The Giant, the Mermaid and the Mixon
A lot of stories start with Once Upon A Time and this one is no different. What Once Upon a Time really means is a long time ago. This story happened a long, LONG time ago.
Once upon a time, there lived a giant. This is no surprise as there were lots of giants around then but this one was special; this giant was a knight.
His name was Sir Bevis and he lived at Arundel Castle where he worked as the gate keeper. He lived in a special tower and was paid in ox and beer – one whole ox and 864 pints of beer every week. That is a lot of beer and would ordinarily make somebody very ill, but Sir Bevis was such a huge giant that it was fine.
Like all good knights, Sir Bevis owned a horse, a special horse called Hirondelle who was as tall as a house.
He also had a massive sword as big as a man which he called Morglay.
Every week, Sir Bevis would get one day off and he would spend this day going for a good walk. Being a giant, he took enormous steps and could walk from Arundel to Selsey quite happily and he was so tall he could cross the sea to the Isle of Wight without his head going underwater. One day, when he had been visiting the island, he was wading back though the sea and he nearly tripped on the Mixon which is a very deep hole in the floor of the sea with a vertical cliff at the edge. Sir Bevis normally knew exactly where this hole was but on this particular day he was distracted and what distracted him was a beautiful girl sitting on the top of the reef.
This was the most beautiful girl the giant had ever seen, she had long, flowing golden hair, creamy skin and rosebud lips. She was wearing what the giant thought was an amazing green dress, shimmering in the sun. Can you guess why this beautiful girl was sat in the sea? That’s right, she was a mermaid and not just any mermaid – Selsey's Mermaid Princess!
When she dived into the water, Sir Bevis could see her tail, just like a fish’s tail, shiny with scales and looking just like a sparkly green dress. Well, it was love at first sight for the knight and he immediately introduced himself.
Soon they were great friends and played happily in the waters of Selsey together, swimming and splashing around.
Each week, on Sir Bevis’s day off from his important job at Arundel Castle, he went straight back to the Mixon and met with the mermaid princess to chat and play. It was his favourite part of every week and he spent as much time with her as he could, falling more and more in love with her all the time.
Now this went on for months and months and all was happy with the knight giant and the mermaid princess. Then Sir Bevis started thinking and if you’ve ever read any giant stories before, you’ll know that thinking isn’t the best idea for giants. They may have massive heads but their brains just don’t seem to be enough to fill such a big head. The thoughts that Sir Bevis had was that it wasn’t enough to see his love just once a week, he wanted to see her all the time. He wanted her to be his wife.
You and I would have realised it would be impossible for a giant to marry a mermaid, she has to stay in the seas of Selsey and Sir Bevis had to stay at Arundel Castle doing a very important job, but Sir Bevis didn’t think this and so her asked the mermaid princess to marry him.
Oh the poor mermaid princess. She was very fond of the giant and loved being his friend but she knew she couldn’t marry him and so she had to say no.
Sir Bevis was heartbroken. He actually felt his heart break inside his chest and because he had such huge, giant ears, he swore he heard it crack too. Feeling as sad as it is possible to feel, he dragged himself back to Arundel Castle and flung himself on his enormous bed.
All his friends tried to cheer him up and his horse, Hirondelle would stick his head through the window of the tower to nuzzle him and try and make him feel better. But none of it helped. Sir Bevis stopped eating his ox and drinking his beer and soon nothing could save him.
On the night before he died, Sir Bevis threw his mighty sword, Morglay, from his bedroom window and said that he would like to be buried wherever it landed.
If you visit Arundel Castle today you can still see the tower where Sir Bevis lived. In the Castle Armoury you can see a slightly rusty giant sword, Morglay and in Arundel Park there is a long barrow called Bevis’s Tomb.
In Selsey, off of East Beach the Mixon still lies underneath the sea and if you are very lucky and look very carefully, you might just see a mermaid sitting on the edge, the great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter of the mermaid princess.
This story was introduced to us and re-told here by Alan Duke, it is an old Sussex folk story.