The Pandy Giant

In the beginning were Giants.

They were the first dwellers in this dominion. Half- man and half-beast, they were bad-humoured creatures, cross as crabs, with tempers as quick as lightning, as loud as thunder. They fought amongst themselves without end, hurling huge boulders at each other from opposite hillsides. In fact, the great stone circles that litter the countryside today are relics of their gigantic tussles.

When the mists of time cleared, smaller people came to dwell in this land, and, when the giants weren’t at loggerheads, they were the fret and fume of the little people. They stole their sheep and cattle and even kidnapped their little babies.

Not far from Nelson is a beautiful waterfall where the River Caiach swashed its waters into the River Taff. There was a mill here, the Pandy mill, and during the ogre-years it was inhabited by a huge, one-eyed giant. His hobby was hunting people in order to grind their bones into flour for his bread.

It is said that he could make the wind bite like a beagle; fashion fireballs from the sun; create coloured lances of lightning from a rainbow and pitchforks from the rain.

He was everybody’s bugaboo.

The only person who was safe from the mill-stone was a boy Sion, kept by the giant to tend the mill, and the poor lad only saved his bacon by pandering to the ogre’s every whim. It was the price he paid for his life. The mill was his prison, the giant his gaoler.

When Spring tiptoed into the valley, a fair rolled into Nelson. Sion knew that all the lads and lasses would be there and he had aheart to go a Maying with the maidens. He set his wits to make a plan.

Every noontide after his bone-bread bellyful the giant napped awhile. As he snored loud enough to startle the echoes, Sion grasped a knife and stabbed it into the giant’s single eye. The monster wailed like a witch in woe at his blind pain, but somehow managed to stagger to the door and stop Sion scarpering.

Sion had a brainwave.

The giant kept a mastiff to guard his mill. Sion, in an instant, fleeced the dog, draped himself in the pelt and crawled on all fours to freedom though the giant’s legs.

He reached the fair, his heart like a rainbow, and told everyone how he had hoodwinked the giant. No-one ventured near the mill until it was as sure as the sun at noonday that the ogre was dead. Then, they put him to bed with a shovel and his huge grave can be seen to this very day.

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