Long ago, in the Thirteenth Century , there lived a giant who used to wander across France, strolling from province to province. As he went, his usual round would take him from Périgord to Limousin, and when you were at Pierre-Buffière and saw him coming, it was like a storm gathering on the horizon. For he was so huge that he had to bend his head a little to stop bumping it on the clouds.

    And when they saw this mass darkening the heavens, the people would cry in their alarm: "Woe! Woe! Our two plagues are upon us again!"

    The first plague was that their harvest was flattened wherever the giant set his great feet. But that was nothing compared to the rest, and the rest was this. The giant had come a long way, and his walk made him very thirsty indeed. So he would sit down, take off his shoe, fill it with water from a handy river or lake, lift it high, high up to his lips and then he would drink. Glu...glu...glug. After that he would shake his shoe dry over the surrounding countryside before putting it back on his foot.

    Now, in the toe of his shoe, apart from the drop of water which had not gone down his throat, there would lurk the rocks and boulders which he had scooped up from the bed of the lake or river. Thus it was that five or six parishes suffered not only from a slight rain storm, but from a positive hail of huge boulders which came whistling down like bombs and plunged into the ground all over the place, in the woods, in the meadows and among the standing corn.

    The poor people of Limousin cowered for safety under this barrage of boulders in the nearest convenient hole in the ground and did not dare come out again until the giant had departed. However, they discovered that this did not happen to the people in nearby Périgord.

    "Doesn't the giant really shower boulders upon your heads?" one of them asked, having gone to Périgord especially to find out.

"Wherever would he get the boulders from?" was the answer."There aren’t any in our wine vats?"

"In your vats!"

"Of course, in our vats. You see we fill the giant's shoe with wine."

    The man returned, bubbling over with the news and told the whole Viscounty of Limoges that, when you offered the giant wine, he did not scrape the lakes and rivers for a drink of water. The people of Limousin resolved to copy this idea, but, alas, in those days their country was too cold for vines to grow. If they were to offer the giant a shoeful of wine they would have to buy it from the people of Périgord. This they did; and the people of Périgord sold them the very worst casks they had.

    When the inhabitants of Pierre-Buffière saw the giant looming on the horizon, like a storm cloud, they hurried off to meet him with twenty carts laden with barrels. The giant took off his shoe and filled it with the dregs which the people of Périgord had sold them.

    However, before he drank it he sniffed it and then he exclaimed in a voice like thunder: "My Little men, you've given me vinegar instead of wine !"

    The poor folk thought that in his disappointment the giant would squash them flat as pancakes under bis huge feet. But nothing happened, and at last after standing there, holding his shoe with a pleased but hesitant expression on his face, the giant spoke.

"I feel like a good green salad. I've got the vinegar, but what about the oi1?"

    The people of Limousin still shivered in their shoes as they answered that they had oil, too.

"What’s it made of?"

"Poppy seed, your Highness!"

"Pooh! The only oil I like is walnut oil!"

    Then a crafty man in the crowd piped up: "They have as much as you want in Périgord!"

    "Then I'd better go back," said the giant.

    So he turned on his heel and headed south, stepping very gingerly so as not to spill his shoe full of good vinegar.

    The people of Périgord were dumbfounded when they saw the giant loom over their province once more. Down he sat, set his hat (it was as round as a salad-bowl) between his knees, took off his other shoe and demanded walnut oil in a voice like thunder.

    They had to drain the oil presses of the four baronies of Périgord to fill the other shoe.

    The next thing the giant said was: "And now for the garlic!"

    It needed three carts full to provide enough garlic, and they had to borrow some from the people of Quercy.

    When they had brought the cartloads of garlic, peeled it and thrown it into the vast salad bowl of a hat, there was a fresh rumble of thunder from the giant.

"Salt and pepper!"

    They had to go as far afield as Saintonge for the salt, and Toulouse for the pepper. And even that wouldn' t have been enough if they hadn't mixed in five thousand pounds of best lime from Saint-Astier when the giant wasn't looking.

    "Good!" said the giant. "Good! We've got the dressing, now, what about the green stuff? What I'd like are dandelions !"

    Dandelions! Heavens above! Dandelion leaves hidden in the long grass! They needed thirty carts full; so young and old, man and woman, every single person in Périgord had to go out to collect dandelions. Even the children were given a holiday from school to help. And when they had finished you would have thought you were in a land of hunchbacks, so hard it was for the poor people to straighten up again.

    But at last the giant had everything he had asked for and he could eat his salad.

    When he had swa11owed the last morsel, he smacked

his lips contentedly and said: "What a grand little place this is! It's got everything I want. If that's the way it is, then this is where I'll stay for the rest of my days."

    And he was as true as his word. And so for the next thirty years the people of Périgord were forced to serve him with food and drink by the cartload. In the end he died and the Devil carried him off, but the Province was ruined!

    And from that day to this, to fill their purses once more, the people of Périgord have been forced to sell their best wine to the people of Limousin and to drink their worst wine themselves.

Léonce BOURLIAGUET