by Jan Andrews
Living next door there was a young man who was very handsome. He was very handsome indeed. He started to wait for her so he could talk to her. He might have been very handsome, but he wasn’t very nice.
“I want you to go away with me,” he told her one day.
Angelina didn’t like that. Still, she didn’t say she would and she didn’t say she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. A month passed and then another, and then one more.
Her father fell to thinking he’d like to see her. He decided to pay the couple a visit, and – since he wanted to surprise them – he came unannounced. There he was then, standing on the doorstep.
Angelina ran to greet him. “How glad I am to see you, my father,” she said.
She was glad, but she was also worried. She didn’t know what she was going to give him to eat. It had to be good. It had to be something that would show him honor. Mostly it had to be meat. There was nothing in the house besides milk, as usual. She didn’t even bother looking in the cupboards. She knew she wouldn’t find anything there.
She and her father sat talking for a while. Angelina made him some mint tea from a plant that grew nearby. She had that at least. After a while, when they’d caught up on all the news, her father said he would like to rest from the journey.
Angelina showed him to the bedroom. She made sure he was comfortable. When she knew he was sleeping (maybe snoring even), she went outside. She paced about all over, muttering to herself. That’s how upset she was.
You can guess what happened. The handsome neighbor came by.
“Tell me what’s bothering you,” he begged her.
Angelina did. She was so troubled the words came pouring out of her. “My father has arrived. He’s traveled all the way from his home to visit me. I’ve nothing to feed him,” she said.
“What is it you need most?” her neighbor asked her.
“I need meat,” she answered.
“Aah,” said the neighbor. “I’ll take care of that. I’ll bring you meat. I’ll bring meat of the finest.”
“I’ll give you my thanks,” said Angelina.
“I’ll need more than your thanks,” said the neighbor. “I’ll need you to remember what I told you before. It hasn’t changed. I still want you to go away with me.”
With that, he set off. He went to the market, grinning to himself and thinking of how Angelina would soon be living with him. He didn’t just bring meat. He brought vegetables and spices.
Angelina started cooking. She started making a stew. By the time her husband got home, the house was filled with scents such as it had never known in all the time of their marriage.
“What’s happening?” he asked her.
“My father’s come to visit,” said Angelina. “I was so grieved I had nothing for him. Our neighbor’s helped us out.”
“It’s good to have a neighbor who’s so generous,” said her husband.
Angelina went on with the cooking. Quite soon, her father woke up. He and her husband sat talking together in the living room, but I suspect they didn’t talk of cattle. Her husband wouldn’t have wanted to be doing that.
Meanwhile, the handsome neighbor was growing impatient. He was longing to carry Angelina off. He couldn’t contain himself; he went walking by the window.
Angelina’s husband knew nothing about the neighbor. Nothing!
“Come in,” he called out. “You must come and join us. You must.”
Oh well, thought the neighbor. In he came. He got himself introduced to Angelina’s father.
“The meal is almost ready,” Angelina’s husband told him.
The three men talked some more. Angelina was putting the finishing touches to her work. She was also listening to them. She heard their jokes. She heard their laughter. Somehow, during all of this, she found she wasn’t smiling anymore. She took the stew from the pot; she placed it on a platter. She carried the platter to the table. The three men settled themselves, all eager.
“You’re fools, the lot of you,” she announced.
The men were shocked.
“How could you speak to us like that?” her father demanded.
“How could I not, when it’s true?” Angelina replied.
She was going to leave the room. She was going to go back to the kitchen. Her husband stopped her.
“You must at least explain to us,” he told her.
“The meal is cooling,” she argued.
“The meal’s not important,” he answered.
Angelina held her head up. “One of you is a fool because he sold something precious in return for something he didn’t even need,” she burst out.
She looked then at her father. His face went very red.
“You didn’t need more cattle. You had six thousand,” she went on. “And yet, to get more, you traded away your only child.”
Her father’s face grew even redder. He had to take a drink of water.
“Go on,” said Angelina’s husband.
Angelina stamped her foot. “Another of you is a fool because he gave away everything he had. He gave away his means to earn a living for something he knew nothing about.”
Her husband started staring at his feet.
“Why didn’t you think about the future?” Angelina asked him. “You’d never done more than catch a glimpse of me. Why didn’t it occur to you that a woman who wasn’t going to ensure your everlasting poverty might have been a better choice?”
Her husband looked down harder.
“The third is the biggest fool of all,” said Angelina.
She stamped her foot again. The neighbor was moving toward the door already.
“The third thought he could have something precious – something that was worth at least a hundred cattle! – in exchange for a piece of meat.”
The neighbor was gone. They could hear his footsteps retreating in the distance. Angelina’s husband and her father were looking at her. They were looking at one another.
“I’ll send the cattle back as soon as I get home,” her father told her. “I’ll ask your forgiveness for what I’ve done.”
