The Tall Tale Of Ramm Hammersen -Part One

There was once a very clumsy boy named Ramm Hammersen who, because he was an orphan, lived with his wicked aunt Inga and his three cruel cousins Greta, Gerda and Grunhilda.
Whatever Ramm Hammerson touched he always broke. Give him a broom to sweep with and it would get snapped in two, ask him to hammer a nail into a piece of wood and he would end up hammering a hole through the wood.
"Ramm Hammersen", his aunt would always scold him whenever he broke something, "What an incompetent boy you are. You'll never ammount to anything".
And his three cruel cousins would laugh and jeer at him, "What an oaf you are, Ramm. Why the animals on mamas farm are smarter than you".
And because Ramm Hammersen believed what his Aunt and his cousins said he never challenged them.
"It must be true", he thought to himself, "I must be an idiot and thats why my Aunt and my three cousins are so cruel to me".
And they were terribly cruel to him, not just in the things they said but in how they treated him.
Whenever Ram Hammersen broke something, his Aunt Inga would thrash him with a broom and she wouldn't let him sleep in the house but made him sleep in her stable because, she said, he belonged with the animals.
And his three cousins would kick him and shove him and jab him and pull his hair too and, because he thought he deserved this rough treatment, he never fought back.
One day however, his wicked Aunt was beating her carthorse with a whip when the carthorse reared up and tipped over the cart ontop of her.
Her three daughters started to panic but she shouted to them,
"Fetch Ramm from the stable".
"Ramm?", asked his neices, "But what can he do to help? He's just an oaf".
But their mother got angry with them.
"Just get him", she yelled.
And so the neices ran to fetch Ramm and when he came, his Aunt told him to lift up the cart.
"Lift up the cart?", asked Ramm, bewildered and frightened, "How can I lift up the cart? Its too big for me to lift".
And her three daughters all thought that their mother had gone mad.
"How can Ramm lift the cart, mother?", the eldest asked, "Surely we should fetch help from the men in the village".
But then, sighing, his Aunt Inga confessed that she had lied to Ramm Hammersen all his life, that he was not clumsy at all but just incredibly strong.
"You can lift up the cart", she said, "Try it and you'll see".
And so Ramm took hold of the side of the cart with his hands and lifted and then, to his amazement and the amazement of his three cousins, he lifted the entire cart over his head before laying it to one side.
But then, after Ramm Hammersen had carried his Aunt inside the house she told him more that she had been concealing from him.
"One day, when your mother and I were young women", she said, "A strange man came to the farm; a young man who was incredibly handsome. He worked as a farmhand for us but he could have been a god or an angel because his beauty was so radiant. I and your mother were both very much in love with him; in awe of him almost but he chose her and not me to love and I was jealous. I said to him, "Why? Why her and not me. I could love you just aswell as she" but all he could think of was my sister Agnetha. Then one day, our farmhand disappeared. No one ever knew where he went but, soon afterwards, Agnetha became pregnant and then you were born and you looked just like him. I could not bear the sight of you for you were a constant reminder to me that the stranger had picked Agnetha and not me and then, one day, while my sister was taking grain from the big silo, I pushed her into it and, falling into the grain she suffocated. She called out to me, "Inga, help me, please. I love you" but I did not love her. I hated her and so I left her there to die then, when the village doctor came to tell me that you had remarkable strength, not like a human but like a Samson, I decided that I would never let you or anyone discover how special you were, infact I married the old doctor just to prevent him from telling anyone about you and had him write out a certificate that said you were slow and backward so I could keep you on the farm and wouldn't have to send you to school. Then I had three daughters with him and he died and that is all there is to know".
And not long afterwards, because of the injury she had recieved from the cart falling upon her, Ramm Hammersens Aunt died.
After her death however, Ramms three cousins began to look at Ramm differently.
Now that they knew he was so strong and that his father had been someone magical, suddenly all three cousins started to fall in love with him.
Instead of making him sleep in the stable they prepared a room in the house for him and one by one they came to him, bringing him gifts and trying to win his affections.
"I am sorry we were so mean to you", said Greta, bringing him a cake she had baked for him, "It was our mothers fault. She told us to be that way to you but I always secretly felt bad whenever we bullied you. I always liked you and now I know how very special you are. You do forgive me don't you, Ramm?".
But then, when Greta tried to kiss Ramm, he pulled away from her, quite shocked by it.
"Perhaps you prefer one of my sisters to me", she said to him, sounding jealous just the way his aunt had, "Is it Gerda that you like or Grunhilda?".
But Ramm did not like any of them.
Inspite of their attempts to cajole him, flatter him, bribe him and seduce him he could only think of them as the three girls who, with their aunt, had tormented him and so, just to get away from them, he declared one day that he was going to leave and seek his fortune in the world.
Frightened that he would go away and never come back just as his father had, his three cousins conspired to keep him there.
Asking him to stay just one more night at the farm so that they could prepare a big feast for him and have a going away party, they cooked a meal for him that was drugged and when he woke up the next day he was lying in bed in chains and shackles.
But then, remembering how strong he was, he easily pulled apart his chains as if they were made of nothing but paper then, so as to avoid running into his cousins, he climbed out of the window of his room and ran off.
Infact he ran all the way to the nearby village 5 miles away but he reached it in less than half an hour.
Ofcourse when his three cousins discovered that he had escaped, they hitched their carriage to their fastest pair of horses and rode as quckly as they could towards the town, Greta clutching their mothers medical certficate that proved Ram was 'mentally deficient' and gave them legal custody over him.
"We'll say he's run away but that he can't survive on his own and is legally in our care. Then the police will arrest him", she said to her sisters.
While Ramm was in the village however, he came across a travelling circus and, outside one of the circus tents was a strong man lifting a large dumbell over his head and seeing this gave him an idea.
