Here lies Trouble
Photo of a standing stone on a green lawn with a house in the background. There is a small plaque in front of the stone which says: “Trouble. Aptly named. Gone but not forgotten.”
Trouble was born in 1742 and died in 1806 by an arrow from her very own bow. She wasn’t born Trouble, you understand, that was just what she made of it after all was said and done. I know the plaque says 2004-2018 – the engraver got it wrong. That’s because they didn’t have this story to reference as they made it. I shall go back to Black Down with a sticker to correct it one of these days.
Anyway, Trouble was a maiden of lowly birth, neglected by her parents and hence thoroughly resourceful from age 5. She grew into the type of woman who, had she been born in contemporary times, could make quite a successful living delivering bushcraft courses. But no one paid for things like that back then, so she just used her skills to survive as a genuinely free and liberated eighteenth century lady-lad.
Trouble lived in the woods mainly, but also on the heath during the summer, and sometimes a cave near Farnham in the depths of winter. She was an original nomad and it is her fearless individualism that Soul II Soul honour in their club classic ‘Keep on movin’. Yellow is the colour of sun rays and the war paint our Trouble made out of buttercups and slime mould.
Naturally, Trouble stole from the rich to give to the poor. Given the way things were back there, ‘the rich’ comprised one laird of the manor of the moor and that pesky Trouble gave the old laird one hell of a crook in his neck. However, the old laird had a young laird son, just a few years younger than our Trouble. As is the way of young lairds, he sought to distinguish himself from his father, so that his apple didn’t rot around the same old tree.
Trouble’s thieving mainly came in the form of cattle rustling. One good steal fed a family of eight plus Trouble for a goodly long time ensuring low risk, maximum reward. At first the young laird would secretly let a gate off the hook in order to facilitate Trouble’s rustling. Then one day, emboldened, he decided to hide out and wait for the rustle and when he spied her, he leapt out into the field and made a big show of putting his hands over his eyes and turning his face the other way, so that Trouble would know she had a secret sponsor.
Trouble paid the laird no mind and acted like she couldn’t see him either. Well, Trouble does as Trouble calls upon herself a thousand-fold times. Young lairds, like old lairds, have egos and pride and are not inclined to tolerate being dismissed. As such, and forthwith so inclined, the young laird sought some recompense for Trouble’s rude and dismissive eyes.
The young laird sought out the most accomplished witch of all the parishes of the land. And even though witches were supposed to have a truce with Trouble, this witch decided she didn’t give a damn and took the young lairds gold and silver coins, spent one on some wool, and then set about knitting an effigy of Trouble. After spells were cast and deeds were did, the witch took a sharpened twig and stabbed the effigy of Trouble, making it fall down dead.
Meanwhile, Trouble lived on for 31 days and nights blissfully unaware and gorging on bone broth soup, ribeyes, and udders. And when the time came to rustle up another cow, well, this was when the disaster happened. Trouble shot her arrow but this time it seemed to hit an invisible wall, and before Trouble knew what had happened, it rebounded back and speared Trouble right in her eye. She gasped and she moaned but the cows were disinclined to help her. Then suddenly, the young laird emerged out from behind a haystack.
‘Help!’, gasped Trouble.
‘Not likely!’, he said.
And so this is how our Trouble met her demise. Despite proving to be as rotten as the old laird after all, the young laird regretted his refusal to help and never got over the loss. So he built a dwelling beside the place of Trouble’s passing and erected this tombstone above it. He spent every Sunday and Tuesday afternoons here for the rest of his life, gazing out upon the stone, nibbling on a fillet mignon, and weeping into a mug of bull blood.
So, yes: here lies Trouble. Our hero, the young laird’s love, the legend of the Serpent Trail. May this marker forever be a place of pilgrimage for all of those whose arrows have never flown straight.
Listen to me read Here lies Trouble: