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STORY

The Cave of the Danishman

This story comes from the Shetland Islands, north of the Scottish coast. The islands belonged to the King of Norway for many centuries, but over time, the kings of Norway grew weaker, and finally, in 1472, King James III of Scotland took the islands back.

Life on the islands quickly changed. They got rid of the Norwegian laws, and got rid of the Norn language, which people had spoken for centuries. Because the islands no longer belonged to the king of Norway, they were not protected by the king’s army, so many Danish pirates raided them.

On one of the Shetland Islands, Unst, there was a pirate who everyone was afraid of. He was known as the Denschman, which meant ‘the Danishman’. The Denschman raided the island on his ship, the Erne. ‘Erne’ was the Old Norse word for eagle, and this ship was indeed like an eagle. It moved fast, and killed fast, too. When the people of Unst saw the dark ship coming over the sea, they ran away and hid in the hills, and the Denschman came and raided their houses.

One summer, the fishermen of Unst were at sea when dark clouds filled the sky – there was going to be a storm! They quickly ran home to hide from the wind and the rain. For a while, they were glad to be safe from the storm. But then a boy ran through town crying, ‘The Erne has been seen! The Erne has been seen! The Denschman is near the island of Yell!’ Panic broke out on the island. Everyone started to take their most precious things and run outside. They ignored the storm and ran all the way into the hills, to hide from the Denschman.

Some men and boys went to look out, to see where the Erne was. Finally, they saw it to the west of the island. Something was wrong with the ship. It was too low in the water, as if it were sinking.

‘Let us pray that awful man sinks!’ cried one of the women.

And the people of Unst began to pray. They prayed for the Erne to sink and take the Denschman with it. In the storm, it was hard to see the ship, and soon they lost sight of it.

A few minutes later, an old farmer arrived with news.

‘I’ve just seen the ship!’ he said. ‘He tried to land it on the Ayre of Windwick, but the storm was too strong, and they crashed into the Holm of Windwick. Then the sea carried it down to the rocks at Flubersgerdie. It crashed there, and broke into pieces. I am sure no man could have survived that.’

The ship had crashed! The people of Unst were safe. The storm was clearing up, so they began to walk home. As they walked, they laughed and chatted. The Denschman was dead!

Two days later, the wind had calmed down enough for them to row out to the place where the Erne had crashed. Of course, they found many pieces of wood, which they collected – not many trees grow on the islands, so wood is very precious.

But then one of the fishermen cried, ‘It’s the Denschman!’

They turned around and gasped. There, in the mouth of a cave, stood the Denschman. The cave was in the side of a cliff, down by the sea. The Denschman looked awful – his clothes were torn apart, his beard was wet, and his skin was red. But he held a sword in his hand, and he laughed at the fishermen.

‘You thought you had seen the last of me, huh?’ he said. ‘You thought wrong!’

In the sea below the cave was a large piece of wood. ‘He must have held onto that wood to get to the cave,’ said one of the men.

‘Well, come on, then!’ shouted the Denschman. ‘Don’t just stand there. Fight me!’

The fishermen did not want to fight him, and they quickly rowed away. They discussed what they should do.

‘There are six of us and one of him,’ said a young fisherman. ‘We can take him.’

‘But the Denschman is as strong as three men combined,’ said another. ‘We would certainly lose two or three men in the fight.’

They looked at the cave again. It would be impossible to climb out of it, and there were sharp rocks around it. If the Denschman tried to swim away, the sea would push him against the rocks and tear him to pieces.

‘Say…’ said an old fisherman. ‘He has no food or drink. Why not just wait for him to die?’

The fishermen began to laugh, and without another thought, they rowed home, taking their wood with them.

The next day, more people from Unst rowed out to see the Denschman. This time, he did not laugh at them – they laughed at him. He sat in the cave, silent, while they made fun of him. The day after the same thing happened, and this continued for a week, but still the Denschman did not react. People began to call the cave ‘The Denschman’s Hadd’. A ‘hadd’ in Shetland is a small hole that a wild animal lives in, like an otter.

