Scotland's Storybook: stories in English (1.1 - Education Scotland

AULD CROOVIE
There was once a young man called Jack who worked as a shepherd for a wicked
and greedy laird who lived in a fine castle on top of a hill. While Jack was only
paid a few copper coins every year for his services, he was a happy young man,
and he loved to lead an outdoor life protecting his flock from the foxes and wild
dogs who roamed the countryside. What money he had he shared with his old
mother, who was a very industrious woman who knitted jumpers and sock made
from the bits of wool that Jack gathered from the fields and picked from the
bushes around where the flock grazed. She would wash and card these bits of
wool and spin it into thread and then she made dye from plants in order to knit
the brightly coloured garment that she sold at the market.
Jack loved nature, and he treated every living thing with kindness, except for
the foxes and wild dogs that he chased away from the sheep. But there was one
place that Jack loved more than any other, and that was a great ring of old oak
trees that grew on top of a hill. From that hill he could see the river than ran
through the meadows and the greedy laird’s big castle on the hill opposite. He
would sit there for hours at a time, listening to the little birds that lived among
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