“With the cattle, I’ll earn us a good living,” said her husband. “But I won’t tell you I’m sorry I took you for my bride.”
“Perhaps I’m not sorry either,” said Angelina. She looked around the table. “Come,” she said. “The meal is cooling. We should eat.”
Eat they did too. They ate and they drank. They had a splendid meal, the three of them, and afterward they sang some songs. There were a whole lot of splendid meals in that house from that day onward. Angelina and her husband lived quite happily. She had lots of reasons to be smiling. The cattle grew in number. Her father came to visit often. There were children. The children were wonderfully well behaved.
“There’s a time and a place for all things,” Angelina sometimes told her children. “If you’re going to be rude, make sure it’s a good rude.”
You can think about that. I’ll leave you to it. You might find what she was saying useful. You might come to the same conclusion about what she did.
I’m right at the end, are you saying?
You’re putting me in at the last,
When I’m known as the champion cusser,
When I shovel my food down so fast?
I’m finding that really insulting.
I don’t think I’ll be rude at all.
I think I’ll just sulk in the closet.
I’ll hide there and play with my ball.
Here we are. We’ve come to the finish. You’ve been wonderful, every single one of you. I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather have been with.
I’m giving you a “cautionary tale” to go out on. “Cautionary” means it has a warning to it. The warning comes because I care. You might not like the sound of that. It’s a bit teachy.
What if I tell you, though, that the story happened in the once when squirrels had their homes in rabbit holes, so rabbits were forced to wander from one place to another, pullin
g their furniture in carts behind them, looking for somewhere to live? It happened when beavers didn’t beave and armadillos hadn’t got into dillo-ing yet, when those things were all part of the wondrous possibilities to come.
Would you believe that now? You’d better, because if you don’t you’ll never get to hear the rest.
It’s about this brother and sister. They were young and they were lucky. They had a grandfather living nearby. He came over every evening. He sat in the kitchen by the fire with them, telling them stories.
He told them about kings and he told them about castles; he told them about rich people and people that were poor; he told them about adventures and deeds of daring; he told them about babies being born and wild horses galloping. He told a lot of rude stories too. I’m sure he did.
The other kids in the neighborhood found out what was happening. How could they not? Every morning, the boy and the girl came out to go to school, their eyes bright and shining.
“You should hear what our grandfather told us,” they’d say.
Trouble was, they were teasing. The other kids begged. The other kids pleaded.
“Tell us!” they chanted. “Tell us!”
The boy and the girl stuck their noses high in the air.
“The stories are for us. He’s our grandfather,” they’d answer.
Nothing, nothing, NOTHING would get them to change their minds. The other kids gave up after a while. That might have been the end of it, except the other kids weren’t the only ones who were unhappy. The stories were as well.
The stories knew it was their job to be passed on, to be carried to other times and places. They knew they were supposed to be making people laugh and cry and shiver and scream all over. They knew they were being put out of work.
The stories had spirits. Because that boy and that girl were so mean and so mingy, those spirits were shut in a bag. It was a sack kind of a bag. It hung in a horrible, dark corner in the basement. The fabric was smelly and itchy. The spirits were overcrowded. There were dozens of them in there, and more were appearing every night.
The spirits kept hoping that the boy and the girl would relent, but they didn’t. They wouldn’t! No way!
The day came when the spirits couldn’t stand it any longer. They started complaining to one another. Their voices got louder and louder.
The grandfather had come over to borrow a saw. He’d gone down into the basement. He heard the stories’ voices. It took him a while to figure out where the sounds were coming from, but he managed it. He knew something bad was being talked about, so he crept closer to find out what.
By then, the spirits were getting even angrier. There was a lot of ranting.
“What do they think they’re up to?”
“How dare they?”
“Keeping us imprisoned.”
“Keeping us trapped here.”
Next thing the grandfather knew, the spirits were going on about how they were going to take revenge.
“I’ll turn myself into a stone,” said one. “I’ll stand in that boy’s way. I’ll make him fall and hurt himself. I might even make him break his leg.”
“I’ll go for the girl,” said another. “I’ll magic myself into that candy she likes to buy herself. I’ll make it taste so bitter it might be poison, for all she knows.”
“When will you do it?” asked a third.
“Tomorrow,” the first two answered. “Why should we wait any longer? Haven’t we put up with enough?”
“We’ll get them when they’re going to school,” a fourth one added.
A great chorus of shouting went up. Turned out, the stories were going to make all sorts of other things happen. The boy and the girl were going to find themselves up to their necks in mud puddles. They were going to have rocks fall on their heads. They were going to be tricked into drinking water that would make them sick.
The grandfather was horrified. The next morning, he got up extra early. He walked to school with his grandchildren, taking another route. It was longer, so they whined and fussed about it. The grandfather took no notice. He came after school too. He made them walk back by the same path.
That night, instead of telling them stories, he took them down to the basement and showed them the bag. They could see it was writhing and twisting. They wanted to run away, but the grandfather wouldn’t let them. In fact, he gave the bag a squeeze.
