Winter's Tales (4 page)

And winter stayed. Winter got deeper and colder. The snow kept falling, the glaciers in the valleys grew thicker and higher. It was impossible to get canoes out to sea, everyone's winter food stocks ran out, and sometimes the blizzards were so fierce people couldn't leave their huts to collect firewood.

Many people froze, many people starved, and the people who survived longed for spring.

But they knew they could not shout to the ibis to ask her to bring spring, because that would drive her further away. So after many long months of a winter with the strength to last forever, they realised what they must do.

They
whispered
their request to the ibis.

They whispered, gently and respectfully, into the cold air. “Beautiful ibis, beautiful Lexuwa, please end this long heavy winter. Please bring spring and we will never offend you again.”

So the ibis brought spring. She flew back over the village and as she flew over, winter ended and spring began.

But the people's troubles were not over.

The long winter had trapped massive quantities of water in the snow and glaciers. So when the warm spring sun melted the ice, it caused the great flood, which is remembered in many stories around the world.

The floodwaters rose so high that the Yamana retreated to the mountain tops, waiting for the water level to fall before they
could return to the coast and rebuild their huts.

Once the floodwaters had gone, the seasons settled back into their rhythm.

Now, when the people see the ibis woman approach, they don't shout and point. They stay still and quiet. They send the children into the huts, and they shush the little ones, so no-one makes a noise and no-one offends the ibis.

Because they hope the ibis will always bring spring, rather than bring another long winter and another great flood.

Scottish myth

Winter made the land.

In ancient times the winter hag, the Cailleach, carried a basket of stones and rocks on her back, and waded through the sea. When she reached the right place, she tipped the basket up over her head, so the rocks and stones poured out into the sea.

The stones that bounced away became the islands scattered down the west coast of
Scotland, and the rocks that landed in a pile became the mainland of Scotland.

The Cailleach smashed the pile of rocks together to make one land with her great heavy mallet. Her hammer crushed the rocks together, but also froze them hard, because everything the winter hag's mallet touched became ice cold, barren and lifeless.

Then the Cailleach ruled the land. Her reign of dark and ice lasted for many cold years. She hoped it would last for ever.

Only one person could end her reign: her son, Angus Og.

Angus, with his red-gold hair, was born to be the god of summer. So he could end the reign of winter. But Angus could only become god of summer and end the endless winter if he married a girl called Brid, the girl who was born to be spring.

When the Cailleach discovered this, she banished her son, then she kidnapped Brid and held her prisoner in a hollow mountain.

So while Angus strode up and down Scotland searching for his mother's hiding
place, the Cailleach sat on her ice-cold throne in the centre of the mountain, surrounded by her storm hags, with her prisoner in a small stone cell.

But hiding in a hollow mountain becomes boring after a while, so the Cailleach decided to entertain herself by teasing and tormenting Brid. She knew that despair is a terrible thing, but that a glimmer of impossible hope is even worse.

She dragged Brid from her cell and said, “I will never let you go, unless you can wash
this
pure white in the running water of the burn outside.”

She threw a filthy crusty grey-brown sheepskin at Brid's feet.

So every day Brid was allowed out, to crouch by the cold burn flowing down the side of the hollow mountain and wash the fleece in the ice-rimmed water.

She couldn't run away, because she was guarded by the storm hags. A dozen huge bitter old women, with blue faces, tusks for teeth, matted white hair and one grey eye
each, sat near the burn on their shaggy goats, as Brid scrubbed and rubbed.

Every day, while Brid washed the fleece, she wondered how she could escape or let Angus know where she was hidden.

For one hundred days she scrubbed the fleece, until her hands were red raw with the cold water, her nails were splintered and her knuckles were bleeding.

Each day the water in the burn ran away dark and filthy from the fleece. Each night she had to show the filthy fleece to the Cailleach, who taunted Brid about her failure to wash it clean.

Then after one hundred days, the water began to run clear. Brid had rinsed all the dirt out of the fleece, but the wool was still brown.

However, Brid kept washing the fleece every day, because she knew she had more chance to escape, or to signal Angus, on the mountainside than inside her stone cell. So she kept scrubbing and rubbing at the brown fleece, her hands cold and sore and raw.

