A folk tale told around Malton.

Orlanth and his badly behaved friend Eurmal were always getting into trouble. There was one time when they really upset Mostal, king of the dwarves. You see Mostal had this magic item he was very proud of that told him when to do things; when to eat, when to drink and when to go to sleep. The dwarves are like that, they make things which tell them what to do, not like we Orlanthi who do only what we wish to do.

Anyway, Eurmal told Orlanth that the treasure, which Mostal called his “clock” – stop sniggering over there, I said “clock” – might help him gain the favour of Ernalda. So off they want to visit the dwarf kingdom. The dwarves are very paranoid and they didn’t trust Eurmal (as you might guess) so he disguised himself as a spider and Orlanth hid him somewhere very private that the dwarves would never dare look.

His sporran!

Back to the story.  It’s getting a bit late so I’ll keep it short. While Orlanth traded stories with Mostal, Eurmal crept out and into the clock and using his magic finger he made the clock tell Mostal it was time to go to sleep. Taking his chance, Orlanth grabbed the clock and he and Eurmal ran off together laughing at how easy it was.

Of course, when he woke up the dwarf king was furious and didn’t have anything to tell him what to do so he sent his giant servants, the Jolanti to find it. Normally Orlanth would just laugh at such things and defeat them easily but Ernalda had been nagging him about “violence is only option” and all that stuff so Orlanth tried hiding in the clock while Eurmal disguised it as a rock. The Jolanti weren’t too smart and they stomped off looking for Orlanth.

When they had gone, Orlanth came back out of the clock but Eurmal had played another trick. One trick is never enough for that scoundrel, and Orlanth came out of another clock deep in the kingdom of the dwarves. Well, they were as surprised as him and it took a lot of adventures for him to get safely out of the kingdom I can tell you!

Anyway, once he got back he found Eurmal and gave him a damned good thrashing for sure. And, after all that Ernalda didn’t even like the clock so I guess it probably got stuck in box somewhere. You know how women are with things like that.