“Only now I remember all that—up to this moment I was as if I had never had a wife at all—how sorry I am; but indeed it is not my fault, not at all. I never wished it like that, and it is my old aunt who kissed me twice without my knowing it.”
“It is all the same now. You are here now. You have done penance enough; your friends have done it too. One passed the whole night getting powder out of his head, and the other in washing his feet, and they have not slept with me any more than you have. At present you must go into your country, and you must get a priest. He shall baptize me, and then we will go into your country.”
The husband goes off and returns with the priest, and she is baptized, and they set out for his country. When they have arrived there, she touched the earth with her stick, and says to it:
“Let there be a beautiful palace, with everything that is needed inside it, and a beautiful garden before the house.”
As soon as it is said, it is done. They lived there very rich and very happy with the old mother of the lad, and as they lived well they died well too.
Laurentine Kopena.
Suggested Explanation of the above Tale (The Lady-Pigeon and her Comb).
This legend seems to us to be one of the best examples in our collection of what may be called atmospherical, or climatological myths.
The story opens with man in misery, without the aid of cultivation and agriculture. The old king we take to be a personification of winter; his daughter of spring, warmth, and fertility—of what the French call “la belle saison.” The comb, with which she does her marvels, is the power which draws out her golden hair, the sun’s bright rays. The young man, who, without her aid, can effect nothing, is man in relation to the frozen ground, which needs her aid to quicken it into fertility. It is the old Sun-god, the Cyclops, who tells him where to find, and how to woo, his fairy bride. But spring and earth are as yet both fast bound in winter’s dominions. There he must go, and learn what he must do, if they are to be married. The felling of the forest, the sowing and ripening corn, and the cooked cake, teach him that he can only succeed by her help; and yet he does not see how she does it—man cannot see the corn grow, etc. The summer warmth and fertilizing power, typified by the ring, still lies buried in the frozen waters. The taming of the horses shows the need and help of domestic animals in agriculture. These things are necessary to be known ere spring can free herself from winter’s dominion and marry her chosen lover. Winter would still hold her fast; but even in his own home her influence works secretly against him. He does not suspect that she is in league with her lover. But at length they are joined together; they flee, and the great struggle between winter and spring has fairly set in. She is able to hide her flight a little while; but he discovers it, and pursues and nearly overtakes her. But, by means of her comb, scattering abroad her warm rays, she works wonders. He is stopped by rough, wintry roads. Her path is through fair and pleasant ways; the storms, and hail, and rain of early spring assist her, but it is the mighty inundation of the swollen rivers which finally overwhelms him, and sweeps him for ever away.
But their union is not complete yet. She cannot enter the Christians’ land. The natural powers of earth and sky have need of agriculture and civilization for their full expansion. And man, frightened at the toil, is lured back again to the nomad hunter life. He forgets his bride in the pleasures of the chase. He spends the winter thus, but is drawn back by the attraction of his waiting bride in spring. She has food in abundance; he is hungry. Other wooers come; she cheats and deludes them, till her true husband appears, and submits to her once more. Then is the full marriage of earth and husbandry, and man wedded to the summer’s warmth and glow.