So he told her and all the villagers standing round how he had walked down the valley to Rutherford where he helped for a bit in the building of a stone bridge over the river, and then he had walked on southwards, keeping the sunrise on his left over a great country they called the Weald, a country of forests and fields and farms and again farms and fields and forests, and then still to the south he came to a great line of smooth hills with no trees, just a hawthorn or two in the valleys, and covered in short grass and there were sheep everywhere. And the earth, just a hand’s breadth down was all hard and white. Well, the villagers didn’t believe that, but, he said, sure it was white. And he walked to the top of the hills and on the other side he could see the sea – water – water such as you’ve never seen, as far as the eye could reach, ending at a straight line where it reached the sky at the end of the world. Well, you can imagine if the villagers didn’t believe white earth they wouldn’t believe in water reaching to the edge of the world. He had gone down the smooth green hill till he reached the sea and – you know how when the wind is fresh and the millpond is full and it is all ripples and they splash on the edge among the stones and grass? The villagers said they’d seen ripples on the millpond, but, says Will, the ripples on the sea were as big as a cottage and crashed down on the pebbles on the shore with a sound of thunder. They didn’t believe that either!

He went on to tell how he had walked along the shore and came to a river estuary where the river ran into the sea and there were houses and boats tied to posts on the river edge, and there was a man on a boat fixing ropes and sails. He got talking to this man and, to cut a long story short, he lodged with this man in his house by the river and worked for him mending his boats and the like and the man’s wife treated him well for many months.

Now this man had sailed his boat over the sea, still to the south and he said no, that line was not the end of the world, that over the sea was another land. It had white chalk edges too, and grass and sheep and people growing corn just like everywhere, except they spoke in a funny way, and the sailor wanted Will to go with him across the sea. He was taking a shipload of wool and would bring back barrels of salt fish. But Will was already in love with Osyth, the eldest of the sailor’s many daughters, so Will did not want to go. The man sailed off with a local boy or two instead, and Will stayed with his wife and Osyth and the other girls and he ploughed their field and dug their garden and cut their wood and mended their byres and caught fishes, big as … (a gesture followed) and all the family liked him. When the sailor and his boat came back at the end of the summer with a load of barrels of salt and salt fish and woven hemp and ropes and some gold rings, Will asked if he could have Osyth as his wife and take her back to his village and his old parents and brother, and Osyth was willing enough, and her father gave her a gold ring. She wanted to take one of her sisters with her as company, but only Edith, the youngest, had the spirit to go, so that’s how they came to the village.