and
now for part two;
Oh my it was the saddest thing
you ever did see, and the people were forced to eat all sorts of other
foods just to carry on for another year. Well there were oats, and spinach,
the kids hated that, and the poor grown-ups, well they were all sad and
hungry for the terrible things that had come to pass.
I think all
would have been lost if but for the fact that some wild spuds growing,
and hanging on in the green rolling hills. People say these spuds, maybe
the very ones cared for by the fairies, were able to hold off their distruction.
It could have been magic, but some of them had grown up with eyes just
like now. You must remember that when the eyes first appeared, spuds could
see with them. Well now what this meant was that whenever a potato hawk
was flying along and saw a spud on the ground, well sir instead of flying
down and gobbling it up, the darling little spud with eyes would just up
and jump into the ground and hide from the terrible bird. In that way the
hawk would miss a meal, and the dear little one could grow up and the next
year have more little spud kids; But now they were mostly all being born
with eyes.
You can see,
it was not a long time at all before the wild spuds from the hills started
to spread down and on to the lands of the Celtic farmers. Every year more
and more spuds were being born with eyes to see the potato hawk flying
along, and every year all over the land you could hear the sound of spuds
up and jumping into the ground to get away from being eaten. The hawks
weren't getting all the spuds any more, in fact in some cases spuds were
getting born right in the ground. The dear spuds never even got to see
the light of day, but they also never got eaten by potato hawks.
Now of course
the potato hawk was able to eat a few poor spuds that were too slow to
jump into the ground for safety. Soon the only spuds that were being born
were the ones who started out life right in the ground. The terrible mean
old potato hawks could only get the sad spuds that lived on the top of
the ground, and then only the poor slow ones. It did not take too many
years before all the lovely spuds alive were spuds that started out life
under ground. sadly for the bad old potato hawks there were no more above
ground spuds, anywhere.
I suppose we
should shed a tear or two for the poor potato hawk. After all potato hawks
had babies to feed, they sang, they told the old stories around the nest
to their little ones. But alas, from the time the spuds learned to live
under ground, no one has seen a potato hawk again. It's like they are all
gone. Still it's said that on long cold winter nights if you listen very
hard you may hear the cold shrill cry of a lonely potato hawk high up in
the hills looking all over for other lonely ones like itself.
Come back next week for part three.