He had to go carefully, testing one step at a time, so it took him a while to reach a little island of solid ground where the alder bush grew. It had almost no leaves now except for a few wilted survivors clinging on, as though it were summer still.
Johnny Reed got to work. He dug and dug, and after a while his shovel struck something with a clang. He kept digging and eventually uncovered the object. It was entangled in the roots of the alder, so it must have been there a long time. With his hands he brushed more dirt away from its top and saw that it was a cauldron with a lid on it. He tried to lift the lid off by its arched handle, but it seemed to be stuck and he did not have enough space to grasp it. So with his long-handled shovel he levered the entire cauldron out of the hole, noting how heavy it was.
He looked the cauldron over and saw that it was made of dark red cast iron with an intricate pattern around the top rim. Again he tried to lift off the lid, without success. He thought it might be screwed on to the top of the cauldron, so he thrust the handle of his shovel through the arch of the cauldron’s handle and turned it with all his strength. At last, the lid began very slowly to turn and eventually
popped off, causing Johnny to fall backwards. He got back up and looked into the cauldron. Nothing. There was nothing in it.
Johnny told his wife when he got back to the hovel, “See, not a gold coin, not any gold of any kind.” For he had brought the cauldron down from the moors so that she could see for herself. All she could see was the smooth dark red inside of a dark red cauldron the size of an ordinary kale pot.
So Johnny and his wife returned to living their normal lives. Time passed and their six children all grew up and married and went to live in other nearby hovels.
Twenty dull years went by, then something out of the ordinary happened again to Johnny Reed.
On a winter’s morning, there was a loud knock at the hovel door. Johnny opened it to behold a man in a bearskin riding coat and a tricorn hat, his horse haltered a few yards away. The man apologized for the intrusion. He was a traveller from England, a scholar studying the local customs and traditions of the Uplands. He had been trying to find the main road and had wandered astray in the bad weather. He was now hungry and cold.
Johnny’s wife invited him in and sat him down on a three-legged stool at the table near the hearth. She ladled him a bowl of kale soup out of the dark red cauldron on the peat fire.
The soup warmed the traveller’s insides and soon he was ready to continue his journey. But before he left, he asked if he might examine the cauldron containing the soup. In all his travels, he had never beheld a dark red cauldron of this type. Johnny Reed’s wife, with some old dish
rags, moved the hot cauldron off the peat fire and onto the flagstone border of the hearth. Neither she nor Johnny told the traveller about the dream that had led to its discovery.
The traveller perched a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on his nose and looked the cauldron over. He was especially interested in a pattern he discovered around the outer rim, sooty from decades of peat smoke. He rubbed it clean with his kerchief.
“Well, well,” he said. “A Latin inscription. It’s very possible your cauldron is from the period when Romans were here. Let me see:
Sub hoc alia jacet
How very curious. It means
Beneath this, lies another
.”
The English traveller congratulated Johnny Reed and his wife on their unique cauldron. It might not be worth much in terms of money, but it was an archaeological treasure and he hoped they’d look after it. He thanked them for the food and warmth, got on his horse, and headed for the main road as they’d directed him.
As soon as he’d gone, Johnny took his shovel and set off once more to the place where he’d found the cauldron twenty years before. He was in a state of excitement as he picked his way across the dangerous bog to where the skeletal alder bush still grew. He began digging again deeper, much deeper than before.
CLANG!!
Sure enough, Johnny uncovered another dark red cauldron, and levered it to the surface. He inserted the handle of his long-handled shovel into the arch of the lid. The lid turned slowly, metal screeching on metal. With the final twist, Johnny again fell backwards. He rose to his feet and stared into the cauldron.
Gentle Reader:
As of this point of the story, a variety of versions exist. Out of an obligation to truth, I shall include them here for your delectation.
In the version I heard in my childhood, the second cauldron did contain a fortune in ancient gold. But when Johnny, exulting, tried to carry it back to dry land, his foot slipped. His coat snared in the handle of the cauldron and it pulled him down into the bog, where he slowly sank and choked to death. Many springtimes later, the bog heaved up his remains with his arms still encircling the cauldron, which was now quite empty.
In another version, when Johnny unearthed the second cauldron, he found nothing in it, just as before. But although he could neither read nor write, he recognized the Latin words on its brim:
Sub hoc alia jacet
So he dug again and he found another cauldron, again empty, with the same inscription. He dug once more and found another, also empty, with that inscription. He dug up another, then another. He is still digging, still finding cauldrons, all of them empty, all of them inscribed.
In another version, a very different outcome is presented. Johnny did indeed, after the English traveller left, go back up to the bog; he found the second cauldron with nothing in it. But that very night, after coming home disappointed, he dreamt once more about a cauldron. This time, however, it was not buried by the alder bush in the bog. Instead, it was buried deep below the kale patch directly outside his hovel.
When he awoke, he considered his dream for a long time and discussed it with his wife. They decided to do nothing. A dream was, after all, only a dream, and they
had no desire to ruin the little patch of ground where their kale, the food that sustained them, grew to ripeness each summer.
But if only Johnny Reed had taken his long-handled shovel and begun digging in that kale patch, he would certainly have heard that CLANG again. His shovel would have struck yet another dark red cauldron, and this one would have been full of gold. With all that, Johnny Reed would have built a palace for his wife and himself, and for his children and his children’s children. He would have planted tall forests again all through the Uplands, and filled them with birds of paradise and orangutans and other animals and birds from around the world. He would have hired a team of wise men to look for the secret of universal happiness. They would not have disappointed him. He would have instructed them to publish their findings for the benefit of all mankind. Everyone in the world would have lived and loved happily ever after.
When I’d finished reading the story, I wondered why Miriam had chosen it for me. It was certainly ingenious enough, but those variant endings were quite pessimistic: whether a man follows his dream or doesn’t, the outcome isn’t going to be all that great. For me, the additional thought that this little book had last been opened by some poor sailor whose bones were now scattered at the bottom of the sea wasn’t very cheering either.
All in all, aside from entertainment value, An Upland Tale seemed just as depressing in its way as the story of the Tollgate’s Cameron Ross, though definitely without the element of terror. When I saw Miriam tomorrow, we’d have a good discussion about it.