The Tuckerton Giant
Welcome to another adventure from the Thousand Acre Woods. A place on the edge of Trollheim deep within the mysterious NJ Pine Belt! Tales Chronicled by Christopher Jonathan Hulton... That's me! In today's tale, we hear about this guy (who almost stole my girl) investigating the Tuckerton Giant.
We heard they found a giant just off the first bridge on Tuckerton's Seven Bridges Road. Gramps and Bosco were joining me on my investigation. Two of the bodies found were almost seven foot. They dug them up within arm's reach of a giant shell midden, rising ten feet out of the marsh; that is an arm's reach for a Troll...
I wasn't sure if they were some coastal population of Finns or Swedes. Were they a Norse Viking or one of Prince Madoc's sailors? Gramps thought it was an Eotin or jötunn, meaning an immense eater. An immense clam eater, that is... He wondered if it was a cousin he lost touch with, a few hundred years ago. Trolls are known to fall asleep long enough for bears to hibernate in their nostrils, their beards to develop split ends like pine trees, and grass to grow over themto resemble rolling hills. Though the bones they found in Tuckerton were much smaller.
So we headed up the Tuckerton Stage Road, where we met Pops.
He was on the way to spend a few weeks clamming on the shore. Knowing him, he was going to eat some clams on the way. He knew most of the bar wenches (pretty maidens) on the road at the various taverns.
We had a half day's journey before us, if Pops and I had to walk it. The road took two days to finish from Philly. So we rode on Gramps' shoulders, and Bosco ran along with us.
By the time we got to the Troll boulder, near the crossroads, we bumped into John Bowker Senior. He was heading back with Karl in his wagon.
"Where are you coming from?" asked Gramps.
"I went Bear hunting."
Bosco let out a growl.
"How did you do?"
"Excellent."
I looked in the wagon, but it was empty. "Did you shoot any?" I asked as Bosco got up in his face.
A little stirred, Karl said, "No."
"Did you see any?" Gramps asked.
"No."
"Did you see any tracks?" Gramps asked.
"No."
"Did you even smell any?"
"Not until now," Karl answered, with Bosco going nose to nose
"So, how was it excellent?" I asked.
"I don't even like getting this close to Bosco; do you think I want to get that close to some strange bear…"
Bosco backed off after swatting Karl.
"John, are you up for a trip to the shore?" Pops asked. "We can split the clams for the summer if you can carry them back."
John agreed, and he carried us, which gave Gramps' back a break.
Karl headed off into the Forked River Mountains to steal a boar for dinner.
"A giant, you say!" John exclaimed. "I have crabbed off that midden for years."
"Yup, they say Franklin Hamilton Cushing from the Smithsonian is there today examining him," I said.
He worked with a Mrs. Hemenway from Salem, Ma digging up lost Indian sites in Arizona, and some dinosaurs. Gramps heard that out west, some Sasquatch had pet dragons.
On a trip visiting my Hulton relatives, north of Salem, I had an affair with a red headed Irish cook who worked for Mrs. Hemenway. I didn't catch any lobsters on Lobster Cove, but I caught a red snapper…
Cushing was her neighbor who also had eyes on the cook.
"Cushing, I hear he is a bit of a mystic," Pops said. "Some of my relatives, living with the Zuni, almost burned him at the stake for being a witch."
"He came to Manchester, that is Manchester, MA, with some shamans I met at Hemenway's. I think the cook was a witch too…" I said. "I think he is a bit of a mystic. An astrologer following the course of the stars."
"I hear he is also investigating the strange amount of meteors that land in that marsh," John said. He is always checking the night sky for Venusians.
"Oh, my cousin, when he was awake, would catch them as they went by. He would make firefly lanterns out of them," Gramps said.
"Maybe you were smoking some of Cushing's family's pipes?" Pops said as he was smoking some of the Lenape's traditional herbal blend. I am not sure if it had anything from Gramps' and Karl's garden in it? Cushing's cousin was the biggest opium smuggler in Canton, China, working for his uncle, Thomas Perkins, and Houqua, who was the richest man in the world. Houqua handed out portraits of himself like others who handed out business cards…
I was not sure if the bones would be his cousin or one of Bosco's berserker cousins.
We got there just after sunset, and Cushing was cleaning up.
"So what is the truth of your find?" I asked as the twins, who found the bones, stood waiting for his answer.
"That would cost you dearly," Cushing said. "Value is based on scarcity, and there is little to be found within the Smithsonian lately. I have been finding Troll bones everywhere, but the museum's official response to them and some Phoenician artifacts in the Grand Canyon are they are a fallacy."
It was then Gast stood next to Cushing. "They don't believe in him either…"
I then caught Gramps spreading some dust over the bones he got from Thor. Thor used it to resurrect his goats after he had them over for dinner.
The eotin grew back his muscles and skin and let out a large burp. "How long was I asleep this time?"
"Oh, about a little over 400…" Gramps said.
"Every time I come back here, I eat too many clams and pass out," he said as he nodded towards the midden of shells he made.
If you like this tale, hit the share button below or just even tell your friend the old fashion way, with your mouth. Come back next week for our next tale.
We just released our first collection of Trollheim stories in print. It is available on this website at www.salemhousepress.com and Barnes & Noble. Pick up your copy today, pretty please with sugar on top...
Fiction/ Illustrated Fantasy/ Mythology / Scandinavian Myth/ Norse Sagas / Scandinavian Folk Lore / Coffee Table Book
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Following the Harry N. Abrams, Inc. tradition of the series that created Brian Froud's and Alan Lee's Faeries and Gnomes by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet, we present you with what would have been the next book in the series: Trolls: A Compendium. Trolls—do you think you know what they are? Could you be wrong?
Trolls within Scandinavian lore, myth, saga, fantasy, and folktales are actually anything magical within our northern neighbor's culture. Richly illustrated in this volume are the tales of faeries, dwarves, nissen, huldras, gods, Jotuns, draugar, ghosts, and more. Also, this book introduces our readers to the world of Trollheim, populated by Nattrolls that escaped the 17th-century Swedish colony within the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Narrated by Christopher Jonathan Hulton, who lives in the Thousand Acre Woods just after the Civil War, their tales are filled with Native American lore and tales of their neighbor, the Jersey Devil.
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