Once upon a time there was a people in this country called the Picts. They were very tiny people, with red hair, long arms, and feet so wide that when it rained, they could lift them over their heads, and then they served them as umbrellas.
The Picts were great builders, they built all the ancient fortresses in the country; do you know how they built them? I'll tell you. They all stood in a row from the quarry to the place where they were building, and each one passed the stones forward to his neighbor until everything was completed.
The Picts were also a great people because of the ale they brewed from heather: this, you know, made an unusually accessible drink, for heather, I guarantee, was as plentiful then as it is now. This art of theirs was greedily coveted by another tribe that lived in the country; but the Picts never betrayed the secret, but passed it on from father to son, along with a strict order from one to another: never give it to anyone
to know!
In the end, the Picts had great wars and many of them were killed, and soon, truly, they reached the point where they became only a handful of people and probably should have disappeared from the face of the earth.
Still holding tightly to the secret of heather ale, they decided that their enemies would never force it out of them. Okay, it finally came to a great battle between them and the Scots, in which they suffered a complete defeat and everyone was killed, except two - father and son.
And now these people stood before the king of the Scots, brought to him, so that he would intimidate them into revealing the secret. He directly told them that if they did not open it voluntarily, he would torture them until they opened it, and therefore it would be better for them to give in in time. “Okay,” the old man said to the king, “I see there is no point in resisting. But there is one condition that you must agree to before you learn the secret.” - “And which one?” - asked the king. “Do you promise to fulfill it if it is in no way against your self-interest?” - asked the old man. “Yes,” said the king, “I make such a promise.” Then the Pict said: “You must know that I wish the death of my son, although I would not want to take his life for myself. First kill my son, And I am ready to tell How we brew our ale From heather flowers!
Without a doubt, the king was greatly astonished by such a request, but since he had promised, he ordered that the boy be immediately executed. When the old man saw that his son was dead, he jumped high and shouted: “Now do whatever you want with me. You could force my son, for he was only a frail youth, but you will never be able to force me!
And I won’t tell you, Although you are ready to kill, How we brew our ale From heather flowers!
Now the king was more amazed than before, for it had never happened before that he had been outwitted by a simple savage. However, he decided that it was not worth killing the Pict and that his greatest punishment now would be that he was left alive. So, he was taken as a prisoner, and he lived after that for many years until he became a very, very old man - immobile and blind. People have forgotten that such a man lived. But one night in the house where he was, some fellows happened and made a great boast of their strength. He rose from his bed and said that he would like to test one of their wrists to compare it with the hands of people who lived in the old days. And they, for fun, handed him a thick iron rod. He simply broke it in two with his fingers, like you would break a pipe. “A fair bit of gristle,” he said, “but not at all like the hands of my time.” This was the last of the Picts.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru