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

MALLIE AND THE TROW
Mallie and her husband Robbie lived in a small croft in Shetland with their four
young bairns (children). Robbie was a sailor who would sign on ships for a few
months in the summer, but return home for the winter bringing with him
enough money to live on. They would buy enough barley flour to fill the meal
girnal (a wooden chest used for storing flour) and a barrel of pickled herrings to
see them through the cold winter months. But one year Robbie never returned
to Mallie and the bairns and it was feared that he had been lost in a shipwreck
or through disease on board his ship. Nobody knew, but Robbie never returned
home again. Mallie had four hungry bairns to feed, and no money coming in.
She got bits of jobs here and there, making dresses and repairing clothes, but it
was scarcely enough to put food on the table, and her bairns were crying with
hunger. She could bear it no longer, and swallowing her pride she took a staff in
her hand and put a straw basket called a kishie on her back and she set off with
her four bairns to beg for food.
They went to an old woman who lived up the hill, and who was known to
have plenty of food and drink for herself. Mallie knocked on the door, which the
old woman opened and peered suspiciously outside.
‘Who’s there?’ demanded the old woman.
‘It’s me, Mallie, and my four bairns. We are hungry; we have no food. Would
you be kind enough to spare a mouthful of something for us, as without it I
don’t know what will happen to us?’
The old woman’s face twisted into a look of horror, and she replied, ‘I’m an
old woman, and I have no food to spare for the likes of you!’ Then she slammed
the door in Mallie’s face.
As they walked back down the hill the oldest boy’s blood boiled with rage.
‘Did you see that, mother?’ he shouted, ‘Did you see what was in that old
woman’s cupboard? It was full of bread, cheese, butter, meat, puddings and all
sorts of food, far more than she could ever eat, and yet she wouldn’t give us so
much as a crumb! How could she do that to us?’
‘Well son,’ said Mallie calmly, ‘that is just her way. Some people share and
others do not. But remember this son, we are better than that, for while we may
have nothing, we will always share what we have.’
And they walked home sadly to their empty house.
The youngest bairns were crying with hunger, so Mallie tucked them up in
their warm bed to sleep. At least sleep would make them forget their misery.
Mallie made up the fire and returned to her sewing. Suddenly there was a knock
at the door. ‘It is late at night, so who could be calling at this hour?’ wondered
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