The following is a transcript of a story I told for some 5-8 year olds in East Helena at the very end of 2015.
I’m going to tell you a story about right here. It’s a story from a long time ago, before we had houses around here, before we had roads around here. But there were still a lot of people who lived here. And one day they heard a sound.
Boom boom boom! BOOM!
It was so loud, everybody was so scared. There was an old man who said, “I know what that sound is, that’s the sound of the snow falling off the trees.” Everybody looked at him and said, the snow falling off the trees? It’s spring all the snow is melted, there’s no snow to..”
Boom Boom Boom!
A little old lady said “I know what that is, that’s the sound of buffalo running through the valley, it’s so loud it sounds like thunder.” Everybody looked at her. “The buffalo don’t come in the springtime, everybody knows they run in the fall…”
Boom Boom Boom!
All along standing in the back there was a little girl and she was looking to the east, beyond the mountains to the horizon.
“Hey! Hey! I know what it is, I know what it is, everybody, look over there!”
They all turned to look and sure enough, sitting on the horizon there was a cowboy hat.
Boom boom boom.
Under the hat the was a cowboy’s head.
boom boom boom.
Connected to the head there was a body, connected to the body there were two long legs at the end of the legs there were two big cowboy boots.
Boom boom boom.
“Hahah! Hey I’m a giant! What’s going on around here?” Said the great big giant.
All of the people who were so so small around his feet, “Ahhhhh!” ran ran ran up into the mountains where they watched the giant, boom boom boom kicking over trees, splashing in the river, and knocking over mountains turning them inside out.
They asked themselves, “what are we going to do with this terrible giant?”
They were way up in the mountains and they knew there was a pretty crazy guy who lived up there. He told a lot of stories, he had messy hair, messy teeth and messy clothes with holes in them. They asked him, “Can you help us? There’s a big giant down there messing up the valley. You can hear him now…”
Boom boom boom!
The old man combed his hair, wiped the dirt off his clothes and picked a feather out of his teeth. He said, “Aah, mmm, I’ve heard about this before. Someone a long time ago told me a song. This is a song to put monsters to sleep. It’s one of the old songs.”
He started to sing it and play on his drum, they started to sing and play the drums, and singing and playing on the drums. And the giant heard that song, stopped and turned and listened. As he listened he started to get sleepy. It was like a lullaby for giants.
Boom… boom…
…..boom
Until his eyes got heavy, “Yawhnnnnnn!” And he got sleepy and sleepy and sleepy.
Until he went right down and went to sleep. And the people in the mountains kept singing and playing their drums.
He slept for so long the mountain grew up over him and trees grew on his head. If you look to the north you can see him out there sleeping.
They’re still singing that song, still singing a sad lullaby to keep that giant asleep.