The Farmer of Liddesdale

In Liddesdale, in Morven, there was a farmer who suffered terrible losses in a single year. First his wife and children died, and soon afterwards his ploughman left him. The hiring fairs were over by then, so there was no way to find another man. When spring came and his neighbours began ploughing, he had no one to hold the plough and did not know what to do. The days slipped by, and he grew more and more impatient, until at last, in a fit of temper, he told himself he would hire the first man who came along, whoever he might be.

Not long afterwards a man came to the house. The farmer met him at the door and asked where he was going and what he was looking for. The man said he was a ploughman looking for work.

“I need a ploughman,” said the farmer, “and if we can agree on wages, I’ll take you on. What do you want from today until the harvest is in?”

“Only as much of the corn, once it is dry, as I can carry away in one burden-rope of twisted twigs.”

“You shall have it,” said the farmer, and they made the bargain.

Next morning the farmer took the ploughman out to show him the fields to be ploughed. Before they went back, the ploughman went into the wood, cut three stakes, and set one at the head of each field. Then he said to the farmer, “I’ll do the work alone from now on. You needn’t worry about the ploughing any more.” With that he went home and did nothing for the rest of the day.

The next day he did nothing either, and the day after that. When this had gone on for a good while, the farmer told him it was time to start, because spring was slipping away and the neighbours were half finished.

“Oh, our land isn’t ready yet,” said the ploughman.

“How can you tell?”

“Oh, I know it by the stakes.”

If the delay puzzled the farmer, this answer puzzled him even more, and he made up his mind to watch the man. He got up early the next morning and saw the ploughman walk to the first field, pull the stake out of the ground and hold it to his nose. He shook his head and pushed the stake back in. Then he went to the other fields, sniffed the other stakes, shook his head and went home. At dusk he went out a second time, sniffed the stakes, shook his head, put them back and went home.

The next morning he went out a third time. At the first field he pulled out the stake and held it to his nose as before, but this time he flung it away and ran for the farm buildings as fast as he could go. He fetched the horses, the twig ropes and the plough, and when he got to the end of the first field, he drove the plough into the ground and cried:

“My horses and my leather traces, and lively lads,
The earth is coming up!”

Then he started ploughing and kept at it all day at a tremendous pace, and before the sun went down there was not a palm’s breadth of the three fields that he had not ploughed, sown and harrowed. The farmer was delighted, because his work was finished as soon as his neighbours’.

The ploughman was quick and willing to do whatever he was asked, and he and the farmer got on well until harvest. One day after the reaping was done, the farmer said he thought the corn was dry enough to bring in. The ploughman tested a sheaf or two and said it was not dry yet. But a little later he said it was ready.

“If it is,” said the farmer, “we had better start bringing it in.”

“Not until I have taken my share,” said the ploughman.

He went off to the wood and soon came back with a long rope of scraped, twisted twigs. He stretched it out on the field and began loading corn onto it, sheaf after sheaf, until he had taken nearly every sheaf in the field. The farmer asked him what he meant by it.

“You promised me as my wages as much corn as I could carry in one burden-rope,” said the ploughman, drawing the rope tight, “and here it is.”

The farmer saw that the ploughman would ruin him, and he said:

“It was in the Mart I sowed,
It was in the Mart I baked,
It was in the Mart I harrowed.
You who have ordained the three Marts,
Do not let my share go in one burden-rope.”

At once the rope snapped with a loud crack that echoed back from every rock far and near. The corn spread out over the field, and the ploughman rose away into the sky in a white mist and was seen no more.

Where this tale comes from

Joseph Jacobs took “The Farmer of Liddesdale” for More Celtic Fairy Tales from MacDougal’s collection in Waifs and Strays, volume III. He compares Campbell’s “The Master and the Man” in West Highland Tales.

Jacobs hints at who the strange ploughman really is without naming him, calling the story a “rustic Faust”: the farmer escapes his bargain by appealing straight to the higher powers. The ploughman’s wage is measured in a burden-withe, the twisted carrying band he cuts in the wood at harvest.

Read the original: Joseph Jacobs, More Celtic Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #34453, The Farmer of Liddesdale)

Best for ages 9–12 — a short, eerie Highland tale about a bad bargain and a mysterious ploughman.

The measure hides the risk

“One burden-rope” sounds small because the farmer imagines an ordinary worker’s carrying capacity. The ploughman never promises an ordinary load. Earlier, the farmer also misreads the worker’s apparent idleness before the sudden day of labour. Both surprises depend on judging unfamiliar abilities by familiar limits.

Rewrite the bargain

Write a wage agreement that names a fixed amount of corn rather than what one person can carry. Compare it with the original: which uncertainty has disappeared, and what would the farmer still need to know?

Questions to ask

• Why did the farmer hire the first man who came to his door?
• What did the ploughman do with the three stakes, and what was he waiting for?
• How did the farmer escape his bargain at harvest time?

You may also like

• The Field of Boliauns — another short tale from Joseph Jacobs’ Celtic collections
• The Sprightly Tailor — a Highland tale with an uncanny visitor
• The Russet Dog — another tale from More Celtic Fairy Tales