Margad was left alone in the kitchen when her mistress had gone to bed, and at first she was trembling with fright; but she was a middling brave girl, and she took a notion, as there was no person to stop her, to see if all the things were true that she had heard about Old Christmas Eve.
‘They’re saying,’ she thought, ‘that the bees are coming out, an’ the three-year-old bullocks going down on their knees, an’ the myrrh coming up in bloom.’ Then she says to herself:
‘I’m thinking I’ll go out an’ watch the myrrh.’ So she put a cloak round her and crept out at the door into the cold frosty moonlit night, and midnight had just struck as she put her foot outside. She stooped to look on the spot where the myrrh root was buried, and as she was looking, the earth began to stir and to crack, and soon two little green shoots pushed up to the air. She bent closer to see what would happen, and to her great wonder the leaves and stalks grew big and strong before her eyes, and then the buds began to show, and in a few minutes the lovely white flowers were in bloom and the garden was sweet with their fragrance. Margad could do nothing but stare at them at first, but at last she dared to gather one small piece of the blossom, and she kept it for luck all her life. Then she went to the cowhouse and peeped through the door. She heard a groaning sound and there were the young bullocks on their knees, moaning, and the sweat was dropping from them. Margad knelt down, too, and put up a bit of a prayer to the Holy Child that was born in a stall. But the wonders were not over yet, for as she went silently back to the house she noticed that the bees were singing and flying round the hive—they were inside again, when she shut the door of the house behind her.
Always after that, when the neighbours would ask her if she believed in the wonders of the Old Christmas Eve, she would say:
‘I know it’s true, for I’ve seen it myself.’
THE BUGGANE OF ST. TRINIAN’S
A long time ago there came some monks to the broad, rough meadow which is between dark Greeba Mountain and the high road, and they chose a nice place and set up a church to St. Trinian on it. But they reckoned without the power of the Buggane, who had his haunt in the mountain. The Buggane was mighty angry, and he said to himself:
‘I’ll have no peace night or day with their jingling bells if I let them finish the building.’ And, as he had nothing else to do, he took it into his head to amuse himself by tossing off the roof.
So when the roof of the church was first put on, there was heard that very night a dreadful sound in it, and when the people of Greeba got up early next morning they found their church roofless, and planks and broken beams all around the place. After a time, and with great effort, the roof was put on again. But when it was on, a great storm arose in the night and it was blown down from the walls, exactly as had happened before. This fall put fear in the people, for they were sure now that it was the evil, destructive Buggane himself that was doing the mischief. But, though they were terrified, they resolved to make one more attempt; and the third roof was nearly finished.