A Cautionary Tale

A poor shepherd, known for his prudent ways, saved every penny he could all his life long. In 1895, near the end of his days and never having married, he hid the money in a box in one of the fields he'd so often wandered while tending his flock. Rumour of his hoard passed into local legend as Old Mister Brown's Folly, and many was the local lad who tried to find it, though none ever did.

Until one day in 2013 when a man from Birmingham parked his car in the local Borough Council's car park nearby, and ran like a lunatic around the fields waving a metal detector. What luck! The detector went off with a beep, and the man dug up a rotten wooden box with a rusty iron handle and hinges. Trembling, the man broke open the box. Inside it were some large, white pieces of paper with strange, curly writing on them!

"Crumbs," he thought, "what's this?"

What it was, was twenty old Five Pound notes, from 1895 or thereabouts. One hundred pounds, at that time a veritable fortune for an 'umble working man.

But the man from Birmingham scowled. He'd heard of Old Mister Brown's Folly, and he'd been expecting a good deal more than this. Why the metal detector alone had cost more than that (he'd bought it specially for the job)! With a truly dreadful imprecation he grabbed the money and dashed the box to pieces on the stony hillside. Then he got into his car and drove dangerously fast to the nearest bank. A hundred pounds was better than nothing, he reasoned, and he could probably sell the metal detector as unused on eBay.

Unfortunately, when he got to the bank, the clerk said, "I'm sorry, Sir," (and he made a kind of pantomime dame voice when he said "Sir," to let the other tellers know that he was going to have a bit of fun with this geezer), "but this is not legal tender. It's quite worthless I'm afraid!" (and here his voice sounded all dramatic for a moment). And then, being curious, and noticing that it was nearly closing time, he added, "Where ever did you get it?"

So the man from Birmingham told him the whole story, to much muttering from the people in the queue behind him, who could see that they were clearly not going to get their money out before the bank closed, but who nevertheless were determined to stay and make pointed and quite audible comments behind his back. Some of them had even heard of the legend of the Folly, and were intrigued that it had at last been found.

As closing time arrived, the bank clerk, who had been keeping his eye on his watch, interjected, "What a shame, Sir, that Old Mister Brown didn't bury the money in the form of gold Sovereigns, which I note from my computer" — and he clicked some keys very quickly on his actually-just-a-terminal — "would now be worth..." and here he stopped, just like the judges on X-Factor, and made them wait a little bit longer, "... three hundred and sixty pounds each! Why, that's thirty-six thousand pounds, Sir! What a Shame".

And all the people in the queue cheered, to think how much money the man had missed out on.