Under The Bridge

[wert hog]

I like it here, under the bridge.

 

People who aren't generally liked could get robbed from here, people who are too rich for their own good anyway.

 

There are a few of us live down this way - living rough I suppose you'd call it. All sorts we are. Some are thieves and robbers anyway, and are outlawed - aaye, the rogues come and find us here. Many of the outcasts though, have been spurned by their own society for no other reason than that they are a little bit slow maybe. Backward. Some are strangely giant and grotesque – that’s the bigganes as you might call them, you might have seen them when they have run off from our place, looking for their original home I suppose. But in contrast some, believe it or not, are outcast because they are small people. Yep, the Little Folk or the Fairies as many seem to call them.

 

The big Viking types who invaded didn't like little people you see. They banished them from the invasion lands - ethnic cleansing you'd call it today. So some of the little folk who survived live down here now with the rest of us.

 

We're well hidden amongst the thick trees, but there's a track runs through 'our bit' as a short between the Abbeylands. The track has a bend at either end, and the bridge, our bridge, in the middle. It makes it nice and handy to nip out and do a bit of robbing. That's robbing to survive by the way, not robbing for greed or badness. Its hard to live when you can't even grow your own food on your own land, you know. In fact most of our time is spent just trying to survive.

 

The comeovers, they get done the most, well the bad and selfish amongst them do anyway. But some learn about us, and we help each other by. The Manxies, who some of us used to live and work alongside rarely get robbed – not the good ones anyway. They give a wave over the Bridge and we know to leave them alone. A signal really. Besides, they look after us in other ways, but that's another story.

 

Well that's my trolling over for today. I hope you don't mind me turning up but I've been looking for a likely bridge from which I can hide.

 

Bye for now folks.

[Bill Posters]

Hey, werty, thought you'd gone to the big 'troll' in the sky!

[wert hog]

Whenever we move into a likely hiding place - an old building or barn say - and try to make a home, we eventually get found and they (the invaders and their new pals) chase us out. Burn us out even. So now we know where to hide for our lives and that is literally underground. We try and keep warm and cook and that, by lighting a fire but you can imagine that it’s pretty uncomfortable with all the smoke. Besides, we can’t have smoke giving our place away in the daytime. So it's all rather uncomfortable, but just bearable. You don't know how lucky you are, with the things you take for granted.

 

We need the daylight and the sun same as anyone else (although Boo Radley survived it seems). And when the sun shines the little folk play in the clearings deep in the woods. They love the sun and fresh air but as I say, with all this ethnic cleansing going on they have to be covert about their frolicking.

 

We like to be able to do work as well, like the horses pulling the plough need and enjoy that exercise. But we need to work to survive - it isn’t all robbing folk who go over our bridge, you know. We work at night. There’s been many an occasion when we’ve finished a farmers harvest stacking through the night. They're really grateful when they turn up the next morning and see it all done. Especially if we managed to get it finished before the weather’s about to suddenly turn nasty on them and ruin the last of the crop. Bless ‘em – they scratch their heads and smile. They know who helped them though. Oh, and they know how we want rewarding too – a few loaves of bread and a churn of milk left down at the farm gate tonight won’t go amiss.

 

Remember in these here olden days, to fix someone’s boots they’d left by the back door or mend the plough that was left for unrepairable, could save a farmer and his family many many working hours. Could even save heartache and havest sometimes. So we aren’t all bad, you see.

 

I'm getting a bit carried away with the romance of it all now, because of course, it isn’t all good deeds and wishes come true. You see, we love to get up to plenty of mischief also. Cutting the fishing lines of the ones who don’t like us is a favourite. Heh heh, that’ll teach ‘em. Maybe it won’t though – but it’s good fun to do it all the same. Aye, we get the devil in us at times alright. And we know how to frighten a few of them too, but we usually wait until they are coming home late from the beer selling house before we have some fun. They get that frightened at our antics they’re like bletherin’ idiots by the time they get back home to their wives and try to explain what they’ve been seeing, coming home on a night. The screeching they hear outside, by the way, is us lot laughing as we peer through the windows at them getting a beating with the broom from the missus for being so stupit and drunk!

 

But there’s little fun these days in life, all in all.

 

It can be hard surviving on this Island. You lot these days have got it easy with your DSS this and Social that. And everything seems civilised enough.

 

There’s a big road over our bridge now, I see. And who’s putting all those silly notes up then? Half-wits they must be. Bringing attention to us isn’t going to help, you know.

 

“Dear fairies, I want to meet David Beckham”. Who do these people think we are - Jim’ll Fix-It?

 

We can make some of your wishes true, but most people seem to be just greedy. What’s all this lottery business and wanting to “buy me Mum a new house and me Dad a new car”? You get sick of reading that sort of thing. Well, at least we know who they are. We’ll feel no guilt at all in lightening them of some of their load next time we see them.

 

It’d be nice to see this Island going back a little to how it was, wouldn’t it? But maybe not, I really don’t know. It was all just a different place back then.

 

Anyway, I’m off underground just now.

 

See you sometime

 

 

 

 

ps Bill. We don't die off you know. We come and go. We're always around - somewhere. B)

[wert hog]

tbc