But after the first week, people began to talk. Wasn’t it strange that every day the Denschman looked the same? Shouldn’t he be getting weaker, thinner? Shouldn’t he be praying for food and water? Another week passed, and some started saying that he must be protected by the Devil. The only way he could be surviving was if someone was bringing him food and drink, but no man on Unst would do such a thing. After all, the Denschman had raided Unst many times.

Eventually, the men of Unst decided they must do something. They couldn’t simply leave the Denschman there. But if they attacked him, he would bring some of their men down with him. He still had a sword, after all. So the next day, they would row out with a boat full of sharp stones. They would stone the Denschman until he was weak, and then row to the cave and kill him.

The old farmer was the richest man on the island, and he had the largest boat, so they decided to use his boat. They spent a whole day collecting sharp stones, and planned to leave in the early morning.

Before they left, the farmer asked his three fair-haired daughters to pray for them. The three women stood and watched as the men went to the beach, where the boat was. But when they got there, the boat was gone! Just yesterday, it had been there, safe and ready to go. The men started to look at each other.

‘Could the Denschman have taken the boat?’

They had no option but to take another boat. They filled the smaller boat with the stones, although they did not have enough space for all of them. Then they rowed out to the Denschman’s Hadd.

But when they got there, there was another problem: the cave was empty! The Denschman had escaped.

Weeks passed, and then months. Nobody heard news of the Denschman, but many lay awake at night, listening out for the sound of a ship on the sea. Before, people had said that the Denschman was protected by the Devil, but now many believed he had magical powers. He had used his magic to steal the farmer’s boat, and one day he would return to kill the entire island. When children were bad, their parents told them that the Denschman would come in the night and steal them away.

As for the farmer, he didn’t believe these stories, but he was sad to have lost his boat. Still, nobody had died, and the people of Unst had not had to kill a man.

One afternoon in autumn, a boy ran through Unst again, crying out, ‘A ship on the sea! A ship on the sea! It looks like the Erne!’

The people ran out to look. How could it be? The Erne was torn apart on the rocks, all those years ago. How could it be coming back?

Even stranger, the ship was flying a white flag, a sign of peace. The ship was pulling a boat behind it – it was the old farmer’s boat! Some of the men of Unst got ready to row out to the ship, but then they saw who stood on it. It was none other than the Denschman.

‘Do not come closer!’ cried the Denschman. ‘I am returning this boat. There are gifts on it for the farmer’s fair-haired daughters. If it weren’t for those young women, you would all be dead right now. So say your thanks to them. They are the reason you are alive.’

The people of Unst couldn’t believe it! But they wanted to get this over with quickly, so they rowed out and took the farmer’s boat, and then returned to the beach. The farmer looked inside and found the boat filled with silverware, gold jewellery, silk dresses, fine tablecloths, fruit, wine and grain. He looked up to the ship, but it was already sailing away. So he turned to his daughters instead.

‘I feel as if I am in a dream,’ he said. ‘Can you explain this to me?’

The three daughters stood proud, and the eldest spoke.

‘We saved the Denschman. How could we not? Yes, he raided our homes many times, but to leave a man to die alone in a cave, and to stone him to death – it is monstrous!’

‘And we saw honour in him,’ said the middle daughter. ‘No man is entirely heartless.’

‘While you slept,’ said the youngest, ‘we brought him baskets of food, drink and warm clothing. Ha! You probably thought we could not even row, but we are much stronger than you think.’

‘When we heard you planned on attacking him,’ said the eldest, ‘we knew we had to do something. We took your boat and rescued him. He was not expecting that. He thought we were just simple young girls. So he was not careful, and I took his sword. I held it to his throat and made him swear he would never raid this island again. I made him swear that if he hurt even a sheep of Unst, I would come and cut his throat myself.’

‘She really did it,’ said the middle daughter. ‘We were very impressed.’

‘I think he liked her,’ said the youngest. ‘Uh, but that’s not important.’

For a while, the people of Unst were unable to speak. These three women, who had seemed so innocent, had made the whole island look stupid.

