Sunday 20 March 2011

A Goat called Happy

Whilst collecting stories for Family Legends yesterday at the local library, a lady told me a wee story about a goat. I like goats, so thought it apt to jot it down here at JAGG World.

'My great grandfather was known as a very kind man and one day a group of raggedy children came to his door with a kid goat on a string and said, "Mr Gregory, you're a kind man, our father wants to kill the goat. Will you take it?"

So of course, being a kind man he did take it, and the goat moved in. He really moved in. He didn't quite sit in the best chair, but he did lay on the hearth at night in front of the fire. Of course, he got bigger and bigger, and hairier and more goaty as the weeks went by. And so the goat lived in the house and we all had to accommodate its foibles. It was called Happy.


My great-aunt used to come visit. She did not like Happy. She would stand at the garden gate with her umbrella (ladies always had umbrellas those days) shouting, "Be off you horrid beast." She would not enter the house until someone had taken Happy away by the horn. Needless to say, he stayed with my great grandfather for a long time, living mostly in the garden, but every night that it was cold he would come and lay in front of the fire before going to bed.