Thursday, December the 9th, 2004

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The Legend of the Grunty Man

Now children, settle down your sleepy heads, and remember you must be good, because you know what happens to naughty children, don't you?

What happens, ma?

Why, the Grunty Man comes to get them, of course!

Oooooooh.

He comes bounding down from the dark terrible hills to snatch bad boys and girls away!

But how does the Grunty Man get in, ma?

He makes his grunty noise, three times, and all the doors and windows of the house just pop open like that!

Oooooooh. What does he look like?

Nobody who the Grunty Man snatches away ever, ever comes back, so nobody can say what he looks like, children.

Where does he take them, ma?

He snatches them from their beds and tucks them under his arms and he bounds away with them up into the dark terrible hills and then he makes them work in his big furnace in a grim black cave where he makes his grunty noise at them all day and all night and it is so loud and horrible that birds fall out of the sky if they hear it… Are you fast asleep now, little ones?

Not yet, ma. Tell us more about the Grunty Man.

The Grunty Man is ten thousand years old, and even huge bears and bison and squid and creepy crawlies and weasels and fierce wild animals are frightened of him.

Does he snatch away bad animals too, ma?

Yes he does, and he keeps them in cages and sets them on the bad children when they don't work hard enough in his terrible belching furnace in the cave.

Oooooooh. What is there to eat in the cave?

The Grunty Man makes special cakes and buns to feed the naughty children, poisonous cakes and buns, with flies hovering over them, and no icing.

No icing at all? Are they like fairy cakes?

They are, children, but poisonous fairy cakes. And they taste horrible!

Eeeeuuurrgghh. We would be sick.

You would be very sick. But you would never die, because the Grunty Man would keep you working at the furnace. Clang clang clang. Imagine the giant anvils and red hot bellows. That is what lies in store for you if you are bad children and do not fall asleep right now, tucked up under your soft eiderdowns.

We understand ma, for we are the spawn of the Grunty Man and he has sent us to menace you and haunt your every waking moment for as long as you shall live!