The Tide at Morphet

Long ago, the small town of Morpeth in Northumberland was buzzing with the news of the arrival of Michael Scott, the great magician.

"The king of Scotland had sent Michael Scott to France to secure a treaty between the two countries," said the mayor of Morpeth to his councillors. "But because he was dressed shabbily, Michael was not allowed into the palace to speak with the king. This was not what the magician had come all the way to Paris to hear, and he became quite annoyed, and again sent a message inside, this time with the warning that if he was not heard, he would bring the palace down about the ears of all inside.

"He made his horse stamp its feet, and the ground shook mightily, and the palace walls began to shake and spill out plaster dust onto the king and his court below. So Michael Scott had made the king of France do what all the other ambassadors had failed to do!"

There was a reception planned for the magician while he stayed in Morpeth, and during the banquet, he said to the mayor, "You have been very kind to me. Is there anything I can do for you?"

So the mayor called together the council and they discussed what favour they might ask. They discussed many things they should have the magician do for them. They could ask for gold, or new houses to live in, or maybe he would give them wealth beyond their dreams!

"No, no!" said the oldest and wisest of them, " We must ask nothing for ourselves, for if he decides that we are a greedy people, he will undoubtedly be very angry, and likely we shall get more than we bargained for!"

The others saw the sense in this and they agreed.

"We ought to ask for something for our town, then we shall all gain benefit from it."

They sat around their conference table and eventually agreed that what they would like best was that Morpeth become a very prosperous town. The way to do this, they thought, was to have a fine port like the people of Newcastle had, so that they too would receive lots of merchant shipping and foreign trade. There was only one drawback to this idea, and that was that there was no tide at Morpeth, for it lay too far inland, and it mattered not how good a seaport they built, it would be useless if the ships could not reach it. So the mayor and his council decided they would ask the great magician to bring the tide to Morpeth.

Michael was pleased when he found that they did not want him to give them all riches and gold, which is what people usually asked of him, and so he told them that he would do everything within his power to bring this change about. Late that night he called in the men of the council, and told them that he had a spell which would bring the tide up the River Wansbeck, all the way to Morpeth!

"This is a simple plan, but you must be sure to follow it to the letter. If you do not, the spell will break and the opportunity will be lost forever."

The men listened carefully to what Michael said, and what he said was this:

"Choose among you someone who can run fast and far, and have him stand on the seashore at the break of day so he may be there when the first tide of the day comes to its full height. At that moment he must turn and run toward Morpeth as fast as he can, and on no account must he look back, else the water will rush back to the sea and never return."

The men listened in excitement and talked about it into the small hours of the next day. It was decided that the runner would be the young man who ran each year in the fell races across the Pennines in the Lake District of Cumbria, for he had both speed and stamina, and they felt sure that if anyone could outrun the tide, it was he.

The young man was only too pleased to do this for the town in which he had been born, and bright and early the next day he proudly stood on the shore of the North Sea, waiting for the signal to begin his run to Morpeth.

The time arrived and the tide was full, and, amid the encouraging cheers of the people on the beach, the young lad set off. What happened then came as a completed surprise to him, for as he ran, he began to hear the terrible wails and cries of the water spirits as they ran along just behind him. The runner was very frightened by these weird and horrible sounds, and felt an overwhelming desire to look around to see what was making them, but he remembered what the magician had said, and he kept on running. The closer he got to Morpeth, the louder grew the noises behind him, begging, it seemed, for him to turn around and set them free.

Time seemed endless to him, and his legs felt as though they were filled with lead, dragging along, tiring him out step by step. He could feel the icy breath of the faeries on the back of his neck, and their cold little hands as they grabbed at the strands of his hair that flowed out behind him. At last he could stand it no longer, and he threw one quick glance over his shoulder to satisfy his curiosity. No sooner had he done this that the mournful cries turned to hideous laughter, and the spirits of the sea scorned and jaded him for his failed effort to bring the tide away from where it was meant to be.
And the water rushed back down the valley to the sea, and has never since returned to Morpeth.