'so you'll be doing the pig ride tomorrow will you?'
How Grandfather would laugh when he told this part of the story. He joyfully recalled how he had been caught by his own foolishness and how the other boys would not let him off the hook. 'They used to call me Smudger you see' he would add and then 'I couldn't back down it was a dare.'
I remember one occasion when my Mother had been standing watching Grandfather entertain us with this story. When he explained how the dare was sacred to the village boys when he was young she had interrupted to scold the old man saying 'Well it's not anymore, and none of you boys take any notice of Grandpa's saying it was once either.' With that she stalked off leaving Grandfather looking just as he must have done as a naughty little boy, the wicked smile still in his blue eyes.
Evidently such good sense as my Mother's had been in short supply when my Grandfather had been a youngster. The morning after the dare he found himself staring fearfully at the pig he had promised to ride. Nobby was next to him rubbing his hands with glee and Nicely was just making sure that his Father was indeed away in the fields.
'Somehow' Grandfather would say with a wink, 'word had got round some of the villagers that I was going to make a fool of myself riding a pig. A small crowd had gathered by the time Nicely came back. Thankfully the cartwright's was still quiet but the wheelwright, a man fond of a little sport; the carpenter, whose early mornings were often no more than a sign that he had not been to bed at all, and the brewer's wife amongst others, were all there to see me off. Or more likely to see me fall off.'
The brewer's wife appeared in other of Grandfather's stories and she could not, I think, have been much older than he. The brewer was an older man, long in the tooth Grandfather would put it, and then suggest that his wife had a not altogether respectable fondness for the village lads. On reflection, I am sure that the old man made his stories fit his audience, but I suspect that even telling the tale of the pig ride to children, mention of the brewer's energetic young wife brought a glint to his eye.
'Well, I had spent all night worrying about how I would ride that pig' the story went on. 'I had decided that I principally needed two things: a way to make the pig go and a way to make the pig stop. I had tied little clouts to my heels as spurs and brought along a stout length of rope to hold around the pig's neck. How the carpenter and the wheelwright laughed to see my equipment.'
Sometimes he would tell it that the brewer's wife brought him a mug of ale, but the inclusion of that detail depended on if his own wife, my Grandmother, was in the room at the time. If she was then the ale would feature and he would give his furious wife a cheeky wink; if she was elsewhere the ale would not usually come into the telling.'
'I remember that pig being none too pleased when I threw my leg over it and tested my weight upon its back. When Nobby came up and patted me on the back for good luck I quite forgave him his part in getting me into that mess. I was too scared to be cross.
'After watching Nicely struggle to get the pig moving the day before, I was really surprised at how easily I got it into a run. Those home-made spurs were a good deal sharper than I had thought.'
The pig obviously took off at some pace with Grandfather on its back. Fortunately for him and the course of the dare it chose to head downhill, although whether the rider's wishes had anything to do with it we shall never know.
Now a pig in full flight is a swift animal but not so swift that Grandfather could sweep down through the village unnoticed. The creature was giving loud vent to its anger and I imagine that Grandfather too was screaming from time to time. He tells it that he clung on mostly with his knees and that the piece of rope was useless from the start because almost immediately he lost hold of one end of it. I admit that I have never seen a nearly full grown boy ride a pig but he must have had one knee or both pretty much on the ground for most of the time.
Of course this is not really a story about a pig ride, or at least it was not that when Grandfather told it. It is really a story about the people and the place where the unlikely event occurred. That was usually the way with Grandfather's tales.
'The pig clattered down the cobbles, its trotters scraping and sliding and its legs threatening every moment to take off in different directions. It's eyes were wide' Grandfather would say, 'but perhaps not as wide as mine.'
In all but the shortest versions of the tale it seems as if everyone in the village was outside on that fine spring morning and not only that, but from his precarious position Grandfather noticed them all.
Standing awkwardly as was normal, the tailor watched bemused as Grandfather and the pig passed by. Now either Grandfather's father owed this knock-kneed waspish little fellow money, or he was waiting for a coat to be mended and it was long overdue. The tailor's family had long left the village by the time Grandfather was in his storytelling prime, cousins and all, so he could say what he liked.
The screams of the pig and the rider must have been heard all around the village, and laughter and shouts must have followed the action down the hill. One of Grandfather's aunts, the carpenter's wife, shouted 'Just you wait until I tell your Father' and then added as an afterthought 'You be careful you silly boy.'
To this day there is a point in the village street where the slope suddenly becomes steeper, a slight bump, but one which has nevertheless betrayed many a carter with a poorly tied load. Well a cart is one thing and a speeding pig and rider is another entirely. Both pig and Grandfather took to the air, at first together and then separately. Grandfather's more energetic tellings could demand a lot of space at this stage in the proceedings. By fortune only, for good or ill, the jockey landed back on the sow just as it too came back to earth, first finding its front feet and then it back.
