The youngest daughter confronted the troll. It was a great slobbering thing, giving off a powerful stench of curdled milk and sour fish in brine. 
'Go back to where you came from,' she said. 'You won't fit in here. The people will never accept you.
The troll shifted in an agitated manner, its ears reddening.
'I've nowhere else to go'.
'You've the whole world,' the youngest daughter insisted.
'That's what I thought,' said the troll. 'But I've tried everywhere. It's always the same reaction. People just don't like what they see.'
'Maybe if you smartened up?' said the youngest daughter. 'Bit of a haircut, maybe a bath?'
'Tried that,' said the troll. 'If you lived in my kind of hole, you wouldn't be able to keep it up for long, either.'
He looked at the daughter, blinking his great leathery eyelids.
'Are people really that superficial?'
The daughter nodded.
The troll turned away and trudged on to a far new hole, on the hiddenest side of the wood, where he began to write his memoirs.
© 2007 Jules Horne
20/12/2007
Miles Krasse
O'Neill's Music of Ireland, 1976
p 99
Comments