"The Wrekin Giant" by Valerie Valdary Higgins

The Wrekin Giant

Once upon a time, in the town of Wellington, in what is now the county of Shropshire, England, there lived a cobbler called Tom.

A cobbler is someone who can mend shoes. In the days before anyone had thought of making shoes in factories, shoes and boots cost a lot of money. A good pair of shoes would be mended until there was more mending than there was shoe.

Not enough people lived in Wellington for Tom to make a living mending their shoes, so Tom would travel to other towns nearby. He would set up a stall at the market for people to bring him their worn out shoes. When he had collected as many worn out shoes as he could carry, Tom would take the shoes home to mend, then when they were all mended he would take them back to the market for their owners to collect.

One day he had been to market at Shrewsbury and was carrying home his pack full of worn out shoes. Tom was fit and strong, so even carrying his pack and walking on mud tracks he could walk home in about six hours. (This was before even the Roman roads had been built) He had been up before it was light to get to Shrewsbury market and now it was about an hour before sunset and Tom was looking forward to his bed. He was just thinking that he would be home before dark when he heard a loud rumbling thump, thump, thump.

Tom looked up, and up, and up.

Walking towards him was a giant. Tom took a deep breath and looked around for somewhere to hide, but it was too late. The giant had seen him.

" Hey you! Little man! I want to talk to you. " said the giant.

" How can I help you! " said Tom cautiously. He would have bowed but the giant was so big, he thought that bowing couldn't possibly make any difference and Tom was just a bit offended at the way the giant had spoken to him. The giant was called Gwericon and he was so bad tempered and grumpy that no-one had ever dared to mention that it wasn't polite to shout " Hey You! " at people.

" Tell Gwericon the way to Shrewsbury, Little Man! " said the giant.

Tom looked at the giant, Gwericon didn't look very clever and Tom didn't fancy trying to explain the track to Shrewsbury to him.

" You'll get to Shrewsbury if you just keep following the river. " said Tom. This was true, but the River Severn wound in and out a much longer way around than the track. " If you stay by the river, you'll get there eventually! "

The giant had already been following the River Severn all the way from the port of Bristol. Gwericon had set out for Shrewsbury in a towering rage after hearing that some merchants from Shrewsbury had called him a clumsy oaf when the waves he made paddling had upset their boatload of wool. Now Gwericon was tired, he had a headache and there were stones in his shoes.

" I'm going to tear Shrewsbury down and stamp it flat! " said Gwericon. " I've been walking all day. How much longer will it take me to get there? "

This worried Tom, some of his best customers were from Shrewsbury, and he didn't want the giant to hurt anyone.

" Oh, it will take you a very long time! " said Tom, thinking quickly, " I should know! I've just had to walk from there myself. "

Tom tipped out the pack of worn out shoes that he was taking home to mend. " Will you just look at all the pairs of shoes that I've worn out on the way? "

Gwericon looked at the pile of shoes and sighed. Tom held on to his hat to stop it blowing away, and hoped very hard that the giant wouldn't notice that the shoes were all different sizes.

" I don't have time to go all that way tonight. I'll just have to squish them some other time. " said Gwericon, " I just need to shake the stones out of my shoes before I go home. "

" Goodnight then! " said Tom, and he gathered up the shoes into his pack and ran for home just as fast as ever he could, because Gwericon was hopping on one leg pulling off his shoe and Tom didn't intend to be underneath him if he fell over.

It was just as well that Tom had run out of the way because Gwericon shook a mountain of stones and dirt out of each shoe. Tom heard the rumbling and ran even faster, but even so he was overtaken by such a cloud of dust that he could hardly see where he was going.

The dust settled a little and Tom looked back to see the hills of dirt and rock that Gwericon had tipped out of his shoes, outlined against the sunset.

Tom arrived home after dark and at first, none of his neighbours believed a word of his story about the giant. The next day everyone went out to see the new hills and then they had to believe Tom. They called the larger of the two hills Caer Gwericon, which in the language of Ancient Britain means Gwericon's Hill. The Romans who invaded later couldn't pronounce Gwericon so they missed off the G. The Saxon people who settled there after the Romans called themselves People of the Wroecen (in their language that was Wroecensaetna) but today people living there call themselves Friends Around The Wrekin, and tell their children the story of the Wrekin Giant.