Post
by the fire elf » Sat May 20, 2006 4:50 pm
Once upon a time a few days ago, the man down the road still owned a large stone that ground the villagers' grain to flour. The miller had fallen on hard times and had nothing left but the great rough millstone in a shed, and the large flowering apple tree behind it.
One day, as he carried his silver-lipped ax into the forest to cut deadwood, a strange old man stepped from behind a tree. "There's no need for you to torture yourself by cleaving wood," wheedled the old man. "I shall dress you in riches if you will but give me what stands behind your mill."
"What is there behind my mill but the flowering apple tree?" thought the miller, and agreed to the old man's bargain.
"In three years' time, I'll come take what's mine," chortled the stranger, and he limped away, disappearing between the staves of trees.
The miller met his wife on the path. She had run from their house, apron flying, hair askew. "Husband, husband, at the stroke of the hour, into our house came a finer clock upon the wall, our rustic chairs were replaced by those hung in velvet, and the paltry cupboard abounds now with game, our trunks and boxes are overflowing. Pray tell, how has this happened?" And even at that moment, golden rings appeared on her fingers and her hair was drawn up with a golden circlet.
"Ah," said the miller, looking in awe as his own doublet turned to satin. Before his eyes his wooden shoes with the heels worn to nothing so he walked tilted backward, they too turned into fine shoes. "Well, it is from a stranger," he gasped. "I came upon an odd man in a dark frock coat in the forest and he promised great wealth if I gave him what is behind our mill. Surely, wife, we can plant another apple tree."
"Oh, my husband!" wailed the woman, and she looked as though she had been struck dead. "The man in the black coat was the Devil, and what stands behind the mill is the tree, yes, but our daughter is also there sweeping the yard with a willow broom."
And so the parents stumbled home, weeping tears on all their finery. Their daughter stayed without husband for three years and had a temperment like the first sweet apples of spring. The day the Devil came to fetch her she bathed and put on a white gown and stood in a circle of chalk she'd drawn around herself. When the Devil reached out to grab her, an unseen force threw him across the yard.
The Devil screamed, "She must not bathe any more else I cannot come near her." The parents were terrified and so some weeks went by and she did not bathe until her hair was matted, her fingernails like black crescents, her skin grey, her clothes darkened and stiff with dirt.
Then, with the maiden every day resembling a beast, the Devil came again. But the girl wept and her tears ran through her palms and down her arms. Now her hands and arms where pure white and clean. The Devil was enraged. "Chop off her hands, otherwise I cannot come near her." The father was horrified. "You want me to sever the hands of my own child?" The Devil bellowed, "Everything here will die, including you, your wife, and all the fields for as far as you can see."
The father was so frightened he obeyed, and begging his daughter's forgiveness he began to sharpen his silver-lipped ax. The daughter submitted, saying, "I am your child, do as you must."
And this he did, and in the end no one could say who cried out the louder, the daughter or the father. Thus ended the girl's life as she had known it.
(to be continued,
courtesy of 'Women Who Run With the Wolves', myths an stories of the wild woman archetype, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.)
instantiate vacuous truth
