Question -
Answer -
The following poem narrates the legend of an old lady who angered Saint Peter because of her greed. Let’s read it :
A Legend of the Northland
Away, away in the Northland,
Where the hours of the day are few,
And the nights are so long in winter
That they cannot sleep them through;
Where they harness the swift reindeer
To the sledges, when it snows;
And the children took like bear’s cubs
In their funny, furry clothes;
They tell them a curious story
I don’t believe ’tis true;
And yet you may learn a lesson
If I tell the tale to you.
Once, when the good Saint Peter ,
Lived in to world below,
And walked about it, preaching,
Just as he did, you know,
He came to the door of a cottage,
In travelling round to earth,
Where a little woman was making cakes.
And backing them on the hearth;
And being faint with fasting,
For. the day was almost done,
He asked her, from her store of cakes,
To give him a single one.
So she made a veiy little cake,
But as it baking lay,
She looked at it, and thought it seemed
Too large to give away.
Therefore she kneaded another,
And still a smaller one;i
But it looked, when she turned it over,
As large as the first had done.
Then she took a tiny scrap of dough,
And rolled and rolled it flat;
And baked it thin as a wafer
But she couldn’t part with that.
For she said, “My cakes that seem too small
When I eat of them myself
And yet too large to give away.”
So she put them on the shelf.
Then good Saint Peter grew angry,
For he was hungry and faint;
And surely such a woman
Was enough to provoke a saint.
And he said, “You are far too selfish
To dwell in a human form,
To have both food and shelter,
And fire to keep you warm.
Now, you shall build as the birds do,
Ans shall get your scanty food
By boring, and boring, and boring,
All day in the hard, dry wood.”
Then up she went through the chimney,
Never speaking a word, ‘
And out of the top few a woodpecker,
For she was changed to a bird.
She had a scarlet cap on the head,
And what was left the same;
But all the rest of her clothes were burned
Black as a coal in the flame.
And every country schoolboy
Has seen her in the wood,
Where she lives in the trees till this very day,
Boring and borings for food.