Then cross the moor came Ramblin’John upon a strange and wondrous sight; lying in the crook of the roots of the great oak lay an old man with beard an ell in length. Ramblin’ John wondered at the sight for the roots of the oak were about and above the man and so Ramblin’ John called out ‘Ho father! How camst you to this pass, that the oak would embrace you so in its roots?’ The old man gave out a moan and cried ‘oh I am the most pitiable fool, when I was a lad I drank deeply of the fayre’s mead in the village down the valley, I slept here to rest ‘til morn when I might face my mother with clear face. When I awoke the roots had grown about me and trapped me in their grasp. For years have I lingered so, oh grace that my mother and sisters have fed and water’d me that I might live!’
Traveled widely though he was Ramblin’ John gaped at this ‘had you no father, or brothers to free you with axe or saw?’ He cried disbelieving. At this the man wailed again ‘oh my father was a wastrel who left my mother when we children were but young and no brother had I nor neighbours for leagues! Woe illfortune! But the day before I was trapped I had lost our sole axe and so my sisters had no way to free me.’ As John wondered at the bizarre tale the old man’s sisters came to the tree and presented to the old man his supper, lifting his beard from before him and resting his head on their breasts that he might eat in comfort, lamenting all the while that so needful their tendering to their brother that they could take no husband to grant them daughters to ease their labours.
At this Ramblin’ John let out a great shout of laughter for he knew the tale of another rogue when he heard it; reaching forth he grasped the old man and lifted him forth from the tree with a single great heave. ‘Old rascal thou! ‘Tis decades a tree’s growth is measured in - not days! You lost the family axe, drank yourself to stupor squandering the coin needed for replacement and then made this tale to avoid your mother’s ire - aye and led a life of idleness and sloth thereafter as to make any man jealous! Then did Ramblin John step back and watch with great merriment as the old man’s sisters beat him ‘til he was blue for so deceiving them, crying out to this sister or that to encourage her as she flagged and eating heartily of the old man’s supper as fair payment for freeing the sisters from their lonely toil.
The tales of Ramblin’ Jack, “the old man who was eaten by an oak.”