The Toad

Amidst the fallen and scattered stones of a ruined castle close to where I live, it is said, dwells an ancient toad. For five hundred years and more has the toad lurked, squatted, crawled and roamed within the castle grounds, confined inside its boundaries forever by force of a medieval spell.

Way back in the sixteenth century, when the toad was just a normal toad, he came upon a beautiful princess, asleep on the grassy bank below the the castle wall. Through some amphibious instinct or mystic influence, he knew not which, he shot out his lightning quick tongue towards her lips, as if to catch a fly. No sooner had the sticky tongue flicked the princess’s lower lip than her eyes opened, but no longer were they the eyes of a princess. To the startled toad’s amazement, there, on the grassy bank before him, lay an ugly old witch who had been turned into a beautiful princess in a previous legend.

Sitting up, the witch stared down at the toad for a moment and then scooped him up off the ground to take a closer look at him. The toad was alarmed to be raised by a toothless, bearded hag in this abrupt way, but it was all right, she set him back down again on a nearby stone, which had rolled part way down the bank.

The witch had mixed feelings about being restored to her original form but was obliged by witch lore to grant a wish to her restorer. The toad quite liked the idea of being a handsome prince, so, with the uttering of a few strange words, the witch caused it to be so; although her dissatisfaction at being old and ugly again found it’s way into the wish. So, while she did grant that the toad become a prince, and should be so for eternity, she rather meanly contrived that he should be a toad prince, which, from the perspective of a
human, is barely any better than just being a toad. She did make him handsome, but only another toad would be able to tell.

All in all, things worked out pretty well for the toad. Being a handsome princely toad, he naturally acquired a harem of pretty girl toads around him at all times.

Through the years there have been many sightings of the ancient toad, and all the documented descriptions of him bear a remarkable similarity; too similar, some say, for mere coincidence. All who have seen him report his appearance as being uncannily similar to that of an ordinary toad, making the claims difficult to dismiss as nonsense. Several of the witnesses have also remarked how quickly he is able to leap into the undergrowth or behind a stone and disappear without trace. This is most probably how the toad came to be known locally as Jumping Natterjack Flash.