Irish Legend
The King’s Secret
This Irish legend tells of King Maon and the secret he was extremely ashamed of. However, no secret can be kept secret forever. Eventually, the king has to face his greatest fear – the fear of shame and ridicule.
I expect you know a girl like Clara. She’s the one who’s always late to class, whose socks are constantly falling down and whose ponytail is wonky. When the teacher asks for people’s homework, she’s the one who has left the book at home. And if she puts up her hand to answer a question, what she says is almost always wrong.
So when Mrs Brimson said that there would be a visit from Queen to celebrate the school's 100th birthday and a pupil would be chosen to greet Her Majesty, everyone knew it wouldn’t be Clara. It would be Priya who was brilliant at gymnastics, or Michael who was clever at science, or Skyla who always came first in exams.
To stop any arguments, Mrs Brimson pulled the name of the person who would meet the Queen out of a hat. And imagine everyone’s surprise, when it was Clara!
“But you don’t have any talents,” said Emily at break time.
“Yeah,” said Katie, tossing her golden hair. “You’re not fast or clever or even very pretty. The Queen will get bored meeting you.”
“I do have talents!” said Clara. Secretly though, she was worried that what the girls said was true. She didn’t have any special skills – unless you counted being bad at most things and she didn’t think that was something you could show off.
“I’m good at lots of things.”
“Oh yeah, like what?”
“Well, I… That is… Umm…”
“We’re waiting,” retorted Katie tapping her foot. “And the Queen will be waiting too, yawning her head off.”
“I’ve got a magic dog!” Clara could already hear how silly it sounded, but it was too late to take it back. “My dog, Scruffy. He’s magic. He does tricks normal dogs can’t do.”
“Like what?”
“Like……