Seeds of Pine

by Emily F. Murphy

Although they are in no great credit with historians, it is an odd idea of mine that the only true history of a country is to be found in its fairy tales. These seem to be the crystallization of the country's psychology. On the trail, on the river, in the woods, you may glean from the Redmen and their mate-women tales that are well veined with the fine gold of poetry, but which, as a general thing, are inconclusive and do not serve aright the ends of justice. As you search into the untaught minds of these Indian folk and pull on their mental muscle, you must perforce recall the amazing sensation of the gentleman who took the hand of a little ragged girl in his and felt that she wanted a thumb.

Or again, in your Anglo-Saxon superiority you may feel like that Merodach, the King of Uruk, of whom a philosopher tells us. This Merodach wished to make his enemies his footstool, so as he sat at meat, he kept a hundred kings beneath his table with their thumbs cut off that they might be living witnesses to his power and leniency.

And when Merodach observed how painfully the kings fed themselves with the crumbs that fell to them, he praised God for having given thumbs to man. "It is by the absence of thumbs," he said, "that we are enabled to discern their use."

Listen now to this tale of the North: Once there was a smiling woman in this land and wherever she went she brought warmth with her and light, so that even the ice melted in the rivers. Her eyes were blue like the flowers and her skin was white like the milk of a young mother. As she passed through the land the fish swam out of their caves, the birds rested on their nests, and even the dead women who were in the clay stirred themselves when she passed over, for once they had known lovers and had carried men children. She was vastly kind, this woman, and was known even to the dear God and the Holy Virgin in the country of the beautiful heaven.

Now, there was also in this river land an evil man of impetuous appetite who was part bear, and had seven tongues, and his arms had claws instead of hands. And it befell that when he saw the woman and heard her voice that was sweet like the singing voice of an arrow when it leaves the bow, he yearned to her with a vehement love and wooed her with cunning words and with dram songs that she might come to him and be his mate-woman.

"So strong am I," he said, "that my blow can break any skull. My skin is flushed, and my flesh is warm with thoughts of you. My bed is of soft skins and I will feed you with yellow marrow from white bones. I am Mistikwan, the Head, and I have strength and skill to feed the mouth of my woman. I am Askinekew, the Young Man."

But the woman flouted him, for he was hateful with his hands of hair and his seven tongues; besides she knew, this woman, that there were matters of scandal against him and that the people of the Crees said weyesekao, "He is a flesh-eater," and hid themselves in the trees as he passed by.

And because she thus flouted him, the dew stood out on his face like the juice on the fir-tree, for he loved her most exceedingly.

But as he drew near and grasped her in his strong arms that could not be unloosed, the woman's heart became weak as the poplar smoke when it turns into air.

And thus he holds her for nine months, this Askinekew, the Young Man who is strong and very mischievous, till she bears him a son, when it happens that for three months he falls asleep so that the woman goes free to bring heat and light to the river-land and meat and fish to the kettles.