One night, as the weather begins to blow foul and game becomes more scarce, a hunter in tattered garb drags himself through the tavern door. He is worn and mud-spattered, his face grim and hard. The cold, dry air has not yet reached the inner bowels of the forest where he has roamed, and the trials of the day wear in heavy splatters on his clothing. With little regard for his equipment, he drops bow and quiver on the floor, and throws himself bodily into a chair. The man is the very picture of defeat.
"Rough day, luv?" one of the barmaids sidles up, a tray hitched against her hip and littered with empty mugs. "Y'look roigh' facked, y'do."
With a roll of his eyes and a grand sigh, the man gestures back out the door through whence he had strolled.
"Th'bloody damned trees're more haunted than a witch's taint," he mutters. "There I be, mindin' me oon, fahllin' a buck I'd tagged fer th'kill. En ootta nowhere, ootta the bloody trees 'emselves, comes this 'ellish thing all o' twigs en leaves. Jus' streaked pass me like a fackin' breeze."
"Yer a loiar!" the wench gasps. She bounces the tray for emphasis, setting the mugs to rattling together hollowly. "Noo sooch thing in th'fores'."
"Swear it on me mam's grave, I do," he says solemnly.
"Aye, yer mam 'oo lives 'cross from moine then, ey?" she laughs, and the mugs clank their merry approval.
"T'chah, aye. 'm tha' serious!" he growls, clearly not in the mood to laugh at his own vows.
"Weeeh-yel then, ge'oon wi'it. Wha'appened?"
"Roigh'. Well. I fin'ly caugh' oop to tha' buck, y'see? Fine beast, grea' rack—" and here he has to pause, to quell the barmaid's giggling "—four'een points, 'e had! A foine prize! Bu'when I coome across him at lass, fin'ly felled, th'bloody thing o' twigs en bark is roigh' a'top o' it, shovin' entrails inta is gapin' maw."
For emphasis, the hunter raises his hands to his jaw, and forms his fingers into mock fangs that gnash and clamp in front of his lips.
"Now I know yer fibbin'," the younger woman scoffs. "We ain'ad noothin' loike that in Myrken. Leasaways, no' since I was a wee bairn."
"I told ye I'd swear on me mam's grave, en I'd swear on me own to boot. 'twere one o' them whasies—tree bitches—a dried—stuffin' is gullet with me buck's guts," he says, and makes a sign against evil with his right hand over his heart. "Had tits like oak roots and mossy growin' all o'er it loike. Hissed a'me loike some grea' big cat'er some shit."
"Dry-ad," the barmaid corrects him with a sniff. "Me own mam tole me 'bout those things. Said there ain' been noone in nigh on a decade."
"Well yer mam weren't oot there w'me today t'see it," he grumbles in reply. "Gore 'nuff to turn even me guts, with the way it tore inna that buck. I ran 'fore it could catch clear sight 'o me. 'case it decided I'd be a tastier morsel than tha'there deer."
"Sure, sure. Well, I'll go get ye a bit of our venison, and a mug 'o brown." With a laugh and a sashay of her hips, the barmaid departs to bring the defeated hunter his dinner. For the rest of the night, as he grumbles and growls, the man relates the tale of what he saw to all and sundry.
"There's somethin' oot there in the woods," he tells anyone who would listen. "Mark me words, y'don wanna be oot in those trees aloon."