Since food is a major topic these days, a gentle reminder of one of life's most vaulable lessons:
Once upon a
time there lived a bullock at a farmer’s farm. The bullock suffered for the
work he had to do was hard and many a day the bullock had not gotten anything
to eat for refusing to work. The bullock lived in a huge barn and chained up he
slept on old and misty straw and no one except for a few mice came and talked
to him.
One day a
hitherto unknown animal appeared in the barn and the mice were never seen
again.
The animal
was a small snake with colourful skin and sharp green eyes.
“Hullo,”
the bullock said, “Who art thou, little fellow?”
“Have thou
never heard of me before,” the snake replied astounded, “or are thy eyes that
bad?” (And she couldn’t help but think about the meals of bullock meat she would
have from soon on.)
“I can see
thy face quite well, dear fellow. But may I humbly dare to ask for thy help?“
the bullock said.
“Mayhap,
mayhap… but what could a rather small animal like me do for such a gigantic
beast like thee?”
“Alas,”
said the bullock and his eyes grew bigger in excitement, “I am held captive and
I am punished by a fierce and vicious farmer living over there in the red
building. I strongly suffer from his tyranny.”
“I
understand thy misery, brother,” the snake hissed and her eyes grew bigger in
excitement, “What shall I do?”
“I surely
can see thy thin tongue darting in and out thy mouth and I can also see those
sharp teeth of thee… And so, methinks, thou art quite apt at using thy sharp
teeth on the farmer who hath been hitting me all my life long?”
“Sure I
am,” said the snake and she quickly glided out of the barn and into the house
and bit the farmer. Suffocating from the snake’s poison, the farmer dropped
from his chair by the kitchen table and died.
When the
snake was back in the barn, she proudly said, “I did what thou asked for,
master. Have thou got any further instructions?”
“Ay,” said
the bullock kindly. “I told thee about thy beautiful thin tongue that is
darting in and out thy mouth. So, as a last service, wouldst thou be so kind to
slid thy tongue into the padlock and open my iron chains?”
The snake
skilfully used her tongue to open the padlock and slowly the gigantic bullock
moved. When he had gotten up – just one second before the snake could bite into
the bullock’s left leg, the bullock lifted one of his huge feet – and simply
stamped the snake to death.
Moral: Thou shalt not play with thy food…
2 Kommentare:
Interesting. As far as I'm aware this is a total departure for you.
What was the inspiration for this? Did you decide to write your own fable or did it grow from something else?
I like many things about it, which, and please take this in the friendly spirit in which it is intended, is despite the fact that I dislike it when writers use old fashioned language. In this case the 'thees' and 'thys' seem appropriate, though I'd be interested to see a version written in another style. In defence of the old fashioned language though, it is important that writers have a command of all different kinds of vernacular and you have used this style, which is quite different from your normal, quite well.
It's good to see these news posts going up. It makes me want to write more and publish more.
It is, like some of the other prose pieces, part of a creative writing course I attended at uni several years ago. I re-read the stuff I wrote back then and found that it's decent enough to be shared.
I agree that old-ish language shouldn't be overused, but in this case, as you've already observed, it's part of the design as a fable.
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