All in all, it's been a relatively mild winter so far. Some cold temperatures and snow, but fair more often than not and not that much precipitation. (Though the glacier in front of the north-facing mailboxes tells a story of recent frigidity.) The squirrels are fat and there are flocks of geese everywhere. I love watching them take their flight every night from the drainage canal along Yale to their resting grounds at Quincy reservoir.
When I was a little girl I used to read Grimm's Fairy Tales over and over. One of my favorites was the story of Frau Holle, who caused it to snow when she shook out her feather bed.The tale of Frau Holle/Mother Hulda goes like this: a widow had a daughter and stepdaughter. Favoring her own daughter, she allowed her to laze about and made her stepdaughter do all the housework. One day the stepdaughter accidentally pricked her finger on a spindle. Leaning over a well to wash the blood away, the spindle fell from her hand into the well. Panicked at the thought of her stepmother finding out she'd lost the spindle, the girl leapt into the well after it.
There she fell into the world of Frau Holle, where she immediately encountered a few things that needed tending: bread about to burn, an apple tree that needed plucked, and house chores for Frau Holle herself. Impressed by the girl's kindness and industriousness, Frau Holle rewarded her by covering her with gold before sending her back up to her own world.
The girl's greedy stepmother had the notion to send her own daughter down as well. So the girl pricked her finger as her stepsister had done, and jumped down the well. Only she refused to save the bread from burning, or to pluck the heavy apples, or to lend Frau Holle a hand in her little home. Disgusted with the girl's mean behavior and laziness, Frau Holle sent the girl back covered in pitch, not gold.
It's turned colder tonight, and it looks as though Frau Holle is going to shake out her bed tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment