One time the people living thereabouts would have a church, and they got all the stonemasons of the village together to build the walls, and then all the carpenters to put up the A-frames and the purlins and the laths, and then all the thatchers to put on the thatch, and then the labour was done, and they all rejoiced and went to bed thereafter.
When they rose the next morning to go to worship, they looked out of their homes, and there was the field, and there was the church, and there was the roof all over the field.
So they laboured again, and they laboured all day to put the roof back on the church, and the next day they woke up to go to worship, and they looked out and there was the field and there was the church, and there was the roof all over the field.
So once again they laboured, and they laboured all day to put the roof back on the church, but when they woke the following morning and they looked out, there was the church and there was the roof all over the field.
So the elders of the village got together and they said one to another ‘We must go to the Wise Fellow’.
Now the Wise Fellow lived in a cave, high up on the side of Greeba, and he saw the elders coming up the path, and he said to them ‘You’ll be coming here to ask me about that church’, and they said ‘How do you know that?’, and he said ‘I’d be a fine Wise Fellow if I didn’t’.
And he said, ‘You have built that church in the field that belongs to the Buganne, and unless you settle things with the Buganne, he will not allow a roof to remain on that church.
‘You must get your village tailor’, he said, ‘and he must sit in the nave of that church from sun-down to sun-up, and he must make a pair of breeches, and if he can stay all that time, you will have no more trouble from the Buganne’.
So they got the village tailor, and they told him what he had to do, and he agreed, because like many tailors he was not a brave man.
And he can hear the bell chiming the hour in the church of the next village, a mile away, he hears it chime nine, sewing away, sewing away; chime ten, sewing away, sewing away; chime eleven…
Then it’s a quarter hour, sewing away; a half hour, sewing away, a quarter to, sewing away…
Then it starts to chime the twelve; one, two - sewing away – three, four - sewing away – five, six - sewing away – seven… eight…nine - sewing away – eleven - sewing away – Twelve…
Sewing away; nothing’s changed, it’s all as it was.
Except that little tuft of grass there that’s been in the tail of his eye for the last few hours; it’s not there any more. And that little fold of ground just there is not quite the same shape as it was, and that’s not so much of a wonder, because as he looks, he can see that the ground is moving, it’s shifting – it’s splitting!
A great jagged gap, and up through the gap comes an elbow and then a hand, and then another elbow and another hand, and a knee and a foot , and shoulders and a head –
But by now he’s running; running out of the church and across the field, running out of the gate onto the road; running, running, running.
And the Buganne is behind him, he can hear the great big feet coming down on the road, bam, bam, bam -
Running, running, running; running so fast that he cannot run any faster; running, running, running; running because if the Buganne catches him –
The Buganne is still there the great big feet – bam, bam, bam – on the road behind him, he can hear it so close behind him, and if it gets him –
Running, running, running, and there in front of him at last, at long last, is the church he’s been hearing chime all night, and he leaps over the churchyard wall –
And the Buganne stops; it’s consecrated ground. He can’t go in there. And he reaches up and he tears his own head off his shoulders and he throws it –
There is a terrible ghastly silence.
There is a terrible ghastly noise.
There is a terrible ghastly silence.
Now if you take the bus from Douglas to Peel, and if you look over your right shoulder, as you pass under the lee of the mountain, Greeba, you’ll see a church, right in the middle of a field, without a roof, and if you stop, and you go into the pub close by, called ‘The Highlander’ you’ll see the shears and the needle that he used to make the breeches, and that is the story of the Buganne.