by Sarah Earlene Shere, Hosanna Heralds, ©2023
(Jan. 20, 2023) — Once upon a time, there was a farmer and his wife who had a beautiful daughter; she was engaged to marry a wealthy traveler. One evening, when the beau had come to enjoy a supper with his intended and future in-laws, the young woman went down to the cellar to draw some cider from their barrels.
As the jug filled, she looked up and saw a mallet, covered with dust and cobwebs, stuck between the rafters. The lass began to consider, “What if I marry this traveler, we have a son, and, when he is a man, we ask him to come down here to draw cider, and what if that mallet should fall on his head and kill him?”
Suddenly overcome with grief, the young lady sat down and wept. After her long delay, her mother entered the cellar to see what had become of her daughter. The child told everything she had been thinking, causing the mother to sit beside her and weep also. With time, the farmer came down to see what had happened to his wife and daughter. When they told him what was troubling them, he, too, sat down and wept. Finally, the traveler came down the stairs. He found the trio, all weeping, sitting in a puddle of cider (for the girl had not closed the spout). The young man rushed to turn off the flow of cider and demanded to know what happened. His intended explained the dreadful scenario.
The traveler laughed between humor and vexation. With a swift movement, he removed the mallet and set it atop a table. “Surely there is no one on earth sillier than you three! I can not be burdened with such a family! I will journey and see if I can find three people sillier than you. If I do, I will return and accept my lot of being yoked with you.”
So the young man set out. The first year, he roomed with a man who endeavored to put on his trousers, every morning, by hanging them across two chairs and making a running leap in order to get into them. He was certainly sillier than the farmer or his wife. The second year, he saw a woman desperately attempting to save the moon from drowning, never acknowledging that she was pointlessly trying to fish out the moon’s reflection in the lake. How wise this made his betrothed appear to be!
Near the end of the third year, the traveler was unsure if he would find another silly person. He began to consider, “What if I never find another silly person? In that case, I could never go back to my intended, for, after all, I have my pride; I could not return having not fulfilled my quest.” He then began to feel a deep ache in his heart at the thought of never seeing his beloved’s laughing eyes, never hearing her voice and never feeling her in his arms again. Tears came to his eyes. At that moment, he caught sight of his reflection and laughed when he realized he had just found the silliest person of all, for no one is sillier than the one who puts pride and arrogance before love and compassion!