‘You did well,’ said an old woman. ‘If we were to let a man die like that in a cave, or stone him to death, we would not be able to sleep at night.’

‘And where would we be without kind-hearted women?’ said one of the fishermen.

The eldest daughter looked at him.

‘Uh, kind-hearted and strong,’ he corrected himself. ‘Very strong.’

The farmer sighed. ‘I suppose I have raised you to be like me. They always said I had a weak heart. But I was not brave enough to do what you did. Well done, my daughters. And now, these gifts are all yours.’

The daughters went to look at the gifts in the boat, and for a while, the people thought they might share them with everyone. But they were such beautiful things, and they would be useful when the girls got married. So the daughters kept their gifts, and for the next several years, the young men of the village fought over who would marry which daughter.

The Denschman never returned to the island of Unst. He had sworn to the girls that he never would, and he was a man of his word.

THE END

TRANSCRIPT

Would you help your worst enemy? What if he was dying? In today’s episode, we learn a lesson of true kindness through a story from a small Scottish island. Keep listening to learn English!

Hello, my Lovely Learners and welcome to Easy Stories in English, the podcast that will take your English from Okay to Good and from Good to Great. I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show. Today’s pre-intermediate story is called The Cave of the Danishman. As always, the transcript and PDF are available at EasyStoriesInEnglish.com and you can find the link to that in the description.

Today’s story comes from a book called Scottish Folk Tales of Coast and Sea by Tom Muir. Muir? Muir? Muir? I don’t really know how you pronounce that name, and that doesn’t bode well, that doesn’t feel very good, I don’t think that means good things are going to happen because I’m going to be doing some Scottish accents in today’s story, so hopefully my Scottish accents go well.

Anyway, the sea has appeared a lot in my life recently. I went to visit a place by the sea a few months ago with my church. I’ve heard a lot of stories from the sea lately. I feel very connected to the sea. Um, when I do my shamanistic journeys, my power animals are an otter and a shark, which are both sea creatures. And I’m soon moving to Ningbo, China, which is by the sea. So it feels right to be doing a seaside tale.

And speaking of China, when the next episode comes out. I will be in China, so I will probably record the episode before I go, but just know that the week after this episode, today’s episode, I will be in China because I’m flying out on the 10th and I’m arriving on the 11th.

And I’m so excited. Oh my goodness! I’m so excited to be moving to China. This feels like a long, long journey that I’m finally, well, it’s not that I’m finishing the journey. I’m about to start the journey and I’ve been doing so much preparation to move to China, but I finally feel like it’s real. It’s happening. So yes. So look forward to an episode after I’ve arrived and settled in where I tell you all my fun experiences in China. I’m sure I’ll have lots of stories to share.

But let’s not talk about that now because we’ve got a story today. We have the Cave of the Danishman, and not only will I be doing Scottish accents, I will also be doing a Danish accent in this story because there is a Danish pirate, yarr!

Now, technically the word for someone from Denmark is a Dane, but I use the word Danishman in this story ’cause it sounds a bit more old fashioned and it’s probably easier for you to understand. There’s also another word in this story, ‘Denschman’, which is like, I guess this old fashioned Scottish way of saying Danishman.

The thing is with these stories from this book, Scottish Folk Tales of Coast and Sea, many of them come from small islands that are off the coast of Scotland, and these islands have a very particular history. Often they were closely tied to Scandinavia, so Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Actually the northern part of the UK was ruled by Scandinavia for a long time.

But anyway, let’s not talk too much about the history. Let’s get into the story. So as always, I’ll go through the story twice. The first time, I will explain the meanings of words and phrases, and the second time I’ll do it as a lovely performance for you to simply enjoy. So let’s get into the story.

The Cave of the Danishman

So if you don’t know, a cave is kind of like a house, but made from rocks. So by the sea, if water pushes into rocks enough, it will create a cave. And the very oldest humans who I guess were Neanderthals, for example, lived in caves because caves were cool and dark and safe. So.

