The street corner on which Dylan begged was the busiest corner in the city and on a good day Dylan could get up to two pounds in penny coins from passers-by – enough to buy a pie from Mr Pastry’s across the road, or a bed for the night at the local hostelry or, whenever his got stolen – which they often did while he slept – another pair of shoes from the second-hand shop.
Saturday morning, and the city was crammed with shoppers and tourists as usual, and Dylan was sitting on his coat in front of the post office, as usual, begging for money or food or any unwanted object that could fetch a penny or two at the pawn shop. But on this day Dylan would beg for the last time.
As he rested his head on his knees to take a mid-morning snooze, Dylan was disturbed by a deep, booming voice. ‘Why are you begging?’ said the voice.
Dylan looked up sharply. Towering above him stood a man in a long black cloak and a red floppy hat that covered his eyes. ‘Who are you?’ Dylan enquired, timidly.
‘I asked you a question,’ replied the man, seemingly having paid no attention at all to Dylan.
Frightened by the man’s sharp tone and huge stature, Dylan felt compelled to answer. ‘Because I don’t have a job,’ he replied with a tremble.
‘How unfortunate,’ replied the man. ‘Why don’t you have a job?’
‘Apparently I have no purpose,’ said Dylan. ‘My parents died when I was young so I went to live with my grandmother. She would beat me often and tell me that I had no purpose and would never amount to anything. On my seventh birthday she kicked me out into the street where I was forced to beg for a living.
‘When I was finally old enough to get a job, no one would give me one. They told me that jobs were for people with a sense of purpose, and since I had no purpose nor sense of one, there was nothing for me to do. So here I am, begging for a living which I shall probably do till the day I die, which could be any day now since I am afflicted with the Beggar’s Blight for which there is no cure.’
‘How unfortunate,’ replied the man, his tone much softer now. ‘Tell me, if I were to grant you one wish, what would it be?’
Dylan thought for a moment and replied with a smile. ‘Purpose! I would like to have a purpose.’
‘You wouldn’t wish to be cured of your illness?’
‘What would be the point in that?’ Dylan replied. ‘I would still be a beggar with no purpose – but for much longer.’
‘Then what if were to make you rich so you didn’t have to beg anymore?’ said the man.
‘Then I would be a rich man with no purpose,’ said Dylan. ‘And there would be no point in that either.’
Impressed with Dylan’s answers and touched by his plight, the man said, ‘if it’s a purpose you want, then a purpose you shall have.’ He beckoned Dylan with his gnarly finger, turned and walked away without saying another word.
Dylan jumped to his feet, grabbed his coat and immediately set off after the man, being careful to stay several steps behind him for Dylan wasn’t yet be sure of the man’s intentions.
After a day’s journey, the man brought Dylan to a field. Covered in humps and stones and weeds, it was the most unloved and unlovely thing he had ever set eyes on.
‘Behold! Your purpose!’ said the man, his eyes still covered by his red, floppy hat.
Dylan stared at the field in dismay. ‘What am I supposed to do with that?’ he asked.
‘This field has been barren since the day I bought it,’ said the man. ‘If you work the field and prepare the soil well, it will one day produce a harvest.’
‘But I have no plough with which to till the ground, and no ox with which to pull the plough,’ said Dylan.
‘All that you need to complete the task will be provided for,’ said the man. ‘The choice is yours. You can either work with a purpose here in my field, or return to the street corner and squander what little time you have left as a pointless beggar.’
‘Since you put it like that,’ said Dylan, ‘I accept your offer.’
That night, Dylan ate the heartiest meal he had ever eaten and slept in the warmest, softest bed he had ever slept in. At 5am he was awoken by the cockerel that lived in the field next to the rich man’s house. He entered the kitchen to find the table prepared with the biggest breakfast he’d ever seen: toast, fruit, bacon, porridge and milk – more than enough for a scrawny young man like him.
‘Good morning, sir,’ said the maid. ‘The master has gone away on business and shan’t return for a while.’ She handed him an envelope. ‘He instructed me to give you this and said that you are to receive one of these on the first day of every month until he returns. In the meantime, you shall stay at this house and all your meals and clothes will be provided for.’
Three words were written on the envelope: For Your Purpose. Dylan opened the envelope and pulled out a fifty-pound note. He knew immediately what he should do with it and in his excitement, left the house without a morsel of breakfast.
