Welcome
to my weekly blog, SATURDAY SESSIONS!
In
this blog, for the perusal of all our students, past, present and future, I
include an extract from our interactive presentation Course, Ireland and its
Culture. We explore and discover Ireland
and its Culture - so that's why I call them 'Logs', as in a ship's (or Star
Ship Enterprise's) logbook!
Each
Saturday, I hope to post an extract from each of the Logs.
Below
each extract, we have a corresponding extract
from the Mining The Text
section which focuses on the use of English involved in creating the paragraph.
In
our Course, participants sit back and listen first to a recording of the
reading, then we read it together, look at how it was created and discuss the
content involved!
In
the afternoons and evenings, we go out, explore and discover!
If
you wish to ask me any question about the text, by the way, just send me an
e-mail at greg@bluefeather.ie
For the next few weeks, we'll be sharing some old
Irish tales and legends with you :) .
LOG 12, The Stone of Truth
In a remote part of the south of Ireland, deep in a
valley, there was a village which had The Stone of Truth. Anybody suspected of
telling a lie or breaking the law would be asked to speak in front of the Stone
of Truth.
Now, in this village there was a man by the name of
Paddy who was known to be a thief. However, Paddy hadn't stolen anything for
years because he was afraid of the Stone of Truth. One dark night, however,
Paddy decided to steal the stone itself.
That way, he could continue to steal without getting caught.
When everyone was sound asleep, Paddy lifted the
heavy stone onto his shoulders, walked
to the bottom of the valley where he stood on a boulder and dumped the
stone into the river. There was a loud splash and then silence. Paddy jumped
for joy and made his way back into the village. Not a man to miss an
opportunity, he sneaked into a villager's garden and helped himself to the
lettuce, carrots and potatoes that were growing there.
The following morning, the villagers were at his
door, demanding to know if he had stolen the vegetables in their neighbour's
garden. Paddy denied everything with a big smile, knowing he would never get
caught. Then the villagers asked him to accompany them to the Stone of Truth so
that they could make sure he wasn't lying. Paddy gladly accepted the offer and
walked with them to the centre of the village.
To his shock and horror, there lay the Stone of
Truth where it always had been. Paddy had to spend the next month working in
the neighbour's garden as punishment.
One morning, when he was clearing the garden to dig
the soil, he lifted a small water-rolled pebble from the grass. In front of him
was a tiny man, no bigger than his thumb. The leprechaun told him that it was he and his leprechaun
friends who had returned the Stone of Truth to the village.
And the moral of the story? You can hide the truth
and think it will never be found; but in the end, the truth will always find
you.
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