For the summer I’m going back to the series of pieces mythologizing growing up in Cape Breton. Check the Village Stories page http://wp.me/P1RtxU-1fT here for previous pieces in this series.
The Wedding Guest’s Tale
the choir had sung at a wedding
‘jesu of man’s perspiring’
each of us was given the traditional
cayenne molasses candy favours
outside the church I was stopped
by one of the wedding guests
he was very drunk
but had such a happy face
I shared some of my sweets
he began to cry as drunks were wont to do
‘yer the bes’pal I ‘er had’
he slurred as he chewed the candy
‘let me tell you something son
something I have never told another
something you must never ever repeat
you understand’
I nodded yes
‘this is the story of how we learned
to hunt the moose
has anyone told you this story son’
‘no’ I replied.
‘well this is how it happened
years before I was born
you know
it was told me by my great-grandfather
he was a lad when they discovered
how to hunt the moose
one winter the water was too frozen to fish
up till then we had only been fishers
there wasn’t smelt in the storage silos
when the men went into the woods
the moose charged at them
they could smell a villager a mile away
with their antlers they killed two men
flicked them into the willow trees
it’s the wind in their bones you hear
in Whistling Woods
then one of the men had an idea
he dressed half his body as a robin
all red feathers
the other side he dressed as a smelt
covered with silver scales
he ran through the moose
a long sharp knife in either hand
to slash as them as fast as he could
half the moose claimed
they were attacked by a great robin
the other half swore they were attacked
by a deadly silver smelt
they began to argue amongst themselves
distrust set in
one half the herd attacked the other
at night fall the men went back
and dragged away the carcasses
thus we learned to hunt the moose
we don’t wear feathers and scales anymore
because the moose have no faith in
their senses or one another
when they warn that a man is near
they snort with distrust
and are easy prey for us’
do you know the way to fan expo
Here I return to the folk lore roots of the Village stories. Many of the elements in this are from or variations of actual folk lore. The wedding guest, the old story teller, is a stock ballad figure – one of them starts the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. The ‘swear’ is also out of that tradition.
stripe hydranted
The disguised hunter come from African lore, the particulars of the disguise come from the mythos of the island – moose, robins – I was working with. Its been some years since I read the original folk tale but I think it involved and enemy confusing villagers with this split side disguise.
snakebucks
There’s also some use of this misidentification in Chaucer & Boccaccio for amorous ends so its one of this universal notions. I also enjoy this sense that it’s our distrust of what is in fact real that makes us easy prey. How easy it is to lose sight of what happened: the moose get slashed is diverted into arguing over details, rather than developing some defence to deal with it. Like passing a law that makes it illegal for people to act on their bias rather than educate people out of their bias.
November 1 – 30 Participating NaNoWriMo
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