This story comes from the Shetland Islands north of the Scottish coast. The islands belonged to the King of Norway for many centuries, for many hundreds of years. But over time, the kings of Norway grew weak. And finally in 1472, King James III of Scotland took the islands back. So the islands were part of Norway for hundreds of years, but the king got weaker and weaker. He had less of an army, he had less power. So finally the Scottish King took the islands back.

Life on the islands quickly changed. They got rid of the Norwegian laws. They removed the Norwegian laws and got rid of the Norn language, which people had spoken for centuries. So they stopped people speaking this language Norn, which had been spoken for hundreds of years.

Because the islands no longer belonged to the King of Norway, they were not protected by the King’s army, so many Danish pirates raided them. So before the King of Norway protected the islands, he made sure that nobody attacked the islands, but now there was no king protecting the islands, so many Danish pirates attacked them. They raided them.

So a pirate is someone who rides on a ship and goes and attacks people, takes their money and their food, and destroys their houses. And this is called raiding, right? Raiding is attacking and stealing. Famous pirates are Long John Silver from Treasure Island and Luffy from the Japanese anime series One Piece. And pirates traditionally go ‘yarr!’ and they have a parrot on their shoulder. Actually in the show One Piece the pirates don’t raid anyone. They’re not very authentic pirates, I suppose, by historical standards.

On one of the Shetland Islands, Unst, there was a pirate who everyone was afraid of. So everyone was scared of this one pirate on the island of Unst. He was known as the Denschman, which meant ‘the Danishman’. The Danishman raided the island on his ship, the Erne. Erne or ‘Erne’, I’m not really sure; Erne was the Old Norse word for eagle. So Old Norse is another language. Old Norse is the language which evolved into Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish.

And Eagle, E-A-G-L-E, is a very powerful bird that flies very fast and eats mice and rabbits and things like that. The bald eagle is a symbol of America. So it’s this eagle with this white, uh, face. It has white feathers around its face. So, uh, here an eagle is being used as the name of the ship because it’s a very powerful fast hunting bird.

Erne was the Old Norse word for eagle, and this ship was indeed like an eagle. It moved fast and killed fast, too. When the people of Unst saw the dark ship coming over the sea, they ran away and hid in the hills, and the Denschman came and raided their houses. So when the ship came, the people ran and they hid. They found a place where they could not be found. They hid in the hills. Hills are like small mountains. And then the Denschman came and raided.

One summer, the fishermen of Unst were at sea when dark clouds filled the sky. So fishermen are people who catch fish for a living. There was going to be a storm. Ooh, a storm, thunder, lightning, rain, wind! They quickly ran home to hide from the wind and the rain.

For a while, they were glad to be safe from the storm. But then a boy ran through town crying. ‘The Erne has been seen, the Erne has been seen! The Denschman is near the island of Yell!’ So here are my Scottish accents. Hopefully they’re okay. So someone has seen the ship, this terrible ship that belongs to the Denschman, the pirate.

Panic broke out on the island. So everyone started panicking. Everyone started to take their most precious things and run outside. They ignored the storm, they didn’t care about the storm, and ran all the way into the hills to hide from the Denschman.

Some men and boys went to look out to see where the Erne was. Finally, they saw it to the west of the island. Something was wrong with the ship. It was too low in the water, as if it was sinking. So if a ship hits a rock, it might get a hole and then water will come in and then the ship will start to sink. It will start to go underwater. So something was strange about the Erne. It was very low in the water, so it looked like it was sinking.

‘Let us pray that awful man sinks,’ cried one of the women. So pray is when you put your hands together and you say, please God, give me what I want. Well, that’s one way of praying. Really, you should put your hands together and say, thank you, God, for everything you have given me. That’s a better way of praying. And this woman is saying they should pray that his ship sinks. And the people of Unst began to pray. They prayed for the Erne to sink and take the Denschman with it in the storm.

It was hard to see the ship and soon they lost sight of it. They lost sight of it, they weren’t able to see it anymore. A few minutes later, an old farmer arrived with news. So a farmer is someone who works the land to make food. ‘I’ve just seen the ship,’ he said. ‘He tried to land it on the Ayre of Windwick, but the storm was too strong and they crashed into the Holm of Windwick.’

