North Yorkshire Folk Tales by Ingrid Barton Read Free Book Online

wander the wild moorland at Pilmore near Topcliffe where he lived. There he collected birds’ eggs and set snares for rabbits, as was commonly done by lads in those days, but as well as eking out the family’s food, he also liked to watch things. There was plenty to entertain him: not just dragonflies, tadpoles or frogs, but deer, foxes and badgers as well.
    One day he was lying on his front peering into a pool when a huge shadow fell across him. He looked up: it was a giant, a very big giant with only one eye.
    Jack immediately knew who he was; everyone did. His mother had warned him only that morning, ‘Don’t go on the moor, Jack, or the giant of Dalton Mill might get you!’ He had, naturally, ignored her. Now he was realising, too late, that not everything your mother tells you is rubbish.
    The giant reached down and picked up Jack as easily as if he had been a stick. Jack kicked, struggled and shouted, but, of course, no one came to help him.
    The giant carried him up hill and down dale until they came to the mill. Dalton Mill has been rebuilt several times over the years, but when the giant lived there, it was a terrible place. You could smell it from miles away, and when you got closer clouds of flies would rise up, buzzing, from its gloomy walls. You see, the giant did not mill wheat – he ground human bones. Every couple of days he went off hunting for people, dragged them back to his mill, butchered them and then ground their bones into flour. The meat he would either cook into a nasty stew, or just eat raw and dripping. The bone flour he would mix with blood and bake into loaves of bread. They were a bit on the heavy side but the giant enjoyed them. After dinner, he would lie on the floor or in his chair by the fire and sleep, his big knife clasped firmly in his hand.
    Jack thought that he was going to die as the giant strode up to his horrible mill. He was carried through the door and thrown carelessly onto the bloodstained floor. He waited, frozen with terror, for the giant to get out his famous knife, long as a scythe blade, so people said – but to his surprise the giant bent awkwardly down to him, and said ‘I’ll not eat tha if thoo’l work for me.’
    It seems that the giant was getting old and a bit rheumaticky. He found it hard to do all the things that a mill requires to keep working properly; cogs need oiling and grindstones need dressing – especially when you use them to grind bones!
    Jack grabbed the chance of survival with both hands, even if it meant that he was now the giant’s prisoner. There was only one door to the mill, which the giant always carefully locked when he went out.
    He began to learn something of the miller’s art whether he wanted to or not: there was absolutely nothing else to do and he knew better than to ignore the giant’s instructions. He also learned to make himself scarce and put his fingers in his ears when the giant brought his victims home.
    What did he eat? Don’t ask!
    The giant had a truly nasty dog called Truncheon, who was a smelly, scurvy- and flea-ridden snappy dog who delighted in making Jack’s life a misery, nipping his ankles and lifting its leg on him when he was sleeping. Jack did not dare do anything to Truncheon in revenge, because the dog was the giant’s best mate. Their eating habits were very similar; sometimes Jack felt quite sick hearing them both gobbling down their dinners, growling when one thought the other had got too close.
    Seven months – or was it seven years? – went by. Jack worked for the giant, fettling the machinery, fetching and carrying, doing an occasional mop up. He kept looking for a chance of escape but he never found one. The giant slept very lightly and that one eye was always half open.
    One day Jack was idly looking out of the window, feeling more than usually homesick and miserable. It was sunny and hot outside. The moors would be full of life, he thought, and here he was shut up away from everything. It must