The Mayor, standing ruddy-faced with his brother the brewer, made sure to say loudly that racing down the High Street was strictly prohibited, but then turned to the Captain, an old soldier and veteran of more campaigns that he could talk about at length to anyone passing within earshot, and said 'I'll wager you Captain that the boy stays on all the way to the river.'
'Shall we call it a shilling?' the Captain replied with a smile. The Mayor blanched because a shilling was a lot of money in those days, but accepted. After all a dare was a dare.
Underway again, with the bottom of the hill, the end of the cobbles and flat ground in sight, Grandfather usually told it that he passed two farmers, old boys come into the village for supplies and always wary of the oddities of "townsfolk".
'That's a fine pig' one said to the other as the boy on the pig hurtled past at full pelt.
'Yes indeed' his friend replied scratching his chin thoughtfully. Without another word they continued up the hill, the only figures on the road with their backs turned to the strange sight of the back of a boy and the backside of a pig careering towards the mill and the river.
In fact the cast of characters changed with every telling, but always but always Grandfather reserved a place in the story for the miller's daughter. 'She was a beautiful girl' he used to say, 'fair of face and strong. I had loved her since I could first remember and always blushed and fell stupidly silent when I was near her. Well imagine her surprise that morning as I came down the hill past the tavern and The House at Cobble End riding a pig so angry that it didn't know whether to keep running or stop and try to bite me.'
Sometimes Grandmother, the miller's daughter of course, if she was there, would add a comment at this stage, brief and to the point as was her way. If she wasn't there, and in particular if he was telling the tale to a group of men, Grandfather would delight in describing for them, in a roundabout way you understand, the miller's daughter's finer qualities as a woman.
'She gave me a smile I swear' he would add without fail, 'and seized by madness - it can happen when you go riding a pig - I shouted out "I love you Lilly", but I could not see her face by then because I was already speeding onwards towards the mill.'
Grandfather had a legendarily bad relationship with his Father-in-law and although no-one else would vouchsafe the origins of the feud, Grandfather always maintained that it went back to that morning of the pig ride. 'Me and the pig were upon the miller so fast that he could not get out of the way. He took a good side swipe as we turned and fell back into the millpond.I could only imagine his face because that pig was still running.'
The plan had been to stop the pig before the bridge. After all the dare had been fulfilled. The pig it seems had other ideas. 'Now I could have jumped off' Grandfather would say shaking his head and rubbing his whiskers hard, 'but how would I have told Nicely that I had lost his father's pig in the woods? So I held on.'
The pig clattered across the bridge, it was still wooden in those days, and into the fields beyond. There were well-used tracks through the crop-lands and into the coppice woods that kept the village in greenwood and timber and Grandfather knew them all. From early childhood all of the village children went across the river to play, to collect firewood and, in the right seasons, to pick wild fruit or search for mushrooms.
The pig however, perhaps crazed by its ordeal or perhaps on a quest for revenge, followed the paths only as far as the top of Taplow Hill, there it plunged into the undergrowth.
On it ran and all the while Grandfather clung grimly on. This was the only place in the story where Grandfather allowed himself to be the hero and as children we loved the actions he used to accompany his description of the ride deep into the wildwood.
'I rode that pig all day' he would say. 'And let that be a warning to you all: it is often easier to get on to a pig than off of one.'
What happened though?' would come the cries, 'What happened to you?' and 'What happened to the pig?' Grandfather lived for these questions of course and, making great pretence of resignation, he would finally settle down again to the telling and reveal all.
'I thought I'd mastered that pig in the end. She came to rest in a wide clearing. Spring flowers, blue, yellow and white carpeted the place, it was breathtaking in the evening light and there to see it, or so I thought at first, only me and that pig. It was then that I saw the lady. Slim and tall she was, beautiful with nut brown hair; she was dressed in almost nothing at all and all of that in places that covered nothing important. Yes she was beautiful but frightening too with eyes as hard as ice.
'First off she said only one word. Not to me but to the pig and it threw me off as easily as it might have shaken a raindrop off its nose. It turned and trotted back into the trees and it was home before me mind you.
'She looked me up and down and although she was the near naked one and I was clothed, I felt all exposed before her. It was as if she could see my heart and soul. Finally she spoke to me: "I can show you the path into the wide worlds and you can travel all the days of your life. You can see all the wonderful things in the world and meet people from all of its distant corners or, if you want it instead, I can show you to the path home and, taking that you will rest there, knowing only your village forever."'
Sometimes Grandfather told it that he just turned and ran away, finding the river quite by chance and following it all the way to the mill. On other occasions he took the opportunity to describe his meeting with the fey in greater detail. My favourite versions involved him telling the elf that he had fallen in love and must go home. 'You will never travel far if you reject my offer' she warns and he replies 'There's as much in my village as there is to see in the whole world I reckon, and the girl I'm going to marry too.'