Making straight for the local trading post, Dylan bought himself an ox and a plough, which came to forty-eight pounds exactly. With the change he bought himself a red floppy hat – just like the one the man had worn – to keep the sun out of his eyes.
With the help of the ox and the plough, Dylan set about tilling the field. At the end of each day he went home to a hearty meal and slept in his warm, soft bed. Every morning, after being woken by the cockerel, he sat down to a big breakfast then set to work in the field.
Despite his best efforts, by the end of the month Dylan had only managed to till a small corner of the field and knew that he would need help if the field were to be ready in time for sowing in the spring. With the next fifty pounds he hired another worker with his ox and plough to help him till the field. This he did every month until the field had been flattened and all the soil had been turned. Spring arrived and he was ready to sow his crop.
‘I’ve always liked parsnips,’ he said to himself. ‘So I shall sow parsnips.’
On that first spring morning he went out and bought a hundred sacks of parsnip seed and began sowing them into the soil. It took him thirty days to sow all of his seeds by which time he was exhausted, not least of all because Beggar’s Blight had begun to eat away at his muscles.
Nevertheless, after a good week’s rest Dylan emerged with renewed vigour from his bedroom to begin another day. It was the first day of the month and the maid handed him another envelope containing a fifty pound note, but since he had nothing more to buy and no need of anyone else to hire, he put the money in his shoe and went out to check on his field. He climbed the fence surrounding the field, sat on the fencepost and admired his handiwork. ‘The soil has been tilled, the seeds have been sown. All I have to do now is wait for the spring rain,’ he said to himself.
He looked up to the sky to see if any clouds were gathering but it was as clear a spring morn as he had ever seen; nothing but blue from one horizon to the other. ‘No matter,’ he said, ‘perhaps the rain will come tomorrow.’
But it didn’t rain the following day either, nor the day after that. In fact, it didn’t rain all spring. It was now the height of summer and the crops in the neighbouring farm were thriving but Dylan’s field showed no signs of life.
One evening, the maid, who hardly ever spoke, noticed that Dylan wasn’t eating his dinner, and in fact, hadn’t done for days. ‘I can tell that you’re sad,’ she said. ‘When a young man doesn’t eat, it’s a sure sign that he’s sad.’
‘I am,’ he replied. ‘I’ve tilled the soil, I’ve sown the seed but the rain hasn’t yet come to water my crop.’
‘Don’t you know?’ said the maid, ‘it hasn’t rained here in over a hundred years.’
‘If that’s true,’ he replied, anxiously, ‘then how shall I water the crop?’
‘I suppose you shall have to do what all the other farmers do and take water from the river,’ replied the maid. It then became clear to Dylan why the crops in the neighbouring farm were thriving while his crop was not. By this time, Dylan had saved two hundred pounds of the man’s money so he went out and bought timber and hired carpenters to build a channel from the river to the field to supply his crop with the water it needed.
The carpenters worked hard throughout the summer to build the channel, but by the time it was completed the weather had turned too cold for any crop to grow.
Disheartened but not defeated, Dylan waited out the winter, confident that his field would produce a harvest now that it had an ample supply of water.
Spring came and water flowed from the river through Dylan’s newly-built channel into his field. Every day in April Dylan got up before the cock crowed, tucked into a big breakfast and ran to his beloved field to look for the first signs of life. Sure enough, on the last day of April he spotted his first green shoot right in the middle of the field.
Beside himself with joy he ran into the village shouting ‘Parsnips! Parsnips! I have parsnips!’ But the villagers, a reserved bunch and not given to public displays of emotion, kept their heads down and did their best to ignore him, although one or two of the older folk did grumble at the young man’s behaviour. ‘Ain’t decent to be smiling so early in the mornin’,’ they said.
But Dylan couldn’t contain his excitement. He ran back to the house, took the maid in his arms and danced her all around the kitchen singing:
My purpose is parsnips,
My purpose is parsnips
And parsnips my purpose shall be.
My purpose is parsnips
My purpose is parsnips
And I shall have parsnips for thee
Each day saw more and more shoots springing from the ground and each evening Dylan danced the maid around the kitchen and sang to her.
Then one morning, towards the end of May, Dylan noticed that the field wasn’t getting any greener; that no new shoots had emerged for a good number of days. ‘Perhaps the channel has sprung a leak,’ he thought.