So these are names of like tiny little islands, um, ‘ayre’ and ‘holm’. These are words that are specific to these islands in Scotland. So they’re not words we use down here. So basically he tried to land the ship, he tried to stop the ship on one of these islands, but the storm blew him into the Holm of Windwick and he crashed. He hit the rocks and well, you can imagine what happens when that happens.

‘Then the sea carried it down to the rocks at Flubersgerdie.’ So the sea pulled the ship down to the rocks, not very good, at Flubersgerdie, very funny name. ‘It crashed there and broke into pieces. I am sure no man could have survived that.’ So it broke into pieces. It broke into many small parts, and nobody could have survived. Nobody could live through that. So basically the farmer is saying he is sure that the Denschman is dead.

The ship had crashed! The people of Unst were safe. The storm was clearing up, so they began to walk home. The storm was clearing up, the storm was ending. As they walked, they laughed and chatted. The Denschman was dead.

Two days later, the wind had calmed down enough for them to row out to the place where the Erne had crashed. So rowing is when you sit in a boat and you have these long sticks called oars, O-A-R-S, and you move them in a circle. The oars push through the water and they push the ship forward. So there’s two ways of moving a boat or a ship. Either you use sails, which are big pieces of cloth that the wind blows, or you use oars and you row and rowing needs humans, yeah? You have to work to row. So rowing obviously uses more energy, but it’s easier to row because you can row in any conditions, whereas with a sail, you might have no wind and then you can’t move.

So the wind had calmed down enough, the wind had gone down enough, for them to row out to the place where the Erne had crashed. Of course they found many pieces of wood, which they collected. Not many trees grow on the islands, so wood is very precious. So that’s something I learned from this book of folktales. If you live on a small island with few trees, if a ship crashes and the bits of wood land on the beach, people will take them and dry them and use them because wood is very precious if you can’t grow trees.

But then one of the fishermen cried, ‘It’s the Denschman!’ They turned around and gasped. There in the mouth of a cave, stood the Denschman. The cave was in the side of a cliff down by the sea. So a cliff is like a bit of land next to the sea, right? So a cliff is where it suddenly drops into the sea. The cave was in the side of a cliff down by the sea.

The Denschman looked awful. His clothes were torn apart. His clothes were in pieces. His beard was wet and his skin was red. But he held a sword in his hand and he laughed at the fishermen. So a sword, S-W-O-R-D, is a long, sharp thing you use to fight, yeah? Uh, medieval knights fought using swords. In Harry Potter, Harry uses the sword of Gryffindor to fight the Basilisk in book two.

And here comes my Danish accent, which is probably worse than my Scottish accent. ‘You thought you had seen the last of me, huh?’ he said. ‘You thought wrong.’ So you thought you had seen the last of me. You thought I was gone, but you thought wrong. I’m alive.

In the sea below the cave was a large piece of wood. ‘He must have held onto that wood to get to the cave,’ said one of the men. ‘Well come on then!’ shouted the Denschman. ‘Don’t just stand there. Fight me.’

The fishermen did not want to fight him, and they quickly rode away. They discussed what they should do.

‘There are six of us and one of him,’ said a young fisherman. ‘We can take him.’

‘But the Denschman is as strong as three men combined,’ said another. So the Denschman by himself is as strong as three other men. ‘We would certainly lose two or three men in the fight.’

They looked at the cave again. It would be impossible to climb out of it, and there were sharp rocks around it. If the Denschman tried to swim away, the sea would push him against the rocks and tear him to pieces, cut him up, basically.

‘Say,’ said an old fisherman. ‘He has no food or drink. Why not just wait for him to die?’ The fishermen began to laugh and without another thought, they rode home, taking their wood with them. Not very nice, these fishermen.

The next day, more people from Unst rode out to see the Denschman. This time he did not laugh at them. They laughed at him. He sat in the cave, silent, while they made fun of him. The day after the same thing happened, and this continued for a week, but still the Denschman did not react. He didn’t say anything.

