Good evening, children. It's Granny Maduff, ready with a story. So make yourselves comfy, and I'll begin. Once upon a time, on a beautiful estate lay a lovely and perfectly kept garden of rare trees and flowers.

Every Sunday, people from the countryside and from the town alike would come and ask if they might walk about the garden.

Even schools from all around would travel to see it.

Everyone praised its beauty. Just outside the fence that ran around the garden, there grew a large

thistle. It was an unusually large thistle, with such robust branches rising from the root.

It deserved to be called a thistle bush.

But no one ever paid any attention to her, for they were all too busy admiring the manicured garden.

Only an old donkey ever noticed her.

He pulled a milkmaid's cart, and every time they passed by, he'd stretch his neck out and tell the thistle.

What a beauty you are! How I'd like to eat you.

But luckily for the thistle, he was never able to get close enough to take a bite.

One day, there was a big party at the estate.

Many fine people were in attendance.

Among them, a charming young lady who had come all the way from Scotland to attend the affair. She was a noblewoman, rich in land and gold and a beauty to behold. The young men in town and their mothers too thought her a bride well worth winning. All of the young people

amused themselves on the lawn with games. A few of the ladies went about finding their favourite

flower, plucking it and putting it in the buttonhole of the young man they fancied. The young lady

from Scotland looked all around for a flower, but she saw none that suited her, until she

spotted the thistle, flourishing with brilliant purple flowers, sitting just over the fence.

She smiled and asked the young, handsome heir of the estate to pick one of them for her.

She told him, That is Scotland's flower. It blooms on my

country's coat of arms. That is my flower. He picked the biggest flower from the thistle,

and the young lady put it in his coat buttonhole. He was honoured by this, for he was now the envy of

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