He checked the channel for leaks, but none was found and the water flowed as freely as it always had from the river to the field. ‘Then what can be the matter?’ he asked himself, sifting the soil through his fingers.
‘Weeds,’ said Farmer Furrowbrow, seemingly having appeared out of nowhere.
‘What did you say?’ asked Dylan.
‘Thems not parsnips, lad, thems weeds – mostly, anyway. You’ll not grow much parsnip with all them weeds in the soil. You’ll ‘ave to dig em up and burn em.’
‘Oh no!’ cried Dylan. ‘All my hard work gone to waste.’
‘Hard work never goes to waste,’ said Furrowbrow, as though it were nothing but a thing. But to Dylan, the field had become everything.
Disheartened but not defeated, Dylan spent the rest of the summer ridding the field of weeds. Unfortunately, it was impossible to separate the seeds from the weeds, so they too were burned.
The following spring he bought a hundred more bags of parsnip seed and sowed them into his newly weeded soil. ‘I have tilled the soil, rid it of weeds and I have sown new seed. Now I shall have a harvest,’ he said.
As was his habit, Dylan was up before dawn every day being sure to eat a big breakfast in order to keep his strength up.
June came and with it the promise of a fine harvest as the new shoots emerged from the soil in their tens of thousands. Once more Dylan felt obliged to share his good news with the village shouting ‘Parsnips! Parsnips! I have parsnips!’ Once more the villagers ignored him apart from a few old folk who grumbled at him – this time for bringing muddy wellies onto the village green.
Nor did the maid escape his celebrations. That afternoon he threw her around the kitchen singing:
My purpose is parsnips,
My purpose is parsnips
And parsnips my purpose shall be.
My purpose is parsnips
My purpose is parsnips
And I shall have parsnips for thee
But no sooner had the shoots emerged from the soil than they began to show signs of wilting. Within days the entire field had turned a deathly shade of yellow. Dylan stood weeping as he watched his beloved crop endure a slow, withering death. Sifting the soil through his fingers, he was left to wonder once again what on earth could be wrong with his field.
‘Stony,’ said the familiar voice of farmer Furrowbrow. Dylan turned slowly towards the farmer but was too upset to respond.
‘Your field is stony,’ Furrowbrow continued, chewing on a piece of straw. ‘Far too many stones in that soil for anythin’ to grow proper,’ he said. ‘You’re gonna ‘ave to get rid of the stones if you want your crop to thrive.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Dylan, glumly. ‘It will take me forever to rake out the stones.’
After cheering himself up with a cheese sandwich, Dylan headed down to the trading post and hired three oxes, three rakes and three farm-hands to help him rake out all the stones from his field. It was a mammoth job and took the workers all summer to complete, by which time it was too cold for any crops to grow.
Disheartened but not defeated, Dylan once more waited out the winter, convinced that his field would, this time, produce a harvest. When the trees once more showed their leaves, he bought a hundred more sacks of seed, re-ploughed the field and re-sowed it with parsnip. ‘Now I shall have a crop,’ he said. ‘I have ploughed the field, supplied it with water, removed the weeds and stones and re-sown the seed. This year, there will be a harvest.’
Sure enough, by late spring, the field was once again speckled in green parsnip shoots, and looking much greener than the year before. Dylan’s hard work had paid off. Convinced that he had finally overcome all obstacles, he decided he celebrate his good fortune by inviting all the villagers to a banquet at the rich man’s house. With money left over from his winter savings, he hired servants and bought in the best meat from the surrounding farms and the finest wine from the vineyards.
The banquet was a triumph and all the villagers, having forgiven Dylan for his shameless displays of happiness, congratulated him on his success. But the mood in the house was about to take a dramatic turn.
As the village clock struck twelve and the visitors made ready to return to their homes, without warning, a raging torrent descended on the village and all the surrounding farms. The rain fell with such force that it sent a waterfall cascading down the chimney, which put out the fire and spattered rivulets of rainwater across the floor of the banqueting hall. The terrified villagers sought refuge on tables and chairs and window sills. Now they dared not leave the rich man’s house for fear of being washed away into the ocean, never to be seen again.
‘Tis the Damsel’s Tears,’ said farmer Furrowbrow.
‘What’s that?’ asked Dylan.