A dreadful roar of fury came out of it. There was a lot of shouting as well. The boy and the girl were terrified. The grandfather made them listen. He was pretty mad at them himself. He couldn’t imagine how his grandchildren could be so nasty and so mean.
The spirits were grumbling and rumbling about how they’d been cheated in their plans.
“Do you recognize any voices?” the grandfather asked his grandchildren.
The boy and the girl had to admit they knew all the voices they were hearing. They knew them very well.
The voice that was talking about turning itself into a stone – that one belonged to a prince, a good prince. The voice that was going on about the candy that might have been poison – she was a brave, brave girl. The voice talking about mud puddles – that was the old lady who owned the magic wand, the one who had helped a poor young lad through a flaming forest.
The boy and the girl looked at each other in panic. They knew right then and there they were going to have to change their ways. Luckily, the next day was a Saturday. Out they went, first thing in the morning.
“We’re going to tell stories,” they shouted. “We want you all to come.”
At first no one did. The other kids thought they were being tricked again. The boy sat down on the front steps. The girl started telling him about the queen whose children turned into swans. The kid from next door saw them at it. That kid came and sat down as well. When the swan story was finished, the boy began on how the world came to be made out of an island on the back of a turtle. Another kid sneaked up and another. Seems to me there was a tale of two women who got into a belching contest next. There might also have been one about three little pigs that were different colors, and maybe one about a woman who should’ve been dead. I can’t be certain about that. I just know that before long, there was a great big crowd of kids gathered, and they were all of them having the time of their lives.
“We could do this every Saturday,” the boy said.
“You have to promise to pass the stories on though,” the girl put in.
That evening, their grandfather asked them, “Would you like a new story or an old one?”
“Something the others will want to hear as well,” they answered.
The grandfather smiled.
I’m happy to report that that was it for the bag. They went to check it the next day. It was silent, and it was empty.
“I don’t think this will be needed any longer,” said the grandfather. “I think we can throw it away.”
You can probably guess why I’m telling you all this. It’s because I don’t want any spirits in bags where you’re living. I want to be sure the stories are safe with you. I want to be sure you’re safe with them.
Off you go then. Start wherever you feel like. Rude stories or polite ones. It doesn’t matter. Even if you only tell one story to one person. As long as you do that, you’ll be fine.
There, that feels better. I can relax now. I can put my feet up. I can stop worrying. I can listen to a few more stories myself.
Should I make this good-bye a rude one?
Or should I make certain it’s nice?
Should I bow, should I scrape most genteelly?
Should I put in a touch more spice?
If I stood on my head, would that do it?
If I cavorted and gamboled and flew?
If I decked myself out in long ribbons
And painted my earflaps bright blue?
A NOTE ON SOURCES
MR. MOSQUITO. From Gypsy Folktales by Diane Tong (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989).
THE SKELE
TON IN THE ROCKING CHAIR. This comes from a story I heard Toronto storyteller Norman Perrin tell to celebrate the life of yet another teller – Murray Garrett. Norman’s version came from a picture book by Cynthia C. DeFelice entitled The Dancing Skeleton. This in turn was adapted from “Daid Aaron II” in The Doctor to the Dead: Grotesque Legends and Folk Tales of Old Charleston by John Bennett (Columbia, SC: University of Carolina, 1995). I made the skeleton into the wife rather than the husband because that seemed to suit my telling better.
A RED ONE, A GREEN ONE, AND A BLUE ONE. From “Ti-Jean and His Three Little Pigs” contributed by Franco-Ontarian teller Camille Perron (aka Pépère Cam) in Next Teller: A Book of Canadian Storytelling collected by Dan Yashinsky (Charlottetown, PEI: Ragweed Press, 1994).
A TALE OF RUDE TAILS. I heard this story told many, many times by Odawa elder Wilfrid Peltier. I am aware that there is much controversy over who may tell First Nations stories, but Wilfrid always insisted his stories were to be shared widely, and I honor that. You can find more information about Wilfrid by researching under the other variant spellings of his two names: Wilfred and Pelletier.
ELLA AND BELLA. This one’s my own. It was inspired by a bush tale I heard from teller Ed Miller at a story swap in Canberra, Australia. That too was about a contest, although I seem to remember it involved sheepdogs or flies (or maybe both). I loved the slow build to the climax, remembered a friend who told me how she and her brothers and sisters had dynamited a shack during their childhood, and I was away.
THE MAGIC BOTTOM FAN. From The Sea Of Gold And Other Tales from Japan by Yoshiko Uchida (Berkeley, CA: Creative Arts Book Company, 1988). The story there is called “The Tengu’s Magic Nose Fan,” so you can guess the adaptation I made.
ANGELINA SPEAKS OUT. From “A Woman for a Hundred Cattle” in Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World by Kathleen Ragan (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998). The story is Swahili in origin.