Let Sleeping Sea-Monsters Lie (10 page)

Then she went back for the MacCallum sheep and dropped him into the loch too.

And then she went flapping away on her enormous wings to go and look for some proper sheep because a mother’s work is never done.

As for the Scotsmen, they managed to swim ashore and to hobble home, one in his underpants, one in his vest to which a frozen frog had stuck, and one in nothing but a large leaf, and for the
rest of the year they had chilblains in places it would not be polite to mention. MacDuff’s wooden leg was lost in the water and so were all the rest of their things, which serves them right
for trying to trick a Boobrie bird. Boobries may be a little silly, but if you give them time they can always tell a Scotsman from a sheep.

This is a story about a Brollachan.

You will now want to know what a Brollachan is and I will tell you. A Brollachan is a dark, splodgy, shapeless thing. It has two red eyes, an enormous mouth and absolutely nothing else
whatsoever. A Brollachan has no bones and no stomach and no nose. It has no arms and no legs and no feet and no toes and therefore no toenails. And it has no hair. There is probably nothing with
less hair than a Brollachan.

A Brollachan, then, is just a squashy and quite frightening blob which rolls about the place. But though it has no shape of its own a Brollachan can take on the shape of things that it meets. A
Brollachan lying on a table, for example, might become table-shaped or a Brollachan looking at a round Dutch cheese could become cheese-shaped if it wished. And though it cannot really think it can
hear a little through its bulges and it can certainly feel.

The Brollachan that this story is about lived in a house beside a swampy pond with his mother, who was a Fuath. Fuaths are evil and bad-tempered fairies who live near water, so they are often
dripping wet. They look almost like ordinary ladies but if you look at them carefully you will find that there is something odd about them. Sometimes they are hollow from behind, and sometimes they
have only one nostril.

The Brollachan’s mother had a long nose with a black wart on it, whiskery ears, one frightful long tooth and webbed feet. She was a worrier and she was a nagger. She wanted the Brollachan
to be more scary and more shapeless than he was. She wanted him to lure people into the swamp by terrifying them with his vile red eyes. She wanted him to bubble disgustingly in the mud at the
bottom of the pond and she wanted him to speak.

“Say ‘Mummy’,” she would yell at him. “Go on, say it. Say ‘Mummy’.”

But the Brollachan couldn’t say “Mummy”. He couldn’t say anything. His mouth was big but he used it for eating, not for talking. So he would roll away sadly and suck in a
large turnip or a dead rat or a ham-bone and you would see them – the turnip or the rat or the ham-bone – lying inside him sort of glowing a little until they gradually became part of
the Brollachan because that is what happens to the things that Brollachans eat.

All day long the Brollachan’s mother followed him about, flapping a wet cloth at the furniture and dripping water on him.

“I don’t know what will become of you, Brollachan. Why aren’t you outside drowning someone? Why are you sitting in that bucket? Why don’t you do something with your life?
And why don’t you say ‘Mummy’?”

The Brollachan tried hard to please her. But however wide he opened his mouth, all that came out was a kind of gulp or a sort of glucking noise.

Sometimes the Brollachan’s mother invited her friends round; ladies like Black Annis who was a cannibal witch with a blue face or the Hag of the Dribble who was covered all over in grey
slime, and then she would start.

“You don’t know how I worry about him,” she would say to these ladies, prodding the Brollachan with her webbed foot as he lay politely on the floor. “I can’t sleep
for worrying about him. He’s so backward; he doesn’t even try to frighten people into fits. And he won’t say ‘Mummy’!”

“You should punish him,” said the cannibal witch, burping rudely because she always swallowed people whole and this gave her wind. “Make him kneel on dried peas – nothing
more painful than that!”

Which was not only a cruel but a silly thing to say since the Brollachan did not have any knees.

One day the Brollachan and his mother went for a walk in the forest. The Brollachan liked the forest very much. It was not wet like the swamp where he lived and the leaves felt pleasantly tickly
under his body. He stretched himself out more and more and became bush-shaped, then tree-shaped, and then just Brollachan-shaped but extra large. He felt happy and he felt free.

But the Brollachan’s mother was still talking. “Why don’t you learn the names of the trees, Brollachan?” she said. “Why don’t you at least try to give off an
evil mist? There’s a Brollachan in the next valley who has a whole village gibbering with fright every time he shows himself.
And
he can say ‘Mummy’!”

After a while the Brollachan rolled away between the trees and he rolled and he rolled and he rolled until he was quite a way from his mother.

The Brollachan’s mother did not notice this at first because she was so busy talking. “It’s all right for you,” she said. “You can’t have a stomach ache from
worrying because you haven’t got a stomach. You can’t have a headache from worrying because you haven’t got a head. You can’t – Brollachan, where are you? Brollachan,
come here at once, I’m talking to you. How dare you hide from your mother! I can see your vile red eyes behind that tree. I know you’re just pretending to be that smelly toadstool. Now
come to your mummy, Brollachan; come at once!”

But the Brollachan was a long, long way away and he was well and truly lost. He rolled on, however, until he came to a little wooden house in a clearing and because he was very tired by now, he
oozed through the crack under the door and went inside.

It was a very nice house. There was a fire in the grate and a painted stool and a rocking chair in one corner. In the rocking chair, fast asleep, sat an old man with a kind face and a long white
beard. Everything was quiet and everything was dry and the Brollachan liked it very much. And becoming more or less the shape of the hearthrug he lay down by the fire, closed his vile red eyes and
fell asleep.

He slept for one hour and he slept for two while outside in the forest his mother, the Fuath, roared about on her webbed feet, searching and scolding and calling him. Goodness knows how long he
might have gone on sleeping but just then a burning coal fell out of the fireplace and landed on one of the Brollachan’s bulges.