‘Once every ‘undred years or so, we be visited by a deluge so great that no-one dare venture out in it,’ he said. ‘Legend has it that they be the tears of an ‘eavenly damsel who’s ‘eart was broken when an evil witch turned ‘er bridegroom into a dragon.’
‘Why did she do that?’ asked Dylan.
‘An evil witch needs no reason to be evil,’ replied the farmer. ‘Tis in ‘er nature to be so.’
‘I suppose,’ replied Dylan.
All night long the rain pounded the house and the villagers remained huddled together on tables, chairs and window sills in the banqueting hall.
By dawn the storm had subsided and the rising sun began its job of drying the land. One by one the relieved villagers left the rich man’s house and trudged down the muddy lane to their homes.
Eager to see how his crop had faired through the storm, Dylan ran to his field. What he discovered on his arrival would have plunged the most robust of hearts into the depths of despair – his crop completely destroyed except for a few brave shoots. The rest had either been demolished by the giant raindrops or washed away by the floods. Once more, Dylan’s attempt at producing a harvest had failed and once more he would have to re-plough the field and re-sow the seed.
The following summer brought even more disappointment for Dylan. Nothing grew, not a single shoot. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I’ve re-ploughed the soil, I’ve re-sown the seeds. Why won’t my crop grow?’
‘Acid,’ said the familiar voice from behind. Dylan turned. There stood farmer Furrowbrow in his usual pose, leaning against the fence chewing on a piece of straw. ‘Too much acid in the soil,’ he added. ‘The rain must’ve gathered it as it passed through the smog that ‘angs over the city yonder. Nothin’ like acid rain to ruin the soil.’
‘Well, how come your crops have grown again this year?’ asked Dylan.
‘Lime,’ replied the farmer. ‘I spread lime on my field to neutralise the acid. If you’re going to grow anything in that soil again you’ll have to neutralise the acid.’
Dylan tugged that month’s fifty-pound note from his shoe and made immediately for the trading post, returning with all the lime he could buy.
Throughout the autumn he worked the lime into the soil in the hope that the following year it would yield his long-awaited crop of parsnips. Once more he sat out the winter and in the spring sowed new seed into the soil. As spring gave way to summer, to his overwhelming joy, the glum brown field transformed itself into a carpet of vibrant green.
Dylan once more took to dancing the maid around the kitchen and singing his song:
My purpose is parsnips,
My purpose is parsnips
And parsnips my purpose shall be.
My purpose is parsnips
My purpose is parsnips
And I shall have parsnips for thee
So lush was Dylan’s crop that it glowed in the moonlight, drawing spectators from miles around, many of whom would take midnight picnics along its fences, mesmerised by its aura. ‘Never have these hills seen a more splendid crop,’ they would say. ‘An agricultural marvel.’
‘You’ve done yourself and your master very proud, young man,’ said Mrs Furrowbrow as she waddled home from the market one afternoon. And she knew a thing or two about growing things since she and Mr Furrowbrow’s potato farm was the oldest and biggest farm in the county.
Finally, it came time to harvest the parsnips. Dylan had hired a team of farm hands to help him gather the crop and they all assembled at the house the night before, ready for an early start.
As they feasted on bread and wine in anticipation of Dylan’s bumper harvest, the shutters on the windows began to rattle; not just one or two shutters – but all one hundred and thirty of them.
The room fell silent. ‘What could that be?’ asked Dylan. Before anyone could answer, the entire house was being buffeted by a wind so fierce that it could have lifted old Mrs Furrowbrow clean over the village clock.
‘Tis the Dragon Breath,’ said a farm hand, eyes bulging with fear.
‘What’s the Dragon’s Breath?’ asked Dylan?
‘Tis a wind so strong, that no-one dare venture out in it for fear of bein’ blown into the ocean, never to be seen again.’
“That’s a very strong wind indeed,’ said Dylan.
The farm hand continued. ‘Legend has it ‘tis the wailin’ of the dragon prince, yearnin’ for his damsel. It always follows the Damsel’s Tears – sometimes by a week, sometimes by a year, but it always comes.’
By now the wind was rattling the shutters so violently that the farm hands couldn’t even hear one another screaming. The Dragon’s Breath raged through the night until it finally subsided as though the dragon had wailed itself to sleep. Dylan stepped outside and felt the last faint whisper of breath against his face before the air fell as silent and still as the distant mountains.
