by MacRua Fri Nov 26, 2004 3:56 pm
Who knows... Maybe you are right. Even oldest men from our local can say nothing for certain... There were loads of different rumours, wise, funny and just silly, but rumour is just a rumour, it never brings you closer to solution. They talked about treasures, killed wives, old family doom, bad harvest of potatoes and even gasification of neighbourhood (it was the greatest fib as we discovered much later).
I can't say now when I saw him for the first time... Seems like that poor digging man kept digging somewhere near since my very early years. In winter and summer, day and night, on week days and Sundays. And he never changed... Sometimes you could hear tap of his spade from far away, somewhere amid bogs, or remote hills. Sometimes you could encounter him absolutely unexpectedly in a dark coming back home from your local. And it was really frighten, you know, bang, and you fell over his bloody spade or fell in one of fucking holes he made all around. People used to break legs and arms. He was a real doom of our place till they gave us electricity. Then only careless drunkards who tried to shorten their ways through bogs became his victims... I loved to watch after him sitting upon the fence by the road or on the edge of the ditch and sipping something from the bottle. And I was careful and never abused sitting upon wooden fence. But there was nobody who could take care about him, stop poor man from digging, somebody who could take away his spade and saved him from becoming a spade himself.. I am really afraid it's happenned to him (I mean spadefication). Step by step he turned into spade. And once someone found him (actually a human-shaped spade) on top of lonely hill, took to farm and closed in shed. That's why we have not been seeing him for ages here...
Who knows... Maybe you are right. Even oldest men from our local can say nothing for certain... There were loads of different rumours, wise, funny and just silly, but rumour is just a rumour, it never brings you closer to solution. They talked about treasures, killed wives, old family doom, bad harvest of potatoes and even gasification of neighbourhood (it was the greatest fib as we discovered much later).
I can't say now when I saw him for the first time... Seems like that poor digging man kept digging somewhere near since my very early years. In winter and summer, day and night, on week days and Sundays. And he never changed... Sometimes you could hear tap of his spade from far away, somewhere amid bogs, or remote hills. Sometimes you could encounter him absolutely unexpectedly in a dark coming back home from your local. And it was really frighten, you know, bang, and you fell over his bloody spade or fell in one of fucking holes he made all around. People used to break legs and arms. He was a real doom of our place till they gave us electricity. Then only careless drunkards who tried to shorten their ways through bogs became his victims... I loved to watch after him sitting upon the fence by the road or on the edge of the ditch and sipping something from the bottle. And I was careful and never abused sitting upon wooden fence. But there was nobody who could take care about him, stop poor man from digging, somebody who could take away his spade and saved him from becoming a spade himself.. I am really afraid it's happenned to him (I mean spadefication). Step by step he turned into spade. And once someone found him (actually a human-shaped spade) on top of lonely hill, took to farm and closed in shed. That's why we have not been seeing him for ages here...
