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

The next morning the trow said his goodbyes and headed for the door. He
stopped and turned to Mallie and said;
‘Was that truly all the food that you had in the house? That… stuff… you gave
me, was that all that you had?’
‘Truly it was,’ said Mallie.
‘Well then,’ said the trow, ‘it takes a very special kind of person to share the
last food they have in the world with a total stranger. You have my blessings.’
And with that the trow left Mallie’s house and disappeared from view.
‘Well my boy,’ said Mallie to her oldest son, ‘we may be starving, but we may
as well be comfortable while we starve! Go and bring in some peats so that we
can be warm.’
The boy brought in a kishie full of peats and set it by the fire. Mallie picked
up a large peat and broke it in two so that it would burn easily, and as she did so
she heard a ‘ching’ on the floor. She looked down, and there was a gold coin
lying shining by her hearth.
She broke another peat, and ‘ching’, another gold coin fell from it. She broke
another, and another, and another peat and every one had a gold coin inside of
it. Mallie realised that this was the blessing that the trow had mentioned, and
she gathered up all the money and said to her oldest son, ‘Run into town, and
buy bread, and cheese and butter, oh and some ham and some tea. Oh, and
strawberry jam, do you remember jam? Run!’
And away the boy ran to buy food. Mallie and her four bairns ate like royalty,
and every peat that they broke had a gold coin in it.
Now word spread that Mallie had come into money. She had been as poor as
a church mouse, but now she had plenty of money. The old woman who lived up
the hill grew jealous.
‘A beggar woman living like a queen. Who ever heard of such a thing?’ she
muttered to herself.
‘I’ll find out her secret. Why should she have all that money? Why shouldn’t I,
a poor old woman, share in this good fortune too?’
That night the old woman sneaked silently down the hill, and she spied on
Mallie. As she peered through the window she saw Mallie break open a peat,
and a gold coin fall onto the floor.
‘So that’s her game, is it?’ muttered the old woman, and she crept back up
the hill to wait until they were asleep.
When she saw that the house was in darkness she crept back down the hill
with a kishie on her back and she stole Mallie’s peats. All night she carted peats
from Mallie’s peat stack back to her own house where she piled them by the
fire.
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