Dylan drew a deep breath and sighed a slow, melancholy sigh. He was in no doubt as to what the storm had done to his beloved crop and dared not even venture to the field that day. Instead, he sent the farm hands home and sulked on the porch, wondering whatever he must do to reap a harvest. ‘One more try,’ he said to himself. ‘I’ll give it one more try.’ By now, Beggar’s Blight had taken a firm hold of Dylan and his legs and arms were beginning to waste away.
Nevertheless, the next spring Dylan sowed a new crop of seed, hoping beyond hope that this would be the year he would reap a bountiful harvest. Summer came and went, but the luscious green shoots that had lit up the hillside the year before were nowhere to be seen. Nothing grew. Not even a weed. Dylan leaned against the fence and wept bitterly until his throat seized up.
As he dried his tears on his sleeve, Dylan heard the familiar voice of farmer Furrowbrow whisper in his ear: ‘top soil.’ Dylan was too upset to even look at him and kept his head firmly buried in his arms, resting on the fence.
‘What do you mean, top soil?’ he croaked.
‘That be your problem,’ said Furrowbrow. ‘Dragon’s Breath blew all your topsoil away. Now there’s no nutrients left in the soil to nourish your crop no more. You’re gonna have to replenish those nutrients with good ole cow dung.’
‘Where will I get cow dung from at this time of year? It will all have gone to the other farms by now.’
‘Fear not, my friend. I’ve got plenty left over,’ replied Farmer Furrowbrow. ‘I’ll let you ‘ave the lot for two ‘undred and fifty pounds. That’s ‘alf of what I paid for it.’
Dylan slowly lifted his head and paused for a moment. Did he really want to put himself through all that again and risk bitter disappointment? ‘One last try,’ he thought. ‘I’ll give it one last try.’
He smiled at the farmer and with a croaky voice said, ‘Thank you.’
That autumn, with renewed hope in the cow dung, Dylan set to work replenishing the soil, but being much weaker now due to the Beggar’s Blight, he was taking a lot longer than ever before to complete the task, and since all his money was going to Furrowbrow in payment for the dung he couldn’t even hire any workers to help him.
Having toiled all winter in the field, and barely having sowed the last sack of seed, Dylan fell gravely ill.
The maid sent word to the rich man that Dylan had not much longer for this world and that he should come right away. The rich man interrupted his business abroad and returned home to find Dylan bedridden and ghostly. His muscles had all but wasted away and all the colour had drained from his skin.
‘Forgive me,’ said Dylan in a frail whisper. ‘I have failed you.’
‘How have you failed me?’ asked the rich man.
‘Every time I tried to reap a harvest in the field, I was thwarted: first the weeds, then the stones; then the lack of rain; then the Damsel’s Tears; then the Dragon’s Breath; then the top soil, and now the Beggar’s Blight. I am dying and can no longer work the field. I am a useless beggar after all, for I have failed in the purpose you gave me.’
‘Nonsense,’ said the rich man. He removed his red floppy hat, revealing his steely-blue eyes to Dylan for the first time. They glistened with pride in the candlelight and brought a little comfort to the dying young man.
‘You haven’t failed at all,’ said the rich man.
‘But I haven’t reaped a harvest,’ replied Dylan.
‘I didn’t ask you to reap a harvest,’ said the rich man. ‘I asked you to work the field and prepare the soil for a harvest. This you have done diligently. And now, this field that you have toiled over for seven years will go on to produce a rich harvest every year for many years to come, of this I have no doubt. Had you not served your purpose, my field would have remained barren for another hundred years, for it has taken me that long to find anyone with the courage and the will to do what you have done.’
‘Then my purpose was only to prepare the field and not to reap from it?’ enquired Dylan.
‘Yes,’ said the rich man.
‘Then where is the reward for all my hard work?’
‘But you didn’t ask me for a reward. You asked me for a purpose, which I gave you. Yet, if it’s a reward you’re after, what greater reward could a man receive than to know that what did with his life will go on enriching the lives of others long after he has gone?’
With that, Dylan creaked a smile and breathed his last.
That summer, the field produced the most bountiful crop of parsnips that the rich man had ever seen. In honour of his departed friend, he named the field Dylan’s Purpose. And just as he had predicted, Dylan’s Purpose went on to provide a rich harvest every year for many years to come.