Then one day, she noticed a line of tiny flowers pushing up through the hard cold ground by the side of the burn.

Brid realised that Angus must have walked this way searching for her.

Because although Angus Og was not yet the god of summer, he held all the warmth of future summers inside him. So as he walked on the frozen ground, the warmth of his tread softened the earth enough for plants to grow for a little while.

Brid didn't say anything. She just kept scrubbing, until one short moment when none of the storm hags were looking straight at her, then she quickly plucked a flower and hid it in her cloak.

That evening when she was taken before the Cailleach to show the fleece, the winter hag laughed down at Brid from the icy throne. “You've still not washed it pure white, you useless girl!”

Brid said quietly, “Of course I haven't washed it pure white. However clean it is, this fleece will never be white, because it
came from a
brown
sheep, you cold cruel old woman. And I know this now, because I have seen pure white.”

The Cailleach shrugged. “You have seen the pure white of my snow and ice.”

Brid shook her head. “No, the white I have seen is purer and clearer and brighter than that. The purest, most beautiful white of all is the white of the first flower at the end of winter.”

And Brid pulled from her cloak…

A snowdrop.

As soon as she saw the tiny flower, the Cailleach screamed, a scream of rage and fear that echoed around the hollow mountain then boomed across the whole of Scotland. Just as Brid had planned.

Angus heard the scream, he recognised his mother's voice and he followed the sound to the mountain.

Faster than his mother could think or the storm hags could move, Angus burst into the hollow mountain, grabbed Brid's hand, and the two of them ran.

They ran as far and as fast as they could.

The Cailleach knew that if Brid and Angus, spring and summer, stayed together then winter would be over. So she sent her storm hags after them, to separate them or kill them.

The storm hags chased Brid and Angus around and across Scotland.

Every time they were trapped or ambushed, Brid and Angus stood back to back and fought together.

The storm hags attacked with their weapons of biting cold and slicing wind.

Brid and Angus fought back with their own weapons: Angus with his sword, red-gold and bright like his hair; Brid with the fleece she had washed so often, long and supple.

He stabbed and slashed and parried with blows of the sword. She blinded the one-eyed hags and tripped the goats with flicks of the fleece.

They fought every day for weeks. On the days when Brid and Angus were winning, the weather was warm and bright and clear, and
plants began to grow. On the days the storm hags were winning, the weather was cold and dark and frosty, and new growth was nipped in the bud.

The battle went on for weeks, up and down the whole land. But finally, Brid and Angus prevailed. At last, all the storm hags were dead and their goats were limping away.

Spring and summer stood together, triumphant.

So the Cailleach came out of her mountain.

She stomped towards them, her massive mallet striking the ground with every step. The mallet froze and killed everything it touched. All the new plants, all the new growth, all the new hope.

The Cailleach was the coldest, the strongest, the hardest, the most destructive being on this earth. Nothing Brid or Angus could do would stop her, no weapon they could hold would defeat her.

The Cailleach stomped closer and closer, destroying everything before her with crashing blows of her mallet.

Angus called out to the sun, because he knew the sun longed for summer. He called for help to defeat his mother.

So the sun forged a spear from boiling air and burning fire, and aimed the white-hot weapon at the Cailleach's back as she marched toward Brid and Angus.

But the Cailleach ducked out of the way and the sun's spear missed her, gouging a line right across Scotland as it fell to earth.

Though the Cailleach dodged the burning blade, the pure heat of the spear passed so close to her that it melted her icy core of strength. The Cailleach collapsed to the ground, exhausted after her long reign.

She dropped her mallet under a holly bush – which is why nothing grows under a holly bush, not even in the most fertile spring or the warmest summer – and she crawled away to one of the stony islands she had dropped from her basket.

The winter hag lay on the island, barely breathing, unable to wake. While she slept, Brid and Angus brought life to the world.
Life and hope and growth and warmth and colour.

That is why every year, spring weather veers between days of bright clear warmth and days of dark cold frost. Because spring is a battle between winter and summer. A battle that summer always wins.

But summer doesn't win for long.

Every autumn, the Cailleach wakes up. And she reaches for her mallet…

Ukrainian folktale