How Gofa sold some Meal to a Hungry Man

ONE night, after the cold-time was over, Gofa and Tig and his little brother Ban and his little sister Fearna and Sona the baby were in the hut waiting for Garff to come home from hunting. Gofa was making porridge for supper, and Tig and Fearna and Ban were waiting to have theirs, for they were hungry. By this time Gofa’s store of corn was low, and she used to put a handful or two of pounded-up acorns with the corn-meal when she made porridge or bread.

Gofa was stirring the porridge when she heard a noise outside the hut. She jumped up and snatched a club and stood ready to strike if there should be an enemy at the door. Then she called out:

“Who is there?”

“It is I, Tosgy,” said a voice outside. So Gofa laid down the club and pushed aside the stone at the doorway, and then Tosgy crept into the hut. Tosgy was not a strong man like Garff. He had had his feet frost-bitten in the cold-time, and he could not run and so he could not hunt. The people called him Tosgy because he had big teeth.

“See,” he said, “I have brought you a beautiful fox-skin—a fine one, a rare, fine one; and I beg you give me some meal for it, a little meal for my children. It is now five days, nay, six days since we have eaten bread. We have had naught to eat but the green buds and leaves that we have plucked from the trees and boiled—and oh, but they are poor stuff! There is no goodness in such food, and my little ones are ailing. I beg you take the skin and give me meal.”

Gofa took the skin and looked at it; and she said:

“My man brings me many skins as good as this one; but you shall have the meal for the little ones—mixed meal, look you, such as we have to eat ourselves. We have no better.”

Then she went to a jar that was standing beside the fire and took out a handful of baked corn and gave it to Tosgy and said:

“Munch that, while I put up the meal—it is hard fare, but thy teeth be good.”

“Ay, ay,” said Tosgy, “my teeth be good! would that my feet were as sound!” So he munched the parched corn.

Then Gofa threw some more meal into the porridge pot, and told Tig to go on stirring the porridge. And she took Tosgy’s jar which he had brought and filled it up to the brim with meal; and then she took a smaller pot and filled it up with porridge from the pot beside the fire; and gave it to Tosgy to take home to his children. And Tosgy thanked her many times and made haste to go home with the provender. As he crept out at the doorway, Gofa shouted after him:

“Mind how thou goest! Spill none, and see that my bowls are brought safe back when they are empty—which they soon will be methinks with all those hungry mouths to fill!”

Very soon after this visitor had gone, Garff came home. Gofa did not pick up a club to brain him with. She knew who was coming before he got to the hut, for she heard his whistle; and Flann his dog came to the door and whined and scratched outside. Then Garff crept in and threw down on the floor the game that he had brought home—a squirrel and two water-rats.

“Poof!” he said, “I am tired! Up hill and down dale all day long and never a sight of game. As for the deer, there is no getting near them, and what we shall do if this goes on I cannot tell. But the wolves! why, they be as bold now as ever they were in the cold-time. There were five at least prowling about a bowshot from the gate.”

“Ah!” said Gofa, “and thou all alone!”

“Nay, I was not alone,” said Garff. “Darach was with me and he let fly at one and shot it through the body—a rare long shot—and the rest, as their way is, fell upon it and pulled it down and tore it to pieces. We went round to see that the cattle be all safe within walls. I never knew the wolves so fierce save when there was snow on the ground. But the cattle be safe; that’s one good thing; the cattle be safe. Give me some of that porridge, I am hungry.”

So Gofa brought him some porridge and a bowl of milk, and he sat by the fire and ate his supper, and afterwards ate some parched corn, munching a few grains at a time, while Gofa set to work to strip the fur from the squirrel and the water-rats to make them ready for cooking the next day.

By this time Tig and the other children had gone to lie down to sleep in the part of the hut where they slept. Then Gofa told Garff about Tosgy and how he came to ask for meal.

“I fear there will be many hungry mouths among our folk,” said Garff, “before the fruits are ripe and the harvest fit to be gathered in; and with game getting so hard to kill too! I am glad thou couldst spare some meal.”

“But I shall give him back his fox-skin,” said Gofa, “for they are very poor. See now, I will tell his wife to send one of the children for it next time she is making a coat!”