People began to call the cave The Denschman’s Hadd. A hadd in Shetland is a small hole that a wild animal lives in, like an otter. So this is just another word for a cave, but by calling it a hadd, they’re making it sound like the Denschman is just a small little animal.

But after the first week, people began to talk. Wasn’t it strange that every day the Denschman looked the same? Shouldn’t he be getting weaker, thinner? Shouldn’t he be praying for food and water? Another week passed and some started saying that he must be protected by the Devil. So the Devil is the big red man with horns, the enemy of Jesus and God. The devil always does evil, nasty things, yeah? And people were saying that the Devil is maybe protecting the Denschman because he’s not dying. He’s not getting weaker.

The only way he could be surviving was if someone was bringing him food and drink, but no man on Unst would do such a thing. After all, the Denschman had raided Unst many times. Eventually the men of Unst decided they must do something. They couldn’t simply leave the Denschman there. But if they attacked him, he would bring some of their men down with him. So he would kill some of their men if they attacked him. He still had a sword, after all.

So the next day they would row out with a boat full of sharp stones. So stones are like rocks. They would stone the Denschman until he was weak, so they would throw these stones at the Denschman until he was weak, and then row to the cave and kill him. The old farmer was the richest man on the island, and he had the largest boat, so they decided to use his boat. They spent a whole day collecting sharp stones and planned to leave in the early morning.

Before they left, the farmer asked his three fair-haired daughters to pray for them. So fair-haired means having fair-haired, having light hair, so pretty hair, basically. The three women stood and watched as the men went to the beach where the boat was. But when they got there, the boat was gone!

Just yesterday, it had been there safe and ready to go. The men started to look at each other. ‘Could the Denschman have taken the boat?’ They had no option but to take another boat. They filled the smaller boat with the stones, although they did not have enough space for all of them. Then they rode out to the Denschman’s Hadd.

But when they got there, there was another problem: the cave was empty! The Denschman had escaped.

Weeks passed and then months. Nobody heard news of the Denschman, but many lay awake at night listening out for the sound of a ship on the sea. So many of them couldn’t sleep at night because they kept thinking they might hear a ship.

Before, people had said that the Denschman was protected by the Devil, but now many believed he had magical powers. He had used his magic to steal the farmer’s boat, and one day he would return to kill the entire island. When children were bad, their parents told them that the Denschman would come in the night and steal them away. So parents used the threat of the Denschman. They said, don’t be bad, or the Denschman will come and get you.

As for the farmer, he didn’t believe these stories, but he was sad to have lost his boat. Still, nobody had died and the people of Unst had not had to kill a man. So they didn’t have to kill someone. So in some ways that was better because it’s very difficult to kill someone. It’s not a nice feeling… I imagine!

One afternoon in autumn, a boy ran through Unst again, crying out, ‘A ship on the sea, a ship on the sea! It looks like the Erne!’ The people ran out to look. How could it be? The Erne was torn apart on the rocks all those years ago. How could it be coming back? Even stranger the ship was flying a white flag, a sign of peace. So when people fly a white flag, it means they don’t want to fight. They are coming in peace. The ship was pulling a boat behind it. It was the old farmer’s boat! Some of the men of Unst got ready to row out to the ship, but then they saw who stood on it. It was none other than the Denschman. So the Denschman was standing on this ship coming into the island with the old farmer’s boat behind him.

‘Do not come closer!’ cried the Denschman. ‘I am returning this boat. There are gifts on it for the farmer’s fair-haired daughters. If it weren’t for those young women, you would all be dead right now.’ So if the farmer didn’t have these lovely daughters, then the Denschman would have killed everyone. ‘So say your thanks to them. They are the reason you are alive.’

The people of Unst couldn’t believe it, but they wanted to get this over with quickly. They wanted him to go quickly. So they rode out and took the farmer’s boat, and then returned to the beach. The farmer looked inside and found the boat filled with silverware. Silverware is like knives, forks, spoons, but all made out of silver. Gold jewelry. So gold earrings, things like that. Silk dresses, very fine dresses, very nice dresses. Fine tablecloths, fruit, wine and grain. So grain is like rice and wheat.

