The Giant Sisters
An old man and his grandson stood at Newlands Corner, looking at St Martha’s Hill. It’s a beautiful sight on a sunny day, and even better in the middle of winter with all the snow. And far on the other side, if you just stretched a bit, you might just see St Catherine’s Hill.
The old man pointed toward St Martha’s Hill.
“Can you see, “he said, “on the top of St Martha’s is a church, and on the top of St Catherine’s was a priory- a holy place for monks to live. Some people say that in the old days there were two giant sisters - each one was trying to build a church on top of the hills- one on St. Martha’s and one on St Catherine’s.”
The grandson thought for a moment and asked “The giants.
Would one be called Catherine, and maybe the other called Martha?”
“Perhaps” said the old man.
The boy asked again “How did they build the churches?”
The old man smiled. “They were very strong, and able to carry all the wood and stone that they needed to the top. They would have had big hands to put things together.”
The boy thought about the way his father made things. “And how could they fix the tricky bits together?”
The old man chuckled and said “They had a hammer and nails of course. But they only had one hammer between them.”
The boy was puzzled. “How did they build the churches if they only had one hammer? Did they fight over it?”
The old man shook his head. “Well, they could fight,” he said, “but they wouldn’t get their churches done. They started off taking turns, one have it one day, the other the next. But that didn’t work out, because one was always a bit ahead of the other- and they both wanted to finish first. Then they tried having it for an hour each. But they were always running up and down the hills to handover the hammer when they needed it.”
The boy looked concerned. “So how did they do it?” he asked.
The old man laughed. “Well, in all the rush to build their churches, they had forgotten the one thing they were good at. They were giants, and they were very strong giants- they had good strong arms. And they put those strong arms to good use. They still took it in turns with the hammer- but this time they would strike the nail in, and then throw it across the valley to the other sister.
So- Martha puts her nail in a beam in her church, then calls out “Here sister”. With all her strength she throws the hammer to her sister. The hammer flies across the valley to Catherine. She grabs it, uses it to hammer in the next nail, and then calls out “Here sister!” Then using all her strength throws the hammer back across to Martha. That hammer goes backwards and forwards all day long.”
The boy was still thinking. He asked “But supposing someone is very short-sighted, gets in the way and gets hit on the head?”
The old man roared with laughter. “Well, in that case- DUCK!”