The Fairy Tale Man.
On my way home I was stopped by a man. I thought he wanted directions as you may well know from Dartford Heath one can go to many villages and small towns. Imagine my surprise when the man asked me if I knew the Fairy Tale Man. Looking the man over very carefully without appearing to be rude. I told him that there was a man that writes Fairy Tales but that he lived very quietly and is not known to many of his neighbours. “May I ask you why you want to see this man?” “I want to see him about a problem; I have I have come a long way to see him I desperately need his advice.
I decided to make myself known to this man and asked him to come with me. “Before we speak let us have a bite to eat,” I heard myself saying. The man was agreeable and I made a pot of tea and opening a tin of corned beef I quickly made a plate of sandwiches. We sat at the table and after the second cup of tea I told the man that it was I that wrote Fairy Tales. “Can you really use magic?” He next asked. “Yes I am able to use magic if it is for a good cause.” “What is it that is troubling you?” The man then told me this story.
“I own a large farm; you could say a dairy farm. I have a stock of cows and calves over two hundred. My produce is milk, cheese, yoghurt and eggs from free running chickens.” “It sounds as if you are indeed a rich man; how may I help you? I said. “Rich yes, but I am a Farmer not for riches but to help people my farm produce is the cheapest in the county and this is where I need help.” “Another Farmer that owns an even bigger farm than I has got the help of a powerful Wizard who is making my cows ill my calves have gone off their feed and what’s more my milk is turned sour on its way to the Dairy. The shells of my eggs are so thin that they break as I take them from the nests. Have you a spell that can break this Wizards power.” I wanted to help the Farmer he appeared to be an honest man and it must be heartbreaking for everything to go wrong. I said I would help him.
“Have you got a photo of this Wizard,” I asked. “Yes came the answer and the man showed me a picture that could have come direct from a children’s pantomime. The Wizard was dressed in a black robe, on his head a pointed cap. The cap and the robe were covered in stars with a rising new moon on the cap. Taking from the shelf my piece of broken magic mirror given to me by Her Majesty Queen Feeanna to see what has happened in the past. I placed the picture so that it reflected from the broken mirror. Pictures appeared in the mirror the wizard stood stirring some mixture in a big iron cauldron. Every now and then he took various herbs and threw them into the cauldron. The picture changed the wizard was now to be seen carrying the cauldron to a spreader. He poured the mixture that I now saw was green into the spreader and went on his way. A picture appeared of the Farmer that was sitting at my kitchen table. The farmer hitched the spreader to a tractor and proceeded to spray his fields. Unknowingly the Farmer had spread the mixture onto his own fields, later pictures of cows wandering over the fields eating the grass. Other pictures showed the Farmer cutting fields of hay for the winter all of the fields the Farmer had spread with mixtures from the Wizard.
No wonder that the cows were giving sour milk and that the free running chickens were delivering eggs with very thin shells. The Wizard was a menace. The last picture to be shown was of another man giving the Wizard money. The Farmer at my kitchen table recognised the man. “Why that is my Neighbour, he has been paying the Wizard to damage my crops of hay. This is the advice I gave the Farmer. Go home and use the spreader if you have a Shire horse let the horse pull the spreader and spread whatever mixture is in your spreader on the fields of your neighbour let him suffer that what you have had to put up with, do not use your tractor as this would alert the Farmer and he would come to see what you were doing on his fields. As for the Wizard throw this gold piece that I will give you so that he and only he will pick it up. The man is greedy and is using magic spells to earn money this must be stopped. I gave the man one of my gold coins that I keep for such purposes and walked with him down to the railway station. “As soon as the Wizard picks up this gold coin he will disappear. Do not look for him you will not find him. He will disappear for ever and you will be able to run your farm as before without his wicked schemes to ruin you. The other Farmer will get exactly the same treatment as you have been having. Return home and be happy and you have never met me forget that I ever existed,” were my parting words. Bern