He looked up to the ship, but it was already sailing away. So he turned to his daughters instead. ‘I feel as if I am in a dream,’ he said. ‘Can you explain this to me?’

The three daughters stood proud. They stood like, yeah, we’re amazing. And the eldest spoke. So the oldest daughter spoke.

‘We saved the Denschman. How could we not? Yes, he raided our homes many times, but to leave a man to die alone in a cave and to stone him to death, it is monstrous.’ Monstrous, like a monster. So it would be horrible to let a man die like that. They felt like they had to help him.

‘And we saw the honour in him,’ said the middle daughter. ‘No man is entirely heartless.’ Heartless meaning not having a heart. So nobody is completely heartless. Everyone has some good inside them.

‘While you slept,’ said the youngest, ‘we brought him baskets of food, drink, and warm clothing. Ha! You probably thought we could not even row, but we are much stronger than you think.’ So they brought him baskets, they brought him containers, of food, drink, and warm clothing.

‘When we heard you planned on attacking him,’ said the eldest, ‘we knew we had to do something. We took your boat and rescued him.’ They took the boat and saved him. ‘He was not expecting that. He thought we were just simple young girls, so he was not careful and I took his sword. Ha! I held it to his throat and made him swear he would never raid this island again.’ So she put the sword against his throat and made him swear, made him promise, he would never raid them again. ‘I made him swear that if he hurt even a sheep of Unst, I would come and cut his throat myself.’

‘She really did it,’ said the middle daughter. ‘We were very impressed.’

‘I think he liked her,’ said the youngest. ‘Uh, but that’s not important.’

For a while, the people of Unst were unable to speak. These three women, who had seemed so innocent, so nobody thought they could do something like this. They seemed very, you know, normal; had made the whole island look stupid.

‘You did well,’ said an old woman. ‘If we were to let a man die like that in a cave or stone him to death, och, we would not be able to sleep at night.’

‘And where would we be without kind-hearted women?’ So what would we do without kind women? Said one of the fishermen. The eldest daughter looked at him. ‘Uh, kind-hearted and strong,’ he corrected himself. ‘Very strong.’

The farmer sighed. ‘I suppose I have raised you to be like me.’ So when you raise children, you help them grow. So he has raised his daughters to be like him, kind-hearted. ‘They always said I had a weak heart, but I was not brave enough to do what you did.’ So he was not brave enough. He did not have the courage to do what they did. ‘Well done, my daughters. And now, these gifts are all yours.’

The daughters went to look at the gifts in the boats, and for a while the people thought they might share them with everyone, but they were such beautiful things and they would be useful when the girls got married.

So the daughters kept their gifts, and for the next several years, the young men of the village fought over who would marry which daughter. So all of the men were competing to see who could marry the daughters.

The Denschman never returned to the island of Unst. He had sworn to the girls that he never would. He had promised the girls he would never come back, and he was a man of his word. He was a man who kept his promises.

THE END

And now we will listen to the story without interruption. So listen and enjoy!

Jump back to the story

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Thank you for listening to this episode of Easy Stories in English. Ooh, it feels good to get back to telling a story even if I’m right in the middle of packing. If you’re watching this on YouTube, you can see some of the chaos around me. I’m literally taking the room apart! Ho ho ho ho ho.

But anyway, you can support me by praying for me. Pray that my trip to China is smooth and safe. And if you’re not a religious person, you can give me money. Just go to the transcript using the link in the description, and click the orange button at the bottom that says buy me a coffee. Ha! That’s the price you pay for not being religious. You don’t pray for me? You buy me coffee. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules. The big guy upstairs makes them. That’s what we call God sometimes for fun.

Anyway, I’m gonna leave it here. But yeah, thank you for listening and I’ll see you in China. Well, I’ll be in China. You’ll be wherever you are, but the most important thing is God is good. Ooh, no. Well, if you’re religious, uh, money is good. Speaking of which, give me money. Okay, this has gone on long enough. Bye! Ooh. Okay.