"Excuse me", he asked the strongman, "But could you tell me how I could get a job like yours. I'm very strong".
The Circus strongman laughed because Ramm did not look like someone who was incredibly strong; he did not have bulging muscles or a barrel chest but then the strong man handed him the dumbbells he had been lifting.
"Can you lift this?", asked the Strongman.
To his astonishment, Ramm took hold of the dumbell as easily as someone being handed a wooden walking stick and then he twirled the dumbell round just like a walking stick, threw it up in the air and caught it again.
And seeing this, the Circus strongman, whos name was Stromboli took Ramm to see the Ringmaster who owned the circus, a man named Kopperberg and after performing the same trick for the Ringmaster, he arranged a contest under the big top between Ramm and Stromboli.
"If you can beat Stromboli in a contest of strength", said Kopperberg to him, "Then you can be my new strongman".
And so, infront of all the spectators under the big top, Ramm and Stromboli competed to see who was stronger.
First, Stromboli took an iron bar and, bending it, he twisted the bar into a knot.
But then Ramm, picking up an empty circus cage of Iron bars crushed it down to the size of a jewel box.
So then Stromboli picked up a baby elephant and held it above his head.
And so Ramm picked up two full grown elephants, one in either hand and lifted them over his.
Finally, Stromboli taking hold of a chain that was attached to a circus wagon, swung the wagon round and round the big top.
So then Ramm took hold of the chain and swung the wagon round and round aswell but then, when he had built up a great momentum, he hurled the wagon up in the air and it went crashing through the roof of the big top, tearing a large hole in it and, though everyone in the bigtop waited for it to, it never came down.
And, after seeing this amazing feat of strength, Kopperberg declared that Ramm had won the contest and was his new strongman.
But then, into the tent came Ramms three cousins with a policeman.
"There he is, sargeant", said Greta to the policeman pointing to Ramm, "There is our cousin. He must have run away and tried to join the circus but he really is an imbecile and should be in our care for his own safety".
But when the seargent attempted to arrest Ramm, Kopperberg, because he didn't want to lose a circus act with such an amazing talent, stepped forwards and said,
"Now wait a minute Sargeant. I'm an incredibly wealthy businessman who has a vested interest in keeping hold of this talented young man. Can't we come to some sort of arrangement, some way we can both settle this amicably".
And because the Sargeant, a man named Bjorn Bjorgen, was a poorly paid, petty official, he happily accepted a bribe and, when Ramms three cousins protested, arrested them instead for causing a public disturbance.
Then, to avoid the possibility of further problems with either Ramms Cousins or the the police Sargeant, that night Kopperberg and his circus packed up and moved to another town.
While Ramms three cousins were sitting in a police jail cell however, wondering what to do next, Stromboli, because he was angry about losing his job to Ramm, fixed a chain to the barred window of the cell and, simply by pulling upon it, pulled down the wall helping the three sisters to escape.
"Since your cousin took away my job as Kopperbergs strongman I am now without a source of income", he said, "But if you pay me, I will help to get him back for you".
Things for Ramm had never looked so bright. For the first time, with the other acts of the travelling circus, he felt as if he had finally found a family.
But then, sadly, he started to attract the affections of several of the female circus acts. A tightrope walker, a tumbling acrobat and the assistant of a knife thrower, even the wife of Kopperberg himself which angered the Ringmaster so much that one day he decided to get rid of Ramm by locking him in a cage full of ferocious Circus lions.
But then, trying to escape, Ram bent apart the bars of the cage and not only did he get out but he let all the lions out that then started to rampage around the circus.
Realising that he couldn't stay with the circus anymore Ramm took advantage of the chaos and confusion caused by the lions to run away.
Infact he escaped upon the back of an elephant and when the elephant got tired he carried it upon his shoulders .
After he had been travelling for several hours however, he came to a road along which a batallion of swedish soldiers were marching.
"Excuse me", he asked one of the soldiers, "If you don't mind me asking, where are you marching to".
The soldier wasn't sure exactly who they were marching to fight against and had to ask the other soldiers in his batallion wether it was the Danes or the Norwegians, the Russians, the Germans or the Poles but finally he got an answer from one of the soldiers further down the marching line that it was the Russians they were fighting and, because Ramm had never seen a Russian before he asked if he could go with them.
When they finally reached the field of battle however, the general, a man called Gunder Gundersen who was leading the troops realised that they had forgotten to bring any gunpowder for their cannons.
"But how are we supposed to fight the russians without cannons?", asked his lieutenant general.
Then, however, Ram Hammersen, offering to help, started to pick up cannon balls and hurl them at the Russian guns and each time he struck one of the Russian cannons he hit it with such force that it caused it to explode.
Unfortunately, then the Russians brought forward their secret weapon; a cannon that was half a mile long and half a mile wide, nicknamed "Ivan The Terrible" and the soldiers of the swedish army, looking at the enormous weapon started to tremble with terror.
Just as it was about to fire, however, Ramm picked up a cannonball and hurled it so that it hit the side of the giant cannon causing it to spin around and face the Russian side and when the cannon fired it was the Russian side that was blown to splinters like so many wooden soldiers.
Then, seeing the Russian army turn and flee, the Swedes cheered for Ramm Hammersen and ordering him to come forward, the General awarded him a medal for service to his country.
As the swedish army was marching back in the direction of Stockholm however they stopped and camped one night near to the edge of lake Storsjon and while they were encamped there three Bridgettine Nuns and a Jesuit priest turned up to minister to the spiritual needs of any catholic soldiers and entering the camp lit thuribles that, as they waved them around released an incense that put all the soldiers to sleep.
Then picking up a sleeping Ramm Hammersen they carried him off, placing him on a boat and rowing it out over lake Storsjon.