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THE OGRE THAT PLAYED JACKSTRAWS
David Starr Jordan
Once there was a terrible giant ogre, and he lived in a huge
castle that was built right in the middle of a valley. All men
had to pass by it when they came to the king’s palace on the
rock at the head of the valley. And they were all terribly afraid
of the ogre, and ran just as fast as they could when they went by.’
And when they looked back as they were running, they could see
the ogre sitting on the wall of his castle. And he scowled at
them so fiercely that they ran as fast as ever they could. For
the ogre had a head as large as a barrel, and great black eyes
sunk deep under long, bushy eyelashes. And when he opened
his mouth they saw that it was full of teeth, and so they ran
away faster than ever, without caring to see anything more.
And the king wanted to get rid of the ogre, and he sent his
men to drive the ogre away and to tear down his castle. But the
ogre scowled at them so savagely that their teeth began to fall
out, and they all turned back and said they dare not fight such
a horrid creature. Then Roger, the king’s son, rode his black
horse Hurricane up against the door of the ogre’s castle, and struck
hard against the door with his iron glove. Then the door opened
and the ogre came out and seized Roger in one hand and the
great black horse in the other and rubbed their heads together,
and while he did this he made them very small. Then he tumbled
them over the wall into the ogre’s garden. And they crawled
through a hole in the garden fence and both ran home, Roger
one way and Hurricane the other, and neither dared tell the king
nor anyone else where he had been, nor what the ogre had done to
him. But it was two or three days before they became large again.
Then the king sent out some men with a cannon to batter
down the walls of the ogre’s castle. But the ogre sat on the wall
and caught the cannon balls in his hand and tossed them back at
the cannon, so that they broke the wheels and scared away all
the men. And when the cannon sounded the ogre roared so
loudly that all the windows in the king’s palace were broken, and
the queen and all the princesses went down into the cellar and
hid among the sugar barrels, and stuffed cotton in their ears till
the noise should stop. And whatever the king’s men tried to do
the ogre made it worse and worse. And at last no one dared to
go out into the valley beside the ogre’s castle, and no one dared
look at it from anywhere, because when the ogre scowled all who
saw him dropped to the ground with fear, and their teeth began
to fall out, and when the ogre roared there was no one who could
bear to hear it.
So the king and all his men hid in the cellar of the castle with
the queen and the princesses, and they stuffed their ears full of
cotton, and the ogre scowled and roared and had his own way.
But there was one little boy named Pennyroyal, who tended
the black horse Hurricane, and he was not afraid of anything
because he was a little boy. And the little boy said he would go
out and see the ogre and tell him to go away. And they were all
SO scared that they could not ask him not to go. So Pennyroya!
put on his hat, filled his pockets with marbles and took his kite
under his arm, and went down the valley to the castle of the ogre.
The ogre sat on the wall and looked at him, but the little boy
was not afraid, and so it did the ogre no good to scowl. Then
Pennyroyal knocked on the ogre’s door, and the ogre opened it
and looked at the little boy.
“Please, Mr. Ogre, may I come in?” said Pennyroyal; and
the ogre opened the door, and the little boy began to walk around
the castle looking at all the things. There was one room filled
with bones, but the ogre was ashamed of it, and did not want to
let the little boy see it. So when Pennyroyal was not looking
the ogre just changed the room and made it small, so that instead
of a room full of bones it became just a box of jackstraws. And
the big elephant he had there to play with he made into a lap-
elephant, and the little boy took it in his hand and stroked its
tiny tusks and tied a knot in its trunk. And everything that
could frighten the little boy the ogre made small and pretty, so
that they had great times together.
And by and by the ogre grew smaller and smaller, and took
off his ugly old face with the long teeth and bushy eyebrows and
dropped them on the floor and covered them with a wolf-skin.
Then he sat down on the wolf-skin and the little boy sat down
on the floor beside him, and they began to play jackstraws with
the box of jackstraws that had been a room full of bones. The
ogre had never been a boy himself, so jackstraws was the only
game he knew how to play. Then the elephant he had made
small snuggled down between them on the floor. And as they
played with each other, the castle itself grew small, and shrank
away umtil there was just room enough for them and for their
game.
Up in the palace, when the ogre stopped roaring, the king’s
men looked out and saw that the ogre’s castle was gone. Then
Roger, the king’s son, called for Pennyroyal. But when he
could not find the boy, he saddled the black horse Hurricane
himself and rode down the valley to where the ogre’s castle had
been. When he came back he told the king that the ogre and
his castle were all gone. Where the castle stood there was nothing
left but a board tent under the oak tree, and in the tent there
were just two little boys playing jackstraws, and between them on
the ground lay a candy elephant.
That was all. For the terrible ogre was one of that kind of
ogres that will do to folks just what folks do to them. There
isn’t any other kind of ogre.
