There is an old story, and a poem by Alan Temperley, which was recorded in 1786 near Galloway on the Solway Coast, about a boy and an adder A farmer’s wife heard her son speaking of meeting a “beardie,” who was his friend, in the garden. She thought little of it, but one morning noticed he had been taking his breakfast bowl of porridge outside and eating it in the garden. She heard him say in his childish voice, “Keep yer am side 0’ the plate, grey beardie.” She crossed to the knoll and saw the bowl of porridge lying on the grass beside him, but to her horror an adder was curled up next to him, its head in the dish feeding from the boy’s breakfast. The little boy rapped the adder on the head with his spoon to send it round to its own side of the bowl, and the adder did what he was told and rested its throat on the rim and resumed feeding from the same dish. His mother quietly spoke to him telling him to get up softly and come to her, not wishing to upset the boy or the adder. She then pulled him away.
The adder slithered off into the rough grass. She called some of the men from the farm and they quickly poked and thrashed through the heather and grass and clubbed it to death. The boy was broken-hearted at their cruelty and within three years he died, they said of grief at the loss of his friend.
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depict the friendship between the boy and the adder
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depict the hunt for the adder and the boy’s loneliness.